Created by Do Own (Donna) Kim (U Illinois Chicago)
This course approaches games as networked and collaborative technologies. This semester, we will focus on how games, gaming practices, and gaming cultures communicate values. As social technologies, games can facilitate community building, interaction, and development. However, not everyone is (feels) invited. We will closely study how their structural, representational, and cultural components are sites of dynamic meaning negotiations. Games have a social impact.
Course Goals
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Understand how video games have shaped culture (and how culture has shaped games)
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Explain why certain video games and gaming trends have been so controversial
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Interrogate video game structure, narratives, and their representations
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Analyze the implications of video games as cultural commodities and as political technologies
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Assess the impact that video games have on audiences and culture