Editorials and the Importance of Informed Opinions

When researching any contentious topic, you’re bound to run into editorial columns and articles.  These opinion pieces can provide valuable insight into the perspective and reasoning of individuals either in agreement with an author or opposing them.  Editorials are distinct from regular opinion pieces, as they frequently are the work of collaboration between multiple authors, and often take a broader look at a topic than single-author opinion pieces.

The amount of editorial content present in an argument is often influenced by the “hardness” of the topic at hand.  If an argument is suited to being fought with hard numbers and statistics, for instance, editorial content will likely best serve as peripheral to the main thrust of the argument, putting a distinct face onto the numbers which act as the crux of the argument.

Just about any discussion of defining “art” is what I’d be inclined to consider a “soft” topic.  There are numerous theories and philosophies of art, but art is not something that can be numerically quantified in the same way as proposed budgets or scientific definitions.  Because of this, any argument revolving around video games as art (or as being excluded from art) is bound to rely heavily on editorial content.  The persuasiveness of the overall argument will depend in part on the strength of reasoning presented by individual editorials.

            

           There has been quite a lot of editorializing around the topic of games as art (and associated artistic freedom), tackling the topic from many angles.  Of particular interest is this editorial from The Guardian which asserts that the games as art debate is a debate that shouldn’t even need to happen, and that games being an artistic medium is a foregone conclusion.  Or perhaps an editorial from The New York Times which asserts that games ought to be protected from censorship, on the basis that games are an artistic medium.

Thesis Statements; the Core of the Argument

      The importance of the "thesis statement" within an argument is difficult to overstate.  While it is possible for an argument to be successful without a distinct thesis statement, its inclusion can only make an argument more clear.  What makes the thesis statement so significant is that it indicates, in no uncertain terms, the exact purpose of the argument.

      The Purdue Owl online resource gives a couple of guidelines which should be applied when creating a thesis for an argument.  First, the claim made by the thesis must be debatable; that is to say, it must be a statement which could be both affirmed by one reasonable person or rejected by another.  Second, the thesis should be narrow.  It needs to make a specific claim, which can be argued using specific, focused research.  If a thesis is too broad, it can result in participants arguing past each other.

      In my case, there are a couple theses which could be workable:

1. Video games should be widely recognized as an artistic medium, because they meet the generally agreed-upon criteria for "art."

      This would necessitate that I form a working definition of "art" based upon both historical definitions and the theories applied by contemporary art critics.  While this could make for an interesting exploration on its own, I feel that any answer I derive from this thesis would be better served as a component of my second possible thesis, and the one I'd like to go with:

2.  Because video games meet the generally agreed-upon criteria for "art," games should be subject to the same protections against censorship as other artistic mediums.

      This would involve not only creating a working definition of art as with the first proposed thesis, but would also necessitate research into historical examples of art censorship and its consequences as well as historical attempts at censoring content in video games (Florida lawyer Jack Thompson's campaign against mature content in games during the mid-2000's comes to mind).

Kairos and Timing

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On the Inclusion of Visual Elements

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