Schedule

Week 1 | F 09/04

Introduction: Graceful Degradation

Sandy Stone, “Sex, Death, and Machinery” (in The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age)

See W1 Introduction.

Week 2 | F 09/11

Adventure Games

Nick Montfort, “Adventure and Its Ancestors” (Twisty Little Passages, ch. 3)
Lebling, P. David, Marc S. Blank, and Timothy A. Anderson, “Zork: A Computerized Fantasy Simulation Game” (IEEE Computer, April 1979, pp. 51-59)

Week 3 | F 09/18

Hyperfiction

Nick Montfort, “Zork and other Mainframe Works” (Twisty Little Passages, ch. 4)

Week 4 | F 09/25

Chatbots: A Brief History

Sarah Ciston et al., Inventing ELIZA: How The First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI (chs. TBA)

Week 5 | F 10/02

Habitat: Democracy in Cyberspace

Video: Lucasfilm’s Habitat promo

Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, “The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat” (in Cyberspace: First Steps, edited by Michael Benedikt, MIT Press, 1991, pp. 273-300)
Dibbell, Julian. “A Rape in Cyberspace.” The Village Voice, December 21, 1993.
Martin Roberts et al., Democracy in Cyberspace. MIT Communications Forum, 1994.
How to log on to LambdaMOO

Week 6 | F 10/09

Myst

Videos: Myst (2)

Week 7 | F 10/16

Second Lives

“Double Agents” (New York Times, 15 June 2007)
Thomas Malaby, Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Labs and Second Life:
- “The Product: Second Life, Capital, and the Possibility of Failure in a Virtual World” (ch. 1)
- “Knowing the Gamer from the Game” (ch. 3)
- “References”
Second Life (try setting up an account!)
LIFE 2.0 (documentary about Second Life)

Week 8 | F 10/23

VRChat

Screening: We Met in Virtual Reality (documentary, Joe Hunting, 2022)
Hyperallergic article
Hunting interview

Week 9 | F 10/30

Virtual Psychogeography

Videos: Cyberpunk 2077 (2)

Stephen Johnson, “Watch how video games are approaching perfect photorealism” (Freethink, 30 September 2023)
“The Truth About the Modded Cyberpunk 2077 Hyperrealism Fad” (Medium, 19 April 2024)
“The Ultimate Cyberpunk 2077 PC Modding Guide: Looks, Performance & Customization” (Medium, 19 April 2024)
Alexandra Sakellariou, “RDR2 Prioritizes Realism At The Expense of Playability” (Screen Rant, 7 September 2020)
Cyberpunk 2077 (Nexus Mods)
Cyberpunk 2077 YouTube playlist
inZOI

Week 10 | F 11/06

Generative Worlds

Fei Fei Li, “From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence is AI’s Next Frontier” (World Labs, 10 November 2025)
“Marble: A Multimodal World Model” (World Labs, 12 November 2025)
“3D As Code” (World Labs, 3 March 2026)

Week 11 | F 11/13

Photorealistic Worlds

“Atlas: A World Model for Spatial Intelligence” (World Labs, 1 September 2026)
“A Functional Taxonomy of World Models” (World Labs, 3 June 2026)

Week 12 | F 11/20

Agents

Introduction to Agentic AI - Claude Code, Hermes. etc.

Week 13 | F 11/27

NO CLASS (Thanksgiving recess, T 11/24 4:45 p.m. to Sun 11/29)

Week 14 | F 12/04

SIG Presentations

DEADLINE: Special Interest Group (SIG) presentations

Week 15 | F 12/11