Contributes to Game Studies Minor, University Breadth Requirement Group A, CAS Group A, Multicultural Course

This course aims to acquaint students with the major genres of videogames produced around the world, as well as the major critical approaches taken by academics to the study of those games. Issues for discussion include the dominance of console platforms in some markets (e.g. Japan) as opposed to online or PC gaming in others (e.g. Korea, North America); different approaches to difficulty, ethics and violence in games; and problematic representations of gender and race in specific game texts. We will examine theoretical terms like ‘immersion’ and ‘identification’ and see how these apply to different styles of play. We will examine the role of graphics and dimensionality in immersion, especially the effect of increasingly realistic environments. During this course, students will be expected to log a certain number of hours playing game examples from different genres in the Games Lab in Morris Library.

Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America (MIT Press, 2016)