Video Games Discourse Analysis

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

The introduction to the Video Games Discourse Analysis in the context of European problems with politics, ecology and culture. Video Games will be treated as the cognitive pattern for diverse contemporary discourses, as a realm of fundamental questions shaped in the virtual worlds.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Syllabus

Course learning content:

Explanation of Video Games Discourse Analysis – definitions, categories, contexts, history, textual and discursive structures of virtual worlds

Presentation of Video Games as the natural realm of important for the contemporary Europe discourses – between digital and non-digital traditions.

Between theory and interpretation: transmedia narratology, ecocriticism, post colonialism, hermeneutics, poststructuralism, semiotics.

The „new” categories of discourses: interactions, virtual reality, avatar, remediation, immersion, interface.

Relations between real and virtual Europe – case studies.

Reading list

• Mäyrä F., An Introduction to Game Studies. Games in Culture, 2008.
• Murray J. H., Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, Cambridge 1998.
• Pigulak J., Kubiński P., Jędrasiak K. (red.), The Structure of Video Games, “Images. The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication”, vol. XXIX, nr 38, 2021.
• Ryan M.-L., Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media, Baltimore-London 2001.
• Ryan M.-L., Thon J.-N. (red.), Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology, Lincoln-London 2014.