Eaten by a Grue

At the beginning of every year, we like to look back at which games were most popular over the course of the previous year. Some games, like the FIFA series and Super Smash Bros., remain relatively constant in popularity over the years, while others are surprise hits. Here are our most popular games for 2019, all of which were played at least 50 times over the course of the year.

The end of the semester is already approaching, as are holiday breaks. Here is what our hours of operation will look like over the next month or so. We'll be closed Wednesday - Friday over Thanksgiving week. For the first two weeks of December, we plan to be open with our normal hours, with our last day open for the semester on Friday, December 13th. Then we'll plan to reopen on the first day of Winter classes: Wednesday, January 8th.

It's that time again to register for Winter classes. Do you find yourself wondering how to work your love of video games into your course selections? Here are some courses that might help you do just that.

It's been a busy year in the CVGA so far, and we thought it was time to look at which games are peaking everyone's interest in 2019 so far. FIFA is being played about 3 times as often as anything else, with Assassin's Creed and Spider-Man next in the running. Then we have some of our usual contenders, with the Mario Kart series dominating much of the list. By comparison, we also show our Top Ten List of All Time. FIFA was most popular in years 2013-15, but the Black Ops series still overtakes it in the list. We also see Mariokart, Super Smash Bros. and League of Legends in the overall rankings.

Our Atari 7800 stopped working after one of the tabs on the cartridge port broke off, resulting in games that wouldn’t sit properly in the system and were therefore unplayable. We only have one Atari 7800 system, so we were eager to try whatever we could to repair it. So when our student worker Justin found the specs online to 3D-print the replacement part we needed, we were eager to give it a try.

The Spring semester has kicked off and orientation season is in full swing, so we thought it would be a good time to showcase our collection of games here at the CVGA. Here are a few visualizations for our collection of more than 8,000 video games, board games, game soundtracks, and more.

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.

As the Winter term comes to an end, we like to take a look back and see which games were most popular in the archive over the course of the year. We take a look at our top 10 games over the Winter term, with FIFA being played about 3 times as often as anything else. We also have a few new games that have taken off, including Spider-Man, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and the surprise couch co-op hit, Overcooked 2. Looking at our top 10 list over the Fall and Winter semester, we see some similarities, with FIFA taking the lead and Mario Kart making the list as well. In addition, Rock Band 3 made it on the list for the first time in quite awhile.

Interested in creating adaptive and accessible video game technology? Looking to learn which video games are the best of the best when it comes to accessibility? Just looking to game? The library is hosting two accessible and adaptive gaming events in April! The CVGA is also working to add more accessible and adaptive gaming equipment to its collection.

Curious about which university classes are incorporating games into their studies? Here is a list of game-related classes happening this semester.