BA Game Studies

Course Description | Course Structure & Modules

BA (Hons) Game Studies (Joint). This is a new and innovative course in an exciting and rapidly developing field of study. Game Studies is an interdisciplinary programme designed to develop your in-depth knowledge of digital games and gaming from various perspectives and your ability to reflect critically on the role of digital games in contemporary society.

The main aims of this course are:

to foster knowledge of the history of games, game genres and audiences, game cultures and industries, while developing students' abilities to engage critically with such knowledge and its underlying assumptions.
to encourage students to both reflect upon their own experiences and to also consider digital games within wider historical, ethical and social dimensions.
to develop a level of specialism in reviewing and writing for games, games analysis and criticism, and an understanding of the processes of game design and game production.
to build the graduate-level skills of critical analysis, cultural awareness, independent research and effective communication, providing a combination that aims to equip students for a range of careers and professions.
to support student learning in related, interdisciplinary or combined fields.
to provide a basis for further study or employment.
to encourage flexible and transferable skill development within a range of defined graduate attributes.

Possible Career Paths
The Game Studies programme has been drawn up with reference to Game Industry guidelines (by IGDA, Skillset & ELSPA). Depending upon degree combination, graduates could progress to careers such as:

Game Journalist
Game Writer
Educator in game studies and related areas
Game Researcher
Game Buyer
Game Marketing/PR
Roles in game design/production*
broader career paths in the fields of media or education with a specialism in games.

There are many opportunities for further study and research in this and related fields.

Degree Combinations
*Students who are interested in game design/production should combine Game Studies with a production orientated degree, such as Digital Media or BSc Computer Games. Other suggested degree combinations are with: Film Studies, English Literature, Journalism, Education Studies, Creative Writing, Multimedia Technology & Applications, Business or Marketing.

Course Description | Course Structure & Modules

Course Structure
Core modules provide a foundation in key areas. You can also personalise the course and use it to enhance your profile by following a strand of interest through the modules offered and through work placement and project modules. Some modules provide the opportunity to develop portfolio-quality work for presentation to potential employers. There are three levels of study, Certificate, Intermediate & Honours. At each level there are also a number of optional modules from other subjects such as BA Film Studies and BA Digital Media. For a detailed module description, including syllabus and assessment, please follow the links on the module titles.

MODULES
Certificate Level
INTRODUCTION TO GAME STUDIES [Core]
This core module introduces Game Studies as an emerging academic subject. It provides an overview of key concepts and approaches alongside opportunities for students to begin developing a critical stance informed by playing experience.

INFORMATION LITERACY FOR GAME STUDIES [Core]
This module serves as the subject's combined HEO and IT module. It is subject-based and introduces a range of information resources of direct relevance to Game Studies.

GAMES IN CONTEXT [Core]
This core module situates play and games in historical and socio-cultural context and provides an introduction to theorising the relationship between games, technological development and socio-cultural change. It explores the nature and agency of games in a variety of contexts such as, training, social simulation, political activism, leisure and networking.

Optional Modules from other Subjects
DESIGN AND CREATIVITY [Digital Media option]
This module focuses on interdisciplinary design theory and itís application in a digital media context. It will examine the creative process in an aesthetic context and explore universal design principles inherent in the production of images, sound, video, animation, narrative and interaction

INTRODUCTION TO PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION [Digital Media option]
This module will review the history of animation and the moving image using examples from the fields of film, television, advertising, games and the World Wide Web. Students will experiment with a wide variety of animation techniques focusing on the skills and disciplines of traditional animation and exploring how these can be applied in the digital domain.

Intermediate level
GAME DESIGN THEORY AND THE PLAYING EXPERIENCE [Core]
This core module develops students' knowledge and understanding of the core concepts of game design theory and the relationship between game design and the playing experiences of diverse audiences. It provides students with an essential vocabulary with which to describe and critique games in detail, whilst appreciating design issues and constraints.

GLOBAL GAMING CULTURES [Employability Core]
This module explores game design as an expression of national culture and the worldwide growth of gaming. It includes a focus on MMORPGs, contrasts Japanese and American games, and also serves as the subject’s employability core.

GAME CRITICISM AND REVIEW [Core]
This core module develops students' specialism in game criticism and review.

INTERACTIVE NARRATIVE [not running in 09/10]
This module explores both the roots of videogames within text-based adventure games and the history of experimental electronic literature. It introduces a range of theoretical debates about interactive narrative and provides opportunities to study classic early hyperfictions and text-based games.

WRITING FOR GAMES
This module focusses on the role of the writer in the process of game design and marketing. It provides opportunities to develop writing skills and to produce portfolio pieces of writing.

GAMES AND MEDIA CROSSOVER
This module places games within a wider economy of cultural production by examining the phenomenon of media crossover. It traces transformations and continuities between games and other media, especially film, and develops students' understanding of genre, aesthetics, narrative and audience both within games and cultural production more broadly.

WAR, GAMES AND CONFLICT
This module examines a variety of war game genres and considers debates about the potential relationship between gaming, aggression, violence and conflict resolution.

Optional Modules from other Subjects
DIGITAL MOVING IMAGE [Film Studies option]
This module aims to introduce students to the contemporary production skills base required for digital production, and to help students develop an understanding of digital video techniques in relation to a range of contemporary video production contexts including independent cinema and online media.

GAME DESIGN [Digital Media option]
This module introduces students to game design theory, game design processes and tools, game studies, the analysis of the history of games and game audiences, the various applications for digital games, gameplay and game narratives. Students will learn how to appreciate and critically evaluate the current debate on game design issues as well as how to design a digital game.

Honours Level
GAME AESTHETICS [Core]
Aesthetics is a much-used term in both popular and academic discussions of digital games. This core module provides in-depth study of aesthetic concepts and develops students' ability to apply these in the evaluation of game design conventions and playing experiences.

GENDER PLAY [Core]
This core module extends analyses of the social and cultural relations of games and game-related technology and practices, introduced in GAMES IN CONTEXT, to focus on how these relations are mediated by gender. It encourages students to reflect on their own gaming experiences in order to question and evaluate the gender relations of past, contemporary and possible future game development from within a feminist analytical framework. It examines the mechanisms in real and virtual worlds by which gender, and other socio-cultural categories, are reconstructed and performed.

GAME STUDIES PROJECT [Core]
This module provides an opportunity for students to undertake a substantial piece of self-directed research and to synthesise the knowledge and skills developed during their course of study. This can be taken as a double or single module.

GAMES AND LEARNING [not running in 09/10]
This module introduces and explores the role of the digital game as a tool for learning in a variety of contexts. It provides an overview of competing learning theories and develops students’ ability to compare, critique and utilise these with respect to the situated learning experiences of the player and the learning mechanisms of digital games.

Optional Modules from other Subjects
DREADFUL PLEASURES [Film Studies option]
The aim of this module is to explore a range of theoretical approaches and concepts that have been applied to the horror film. It will draw its examples primarily, but not exclusively, from the American cinema and explore the narrative and visual properties of horror films, the monstrous as a metaphor for cultural fears and the central relationship between horror and its audience.

WOMEN IN FILM AND POPULAR CULTURE [Women's Studies option]
The module provides a critical understanding of issues relating to representations of femininity, difference, gender, race and sexuality in film and popular culture and of different feminist theoretical approaches to analysing film and visual culture.

INTRODUCTION TO SCREENWRITING [Film Studies option]
This module aims to introduce students to the practice of writing for the screen, and the skills necessary to make narrative ideas visual. This is a practice/theory module where students will workshop their own ideas and produce the screenplay for a ten minute short, fiction film.

DIGITAL MEDIA INDUSTRIES [Digital Media option]
This module introduces students to the structures and processes of various digital media industries including: the digital music, film and television industry, the game and the interactive entertainment industry, the digital arts and exhibition sector, the digital business communication and corporate sector, interactive media applications for the voluntary and public sector. The module also explores career opportunities in the digital media industries.

MANAGING NEW MEDIA PROJECTS [Digital Media option]
This module introduces students to the management of interactive projects and explores issues in team management, client handling, outsourcing and asset management, copyright and legal issues, the planning and production life-cycle, budgets and marketing. Students will learn how to manage a digital media project and how to effectively plan and execute a production cycle.