Assignment

This assignment asks you to consider a topic of personal interest as it pertains to digital games. Given the comparatively limited scholarly literature on video games, it may be difficult to find sources you can use as part of your arguments. Feel free to borrow from other media theory/criticism you may have encountered if it helps you with the argument(s) you would like to make. Feel free to use web sources, but be careful about the credibility of the information collected from the INTERNET.

Instructions

Select a digital game or a digital game genre (e.g. rogue-like) you find interesting and with which you are familiar. Following from the work we have done and the research we have read, perform a textual analysis of this game or of the game genre's features to make an argument about what it is communicating. Use sources from the first half of the course to guide your thinking about your selected games. Your game of choice need not be recent, however, more recent games have the potential to give you more to talk about. Your ultimate goal is to make an argument about what your chosen game or game genre means.

The only games that cannot be addressed are those we have discussed in class, in readings and/or those from the following list: Wii Sports, games from the Mario Bros./Super Mario Bros. family, games from the Pac-man family, and The Sims. Please check with me if you are unsure about your potential choice.

You might consider some of the following questions as a way into making your argument (you cannot cover all with the space you have to work with):

a) What signs (visual, auditory, tactile) does the game provide players? What do these signs mean? How do you know? What is significant about the game's signs? b) Which approach will you take to your game? A more narratological approach like, for example, Cassar? A more ludological approach like, for example, Frasca? c) How might I combine Konzack's terms with a Cassar-like narratological approach? Or, how might combine Konzack's terms with a Frasca-like ludological approach?

d) What kinds of interactivity does the game offer? What is significant about the game's form of interactivity?

e) What are the rules of the game? What do these rules teach us about the game's meaning/ideology?

f) How does your game position its audience? What does the game suggest is the ideal audience/player for the game? How does this ideal player think and what kinds of things does this player think about? How does this ideal audience/player influence what the game means? How do you know?

g) What kinds of ideologies does the game communicate? What is it saying about the world? Why does this game appear in its specific historical context? For example, with the last question, if we were analyzing Pac-man, we might ask why it was popular in the early 1980s.

h) What might be some of the implications of this ideology? How might players be influenced by it? How do you respond to this ideology? Do you agree with the worldview being conveyed by the game? Why or why not?

These questions are not a checklist to answer one by one. It is not required that you answer each and every one of these questions either. Your task is use some of these questions to craft an argument what your selected game means and why. This argument will need to be supported by evidence from the game itself and, where applicable, from the culture in which the game appears (remember Geertz here). Journal articles from the library databases can help you with the latter.

In order to successfully complete this assignment, you will need to be extremely familiar with your game of choice. That may not necessarily mean "finishing" the game in every case, but it will mean that you should likely have spent a considerable amount of time exploring the variety of options and scenarios the game affords its players. Given the time required to play the game, you will thereby spend much less time searching for secondary sources to supplement your analysis of the game, but these sources can still go a long way in enriching the depth of your argument.

The second half of the class should provide you some additional ways to approach this assignment and give you some examples of what this assignment will look like when complete.

Final Considerations

This assignment is not asking you to perform a game review. Game reviews can be found all over the internet and explain what makes a given game good or bad, fun or not fun. Typically, these reviews talk about the game's graphics, sound and story. Your ESSAY will likely talk about these kinds of things, but it is more important that you think about your game as more than just a game. Your analysis will be different from a review by the way you get to the broader significance of graphics, sound, story, game mechanics, etc. It is not enough to just talk about these details. Your analysis should get at what makes these design choices important for understanding the cultural meaning of your chosen game. Like the authors we will look at in the second half of the course, aim to think philosophically to get at bigger issues that go beyond whether or not the game is fun.

Put some real time and effort into this exercise. The more work you do on this project before the final month of the semester, the less you will have to do when all your class work starts to snowball.

Your essays should:

-- have a thesis (remember that you're making an argument).
-- be proofread. If you don't, I will. Your spell checker is not always the answer.
-- be sure to italicize game titles as they are proper names
-- go through several drafts. Nothing comes out right the first time!
-- have evidence to substantiate your points, whether quoted, paraphrased, or simply mentioned.
-- argue rather than simply assert. An argument gives reasons and evidence; an assertion just states something without any backing.

You'll be graded holistically (not by a point system for various aspects) on such dimensions as the clarity of the writing, the coherence of the argument, the organization of the essay, excellence in style, and creativity and originality.

Length: 6-8 pages with works cited page separate (I won't read beyond page 8), typed, double-spaced, 12 point font (no smaller!), with page numbers.

Citations: Please follow APA style guidelines (however, no abstract or title page will be necessary) for citing sources and for creating a bibliography.