GTA in the classroom: At the college, they started a course that explains modern America through the game

Professor Tore Olsson, in statements carried by the media, says that video games are a “generational bridge” and that they can encourage students to engage more with the material. The emphasis is not on playing GTA in a lecture ‘for fun’, but rather on topics that GTA often provokes, such as crime, media, consumerism, moral panic, police and urban life, to open up conversations and analyzes of modern American society.

Olsson is not new to this approach. At UT, he previously developed a course that looks at American history through other games, especially through Red Dead Redemption, and in 2024 he published the book ‘Red Dead’s History’. UT’s announcement about his work emphasizes that through Red Dead, he used games as a way to bring students closer to topics from the American past, especially violence and wider social processes.

An interesting detail is that Olsson himself on the official UT website announces this GTA course as the new HIST 150 and states that it focuses on the period ‘from 1980 onwards’ and the transformations that changed the USA. In the same description, he also mentions that he spoke about the course in an interview with IGN back in September 2025, which means that the project was planned for a long time, and not that it was created overnight as a viral sensation.