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Instructors: Dr. Damien Schlarb
Event type:
online: Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.866.410
Hours per week:
2
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 30
Registration group: AS 410
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Requirements / organisational issues:
Active Particiaption Requirements
You must complete all of these in order to get aktive Teilnahme.
- weekly online reading responses (6 over the course of the semester)
- group assignment
Final Grade
Final argumentative research paper (100% of grade; see length requirements)
Prior Knowledge
To successfully complete this course, you will need
- Internet access (weekly)
- Online access to JGU’s university library servers via VPN
- Proficiency in academic writing in English
- Proficiency in academic research methods
- Familiarity with methodologies and research questions of the humanities
- Familiarity with the Anglo-Saxon essay model
- Familiarity with the basic themes and concepts in American Cultural Studies (courses I & II)
Contents:
Video games have become a global medium capable of articulating nuanced points about culture and the human condition. Games are not “pure” representations, like novels, movies, or TV shows, however. Traditional “analog” games, such as board games, are built of rules and conditions, yet video games often come wrapped in narratives that sometimes even span various media (e.g. Fortnite, The Matrix). Video games engage players and incorporate them into their digital story worlds and, in doing so, make visible certain dimensions of human behavior: immersion, motivation, focus, flow, engagement, fun, play, but also mental manipulation and addiction. Their ability to modulate all other legacy media (print, radio, TV) allows them to reflect meta-referentially on the nature of media as such (e.g. The Stanley Parable, Pony Island). They also reveal the inner workings of the rising digital technology economy (#gamification). These factors make video games worthwhile objects of scholarly inquiry, and they will inform our semester-long discussion on whether and how games speak to us as cultural objects. Our goal this semester will be to discover the promises and challenges video games present to us as students of American/anglophone culture. I will assume that none of you have worked with games in a scholarly academic setting before. We will start by asking simple questions: How do we talk about games? How do we analyze them? Answering these questions will require us to consider games alternatingly as texts, digital, procedurally generated objects, activities, or code. This kind of flexibility constitutes one of the challenges of studying this fascinating medium. We will then talk about games in a culture studies setting, review existing taxonomies and genre categories, and deliberate how games continue and challenge the U.S.-American cultural and media traditions. How do games speak to (American) culture? How do they generate meaning? Talking about games as cultural objects will allow us to draw on some of the Cultural Studies theories you already know from other seminars (e.g. gender, race, class, mind). For example, we may ask how gender is negotiated in certain genres, such as role playing or online shooter games, and discuss if and how that negotiation differs from other, older media forms.
Recommended reading list:
All readings for the course will be available as e-books, courtesy of the JGU University Library. You need an active JGU account and a VPN to access these materials from home.
Some of the best introductions are listed below. You can check them out to familiarize yourself with video games as a matter of academic inquiry, which I strongly recommend, esp. if you never worked with games before. Other texts will be announced on day 1.
Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Pajares Tosca. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. 3rd ed. Routledge, 2015.
Introduction to Game Analysis. New York: Routledge, 2014.
The Video Game Theory Reader II. New York: Routledge, 2008.
The Video Game Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Digital teaching:
Parts of the class will be conducted online via video and audio communication platforms. You will need to be able to record and play sound and video.
I will announce which of the university's digital teaching platform we will use. Please monitor your student email as the semester approaches.
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