Humanities
Get into the Game
Twitter
Facebook
Forward
The lights were dimmed in a meeting room of Global Studies Hall on a recent Saturday night. It was quiet, a dozen people transfixed by the 10-by-10-foot projection screen on the wall. A pale-blue flickering glow illuminated their faces and a palpable tension filled the air.
A call to battle shattered the silence.
“Grab the flamethrower!”
The two players contorted, twisted, and grimaced as they used handheld controllers to guide characters to seize weapons and avoid getting fricasseed by foes in this video contest called Duck Game.
“Nooooo!” the group cried out in mock sympathy, as one player’s duck met its untimely demise.
Welcome to Think.Play, a club that spends as much time discussing video games as playing them. But the members aren’t trading tips on how to climb the ladder in Donkey Kong—instead, these students use video games to explore ideas about art, representation, narrative, and culture straight from the English department.
As video games continue to shape and reflect modern culture, the department is using the medium to introduce students to topics that apply to literature and culture—critical analysis, character development, and gender, among them.
Students started the group in 2011, not just to play video games, but also to interpret them academically. The English department took note, recognizing that the group was essentially breaking down video games as you would a classic text; the club is now affiliated with the English Undergraduate Organization and the department helps promote activities.
“The English department looks at film, they look at books,” said senior Ana Lind, a digital arts major. “Video games are just another one on that list.”
Think.Play members explore mythology and other storytelling devices in video games, and how effectively these devices move the player through the action. Members analyze characters, storylines, and the extent to which the games reflect society or politics.
These are all skills that can be applied to most any literary topic.
During a recent session, Think.Play deconstructed Fallout, a popular game set in a postapocalyptic world.
The group discussed the game’s presentation of posthumanism, gender, and nuclear apocalypse. In Fallout (pictured), for example, people look as we do today and capitalism thrives even after the obliteration of society. Think.Play members found in that circumstance rich material for discussion.
“They’re telling us what the game’s creators saw—consciously or subconsciously—as unchangeable elements of the human condition,” said Dante Douglas, a sophomore in sociology. “Things that wouldn’t change even in a world-altering event.”
The group’s members hail from disciplines as disparate as economics and music. Think.Play is also open to those who are simply interested in video games or work
in the industry.
Tara Fickle, a faculty sponsor and an assistant professor in English, said that whether Think.Play is playing video games or discussing them, the outcome is the same: participants are energized.
Fickle teaches a course—New Media and Digital Culture: Games as Theory and Culture—on the cultural phenomenon of video games, including their purpose and audience. The class is designed as a game, with students completing “quests”—say, creating an activity for the class—to earn points toward “ultimate achievements,” similar to grades. Class attendance is strong and response overwhelmingly positive.
The experience showed Fickle that video games can serve as an excellent tool for learning how to analyze a story—and that’s as applicable to Faulkner as it is to Fallout.
Said Fickle: “We’re giving students a way of looking at video games that they can transport to whatever text they are reading.”
—Jim Murez
Photo Credit: cc-Bago Games