A new Video Games Studies Minor at Oakland University launched this fall, and its first public act was not a syllabus dump or a keynote. It was a "Video Game Confessional Booth" in the Oakland Center, running Sept. 14-18, where students sat down and spoke honestly about artificial intelligence in video games. Per The Oakland Post, the booth was part of "Play/Create/Critique," a series hosted by the new minor, and the recordings will be edited into a video for future events.
Why does a campus event matter to people who mostly care about patch notes and tournament meta? Because game criticism has been arguing about AI from the outside — hot takes, forum threads, boycott threads. A degree program built to teach students how to think about games as media, and to do it through structured reflection rather than slogans, is a different instrument. It treats players as participants in the debate, not an audience for it. That is the shift worth watching, and it is one reason we keep an eye on the wider culture around games, not just the scores. This connects to our earlier piece, Is Rainbow Six Siege esports in better shape than people think?.
The minor itself launched this fall through OU's Department of Communication, Journalism and Public Relations. According to The Oakland Post, it is an interdisciplinary program meant to help students explore games as an increasingly influential form of media while picking up skills that transfer across creative and professional fields. In plain terms: not a programming degree, not a design portfolio mill — a media-studies degree with games at the center. For related coverage, see Did Overwatch esports actually rebuild itself after the League collapsed?.
Why a confessional booth instead of a panel?
Because the organizers did not want consensus, they wanted range. Sam Srauy, Associate Professor of Communication and Coordinator of Digital Media and Production, told The Oakland Post that "whenever you get seemingly contradictory ideas, that usually means there is something more nuanced to be learned." The format was chosen deliberately. "As a confessional, we wanted to evoke the idea that they aren't expected to conform to any particular answer," Srauy said. "We wanted them to speak from the heart."
That design choice is the analytically interesting part. A panel would have produced positions. A confessional produces ambivalence, and ambivalence is closer to how most players actually feel. The organizers reported a genuine split: some students worry people are leaning too hard on AI, others are uneasy about its growing role in creative fields at all. Per The Oakland Post, the goal was "to explore that and give them a voice."
What students actually said about AI in games
The recorded reactions cut both ways, which is the point. Israel Cameron, an accounting major who visited the booth, did not hedge. "I don't like it," he said of AI use in games. "It diminishes creativity." His prescription was consumer-side: "If you are noticing that your favorite creators or games are becoming AI-slapped, you've got to stop supporting it."
That is a striking position for an event hosted by an academic program, because it is a market argument, not an ethical abstract. Cameron is describing a feedback loop: players notice, players withdraw spending, developers respond. Whether that loop works is an open question, but it is the same logic that drives review-bombing campaigns and refund discourse — pressure applied through purchase decisions. Anyone who reads our reviews coverage knows we treat monetization and player trust as part of the product, and this is that argument extended to production methods.
AI is already in the pipeline — the debate is about how
Bridget Kies, Associate Professor of Film Studies and Production and one of the event coordinators, framed the stakes plainly. "AI has already impacted every aspect of video game creation, but how it's used is what gets debated as acceptable or not," she told The Oakland Post. That is the honest baseline. The question stopped being "will AI touch game development" some time ago. It is now a question of where in the process it sits, whether it displaces people, and whether players can tell.
Both organizers pushed back on a binary verdict. "It's never all good or all bad," Kies said. Srauy's version was more actionable: "By helping to shape how it's used, or not, is a way of participation that they can meaningfully do right now." Read together, the program's position is that students are not just future employees of the industry — they are present-tense stakeholders in how its tools get used.
What happens to the footage — and why it matters
The conversations do not end in the booth. Per The Oakland Post, Kies said the recordings will be compiled into a video "showing the different kinds of reactions the OU community has to video games and AI." It will screen at a future Play/Create/Critique event, alongside game design projects from the series' workshops, so attendees can compare stated attitudes with things students actually made.
That pairing — opinions on one wall, artifacts on another — is quietly the most rigorous thing here. It is the same test any critic applies: what you say about games versus what your choices show. A program that builds that comparison into its own event series is teaching evaluation, not just appreciation.
The takeaway for players outside the classroom
The honest conclusion is modest. One minor at one university will not settle the AI debate, and the organizers are not trying to — their stated goal, per The Oakland Post, is a "more nuanced discussion," not a verdict. But the shape of the thing is the signal. Games are now serious enough as media that universities build programs around them, and the first question those programs ask students is not "what do you like" but "what do you accept."
For players, the useful move is the one Cameron named: pay attention to how the games you buy are made, and let that inform what you support. For the field, watch whether this model — reflection first, judgment later — spreads. If it does, the next generation of critics, developers, and yes, reviewers, will arrive having already practiced the conversation the rest of the industry is still fumbling through.
