Games & Culture (Autumn 2020)

Abstract

The course conveys the necessary tools for analysing games and player cultures from a comprehensive variety of angles, ranging from classic play theories and semiotics to transmedia and gender studies. It engages with games and play from a historical perspective, establishing a common ground for communication about games and player cultures among students from different backgrounds.

Description

Games and Play are fundamental phenomena found in every society throughout history. They are forms of entertainment, and also part of many cultural discourses, as well as modes of behaviour and communication. Lately they have evolved, through computer technology, into the most prominent form of digital culture and expression.

Students will learn how to analyse games and their relation to culture at large in order to discuss games from various theoretical, cultural and critical perspectives, classify them according to taxonomies and assess their use in various contexts.

This course offers a broad overview of the fundamental concepts, theories and approaches to games and play. We will discuss a selection of the main critical and research approaches.

The main topics of the course are as follows:

• Defining and analysing games and play
• Games as sign-systems and rule-systems
• Quest games, narrative, and fiction
• Space and time in games
• Avatars, Characters, and Agency
• Representation in and of games and their players
• Games as transmedia and cross media artefacts
• Players and fans
• Materialities of games
• Doing games research and applying it to practices
• The politics and ideologies of games, player cultures, edutainment and gamification

Formal prerequisites

There are no formal prerequisites. The course is theoretical in nature, so engaging with the course readings and general openness to theoretical and analytical issues will be essential. You are expected to prepare for and actively participate in the lectures, which are dialogic in form, with ample room for discussion.

Additionally, you need to expand your familiarity with a wide variety of games (both digital and analogue). It is suggested to spend some time brushing up on historical game knowledge, i.e. researching and getting first-hand experiences of a wide variety of genres and classics.

While we would not think of formulating a canon of digital games, there are a number of games/game series/genres that you will encounter frequently in research and in your studies. You should therefore have more than heard about (i.e. find them on the internet archive, GOG, abandon-ware portals, or at least watch videos of) most of the following:

• Early games: Spacewar, Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong
• Text Adventures: Adventure, Zork, Hunt the Wumpus (e.g. http://www.amctv.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire/colossal-cave-adventure/landing) 
  
• Genre definers:
• Super Mario Bros. 
• Tetris 
• SimCity 
• Myst 
• Diablo 
• Tomb Raider 
• Grand Theft Auto III 
• The Sims 
• Adventures (esp. the LucasArts school: Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Sam & Max) 
• Formative First-Person Shooters: Doom, Quake, Half-Life 1+2 
• CRPGs (esp. Final Fantasy, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, KOTOR/Mass Effect/Dragon Age series) 
• 'Immersive Simulation' games: System Shock, Deus Ex, Bioshock 
  
• Survival Horror (esp. Resident Evil, Silent Hill series) 
  
• RTS (esp. the Blizzard school: Warcraft, Starcraft)
• MMO (esp. World of Warcraft, EVE online)

Intended learning outcomes

After the course, the student should be able to:

• Discuss games, play and player cultures from a variety of theoretical, cultural and critical perspectives (e.g. semiotics, procedurality, representation).
• Systematically classify games and playful activities.
• Contextualize games in a historical and generic perspective.
• Analyse and interpret games using established or adapted analysis methods.
• Develop coherent arguments that engage critically with theories, definitions, and categorizations.
• Independently examine the state of the art in specific game studies topics by doing a bibliography and presenting the results in a standardized format.
• Reflect on cultural biases, stereotypes, and discrimination within the domain of play and games.
• Examine game culture as a part of a larger media ecology of fandom, transmedia franchises, social media etc.

Learning activities

Lectures give an overview of theories, discourses, and historical developments. They contextualize the readings in the course syllabus and thus facilitate critical engagement. Students are strongly encouraged to discuss concepts, definitions, and categorizations in the lectures.

This analytic approach to existing research is deepened and applied in the exercises through e.g. discussions of examples, formulations and evaluations of alternative concepts. These oral exercises will be supplemented with several hand-ins that build towards the final examination, which takes the form of a term paper. In the term paper, students will individually engage with a self-chosen topic, building on and critically engaging with research from the course readings and beyond.

Mandatory activities

There are no mandatory activities.

The student will receive the grade NA (not approved) at the ordinary exam, if the mandatory activities are not approved and the student will use an exam attempt.

Course literature

The course literature is published in the course page in LearnIT.

Student Activity Budget

Estimated distribution of learning activities for the typical student

• Preparation for lectures and exercises: 20%
• Lectures: 15%
• Exercises: 15%
• Assignments: 15%
• Project work, supervision included: 35%

Ordinary exam

Exam type:
C: Submission of written work, External (7-point scale)
Exam variation:
C11: Submission of written work

Time and date