An English major playing a video game to analyze its narrative, a psychology student studying their peers for the physiological effects of gameplay and a student creating their own video game for computer sciences—this is a vision of what could happen within a Hamline-based “game lab,” according to English Professor Jen England.

England, who is currently teaching Studies in American Literatures: Digital Games as Rhetorical and Cultural Artifacts, offered not only reasons to bring video games to Hamline as texts, but also what she would like to see as the future of video games on the Hamline campus.

England believes that games serve an important function not only for study, but because of their importance to overall society, culture and contemporary issues.

“I think that (video games)

do a lot of work that they’re not always given credit for,” England said. “I think there’s a lot going on culturally with what is happening in games and how games are created. I think there’s a lot of good narrative work that’s going on in games. I think games afford a truly interdisciplinary approach to study.”

While there is currently no concrete plan to provide access to games as part of Hamline’s curriculum, England offered several possibilities for the creation of resources for the study of video games as texts.

“One of the things that I would like to see is sort of similar to what DMA has with their computer labs, but it would be a games lab,” England said. “[It] would have a mix of gaming laptops, a couple gaming computers, some dedicated with Steam accounts for playing, others dedicated for creating.”

England explained that this kind of classroom space would not only “be great [for students in general], but would also