Play along at home with #hist3812a

Posted on by Shawn

In my video games and history class, I assign each week one or two major pieces that I want everyone to read. Each week, a subset of the class has to attempt a ‘challenge’, which involves reading a bit more, reflecting, and devising a way of making their argument – a procedural rhetoric – via a game engine (in this case, Twine). Later on, they’ll be building in Minecraft. Right now, we have nearly 50 students enrolled.

If you’re interested in following along at home, here are the first few challenges. These are the actual prompts cut-n-pasted out of our LMS. Give ’em a try if you’d like, upload to philome.la, and let us know! Ours will be at hist3812a.dhcworks.ca

I haven’t done this before, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

Introduction to #hist3812a

Challenge #1

Read:

  1. Fogu, Claudio. ‘Digitalizing Historical Consciousness’, History and Theory 2, 2009.
  2. Tufekci, Zeynep. ‘What Happens to #Ferguson Affects Ferguson: Net Neutrality, Algorithmic Filtering and Ferguson. MediumAugust 14 2014

Craft:

A basic Twine that highlights the ways the two articles are connected.

Share:

Put your Twine build (the *html file) into the ‘public’ folder in your Dropbox account (if you don’t have a public folder, just right-click and select public link – see this help file). Share the link on our course blog:

  1. Create a new post.
  2. Hit the ‘html’ button.
  3. type:
  4. Preview your post to make sure it loads your Twine.

Play:

Explore others’ Twines and be ready to discuss this process and these readings in Tuesday’s class.

—

A history of games, and of video games

Challenge #2

Read & Watch:

Antecedents (read the intros):

Shannon, C. A Mathematical Theory of Communication  Reprinted with corrections from The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp. 379–423, 623–656, July, October, 1948. http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf

Turing, Alan Mathison. “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” J. of Math 58 (1936): 345-363. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf

Cold War (watch this entire lecture): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otw7hWq58A

1980s:

Dillon, Roberto. The golden age of video games : the birth of a multi-billion dollar industry CRC Press, c2011.

Christiansen, Peter ‘Dwarf Norad: A Glimpse of Counterfactual Computing History’ Play the Past August 6 2014 http://www.playthepast.org/?p=4892

Craft:

A Twine that imagines what an ENIAC developed to serve the needs of historians might’ve looked like, ie explore Christiansen’s argument.

Share:

Put your Twine build (the *html file) into the ‘public’ folder in your Dropbox account. Share the link on our course blog by:

  1. Create a new post.
  2. Hit the ‘html’ button.
  3. type:
  4. Preview your post to make sure it loads your Twine.

Play:

Explore others’ Twines and be ready to discuss this process and these readings in Tuesday’s class.

—

Historical Consciousness and Worldview

Challenge #3

Read:

Kee, Graham, et al. ‘Towards a Theory of Good History Through Gaming’ The Canadian Historical Review
Volume 90, Number 2, June 2009 pp. 303-326.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/can/summary/v090/90.2.kee.html

Travis, Roger. ‘Your practomimetic school: Duck Hunt or BioShock?’ Play the Past Oct 21 2011 http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2067

Owens, T. ‘What does Simony say? An interview with Ian Bogost’ Play the Past Dec 13, 2012 http://www.playthepast.org/?p=3394

Travis, Roger. ‘A Modest Proposal for viewing literary texts as rulesets, and for making game studies beneficial for the publick’ Play the Past Feb 9 2012 http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2417

McCall, Jeremiah. “Historical Simulations as Problem Spaces: Some Guidelines for Criticism”. Play the Past http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2594

(Not assigned, but more of Travis’ work: http://livingepic.blogspot.ca/2012/07/rules-of-text-series-at-play-past.html)

Craft:

A Twine that exposes the underlying rhetorics of the game of teaching history.

Share:

Put your Twine build (the *html file) into the ‘public’ folder in your Dropbox account. Share the link on our course blog by:

  1. Create a new post.
  2. Hit the ‘html’ button.
  3. type:
  4. Preview your post to make sure it loads your Twine.

Play:

Explore others’ Twines and be ready to discuss this process and these readings in Tuesday’s class.

—

Critical Play Week

Challenge # 4

Remember: 

Keep notes on the discussions from the critical play session; move around the class, talk with people about what they’re playing, why they’re making the moves they’re doing, and think about the connections with the major reading.

(nb, I’ve assigned all the students to bring in video games, board games, in both sessions this week that we’ll play. We might decamp to the game lab in the library to make this work. This group will observe the play. I’ve also pointed them to Feminist Frequency as an example of the kind of criticism I want them to emulate).

Craft:

Devise a Twine that captures the dynamic and discussions of this week’s in-class critical play. Remember, for historians, it may be all about time and space.

Share:

Put your Twine build (the *html file) into the ‘public’ folder in your Dropbox account. Share the link on our course blog by:

  1. Create a new post.
  2. Hit the ‘html’ button.
  3. type:
  4. Preview your post to make sure it loads your Twine.

Play:

Explore others’ Twines and be ready to discuss this process and these readings in Tuesday’s class.

—

Material Culture and the Digital

Challenge #5

Read

Montfort et al, ‘Introduction’, 10 Print http://10print.org/ (download the pdf)

Montfort et al, ‘Mazes,’ 10 Print http://10print.org/ (download the pdf)

Bogost, Ian, Montfort, N. ‘New Media as Material Constraint: An Introduction to Platform Studies.’ 1st International HASTAC Conference, Duke University, Durham NC  http://bogost.com/downloads/Bogost%20Montfort%20HASTAC.pdf

Craft:

Make a Twine game that emulates Space Invaders; then discuss (within the Twine) the interaction between game, platform, and experience. Think also about ’emulation’…

OR

Play one of these games, reviewing it via Twine, thinking about in a way that reverses the points made my Montfort & Bogost (ie, think about the way the physical is represented in the software).

Share:

Put your Twine build (the *html file) into the ‘public’ folder in your Dropbox account. Share the link on our course blog by:

  1. Create a new post.
  2. Hit the ‘html’ button.
  3. type:
  4. Preview your post to make sure it loads your Twine.

Play:

Explore others’ Twines and be ready to discuss this process and these readings in Tuesday’s class.