Video Game Studies Minor

The Video Game Studies minor is for students to both analyze and create video games. Game Studies is a burgeoning academic field, and rightly so, as the global video game industry’s revenues are more than triple those for the film industry. But the field is still in its infancy, which offers students the opportunity to be on the leading edge of an academic pursuit that combines humanities and the fine arts. This minor will allow students to become more thoughtful consumers of video games and also participate in the larger creation and criticism of them should they so choose.

Upon successful completion of the Video Game Studies minor, students will be able to:

1. Describe the formal elements that comprise a video game and analyze how those elements are used to contribute to a game’s effects, communications, and meanings.
2. Analyze how video games (either isolated examples or broader genres) impact the societies and cultures in which they are played, as well as how those societies and cultures impact the games that are made and how they are received.
3. Create original video games that demonstrate sound game design principles and generate meanings beyond “mere” entertainment.
4. Demonstrate competency in a selected track of video game design and/or theory: art and graphics; music, sound, and voice; writing; or criticism.
5. Answer from many different perspectives: What is a video game?