I am an English teacher teaching a Video Game as Literature class this fall
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I just made this alt profile so I can network and talk with other gamers about the creation of my class. We’ll primarily be using game pass, because PS5 scarcity is still crazy, and we’ll have some Switches. I am still amazed my school district is allowing me to do this, and I’m so excited to be starting this journey proving more than Minecraft can be in the classroom!
We’ll be playing a variety of games that are shorter, and some of the best levels of specific games. I’m playing as many games in gamepass as I can this summer to research writing activities and analysis of narrative plots to backup the creation of this class.
I teach at a public school in the states, and got a grant for these consoles.
How do you teach video games as literature?
That is awesome! However, the one upside down Xbox is killing me inside.
What a brilliant idea. Not just for engagement from the kids in the coursework, but to explore gaming as a medium for deep and compelling storytelling. Best of luck to you, and keep us up to date with how it’s going!
Any games that pop out that will for sure make the curriculum?
Can I Billy Madison into that class?
If you have never heard of it, “The Stanly Parable” has always stood out as an amazing narrative and could be a wonderful piece to dive into. It’s a game about making choices.
How you got a budget for this, I will never understand.
In 1997 I had to share a Social Studies textbook with another student because the school could not afford enough, that book mentioned the Soviet Union as an entity that still existed years after they dissolved. My teachers had a limited number of photo copies they were allowed to make per semester because supplies were just too expensive. Our computer lab consisted of Apple ][s (which we also had to pair up to share) in an era of Windows and the internet. Probably worth noting: The last Apple ][s were manufactured in 1993.
I say this with poignancy, not to disparage you. I’m glad you have the budget you have, but damn, I really wish someone funded my education a little better.
Would you share the syllabus?
This is cool, but I don’t see how it can work just from a logistics standpoint. How long is the class, like an hour a day for maybe 100 days? You read a book for an hour and then you have a lot to talk about. You play a video game for an hour and you’ve created your character and done the tutorial to learn how the buttons work. Most of my favorite and most immersive “literary” video games took close to 100 hours of play time to really get to the level of detail I’d like to have a meaningful discussion with a group about it.
How were you able to sell this as something that would really add a full semester of learning for students?
It looks like all the kids will be playing individually. How will you handle differences in individual skill between gamers? I assume they won’t be able to bring the consoles home for homework, so it’s not like slow “readers” can finish up later.
Brilliant ideia, I am happy that you manage to make it happen. I don’t know if the game pass from my country offers the same as yours, but felt inclined to suggest some games I saw offered here:
1- A memoir blue: very short game that could be embrace to discuss narratives without text or speech, how to convey an ideia only through images.
2- Firewatch: relatively small game that could be observed through the lens on how to write a credible yet interesting dialog. The game starts twenty minutes in the actual game.
3- Hellbalde senua’s sacrifice: best to be used only some selected chapter, could be the first; it shows how to pass the felling of a mental illness through writing. Maybe parallels could be made from “the sound and the fury” by William Faulkner, where one of the chapters is written in first person of someone with autism.
4- What remains of edith finch: this is a must in what you intend, if you haven’t, play the game and you will notice what I mean.
5- Spiritfarer: great dialogue with the central theme being death and how to deal with, being it others or yourself. It’s a slow game, but I think it could be fasten somehow to give more focus on the writing.
Teach metal gear solid 2
Give Outer Wilds a shot for this! Literally one of the best games I’ve played recently, and it is literally a game about learning a story through texts. No combat, no gore, just pure sweet exploration.
You must teach at a nice school.
How do I reach these kiddddzzz
Question: what do you see as the benefits to playing through vs watching a YouTube video (without any commentary voiceover / reaction stuff) for the purpose of telling the story?
Nice!
Genuine Q – was it difficult to get this much without having the seller think you were a scalper?
What rich school is this ? My school won’t even replace the 10 yr old mouse
This is cool, but I could totally see this failing as a teaching resource.
Can I take your class? English was my favourite subject.
This sounds like one of those jobs that a little kid naively says they want to have when they grow up.
Meanwhile I just spent $200 of my own money yesterday on markers, pencils and folders for my wife’s class because her district gives her $100 for the entire year.
My whinging aside, this is flipping incredible!
I’m not sure if anyone else here is in education or has suggested this, but please treat the developers of these games as you would authors of books: contact the studios and ask the writers if they would be interested in having a virtual talk or interview with your class. I’m not sure how any larger studios would respond, but I feel some of the small indie ones would take you up on it.
As for recommendations because Game Pass has a lot and also there are a lot of games with a small price tag that could also be great (and I’m going to mention and talk about them without knowing if you have played them or not, so forgive me if you have):
I believe **Hollow Knight** is on Game Pass and is available on Switch. It would be a very good example of world building and how much of a story can be told via descriptions and the setting without directly needing to be spelled out for the player/reader. It’s sequel **Silk Song** will be on Game Pass at launch, which should be within the next year. This game can be challenging if they are not used to platformers of Medroidvanias, so there may need to be some partnering up for this. Mossbag on YouTube does great lore videos that are quite funny to hold attention, but does have vulgarity (not sure how your school feels about videos with that even at a senior level).
I know that **What Remains of Edith Finch?** used to be on Game Pass and still may be. This is a pure storytelling game that operates as a first-person point and click told through both text and visuals. This game would have a very low bar for players as they do not need to be good at video games or even have played one before to get through it as there is no way to fail. If I were to teach this, one of my essay questions would be “what narrative point of view this story is told in?”
If you were already thinking of **Life is Strange**, that studios follow-up game, **Tell Me Why** has been released recently. Honestly, you could probably teach an entire class using knowing but Dontnod Entertainment games.
**Oxenfree** is a newer title as well that works very much like a visual Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. It is definitely a mature title in its themes and settings, but I don’t believe it goes any farther than a well written YA book does. This would be a good game if you want very different answers to come out of your students about their experience playing it.
**Firewatch** is another low skill ceiling game that is like Edith Finch in that its a storytelling walking simulator. This one doesn’t have much in lines of twists or turns in their storytelling methods like the comparison does, but I think it does a really good job of not only telling its story, but also showing how fallible and flawed a first-person narrative can be even though you do everything “right.”
**Thimbleweed Park** is a point & click adventure in the vein of Maniac Mansion with a storyline akin to Twin Peaks. It’s a bit wild but its storytelling through discovery and interpretation could be a nice change of pace from something for spoonfed.
There’s a video on youtube “What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn’t Play Games” and it really drives home what ‘Gamers’ take for granted in video games. if you havent seen it, it’s highly intriguing and educational; the Subject of the expierement struggles with others find trivial, take for granted.
For example, some games tell you to press ‘A’ . While others tell you to press ‘A’ while showing you where ‘A’ is relative to the other buttons. its the small details that matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw&list=PLordXx8iNEyStcX_WzqM0JCpiJYgqhinc
“Okay class, turn on your PlayStation 4s and start up Detroit: Become Human. Billy, if I catch you using PS4 Save Wizard again, I’m sending you to the principal’s office. No Cassandra, you can’t livestream this during class. Yes Faris, I’ve already said that turning on subtitles is fine during gameplay. Everyone, a reminder that you have to submit your reviews on Kingdom Hearts 3 by Friday!”
This sounds like a really cool class. But the school really had room in their budget for all these consoles..? Private school, I’m guessing? Do the kids take these home to play? Or do you hook them up to TVs at school? Guessing they needed headphones, too, if the latter.
I wrote a few essays on game literature as part of legal studies discourse – this is awesome to see! Your curriculum is probably set in stone already, but might I recommend a few blasts from the past? They might not be available on XBOX I suppose.
Xenosaga – there are religious themes, symbolism, and character development and interaction over time.
Zero Escape – a lot of admittedly pseudoscience, but a lot of discussion on concepts and theories and discussions of ‘the good’ and alternate histories.
Final Fantasy 9 – themes of identity and loss.
Orwell – themes of panoptic surveillance and police state participation.
What is the age range of your students?
Were you given a hard no on specific gameplay content or genres of games (Violence, Sexual content, etc?)
How much time do you expect these students will have to navigate to more story-rich content in the games?
I have a few games in mind that are wildly popular and have been lauded for story rich elements, but like most games there is ‘filler content’ (gameplay) to get through to progress story and in some cases, this can be 10’s of hours per game unless you are limiting to stuff like ‘walking simulators’.
What do you do about students that are not proficient enough (or have accessibility issues) to progress in your chosen games to get to the story content?
Also it makes me laugh a little inside to think of a student trying to cheat on a test about the story in a game by watching a youtube video playthrough or a livestreamer or something much the same way as kids might use cliffs notes