Chris Carloy

Assistant Instructional Professor, Master of Arts Program in the Humanities, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, The College

I received my PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago in 2018 with a dissertation titled "'True 3D': The Form, concept, and Experience of Three-Dimensionality in 1990s Videogames." My research focuses on videogame history and theory; theories of space and place; genre history and theory; reception; and phenomenology - and I am committed to interdisciplinary work that places videogames within longer traditions of art, media, and architecture. I received my BA from Baylor University in 2006 and my MA in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA in 2009. 

I spend my free time wandering the Art Institute of Chicago and the city's many parks; taking and posting photographs; listening to and playing music; watching college football and basketball, US Women's soccer, and the Cubs; and trying to get cheap tickets to the Opera. Also, you can ask me about good food in Chicago - I've spent a decade eating my way across the city.

 

1990s Videogame History [Winter 2024]

This course will trace developments in the videogame medium and videogame cultures in the final decade of the 20th century, discuss the unique possibilities and difficulties arising from the study of recent history, and put these discussions into practice through research- based assignments. Questions that will guide our study include: what was the relationship between technological innovations and stylistic changes in the videogame medium? How did the entry of new corporate and creative players into the business affect industrial structures and strategies? What do we make of "freedom," "realism," and other concepts that dominated videogame press coverage - and how were they connected to broader cultural discourses? How did understandings of what it meant to play videogames, and the types of experiences that videogames could offer, change over the course of the decade? What was the relationship between developments in the videogame medium and other media - from film and fiction to virtual reality and the Internet? How has this decade been remembered, conceptualized, preserved, and repackaged in subsequent decades? [MAPH/Cinema and Media Studies]