Assignments and Materials

Required Materials

In addition to excerpts from scholarly sources, we will also be setting ourselves several works to read in their entirety. As such, students will need to acquire full text copies of two novels. PDF extracts of other sources such as selected short stories, and critical readings on games and literature will also be distributed through Canvas.

Students will be required to acquire copies of the following texts for the course:

  • Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) — ISBN-13: 978-0199564095
  • Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) — ISBN-13: 978-0198835226

All games will be provided for either as digital or hard copies in the Greenlaw Gameroom, or as PDF copies distributed on canvas.

Video Games Board Games Roleplaying Games
Stardew Valley (2016) Settlers of Catan (1995) The 1000-Year-Old Vampire (2019)
Octodad (2014) Unfathomable (2021) Wanderhome (2020)
Disco Elysium (2019) Blood on the Clocktower (2022) Dungeons & Dragons 1st Ed. (1978)
Cyberpunk: 2077 (2022)    
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (2015)    

Assignments & Expectations

Weekly Reading and Gameplay

Everything we do in this course will be rooted in two core activities: close reading and critical play.

A significant portion of our class time in the Gameroom will be used to facilitate critical play of featured games. To facilitate this, we will work together to play, watch, and discuss these texts and objects at the 5 gaming stations in small groups, or as one large group together. Aside from play sessions, the course will run mostly as a discussion-based seminar, where we will explore the literature we read, as well as the games we play together through critical conversation.

More specific information regarding play sessions can be found on the Gameplay Activities page of the course website.

Expectation and Effort: In addition to seminar discussions and gameplay sessions held during class time, students will be expected to complete a regular weekly reading load of anywhere between 90-120 pages (45-60 pages of fiction per day for each class session, M/W).

A small number of selected critical readings will be excerpted and assigned as mandatory reading. However, most of the reading in the course will consist of popular fiction. Weeks focusing more on gameplay, and less on literature, may also entail rulebooks, game handbooks or character creation systems as required assigned reading. As the term progresses, I will continue to share uploads of critical selections related the games and literature that we are discussing as assigned reading.

Play Journals

In this course, we will be keeping course journals. These journals will be created and maintained independently by the students and are designed to provide a space for students to engage in deliberate guided reflection and practical experimentation related to games and literature.

These journals will be used to collect notes, observations, and insights generated in the course of our critical play activities in class. These notes and observations will then form the basis of short critical reflections about the games we engage with during our in-class and extended play sessions as a part of the course. In their journal entries, students should use the literary and critical gaming concepts we discuss in class to combine a critical reflection about their situated experience of play, with an analytical discussion of the game’s formal qualities (i.e., aesthetics, mechanics, narrative, cultural context).

Expectations and Effort: Each journal entry should range from 250-400 words in length and must be written in complete sentences and paragraph form. Finished journal entries should not take more than 30-45min each to draft from previously collected notes, however they should take at least 15min of effort. The journals will be completed on a rolling basis throughout the term, using a 5pt scale (structure & organization – 1pt, critical insight – 2pt, and use of evidence – 2pt). Individual journal entries will be assessed, and grades recorded, twice throughout the term:

Assessment for entries 1-4 – Sunday 09.22.24 @ 11:59PM ET

Assessment for entries 5-8 – Sunday 11.03.24 @ 11:59PM ET

FINAL: Class Portfolio Contribution

The capstone assignment for this course will be a contribution to a class portfolio collecting a series of critical design projects. Students will work in small groups to research, design, test, and produce small text-based critical games.

These games can, and perhaps should, have a clear narrative element, but more importantly, they must present and elaborate some sort of critical argument or theoretical insight — about games, or about literature, or both — drawn from, or inspired by, our course conversations throughout the term.

Beyond that, portfolio contributions may take several different forms, for example: as a campaign narrative, monster manual or game world sourcebook, as a character creation system, a journaling game, prompt-based collaborative exercise such as map-drawing, a choice-based branching narrative, or interactive visual novel, to name only a few. In crafting their designs students may choose to create digital games using software like TWINE, or create analog games utilizing pen and paper, or incorporating basic components such as dice or a simple deck of cards.

As such, portfolio contributions will differ slightly in the range of their components and the appearance of the final ‘product,’ however every contribution project will include the following:

  • Proposal - a proposal outlining scope, purpose, and relevance of proposed game design
  • Progress Report - a report on design project’s progress, and identifying obstacles
  • Critical Designer’s Note - an essay outlining the critical intention behind the game’s design
  • Research Bibliography - a bibliography of secondary and primary sources related to the project
  • Documentation - rulebooks, relevant instructions, file packages, URL’s, etc.
  • Components - final documents/layouts, visualizations, assets, physical components, etc.

Expectation and Effort: Students will spend the last 4-5 weeks of the term developing their portfolio contributions. This process will begin with the submission of a brief, but formal, proposal for their portfolio contribution, continue through a sequence of in-class workshops covering research, design, and production, leading onto a progress report on the state of the project near the end of the semester, and culminating in a class exhibition during the final exam period where we will present and play our games together.

Proposals will be submitted in week 12, and final portfolio contributions will be due on Monday 12.09.24.

Required Activities and Assignment Due Dates

  • Play Journal Entries 1-4 — 09/22/24 @ 11:59PM ET
  • Extended Play: Wanderhome — 10/01/24 @ 05:00PM ET
  • Extended Play: Blood on the Clocktower — 10/15/24 @ 06:00PM ET
  • Extended Play: Unfathomable — 10/29/24 @ 05:00PM ET

  • Play Journal Entries 5-8 — 11/03/24 @ 11:59PM ET

  • Project Proposal — 11/08/24 @ 11:59PM ET
  • Progress Report — 11/25/24 @ 11:59PM ET
  • Portfolio Final Project — 12/09/24 @ 11:59PM ET
  • Final Exam Period: Portfolio Exhibition — 12/10/24 @ 04:00PM ET