What exactly are games and why are humans so devoted to play? How are games formally and materially constructed? What is their relationship to social and political structures, body and mind, storytelling and subjectivity? How have games and the cultures that surround them changed over time, and how do games reflect and influence their times? What is the relationship of games to other forms of art, entertainment, and cultural practice? In a wide range of courses, University of Chicago instructors and students ask questions such as these of activities as varied as baseball, interactive theater, online virtual worlds, and videogames. While some courses provide introductions to game design, history, and theory, others have emphasized the relationships between games and a broader array of specialized topics, from music and narrative form to genre, technology, and fandom. Still other instructors and courses have put games in conversation with fields of study such as philosophy, religion, cinema, and language, or invited play into the classroom less as subject matter than as learning method, activity, illustration, and assignment. See below for a list of games-related courses scheduled for the 2025-26 academic year and for a selection of past courses that have introduced games as an object or method of study. 

Autumn

MADD 12320 Critical Videogame Studies
(CMST 27916, ENGL 12320, GNSE 22320, SIGN 26038)

Since the 1960s, games have arguably blossomed into the world’s most profitable and experimental medium. This course attends specifically to video games, including popular arcade and console games, experimental art games, and educational serious games. Students will analyze both the formal properties and sociopolitical dynamics of video games. Readings by theorists such as Ian Bogost, Roger Caillois, Alenda Chang, Nick Dyer‐Witheford, Mary Flanagan, Jane McGonigal, Soraya Murray, Lisa Nakamura, Amanda Phillips, and Trea Andrea Russworm will help us think about the growing field of video game studies. Students will have opportunities to learn about game analysis and apply these lessons to a collaborative game design project. Students need not be technologically gifted or savvy, but a wide-ranging imagination and interest in digital media or game cultures will make for a more exciting quarter. This is a 2021-22 Signature Course in the College. (Literary/Critical Theory)

MADD 20500 ARTGAMES

This studio course playfully explores the methods, tools, and poetics of video games as art. Develop interactive new media art, machinima, and experimental 3D environments by using (and misusing) contemporary game engines. Projects will include hypertext adventures, walking simulators, abstract platformers, and metagames. By hacking, modding, and recontextualizing existing game assets, we will challenge the rules, mechanics, and interfaces of video games. This course counts towards the Media Practice and Design requirement for the MAAD program. Instructor: Chris Collins

MADD 24410 Transmedia Puzzle Design

This course will introduce students to the burgeoning field of immersive puzzle design. Students will develop, implement and playtest puzzles that are suited for a range of experiences: from the tabletop to the immersive, from online puzzle hunts to broad-scoped alternate reality games (ARG). Students in this course will work directly with master puzzler, Sandor Wiesz, the commissioner of The Mystery League. Instructor(s): S. Weisz

MADD 24820 Videogame music and sound production

The advent of video game soundtrack releases and live game music concerts substantiate the importance of music and sound in games, not just as accompaniments but as essential aspects of the gaming experience. This production course surveys the history of sound effects, music, and design in games beginning with the bleeps and bloops of the 1970s and concluding with the ambient, nonlinear soundscape of many contemporary games. Following the timeline media theorist Karen Collins presents in her documentary Beep, this course will explore electronic sound technologies including virtual analog synthesis, frequency modulation, bit reduction, General MIDI, and sample-based production. Each student will compose a game soundtrack demo for their final project. This course welcomes students who are both new to and experienced in sound production; the complexity of each assignment can be adjusted based on experience.

Winter

MADD 13403 Cybernetic Futures in Digital Media

Cybernetic Futures in Digital Media” explores the intersection of cyberpunk aesthetics, feminist theory, and digital media. Cyberpunk, characterized by its high-tech, dystopian visions and advanced cybernetics, serves as the course’s foundation. We will examine its impact on fine art, moving images, creative writing, and video games. The course will focus on evolving gendered embodiments in cyberpunk, from “masculine” identities centered on military strength to androgynous portrayals exploring emotional depth and resilience. We will analyze these themes and explore how cyberpunk and digital feminisms shape contemporary digital and artistic thought. Instructor: Crystal Beiersdorfer

MADD 20041 Digital Media I: Game Design with Unity

This course introduces the principles, practices, and techniques of game design. Students will develop several small games, gaining hands-on experience with the Unity development platform and the C# programming language it uses. The course takes a “ground up” approach: starting with the fundamentals of object- and component-oriented programming, then using those fundamentals to build complex, interactive experiences. While the course focuses on Unity, an introduction to software design patterns and an emphasis on a rapid feedback/iteration cycle will provide tools that translate to other game engines and creative computing projects. Through critique and the close examination of case studies from prior art, students will cultivate their critical eye and articulation, equipping them to discuss, assess, and refine games at various stages of development. Instructor: Cameron Mankin

MADD 22800 3D Modeling and Sculpting for Videogames

In this class, students will learn how to create high resolution 3D model concepts for the production of video games. High resolution sculpting is an integral part of today’s 3D production pipelines. This course aims to focus on this stage of the production pipeline, and its role in creating high quality games. While this class will focus on creating assets for video games, digital sculpting skills can be applied to a variety of other industries, such as architecture, fashion and jewelry, to name a few. Instructor: Tim Nicholson

MADD 25630 Digital Storytelling

New media have changed the way that we tell and process stories. Over the last few decades, writers and designers have experimented with text, video, audio, design, animation, and interactivity in unprecedented ways, producing new types of narratives about a world transformed by computers and communications networks. These artists have explored the cultural dimensions of information culture, the creative possibilities of digital media technologies, and the parameters of human identity in the network era. This course investigates the ways that new media have changed contemporary society and the cultural narratives that shape it. We will explore narrative theory through a number of digital or digitally-inflected forms, including cyberpunk fictions, text adventure games, interactive dramas, videogames, virtual worlds, transmedia novels, location-based fictions, and alternate reality games. Our critical study will concern issues such as nonlinear narrative, network aesthetics, and videogame mechanics. Throughout the quarter, our analysis of computational fictions will be haunted by gender, class, race, and other ghosts in the machine. Instructor: Ian Bryce Jones

MAAD 17887 The Platformer: History and Theory of a Videogame Genre

This course will provide an introduction to genre history and theory in videogame studies through a focus on the “platformer.” Though not a common name outside of videogame culture, the platformer has introduced or popularized some of the medium’s most recognizable figures (Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Donkey Kong) and gameplay mechanics (running, jumping, avoiding enemies, and collecting items). The genre has also been instrumental in and reflective of changes across the videogame medium. This course will cover two decades (roughly 1990 – 2010), emphasizing both historical details and theoretical questions, such as: How have game genres been defined? How do distinct genres emerge and change over time? How do broader trends (technological, formal, industrial, discursive, experiential, etc.) influence individual genres, and what roles do individual genres play in these broader trends? What resources and methodologies exist for studying videogame genres?

Throughout the course we’ll see the platformer alternate between an emphasis on linear, acrobatic movement across two-dimensional spaces and the free exploration of three-dimensional virtual worlds; between providing mascots for the biggest game companies and becoming a marker of independent, small-team production; and between being hailed as “revolutionary” and epitomizing the retro-nostalgic. Classroom lecture and discussion of readings will be accompanied by weekly gameplay sessions on original hardware at the MADD Center. Instructor: Chris Carloy

CMST 40001 Methods and Issues in Media Studies

This class will introduce a toolkit for thinking about and researching media, mediation, and new media cultures. We will begin with questions of technology. These will include the tension between technological determinism and the social construction of technology, as well as methods for investigating the historical evolution of media technologies. To explore how power operates within and through media, we will engage concepts and theoretical frameworks including algorithmic bias, transmedia, fan studies, platform studies, and media infrastructures. Students will develop critical and aesthetic perspectives on digital media, with special attention to games, participatory media, and code. Instructor: Katherine Buse

Spring

MADD 12500 Videogames and Language

Video games are written in code. They are inscribed into a computer’s memory. Critics, designers, and enthusiasts alike refer to their mechanics as “verbs,” like Super Mario’s JUMP or Minecraft’s BUILD. Sometimes, like other kinds of media objects, video games themselves are referred to as “texts.” Starting from these premises, this course will investigate why it makes sense to use this linguistic vocabulary to describe video games. We will consider what theories of language have to teach us about video games, and what video games have to teach us about language itself and the worlds it reveals to us. Readings will include philosophers of language like Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida, digital media scholars like McKenzie Wark and Bo Ruberg, and literary writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Clarice Lispector. This will be a reading- and writing-heavy course: class meetings will consist of discussion of readings, and assignments will generally take the form of written responses and critical essays. Video games (or recorded video game playthroughs) may be assigned alongside films, video clips, and podcasts at low or no cost to students. This class does not require any special knowledge of video games or gaming culture! An interest in the topic is all that’s needed to succeed. Instructor: Patrick Fiorilli

MADD 22322 Introduction to Game Design

This course introduces students to the theories and processes underlying game design through the creation of analog projects. We will be designing for forms that include board games, tabletop games, and live-action games. No prior design experience is absolutely required though some background with game studies will enable more innovative work. This course will be project-based and collaborative in nature. Instructor: Ashlyn Sparrow

MADD 25360 Videogames and Genre Storytelling

Historically, the genre categorization of videogames has been based around what the player does. In place of iconography or thematic content, videogame genres are typically def ined in terms of actions: shooting, jumping, pointing, clicking. This course takes a sideways approach to videogame genre, examining the ways in which games have taken inspiration from, and put their own unique mark on, genres borrowed from popular literature and cinema. The aesthetic formulas for popular genres such as horror, romance, comedy, science fiction, and the detective story will be examined using examples in literature and cinema, before turning to games and examining the unique challenges and interactivity brings to these genres’ typical plot beats and affective techniques. How does the player-avatar relationship complicate point-of-view and identification in the horror genre? What happens to the literary rules of “fair play” in detective stories as they are adapted into actual game form? Can the performative pain of slapstick be successfully adapted into interactive form? How do dating games re-structure the traditional forms of intimacy of the romance novel and cinematic rom com? This course will take advantage of the resources of the Weston Game Lab of the Media Arts, Data, and Design Center, and will be structured around played examples, in addition to examples from popular literature and film. Instructor: Ian Bryce Jones

CMST 27817/37817 Sonic the Hedgehog

(MAAD 17817, MAPH 37817)

In this course, we will use a single franchise – Sonic the Hedgehog – as an access point to study media history, aesthetics, social and cultural practice, and the relationships between games, film, and other artforms. Originally released in 1991 for Sega’s Genesis console, the Sonic series has spawned over three decades of games, cartoons, manga, novels, films, music, board games, action figures, fan art, cosplay, and merchandizing. Both the volume and the variety of these texts allow the Sonic corpus to be a focal point for questions with broader stakes for the study of games and media in general. Some of the questions we will be considering in this course include:

What has been the relationship between particular videogame characters and franchises and the business practices and strategies of entertainment industries? What form does stardom take in the world of digital games, and is it an appropriate concept to apply to a mascot like Sonic? How have established game franchises responded to major technological and aesthetic shifts in the medium? How might we understand the concept and practice of adaptation as applied to the digital games, and what does it reveal about the medium specificity of and the relationship between games, film, comics, novels, and other forms? What can a game franchise that has taken a wide variety of generic forms (platforming, racing, fighting, and pinball, to name just a few) tell us about how genre works as concept and system in digital games? Instructor: Chris Carloy

RLST 27900 Gaming the Gods: Video Games and Religion

What can Freud’s theory of religion tell us about the appeal of Grand Theft Auto? How might critical religious studies help explain who the good guys and bad guys can be in a game? Is it kosher that there’s a game where we can play as Jesus Christ (and punch Satan in the face)? In this course we will investigate the relationship between religion and video games. We will look at how religious narratives, symbolism, and ritual practice have influenced the worlds created by designers and developers. We will explore the communities and artistic expressions produced through the shared experience of gaming, including how the study of religion can help us understand the rules and boundaries that define them. Finally, we will think about how traditional religious communities have responded to video games, embracing their potential for new forms of imagination or rejecting them as dangerous or heretical. Though this course requires no previous knowledge of video games and gaming, interested students will have the option to design a video game as part of the final project. Instructor: Marshall Cunningham

Past Courses

2024-2025 Academic Year:

• 3D Modeling and Sculpting for Videogames
• Alternate Reality Games: Theory and Production
• ARTGAMES
• Augmented Reality in the Garden
• Black Game Theory
• Computer as Theater
• Cybernetic Futures in Digital Media
• Digital Ethnography
• Digital Media I: Game Design with Unity
• Digital Storytelling
• From Open Worlds to Angry Birds: Videogame History 2000-2010
• Introduction to Game Design
• Mediating War
• Methods and Issues in Media Studies
• Planetary Media
• Race and Indigeneity in Video Games
• Refresh, Reload, Reboot, Remake: What are Film Remakes Good For?
• Sonic Cultures of Japan
• Technologies of Care
• Video Games and Language
• Video Game Music Production and Sound Design
• Videogame and Genre Storytelling
• Virtual Reality Production
• Work and Play in the Digital Age: Video Games and Social Media

2023-2024 Academic Year:

• 1990s Videogame History
• Computers for Learning
• Comparative Media Poetics: Horror
• Digital Storytelling
• Games and Performance
• Narratives of Investigation, Games of Investigation
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Theme Park America
• Transmedia Puzzle Design & Performance

2022-2023 Academic Year:

• 1990 Videogame History
• Alternate Reality Games: Theory and Production
• Caring for Technology
• Critical Videogame Studies
• From Open Worlds to Angry Birds: Videogame History 2000-2010
• Gaming History
• Introduction to Immersive Environments
• Multimedia Fashion Design
• Serious Play: Video Games and Global Politics
• The Loop as Form
• The Philosophy of Games
• Videogame Level Design
• Virtual Ethnography: Encounters in Mediation
• Virtual Reality Production
• Virtual Theaters

2021-2022 Academic Year:

• Augmented Reality Production
• Digital Media & Social Life: Contemporary Methods
• The Platformer: History and Theory of a Videogame Genre
• Theater Games to Gaming Theater
• Videogame Consoles: A Platform Studies Approach
• Virtual Reality Production

2020-2021 Academic Year:

• Augmented Reality Production
• Designing Virtual Spaces While Staying Alive
• From Open Worlds to Angry Birds: Videogame History 2000-2010
• Sound and Scandal: How Media Makes Believe
• Transmedia Puzzle Design & Performance
• What’s New in New Media

2019-2020 Academic Year:

• 1990s Videogame History
• Embodied Data and Gaming Interfaces
• Introduction to Video Game Music Studies
• Looking Back: Orpheus and Euridice Across Time and Culture
• Politics of Media: From the Culture Industry to Google Brain
• Trans-bodies in Horror Cinema
• Virtual Reality Production

2018-2019 Academic Year:

• Augmented Reality Production
• Critical Videogame Studies
• Introduction to Videogame Studies

2017-2018 Academic Year:

• Introduction to Videogame Studies
• Senses and Technology
• Virtual Reality Production

2016-2017 Academic Year:

• Popular Science and New Media: Methods, Theory, and Practice

2015-2016 Academic Year:

• Cinema, Play, Modernity
• Digital Media Theory

2014-2015 Academic Year:

• Cinema and New Media

2013-2014 Academic Year:

• Comparative Media Poetics: Cinema and Videogames
• Network Aesthetics, Network Cultures

2012-2013 Academic Year:

• Transmedia Game

2011-2012 Academic Year:

• About the Size of It: Aesthetics and the History of Scale
• Cinema, Play, Modernity
• Critical Videogame Studies

2010-2011 Academic Year:

• New Media Theory

2009-2010 Academic Year:

• Cinema Post-Cinema