video games

Technological Nostalgia and the Academic Year to Come

XKCD comic "Time Ghost"

I feel so out of touch when it comes to video games.

Game Controllers and Course Design

Black Playstation controller

So, I've been thinking this week about controllers and controls. The Playstation 4 controller was announced, and there are some significant changes in the design that speak to the changing nature of gaming in general. The new controller has a touch screen and a color-coded light bar to identify different players. Most significant to this post, though, is the missing 'Select' and 'Start' buttons. Since the 1980s, these buttons have been standard on most game controllers, and Sony's decision to replace them with the 'Share' and 'Options' button signals a shift in video games' focus.

Rhetorical Video Games

Retro image of young couple standing in front of a large Atari home computer

I ran my Mass Effect 1 lesson plan today, and I must say that I’m all fired up about it. Why? Because it worked. Turns out, you can use a video game to teach a rhetorical concept, and not just as a medium that can be rhetorically analyzed, but as a modeling technology that enables (indeed requires) the cognitive work rhetorical concepts entail.

Better than Rhetoric

Screenshot of McDonald's Videogame

My thinking about rhetoric and realism has been greatly elucidated this year by my class, Rhetoric of Video Games.

Video Games, Queer Studies, and Gay and Lesbian Literature and Culture

Fallout Screenshot of Confirmed Bachelor Character Profile

Since early 2006 – when Blizzard Entertainment met with criticism and controversy for threatening to oust a player advertising a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)-friendly World of Warcraft guild – queer visibility in the world of gaming has exploded.

Communication in the Classroom

Two woman conversing in an art gallery

This semester I wanted to develop the Mass Effect lesson I devised in the fall.

Why ARIS Works for Literature Classes

Picture of smartphone with text Than why is he so upset?

So my Banned Books E314 class is wrapping up the ARIS project described in my recent lesson plan post, and as I reflect on the experience I find myself fending off the complaints of a reasonable (if imaginary) skeptic: Sure, games are rhetorical, so it makes sense to analyze them in a rhetoric class. And sure, procedural rhetoric is an important mode of argumentation, so game design makes sense – in a rhetoric class.

Prototyping Procedural Rhetoric

Poster for game mix, with large title and five illustrated people, one of whom holds on jigsaw pieces

For the final project in my RHE 309K: The Rhetoric of Video Games class, I had students work in groups to develop a game concept that uses procedural rhetoric to argue a thesis. The lesson plan can be found here, but the gist is they write a classical argument on a topic of their choice, and then present both why their thesis is the preferred position and how a video game arguing this position would work.

Licensing

Creative Commons License
All materials posted to this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. We invite you to use and remix these materials, but please give credit where credit is due. In addition, we encourage you to comment on your experiments with and adaptations of these plans so that others may benefit from your experiences.

 

User login