Revising & Revamping a Feminist Gaming Class

by: Ashley P. Jones , November 19, 2024

I remember being utterly excited at the prospect of teaching my first games and culture course. I was a Ph.D. candidate at a large R1 university and despite more senior Ph.D. candidates wanting to teach a senior seminar, I was given that opportunity. Even more exciting, I was approved to teach a game studies seminar. I got to work straightaway. The course was an upper-level seminar designed to introduce game studies to students through feminist theory. I worked for months to get the course designed and developed. The course design included plans to watch play-throughs, play easy to access games on their own, read some foundational feminist texts and game analysis papers, and even create their own analysis toward the end of the semester. I had two professors look over and approve the syllabus before I posted it. I was pumped.

Then the class kind of flopped. Registration was lower than most senior seminars. Attendance and reading completion were abysmal. I had student complaints that they didn’t know that the course covered digital games instead of film (several senior seminars are running at the same time, all with different topics) despite digital games being in the description listed in the schedule of classes. I was incredibly disheartened. Of course, I did have some star students that made it all worth it in the end.

Once I graduated with my Ph.D., I decided to try the course again. I was in a new geographic area with students from a diverse background and different economic circumstances. I was now at a school where game studies were not something everyone had heard of. This article explores these new experiences as I navigated the challenges of running the class in an entirely new setting while learning from my past mistakes.

Methodology

This article explores the practice of feminist pedagogy within my gaming studies courses, taught several years apart and on two different campuses. Ultimately, much of what is included is an introspective, feminist-informed reflection on my teaching experiences. I include a comparison analysis in this article to help explain the differences between the two courses and my interpretations of their different outcomes. Specifically, I compare student responses, class design techniques, and final projects to judge the outcomes of the courses and why the second course could be considered more successful.

My goal is to explore how both uncontrollable variables, such as the setting and the students, interact with controllable variables, such as the course design, to produce a novel experience of feminist teaching in game studies. Using feminist pedagogy and feminist game studies, I will explore my own experiences teaching a games and culture course through a feminist lens as I grow in my own pedagogical experiences and with the course design itself. Using a reflective practice theory approach will allow me to contextualise and understand the impacts of the different variables interacting between the two different teachings.

Mahon, Kemmis, Francisco, and Lloyd (2017) present the concept of practice theory and practice architectures as a theoretical and analytical take on how researchers understand their own work within professional environments. They argue that practice theory typically understands practice as ‘situated, social, and relational’ that recognise the epistemological contributions of enacting knowledge in the everyday (2). Practice architectures examine how we construct and use practices in certain ways to support the intention of the practice. ‘The theory of practice architectures holds that practices are social phenomena, and as such, are located in circumstances and conditions that occur in particular locations in physical time-space, and in history,’ (Mahon Kemmis, Francisco, and Lloyd 2). These circumstances and conditions form the basis of my analysis as I compare my teaching experiences and student responses between two iterations of the same course. I specifically examine the practice architectures employed through the course structure as feminist pedagogical tools and ultimate student responses to these architectures. This is done reflectively and after the course has taken place.

Gaming Studies and Feminist Pedagogy 

It is no surprise that research in the areas of gaming studies and feminist and queer theories has been growing exponentially over the last 15 years. #GamerGate is one reason for this, featuring female-identifying individuals, feminine individuals, and allies of those individuals coming under attack for supposedly interfering with ‘masculine’ space of digital games. Topics from playing queerly (Ruberg 2019), to designing games not for commercial consumption but for impact (Anthropy 2012), to the emotional design and its impacts of games (Anable 2018) lend themselves to feminist and queer examination and have all been explored in the last 15 years. Stepping outside of the conventional, commercially viable and risk-averse traditions of game design and play are areas that these authors bring forward in digital game research.

A notable example of this is Shira Chess’ Play Like a Feminist (2020), which examines how the act of play can be a feminist action by disrupting the power relations typically associated with playing video games. Chess argues for harnessing this power for feminist players from multiple sets of circumstances, to take back play from the hegemonic status quo. This contribution is reflective of the examination of power relations that is beginning to stem from a focus on feminist and queer theories in game studies.

Another notable example is Aaron Trammell’s (2023) Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology, which examines the intersectional identification of Blackness in the act of playing and gaming. Similar in a sense to bell hooks’ oppositional gaze (2010 [1992]), Trammell argues that play as an action is a disciplined form of being in a space. There are rules and expectations placed on the act of play and sometimes a person’s identity upsets these rules. Again, by focusing on the power of disruption by being and playing in the identified space, a person’s identity can be illuminating and impactful to the harmful or oppressive natures of games and play. Trammell uses concepts surrounding race to explore this. It is not much of a leap to also consider this around the concepts of gender and sexuality.

These two examples examine different ways play can be used by institutions (and players themselves) to negotiate and create productive trouble around the idea of identity. Chess approaches play and identity from a feminist perspective that centres the player’s experience around the act of play as productive: ‘Playing like a feminist is a deadly serious activity… It can be whimsical and also aggressive,’ (Chess 133). Trammell, on the other hand, understands play and identity as negotiations between player and experience. It can be a way of using play to be either held in or to use play to be released: ‘Repairing play is play that remembers, play that speaks truth to power, and play that is conscientious of its own debts,’ (Trammell 103). As these quotes show, Chess and Trammell use feminist frameworks of troubling the status quo through play to see the play experience as an entry point into othered perspectives, bringing the margins of gaming into the centre of the conversation and creating a more inclusive understanding of digital games. What these and other examples highlight is that feminist and queer thought frameworks are not absent from game studies, despite the torrential pushback from audiences, industry professionals, and media coverage leading up to and following #GamerGate (which is still alive and well, unfortunately).

Transforming the work being done in theoretical game studies into real praxis is where the work begins for educators. As bell hooks argues in Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (2009), our job as educators is not to simply feed information for regurgitation, but to build up students’ knowledge through the wisdom of their own experiences. Sharing experiences and lived situations allows not only for students to connect their own lives to what they are learning but also broadens perspectives for other students learning along with them. Bartell and Boswell (2022: 53) call this an asset-mindset. Asset-mindset is a High Impact Practice (HIPs) tool that is meant to increase the critical thinking and learning of students who experience it as a pedagogical practice. Focusing on this mindset in feminist pedagogy changes the game and adds in an element of productive trouble for traditional pedagogical tools.

This type of mindset is also found in K-12 education. Kelly Morris Roberts (2021) provides a framework for encouraging (primarily K-12 but this could easily be expanded to higher education) educators to transform their teaching into a more equitable feminist tool for the wellbeing of their students. Roberts provides four steps that help directly address the issues that are part of the world and their students’ realities so that there is a direct connection between issues and learning. These steps are:

1. Provide an authentic voice for teachers to use in class.
2. Prepare and engage in transformative pedagogy.
3. Connect to students and be empathetic.
4. Expanding classroom discourse through students’ experiences. (Roberts 2021: 6-13)

The first two principles connect directly with the pedagogy I present later in this article. To present an authentic voice means to bring a personal voice to the classroom, centring lived, and a diversity of other, experiences when discussing higher-order concepts and thinking. Roberts argues that an authentic voice provides space for students to connect with the instructor as well as the material. The second principle, transformative pedagogy, relates to engaging in pedagogical practices in the classroom that prioritises and incentivises multiple perspectives, critical thinking, and critical engagement activities. Together, these two practices inform much of the pedagogy used in my gaming courses. Overall, Roberts engages these practices to connect students to the world they live in, to each other, and to the topics of the day, thus engaging Bartell and Boswell’s asset-mindset. This framework easily translates to higher education as students become required to connect their learning with their real lives, especially after graduation.

This brings up the question of ‘doing’ as learning. Branlat, Velasquez, and Hellstrand address this through the concept of the ‘tentacular classroom,’ which they pull from Donna Haraway’s (2016) concept of tentacular thinking (2023: 29). Branlat, Velasquez, and Hellstrand argue that the tentacular classroom’s impact is one that invites contesting concepts into the discourse. This allows the tentacular classroom to reinvent discussions around power and participation due to this inclusion. This is based on Haraway’s idea that learning is a ‘collective entanglement’ (Branlat, Velasquez, and Hellstrand 2023: 30) which is both open-ended and looped into each other in the learning process, as well as the reality of how power structures and civic participation interact. The authors argue that learning happens in the same way, while also occurring in the places and spaces of power and ideology. Through case studies in their own classrooms, Branlat, Velasquez, and Hellstrand push a critical counter hegemonic on learning, especially when faced with topics, issues, and discussions that are controversial or co-reliant on similar argumentative frameworks. The impact of this critical perspective is a restructuring of learning not just taking place inside the classroom, but also through the actions and learning of their students outside the classroom. These examples of feminist pedagogical practices centred in an asset-mindset informed my own pedagogical practices when I began to reshape my second attempt at teaching feminist play in a digital games course.

Changing the Place and Space: Teaching the Course Again

I was at a large research university when I taught my first course centred around games and culture. I did not know most of the individuals on the course, as we were part of a large department, and I had only been there as a graduate student for a few years. I ran the course as a seminar, with lectures and discussions covering topics that ranged from player demographics to the ideological functions of play. We discussed areas such as race, disabilities, narratives, and the mechanics of games. I had students watch videos of play or play example digital games throughout the semester to see the concepts in action. The class was focused on analysis of games through a theoretical lens, some of which employed feminist and queer theories, thought and frameworks. At the end of the semester, students gave a conference-style presentation analysing a game of their choice through two theories of choice that were part of the class discussions.

Overall, reactions from most of the students were positive, even if it was not their expected or preferred method of learning. A few came back with anti-feminist comments as I did not allow for comments, discussion, or responses that reflected #GamerGate attitudes. But I knew I wanted to make some changes going forward due to the lack of initial response to the course, as well as its more traditional teaching landscape. Once I had graduated with my Ph.D. and started in a permanent position, I was given the opportunity to run the course again. This allowed me to plan for and implement some of these changes that I knew I wanted to pursue from the first time around.

Let’s Try this Again

The second time, I decided to focus on students being more engaged in the classroom and active in their learning experiences. This put my teaching objectives more in line with the HIPs strategy of asset-mindset. Bartell and Boswell (2022) examine the asset-based mindset as a pedagogical strategy that is focused on meeting students where they are in terms of skills and knowledge, so that the learning experience can be tailored to them, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. The asset-based mindset validates students in their current moment, rather than starting them out in a deficit-mindset. With this in mind, I knew that having students engage with games that were not typical of the expected ‘video game,’ as well as games that used simpler controls, would bring student engagement in the class up. Again, I knew going into this class that most students would not consider themselves gamers. This time, however, I was able to make it more obvious that the class would be about games through the title of the course. With increased student engagement planned and more transparency surrounding the course topic, I was aiming for an asset-based mindset approach to the course.

There are a few things to note demographically about the second time teaching the course. My permanent position had taken me away from a research-focused university to a teaching-focused university with a smaller student population and a more rural setting. Many students at the teaching university are first generation students, and the student population is made up of about 50% BIPOC individuals. There is a higher percentage of students that work in addition to going to school, and it is not uncommon for students to experience financial issues during the course of a semester.

With these elements in mind, the structure of my second games and culture course was formulated differently. The topics covered in the class ultimately remained the same, albeit with a little reorganisation. We started with the foundations of games by defining play and game mechanics. Then we turned toward elements such as game narratives and the impact of music and sound. Third, we looked at different ways to analyse games, such as through feminist, industrial, or indie viewpoints. The last part we covered was an in-depth look at how the digital game industry works.

Since I wanted to focus more on the doing aspect of gaming, which included both playing games and making games, I decided that the major final assignment of this class, worked on and scaffolded throughout the semester, would be to make a Twine (or similar software) game. Students still had to analyse digital games throughout the semester, but rather than only working toward a single final project, multiple analyses and design work were carried out in multiple small assignments spread throughout the semester as we discussed different topics, ultimately scaffolding the final project.

For example, when discussing game mechanics, students would play or watch a game like Untitled Goose Game (House House 2019) and break down the mechanics present and their impact on the play experience in short essay responses. For game narrative structures, students would play or watch a walking simulator like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (Astronauts 2014) and do an analysis of how the narrative unfolded visually, through dialogue, and in terms of play. The goal here was not to dismiss analysis, but to bring the concepts being covered in class to an actual example the students could experience.

An additional impact of these analyses was to help students discover how the theories they studied connected to the play of a particular game. This, in turn, was intended to be used as motivation for the design of their own games as their final project. As mentioned earlier, a Twine-like game was the final project. Students were tasked with designing, writing, and creating a game by the end of the semester. This was a new addition to the second time running the course. Instead of ending on the traditional research paper or analysis, I asked students to create games reflecting their lived experiences. The game could be about any topic they chose so long as it was an original. I encouraged students to create a game based on their own interests and/or experiences, as this way they would better know the intricacies of how the narrative should play out. This assignment was scaffolded throughout the semester, with check-ins on game proposals, narratives, rough-drafts, and peer-reviewed play.

Class Design & Goals

The design of this class was meant to keep both the asset-mindset and feminist pedagogy at the forefront. First and foremost, by keeping an asset-mindset (Bartell and Boswell 2022) while designing the assignments and interactions for this course, my goal was to do work worthy of hooks’ (2009) equitable building of knowledge and understanding, not simply information transference. By using a HIPs-focused approach for both the analyses assignments and the larger scaffolded assignment, the class goals reflect feminist pedagogy. The final game design project was the major assignment geared toward the asset-mindset, particularly with asking students to design and make a game based on their own lived experiences and personal narratives. Students ranged in their responses to the prompt, with some creating fantasy narratives surrounding their experiences and some keeping their games more reality centred. Narratives created by students covered topics like anxiety, depression, being a student-athlete, being a Black woman, and the experience of living in your hometown.

Additionally, lived experience being the foundation of the game design process reflects the feminist pedagogy explored earlier, most specifically Roberts’ (2021) work on transformative pedagogy. Asking students to use their personal narratives or lived experiences as the story for a digital game is one way in which the project was designed to meet the students where they are. The creative process and expectations were designed to help students loosen up how they wrote the narrative of the game, and decide on how their story would be told. This type of creation did not require weeks of research or citing a certain number of sources. Instead, it focused simply on the student and how they wanted to tell the story they had chosen. The only constant was the type of media product I was asking them to produce: a digital game.

One can also see the asset-mindset at work in the choice to include Twine as the software for game design. Twine is a free-to-use, open-source software program that focuses on interactive storytelling. By choosing this software, my goal was to keep costs down for students, as well as to provide a user-friendly software for those who had either never considered making a game or did not consider themselves a ‘gamer.’ This decision was inspired by Anthropy’s (2012) call to make games that are not just for consumers, but also for groups whose experiences are often ignored or made invisible. It also fits with Robert’s (2021) feminist pedagogy framework wherein empathy and transformative pedagogy meet to enhance a student’s experience. Knowing that the thought of designing a game would make many students apprehensive, I chose Twine, a software designed not to be too much of an additional burden on students—a game engine that required no special coding or art skills to build a game.

Class Materials

I did not require a book on the course, as I wanted students to experience games as texts instead. Students were presented with crucial theories, vocabulary, history, and examples through lectures and course discussion opportunities. I also asked them to watch game play-throughs and if they could, play certain games themselves, although this was not required in order to be more inclusive of students’ different situations.

The choice to watch or play a game for the analysis assignments also offered up the option of free opportunities in class. If students did decide to play a game rather than watch a walkthrough of it, I kept in mind the overall price when choosing which games the students would encounter. I encouraged the use of Steam as a digital platform, along with itch.io. The most expensive game I asked students to play cost $20, with most being priced at around $10. As mentioned, students were not forced to purchase games if they could not afford to do so, and could watch online walkthroughs instead. These choices were made as part of equitable access for all students in the class.

Branlat, Velasquez, and Hellstrand’s (2023) concept of the tentacular classroom can be seen in both the topics and teaching style of the course as well as the scaffolded final assignment of designing a game. To encourage an open-ended and looping discussion that also interacted with other communication and media courses the students were taking, I focused topics on how we play as well as play’s impact on the player. Sometimes this meant focusing on the technical aspects of a game, the way a game asks a player to interact with it, the narrative of the game, or even the way that audiences responded to a game after playing. I would ask the students to consider the game from a player or audience perspective, through feminist and queer frameworks, or via a mechanical or narrative-bound analysis. The smaller analysis assignments helped to refine students’ understanding of each of these perspectives.

Individual Classes

The basic class structure would be as follows: to run the class in a way that encouraged discussion, I employed a discussion-based seminar style. I would present a concept at the beginning of class with definitions, explanations, and a few examples. Then, I would ask students to watch a playthrough or give an example of a game they had already played, to explore the connections to the course topic. Sometimes this would bleed into the next class session if the discussion surrounding the concept continued longer than originally planned. I did not tend to stop these discussions, however, as this was where the students’ learning was becoming the most beneficial, especially in terms of the tentacular classroom (Branlat, Velasquez, and Hellstrand 2023). As transformative pedagogy (Roberts 2021), I would have the students watch or play the game before the next class period, and then invite discussion through one of the frameworks at the beginning of that class. Inevitably, we would end up discussing anywhere from two to four of the frameworks mentioned by the end of most class periods. Finally, I would present the concept through an analysis option, asking students to play or watch a specific game and then write about how the concept was employed in the specified game through a framework of their choosing. Students often struggled to see a game through a different perspective than the first one they gravitated towards. I had analysis prompts created that they could use for their own individual analysis but encouraged them to use these prompts in the classroom discussions too.

This strategy ended up being a unique way of employing the concept of the tentacular classroom. I will admit to being unsure if it fully utilised the concept, and there are changes I would make going forward. The biggest change that I want to consider would be to introduce more activities surrounding the concepts, as well as more in-class training on Twine. This would engage the principles of the tentacular classroom in a HIPs-oriented way that focuses on learning as doing with potentially controversial topics, as feminist theory often does. While the discussions were useful and productive the second time teaching this course, not everyone participated in positive ways. However, the discussions in class surrounding course concepts and the frameworks used to create them engaged in sometimes differing or even controversial understandings of the play or in the responses to a digital game. Students often had conversations amongst themselves about why a game did or did not resonate with them. Students’ own life experiences also came into play, especially during questions of game narrative. Using these discussions, I encouraged students to incorporate their feelings and responses into their own games for the final project. This was my attempt to garner student engagement even from those who did not directly participate in the discussions inside the classroom. The results of the Twine games students created were both creative and varied in the lived experiences students chose to tell.

Final Projects

Some of the games that students created during the course dealt with race and the college athletics experience, anxiety and depression as a college student, and pressure from parents or authority figures to make certain decisions over others and the associated consequences. There were also fantasy games and RPGs (role-playing games) that did not deal with the experiences of the students’ day-to-day lives but did include elements that students identified as part of their personal narratives. All students performed a peer-playthrough of their classmates’ games and most came away with very positive responses. Students gave feedback on gameplay and narrative elements for each game they played. Most were incredibly supportive, especially of the stories that were being told. Based on the number of smiles and high fives, I think they enjoyed the class period in which they played their classmates’ games the most.

Results

My first time teaching the course, students liked the experience but did not find substantial connections to their other coursework. I wanted to change that this time around. Overall, for the second time teaching the course, attendance was good, and students were engaged. I was happy with the class but not ecstatic at how it went. This was mostly due to a need for flexibility in the schedule for which I had not originally planned. Students were engaged throughout, but were obviously nervous about their final projects and needing more time to spend on them than I had first allowed. There was a lot of room for improvement in my scheduling of the course.

One of these areas was creating a truer form of the transformative pedagogy I had hoped to embrace through activities and an increased embrace of the asset-mindset. Building in more in-class time for exploring the Twine software will be a necessity moving forward. Additionally, building in more time to explore real examples of each concept covered will also be necessary so that students can interact with a concept before deciding whether to adapt it into their own final game projects.

Student responses the second time teaching the course were more positive than the first. Some notable examples include:

‘I liked the use of real-life examples in order to help students be able to make the connection between the material and life.’

‘I love how we started the class with trivia, and created our own game on Twine!’

‘I like that we talked about video games even if we’re talking about gaming from a feminist’s point of view.’

As the last example from the student evaluations show, not all perspectives introduced in the course were welcomed with open minds. This points to the need for more incorporation and development of the tentacular classroom principles. Indeed, while the responses from students were positive overall, this was also the course for which I received the most constructive feedback for future improvement. Suggestions included making the game development assignment a group project, building more history of games into the course, and scaffolding the game assignment even more than it had been.

Discussion

In terms of feminist pedagogy, what I believe went well in the course—based on my own observations and student feedback—was that new ways of thinking through, with, and about digital games became tangible for students. Thinking about such a popular pastime in an academic way seemed to help students realise that there is so much more that goes into a play experience than simply completing an objective or moving the game narrative forward. Understanding how play occurs and how it can be transformative to the player (and how we can purposely design those experiences) leans into Shira Chess’ call in Play Like a Feminist: ‘A playful feminism [which] necessitates a rethinking of the power of video games as a medium,’ (2020: 7). Students did not get to ‘just have fun’ on the course, but were also asked to think deeply about the play experience and their response to a particular game. This critical thinking and analytical practice were then asked to become part of the reflection process when they made their own game. Again, as one comment from the student evaluations above noted, this was not always an easy or accepted practice for some of these academic frameworks. This, though, does not mean that all the frameworks were regarded so poorly by most of the students.

The work done by students in the classroom, informed by a tentacular classroom (Branlat, Velsquez, and Hellstrand 2023) concept, is supported by Roberts’ (2021) framework on a practicing feminist pedagogy. Digital games are my area of research, and I used my own previous analyses and play experiences to inform and create an authentic gaming voice in my classroom. I attempted to use the principle of transformative pedagogy and a teaching style to engage students with the material through their own experiences and discussions with their peers and by engaging in critical analyses with digital game examples. I also attempted to create a safe space for students to share their experiences with the class both through their games and in the discussions. Topics covered in the course inevitably have political issues and prejudice attached to them: sexual orientation, race, and gender identity to name but a few.

To create a safe space, I announced that disrespectful comments that denied another person’s experience, identity, or humanity would be banned. Students who violated this policy would be given a verbal warning, then asked to leave the class, and then reported to the university. Thankfully, it never got that far but some comments did end up warranting the verbal warning. An example of where I had to shut down some comments that began when one game featured a lesbian couple in a romantic relationship and a student made a sexual comment on it. I told them this type of language or perspective was not allowed in the classroom as it was discriminatory. The student apologised and we moved on without incident.

I made sure to include a variety of perspectives related to the course concepts and included several examples through news stories, AAA (commercially developed), and indie-developed digital games, and encouraged discussions from students of different backgrounds. Generally, these are practices that I attempt to keep in all my classes, but it felt especially important in this one, since the topic of the course was so different from the rest of the curriculum.

Future Goals

In response to my observations, reflections, and student feedback, I want to improve this course going forward. I want to re-energise my approach to the tentacular classroom and to transformative pedagogy to be more engaging in the weekly classes outside of just having discussions. I want to re-think the scaffolding of the game assignment to make it even more accessible to students. And finally, I do not want to shy away from the negative responses to the explicitly feminist content that was covered in the course. I want to make it more accessible for students to engage with in their own ways. These goals will take more time and development to achieve before I am ready to teach the course for a third time.

Generally speaking, the way to accomplish these three goals can take many paths. Here are my plans to meet these goals in my next iteration of the class. First, to embrace the tentacular classroom principles and use more transformative pedagogy strategies and create more critical thinking and doing, while also engaging the asset-based mindset, I want to move away from just discussions as a classroom activity. I do not plan to do away with discussions entirely, but incorporating more game writing workshops, paper prototyping, and active play opportunities would help create the tentacular classroom via transformative pedagogy. The more students can engage and brainstorm with each other and with me, the more likely they are to expand on their already creative ideas. This meets the students where they are, and creates a community where they can learn from each other through experiences and conversation.

Second, this leads me into rethinking how assignments work in the class. With more inter-student engagement, the game analysis responses would not be as necessary. I want to do away with these assignments and incorporate more of the in-class HIPs practices already mentioned. The scaffolding of the final game project would also change. Some of the activities mentioned above would be to help students begin and stay on track with their final game project, such as the game writing workshops and the paper prototyping. The new scaffolding of the assignment would include breaking down the steps of creating a game within a single semester even more with several check-in times in class. Rather than having a deadline for a narrative to be written, we might have days for presenting characters, then plot, and then a choice tree, before presenting the whole narrative. This could be done for each step toward the final project. Hopefully, this type of plan would address some of the student anxieties surrounding learning new software to create a digital game.

Finally, I want to make the class more inclusive and accessible to all students. The major revision here will be to include more in-person training with the Twine software, and more group workdays to allow students to help each other in the allotted class time. I will continue not to have a textbook for students to buy, and will focus on having required playthroughs be cheap games. If students cannot afford a game, watching a playthrough will also be acceptable. Using my classroom time more wisely will help achieve these goals. Accessibility here also means that I want to use my authentic voice as a game researcher to encourage students to respect frameworks, even if they do not agree with them. Respect is the bare minimum that is asked in all my classes, but especially in those designed around controversial topics. A revision I need to work on is a more direct way to make sure that students know how to practice respect early in the class through discussions and feedback. More work is needed here.

I hope the third time around with this course will be smoother in terms of course design and student response. I want to see more in-depth final game projects that reflect the authenticity of my students’ experiences. I want students to leave the class with their own amazing digital game and the understanding that play is a political action in which they can choose to participate. I want students to see the connections between this class and their other more traditional media studies and communication courses. I have a plan to move forward based on my experiences so far. Here’s to the third time being the best yet, and to the ever-improving course design being adaptable to our students’ goals.