University of Wyoming Studies Video Games

March 12, 2010 · Print This Article

krou writes “The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting story about how the University of Wyoming’s English office is helping fund a collective called the Learning Games Initiative to study video games. Jason Thompson, an assistant professor at UW who is part of the group, explains that ‘it’s a group of society [who] do research on games, do development on games, and keep an archive of games printed matter such as manuals, … systems, all of it. We really look at games as cultural artifacts; things that reveal theology, things that reveal ability. Things that should be studied in the academy.’ The English

station has been very open-minded with the project, considering they understand that gaming can educate citizens, and that ‘we can expand our notion of what text and study is; the notion that it might be fun doesn’t necessarily preclude its study.’ Thompson believes that it’s vital for academia to study gaming, considering games could be used in the future as a type of textbook: ‘if games can teach, thereupon as teachers shouldn’t we understand what kind of teaching’s going on?’”