Introduction to Game Studies
HUM257-01
Start Date
06/24
Time
6pm–9pm
Format
Remote
End Date
08/07
Meeting Day
Tuesdays and online/moodle
Credits
3
This online course features the following types of interaction:
- Pre-recorded content
This course examines video games and how the video game medium relates to art generally. The course questions how video games can reshape storytelling conventions, especially about film and related media and design studies. It aims to study video games from historical, theoretical, cultural, queer, and industrial perspectives (among others) to interrogate the ideology that video games are an emerging medium. In this course, we will analyze video games by investigating how recent games have turned into blockbuster films (e.g., The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Universal Pictures 2023), theme parks (e.g., Super Nintendo World in Osaka, Japan, and Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios, Hollywood) and premium TV shows (e.g., The Last of Us (HBO, 2023-present)). We will also interact with the local community by visiting and studying arcades such as Versus in Boston to understand public play. What this will look like outside of the class: students can watch playthroughs of the games online via YouTube if they cannot purchase the games or find other ways to play them.
This online class uses ZOOM and Moodle platforms.
Class meets in ZOOM on Tuesdays and recorded lectures posted on Thursdays.
Ryan Banfi
Ryan Banfi recently received his PhD in Cinema Studies from The Martin Scorsese Cinema Studies Department at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. He is a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar and on the Games and Culture editorial board. Ryan’s first book is forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi. It focuses on Chris Ware’s comics. … Read more