This panel further develops the valuable, well-established connection between language-based fields of study and games studies, with discussions of writing and authorship, interactive narratives and storytelling, poetics, and the affective and social value of narrative and interactive media. To achieve this, moderator Dr. DB Bauer presents a brief overview of their own work in games-based pedagogy to introduce the rationale for this special session, including brief introductions of each panelist. Then, each of the four panelists, two presenting together, are allocated up to fifteen minutes to share their work, leaving the remaining fifteen minutes for unstructured Q&A.
Bauer begins with a discussion of hands-on game design and its application to critical reflection on the undergraduate student experience in the course, “People at Play: The Cultural Impact of Games and Play.” Bauer addresses how students analyze “canonical” game studies texts (Johan Huizinga 1938; Roger Caillois 1958) through critical making (Matt Ratto 2011; Garnet Hertz 2016) and critical play (Mary Flanagan 2009). This encourages students to narrate their personal and shared experiences with the goal to foster agency central to the “writerly” classroom (Roland Barthes 1974). Further, this presentation connects games to the exploratory value of “the personal is political,” a phrase central to U.S. Black and feminist movements that inspires critical consideration of social power in the service of empowerment and social equity (Renee Heberle 2016).
Second, Dr. Al Valentín interrogates the possibility of teaching empathy within the feminist classroom. Using feminist critiques of neuroscience, Black feminist theory, and virtual reality research, they argue that while the transmission of empathy could have great societal impact, barriers to its realization remain. They argue for game design that brings together intersectionality and assemblage to create gaming experiences that move us to action in our communities. Grounded in feminist science and technology studies research (Victoria Pitts-Taylor 2017), feminist game studies research (Amanda Phillips 2018), and Black feminist theorization with Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals (1980), Valentín brings these seemingly disparate fields together to make interventions about feminist game design through a lens of intimacy.
Third, PhD candidate Nick Cialini provides compelling adaptations of “gamification” in the first-year writing classroom. While much of the discourse on gamification in the classroom centers on using alternative modes of marking achievement (e.g. badges), Cialini suggests gamification be considered in relation to the planning stages and environmental conditions of the classroom, rather than score-keeping mechanics. This paper presents strategies for class and assignment planning that encourage curiosity and prioritize play much in the same way that Dee Fink’s (2003) taxonomy makes space for “caring” and “the human dimension.” Such strategies plan and assess through successful role-playing practices like improvisation, task completion, exploration, and, most importantly, co-creation. When play is prioritized as an environmental tool rather than scorekeeping (grade-tallying) mechanics, students’ curiosity and engagement will activate their agency and status as co-creators in their skill acquisition and development.
Last, Dr. Steven Gotzler and PhD candidate D.A. Hall present their experiences designing and teaching an intermediate undergraduate course on video games and narrative cinema, specifically centered on issues of settler-colonialism. This talk focuses on a unit that dealt with authorship, identity, and self-determination. Students considered how video games and films often negotiate, subvert, or reproduce historical patterns of violence, dispossession, and power. To ground their discussions historically, they examined a sequence of games and films that address settler-colonialism in North America. Drawing upon the work of Indigenous games studies scholars such as Ashlee Bird and Elizabeth LaPensée, students began by analyzing how video games set in the “Old West” typically produce deeply colonial modes of play. Further, critical play activities enabled students to enact the habits of decolonial thought through interactive learning and reflect upon the potential limits of transposing the real-world stakes of decolonial critique onto virtual spaces. This talk reconsiders the colonial context of their own work in the physical space of the classroom.