In this course we will play, discuss, read about, and critique video games. This class is open to students of all majors and disciplines and does not assume a deep familiarity with games or theories about them. Its only requirement is a sincere enthusiasm to engage critically with games and gaming.
At its core, this class explores games as significant cultural objects. We will talk at length about how games make meaning through their internal logic and how they fit into broader cultural frameworks. We will look at several different accounts of how we might "read" play and games, and investigate how these readings inform other texts. Special attention will be given to the storytelling potential of games, its similarities to and differences from other media, and how the rhetoric of play and games speaks to (and within) traditional media and cultural discourse.
Over the course of the term, we will see how ideas of play and games are already embedded in our culture and interrogate our reliance on them in order to better understand games as well as ourselves as players.