Calendar

Part I :: Fun, Play, and Games

Tuesday, January 19

  • Weekly Roles: First Readers (Group 1); Respondents (Group 2); Seekers (Group 3)
  • What is fun? What is play? What are games? What are videogames?

Thursday, January 21

  • Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun, Forward, Prologue, and chapters 1-3
  • A Thousand Blank White Cards

Tuesday, January 26

  • Weekly Roles: First Readers (Group 2); Respondents (Group 3); Seekers (Group 4)
  • Koster, A Theory of Fun, chapter 4
  • Roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games, pp. 1-35 (Blackboard)
  • To Play: Pac Man and Flow

Thursday, January 28

Part II :: Approaches to Game Studies

Tuesday, February 2 (Platform Studies)

Thursday, February 4 (Procedural Rhetoric and Critical Code Studies)

Tuesday, February 9 & Thursday, February 11

  • GMU Closed for Snowpocalypse

Tuesday, February 16 (Ludology)

Thursday, February 18 (Hardcore Game Theory)

Part III :: Genealogies and Forms

Tuesday, February 23 (Nintendo)

  • Weekly Roles: First Readers (Group 1); Respondents (Group 2); Seekers (Group 3)
  • Stephen Kline et al., “Electronic Frontiers,” from Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing, pp. 109-127 (Blackboard)
  • To Play: Super Mario Bros 3

Thursday, February 25 (Space and Time)

Tuesday, March 2 (Sound and Music in Videogames)

Thursday, March 4 (RPGs)

Tuesday, March 9 & Thursday, March 11

  • Spring Break

Part IV :: Issues in Videogames

Tuesday, March 16 (Interactive Fiction and Subjectivity)

Thursday, March 18 (Subjectivity and Agency)

Tuesday, March 23 (First Person Shooters)

  • Weekly Roles: First Readers (Group 4); Respondents (Group 1); Seekers (Group 2)
  • Galloway, “Origins of the First-Person Shooter,” from Gaming, pp. 39-69
  • To Play: BattleZone and Quake
  • In Class: Mirror’s Edge (and in the 3rd person)

Thursday, March 25 (Agency Continued)

  • To Play: Façade

Tuesday, March 30 (Power and Gender in Games)

Thursday, April 1  (Games and Realism)

Part V :: The Limits of Games

Tuesday, April 6 (Games and History)

Thursday, April 8 (Countergaming)

Tuesday, April 13 (Countergames)

Thursday, April 15 (Socially Conscious Games)

Tuesday, April 20 (Casual Games)

Thursday, April 22 (Alternate Reality Games)

Tuesday, April 27 (Pecha Kucha)

Thursday, April 29

  • Presentations

Tuesday, May 4

  • Presentations

Thursday, May 6

  • Presentations

Tuesday, May 11