Video Games, Design, and Aesthetic Experience

This paper places video games within the area of what I call “designed experiences”. Designed experiences are experiences – in the real world or via media – that are designed to elicit specific effects or affects. In previous work I have investigated how teachers, in their classrooms, or game designers, in their games, design experiences that are meant, in both cases, to lead to learning. However, designed experiences can be intended to elicit other things than learning. They can also seek to elicit things such as social change, attitude or behavioral changes, emotions, or other effects of (or on) the body, the mind, or the soul. In this paper I take up the relationship between games as designed experiences and games as art.