Videogames in Film
The following is an excerpt from a proposed course.
Videogames have often been accused of being too little or too much like film. Some game designers and games have appealed to the film model filling games with “blockbuster” action, cut-scenes, and “cinematic” presentation. However, throughout the history of videogames, designers and theorists have worked to highlight the unique form of the videogames, or, its style of procedural meaning creation.
This course will explore the relationship between videogame culture and videogame form, as well as computational media more generally, through the remediation and reimagination of both games and computational media within and through films.
We’ll explore the key qualities of videogames and computational media, and explain how those qualities have been dealt with and represented in film. Key to our analysis will be an extended discussion of Lev Manovich’s foundational description of new media in The Language of New Media, especially his list of the five key elements of new media.
Along with a an understanding of new media theory, students will learn and deploy film analysis in order to produce comparative descriptions of the style and meanings of interaction between film and videogames. The result of this process will be an online portfolio featuring a variety of different kinds of scholarly production.
Required Texts:
The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich
Super Mario Bros. 3 (Available through emulation or Nintendo Wii virtual console, as well as the Nintendo Entertainment System.)
Super Star Wars (Available through emulation or Nintendo Wii virtual console, as well as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.)
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HISTORY
Screening: The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
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WAR
Screening: WarGames
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POWER
Screening: TRON
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VIRTUAL/REAL
Screening: ExistenZ
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GENDER
Screening: Avalon
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RACE
Screening: Surf Ninjas
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CONSUMPTION
Screening: The Wizard
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PATHOLOGY
Screening: Ben X
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TRANSLATION
Screening: Super Mario Bros.
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VIDEOGAME AS FILM
Screening: Tales of the Past III
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FILM AS VIDEOGAME
Screening: Inception
Sample Assignment Excerpt: Game < Film < Game
Using the Bioshock pitch as a model, develop your own design document for a hypothetical game you’ll be developing. The catch: the game is based on a film that is itself based on a game, e.g. create a design document for a videogame version of the Super Mario Bros. film.
After completing your design document, compose a three page reflection about the process. Pay particular attention to the process of translation required to develop game mechanics which are twice removed from the original template put forth in the videogame that served as the original subject of the film you’re adapting, i.e. does your game resemble the Super Mario Bros. games that were the inspiration for the Super Mario Bros. film at all? What kind of thought process is involved in creating levels from a film? What aspects of the film seemed most game-like? Were those aspects developed from the original game(s)?
