Neoludica: Arte e Gioco

The document is a critical book review, published in Issue 02 of the Italian journal Game Journal in 2013, of "Arte e Videogames. Neoludica 2011-1966" (Skira, 2011), edited by Debora Ferrari with a group of collaborators. The volume is the catalogue of an exhibition held as a side event of the 54th Venice Biennale. The reviewer frames the work as a successor to "Play, il mondo dei videogiochi," the 2002 exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, which he describes as the first major European and Italian exhibition devoted to videogames. He argues that a decade passed before a comparable event could be staged, and that Neoludica's curatorial choices reflect a shift from presenting the videogame "as such" to examining specific details, marginal cases, and internal elements of games.

The review maps the volume's thematic strands, including the question of a national identity for videogames in Italy, the concept of homo ludens and gamification, memory and obsolescence of the medium, the relationship between videogames and other arts such as photography, architecture and literature, and analyses of specific works such as the Oddworld series and the productions of Tale of Tales. The reviewer characterizes the book as a patchwork of approaches and methods, not a conventional academic edited collection or a historically rigorous exhibition catalogue, and sees it as an avant-garde, politically positioned work that advocates the artistic legitimacy of the medium. He also praises its high-quality illustrations and its design, which he reads as itself playful and artistic.