Virtual Realities, Fictional Worlds, and Games

Shai Ginsburg, Chair of and Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

This class is different: It is about both playing hard and working hard; it is about questioning the opposition between playing and working. We inspire to work through play and play through work, and have fun doing both! We take games both as great fun and very seriously. True, we are about to play games—many games—and, hopefully, have fun doing so; but we will also consider the games we play (as well as other games) in a scholarly fashion, as important products of our culture, as something that can tell us about our society, politics, and ideology. We will thus look at tabletop games and videogames from divergent perspectives: historical, sociological, political, military, literary and more, paying particular attention to game design and the ways it shapes our experience not only of the game, but also of the world. Our driving contention is that the understanding of game design and gameplay can enhance our understanding of cultural and political dynamics.

Victoria Szabo, Research Professor of Art, Art History, & Visual Studies; Research Professor in the Program of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies; 

Digital storytelling and interactive narrative take advantage of new technologies to tell stories that are multimodal, participatory, and open-ended. Those that take advantage of game engines also build upon imagined worlds that are designed with procedural elements in mind. In this course we will explore the distinct affordances of digital media for storytelling, considering both how they can realize possibilities latent and expressed in earlier forms of storytelling, and can offer up possibilities that are entirely new in programmed, interactive, and extended reality environments. For inspiration and context we will read/view/experience and
critique examples of open-ended and interactive narrative forms going back to diverse oral traditions and exhibition practices, as well as to relevant novels, film, apps, and games. Our critical readings will draw from theories of play, game design, and virtuality and will include consideration of open world, non-linear, and location-based storytelling techniques. Throughout the course we will consider questions of authorship, agency, authority, and collaboration as well as how the user/player/interactor becomes an active participant and even a co-creator in the stories we tell. As we apply the lessons of these readings to historical and contemporary examples, we will consider what makes a digital story “good,” and how concepts derived from game studies apply to these interactive media forms more broadly, as well as what we can learn about creating better games from our research. We will also do hands-on exploration of the topic by using digital media authoring tools to share original and adapted digital stories of our own.

Aarthi Vadde, Associate Professor of English 

This course uses literary works (novels) and popular culture (video games, TV shows, blogs, Twitter fiction, and crowdsourcing projects) to introduce two key concepts for literary and digital cultural study: fictionality and virtuality. The fictional and the virtual explain how stories immerse us in their worlds: why we can’t put a book down, binge watch our favorite shows, and game for hours. Whatever your pleasure (reading, watching, playing), your immersion in a familiar art form is usually preconditioned by the knowledge that it is not real even if it feels real. But what about when art forms are new? In the 18th century, novel readers did not yet know what they were reading. They thought novels were autobiographies and characters were real people. Today, when we go online and use social media, we encounter real people who behave like fictional characters, parody accounts, curated personas, avatars, deep fakes, and all sorts of other techniques for virtualizing the self. In thinking about the entwined history of fictionality and virtuality, we will gain perspective on a contemporary world in which readers and viewers, for better and worse, have become players and participants. 

Marshall Miller, Senior Research Associate at the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute; Instructor at the Duke Game Lab

This course is an exploration of the theory and practice of game design with a focus on critical play, game decomposition, and iterative design.  Students explore a range of non-digital games to discover how design elements combine to form meaningful systems of play. Readings, discussion, and hands-on design exercises prepare students as they design, develop, and document meaningful games in a collaborative environment. Programming experience is not required.