Abstract:

The main purpose of this research work is to elaborate a guide directed, not only for future video game creators, but for the people that just come from another fields of knowledge. Before any of them, to educators and teachers, related or not to the video game industry. Videogames are generally treated nowadays like a cultural product and combination of various arts; or at a single art form themselves; but videogames still lack educational and research publications (books targeting teachers, researchers, students, parents), that can make the approach easier for different targets than computer related professionals; designers/artists, and/or videogame users.

If we take a closer look into videogame studies, they are oriented to, almost entirely, people from the computing or design disciplines, and restricted to private schools or faculties; and also, being oriented to people who already are into the videogame industry; making people from another fields of knowledge truly difficult to receive academic training or teacher education about videogames (this situation is much worse when we talk about public education, in where videogames are plainly nonexistent).

Nowadays, the only way to give birth to a videogame is by relying on methodologies that have little to do with art or combined arts; even if different types of artists and designers are involved in the creation and development of a videogame (the same happens at the moment we analyse their pros and cons). All these facts, make our society, our educators and the specialized press, still treat videogames as just another product (marketing methodologies are commonly used, and strategies that simply analyse computer related or mere technical aspects; quality-price relationship, etc. too).

This work began with my Final Degree Project; it continued with my Master’s Degree Final Project, and I am still working on this matter through my Doctoral Thesis in Fine Arts (and the works I will publish after its release). We have research journals and several books related to some of these topics, but the world still lacks proper doctoral theses based on videogames in general.
I am aiming to continue this career, and, finally write a series of research books related to videogames (giving them the form of an encyclopedia). My doctoral thesis (this project I will talk about in INTED) it is divided into the different actual Fine Arts disciplines (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, film, photography, sequential art, drawing, design, literature, dance).

I analyse several videogames that had an impact in our popular culture or the videogame market; analysing the influence that a specific art discipline; (just one, or several art disciplines at once) had on them; and, then, I proceed to follow that lead through the history of videogames to talk about another remarkable examples that had helped in the evolution of the videogames sector.

My project aims to show both a technical point of view (talking about graphic engines, software and hardware needed to play videogames or developing them), and also an artistic and educational one (I talk about videogames, serious games or common ones). Videogames could benefit from more artists talking and researching about them (as the great majority of people who write, research and talk about videogames come from a wide range of fields of knowledge, but, almost entirely, from the business, journalism or computer engineering sectors).

Keywords:

Videogames research, videogames and fine arts, videogames analysis, serious games, research methodologies, learning and teaching methodologies.