Games as Social Technology—A Syllabus

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IMAGE 1: Welcome to COMM 260: Games as Social Technology

Teaching Games

(Video) Game is a curious topic to teach. Despite its social and cultural significance, it is still a topic that gets an occasional “wow, this thing exists?” and a “wow, people are actually into doing this stuff?”, often followed by a “but it’s not real!” At times, you may catch a whiff of condescension in the awe. When you engage with popular culture enough, whether as an academic, a fan, or both, you get trained to its distinct note.

Game design is a curious topic to teach because this lingering prejudice can contribute to a unique classroom atmosphere; a sense of community. Many students are likely to have been drawn to the course by their pre-existing interest in games, with an eagerness that matches their fan expertise. They are likely to have observed and experienced first-hand many of the topics to be covered in class, although not necessarily with a critical or analytic approach. Research findings and concepts may resonate on a personal level, and discussions can be rich with examples. The class may grow to become a safe space to bond over shared passions, an environment that may not have been readily available to everyone. In fact, my first semester of teaching COMM 260: Games as Social Technology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)—which was also my first semester here—started with many “I was so happy to see a course on games!”’s and ended with a series of student presentations that truly felt like a celebration of learning and camaraderie that we have fostered together over the course of the past 15 weeks.

Of course, I have heard, although lucky to have not personally experienced it (*yet—fingers crossed), that some students may approach a game studies class with a hostile counterproductivity that champions only their gamer or game player identity, especially if it is taught by someone who does not fit the dominant “gamer” image (i.e., typically heterosexual, cisgender male, and young, and depending on the cultural context also White, Western, and English-speaking). This challenge is relevant to a mythical thinking that an expression that I casually used in the previous paragraph can espouse: (a sense of) “community”. While the concept does not innately assume uniformity among its members, the notion of membership can limit one’s imagination, at times to a composite of similar self-portraits, entitled “the gaming culture”. In reality, there are numerous people who play games that do not perfectly fit this profile, including myself. In fact, a more accurate title for such a composite picture would be “a gaming culture”. The core of the challenge then, in a somewhat circular manner, becomes how to encourage, if not benefit from, a sense of community around games while embracing gaming communities and cultures, including those associated with non-gamers and non-game players.

This was what I understood as the foundation of Games as Social Technology(*) and my main objective. The course overview and learning objectives are as follows:


Course Overview and Learning Objectives

Course Overview:

This course approaches games as networked and collaborative technologies. This semester, we will focus on how games, gaming practices, and gaming cultures communicate values. As social technologies, games can facilitate community building, interaction, and development. However, not everyone is (feels) invited. We will closely study how their structural, representational, and cultural components are sites of dynamic meaning negotiations. Games have a social impact.

Student Learning Objectives:

  • Understand how video games have shaped culture (and how culture has shaped games)

  • Explain why certain video games and gaming trends have been so controversial

  • Interrogate video game structure, narratives, and their representations

  • Analyze the implications of video games as cultural commodities and as political technologies

  • Assess the impact that video games have on audiences and culture

IMAGE 2: Sample In-class Exercise “Alien Ship.” (two slides). This exercise invites students to think about standards in technology design and diverse parties that may be involved in this process. Politics, biases, and consequences and be discussed.

Assignments

I am a big believer in scaffolding when it comes to assignments. Weekly journals were designed to doubly yield an annotated bibliography and a pseudo gameplay log (Consalvo & Dutton, 2006; see course schedule for full reference) or ethnographic fieldnotes for the student’s final project. Reflection essays and documentary notes were designed to provide sufficient time and space for students to deeply reflect on, personally experience, and/or think through (with aid of media) practices and discourses that are relevant to the flow of the course. When needed, prompts for weekly journals additionally helped with this process. The midterm exam functioned as a checkpoint before progressing into more discussion-heavy topics. As the focus was on learning, the students were given the option to review up to four questions for partial points; it was to include a) why they got confused, b) why the correct answer is correct, and c) an illustrative, narrativized example that demonstrates their understanding of the concept. For their final project, students could choose from one of two options: 1) a creative project (designing a choice-based dating simulator) and 2) a critical gaming analysis. An in-class group exercise around Week 5 introduced the students to the first final project option and allowed them to start exploring it. The gameplay logs from their weekly journals were to be used as the data for those pursuing the second final project option. 

(1) Weekly Journal

Except on the days with a designated prompt, you can have up to two (2) freebies. This is designed so that it will help you keep up with class discussions and prepare for the final project.

1. Reading Note

a. You are expected to have come read the assigned readings before coming to each class. From the readings you read for the week, pick one (1) academic reading (journal article or book chapter) that you found interesting and include in your Weekly Journal as your Reading Note. Please follow the format below.

  • Bibliography: APA recommended

  • Takeaways: Key summary points or takeaways based on the reading. No more than 3 sentences.

  • Application/Thoughts: Discuss your reflections on the concept and/or apply to an example(s) and discuss. You may draw on class discussions, make connections to your gameplay log, or discuss its relevance to your final project. Putting readings in conversations with each other is also encouraged. Quality over quantity—e.g., should not exceed a paragraph; aim for insightful 2-3 sentences.

  • [Optional] Key quotes: Put in quotation marks and include page number(s).

2. Gameplay Log 

  1. Play your game of choice* for at least 30 minutes every week. You may exceed 30 minutes, and this does not need to be in one sitting. (*on some weeks, there may be a designated game.)

  2. Answer if there are any journal prompts.

  3. Write down 1) game name, 2) when you played and your total playtime, and 3) three (3) bullet points of your play experience/observations. Include details, also bullet pointed. For example, don’t just write “It was good.” What do you mean by “good” and what made you feel that way? Was it because of certain features, the way you played it, or any other external circumstances? Make sure to screen cap or memo if something interesting happened or there is something you think you might want to refer to later. See formatting example below:

  • Game Name: write name of the game

  • Playtime: XX hour XX minutes

    • Aug 22 Mon 12:30-1:15 pm (45 minutes)

    • Aug 23 Wed 10:00-11:00 pm (1 hour)

    • (add as needed)

  • Notes:

    • Your play experience #1 (repeat for play experience #2 and #3)

      • Supporting details such as a relevant feature, your thought/feeling, a reason, relevant information

      • Supporting detail

      • Supporting detail

(2) Reflection Essay x2

These will be short essays (~2pages). The first will be on your personal relationship to games and the second will be on your social play experience of playing either Among Us or Pokémon Go with your classmates. Instructions will be provided.

(3) Documentary Notes x2

There will be two at-home screening days. Links will be available on Blackboard. After watching each documentary, you will upload a list of timestamped quotes and quick impressions from the documentary. Instructions will be provided.

(4) Midterm Exam

Some people feel more comfortable with taking an exam, others with writing papers. Your midterm will be a take-home Blackboard exam. We will go over the format in class before the exam.

(5) Final Project: Final Presentation + Final Paper

For your final project, you will give a short final presentation and submit a final paper (~5 page without references, tables, images, etc). You will have two options. Option 1 will be a creative project. You will develop one of the class exercises we will do during the semester (designing a choice-based dating simulator) and write about your experience, thought process, etc. Option 2 will be a critical game analysis. You will refer to your weekly gameplay logs and critically analyze the game(s) that you played during the semester. In both cases, you will be required to discuss your positionality and integrate course materials and discussions. Instructions will be provided.

Image 3. A Sample “In the Previous Class” Review Slide. I have befriended continuity, repetition, and gradual build-up in my lecture organization as well. At the beginning of each class, I briefly review some key concepts and/or discussion points from the previous class. I use this time to stress important ideas and help students immerse themselves back into the course narrative, even if they could not attend a few times. This also helps me remind myself of my progress and easily connect together lectures delivered on different days. The left-side image is a Mentimeter word cloud on “game” from the first day.

Course Schedule: A Weekly Breakdown

The narrative of my syllabus, also represented by the respective section titles, can be put as: “we can/should talk about games…by studying these things…for these things”. Classroom is where theory can be practiced. This semester, I paid additional attention to two diversity and inclusivity goals—or, goals for better science—while finalizing the course materials: 1) actively discuss and embrace, if not center, casual games and casual gameplay, as opposed to reproducing the overconcentration on stereotypically “hardcore” games and playstyles; 2) incorporate works on non-English, non-Western cases and by traditionally underrepresented authors throughout the semester, not only on “global” or “diversity” weeks. My training and background both helped me and limited me. The syllabus will continue to be a work in progress. This is one of the reasons why I decided to share it: let’s talk, let’s work together.

The course schedule is as follows. Please note that the original schedule has been reformatted from a table-based version to the current text-only version. Additionally, there are materials that I did not assign as reading to prevent overburdening the students but introduced in class that my students loved, such as Nick Bowman and colleagues’ 2022 work(**) on online discourses around Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that discusses eudaimonic media effects. One of my students seemed to be particularly fascinated by the notion of “proactive stickiness” from Jen-Her Wu and colleagues’ 2010 article(***) on the Uses and Gratification theory and online games that we discussed in class.

The course schedule was prefaced with the following statement: “This syllabus is subject to change—and probably will change—based on the progress of the class, news events, and/or guest speaker availability.” It did change. I drafted the map, but my students and I navigated together. Based on what I observed during the semester and from student presentations, I am happy to announce that we have progressed and arrived.

Week 1

8/22 Mon: Introduction

  • N/A

8/24 Wed: “Game”: What’s special about you?

  • Suits, B. (1967). What is a Game?. Philosophy of science, 34(2), 148-156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/288138

  • [Recommended] McKee, A. (2016). Chapter 3 What is Fun?. FUN!: What Entertainment Tells Us About Living a Good Life. Palgrave Pivot.

  • Due: Beginning of the semester class survey

Week 2

8/29 Mon: Technology: Who are you, are you on our side?

  • Murphie, A., & Potts, J. (2003). Introduction:‘Culture’and ‘Technology’. In Culture and Technology (pp. 1-10). Palgrave, London.

  • Meyrowitz, J. (1999). Understandings of media. ETC: a review of general semantics, 56(1), 44-52. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42579860

8/31 Wed: Technology: The decision-makers

  • Postman, N. (1998). Five things we need to know about technological change. Talk delivered in Denver, CO. https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/postman.pdf

  • [Recommended] Winner, L. (1988) “Do artifacts have politics?” The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. The University of Chicago Press.

  • Due: Journal #1: In lieu of Gameplay Log, make a list of games (at least 5) that look interesting to you. How did you learn about them? What makes them more/less appealing than others? (Ignore cost, system requirements, etc for now but pick ones you have not played before)

Week 3

9/5 Mon: Labor Day (No Class)

9/7 Wed: Video Game History (Online - Documentary)

  • Watch: TheUpliftingGuy (2016). “The History of Video Games Documentary.” YouTube. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7-BN0qdZDk&ab_channel=TheUpliftingGuy

  • Williams, D. (2006). A (brief) social history of gaming. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Video Games: Motivations and Consequences of Use. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.

  • Due: Documentary Notes #1

Week 4

9/12 Mon: Social Consequences: The Good, the Bad, and the Nuanced

  • Mäyrä, F. (2008). Game Culture: Meaning in Games. An introduction to game studies. Sage.

  • Steinkuehler, C. A. (2006). Why game (culture) studies now?. Games and culture, 1(1), 97-102. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412005281911

  • Due: Essay #1: My gaming experience (What’s your relationship to games? Do you play any? Do you identify as a gamer? Are there any games or gaming experiences that are/were significant to you? If you do not play or dislike games, why? Please explain/elaborate—no simple yes/no answers.)

9/14 Wed: Reading games: From my experience…

OR

Shaw, R. M., Howe, J., Beazer, J., & Carr, T. (2020). Ethics and positionality in qualitative research with vulnerable and marginal groups. Qualitative Research, 20(3), 277-293. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794119841839

  • Due: Journal #2 Pick a game and download. Explain why you chose that game. What are your first impressions?

Week 5

9/19 Mon: Reading games: So, you are saying [       ]?

9/21 Wed: Coded: IF A THEN B

  • Juul, J. (2005). Introduction. In Half-real: Video games between real rules and fictional worlds. MIT Press

  • Plotkin, A. (2011) Characterizing, if not defining, interactive fiction. In Jackson-Mead, K., Wheeler, J. R. (eds) IF Theory Reader. Boston, MA: Transcript On Press, pp. 59–68.

  • Due: Journal #3

Week 6

9/26 Mon: (En/de)Coded: Designers and players

  • Stang, S. (2019) “This action will have consequences”: interactivity and player agency. Game Studies 19(1). Available at: http://gamestudies.org/1901/articles/stang

  • Consalvo, M. (2009). Chapter 4 Gaining Advantage: How Videogame Players Define and Negotiate Cheating. Cheating: Gaining advantage in videogames. MIT Press

  • Due: Play Coming Out Simulator: http://ncase.me/cos/ (content warning)

9/28 Wed: (De/en)Coded: Players and designers

  • Rogers, E. M. (2003) Chapter 1: Elements of diffusion. Diffusion of Innovations (5th edition). Free Press.

  • Kahn, A. S., Shen, C., Lu, L., Ratan, R. A., Coary, S., Hou, J., Meng, J., Osborn, J., & Williams, D. (2015). The Trojan Player Typology: A cross-genre, cross-cultural, behaviorally validated scale of video game play motivations. Computers in Human Behavior, 49, 354–361. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.03.018

  • Due: Journal #4 [Coming Out Simulator]

Week 7

10/3 Mon: From text to context: Monetization

10/5 Wed: From text to context: Gaming culture

  • Gray, K. L. (2020). Chapter 1 The “Problem” of Intersectionality in Digital Gaming Culture. Intersectional Tech : Black Users in Digital Gaming. LSU Press.

  • Paul, C. A. (2018). Introduction. The toxic meritocracy of video games: Why gaming culture is the worst. U of Minnesota Press.

  • Due: Journal #5

Week 8

10/10 Mon: From gaming culture to contemporary culture 

  • Kim, D. O. (2021). “Pay for your choices”: Deconstructing neoliberal choice through free-to-play mobile interactive fiction games. New Media & Society, OnlineFirst. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211018177

10/12 Wed: Midterm Exam (Blackboard)

Week 9

10/17 Mon: Intersections: Gender/Sex/Sexuality (Online - Documentary)

OR

  • Cote, A. C. (2020) Chapter 3 Girly Games and Girl Gamers: Inferential Sexism and Its Impacts. Gaming Sexism: Gender and Identity in the Era of Casual Video Games. New York University Press.

  • Due: Documentary Notes #2

10/19 Wed: Intersections: Gender/Sex/Sexuality

Week 10

10/24 Mon: Intersections: Gender/Sex/Sexuality

10/26 Wed: Intersections: Race/Ethnicity/Nationality

  • Gray, K. L. (2012). Intersecting oppressions and online communities: Examining the experiences of women of color in Xbox Live. Information, Communication & Society, 15(3), 411-428. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2011.642401

  • Brock, A. (2011). ‘‘When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong’’: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers. Games and Culture, 6(5), 429-452. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412011402676

  • Due: Journal #7

Week 11

10/31 Mon: Intersections: Race/Ethnicity/Nationality

  • Hussain, U., Yu, B., Cunningham, G. B., & Bennett, G. (2021). “I can be who I am when I play tekken 7”: E-Sports women participants from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Games and Culture, 16(8), 978-1000. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211005360

  • Mukherjee, S. (2018). Playing subaltern: Video games and postcolonialism. Games and Culture, 13(5), 504-520. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015627258

11/2 Wed: Social Gaming (Online/hybrid – Group Gameplay Day)

  • OPTION 1: Among Us

    • With assigned class team (at least 2-3 matches)

    • With strangers (at least 2-3 matches)

  • OPTION 2: Pokemon Go

    • Alone (at least 30 minutes)

    • With assigned pair (at least 45 minutes)

*Contact me in advance if you wish to explore a different game.

  • Due: Journal #8 [Among Us or Pokemon Go]

Week 12

11/7 Mon: Intersections: Age and Ability

  • Gray, K. L. (2020). Chapter 5 #TechFail: From intersectional (in)accessibility to inclusive design. Intersectional Tech : Black Users in Digital Gaming. LSU Press.

  • Liu, M., Choi, S., Kim, D. O., & Williams, D. (2021). Connecting in-game performance, need satisfaction, and psychological well-being: A comparison of older and younger players in World of Tanks. New Media & Society, OnlineFirst. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211062545

11/9 Wed: Final Project check-in/Workshop 

  • Due: Journal #9

Week 13

11/14 Mon: Not JUST games: Social gaming

  • Chen, V. H. H., & Wu, Y. (2015). Group identification as a mediator of the effect of players’ anonymity on cheating in online games. Behaviour & Information Technology, 34(7), 658-667. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2013.843721

  • Vella, K. et al. (2019). A sense of belonging: Pokémon GO and social connectedness. Games and Culture, 14(6), 583-603. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412017719973

  • Due: Essay #2 Social Play

11/16 Wed: Not JUST games: Learning and acting together

Week 14

11/21 Mon: Not JUST games: Transmedia content, E-sports

11/23 Wed: Not JUST games: Livestreaming (Online - Zoom) [Guest speaker: Christopher J. Persaud, Ph.D. Candidate, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California]

  • Persaud, C. J., & Perks, M. E. (2022). Beauty From the Waist Up: Twitch Drag, Digital Labor, and Queer Mediated Liveness. Television & New Media, 23(5). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764221080912

  • Ruberg, B., Cullen, A. L., & Brewster, K. (2019). Nothing but a “titty streamer”: legitimacy, labor, and the debate over women’s breasts in video game live streaming. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36(5), 466-481. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2019.1658886

Week 15

11/28 Mon: Final Presentations [Zoom]

11/30 Wed: Final Presentations [In-person]

Week 16

12/6 Tue: Final Paper Due Date

  • OPTION 1: Creative Project: Dating Simulator (other choice-based games are also fine)

  • OPTION 2: Critical Game Analysis

Image 4. A Sample of the Original Weekly Schedule Table

Closing Remarks

A student had told me that this class felt like home. Every week, I looked forward to learning from my students. I will be teaching Games as Social Technology again in the Spring semester, and am looking forward to navigating together with my new students. UIC and Chicago have begun to feel like home.

If you wish to see the full syllabus, please email me at doownkim[at]uic[dot]edu.

Notes.

(*)The original Games as Social Technology syllabus (then 300-level) was developed by Dr. Kishonna L. Gray, who is currently at the University of Kentucky. Her knowledge and brilliance, which I was already aware of from her work including her 2020 book Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming, inspired me once again. I carried over some of the readings and materials from the original syllabus in designing my version of the course, not just for continuity but because they were essential and excellent. I would like to thank Dr. Gray for her insights and for her endorsement of sharing my version of Games as Social Technology on Pop Junctions. The current version of the syllabus reflects my vision of the course and represents my views and interpretations only.

(**) Bowman, N. D., Bowen, D. A., Mercado, M. C., Resignato, L. J., & de Villemor Chauveau, P. (2022). “I did it without hesitation. Am I the bad guy?”: Online conversations in response to controversial in-game violence. New Media & Society, OnlineFirst. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221078865

(***) Wu, J. H., Wang, S. C., & Tsai, H. H. (2010). Falling in love with online games: The uses and gratifications perspective. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 1862-1871. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.07.033

Do Own “Donna” Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago's Department of Communication. She studies everyday, playful digital cultures and mediated social interactions. She is particularly interested in the questions of what “(being) real” and being together mean in emerging technological contexts. Her work examines boundary-crossing communication practices, with a focus on physical/virtual/hybrid places, norms and categories, and the notion of being human/artificial. Donna also writes about Korean digital feminism and popular media. Her work can be found in journals such as New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, Mass Communication and Society, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CHI PLAY), and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Donna received her Ph.D. degree in Communication from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She is a Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies Alum.

Email: doownkim[at]uic[dot]edu

Website: https://www.doowndonnakim.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoownDonnaKim

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Do Own (Donna) Kim

Do Own (Donna) Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago's Department of Communication. She studies everyday, playful digital cultures and mediated social interactions. She is particularly interested in the questions of what “(being) real” and being together mean in emerging technological contexts. Her work examines boundary-crossing communication practices, with a focus on physical/virtual/hybrid places, norms and categories, and the notion of being human/artificial. Donna also writes about Korean digital feminism and popular media. Her work can be found in journals such as New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, Mass Communication and Society, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CHI PLAY), and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Donna received her Ph.D. degree in Communication from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She is a Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies Alum.