Games are an extraordinarily powerful fiction. They can guide the user's attention by setting arbitrary goals, inducing specific kinds of labor, and providing (or limiting) choices. At their worst, games simply replicate the structures of our world, encouraging us to structure our thinking around violence, accumulation, and competition. But at their best, they can help us subvert the systemically induced helplessness and political apathy produced by modern technologies and institutions.

This seminar centers play as an existential mode that can change our relationship to agency. We will examine how games invite participatory engagement, and how this gives them a unique power as a social technology, as an art form, and as a political tool. What’s in a game, and how can this inquiry help us describe the parameters of our existence or the stakes of our interactions? What is the potential of play?  

We will discuss readings that analyze games (both digital and otherwise) through sociopolitical lenses, as well as engage with indie art games, experimental games, and political games. And, of course, we will play with one another.

Led by Hope Yoon, a video game writer and theater artist from Seoul.