Video Games and Cultural Identity
MA in British Cultural Studies
1st Year
University of Bucharest
Dr Andrei Nae
Over the past twenty years, game studies has developed from a niche field of research to a
full-fledged discipline with global recognition. Throughout its 20-year history, games studies has
constantly broadened and diversified its method, thus becoming a truly interdisciplinary field of
research. The study of video games today is approached from multiple angles such as ludology,
narratology, psychology, media studies and communication, but also cultural studies. The
subfield of video game cultural studies has enjoyed significant prominence in the past years as
attested by the emerging series offered by important publishers, the number of research projects
funded, and the gaming industry’s interest in the scientific work of culturalists.
Given the international demand for experts in video games with a cultural studies
background, the purpose of this course is to help students develop the skills required to critically
examine the political nature of video games as rhetorical cultural artefacts. Students graduating
from this course will:
● Comprehend the specific means whereby games communicate meaning;
● Understand how video games function within a broader media landscape, i.e. in relation
to cinema, TV, comics, novels, social media, and so on;
● Become aware of the ideologies that inform video games and gameplay;
● Identify the ways in which video games function as mechanisms of social exclusion;
● Understand video game cultural studies in the context of other approaches to games,
mainly narratology, psychology, and the cognitive sciences.
With this knowledge and set of skills, graduates of this course will be able to:
● Work in the gaming industry, especially in narrative design/game writing/localization
departments
● Become independent researchers as doctoral, postdoctoral students, or
employed/freelance researchers
● Write much-needed and much-sought culturally critical video game journalism
● Work as advisors for various rating boards of visual products
● Engage in any activity where advanced digital literacy is required
Topics covered:
1. Defining the medium: the ludology-narratology debate
● case study: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
● recommended readings: Marie-Laure Ryan, Avatars of Story (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 181-203; Henry Jenkins, “Game
Design as Narrative Architecture,” in First Person: New Media as Story,
Performance, and Game, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004), 118-130. Andrei Nae, Immersion,
Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games (London:
Routledge, 2022), 11-31.
2. The rhetoric of video games
● case study: Resident Evil 7
● recommended readings: Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive
Power of Video Games (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), 1-64; Jay
Bolter et al. Remediation. Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press, 1999), 20-52
3. Introduction to video game cultural studies
● recommended readings: Soraya Murray, On Video Games: The Visual
Politics of Race, Gender and Space (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017), 1-46;
Adrienne Shaw, Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of
Gamer Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 25-64;
4. Gender in video games
● case study: Silent Hill 2 or Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
● recommended readings: Andrei Nae. Immersion, Narrative, and Gender
Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games (London: Routledge, 2022), 32-54;
Derak A. Burrill, Die Tryin’: Video Games, Masculinity, Culture (New York:
Peter Lang, 2008), 13-44.
5. Video games and colonialism
● case study: Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
● recommended readings: Souvik Mukherjee, Videogames and
Postcolonialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1-52; Soraya
Murray, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and
Space (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017), 141-182; Rachel Lara van der Merwe,
“Imperial Play,” Communication, Culture & Critique 14, no. 1 (2021): 37-51.
6. Video games and capitalism
● case study: Horizon: Zero Dawn
● recommended readings: Nick Dyer-Witheford, et al. Games of Empire:
Global Capitalism and Video Games (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2009), xi-33, 123-152.
7. Video games and the climate crisis (optional)
● case study: Horizon: Zero Dawn
● recommended readings: Alenda Y. Chang, Playing Nature: Ecology in Video
Games (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2019).