Games: Industry, Culture and Aesthetics

Course aim

Games: Industry, Culture and Aesthetics provides students with an understanding of the disciplinary field of games studies, equipping them with the tools to analyse this expanding and influential medium from social, cultural, industrial, political and aesthetic perspectives.

Course content

This course explores the games industry as a major international creative industry. Since their introduction into the home market in the mid-1970s, computer games have become a staple consumer item and successive generations have now grown up with this new communications media. The course situates the contemporary games industry within the medium’s history including its various platforms, key titles, and iconic figures, forms of gameplay and modes of interactivity.

The course also approaches games as ‘texts’, able to be studied in terms of their media content, as well as in terms of the unique issues around interactive narrative and ‘gameplay’ (for example, debates re: immersion versus ‘addiction’), to which they give rise. The study of games here is linked into the wider social world into which they are released and marketed, as well as considered as a media form operating within a broader realm of (digital) aesthetics and cultural practices.

Textbook(s)

Nil

Prerequisite(s)

Successful completion of first year courses in the major/sub-major in Cultural Studies in MBAA Bachelor of Arts or DBCI Bachelor of Creative Industries.

Corequisite(s)

Nil

Teaching method

Component	Duration
INTERNAL, MAGILL
Lecture	1 hour x 10 weeks
Lecture (online)	1 hour x 2 weeks
Workshop	2 hours x 10 weeks

Note: These components may or may not be scheduled in every study period. Please refer to the timetable for further details.

Assessment

Continuous assessment, Essay, Presentation

Fees

EFTSL*: 0.125
Commonwealth Supported program (Band 4A)
To determine the fee for this course as part of a Commonwealth Supported program, go to:
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Fee-paying program for domestic and international students
International students and students undertaking this course as part of a postgraduate fee paying program must refer to the relevant program home page to determine the cost for undertaking this course.

Non-award enrolment
Non-award tuition fees are set by the university. To determine the cost of this course, go to:
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Not all courses are available on all of the above bases, and students must check to ensure that they are permitted to enrol in a particular course.

* Equivalent Full Time Study Load. Please note: all EFTSL values are published and calculated at ten decimal places. Values are displayed to three decimal places for ease of interpretation.