Teaching Media Quarterly CFLR - Teaching About (and With) Digital Games

Submission deadline: July 1, 2017

Digital games have become an increasingly ubiquitous form of activity and entertainment since their emergence in the mid-twentieth century. Today, interactive games constitute a multi-million dollar industry. The role of digital games culturally and socially continues to be a topic of debate, with positions proliferating as more and more people play. For example, the gaming community recently exploded in a 'controversy' known as GamerGate, in which some gamers spoke out against the ways in which video game representations can perpetuate misogyny and racism. Other gamers reacted aggressively to such criticism, threatening and harassing those expressing such views. Meanwhile, popular discourse has long imagined gaming as a kind of drug, addicting and destructive, capable of making individuals unproductive, anti-social, even violent.

At the same time, however, the format and function of digital games have been embraced by sectors beyond arts and entertainment. Games-based learning, for example, is a pedagogical practice aimed at enhancing student engagement by making the classroom more ‘game-like’ in order to encourage risk-taking, experimentation, collaboration and/or competition. In higher education and beyond, “gamification” - that is, the adoption of games and game-design principles in real world contexts - has put games to work.

For this upcoming issue, the editors of Teaching Media Quarterly seek lesson plans that explore how media and communication instructors might approach the study of digital games as an increasingly important element of the global media landscape.

Some possible areas of exploration might include, but are not limited to:

Digital games and transmedia storytelling

Gender, race, sexuality and the production and/or consumption of digital games

The work of representations within digital games

Popular discourse and academic debate on the relationship between violence and video games

"Gamergate," cyber-bullying, and harassment

Digital games and the military-industrial complex

Digital games as forms of art and/or activism

"Gamification" of education, marketing, healthcare, etc.

"Advergames," or the use of games in advertising

Disabilities and gaming

Digital games and participatory culture (e.g., fandoms, modding, etc.)

How playing digital games can shape experiences of sociality, community and public space

Virtual economies and their relationships to real-world economic practices (e.g., entrepreneurship and consumerism in multi-player games, 'gold-farming,' etc.)

Exploitation and overwork in the digital games industry

Please upload your submission as a single Microsoft Word or RTF document to Teaching Media Quarterly at http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/tmq/ using the “Submit Lesson Plan” link in the sidebar.  Please ensure that your submission conforms to TMQ submission guidelines http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/tmq/submission_guidelines.html; for review policies see http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/tmq/policies.html.