DESMA 7
Critical Game Culture
Grades
3.82
Average grade awarded in DESMA 7. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
88%
of the 120 letter grades
D, F or W
0.8%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
9%
12 of 12 students passed
The registrar's own records: 120 grades over 3 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
1 of those terms is a summer session, and summer sessions are counted here.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 3 terms ran 3.81 to 3.87.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 74 · 61.7%
- A 23 · 19.2%
- A- 9 · 7.5%
- B+ 6 · 5.0%
- B 3 · 2.5%
- C+ 2 · 1.7%
- C 2 · 1.7%
- F 1 · 0.8%
- P 12 of 132
Percentages are of the 120 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P).
How the non-letter outcomes are counted
They are excluded from the GPA entirely rather than scored, because counting a P as a 4.0 would be a fabrication.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Spring 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MALABRE, SAM BAKER reviews ↗ | 3.82 | 3.82 | 51 | 1 | 86% | - | not teaching it |
| O GRADY, DAVID K reviews ↗ | 3.81 | 3.81 | 49 | 1 | 90% | - | not teaching it |
| KEEVER, JUSTIN ALEXANDER reviews ↗ | 3.85 | 3.87 | 20 | 1 | 90% | - | not teaching it |
Why Predicted is not the Raw average
“Predicted” is shrunk toward the course average, which is itself shrunk toward the department, so an instructor with a handful of students sits near the course mean rather than topping the list.
Grade records describe outcomes. For what a course is like to take, read student reviews written on dibs below or follow the separate external review link.
Workload and assignments
Work types reported in BruinWalk reviews of this course, across recorded instructors and terms. They may differ from this term's syllabus.
There are no BruinWalk reviews of this course on record as of 27 days ago, so nobody has told dibs what kind of work it sets. That is dibs holding no reviews at all, and not reviewers who wrote without mentioning the work.
What comes first
dibs has not read a class page for DESMA 7 in any term it holds, so it cannot say what comes before it.
Counted in courses rather than quarters: dibs does not know which of them a department lets you take together.
From the registrar's catalog
Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour; outside study, 11 hours. Introduction to critical issues in the culture and discourse of games. Consideration of games and game culture in relation to contemporary social issues such as economics and class, environment, violence, identity, and cross-cultural representation. Weekly focus on a different subject or topic related to games and games culture, combining reading, lecture, discussion, hands-on gameplay, and written assignments. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Spring 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking DESMA 7 was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
No student reviews are available to read on dibs for this course yet. Took it? Tell the next person what helped, what was hard, and how you spent your time.
Looking for more perspectives?
External reviews are separate and do not count toward the dibs rating.