GDIM 129: Special Topics in Advanced Game Design Designing for Emancipation via 'Faux-tobiographical' Game Design

Professor Theresa Jean Tanenbaum

Spring 2023

Tuesday & Thursday, 3:30-4:50pm

Humanities Instructional Building (HIB) 100

Overview: This class is focused on autobiographical game design, but with a twist.  Students will learn how to create games that express aspects of their lives and personal histories.The twist is that we will also be studying alternate histories, science fiction, and allohistorical speculation, through the lens of “restorying”. Restorying is a Black, womanist, memory practice where students create alternate histories that empower them to overcome systemic oppression, write historical wrongs, and reclaim agency that had been denied to them, by re-centering themselves, and people like them, within the social narrative. Students will be creating games that either explore an alternate history for their own lives, or that give players opportunities to imagine living through different experiences and life events through play. Hence the term “faux-tobiographical” game design.

 

(More details forthcoming)