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GOALS ... CONTACT ... GRADING SYSTEM ... MATERIALS ... SYLLABUS ... POLICIES

Overview

Hello and welcome to Introduction to Games, with Professor Edward Castronova of the Media School at Indiana University.

This course leads you into the exciting world of games and game design. Many people think it is a new world, and that games are "new media." Nope! People have been playing games for a long time. Games are older than TV, radio, even books! Puppies and kittens don't read, but they do play games. Games are a very deep and important part of our selves and our society.

After a long hard day of ruling ancient Egypt, Queen Nefertari relaxes with a game of Sennet.
Sennet dates to 3500BC.The first books came 800 years later.

People don't normally think too hard about the games they play, but there are a lot of important questions to be explored. In this class, we will go into things like: What are games all about? What defines a game, what makes it special? Why do we play games? Why don't we pay much serious attention to games? How do games affect us?

Some people see themselves as gamers, others don't. For this course, it doesn't make any difference. We're going to go into areas that very few people, even gamers, know anything about. Such as: Games are systems! They are composed of hundreds of moving sub-systems, that come together to create a huge, complex whole. A good game is like the weather: Always moving along in roughly the same way, yet always new, different, and fresh. If you study games, you study complex systems, which means, you're studying the same forces that create some of humanity's biggest challenges, such as global warming.

But this class goes even deeper; it takes you into the realm of game design. You'll learn how to think of new games, or, new ways of playing existing games. This is a powerful set of mental tools. Just think: If we could redesign the game of oil, how many lives could be saved in the Middle East, and how much healthier would our planet be? Game designers learn how to create choices that engage people and move them. It is a very good skill to have.

A diagram of Tetris.
This game behaves like global warming. Hmmm.

If all of this interests you, you might consider choosing Game Design as your major. The Game Design Major starts with this course. If you like the topics and approaches in here, perhaps game design would be a good career choice for you. We will talk about all the things you can do with game design skills.

How does the class work?

All the teaching in here uses board games. Every class, we will have about an hour of lecture and an hour of playing board games. These games are all designed for 4 players, and you will be put into a 4-person game team. Each person on the team buys 2 games, and so you will get to learn 8 new board games this semester. They range from silly to serious, and from easy to hard. The most hard, most serious games will challenge you, mentally and emotionally. For example, we will play a game about freeing slaves, Freedom. The systems of slavery were deep and complicated, and freeing people from them was a very serious task. This game is hard work, but it is important work.

People playing Freedom, seriously.

To balance against games like Freedom, we will also play silly fun games like Small World. Can your team of Elves and Skeletons conquer the world? Probably not, but they might as well die trying! You'd be amazed at how deep and elegant the mechanics of such a silly game can be. We will look into it. 

Silly board games: Where horrible mistakes are fun.

Finding the information you need

There are many resources for you here on the course website. Depending on what you are after, you should go to these links:

GOALS What are the learning goals of the class? How will I grow?

CONTACT Who is the professor, and how do I contact him?

GRADING SYSTEM What's the work load, and how are grades determined?

MATERIALS What do I have to buy? What games did I sign up for?

SYLLABUS What are we doing today? When are the assignments due?

POLICIES What are the standard rules about things like cheating, being sick, or late assignments?

Welcome to the world of tabletop games

At the end of the semester, I hope you have all learned something about games as complex systems, and added a bunch of new games to your stock of things to do on a boring Bloomington night. This class requires a lot of hard work, but it also should be pretty fun if everyone plays well. See you in class!