Video game centre installed on campus
Sarah Dorchak
Gauntlet News
The Gauntlet
Imagine writing a paper comparing Princess Peach and Ms. PacMan on feminist ideals, or comparing Link's epic journey in Ocarina of Time with Homer's Odyssey. Such courses do exist, but soon study materials will be made available in the Taylor Family Library on the building's New Media floor.
The library aims to increase student access to new and different technologies and plans to include a video game collection for study and research.
"Video games are just another media format for conveying information, whether it's narrative information, or story, or another way to express visual effects, or AI or computer programming," said U of C librarian Jerremie Clyde, who is overseeing the collection's production.
According to Clyde, games have educational value. His research interests include video games as scholarship, so it's no surprise he is working to start this collection at U of C.
"Places like Simon Fraser University have had a similar collection for some time and these collections are becoming much more common in Britain and Europe," he said. "Studying games as a media, whether it's in social sciences, communication and culture, education [or] digital humanities, is becoming more popular."
Clyde hopes the collection can offer resources with considerable breadth across all genres and playing styles of games. He and his collaborator, TFL technology officer Shawna Sadler, are looking to include everything from educational and retro games, to independent games and current pc and gaming consoles. Having this kind of range will help the collection have a variety of sources for students to use and research.
Communication and Culture professor Dawn Johnston sees this resource as a valuable addition to the university.
"Any time a medium comes to play a major role in entertainment and leisure, it teaches something about our culture," said Johnston. "Studying the games themselves can educate us on everything from advances in technology to changing roles of game players."
"Studying the people who play video games can tell us even more-- about an increasingly mediated society, about relationships between people and relationships between humans and machines, all of which are interests in communication studies," said Johnston.
Johnston views video games as a new source of study, joining other cultural sources like film and television.
"People who think of this as an excuse to play games are probably the same people who have been dismissive of television studies and film studies in the past," she said. "We can certainly see how much those areas of cultural studies have grown in recent decades."
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Sarah Dorchak
Gauntlet News
The Gauntlet
Imagine writing a paper comparing Princess Peach and Ms. PacMan on feminist ideals, or comparing Link's epic journey in Ocarina of Time with Homer's Odyssey. Such courses do exist, but soon study materials will be made available in the Taylor Family Library on the building's New Media floor.
The library aims to increase student access to new and different technologies and plans to include a video game collection for study and research.
"Video games are just another media format for conveying information, whether it's narrative information, or story, or another way to express visual effects, or AI or computer programming," said U of C librarian Jerremie Clyde, who is overseeing the collection's production.
According to Clyde, games have educational value. His research interests include video games as scholarship, so it's no surprise he is working to start this collection at U of C.
"Places like Simon Fraser University have had a similar collection for some time and these collections are becoming much more common in Britain and Europe," he said. "Studying games as a media, whether it's in social sciences, communication and culture, education [or] digital humanities, is becoming more popular."
Clyde hopes the collection can offer resources with considerable breadth across all genres and playing styles of games. He and his collaborator, TFL technology officer Shawna Sadler, are looking to include everything from educational and retro games, to independent games and current pc and gaming consoles. Having this kind of range will help the collection have a variety of sources for students to use and research.
Communication and Culture professor Dawn Johnston sees this resource as a valuable addition to the university.
"Any time a medium comes to play a major role in entertainment and leisure, it teaches something about our culture," said Johnston. "Studying the games themselves can educate us on everything from advances in technology to changing roles of game players."
"Studying the people who play video games can tell us even more-- about an increasingly mediated society, about relationships between people and relationships between humans and machines, all of which are interests in communication studies," said Johnston.
Johnston views video games as a new source of study, joining other cultural sources like film and television.
"People who think of this as an excuse to play games are probably the same people who have been dismissive of television studies and film studies in the past," she said. "We can certainly see how much those areas of cultural studies have grown in recent decades."
READ MORE
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