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Game Studies

Program Description

This concentration is for students who intend on pursuing graduate school or entering academia. In addition to the core courses in game design, students will conduct research on the aesthetic, cultural, and communicative aspects of games, and their players. Students will explore the interdisciplinary nature of games through many different lenses, including history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and modern culture. As games grow and change they become a more important academic field, and as such many universities are hiring game studies faculty. Students will also be in a position to pursue a multitude of career options that require strong writing or analysis skills, as well as law school.

Course Requirements

GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS

ENGL 21002 Writing for the Social Sciences (English Composition 2)

MEDIA 180 Intro to Media Studies (Individual & Society)

SOC 101 Intro to Sociology (Individual & Society)

MAT 150 Introduction to Statistics (Math)

RUSS 293 Folklore in Translation (World Cultures & Global Issues) GAME 10300 Representation and Identity in Games (US History)

See advisor for list of approved core options for other requirements.


CONCENTRATION REQUIREMENTS

GAME 10100 Game Design Fundamentals

GAME 10200 Games and their History

GAME 11100 Digital Game Development 1

GAME 11200 Digital Game Development 2

GAME 12100 Game Aesthetics

GAME 20200 Playing with Stories

GAME 20300 Games for Impact

GAME 21000 Level Design

GAME 33100 Game Studies

GAME 33200 Critical Game Design

GD 102 Beyond Games

MEDIA 280 Understanding New Media

LIB 1201 Research and Documentation in the Information Age

SOC 23200 Methods and Techniques of Sociological Research

SOC 345 Quantitative Analysis of Sociological Data

SOC 349 Data Visualization


ELECTIVES


See approved list from EGD advisor. (Students in Game Studies often choose an area of research to focus in)

Featured Course Descriptions

GD 102 - Beyond Games

This course explores how games are used beyond entertainment by artists, storytellers, educators, and others. The class will be divided into four sections focusing on: games as art, games as story, games as social interaction, and games as tools for learning and social change. Students will read a variety of articles as well as play games relating to these topics. Students will develop educational games and learn about game analysis and criticism.


MEDIA 28000 - Understanding New Media

This analytical course explores the convergence of media, communications technologies, art design, and culture. This course is intended to familiarize students with important approaches in new media, focusing on the history of the computer as a medium and the conceptual history of interactivity in art and communication. Artists are at the forefront of technological revolutions. Whether designing computer games, producing web sites, writing software, or working on intelligent systems, artists work on a daily basis consuming and producing electronic cultural artifacts. Cybertechnologies have created new contexts for understanding culture. Referring to popular media, science fiction, computer games, and artists's projects, we'll explore how technology has been and will cotinue to be a key component of culture.


ISP 124 - Alternate Worlds

This course explores the ways that creative artists, writers, and thinkers envision parallel universes and alternate worlds: utopias, dystopias, microscopic universes, worlds of the future, and invisible inner worlds. Drawing on a fascinating array of narratives about imaginary worlds beyond the physical world around us, the course examines the manifold nature of such worlds and the purposes for which artists and dreamers create them.

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