The game studies minor teaches you to analyze the design, culture, and business of games — video games, board games, tabletop RPGs, and more — and to understand the industry that produces them. Open to any UO major, this interdisciplinary minor builds a foundation for the many communication and media careers connected to games.
What Is Game Studies?
Game studies examines the cultural, social, economic, and psychological dimensions of games. It draws on design, art and animation, media studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and human-computer interaction to analyze how games are made, played, and understood around the world. For communication and media professionals, it offers deeper insight into an increasingly important medium and an industry that needs people who can create content and frame it for the public.
Who It's For
This minor suits students drawn to game design, game journalism, multimedia storytelling, or games research, and anyone interested in how games became a dominant media form. You'll build a stronger grasp of the media and communication roles in video games, esports, board games, tabletop RPGs, and virtual and augmented reality. Open to any UO major, it gives future media professionals an edge in a large and growing industry by exploring where games meet technology, psychology, and culture.
Careers and Outcomes
The games industry actively seeks people with strong communication skills, and this minor prepares you for the roles that fill that need. Graduates are positioned for work in game design and development, games journalism, esports, community management, and user experience, as well as public relations and advertising for game brands and studios.
The minor also supports careers in multimedia content creation and academic research, and it strengthens any communication or media role that touches interactive entertainment. Paired with your major, it signals to employers that you understand games as both a cultural form and a business.
How It Works
The game studies minor requires 24 credits that you can complete at any point in your degree. You'll take one required foundation course and five electives, drawn from SOJC game courses and approved courses in other UO programs. Its flexible structure lets you tailor the minor toward your interests, whether that's game design, media theory, culture, computer science, or multimedia storytelling.
For SOJC majors, only one JCOM course can count toward both your major and your minor.
Required Course
JCOM 280 Introduction to Studying Games 4 credits
Survey the fundamentals of game studies, including the industry, history, culture, and critical topics from labor and globalization to identity and representation.
Elective Courses — 20 credits / 5 courses
Choose five from the courses below. Contact the minor's director with questions about other game-related courses across campus that may count toward the minor.
JCOM 380 The Games Industry 4 credits
Examine the shape and structure of the global games industry — its producers, value chains, sales, and industrial logics — along with the critical questions the industry raises.
JCOM 381 Theories of Play in Media and Communication 4 credits
Explore what play is and how it relates to culture and media, covering its role in history, psychology, game design, and modern media and internet cultures.
JCOM 382 Game Design and Critique 4 credits
Work through the stages of creating a game, from design philosophy and pitching to building and playtesting a working prototype.
JCOM 383 Understanding E-Sports 4 credits
Analyze organized competitive gaming, addressing players and teams, business structures and management, diversity and inclusion, and the media and communication around esports.
JCOM 480 Gamification and the Media 4 credits
Study gamification — the use of game elements in non-game contexts — and learn to analyze, critique, and apply game elements in your own media production.
JCOM 481 Making the Virtual a Reality 4 credits
Explore the foundational scholarship of immersive media and build the tools to assess trends like platformization, digital surveillance, and algorithmic bias.
JCOM 482 Analog Games 4 credits
Analyze analog games — cards, dice, board games, tabletop, and "actual play" media — examining game history, mechanics and design, and social impact.
JCOM 483 Game Journalism and Newsgames 4 credits
Explore how games are covered and used in journalism, learn the major types of video game reporting, and build skills to tell stories with games.
Students who meet the prerequisites may also apply these College of Design Art and Technology courses toward the 20 elective credits: ARTD 252 Interactive Digital Arts, ARTD 361 Introduction to Animation, and ARTD 370 Digital Interactivity.