Looking for a course related to game studies for the Fall term? We'll list several of them here. You can find out more about studying games at U-M on our video game studies research guide.
ARTDES 178: Animation for Non-Majors
Animation as an art form has become increasingly prominent in such fields as film and video special effects, games, identity branding, scientific visualization, virtual reality training, and courtroom presentations. Students become familiar with storytelling, acting, character development, and dramatic structure. They examine the history of the moving image and the power and influence of animation and computer-generated imagery in contemporary culture.
ASIANLAN 123: First-Year Japanese through Anime and Manga
The course will incorporate at length various media forms into class activities to improve students’ language skills, as well as to help students have fun. This course encourages students to become autonomous language learners by providing online tools for self-learning (e.g. vocabulary practice games)...
COMM 159, sec. 001: An Introduction to Hackers, Pranksters and Whistleblowers
This course offers a three-part framework for thoughtfully understanding and situating issues and challenges surrounding global “hacktivism.” In addition to course readings, students will have an opportunity to engage with course concepts through the mediums of movies, novels and games.
EDUC 333: Video Games and Learning
Why are videogames fun? This class takes a hard look at videogames, a hard look at education, and considers ways that each can be improved to maximize learning.
EDUC 462: Web Based Mentorship: Learning Through Character Play
This seminar revolves around Place Out Of Time (POOT), a web-based character-playing simulation involving college, high school, and middle school students. You will have a dual role in the simulation: you will play a character yourself, and you will also act as a project leader and mentor to the younger participants.
EDUC 602: Videogames, Learning and School Design
Introduces students to the theory and practice of simulation, metaphorical, and literal games; provides extensive exposure to gaming used as a vehicle of instruction in various parts of school curricula; provides opportunities to design games for classroom use, with some attention to problems of evaluation.
EECS 494: Computer Game Design and Development
Concepts and methods for the design and development of computer games. Topics include: history of games, 2D graphics and animation, sprites, 3D animation, binary space partition trees, software engineering, game design, interactive fiction, user interfaces, artificial intelligence, game SDK’s, networking, multi-player games, game development environments, commercialization of software.
FTVM 368, sec. 001: The Internet of Genders: From Geek to Cute and Beyond
This class will examine both representations of gender identity and the lived experiences of gender identity online. During the early history of the Internet, gender play and experimentation were practiced in many ways, from games to seemingly non-fictional self-representations. This course takes a media studies approach that is informed by cultural studies, material history, and cultural ethnography.
FTVM 368, sec. 003: Mobile Media Cultures
We’ll develop some working theories and frameworks for establishing “mobile media cultures” and then discuss mobile in the context of digital economies and industries, interpersonal communication, politics and safety, storytelling and entertainment, and digital futures. We’ll use the app, the wearable, and the podcast as our main objects of study.
SI 301: Models of Social Information Processing
This course focuses on how social groups form, interact, and change. This course introduces two conceptual models for how information flows is used in multi-person settings -- networks and games. Games describe the actions available to different people and how each person’s outcomes are contingent on the choices of others.