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Speaking in Accents & the American Ethnocentrism in Video Games

“Voice acting has become a staple in gaming that helps flesh out characters and setting…The cultural politics that voice acting implies, however, often escape analysis. The default English accent is General American and deviations from this tap into a subtext that assumes an American player. How accents communicate information to the player exposes the subliminal effects of American ethnocentrism.” Mattie Brice, Pop Matters

Syllabus: VR Storytelling

“This production-oriented course teaches students in communications fields how to tell stories interactively using 360-degree video and computer-generated scenes that subjects experience through leading virtual reality headsets. The target platforms for this course are the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard phone-based viewers.” – Syllabus

Literary Gaming

“In this book, Astrid Ensslin examines literary videogames—hybrid digital artifacts that have elements of both games and literature, combining the ludic and the literary. These works can be considered verbal art in the broadest sense (in that language plays a significant part in their aesthetic appeal); they draw on game mechanics; and they are digital-born, dependent on a digital medium (unlike, for example, conventional books read on e-readers).” – Publisher

Walden

“Walden, a game, is a first person simulation of the life of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. The game begins in the summer of 1845 when Thoreau moved to the Pond and built his cabin there.” – Official Game Page

Syllabus: Games & Culture

“This course examines the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of digital games. Topics include the socio-technical aspects of digital gaming, embodiment and space, communities, spectatorship and performance, gender, race, sexuality, e-sports and sports games, and the politics and economics of production processes, including co-creation and intellectual property.” – Syllabus [PDF]