Playful Pasts & Futures

Playful Pasts and Futures is a course that historicises games and confronts you with questions like 'why do we study games?'. You will learn how play is a form of learning and how we use games to explore the possibilities of new technology. The course touches on the history of the internet, technology and games and the ethics connected to it.

To understand interactive systems and their possibilities, you must be able to see all of its elements separately and how these elements relate to the interactive system it tries to deliver. For budding new technologies the elements they consist of may be clear, but the experiences they could deliver are not. By exploring these experiences, you may be able to find new goals and interactions that will stimulate people to engage with these systems and become familiar with new technologies.

By being able to assess and identify the basic principles of interactive systems, you are challenged to reassess your own relation to the interactive systems you know. This understanding may lead you to find new interactions or applying old interactions in novel ways. In short, this course will enable you to assess the current interactive digital media industries and identify new opportunities to act on.

The course is assessed by a poster presentation and a written report.