Professor plugs into what it means to game
By Jason Winders, MES'10
She was worried her husband was spending too much time reading. And so, Jonathan Boulter’s wife bought him his first video game system, an Xbox.
“She wanted the gaming device to work as a sort of diversion from my academic work,” laughed the English and Writing Studies professor, who has logged countless gaming hours in the 15 years since that first system. “What has happened is, I have turned my pleasure into work.”
Today, Boulter, PhD’96, has found a place among the first wave of video game culture academic researchers. This month, he released his first book on the subject. Next week, he joins American writer and critic Michael Clune in conversation about Clune’s new book GAMELIFE: A Memoir during an event sponsored by the Faculty of Arts & Humanities.
Boulter’s research focuses on 20th century and contemporary literature, with a particular interest in the works of Samuel Beckett. He has published on and taught the works of Paul Auster, Jose Saramago, Jorge Luis Borges and others. However, it is work of Hideo Kojima, and other digital auteurs, which has garnered his attention in recent years.
“As I started gaming seriously, I started noticing certain things in certain games that spoke to my interest in philosophy,” Boulter said. “Certain games had philosophical elements to them – questions about what it means ‘to play,’ what it means ‘to be human.’ I have justified my hours of pleasure in work, or my work in pleasure; I cannot quite tell anymore.”
Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Boulter spent the first decade of his life overseas and shielded from the burgeoning popular culture phenomena of video games in North America. Arriving in Canada in 1979, he missed some formative popular culture among his Generation X contemporaries – no Happy Days, no Evel Knievel and, most importantly, no early days of gaming.
“I had no television, no access to gaming devices or video games,” Boulter said. “In some ways, my interest in certain aspects of popular culture stems from the fact I didn’t have it the first 10 years of my life. I didn’t start gaming until fairly late. I think I am always trying to play catch-up to what I didn’t have.”
