Introduction to Computer Game Studies

COCU 175
Spring 2007
Lecture: Tu. & Th. 3:30-4:50pm, CSB 002
Screening times: Tuesday @ 5, Thursday @ 1, Thursday @ 5
Screening location: Sequoyah 142, see schedule and policies
Website: http://www.noahwf.com/07spring/gamestudies

Lecture Faculty

Noah Wardrip-Fruin
email: nwf@ucsd.edu (email contact preferred)
paper mail: Department of Communication, 0503, UCSD
office: room 246, Media Center and Communication Building (MCC)
office hours: W. 10:30am-12:00pm

Screening Faculty

Carl McKinney
email: cmckinney@ucsd.edu
office: Sequoyah 215
office hours: Thursday 2-3pm and by appt.

Required Materials

Books:

• Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution, Steven Poole
• Pilgrim in the Microworld, David Sudnow (available as bookstore photocopy or e-reserves PDF)
• Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, Jesper Juul
• Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture, T. L. Taylor

Game system:

• Atari Flashback 2 (also available at bookstore)

General Course Notes

Expectations:

• Studying media. In addition to reading traditional texts, this course will also require study of games. These are our primary material and, except as specially noted, require over an hour of concentrated engagement in order to form even initial impressions.
• Grading. 30% of each student's grade will be based on participation (which requires attendance) at lectures and screenings. 10% will be based on five (unannounced) quizzes, which may cover material from the readings, games, and/or lectures. Finally, each of the three papers will count for 20% of each student's grade (for a total of 60%). Each paper will be roughly five pages (at least 2,000 words). There will be no final exam.
• Academic misconduct. Of course, any kind of academic misconduct is unacceptable.

Week 1

Lecture 1a. 03 April

• Intro to class

Lecture 1b. 05 April

• Trigger Happy, chapters 1 & 2

Screening 1. TBA

• Intro to screenings
• Spacewar!, Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen (1962). You and a partner will have to practice to get a sense of how to play, and you can't play alone, with this version using (mostly) the original 1962 code running in a Java PDP-1 emulator.

Optional

• "Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums," Stewart Brand, 1972 (a version with OCR problems is available online).

Week 2

Lecture 2a. 10 April

• Trigger Happy, chapters 3 & 4

Lecture 2b. 12 April

• Trigger Happy, chapters 5 & 6

Screening 2. TBA

• Adventure, William Crowther and Donald Woods (1976). In the lab you can play a version of Adventure ported to Fortran 77 (relatively close to the DEC PDP-10 Fortran "350 points" version by Woods). Alternately, you can use g77 (or another Fortran compiler) to compile the source yourself from here. (On a Mac, g77 is easy to get via Fink.) If you compile yourself, just change the path to the data file to ".." in both the makefile and ainit.f (more on where to make changes in the readme).

Optional

• "Adventure as a Game," from Interactive Fiction: the Computer Storygame Adventure, Mary Ann Buckles (excerpt from first PhD dissertation on computer games -- UCSD, 1985 -- which can be downloaded via UCSD computers/proxies).

Week 3

Lecture 3a. 17 April

• Assign paper 1: Close observation of game learning, due at week 4 Thursday lecture.
• Pilgrim in the Microworld, chapters 1-3

Lecture 3b. 19 April

• Pilgrim in the Microworld, chapters 4-6
• Guest lecture

Screening 3. TBA

• Atari Flashback 2 intro
• Pong, Al Alcorn, et al (1972). The first computer game to achieve mainstream success. It's a little hard to play with the Flashback's joysticks, but if you have original legacy Atari paddle controllers you can plug them into your Flashback unit (I got mine from Atari Ace).
• Combat, Joe Decuir and Larry Wagner (1977). This game came with the Atari 2600 console. After you've gotten proficient at both a tank and a plane variation of the game, switch over to the Flashback's two-player Outlaw (David Crane, 1978) and a couple of its variations.

Optional

• "Combat in Context," Nick Montfort. Available online at Game Studies.

Week 4

Lecture 4a. 24 April

• Pilgrim in the Microworld, chapters 7-8

Lecture 4b. 26 April

• Paper 1 due
• Pilgrim in the Microworld, chapters 9-10

Screening 4. TBA

• Atari Flashback 2 continued
• Pitfall!, David Crane (1982). This game has a 20 minute time limit, but in your first session of play that won't be your main problem.
• River Raid, Carol Shaw (1982). Another influential game, like Pitfall!, published by Activision for the Atari system.

Week 5

Lecture 5a. 01 May

• Assign Paper 2: Analysis of game structure, due at week 6 Thursday lecture (slides).
  1. At least 2k words (include word count at end of document).
  2. An element observed across 3 games (minimum) — must include one of the games we've played in lab. (Some example elements: timers, doorways, jumping, saving the game, firing a projectile, symmetrical competition space, power-ups.)
  3. Engaging at least one game publication discussing this element in one of your games (or several publications that discuss your games but don't mention your element) drawn from game conferences (e.g., GDC, DiGRA, DAC), online game publications (e.g., Gamasutra, Game Studies), game journals (e.g., Games and Culture, Journal of Game Development), or books on games (though, if your citations are all from books, at least one should be from outside the syllabus — and not a guide or catalog).
  4. Have a broader idea supported by your observation and discussion (a conclusion). For a model, look at Juul's discussion of time in games.
• Half-Real, preface and chapters 1 & 2

Lecture 5b. 03 May

• Half-Real, chapter 3
• Guest lecture

Screening 5. TBA

• Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, with Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov (1985). An early DOS version is installed in the lab, using a universal version of the DOSBox emulator for the Mac. (I found this emulator worked well on my Mac, though I had to remove the first line and customize the final lines of the included Preferences file.) Feel free to download DOSBox for your platform and play on your own machine.
• Doom, John Carmack, John Romero, Sandy Petersen, et al, id Software (1993). This is installed in the lab. It can also be downloaded and played with a DOS emulator.

Week 6

Lecture 6a. 08 May

• Half-Real, chapter 4

Lecture 6b. 10 May

• Paper 2 due
• Half-Real, chapter 5 & 6

Screening 6. TBA

• The Sims, Will Wright, et al (2000). The best-selling PC game of all time is, with a number of expansion packs, installed in the lab. If playing at home, make sure you have the original (not The Sims 2 or a console version).

Week 7

Lecture 7a. 15 May

• Assign paper 3: Examine procedural rhetoric or narrative structure, due at week 9 Thursday lecture. (See assignment slides, and class 14's slides on examples of procedural rhetoric.)
• Persuasive Games, by Ian Bogost. Chapter 1 ("Procedural Rhetoric") pages 1-54. (Available from A.S. Soft Reserves starting May 11.)

Lecture 7b. 17 May

• Games Phone Home, by Ian Bogost.
• Turning the Tables on In-Game Ad Design, by Ian Bogost. (Requires free registration at Gamasutra.)

Screening 7. TBA

• Disaffected!, Ian Bogost (2006). This is installed in the lab, and can also be downloaded for Mac or PC.
• Darfur is Dying, Susana Ruiz, Ashley York, et al (2006). You can play in a browser using Flash.

Week 8

Lecture 8a. 22 May

• Michael Mateas, "A Preliminary Poetics for Interactive Drama and Games." (On e-reserve through library.)
• Jordan Mechner, "The Sands of Time: Crafting a Video Game Story." (On e-reserve.)

Lecture 8b. 24 May

• Kenneth Hite, "Narrative Structure and Creative Tension in Call of Cthulhu." (On e-reserve.)
• Jill Walker, "A Network of Quests in World of Warcraft." (On e-reserve.)
• Jeremy Douglass, "Enlightening Interactive Fiction: Andrew Plotkin's Shade." (On e-reserve.)

Screening 8. TBA

• Façade, Michael Mateas, Andrew Stern (2005). This is installed in the lab, and can also be downloaded for Mac or PC (if you have a fast machine). Play through at least three times.

Week 9

Lecture 9a. 29 May

• Play Between Worlds, pages 1-48 (chapter 1 & part of chapter 2)

Lecture 9b. 31 May

• Paper 3 due
• Play Between Worlds, pages 49-92 (part of chapter 2 & chapter 3)