On this page:
Introduction
Course Description
Rationale
Goals and Objectives
Culture matters. It tells Hillary Clinton to legislate Grand Theft Auto. It tells you not to camp with that bazooka or to hog the driver's seat. It tells players that Lara Croft and Bloodrayne are good models of femininity. Culture gives us cues about how to interpret the world.
As gamers, you're already part of a vibrant culture machine; as game designers, you'll take the wheel, determining where that machine goes (and whether it runs over anyone in the process). This class will give you an atlas with which to navigate the game culture landscape and the skills to choose the best path through it.
Throughout the semester, we will use critical tools to explore game culture and your place in it. By the time we're done, you will have begun crafting a sophisticated understanding of games as they relate to larger spheres of culture; you will find yourself thinking about why games do what they do, and how they relate to social issues. This course provides the building blocks for a lifetime of critical engagement in video game culture; you will not only leave this course with a map of the gaming landscape, but with the tools to enter uncharted territory and draw future maps yourself.
This course will complicate your thinking about games. On each of four "levels" we will examine the relationship between games and culture. Each week, we will engage with texts about games—we will write, think, and talk about game culture. Of course, we will play games as well.
Level 1: Game Text
We will begin with semiotics, a way of understanding (and explaining) alphabetic, visual, and aural signs and symbols. Drawing on media studies, we will search for underlying messages in games, teasing out hidden meanings and exploring their cultural contexts. We will ask how a game's 'home culture' affects its reception and consider whether our own context makes a difference in how we understand games. Our conversations will open a broad range of topics that will remain in play throughout the term.
Level 2: Game Play
In the second unit, we will add to our critical toolbox by examining games as video games. These new texts will help us re-evaluate the general theories of media from Level 1. We will read various authors who differentiate game texts from other kinds of texts, and we will consider how play changes our reading experience.
Level 3: Game Worlds
The third unit brings our tools to bear on the question of "virtual worlds." We'll ask how game designers combine interactivity with elements of culture to build worlds people will want to inhabit. We will then explore the cultures that spring up around those worlds.
Level 4: Game Culture
In the last weeks of the course, our now-critical gaze will turn outward to explore the cultural milieu around games. In our discussions, we will use our analytical and theoretical tools to engage with the public debate about games. The final project asks you to tackle these problems as you engage with the questions raised throughout the term and integrate your understanding of game culture.
Game Culture brings
textual and critical theory to bear on video games, examining how
games function in (and with) culture. You will learn to think about
games in new ways, both as isolated objects of study and as a dominant
force in today's media market. At the end of this course, you will
have a deeper understanding of how games work and what they say,
knowledge that will be especially useful to game design majors, who
will bring these new ideas back to their design projects.
Prerequisites
36-1000, Media Theory and Design 1
52-1152, English Composition 2
This course examines computer games from a cultural perspective. We will explore how the prevailing culture and values affect game design, popularity, and experience; we'll also examine how games affect those areas of culture. Other issues discussed in a theoretical context include role-playing and identity, ethics, group behavior, competition, politics, gender, race, and aesthetics.
You will:
1. Learn the role of play in human activity.
2. Learn the ethical responsibilities of game developers.
3. Learn that games are always highly symbolic rituals that grow out of and reflect existing cultural preferences and knowledge bases.
4. Learn the semiotics of embedded messages in games.
5. Understand "virtual worlds" as new media and social construct.
