I remember talking to my dad in early October about the classes I was taking this quarter, and I mentioned that I was taking a course called “Critical Video Game Studies.” To my disappointment, he chuckled, and I spent the next ten minutes explaining to him why the course is valuable and what makes studying video games compelling. To be fair, I wouldn’t really expect many people over 50 to understand the value of these studies, so I think that communication is really important when trying to explain this to someone. I’m usually a bit defensive when it comes to adults not understanding why I study media, but I think that once you have a good conversation, you can change someone’s mind.
Even I am sort of new to video game studies, having only taken one class about them before this one. I’m more of a film student, but this course has definitely opened my mind up to the value of video game studies. I really like the statistics that Patrick showed in class– those that display video games being an extremely profitable industry and far surpassing the film industry. I also really liked the statistic of how many gamers (no matter how general) there are in the world. These statistics really reinforce the idea that video games are ubiquitous and thus warrant further examination.
Lastly, I really like how everyone has a common theme for their final creative project: the Apocalypse. This binding theme means that everyone’s projects, while still being wildly different, will have a running theme. When you hear the word “Apocalypse,” you might just think of the world ending. However, my group is covering Alzheimer’s disease in our final project, which is meant to represent an Apocalypse of the mind. This reminds me of how varied and layered games can be, as well as the myriad of different sociopolitical commentaries that you can convey through them.
