This unit will introduce you to digital games and more specifically to game studies. Digital games are the digital artefacts we interact through play whereas game studies is an academic discipline concerned with the study of games, the playing of games and the culture surrounding games.

This unit will introduce you to the key terms of (1) a game, and to that of (2) study, as in a scientific and scholarly practice. Furthermore, this lesson will provide you with an analytical appreciation and enhanced understanding of defining digital games and the core concepts and frameworks for them.

The last part of the lesson will introduce you to the conceptual framework of critical play and the concept of procedural rhetoric as means of thinking about, analysing, critiquing and mounting arguments through games.

After this module you will know the fundamentals of games and game studies. Key questions in this module are: What is a game and how can we define games? What are the core concepts within games and game studies? How can we approach games and the playing of games from different perspectives and what becomes clear when we shift perspectives? What does the different perspectives on games tell us about the the lense applied in each perspective?