Critical Game Studies
Opening day Mancala tournament
I have rolled out an Alpha Version 0.9 of a “critical game studies” course. We are going to collaboratively co-create the course. I am acting as guide and co-learner.
On day one we had a conversation about creating A canon (not The). I, also, shared ideas about “subject positions” from which to be critical with respect to games. I suspect that we will revisit these two ideas often.
Fun and aesthetics were both invoked, as were an incomplete list of notable authors in Game Studies.
We want to spend about 30 percent of the total effort (“contact” and “non-contact” time in the academic sense) devoted to playing games. The “lab” portion of class was spent playing a single-elimination Mancala tournament with a sixteen player bracket. I set up a modification of the starting condition such that we began with 3 seeds per pit. Ties were resolved with a replay with 2 seeds per pit. A further tie was resolved with 4 seeds per pit.
There were many who had never played Mancala. This is actually an ideal situation. It was my desire for the players to reflect on how their play style evolved over time. Of course in a single-elimination setting half of the players only got to play once. This is something I will have to attempt to improve upon. I like the dynamic of Mancala that causes a player to give to an opponent the very resources that are the object of the victory condition during the course of play.