BYU liberal arts professors launch Y Play Games, offering video games for students to play

The BYU College of Humanities offers weekly video games for students to play, as well as a lecture series to educate students about each game and its connections to the humanities.

Michael Call And Brian CroxallProfessors from the Faculty of Humanities organized the “Y Play Games” lecture series and the game of the week. Croxall said the idea for the lecture series came about because of the popularity of international cinema.

“I started thinking, ‘What if there was something like this for video games?'” Croxall said.

Croxall believed that BYU should have a space for insightful conversations about video games and their impact on culture.

“Many of our students invest a lot of time, money and interest in video games, and here on campus there just isn’t much said about it,” Call said. “We talk a lot about film on campus. We talk a lot about music on campus. There was kind of a glaring gap where you thought, ‘Hey, here’s something that’s hugely important to our students and we’re not saying anything about it.'”

Croxall said one of the reasons individuals may not perceive video games the same way they do films or novels in the humanities is that there is usually no single author to credit games to. Video games are typically created by many members of a game production company, while films or novels are typically credited to their individual directors or writers.

To counteract this assumption, Croxall explained the history of the video game Stardew Valley, which was the subject of Croxall and Call’s first Y Play Games talk. The game Stardew Valley was entirely developed by a single person, Eric Barone, who created the game to show off his programming skills and get a job at a company.

Croxall said the game’s narrative follows the player’s character as he works a boring corporate job until he finds a letter from his grandfather gifting the player his farm. The player then quits his job and moves to the farm in Stardew Valley, where he works hard to manage the farm.

“There’s interesting tension between Barone himself,” Croxall said, “why he’s making the game, what story he’s telling in the game, how your character functions in the game, and how he himself worked for four years, 12 hours a day, seven days a day.” the week.”

Call said the list of games for this semester includes some well-known video games as well as those that are more artistic but not as popular. Each game represents a different moment in video game history and is played on a variety of gaming consoles, both older and newer.

“Part of what we hope students get is to open the conversation,” Croxall said. “Getting a lecturer to come over and talk about the things they think about and how they relate to the video games.”

For example, during her lecture on “Breath of the Wild” on October 7th, Professor of Comparative Arts and Literature Laura Hatch discussed the influence of German Romanticism and Shintoism on the landscaping of Hyrule, a kingdom within the Legend of Zelda game series, according to Croxall.

Roger MacfarlaneProfessor of Classical Studies, will give a Y Play Games lecture on the video game “Hades” on October 21st. He said that this game connects to characters in his area of ​​classical mythology.

“I study adaptations – modern adaptations of classic myths,” Macfarlane said. “Hades should have a fascinating adaptation of the Eurydice myth.”

During his talk, Macfarlane aims to discuss the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and their involvement in the play’s narrative.

“In this one video game, Hades, there is an exceptionally sophisticated narrative that is well thought out and worth thinking about, and the only way to think about it is to engage in the game,” Macfarlane said. “I think it’s not entirely dangerous to get involved in this particular game. There is something worth investigating. It’s not just silliness.”

Stephen TuttleAssociate Professor of English, gave a Y Play Games lecture on the puzzle video game “The Witness” on October 14th. While some professors will lecture on video games related to their areas of expertise, Tuttle, who teaches courses on fiction and short story writing, The Witness said, intentionally rejected narratives.

“It’s a game that has no clock, no points, no enemies and no clear objectives,” Tuttle said. “It’s a game that just invites you to be in this beautiful space, to wander around, to find these puzzles and solve them if you can, or if not, move on to something else.”

He said the game was an escape for him from the combat and enemies often found in other games.

“The larger goal of the series is to talk seriously, academically and thoughtfully about video games and to divert our attention away from games as a pastime or even a waste of time,” Tuttle said. “Recognize that cognitively it is something that is more complex than you originally thought.”

Macfarlane said this lecture series helps validate video game narratives as worthy of intelligent discussion. Call said this also allows video games to enter the broader humanities discussion.

“These games say things about important topics,” Call said, “just like movies or novels or paintings.” To embrace this new form of human communication, you have to bring it into the broader conversation, so to speak, and give it a seat at the table more traditional art forms.”

Croxall said he and Call eventually want to offer video games that are older and less accessible to students.

“We bought retro gaming equipment,” Croxall said. “ET, which Professor Call will be talking about, is an Atari 2600 game. It’s a game so bad that it bankrupted Atari – literally. So we have an old Atari console.”

Students can attend 15-20 minute lectures on each video game on Mondays at 4 p.m. The Fall 2024 semester schedule is listed below, according to the Y Play Games flyer.

• “Hades” – lecture on October 21st by Roger Macfarlane
• “Rome: Total War” – Lecture on Oct. 28 by Chuck Oughton
• “ET the Extra Terrestrial” – lecture on November 4th by Michael Call
• “Limbo” – lecture on November 11th by Luke Drake
• “Tony Hawk Pro Skater” – Lecture on November 18th by Rob Colson
• “Fortnite” – Lecture on December 2nd by Brian Croxall

The video games can be played for the remainder of the week after lecture in Room 1141 of the Joseph F. Smith Building (Humanities Learning Commons).