GNDR 300V - Video Game Culture

Institution:

Westminster College (Salt Lake City)

Subject:

Gender Studies

Description:

Video games have emerged in the 21st century as one of the most watched spectator sport. If you are not a gamer, this may not make sense to you, but with an annual revenue of $71 billion a year, watching people play video games is fast becoming the favorite go to sport for most U.S. Americans. Pro-gamers compete for hundred thousand dollar prizes and they receive sponsorships that can be worth millions. But to view the video game medium as only an economic force denies the complicated nature of gaming. In popular culture, gaming is the domain of nerdy teenagers, but video game conventions demonstrate that the average player is, well, everyone. Gamers are sweaty pimply teenagers, housewives, doctors-both the MD and PhD kind-women and men scantily dressed and hipsters to name a few. Video games appeal to folks across age, race, gender and social class. With shooter games like Call of Duty, fantasy role playing games like Dragon Age, successful indie games like Undertale, and literary gaming such as Firefly, Poems that go, video games are hybrid visual, digital, material that requires a methodology of its own. Academics have been studying video games and video game culture since the first Atari hit the market. Studying not only how it shapes other art forms, such as film, novels, poems, visual arts, but also how it codes humanity into the digital world. This course focuses on the critical analysis of social issues in video games. Class time will be split between playing across different video game genres (such as role-playing video games, action-adventure, life simulation games, strategy video games, sports games, music games, literary hypertexts, etc.) and participating in current academic debates around gaming and game studies. Class discussions will engage with the ludic and narrative elements of game theory from an interdisciplinary perspective that considers video games as cultural artifacts, an economic powerhouse, educational tools, as drivers of technical innovation and works of art.

Credits:

4.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.westminstercollege.edu

Phone Number:

(801) 484-7651

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Four-one-four plan

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