In the winter 2025 semester I taught a course at Concordia titled “Videogames and the Middle Ages.” Find below the syllabus for the course, copied and pasted from Microsoft Word. I have also posted the syllabus to Humanities Commons as a PDF.
Tuesday classes were lecture and discussion, Thursday classes were livestreams of myself playing, which were recorded to provide examples for students to use in their written work.
Most of the links for the readings will just lead you to the Concordia library course reserve, but some of them are to the original weblinks.
Description
This course surveys medieval and medieval-fantasy settings and mechanics in single-player adventure and strategy videogames. Topics covered will include chivalric violence; courtly love; melancholia and the gothic; the politics of fantasy races and classes; systems of magic; the influences of medieval romance, “sword and sorcery” fiction, and tabletop RPGs; transmedia world-building and fan communities; crafting; and the literary genre of the riddle.
Learning Objectives
Course activities and assessments are designed to teach and test the following student competencies. Students in this course will learn how to:
- Recognize and apply distinctions between formal structures and symbolic content in videogames
- Identify and interrogate the manifestations of “medievalism” in the game structures and content of single-player adventure videogames
- Understand how medievalism arose from popular fiction and tabletop role-playing games, to influence not only videogames but the development of digital media more generally
- Use this learning to develop critical arguments about medieval videogames and express them in writing and/or other related media
CLASS SCHEDULE
| Week 1 | Introduction to the Class |
| Tuesday | (in person) Syllabus, Overview |
| Thursday | (Zoom) Dead Cells: Castlevania Edition
“Dead Cells: The Kotaku Review”
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| Week 2 | What Makes a Game Medieval? |
| Tuesday | Mochocki, “Editorial: Games with Heritage, History, and Provocation,” Games and Culture 17.6 (2022): 839-42;
Eco, “Dreaming the Middle Ages” from Travels in Hyperreality pp. 61-72; Sylvester, “Narrative,” from Designing Games, 81-108 ***GROUP CHARTERS COMPLETED AND POSTED TO TEAMS CHANNEL***
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| Thursday | Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla |
| Suggested Readings | Fernandez-Vara, “Areas of Analysis 3: Formal Elements,” from Introduction to Game Analysis
Howard, The Phoenix on the Sword Kline, “Participatory Medievalism,” Cambridge Companion to Medievalism Peterson, Peterson, “The Medieval Setting,” Playing At The World vol. 1 Williamson, “Twentieth Century: Popular Fantasy,” The Evolution of Modern Fantasy
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| Week 3 | Seduction and the Art of Chivalry |
| Tuesday | Reardon and Wright, Selections, The Digital Role-Playing Game and Technical Communication: A History of Bethesda, Bioware, and CD Projekt Red;
IGN, “Sex and Romance – Dragon Age Inquisition Guide” Andreas Capellanus, De Amore (1184-86) — A Treatise on Courtly Love (excerpts) | Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website |
| Thursday | Dragon Age: Inquisition (Sera) |
| Suggested Readings | Consalvo and Dutton, “Game analysis: Developing a methodological toolkit for the qualitative study of games,” Game Studies 6.1(2006), 1–17;
Greer, “Playing queer: Affordances for sexuality in Fable and Dragon age,” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 5.1 (2013), 3–21; Kelly, “Approaching the digital courting process in Dragon Age 2,” Game love: Essays on play and affection (2015), pp. 46–62 |
| Week 4 | Race and Character Creations |
| Tuesday | Iantorno and Consalvo, “Background Checks: Disentangling Class, Race, and Gender in CRPG Character Creators,” Games and Culture 18.8 (2023), 979-1003;
Gygax and Arneson, “Character Creation,” Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook, First Edition (1978); Elder Scrolls Wiki, “Races (Skyrim)” |
| Thursday | Skyrim (XBox, Winterhold)
Skyrim: How its Diverse Society Grapples With Racism
***CHARACTER CREATION DUE (MOODLE)***
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| Suggested Readings | Galloway, “Does the whatever speak?,” Nakamura L., Chow-White P. (Eds.), Race after the internet (2012), 111–127;
López, “The Social Construction of Race,” from Literary Theory: An Anthology (2004); Nakamura, “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet”; Young, “Racial Logics, Franchising, and Video Game Genres: The Lord of the Rings” Games and Culture 11.4 (2015)
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| Week 5 | Death, Failure, and Other Monsters |
| Tuesday | Barr, “Violence: Less is More,” The Stuff Games Are Made Of;
Cohen, “Monster Culture (7 Theses)”, Monster Theory: Reading, Culture; Juul, The Art of Failure, 69-90 (PDF) |
| Thursday | Elden Ring |
| Suggested Readings | “A Dialogue Between the Body and Worms”;
Freud, “The Uncanny”; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, “The Concept of Flow,” Handbook of Positive Psychology Phillips, “Shooting to kill: Headshots, twitch reflexes, and the mechropolitics of video games,” Games and Culture 13.2 (2017), 136-152; Stang and Trammell, “The ludic bestiary: Misogynistic tropes of female monstrosity in dungeons & dragons,” Games and Culture 15.6 (2020), 730–747. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412019850059 |
| Week 6 | Riddles, Puzzles, and Lore |
| Tuesday | Braithwaite and Schreiber, “Chapter 3: Puzzle Design,” in Challenges for Game Designers, pp. 41-58;
Can You Solve These Medieval Riddles?, Medievalists.net; “Vafthrudnir’s Sayings,” from Poetic Edda, trans. Larrington (PDF) |
| Thursday | NYT Word Games |
| Suggested Readings | Aarseth, “Introduction: Ergodic Literature,” Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature;
Montfort, “Riddles,” Twisty Little Passages; Sebo, “Riddling in the Ancient World,” In Enigmate; Sicart, Miguel. “Against Procedurality.” Game Studies , vol. 11, no. 3, Dec. 2011. Yinger, “All The Clues That Are Fit To Solve: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle”, Response: Journal of Popular and American Culture 4.1 (2019) Patrick Jagoda, “Gamification,” Experimental Games |
| Week 7 | Lost Empires, Secondary Worlds |
| Tuesday | Elder Scrolls Wiki, “The Battle of Red Mountain”
Jansen, “The Final Word? How Fans of The Elder Scrolls Record, Archive, and Interpret the Battle of Red Mountain,” Return to the Interactive Past (2021), 57-71 Wolf, “World Structures and Systems of Relationship,” Building Imaginary Worlds (2012), 153-97 |
| Thursday | Skyrim (PC, with Dwemer mods) |
| Suggested Readings | Busse, “May the Force Be With You: Fan Negotiations of Authority,” from Framing Fan Fiction.
De Kosnik, “Canon and Repertoire,” Rogue Archives Kennedy, “The First Hacker Bible,” Medieval Hackers, pp. 55-79 Ryan, “Transmedia Worlds,” An Anatomy of Storyworlds;
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| Week 8 | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight |
| Tuesday | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Pearsall, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: An Essay in Enigma,” Chaucer Review 46.1&2 (2011) |
| Thursday | The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Critical review: Majora’s Mask Should Terrify You, and This is Why |
| Suggested Readings | Essays on Sir Gawain from the back of the Norton critical edition
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| Week 9 | Magic Circles, Magic Systems |
| Tuesday | Consalvo, “There is No Magic Circle,” Games and Culture 4.4 (2007);
“The Lay of Sigdrifa”, from Poetic Edda, trans. Larrington (PDF); Jesch and Lee, “Healing Runes,” from Viking Encounters; |
| Thursday | Slay the Princess 2023’s Best Narrative Game Just Got Even Better |
| Suggested Readings | Arnade, “Huizinga: Anthropologist Avant la lettre?”, from Rereading Huizinga;
Collins, “Magic in the Middle Ages: History and Historiography”; Huizinga, “The Craving for a More Beautiful Life,” from Autumn of the Middle Ages; Huizinga, “Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon,” from The Game Design Reader; Jan van Eyck on Google Arts and Culture; Sanderson, “What Are Sanderson’s Laws of Magic?” Tekinbas and Zimmerman, “Unit 2: Rules,” in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals |
| Week 10 | Holy Grails and Other MacGuffins |
| Tuesday | TV Tropes, “MacGuffin”;
Chretien de Troyes, Story of the Grail, 5-20, 82-94, 168-76 (PDF) |
| Thursday | Ring Fit Adventure
Coronavirus Fears Spark a Run on Nintendo’s Ring Fit Adventure |
| Suggested Readings | Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” from First Person, 117-130;
Bogost, “Exercise,” How to Do Things with Videogames; Polti, 36 Dramatic Situations; Lessard, “Dramatic Situations for Emergent Narrative Authorship”; Snelson, “Contingent Reading: A Poetics of the Search.” ASAP/Journal 7.2 (2022): 385-408 |
| Week 11 | Crusading and Control |
| Tuesday | Fulcher of Charters, Urban II’s Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095
Galloway, “Allegories of Control,” from Gaming: Essays in Algorithmic Culture, pp. 85-106; Elliott and Horswell, “Crusading Icons,” from History in Games: Contignencies of an Authentic Past |
| Thursday | Dragon Age: Inquisition (Campsites) |
| Suggested Readings | Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control”;
Murphy, “Hybrid Moments: Using Ludonarrative Dissonance for Political Critique,” Loading… 10.15 (2017): 1-12; Shippey, “A Cartographic Plot,” from The Road to Middle Earth (2003), pp. 94-134 Wershler and Simon, “The Allegorical Build. Minecraft and Allegorical Play in Undergraduate Teaching,” gamevironments 15 (2021). |
| Week 12 | Crafting Afterlives |
| Tuesday | Grow et. al, “Crafting in Games,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 11.4 (2017);
Custodio, “Residual Afterlives,” from Who Are You?, pp. 175-212 |
| Thursday | The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt |
| Suggested Readings | Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, from Illuminations
Johnston and Van Dussen, “Introduction: Manuscripts and Cultural History,” from The Medieval Manuscript Book (2014); Sotamaa, “When the game is not enough: motivations and practices among computer game modding culture” Games and Culture 5.3 (2010): 239-55;
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