You’re right, “edify” is definitely a tricky and loaded term. For my part, I’m using it with all the connotations of art-as-moral-medicine that can be unkindly associated with it, and that seem implicit in the view that a worthwhile art form must be able to teach you something.

That said, I agree that the supposed intentions of the artist ought to be left out of it. I’m more interested in how the idea of edification affects how we as players and critics interpret a game. As you point out, it leads to some grey areas. Internalizing the worldview of a game isn’t always a straightforward process, and it would be interesting to discuss more about how this happens and why it’s important.

There’s a lot of grey area, though. If I feel that Bioshock sensitized me better to the effect of violence, was I edified? Does a game need to try to be edifying in order to be so?

I’m tempted to say that someone’s intentions in creating a game are irrelevant to how the end result should be interpreted, but that’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction on my part. I’m curious what you think.

That’s a fair question. I don’t consider gaming exempt from any responsibility held by other media, and I do think it has potential as an instructional medium. But the implementation of that potential seems best left to teachers; my objection is to tying the question of instructiveness up with questions of moral and artistic seriousness.

Your second point has me thinking. A unique feature of games is that when they pose a question, the player is usually in a position to answer it. How does this change what it means for a work to raise a question?

I agree that setting out to instruct runs the risk of turning the medium into an interactive Chick tract, but does something doesn’t need to intentionally set out to edify to provide the material needed for valuable social lessons?

I also agree that asking the right questions is perhaps the greatest responsibility of an instructional medium. Do you feel games are exempt from that responsibility?