The Art of Gaming in Japan: A Project Update

I have been sifting through some articles online and considering my project more heavily. If you take a look at the post just below this one, you may notice I was originally going to look at the dichotomy of the visuals in gaming from the east and west. In most cases, the two are opposed completely, both in their artistic representations, but also their core game design. This is interesting, but fails to deliver any kind of concise conclusion. "Look, they aren't like one another," would be the ultimate summary of the project, and that's not compelling.

For that reason, I'll be focusing exclusively on games from Japanese developers. Often times these games reflect the look of the woodblock prints we looked at, Nara's artwork, and Murakami's superflat aesthetic. Something interesting about this research is that the visual design of these games mirrors things we've studied. More interesting is how the actual core design is reflective of some of the concepts we've talked about, primarily mujo.

This tighter scope of observation will (I hope) bring about a more focused and relevant project. Below are the sources I'll use; mostly to contextualize what I'll be talking about, the majority of the project will be dedicated to comparing the imagistic styles of the games and the sub-cultures and pre-existing Japanese art they resemble. Pardon the lateness! If anyone would be willing to drop any helpful comments I would very much appreciate it.

P.S. The images included are meant only to give examples of the kinds of games I'll be looking at. Since this is art in motion, I'll likely move through many different images and utilize videos for my PowerPoint. Thank you!

Sources:

"Games, The Lively New Art" by Henry Jenkins: HERE
"Art Form for the Digital Age" by Henry Jenkins: HERE
"Some Notes on Aesthetics in Japanese Video Games (pg. 211)" by William Hurber: HERE
"Haunting Backgrounds" by Martin Picard: HERE
"The Cultural Economy of Ludic Superflatness" by Dean Chan: HERE