Rockefeller Memorial Chapel came alive with performers from the University of Chicago Guild of Carillonists playing theme music from Plants Versus Zombies on the chapel’s nearly century-old bells. The audience sat in the pews and stared up at stained glass, listening to music that had originally been intended to come out of computerized speakers. A sense of surreality and mixed feelings permeated UChicago’s first event in its Year of Games as I took in the oddity of what I was experiencing.
The Year of Games is a year-long initiative started by UChicago faculty studying games in collaboration with the UChicago Library. Throughout campus, the initiative hosts events and installations that seek to discuss, celebrate, and analyze games.
A brief introduction from faculty and a weekend of panels were soon underway. Friday and Saturday featured keynotes in the form of live recordings of the podcast My Perfect Console with acclaimed guests Alex Seropian (S.B. ’91), co-founder of Bungie Studios, and Evan Narcisse, a narrative consultant, critic, and comics writer.
The concert held in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel evoked a dissonance I felt since I learned about the Year of Games, between my associations with the music and the setting in which I was listening to it, particularly the oddity of having an event centered on video games at a university. For a while, it has been reinforced that games are not worth being taken seriously, but now it feels like they are being taken too seriously.
A moment that truly stuck out was from the Q&A section with the developers of UFO 50, a 50-game collection developed by fictional company UFO Soft in a fictionalized 1980s. The use of the framing device of an alternate history led one student in the audience to ask the designers about the alternate history’s “hypothesis.” The developers seemed confused as laughter erupted in the audience, with someone in the front row claiming, “It’s a very UChicago question.” It was a clash between the academic setting of UChicago and the way video games are usually treated.
However, while this dissonance between the academic institution and gaming may initially feel off-putting, that instinct is a reaction to the novelty of the affair. Yet there lies a great amount of value, offering a chance to join in the infancy of a field of study. Imagine being able to be one of the first people in the world to study film or nuclear physics. That is the position video game scholars find themselves in now, and it feels revolutionary.
It felt like the event understood this gravitas, reaching out to find new audiences while celebrating the audience it had. Discussions like “Are video games art?” persist, but the organizers of this event have moved beyond those basic questions. To them, video games are art, and they are worth being studied that way, so they move on to other questions. They ask about the role of difficulty in games with designers like Animal Well’s Billy Basso, diversity and representation with critics like Evan Narcisse, and the ways sound can be used in games with sound designers like Ghost of Yotei’s Joanna Fang. They give these questions their all, working in a field that has yet to reach any sort of stagnation.
The entire field of video gaming is new, and the panelists throughout the weekend reflected that. The oldest member of the panel had been there at the start of the industry, initially working on pinball machines, and he is only now reaching retirement. Panelists closer to the middle of the age range like Billy Basso and Evan Narcisse would be able to reference some of the first consoles ever made, like the Nintendo Entertainment System and Atari 2600. This field is clearly still emerging, and it makes the attempt to study it professionally both somewhat strange and fascinating as we attempt to accommodate the novelty of it all.
There was a smaller part of the event on Friday that particularly seemed emblematic of this. After the end of the panels for the day, UChicago faculty held a dance party in Lorado Taft Midway Studios near the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. The audience was niche—many participants never enjoyed it but a happy few did.
10 years ago, an event like this would have been a scream for recognition, but here it was an assertion that that the attendees will be a part of the culture and study of the University as long as they can manage it. The University is constantly expanding its course offerings with a focus on games, with an especially high number this year along with even more events. The study is still finding its footing, but that just might make now the most exciting time to join in.
