English 115F Worlds of Wordcraft

Course Description:

Computer games are transforming the entertainment industry, generating $12.5 billion in revenue in 2006 and attracting countless adults as well as children to virtual play. For more than twenty years, online communities have been producing new forms of psychological, social, and cultural experience. The early text-based spaces of MOOs and chat rooms have evolved into virtual societies such as Second Life, which provide a platform for everything from educational experiments to virtual sex to commerce with imaginary currency and real money freely exchanged. Early text-based adventure games such as Zork have become the multimedia environments of online games like World of Warcraft, which combine the written word with graphics, music, skills, professions, and action.

Are online games generating new interactive modes of narrative? How do multimedia environments transform the age-old patterns of quest romances that structure much game play? Is the line between virtual and real experience erased by the fusion of online communities, role playing, and escapist fictions? These questions will animate our consideration of digital narrative forms.

Co-taught by the head of ITS and the chair of the English department, the course will meet in a high tech multimedia seminar room, allowing us to explore the fundamentals of game design. Students will be required to subscribe to an online game for the semester and will compare the interactive story arcs with related narrative forms from literature and film. Readings will range from Spenser’s Faerie Queene to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and include critical theory such as Bolter and Grusin’s Remediation: Understanding New Media, Edward Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Cultures of Online Games, Jesper Juul’s Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, and McKenzie Wark’s Gamer Theory.

Week 1

• Tuesday (August 26) – Introduction of Media Classroom
  • Course procedures and requirements
  • Instructions for downloading and subscribing to Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO).  Set up a WordPress blog account, a class Facebook Group, and Windows Live.
• Thursday (August 28)
  • Jesper Juul, “Introduction,” Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, pp. 1-22. (Central Library Reserve)
  • McKenzie Wark, Gamer Theory 2.0 . Read, “AGONY on The Cave”

Week 2

• Tuesday (September 2)
  • Film: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended DVD Edition)
  • Level your character to at least 6 and exit the Introductory region of LOTRO.
• Thursday (September 4)
  • “Chronology of Influences on Gaming” PODCAST, parts I and II (available on our class Facebook page or on YouTube here).
• Friday (September 5): Blog entry due (5:00 pm)
  • Blog Topic: LOTR (the movie) and LOTRO (the game).  What have you noticed about story development, graphics, audio, characters, or action in comparing the two media so far?

Week 3

• Choose one of the following topics for first paper: 1) Stories and Motifs.  A motif in a story often seems to deepen the significance of the events that make up a narrative.  Striking or repeated images, phrases, objects, actions, musical themes (in movies), ideas, etc. can take on a larger resonance or complex meanings that enrich the experience of finding out how the story turns out.  Often, however, the passages in a book or film that develop the motif slow down or interrupt the action, sometimes creating an actual pause in the forward momentum of a story.  Discuss the relationship between story and motif in the extended version of the movie Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in a five page essay.  Concentrate on one of the following motifs: fellowship, swords, gifts, statues, mirrors and globes, dark places of the earth, or rivers.  Analyze your chosen motif in terms of the meanings it suggests, the cinematic techniques used to present it, and the effect of the motif on the action of the story.2) In Gamer Theory 2.0  McKenzie Wark remarks: “You observe that world after world, cave after cave, what prevails is the same agon, the same digital logic of one versus the other, ending in victory or defeat. Agony rules! Everything has value only when ranked against something else; everyone has value only when ranked against someone else. . . . The real world appears as a video arcadia divided into many and varied games. Work is a rat race. Politics is a horse race. The economy is a casino. . . . Games are no longer a pastime, outside or alongside of life. They are now the very form of life, and death, and time itself” (006). Write a 5-page essay arguing for or against Wark’s thesis. Draw evidence for your position both from games you have played and from experiences you have had in life (for example, sports, schools, jobs, etc.). In the course of your essay, elucidate Wark’s thesis by quoting and analyzing at least two other passages from his work, which relate to one aspect or another of the passage I have quoted from screen 006. Be sure that your essay has a strong argument for or against Wark’s position and that you have supported your argument by compelling evidence.
• Tuesday (September 9)
  • POSTPONED: Steven E. Jones, “Introduction,” The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual  Strategies, pp. 1-18 (currently not available)
  • King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Dungeons_And_Dragons
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork
    
  • Level your character to at least 8 and begin the Epic Quest: Prologue.
• Thursday (September 11)
  • J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (read chapters I-VIII of Book One of the novel)
  • In class: Discussion of how to approach the topic for the first paper.
• Friday (September 12): Blog entry due (5:00 pm)
  • Blog Topic: Compose a blog posting about The King of Kong, responding to one or more of the following questions: Who is the protagonist in the King of Kong?  Did one or the other characters undertake a quest?  Are there analogous characters in the LOTR to Billy and Steve?

Week 4

• Tuesday (September 16)
  • Rough draft of first paper due
  •  Writing workshop using digital classroom collaborative writing software
  • Submit your paper using the Digital Dropbox in OAK. Send it to Jay Clayton. Be sure to use the SEND button not the Add button.
  • Name your paper (both on the hard drive of your computer and in OAK) as follows: “Lastname, Firstname - paper 1 - draft”
  • Level your character to at least 10. Begin a craft.
• Wednesday (September 17): conferences - Benson 332
• Thursday (September 18)
  • J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (Read to 2/3 point of the novel)
  • W. H. Auden, “The Quest Hero” (Central Library Reserve)
  • Jane Chance, “Heroic Narrative and the Power of Structure” (Central Library
    Reserve)
• Friday (September 19): conferences - Benson 332
  • Blog Topic: No Topic this week due to re-write of essays.

Week 5

• Monday (September 22)
  • Final draft of first paper due, 5:00 p.m.
    • Submit your paper using the Digital Dropbox in OAK. Send it to Jay Clayton. Be sure to use the SEND button not the Add button. Name your paper (both on the hard drive of your computer and in OAK ) as follows: ” Lastname , Firstname - paper 1 - final”
• Tuesday (September 23)
  • J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (finish novel)
  • Level your character to at least 12 and complete the Epic Quest: Prologue. Hereafter, you are responsible for leveling your character at least one level each week.
• Thursday (September 25) - MEET AT CENTRAL LIBRARY REFERENCE DESK
  • Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, excerpt from Remediation: Understanding
    New Media , pp. 1-50. (Central Library Reserve)
• Friday (September 26)
  • Blog topic:

    Now that you have had an opportunity to visit LOTRO’s The Green Dragon in Bywater, compare and contrast the difference between our game visit, Chapter 2: The Shadow of the Past in the Fellowship of the Ring where the text states, “The conversation in the The Green Dragon at Bywater, one evening in the spring of Frodo’s fiftieth year…”, and the scene in the extended version of the movie.

     

    As we discussed in class, it should consider one or more of the following aspects of the works–character, the passage of time, sense of space, movement within the imagined world, reader/viewer involvement in the action, integration of the scene within the larger narrative, etc.

Week 6

• Topic for second paper:
  • Apply the concept of remediation to one or two scenes in Snow Crash that deal with media technology. Your essay should have a thesis and an argument; it should analyze in depth only a single scene or contrast a pair of scenes; and it should consider how Stephenson views the relationship between types of media in the near-future world of the novel.
  • Compare and contrast one scene from Snow Crash  with a scene from the movie Strange Days.  Be sure you have a thesis and an argument; use the two scenes you compare as illustrations of your thesis.  Avoid plot summary.
  • How realistic do you find the depiction of the near future of America in Snow Crash?  Focus on one or two specific features, not the whole vision.  (Do not choose this topic for both your Blog entry and your second essay.)
• Tuesday (September 30)
  • Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (read Chs. 1-20)
  • Youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCNVrOdEpv8
  • Level your character at least one level. Reach a minimum rank of Journeyman in a crafting specialty. Continue pursuing your Epic Quests into Book 1 and beyond.
• Thursday (October 2)
  • POSTPONED: Edward Castronova, “The Economics of Fun: Behavior and Design,” Ch. 8 of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Cultures of Online Games (2005). (Central Library Reserve)
  • Discuss Snow Crash in class today.  Bring your copy of the novel.
• Friday (October 3)
  • Blog topics: How realistic do you find the depiction of the near future of America in Snow Crash.  Focus on one or two specific features, not the whole vision.  (Do not choose this topic for both your Blog entry and your second essay.)
  • How do the character classes (Hunter, Champion, etc.) and races (Hobbit, Elf, etc.) in LOTRO interact to support this remediation of Tolkein’s narrative?  Are these classes and races effective in enriching the narrative? 

Week 7

• Tuesday (October 7)
  • Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (read Chs. 21-50)
  • Rough draft of second paper due.
    • Submit your paper using the Digital Dropbox in OAK. Send it to Jay Clayton. Be sure to use the SEND button not the Add button.
    • Name your paper (both on the hard drive of your computer and in OAK ) as follows: ” Lastname, Firstname - paper 2 - draft”
  • Writing workshop: Arguments and evidence.
  • Level your character at least one level. Continue your Epic Quests.
• Thursday (October 9)
  • Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (finish novel)
• Friday (October 10)
  • Blog topic: TBA.

Week 8

• Monday (October 13) - EXTENSION  Since I allowed several students to have until Tuesday to finish their paper, we are granting this same extension to the entire class.  The final draft is now due on Tuesday, at 12:00 midnight (note later hour in the evening).  If you turned in your paper already and would like to take another crack at revising it, feel free to resubmit a new version–I will read the latest version posted.
• Final draft of second paper due Tuesday, 12 midnight. 
  • Submit your paper using the Digital Dropbox in OAK. Send it to Jay Clayton. Be sure to use the SEND button not the Add button.
  • Name your paper (both on the hard drive of your computer and in OAK ) as follows: ” Lastname, Firstname - paper 2 - final”
• Tuesday (October 14)
  • Level your character at least one level. Continue your Epic Quests. 
  • Begin playing Never Winter Nights 2.
  • In class: Seth Schiesel, “For Online Star Wars Game, It’s Revenge of the Fans,” New York Times (December 10, 2005) ( OAK)
  • In class: Star Wars Galaxies demonstration
• Thursday (October 16)
  • Jesper Juul, “Ways of Creating Worlds,” “Optional Worlds and Incoherent
    Worlds,” “Time in Games,” and “Games and Narrative,” in Half-Real:
    Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, pp. 133-62.
    (Central Library Reserve)
  • T. L. Taylor, “Whose Game Is This Anyway” in Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture , pp. 124-50.  (Available in the Class Supplemental Materials in WindowsLive, in the 2007 Folder: http://cid-ab717fca4bd8d45f.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/2007%20Worlds%20of%20Wordcraft%20English%20115F)
• Friday (October 17)
• • Blog topics:
    • Write a lucid, engaging biography for your LOTRO character.

Week 9

• Tuesday (October 21)
• • NO CLASS - Fall Break
• Thursday (October 23)
  • Continue playing LOTRO and NWN2
  • Raph Koster, “Declaring the Rights of Players“
• Friday (October 24).  Blog topics: Does corporate ownership of a MMO affect the quality of one’s narrative experience?

Week 10

• Tuesday (October 28)
• • T. L. Taylor, “The Future of Persistent Worlds and Critical Game Studies,”
    in Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture, pp. 151-62.”
  • Movie: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).  Available at Blockbuster Video.
  • Continue playing LOTRO and NWN2
  • In class: Prelude to Spenser’s Faerie Queene
• Thursday (October 30)
  • Book 3, Canto 1 of Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Central Library Reserve)
  • Read (if you did not finish this piece for Tuesday: T. L. Taylor, “The Future of Persistent Worlds and Critical Game Studies,” in Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture, pp. 151-62.”  In class supplemental materials for 2008 (http://matthewjetthall.spaces.live.com/).
• Friday (October 31)
  • Blog topic: Has online gaming this semester affected other parts of your life–your schoolwork, your social life, athletics, etc?

Week 11

• Topic for third paper:
  • Discuss what you think Spenser means to say about desire through the stories of Venus, Cupid, Adonis, Amoret, and Scudamour in Canto 6, 11, and 12 of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.  Their tales, and those of the other characters they encounter, present a variety of forms of sexual desire.  Why is a thorough treatment of desire important to a book about chastity?  To make your case, analyze Spenser’s use of imagery, parallelism, and contrasting characters/episodes in these three cantos.  You should focus on one character in particular, but you may bring in other figures from elsewhere in these cantos.
  • Remediating Weathertop.  Compare the journey to Weathertop in the book Lord of the Rings and in the game LOTRO.  The journey to the summit of Weathertop can include any parts of the book’s narrative that you think are especially relevant and should include the experience of leveling high enough to go to the Lone Lands, the quests you do in and around Weathertop, and the quest chain culminating in “Retake Weathertop” itself.  You may want to run up to the top of Weathertop when outside of the instance to see what it looks like when it’s deserted.  Do these gaming experiences illuminate Tolkien’s narrative in any way; do they create their own alternative narrative; or do they channel what would have been narrative experiences into some other kind of experience, the quest for XP for instance? To complete this assignment, you must have finished “Retake Weathertop,” which is a full fellowship quest.  If you are too low to journey into the Lone Lands on your own, you should ask for help from people in our kinship.
• Tuesday (November 4)
• • Excerpts from Book 3, Cantos 3-6 of Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Central Library Reserve)
  • Writing workshop on developing a sophisticated thesis.
  • Continue playing LOTRO and NWN2
• Thursday (November 6)
  • Excerpts from Book 3, Cantos 7-12 of Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Central Library Reserve)
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_2
  • Demonstration: Faerie Queene Online in Never Winter Nights 2
• Friday (November 7)
  • Blog topic: None

Week 12

• Monday (November 10): Rough draft of third paper due by 11:59 pm.
  • Submit your paper using the Digital Dropbox in OAK. Send it to Jay Clayton. Be sure to use the SEND button not the Add button.
  • Name your paper (both on the hard drive of your computer and in OAK ) as follows: ” Lastname, Firstname - paper 3 - draft”.
• Tuesday (November 11)
  • Continue playing LOTRO and NWN2
  • Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (OAK E-Reserve — You access these from within OAK)
    • Defining Games, pp. 71 – 83
    • The Magic Circle, pp. 93 – 99
• Thursday (November 13)
  • Narrative Workshop Assignments
  • NPC Selection and Dialog Teams
  • Peruse Obsidian Manuals ( OAK )
  • Blog Topic: Describe the physical attributes of Britomart:  What does she look like?  How tall is she?  What does she wear ?  Would she vote for Obama or McCain? With which historical, mythical, or contemporary person would you compare her?  Write a four line conversation between you and her, and attempt to describe how you would characterize her speech patterns.  Utilize the text as a reference.

Week 13

• Monday (November 17): Final draft of third paper due by 11:59 pm. 
  • Submit your paper using the Digital Dropbox in OAK . Send it to Jay Clayton. Be sure to use the SEND button not the Add button.
  • Name your paper (both on the hard drive of your computer and in OAK ) as follows: “Lastname , Firstname - paper 3 - final”
• Tuesday (November 18)
  • Mythrendale Quick Reference Manual ( OAK )
  • Game design workshop
• Thursday (November 20)
• • Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (Central Library Reserve)
    • Games as Narrative Play, pp. 377 - 416
• Friday: No Blog topic.  Happy Break!

Thanksgiving Break, November 25-27

Week 14

• Tuesday (December 2)
  • Williams, Hendricks, & Winkler, ed. Gaming as Culture
    • Dennis D. Waskul, “The Role-Playing Game and the Game of Role-Playing: The Ludic Self and Everyday Life,” pp. 19 - 39 (OAK)
• Thursday (December 4)
  • Final Game design workshop
• Friday: The FINAL Blog Topic
• Using the Mythrendale area descriptions as an example, work with your partner to collaborate on a design statement for both the area and the NPCs that you were assigned in class.   Do this as a team.  In your title, Type: TEAM X: BLOG TITLE and place both your names in the by-line.  This is a group activity, so please actively collaborate with one another.

Week 15

• Tuesday (December 9)
  • Conclusion

Requirements

• Three 5-page papers will count for 50% of the grade.
• Weekly blog entries, 30% of the grade
  • Passionate
  • Author Engagement in the topic
  • Thoughtful
  • Creative
  • Coherent
  • Not grading on length or mechanics unless major patterns of bad grammar appear.
• Completion of daily reading assignments, class participation, and final gaming project will count for 20% of the grade.
  • Learning to speak articulately about cultural issues is a valuable skill, which literature seminars are designed to foster. Pushing oneself to voice an informed opinion in public often forces a person to think more deeply and to respond to others, whereas listening passively can foster the tendency to accept others’ ideas rather than work out one’s own position. Speaking about specific features of the text also demonstrates that one has read the assigned material carefully.
  • Class participation grades will be calculated as follows:
    • Attendance at the great majority of classes constitutes the minimum passing standard and establishes one’s participation grade as a D.
    • Speaking up only a few times during the course of the semester constitutes satisfactory performance and earn a grade of C.
    • Entering the discussion every class or two constitutes average performance and earns a grade of B.
    • Frequent participation, which is intelligent, respectful of others, and clearly oriented toward contributing to the class experience rather than scoring points or showing off, constitutes excellent performance and earns a grade of A.