MODULE SPECIFICATION
Code: UACAGW-30-3 Title: Games, Simulation and Media Version: 1
Level: 3 UWE credit rating: 30 ECTS credit rating: 15
Module type: Project
Owning Faculty: Creative Arts Field: Cultural and Media Studies
Faculty Committee approval: Quality and Standards Date: 31/3/10 – updated after meeting – chair’s action
Valid from: Sept 2010 Discontinued from:
Contributes towards: Awards up to BA (Hons) Media & Cultural Studies, BA(Hons) Film Studies
Pre-requisites: UACPRW-30-1 Media and Cultural Studies Foundations, or UPCPAE-30-1 Film Cultures
Co-requisites: None
Excluded combinations: None
Learning outcomes:
On successful completion of this module students should be able to:
• Articulate a critical understanding of the significance of play and games within contemporary media culture
• Adapt and develop ethnographic and textual analysis methods for the study of play events and game objects
• Contextualise the impact of digital games and simulation technologies on popular culture, everyday life and the moving image within a theoretical framework of the relationship between technologies and cultural forms.
• Develop and present ideas and arguments relating to the module through group work.
• Develop, research and complete an independent research project on a suitable topic.
All of the above are assessed through all elements of assessment.
Syllabus outline:
This module is designed for both Film Studies and Media & Cultural Studies students. It will take videogames and videogame play as its focus, but will encourage students to make connections with other simulational media forms and with other types of games and play. Through workshops, students will analyse games as screen media, as software, and as lived playful experiences, exploring their own game cultures and those of others.
Over the past three decades computer and video games have challenged cinema and television for the attention, and money, of screen audiences. They draw on cinema and TV for their dramas, characters and storyworlds, but they are also a significantly new form of popular screen media with other origins and influences from the development of the digital computer, networked communications, and histories of gaming from wargaming to dolls house play. As computer software they generate virtual, interactive worlds, simulations central to the reshaping of the experience of time and space in digital culture. Whilst as games they transform screen media spectatorship into play. In turn they have influenced the structures and imagery of cinema, and resonate with new playful television genres such as reality TV.
Teaching and learning methods:
Lectures and screenings will take students through key concepts. Seminar workshops will encourage in-depth and hands-on understanding of the interrelationships between technology, history, aesthetics, play and theory. The playing of digital and non-digital games, and the study of game play, will be a key feature of workshops.
Reading Strategy
Set readings which all students are required to read will be provided in a Module Reader. These will be supplemented by list of journal articles, online resources and books available in the library, from which students will be encouraged to select further reading, particularly for completing assignments.
Indicative Reading List: (see guidance notes)
The following list is offered to provide validation panels/accrediting bodies with an indication of the type and level of information students may be expected to consult. As such, its currency may wane during the life span of the module specification. However, as indicated above, CURRENT advice on readings will be available via other more frequently updated mechanisms.
Dovey, Jon & Kennedy, Helen 2006 Game Cultures: computer games as new media, Maidenhead: Open University Press
Huizinga, Johan 1955 [1938] Homo Ludens: a study of the play element in culture, Boston: Beacon Press
Krzywinska, Tanya & King, Geoff (eds) 2002 ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces, London: Wallflower
Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant & Kelly 2009 New Media: a critical introduction (2nd ed.), London: Routledge
Mayra, Frans 2008 An Introduction to Game Studies: games in culture, London: Sage
Perron, Bernard & Wolf, Mark J.P. 2003 The Video Game Theory Reader, London: Routledge
Perron, Bernard & Wolf, Mark J.P. 2009 The Video Game Theory Reader 2, London: Routledge
Assessment
Component A, Element 2 should be recorded as the final assessment for the purposes of submitting data on non-submissions to HEFCE. (For further information please contact Academic Registry.)
ATTEMPT 1
First Assessment Opportunity (Sit)
Component A
Description of each element Element weighting
1 Seminar workshop activities with documentation 25%
2 Individual research project (4,000 words or equivalent) 75%
Second Assessment Opportunity (Resit) (further attendance at taught classes is not required)
Component A
Description of each element Element weighting
1. Exam (1.5 hours) 25%
2. Research project (4,000 words or equivalent) 75%
EXCEPTIONAL SECOND ATTEMPT (Retake): Attendance at taught classes is not required.
Specification confirmed by …………………………………………………Date ……………………………
(Associate Dean/Programme Director)