This course is an introduction to the analysis of video games. We will explore how video games build up certain argumentations and create meaning in exchange with the player. Since video games are a multi-layered medium, we will not limit ourselves to their narrative or visual level, but will also include the ludic/mechanical level, as processes and so-called procedural rhetoric. This course’s theoretical grounds will be an introduction to game studies, the ontology of video games and basics of game design. Beginning with analyzes of short independent games to sharpen our tool-kit, we’ll move on and try to analyse Nier: Automata (2018) as our main game-text and approach it from various perspectives.
