Short Course Description and Required Reading

Just a quick post to keep you up to date on a couple of things. First, here's the official short description of the course for catalog purposes. It's pretty much the same as the first paragraph of the course proposal.

Playing by the Rules: Games In and Out of the Ordinary World

Poker, chess, tennis, Scrabble, World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero—we may know how to win at our favorite games, but do we know what these specialized forms of play say about us and and world we live in? This interdisciplinary course explores games as a reflection of culture-based values and as a means of experimenting with those values in a "safe," rule-bound environment. We will study classic and contemporary theories about play and apply them to a broad spectrum of games—board games, video games, computer games, gambling, sports, school-yard games—discussing concepts such as "performing belief" (willingly abiding by the rules of a game-created fantasy) and the "magic circle" (the border between play and reality). We will examine behavior such as risk-taking, teamwork and cheating, and look at what lies ahead at the intersection of games, art, and technology. You will be asked to analyze the games you play and apply your discoveries to the "real" world. What rules do we live by in our everyday lives? In what ways do we perform belief and how does it help maintain cultural cohesion? When are we inside or outside the magic circle, and what happens when we cross that border? What happens if we don't play by the rules?

Since the topic of this course is bound to attract the attention of students, I didn't think I needed to sell it by emphasizing how fun the course will be. It was more important to convey that the course will be an serious, in-depth exploration of the its subject involving close reading of texts, critical analysis of games, and a lot of writing. After all, the leading item on my agenda is to show these first-year students how anything they are passionate about can be the subject of scholarly study.

The second thing I wanted to report is that I have chosen the two required texts for the course. These are in addition to a course reader (which I am in the process of assembling). I had narrowed the field to about six books, decided on three, and at the last minute threw out one of my choices because the director of my program said realistically I could expect my students to read at most one inch of book during the quarter on top of the articles in the reader. That was disheartening. So out went Roger Caillois' "Man, Play, and Games" (excerpts will go into the reader).

Required Reading

"Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players" by Stefan Fatsis (Penguin, 2002)

"Gamer Theory" by McKenzie Wark (Harvard, 2007)

The other two books represent contrasting approaches to the study of games. One is a look at a subculture of gamers from an outside perspective; the other attempts to interpret the outside world from within the world of games. One is from popular culture; the other is steeped in critical theory. One is "easy reading"; the other presents more of a challenge. I'll talk more about these books in a future post. If you're curious about "Gamer Theory," it was originally published online in a format resembling a pile of notecards—an interesting approach, but not really practical for the classroom. At least, not yet.