My course: "The Art, History, and Culture of Video Games"

[dsheinem]

May I play Devil's Advocate?

This seems like a cool class, no doubt. It's good that you're considering your students wallets, but you're forgetting an even more precious resource: time.

In my English 204, I was assigned about fifty-ish pages of reading before each lecture. Did I actually set aside an hour three nights a week to read these pages? Negative. I walked into class and pretended to have read the material. Thank goodness for wikipedia. Most of my classmates didn't even put up the pretense; they just sat in silence. They didn't even bother to google Alexander Pope's Essay on Man, or Jean Racine's Phaedra let alone read them.

Now consider how much time you are asking of your students.

Some of the arcade games and platformers on your list can be played in fifteen minutes. Some of the RPGs, MMOs, and RTSs don't even get started untill you're more than one hour in.
Are you really going to assign your students to play WoW and Second Life in the same week? Are you really going to require your students to play Civ and Final Fantasy in two days? Bioshock and Half-Life in two days?

I grant you this much: playing video games is more fun than reading dusty literature. True. Playing the dullest video game is still more fun than reading Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. Will your students commit several hours to playing these assigned games (on top of all the work necessary for other classes)? Probably not.

I suggest you consider how much time your students will realistically spend playing these games.

I don't expect students to spend more that 10-15 minutes with any of the required games, really. Just enough to get a feel for the design, gameplay, storytelling techniques, etc. They can spend more time if they want, they can play recommended games if they want, etc. It should be about 1-2 hours a week of playing, 25-75 pages a week of reading. Most weeks will be on the lower ends of those numbers. That is not unreasonable for a first year class, in my opinion.

If they don't read they won't do well since I assign reading quizzes (designed to gauge only if one did the most superficial reading of the text). They help weed out those who put in effort from those who don't.

[samsonlonghair]

Install and play Bio-Shock. Tell me how far you get in fifteen minutes.

Create an account and play WoW. Can you even finish creating your character in fifteen minutes?

[dsheinem]

Install and play Bio-Shock. Tell me how far you get in fifteen minutes.

Play WoW. Can you even finish creating your character in fifteen minutes?

They can read while the game installs!

Really the opening of Bioshock will give them a good feel for the game's atmosphere and skill in unfolding a story. They'll even get some combat.

If they don't get much past character creation in WoW that's ok too. There's enough there to give them a sense of some of the appeal of the game (character specialization). I'd hope they play a little bit more, but really it's all about basic familiarity/trying/getting a taste of these titles.

[Menegrothx]

If you're not willing to put any effort into it, then why the fuck would you sign up for a video game class? Unless it's mandatory or something, which I doubt. Being able to take A CLASS IN VIDEO GAMES is a reward in itself already. Reminds me of the story of the college professor that tried get a game design class to play Ultima IV and the kids couldn't get over the fact that you actually need to read the game's manual. Jesus christ my generation is pathetic if kids cant even handle studying something fun like video games.

If they don't get much past character creation in WoW that's ok too. There's enough there to give them a sense of some of the appeal of the game (character specialization). I'd hope they play a little bit more, but really it's all about basic familiarity/trying/getting a taste of these titles.

Not really. WoW is 99% about the end game. All the intricate gameplay mechanics don't come into play before you start killing raid bosses and doing PvP against other players. Back in the day it used to take months of level grinding to get to the top level, and then you'd grind months to have gear so you could take part in the end game. You'd need to invest atleast 850 hours into the game before you could even get there. Nowadays the game is a lot less demanding and some gameplay elements have been dumbed down, but the game has 4 expansion packs on top of it's core game (all of which added tremendous amounts of new content to the game), so there's an overwhelming amount of information to grasp for any new comer, unless they are proficient RPG/MMORPG gamers and willing to read a lot of guides on the internet.

If you want to have them learn something, don't tell them to try the game, give them a presentation. The average/casual gamer won't learn almost anything from playing less than 100 hours of World of Warcraft (let alone 15 minutes, which is nothing).

[dsheinem]

If you want to have them learn something, don't tell them to try the game, give them a presentation. The average/casual gamer won't learn almost anything from playing less than 100 hours of World of Warcraft (let alone 15 minutes, which is nothing).

They'll be reading about and hearing about WoW, but in a minimal amount of playing time they can get a sense of things like:


-Conventions of the MMORPG Genre
-Art style (including music, color, graphics, etc.)
-How to interact with the game
-Physics of the game world
-Communication in the game world
-UI layout
-Character design and specialization
-Some gameplay mechanics

The assumption has to be that no one in the class has played any of these games nor that they have time to spend a lot of time with them, but that they'll get a very BASIC feel in a short period of time so that they can have more than simply reading/watching/listening familiarity with the game, I can't fathom teaching a class that covers game history and culture and leaves out WoW, and I think experiencing the games is key to understanding differences in genre, historical development, design, etc.

[noiseredux]

but that they'll get a very BASIC feel in a short period of time

you're going to only give them 2 weeks to program a MMORPG using BASIC? That's fucked up. You're a terrible professor.

[dsheinem]

but that they'll get a very BASIC feel in a short period of time

you're going to only give them 2 weeks to program a MMORPG using BASIC? That's fucked up. You're a terrible professor.

getting closer, Costanza.

[Jmustang1968]

If you're not willing to put any effort into it, then why the fuck would you sign up for a video game class? Unless it's mandatory or something, which I doubt. Being able to take A CLASS IN VIDEO GAMES is a reward in itself already. Reminds me of the story of the college professor that tried get a game design class to play Ultima IV and the kids couldn't get over the fact that you actually need to read the game's manual. Jesus christ my generation is pathetic if kids cant even handle studying something fun like video games.

If they don't get much past character creation in WoW that's ok too. There's enough there to give them a sense of some of the appeal of the game (character specialization). I'd hope they play a little bit more, but really it's all about basic familiarity/trying/getting a taste of these titles.

Not really. WoW is 99% about the end game. All the intricate gameplay mechanics don't come into play before you start killing raid bosses and doing PvP against other players. Back in the day it used to take months of level grinding to get to the top level, and then you'd grind months to have gear so you could take part in the end game. You'd need to invest atleast 850 hours into the game before you could even get there. Nowadays the game is a lot less demanding and some gameplay elements have been dumbed down, but the game has 4 expansion packs on top of it's core game (all of which added tremendous amounts of new content to the game), so there's an overwhelming amount of information to grasp for any new comer, unless they are proficient RPG/MMORPG gamers and willing to read a lot of guides on the internet.

If you want to have them learn something, don't tell them to try the game, give them a presentation. The average/casual gamer won't learn almost anything from playing less than 100 hours of World of Warcraft (let alone 15 minutes, which is nothing).

I disagree here. I know of many WoW players who are casuals and don't raid much at all if any. In fact most players who enjoy the game are hooked on its gameplay long before end game. The ones who don't, usually quit thw game first. For the hardcore player end game is all that matters. But there a few different contingents of players.

[Menegrothx]

dsheinem, make sure to inform the class that the "WoW model" (which was actually created by EverQuest, which was more hardcore) isn't the only type of MMORPG that exists: Ultima Online had a very different take on the whole genre. EVE Online is a modern example of that "UO model" of MMORPG, it's a lot more sophisticated and multifaceted MMORPG than WoW and all WoW clones.

I disagree here. I know of many WoW players who are casuals and don't raid much at all if any. In fact most players who enjoy the game are hooked on its gameplay long before end game. The ones who don't, usually quit thw game first. For the hardcore player end game is all that matters. But there a few different contingents of players.

Well that might be true nowadays, the game has become increasingly less demanding and casual over the years. Or rather, even if you're casual, you can still enjoy the game nowadays, which wasn't the case when I played. Back when I started playing, I spent majority of my leveling up time wishing I was 60 so I could start raiding and enjoying the game. That light at the end of the tunnel is what kept me playing the game to that point.

Anyway Blizzard has put a lot of effort over the years into making leveling a more fun and rewarding experience. XP requirements are a lot lower, there are a lot more fun quests available for lower level players (and quests in general), there's achievements, you get a mount for practically free at level 20 where as it used to require a lot of money saving and wasn't available to players until level 40 and so on. In vanilla and TBC, the game was all about the most successful and active players. Blizzard realized that it makes more sense to keep the majority of the playerbase happy so they've done a lot over the years to make everything except arena PvP and high end raiding as easy possible.

[Jmustang1968]

Yeah you were the end game player. I also know many who love to level and explore and build alts. My wife has been playing for years and has only raided a few times.