Özet:

With the development of technology, the 21st century has turned into a digital age. The world created by the digital age has a culture in itself. One of the most basic elements of this culture, also known as digital culture, is the games played in the digital environment. Digital game or video game is a cultural and industrial product that emerged with the transfer of the concept of game to digital media, with technological possibilities, especially with computers. Games in digital media are also referred to as computer games or electronic games according to the devices in which the games are played or according to the technical equipment, but generally preferred terms are digital game and video game expressions. These games are played with devices such as computer, arcade, and console; Accordingly, they are classified based on the device they are played on such as a computer game, console game, or content such as action and strategy. Digital games / video games has improved in the world since the 1960s, and since the 1980s in Turkey and has been the subject of academic study, especially since the early 2000s. Based on many areas, studies on digital games have been carried out and an interdisciplinary history of digital game studies has been formed, and a framework of theories has been created for the study of these games. In this context, the most fundamental debates have developed around ludology, narratology and anthropology, along with fields such as psychology, educational sciences, and media research. On the one hand, there is a narratology perspective, which sees games as a kind of narrative and examines games with a narrative formalism perspective. On the other hand, there is a ludology perspective, which takes games as games and introduces the concept of game formalism and argues that games should be examined by a separate and specific discipline. There are also anthropological approaches that take place in the interdisciplinary analysis of games and consider games as a cultural issue. In these discussions, digital games / video games are technological with their digital and video-centric features, and cultural with their features of being games. For this reason, it has been studied from many areas, especially the theoretical approaches mentioned. One of these fields is folklore. In this article, it is aimed to reveal why and how it should be oriented towards digital games / video games from the folklore perspective. First of all, the term, definition, classification and history of the concept of digital game / video game are briefly included in the article. In this section, the information given by various researchers about the terminology, definitions, classifications and the history of the games has been gathered and this information has been evaluated. Then, the main debates in digital game / video game studies and the main methods suggested were discussed. In this section, information is given about ludology, which claims to be a separate discipline for digital games, narratology that approaches digital games from a narrative perspective, and anthropology approaches to digital games as a cultural element. Then, the opinions about the position of folklore in the digital world and its place in the internet environment were discussed and the main studies that approach digital games from a folklore perspective and the ideas put forward by these studies are included. As a result, “why” and “how” of Turkish folklorists should work on digital games was discussed.

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