Video game screens: From arcades to Nintendo DS

Abstract

Video games have become one of the most important and profitable mediums of the modern era. They are even considered the most influential form of popular expression and entertainment in today’s broader culture (Jones in The meaning of video games: gaming and textual strategies. Routledge, New York, 2008). Video games have been studied from different points of view (narratological, ludological, sociological, etc.) but not from a “screenological” one, that is, focused on the screen. Following the idea of “screenology” (de Kerckhove in The architecture of intelligence. Birkhäuser, Basel, 2001; de Kerckhove in Inaugural lecture of the UOC 2005-2006 academic year, 2005; Huhtamo in Elements of screenology: toward an archeology of the screen, 2004), this paper aims to provide a first look at how changes in size, design and location of video game screens have transformed the videoludic experience.