SubjectsSubjects(version: 970)
Course, academic year 2017/2018
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Psychology of games and play - OEN2313099
Title: Psychology of games and play
Guaranteed by: Katedra psychologie (41-KPSY)
Faculty: Faculty of Education
Actual: from 2016 to 2019
Semester: both
E-Credits: 6
Hours per week, examination: 1/1, Ex [HT]
Capacity: winter:unknown / unknown (unknown)
summer:unknown / unknown (unknown)
Min. number of students: unlimited
4EU+: no
Virtual mobility / capacity: no
State of the course: taught
Language: English
Teaching methods: full-time
Note: enabled for web enrollment
priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
you can enroll for the course in winter and in summer semester
Guarantor: Mgr. Ondřej Hrabec, Ph.D.
Annotation
The course goal is to give students insight into a crucial role of games and play in psychology and culture. Most notably, emphasis is taken on videogames as a most recent game form creating the complex computer mediated environments (virtual worlds). The course consists of three meetings which provide both theoretical framework and practical illustrations (parts of documentary movies, products of player subcultures etc.) concerning given topics. The illustrations will then become a subject of discussion. Successful course completion requires writing of seminar paper. The paper’s topic should be based on observation or experiencing the play in a chosen context (e.g. video game, play in therapy, sport, theater, child’s play). Following theoretical parts of lectures, the content of the work has to analytically deconstruct playing process (genre of game or play, potential play styles/player types, structure, dynamics, motivation, flow experience etc.).
Last update: SKALOVA/PEDF.CUNI.CZ (19.02.2016)
Literature
Literature:
Caillois, R. (1961). Man, Play and Games. New York: Schocken Books.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.

Fink, E. (2012). Oasis of happiness: Thoughts toward an ontology of play (Moore, I. A. & Turner, C.,Trance.). Purlieu: A Philosophical Journal 1 (4), 20-42. (Original work published 1957).

Huizinga, J. (1950). Homo Ludens. Boston: Beacon Press.

Juul, J. (2006). Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Millar, S. (1968) The Psychology of Play. Baltimore: Penguin Books.

Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2003). Rules of Play. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Sutton-Smith, B. (2001). The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press.

Last update: SKALOVA/PEDF.CUNI.CZ (19.02.2016)
Syllabus

The first lecture

Theory

-          theoretical approaches towards psychology of games and play

-          definitions and conceptions (historical and present)

-          function of play and games

 

Seminar and discussion

-          is game purposeless or functional

-          play vs. work

-          virtual vs. real world

-          digital games vs. traditional games

 

The second lecture

Theory

-          play styles

-          player types and motivation

-          classification of games and play

-          rhetorics of play

 

Seminar and discussion

-          why do we play games

-          "gamification" and professionalization

-          player subculture

 

The third lecture:

-          game structure (rules)

-          game dynamics (strategies)

-          game esthetics (experience and emotions)

-          flow experience and immersion

 

Seminar and discussion

-          how do we experience games

-          how do we strategize

-          impacts of games and play in the context of everyday life

Last update: Hrabec Ondřej, Mgr., Ph.D. (25.02.2016)
 
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