Preliminary syllabus
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- PRELIMINARY SYLLABUS Disclaimer
- Videogames In an English course
- Assignments and Activities
- Games and Media (possibly recommended and/or played in class)
- Outline and Notes for Weekly Topics 1. Games and "new literacy"
- 2. Video games as (new) medium
- 6. World design, simulation, and "fiction"
- 8. Games and Society (I)
- 9. Games and Society (II)
- 10. Games and Society (III)
- 11. Games without Borders (I)
- 13. Games without Borders (III)
- 14. Taking the Wrong Pill, or Second Thoughts
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Department of English University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee English 380 – Media and Society: Game Culture Stuart Moulthrop Fall, 2011 - Wednesdays 11:00 am – 1:40 pm 
PRELIMINARY SYLLABUS Disclaimer: This document does not represent a final syllabus for the class. I may change assignments and activities before the start of the fall semester. However, I have tried to give a fairly accurate impression of the plan. Brief Description: This is a first course in the critical study of games, especially videogames, and the culture of participatory media to which they belong. It will introduce the concept of games and play as pat of a meaning-making activity; it will survey forms, conventions, and practices that inform the design and reception of games; it will outline major theoretical trends within the emerging field of Game Studies; it will examine the place of games in contemporary culture, and consider some of the problems and challenges they pose. The course is intended for students in any major who want to think critically, creatively, and yes, seriously about playful media. This will involve a certain amount of reading and writing (critical evaluation of games, applications and responses to theory), and also a good deal of game play, both in and out of class. Videogames? In an English course? With some justification, leading thinkers have doubts about the relationship of game studies and literary studies. Jesper Juul, whom we will be reading, has been one of the most convincing skeptics, especially on the question of narrative. Is the function of story in game play the same as in poems, novels, or films? Do games even involve stories? Are players the same as readers? Is a game designer an author? What does it mean to speak of games as texts? Should literary types stick to books, and leave the gaming world alone? These controversies have generated fruitful insights about fundamental differences in what happens on the page, the cinematic screen, and the game board or console. While there is probably a larger conceptual gap between games and literature than between film and literature (or indeed, between games and film), there are still good reasons to approach games, however warily, from a literary or linguistic perspective. Many major thinkers in the field come from such backgrounds (Espen Aarseth, Ian Bogost, James Gee, McKenzie Wark). Despite the differences, games and literature still share some common ground, if not so much in the area of narrative, then perhaps in rhetoric. We may not take up precisely the question Gee proposes – how can we read a game? – but we will look into the ways games operate as semiotic systems, or texts. Required Texts Jesper Juul, Half Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press, 2005. About $30 new. (Softcover not currently available.) Tom Bissell, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. Vintage, 2010. About $10. Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games. MIT Press, 2007. About $15. Also excerpts from many other books and articles, available online in PDF. Assigned reading per week will generally not exceed 150 pages. Assignments and Activities We will read at least one book of videogame theory, probably Jesper Juul’s Half Real, and something from the participatory side of game culture, such as Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives. There will also be excerpts from other theorists and critics including Aarseth, Bogost, Wark, Mary Flanagan, Thomas Malaby, and T.L. Taylor. Weekly obligations include quizzes based on assigned reading, and attendance and participation in the discussion section. Section work may involve game play. There will be a 1000-1250 word game review due at midterm, and a somewhat longer research paper due at end of term. In addition, all students will produce a group project, with a proposal due before midterm, and a final submission at the end of the course. Options for the group project may include: running and documenting a campaign in a role-playing game (RPG); designing an original RPG with a tool such as the Generic Universal RolePlaying System (GURPS); curating a Web gallery of important or noteworthy games; operating a game criticism collaboratory in which you play a group of games, observing, recording, and analyzing your mutual experience; developing derivative work from a videogame, such as fan fiction or machinima; and writing basic design documents for a proposed game. About the Faculty Lectures: Stuart Moulthrop Stuart Moulthrop joined the UWM faculty as Professor of English in the fall of 2010. He has taught previously at Yale, the University of Texas, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Baltimore, where he co-founded the School of Information Arts and Technologies and helped create an undergraduate program in game and simulation design. Graduates of that program now work at virtually all D.C.-area game studios, including Firaxis, Big Huge Games, EA Mythic, and Bethesda Softworks. Moulthrop has been on the editorial board of the Game Studies journal since its founding, and has served as respondent for game-related dissertations at several European universities. An award-winning hypertext writer and multimedia artist, he has published numerous works of electronic literature that have received widespread critical attention, including Victory Garden, “Hegirascope,” “Reagan Library,” and “Under Language.” See more at pantherfile.uwm.edu/moulthro/index.htm. Discussion Sections: Trent Hergenrader Trent Hergenrader is a doctoral candidate in Creative Writing. His short stories have been published in places such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, and Best Horror of the Year #1. His academic research focuses on creative writing pedagogy, digital pedagogy, and bringing games and gaming theory to writing classes. In spring 2011, he taught a course entitled “Gaming, World Building, and Narrative,” where students collaboratively created a sprawling, post-apocalyptic version of Milwaukee populated with hundreds of people, places, and objects. In the final third of the course, students explored their co-created world through tabletop role-playing and wrote short stories based on their characters' experiences. Check out the project at http://eng236.wikispaces.com. Despite decades of videogame experience, he’s still rotten at wall jumps, fighting games, and ice levels. Games and Media (possibly recommended and/or played in class) -a- Games per se Carassonne (board game) Adventure (and other text adventures) Myst The Sims Civilization series Halo series Katamari Damacy Ico Shadow of the Colossus Flow Portal Spore World of Goo Heavy Rain Fallout 3 Bioshock 2 -b- Films (for possible discussion and reference) Matrix series (including Animatrix) Existenz Various game-to-film properties, such as Tomb Raider, Doom, Resident Evil Film-to-game properties, such as Watchmen: The End is Nigh, and various Lord of the Rings games Tarkovsky’s Stalker -c- Other Media Red vs. Blue Xtranormal Outline and Notes for Weekly Topics 1. Games and "new literacy" The phrase is from James Gee, whom we will read in excerpt: "when people learn to play video games, they are learning a new literacy." Is "literacy" the right word? Does it have anything to do with game play or its culture? What does it mean to approach video- and other games from the perspective of literary studies? What would it mean to "read" a game? Would it involve interpretation? Engagement? How do video games and other new-media forms relate to writing and its culture? What is it about game play that compels our attention, as people concerned with text? Game of the Week: Carcassonne (board game) 2. Video games as (new) medium Definition, history, genres, and forms The video game market and its structures Outline of cultural reception of video games: introduction to game studies and ludology Understanding the ergodic: excerpt from Aarseth, Cybertext (and possibly his forthcoming book as well)
"Play is older than culture" (Huizinga); games are older than video The ambiguous position of play in the west (Huizinga, Sutton-Smith, et al.); probably an excerpt from Salen and Zimmerman as well Play, ergodics, and new media: an emergent culture? Stephen Johnson, from Everything Bad is Good for You Chris Anderson, from The Long Tail (on non-hierarchical, quasi-ergodic markets) Game of the Week: Katamari Damacy 4. Games as texts (I) (Dramatic) narrative as the primary element in games (someone, possibly Janet Murray) Interactive fiction (excerpt from Nick Montfort, Twisty Little Passages) Stories can be games: examine/demo an interactive fiction (e.g., Adam Cadre's Varicella, Adams and Meretzky's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Montfort's Book and Volume) Game of the Week: Hitchhiker’s Guide or other I.F. 5. Games as texts (II) Games are not stories! (or: there are many other game-forms besides I.F.) Case study: Lord of the Rings and its videogames (read Game Studies article, which while not condemning LOTR games outright, invites skeptical attention to the difference between novelistic storytelling and world-making); possibly, also read the "Scouring of the Shire" section from Return of the King, and for contrast, examine/demonstrate one or both Return of the King videogames.
Read part of Half Real Game of the Week: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Electronic Arts, 2003) 6. World design, simulation, and "fiction" Read the rest of Half Real ("fiction" being Juul's term for a world-model) What is the relationship between ludic fiction and narrative or literary fiction? Are they antithetical? Convergent? Stories and after-stories: possibly read something from Henry Jenkins on trans-mediation; explore possibilities for co-evolution between play and narrative. (It would be good to think of as many examples of game-related or game-derived writing as we could find.) Game of the Week: Civilization V 7. Games and Community The role-playing tradition and its role in popular culture Where do RPGs fit into the overall cultural scheme? Participatory art and the convergence of consumers and producers: read excerpts from Yochai Benkler, Lawrence Lessig, Edward Castronova Game of the Week: Fallout 3 8. Games and Society (I) Popular controversies: video game violence and exploitation; read representative low-level critiques from Jack Thompson and others Read excerpt from Grusin's Premediation to establish more sophisticated critique Games, agon, and the alternatives: read something from New Games Movement (non-conflictual approach to games and simulations from the 1960s; e.g., Edward DeKoven or J.P. Carse) Game of the Week: World of Goo 9. Games and Society (II) Games as rhetoric and discourse Frasca on serious games Bogost, from Persuasive Games Jane McGonigal on positive social potential of games Examples of persuasive games (e.g., Oil Wars) Game of the Week: Bioshock II 10. Games and Society (III) Games, learning, and education Something from Gee, possibly the latest book Something documenting self-organizing learning among game and other niche communities Possibly something on new-media challenges to traditional educational models: is the Internet a university? Could it be?
McGonigal on Alternate Reality games Something from Thomas Malaby on Second Life; also T.L. Taylor on the potential and problems of MPGs
Derivative products, crossovers, and side effects Machinima (Red vs. Blue) Game cults: "abandonware" and Communities of Obsolescence; the nation of geek, or ota-kulture Game of the Week: Tales of Monkey Island 13. Games without Borders (III) Videogame meets cinema: Matrix and Animatrix, but also Existenz Possibly excerpt reel/montage of game-derived movies (Tomb Raider series, Doom, Resident Evil, etc.)
Consider Kevin Kelly's thesis about post-human evolution, and possibly the Matrix movies for good measure: are video games a clever conspiracy by Computing Machinery to motivate technical advances that primarily benefit the machines? Does Intel (or your PC) need you to want better games? The inherent difficulty of games and other ergodic forms: Play becomes work Everything gets very complicated ("infinite complexity... described by simple rules") Read Hayles, "Hyper and Deep Attention." Is game culture a sign of mutation? Do games fit into, or disrupt the prior cultural paradigm? Does play represent a limit to the Empire of Signs? A symptom of decadence? How is game culture responsible/responsive to a history of ongoing crisis? (Read more from Grusin) Where might game culture take us? Game of the Week: Portal (and Portal II) Directory: schedule -> syllabi schedule -> Academic Computer Center Lab Operator Standard Operating Procedures Manual schedule -> Schedule For vlsi – asic design Internship 2013 schedule -> Understanding the Programming Process a computer system schedule -> The list of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, use of which in medical purposes is prohibited a. Narcotic drugs schedule -> Schedule III controlled Substances schedule -> Actors studio fall Semester 2013-2014 syllabi -> Bus mgt 706-001 – managing in a dynamic environment university of Wisconsin-Milwaukee – Spring 2016 syllabi -> History 840: Reinterpreting the Atlantic World Fall 2016: Marcus Filippello, Assistant Professor Download 28.07 Kb. Share with your friends:
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