Oops. Looks like I chose the wrong topic after all. No longer seems at all interesting or new to me. Now do I throw out 2000 words and start again, soldier on, or try to salvage it somehow? But how to salvage 2000 words in a meaningful way..?
Dec
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2008
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2008
lol, that’s the position I was in last night. I love that sinking feeling though, provided its seldom. I decided to soldier on, and through desperate searching came across a little more but still not enough. I have everything I want to say in about 2500 words. I wonder could I wrap it up acceptably in 4000…
The scope of this essay requires more than 1 week of forethought
Though your subject matter does sound interesting, and by the looks of your plan, there are a lot of topics worth exploring. Maybe you could look at cultural realism/accuracy in games, like the way modern games portray certain cultures and the lasting sub-conscious effect. Or maybe not
Excellent advice. I think what I need to to break away from the purely technical aspect of the topic. Thanks!
Is there anyone who is not spending way too long on this dame essay?
Wow, that’s an impressive list of areas to cover. I think that you are definitely onto something with regards to the getting away from the purely technical aspect for a bit. I was reading up a bit on game violence and the possible negative effects on the player and as I went off on yet another tangent I read something that was “slightly” applicable to my essay (seeing as I spend some time reading it I will try to fit it in
). It may be something you could look into in yours? Here it is anyways..
The Janet Murray (that we were laughing at with her comments on “Tetris” was wrote something quite interesting in her book (Hamlet on the Holodeck), it was reference in the “The Game Design Reader” book that Liam recommended at the start of the semester.
“Murray (Murray, 1998) proposes three aesthetic categories for the analysis of interactive story experience: immersion, agency and transformation (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003)”
The category that might be of interest to you would be “Transformation”. Basically when playing the game you become the player character, and (this is my own interpretation) if you take GTA (of course) as an example you become Nico. As the player characters have a background and are placed in a specific setting you take on there characteristic (maybe this is reaching a bit…).
I would not consider myself a violent person but when I was playing GTA I still remember that when I caught up with the guy who double crossed me I let him have it… I kind of became a “bad ass” if you get my point?
Nico and many of the player characters in these types of games are violent people in a violent setting, the transformation that Murray was talking about “could possible” (this is my reading of it!!) meaning that when you play the games the level and realise of the violence that you will accept is dependent on the level of transformation?? Hope that this is of some help to you…. good luck with it
Awesome sauce, James! Thanks!