FYS 101 L117 Videogames & Values
What do Fable, Bioshock, Mass Effect, World of Warcraft, Portal, and the Call of Duty series have in common? They are all videogames, of course, but they also bring up important questions about values and ethics.
This course introduces students to the intersection of ethics, values, and gaming. We will discuss questions such as, what makes some games so controversial? How are values expressed through games? How do we become ethical designers of games and other media? We will discuss “moral panic” around games; the gaming industry and the development of games; and relevant issues of gender, race, sex, and violence. And we may even learn a good retort for when our parents complain that we play too many videogames!
This class will be highly interactive, hands-on, and multidisciplinary, and will incorporate perspectives from philosophy and ethics, design and art, psychology and education, business, literature and storytelling, as well as game design and game studies.
And yes, you will be required to play videogames as part of this course! You will be creating games, too, though absolutely *no* technical or programming experience is required or expected.