A stream of students filed into a room in the Center for the Arts on a recent Wednesday afternoon. As they took their seats, graduate student and co-instructor of "Analysis of Interactive Environments in Art and Entertainment," Shawn Rider, fiddled with the tangled wires of display equipment.
Rider and Professor Josephine Anstey were preparing to make a presentation on the history of video games - the technology, the industry and the psychological appeal. Class has only been in session for a week and a half, but the collection of media studies majors, computer science and fine arts students discussed in hushed tones their pending group presentations.
The presentations will require students to analyze video games, virtual realities, and other "immersive environment" software. The pressure is already on to assemble in-depth PowerPoint presentations and other videos.
Although Interactive Environments fulfills the digital theory requirement for media study majors, many students have elected to take this analysis course with Anstey in order to complement the virtual reality production courses offered by the media study department since the beginning of last year.
About five minutes into the class, Anstey begins her presentation, "A Potted History of Interactive Environments." Her lecture spans from descriptions of the earliest head-mounted virtual reality displays to the role that playwrights like Bertolt Brecht and Eugene Ionescu had in the evolution of gaming narratives.
Some might ask how a class about gaming narratives is supposed to complement virtual reality production. Rider and Anstey said an industry that generates large revenues cannot be ignored.
"Last year video game sales topped box office ticket sales," said Rider. "This is a $7 billion a year industry now, which is growing up."
Ben Shepard, a senior digital arts major, said he is required to take DMS415 and though he plans to work in Web design, which is not directly related to designing or marketing interactive environments, the material in the course might be helpful to him in the future.
"Games - we grew up on games," he said. "So to know what's going on, to know why kids my age and the generation just after or before me are spending over $7 billion a year on games is pretty relevant to my going out and trying to work for them."
Both graduate and undergraduate students could enroll in Interactive Environments where they would be expected to work together on group project, said Steffan Delpiano, a graduate student in the English department studying religious poetry and game theory.
"Ultimately the graduate student is in charge of him or herself and two undergraduates," he said.
According to students, the presentations may seem difficult, but make the course more understandable after the process is complete.
"The help is there if you need it," said Bogdan Marian, a senior computer science major. "But you can't sit down and hold somebody's hand throughout the entire process."
By the end of this semester, Rider said he hopes everyone will see how different aspects of gaming software are related. According to Rider, if students walk away from this course approaching games and the gaming industry with a more critical eye, he will be happy.
"We're not approaching them the way that most people playing video games approach them, which is 'Uh, this sequel came out and it's got eight new guns in it so it's eight times better than the last game,'" he said.
While it's difficult to gauge the importance virtual reality software will have in the future at the university, the current class has something to offer participants.
"In order to create art you have to first experience it," said Rider. "You need to be versed in what's come before. Great art is not created in a vacuum of culture or history."
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
