As I launch a new game studies program, I am becoming keenly aware of issues that crop up when you bring games and concepts from game studies into an undergraduate classroom. When I was a graduate student, surrounded by professors and graduate students, I almost never had to argue about the value of studying games. Games are an important part of our culture, and thus studying them is crucial to having a nuanced understanding of important culture issues that impact us every day. It seems so simple and obvious when I write it up here, but staring into the faces of 20 undergrads, some who hate games and think they cause violence, some who even though they have spent hundreds of hours playing Call of Duty, don’t see games as part of a larger cultural conversation. How do you convince 20+ students that studying games in and of itself is a worthy way to spend their time in college?
First, I think the most important thing an instructor can do is to make real world connections. Often I remind myself that exposing things about our culture is crucial work. At NYMG, we constantly write articles about things that happen on the periphery of games and yet expose how we think and feel about certain things: whether it’s the trope of the monstrous mother, whether or not women’s bodies are portrayed realistically, or the trope of the “child-man,” each of these seemingly innocuous things make us face horrible beliefs that people have in our culture—if we did not do this those ideas would stay hidden and buried beneath the surface, impacting our lives daily in ways we wouldn’t otherwise be able to articulate. So why does the trope of the monstrous mother matter outside of what it says about our culture? How can we as teachers connect that to something in the real world? Luckily brilliant women have written about this exact question at NYMG, but also, we have a huge history of cultural studies, literature, and film to rely on.
Plus, you can always make your students do that kind of thought work: ask them how portraying mothers as either doling out kisses and doting on their children or as murderous monsters might impact our world? What’s the economic impact of games that always portraying female characters as super thin with big breasts and no armor? I would say that impact is enormous. Not only did this portrayal lead developers to exclude women on the program and development side, but proves that they do not recognize that women could be paying customers. Of course the social gaming revolution took the industry by storm: it introduced a type of game people though could make money, to an audience that didn’t play or buy games, through a pay system that would never make enough (microtransactions). Cultural patterns guide our innovative, or not so innovative, practices. One person doesn’t suddenly wake up and decide games are for boys, convince the industry of it, and then make games for boys for 20 years. These beliefs are ingrained and have very real consequences.
Another problem I pretty constantly face is trying to get students excited about playing games. When I hold gaming days, students typically come in exhausted, tired from work and study, and almost seem to be afraid to game. They seem to get bored easily. The only time forced gaming has been successful is if we have a community gaming session. For example, I played Slender with a group of about 6 students. Several of them were scared, there was some screaming, some people laughed, it was really the best gaming session I’ve had with undergraduates. This leads me to believe that despite what my clickbait title suggests, that it’s not apathy that is blocking students from enjoying games in the classroom, it’s fear. This fear breaks down in two way: either the student has been told (s)he (it is usually a she) is not good at games –or- (s)he (it is usually a he) has had it hammered into him so often that games are a waste of time that they’re afraid to really open up and play. Social gaming is a good way to solve this; also letting students bring their own handheld devices helps (that way no one can see their shame).
So both of those common problems have some sort of workaround. But what can you do with the student who just doesn’t like games? They come to class, perhaps begrudgingly reading the material, and just won’t engage. When you give them a simple iPad game to play, you notice 10 minutes later the iPad is on the table and they’re texting. Do you do a communal game and instead of watching and participating, they’re writing a paper for another class. Do you take the “tough shit” approach and force them to participate? After all, if this were math or literature they would have to. Or do you understand that “play to order is no longer play” and wash your hands of it? I land somewhere in between, I keep offering different games and trying to engage, but if they are just totally unwilling to try, then that’s on the student. You can’t force students to be present in your class whether it’s about statistics or chemical properties of rubber or even video games.
