Game Culture & Technology

About

This seminar engages computer game culture and technology from the context of humanistic, social science, and technology perspectives. We will explore such issues as the rise of computer game studies, historical approaches to the study of play and gaming, theories of play, analytical methods for analysis and critique of games, games and art, "serious" games, game mechanics and interaction paradigms, games and consumerism, and game development processes. Each week will involve intensive reading, discussion, and play.

Required Materials

Readings and Games: Available online for your printing/playing pleasure (see weekly breakdown). You are expected to have hard-copy of the week's reading assignment with you during seminar for reference purposes.

Course Overview

Expectations:

• Readings. Readings form the foundation upon which our seminar conversations unfold. A basic collection of readings has been assembled. However, depending upon where discussions lead, we may find that we want to modify/supplement the basic list.
• Games. Games are a primary course material. Concentrated engagement is necessary in order to conduct sound critical analysis. So yes, there will be required playtime.
• Weekly Presentations. Each week either a single student or group of students will be responsible for presenting summaries of weekly readings to class. Assignments will be made at our first meeting.
• Agenda Items. Two days before our scheduled seminar each student will email to the class one agenda item. These agenda items will help drive our conversation. Each student will bring at least three items they wish to discuss. These items must have a reference to either: 1) a reading; or 2) a game assigned for study that week. Attendance and active discussion of agenda items constitute 40% of the final grade.

Assignments:

• Paper or Project. Each student will be expected to complete either: 1) a substantial scholarly paper in the game studies domain (min ~3,500-5,000 words with ~5 scholarly references); or 2) a substantial media project in this area (e.g., a game informed by theoretical work in game studies, a documentary film about an aspect of game culture, a game design document, etc.). Projects must also be written up in a short (min ~1,500-1,800 words), reflective paper. Initial paper/project abstracts are due ..., and final paper/projects are due ... (there will be a penalty for late work). The paper or project constitutes 50% of the final grade.
• Paper/Project presentation. At least one of our seminar meetings will be set aside for student presentations and discussion of their planned course work (depending upon seminar size). Each presentation will be ~10 minutes long and include prepared materials (conference-style, with slides and/or other media support) followed by brief discussion. The presentation constitutes 20% of the final grade (that's right, you're expected to give 110%, or at least fool me into thinking so).

01.08.08

Introductions

• Discussion of seminar topics, syllabus, student interests, etc.
• Game previews.

01.15.08

Theme: HIStory (~100 pgs)

Read:

• "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon," from Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Johan Huizinga, 1938 (as reprinted in The Game Design Reader, edited by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman).
• "The Definition of Play, the Classification of Games," from Man, Play, and Games, Roger Caillois, 1958 (also as in The Game Design Reader).
• "Play and Ambiguity," from The Ambiguity of Play, Brian Sutton-Smith, 1997 (also as in The Game Design Reader)
• "Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums," Stewart Brand, 1972.

Play:

• Spacewar! (Win Version), Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen (1962). Best to play with a partner. This version was programmed primarily by Peter Hirschberg (http://www.digisys.net/users/cogs/spacewar.htm) in C++ - here's the source code if you want to hack at it.
• Adventure (Win Version), William Crowther and Donald Woods (1976) (see http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/ for various ports, cheats, and distributions).
  
  If you're new to interactive fiction, check out Emily Short's introduction.

Related Reading (Optional):

• "The Playful and the Serious: An approximation to Huizinga's Homo Ludens," Hector Rodriguez, 2006 Game Studies, Vol 6, No 1, December 2006.
• "Spacewar!," from Wikipedia 2007.
• "Colossal Cave Adventure," from Wikipedia 2007.

01.22.08

Theme: Game Studies? (~70 pgs)

Read:

• "Game Studies Now, History of Science Then," by Henry Lowood, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "The Question of Computer Games," by Patrick Crogan, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "A Moment in the Life of a Generation," by Frans Mayra, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "A Ludicrous Discipline?," by Tom Boellstorff, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "Why Game Studies Now?," by Dmitri Williams, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "Why Study New Games?," by Fred Turner, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "Why Game Studies Now?," by James Paul Gee, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "Winside Out: An Introduction to the Convergence of Computers, Games, and Art," by Antoinette LaFarge, catalog essay from Shift-Ctrl: Computers, Games, and Art, 2000.
• "Gaming for Beginners," by Toby Miller, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "Game Design Education," by Janet Murray, et al, from IEEE, June 2006.

View:

• "Shift-Ctrl: Computers, Games, and Art," curated by Robert Nideffer and Antoinette LaFarge, Beall Center for Art & Technology, UC Irvine, October-November 2000.
• "Alt-Ctrl: Computers, Games, and Art," curated by Robert Nideffer and Antoinette LaFarge, Beall Center for Art & Technology, UC Irvine, October-November 2004.

Play:

• MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) - Win Version | Mac Version. ROM files (will work x-platform, unzip and copy ROM files in 'roms' folder inside of MAME folder once expanded. NOTE: you do not need to expand the individual ROM files - ROMs can remain zip files once placed in the 'roms' folder) Original arcade console ROMs ported to run on Personal Computers.

01.29.08

Theme: Critique / Methods (~60 pgs)

Read:

• "Comparative Video Game Criticism," by Ian Bogost, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "The Game, The Player, The World," by Jesper Juul, from Level Up, DIGRA, Utrecht, 2003.
• "The Pleasures and Dangers of the Game," by Tanya Krzywinska, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "Game analysis: Developing a methodological toolkit for the qualitative study of games," by Mia Consalvo, from Game Studies, Vol 6, No 1, December 2006.
• "The Mangle of Play," by Constance Steinkuehler, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 3, July 2006.

Related Reading (Optional):

• "Ludology Meets Narratology," by Gonzalo Frasca, from Parnasso #3, Helsinki, 1999.
• "What Are We Really Looking at?," by Barry Atkins, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 6, April 2006.

02.05.08

Theme: Ideology / War (~110 pgs)

Read:

• "Videogames and Ideological Frames," by Ian Bogost, from Popular Communication, Vol 4 No 3, 2006.
• "Game Engines as Embedded Systems," by Robert Nideffer (written in 2003), from Database Aesthetics, Minnesota Press, 2007.
• "Values at Play: Design Tradeoffs in Socially-Oriented Game Design," by Mary Flanagan (et al), from CHI 2005, April 2005.
• "Protocol," by Alexander R. Galloway, from Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 23 2006.
• "From Sun Tzu to X-Box," by Ed Halter, from Thunder's Mouth Press, New York 2006.
• "Theaters of War: The Military Entertainment Complex," by Tim Lenoir and Henry Lowood, to appear in Kunstkammer Laboratorium, Jan Lazardzig, Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte, eds., Walter de Gruyter Publishers 2003.

Related Reading (Optional):

• "Cultural Framing of Computer/Video Games," by Kurt Squire, from Game Studies, Vol 2, No 1, December 2002.
• "Language Wants To Be Overlooked: On Software and Ideology," by Alexander R. Galloway, from journal of visual culture, Sage Publications 2006.
• "Playing Politics," by Ian Bogost, from First Monday, special issue number 7 (September 2006).
• "Social Realism in Gaming," by Alexander R. Galloway, from Game Studies, Vol 4, No 1, December 2004.
• "Warcraft and Utopia," by Alexander R. Galloway, from 1000 Days of Theory, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker (eds), February 2006.

02.12.08

Theme: Play Day

Play:

• World of Warcraft, Robert Pardo, Allen Adham, et al, Blizzard (2004). Use 10-day trial accounts to play (you can buy the game to continue). I will have it installed on my lab computers if needed. Play through at least level 5.

02.19.08

Theme: Case Study - WoW (~90 pgs)

Read:

• "Building an MMO With Mass Appeal," by Nicolas Ducheneaut (et al), from Games and Culture, special issue on World of Warcraft. Vol 1 No 4 (2006).
• "Does WoW Change Everything?," by T. L. Taylor, from Games and Culture, special issue on World of Warcraft. Vol 1 No 4 (2006).
• "Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories," by Tanya Krzywinska, from Games and Culture, special issue on World of Warcraft. Vol 1 No 4 (2006).
• "WoW Is the New MUD," by Torill Elvira Mortensen, from Games and Culture, special issue on World of Warcraft. Vol 1 No 4 (2006).

Related Reading (Optional):

• "Real Genders Choose Fantasy Characters," by Nicholas DiGiuseppe and Bonnie Nardi, from First Monday, volume 12, number 5 (May 2007).
• "Storyline, Dance/Music, or PvP?," by Henry Lowood, from Games and Culture, special issue on World of Warcraft. Vol 1 No 4 (2006).
• "From Tree House to Barracks," by Dmitri Williams (et al), from Games and Culture, special issue on World of Warcraft. Vol 1 No 4 (2006).

02.26.08

Theme: Gender / Economy (~100 pgs)

Read:

• "Genderizing HCI," by Justine Cassell, from Human Factors And Ergonomics, ACM 2002.
• "Next Level: Women's Digital Activism Through Gaming," by Mary Flanagan, from Digital Media Revisited, MIT Press 2003.
• "Complete Freedom of Movement: Videogames as Gendered Play Spaces," by Henry Jenkins, from The Game Design Reader Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (eds), 2003.
• "The Labor of Fun," by Nick Yee, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "Parlaying Value," by Thomas Malaby, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 2, April 2006.

Related Reading (Optional):

• "Conditions of Engagement in Game Simulation," by Ralph Noble (et al), from Level Up, DIGRA, Utrecht, 2003.
• "Hyperbodies, Hyperknowledge: Women in Games, Women in Cyberpunk. and Strategies of Resistance," by Mary Flanagan, from Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture, By Mary Flanagan, Austin Booth, MIT Press 2002.
• "On the Research Value of Large Games," by Edward Castronova, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 2, April 2006.
• "Not a Hater, Just Keepin’ It Real," by David J. Leonard, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.
• "On Virtual Economies," by Edward Castronova, from Game Studies, Vol 3, No 2, December 2003.

03.04.08

Theme: Learning / "Platforms" (~85 pgs)

Read:

• "New Media as Material Constraint: An Introduction to Platform Studies," by Ian Bogost, Nick Montfort, from HASTAC proceedings, Duke University 2006.
• "Hybrid Reality Games Reframed," by Adriana de Souza e Silva and Girlie C. Delacruz, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 3, July 2006.
• "Live Action Role-Playing Games," by Anders Tychsen (et al) from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 3, July 2006.
• "The Play of Imagination," by Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 1, January 2006.

Related Reading (Optional):

• "Point and Shoot: Remediating Photography in Gamespace," by Cindy Poremba, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 2, No 1, January 2007.
• "Combat in Context," by Nick Montfort, from Game Studies, Vol 6, No 1, December 2006.
• "Victorian Snakes? Towards A Cultural History of Mobile Games and the Experience of Movement," by Jussi Parikka, Jaakko Suominen, from Game Studies, Vol 6, No 1, December 2006.
• "Restricted Play," by Robert Alan Brookey and Paul Booth, from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 1, No 3, July 2006.
• "Sustainable Play," by Celia Pearce (et al), from Games and Culture, Sage Publications, Vol 2, No 3, July 2007.

03.11.08

Presentations I

03.18.08

Presentations II: Final Class
All papers/projects due.