Game Studies' Inexorable Advance in the Classroom
Some reflections on CentreTerm 2025
Another delay from writing! This time it was a mix of the ALL THIS and standard January intensive term madness. Every January, I teach CentreTerm: a three week term in which students take one class and faculty teach one class. We meet for three hours a day and in theory the content and the structure of the class adjusts in kind. For years now I’ve typically taught “History and Video Games”, in which we play games, talk about games, write about games, and finally create games. I should do more of a deep dive on those soon and I need to upload game file but if you’re interested in some student-written descriptions and screenshots check our Itch page here.
One big change this year came in the way I handle playing games in class. Typically I’ve thrown a game on, handed a controller to a student and had them play though while I lead discussion. The challenge has been the “lead discussion” part. In truth I have mostly riffed while students either meandered around or, if they know the game, run too quickly through a scenario or level to do their own thing. In fact, student enthusiasm for games they know well can often be an obstacle when you’re trying to make a specific point, in general. I just wasn’t creating the discussions I wanted. I reached out to people and got some advice - thanks in particular to Jeremiah McCall - and handled it differently this time. I played the games; I also kept my own commentary while playing quite limited and typically aimed at helping students see key concepts: diegetic vs. non-diegetic menu systems, for example. The plan had always been to leave time for the students to reflect. On the first day I somewhat instinctively turned off the lights and treated the gameplay session as I would showing part of a film or documentary. It helped that our first game was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
This also proved rather time consuming - not a big deal for a three hour session but yet another example of a practice that works well in the intensive term but would need some work for translation to a more typical semester. The results were very good: students responded well and because I had typically crafted the session - setting up game saves for specific points in advance, say - we had productive conversations.
Another big thing this term was the clear continued progress of generational acceptance of game studies not just as a valuable field of study but a field of study it is blindingly obvious should exist, certainly in the minds of undergraduates. I’m quite fortunate in my career: my institution has largely been very supportive of my teaching games, and with this being a small college the fact I teach this class so consistently - in addition to some great work being done by colleagues of mine in Computer Science and the ongoing flourishing of our esports program - I think that the Centre College environment acknowledges games studies as a self-evidently worthy field. My mentions of gatekeeping and snobbery within broader fields, such as history, increasingly drew bewilderment from students.
This has had a pleasing side effect: the standards expected of me have risen. I can give you a concrete example: I need to get better about remembering which years games came out. My difficulty remembering such a basic fact stems from a few different things, not least my age or the time dilating effects of the Trump COVID era. But it was also a welcome sign that the conversations in the classroom are becoming more intellectually robust. It matters, a great deal, which year LA NOIRE came out (2011) versus Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). And, increasingly, my anecdotal accounts of major moments don’t quite cut it anymore. It might be time to write an article on the Resident Evil 5 trailer and representations of sub-Saharan Africans.
So all in all very encouraging stuff. I’m probably too busy now to make moves on it but again my mind turns to thoughts of a minor program here at Centre. It’s tricky: my own proclivities drive me to push for a more humanities-driven course of study, but it’s hard to know what makes the most sense. Obviously they should do some programming - or at least, I think so - but if I were to create a mostly narrative and context-focused games minor would it draw enough students? A topic for another day, really.