Syllabus

As products of a complicated network of social, economic, and technological forces, games are dense objects, deeply layered with multiple meanings and hidden histories that reveal much about our cultural values, hopes and anxieties, and assumptions about the world. In this class, we will play games, read about games, write about games, and design games. In the process, we will explore how systems analysis, probability theory, pattern recognition, and procedural rhetoric have become indispensable tools for understanding contemporary culture.

The writing you do in this class will include not only words on paper but also oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal communication. You will write to explore concepts like genre, rhetoric, academic discourse, and critical thinking, while further developing and honing your own methods and styles of writing. There are weekly “low-stakes” sketch assignments to encourage your exploration of different methods and techniques, along with some larger analytical writing assignments. These course assignments include a variety of formal and informal genres, all of them incorporating multiple modes of communication (Written, Aural, Nonverbal, Digital).