Aubrey Anable, an associate professor in the film studies department at Carleton University, explores the intricate ways video games compel us to play, and the mental and emotional stimuli that are involved.
A previous University of Toronto (U of T) professor, Anable arrived at Carleton in 2015. Her ongoing projects and video game research have attracted the interest of the community, and in 2016 she appeared in a Charlatan article on Pokémon Go.
Her recently published book Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect “provides an account of why video games compel us to play and how they constitute a contemporary structure of feeling emerging alongside the last sixty years of computerized living,” according to her Carleton website.
When starting her research, Anable critically analyzed video games in modern society and how they’re pathologized by the press and people around the world.
“There’s an interesting divide; video games are either meaningless time wasters, or they are causing the decline of western civilization,” she said.
What motivated Anable in her research was the divide between the two perspectives, and how there isn’t a “complicated middle ground.” In trying to evaluate the emotions while we play, Anable is attracted to the nuanced middle ground of what video games are, and how they engage our feelings.
Anable is also considering the ways in which video games allow us to “rehearse particular effective states that are useful for contemporary life.”
She gives failure as an example of something we experience differently in video games, and how it might change the way we react to failure in real life.
When asked about video game culture in the 21st century, Anable mentioned ‘real’ problems that she hopes to address in her book.
“What a lot of people hear about video game culture is that there are these wars around toxic masculinity and social justice warriors,” Anable said. “I think that’s what comes to mind when people talk about gaming culture in the present.”
According to Anable, video games are the most significant art form of the 21st century.
“What makes video games the most significant art form in the 21st century is that they are a medium that allows us to engage with and interact with computational systems in playful ways,” she said.
In a world centered by digital devices, Anable mentioned the further need for them, and how we have become the digital subjects of today’s age.
“We use computers all the time in our daily lives, we carry around small computers in our pockets,” Anable said. “Video games allow us to feel differently about computational systems, in ways I think we need as digitally mediated subjects.”
Anable also hopes to express the richness of video game culture.
“What I hope comes across in my book is that there’s a really active, rich, and creative gaming culture—people creating independent video games, art video games, using video games to express all sorts of ideas about the human condition in the present, that it is a unique art form,” she said.
Photo by Meagan Casalino
