January 10, 2008 Archives

Choose any game that you know well; analyze and evaluate it, as Koster or Laurel might. 

You will need to develop a thesis statement that makes a claim (like the one I made in the lecture, in which I argued that Pac-Man is a representation of the core values of a hunter-gatherer society).  If you need a refresher, here is some background material on thesis statements. (All this should be familiar from your freshman comp classes.)

To "analyze" is to break down into its components in order to see how the parts work together. To "evaluate" you need to investigate and weigh not only the good and bad, but also examine what you mean by "good" or "bad," who gets to choose the words that carry value, and what those words mean.

Thus, I might say that a McDonalds advertisement is "good" because it is entertaining and sells burgers, but "bad" because it encourages unhealthy eating habits. Or I might say an educational video is "good" because it accurately conveys important information, but "bad" because it is poorly acted and shoddily produced. You and I might agree on all four of these statements, but disagree as to whether the "good" outweighs the "bad."  You and I might agree, but for different reasons.

An academic study should seek out and investigate differences in opinion, not try to explain them away or pretend they don't exist.

Feel free to post your ideas here before you write your full exercise. I'll be happy to give whatever feedback I can.

Revise your portfolio, according to the feedback I have offered. Tell me how you revised your portfolio, either by e-mailing me, leaving a comment on your portfolio page, or uploading a brief statement to the slot on Turnitin.com. 

Read this online class presentation on Lara Croft, written by Leslie Rodriquez, a student who took this course the last time it was offered.

1) First, how familiar are you with Tomb Raider (as a game, movie franchise, or simply in popular culture)?  If you are not familiar with the the series, choose a different game in which gender seems to feature prominently. 

Ms. Pac Man would count, if you carefully look at the ways it differs from Pac Man... despite the feminist "Ms" she is still defnind as a kind of "Pac Man" -- not a separate construct called "Pac Woman."  But some branches of the Galatea storyline lend themselves well to a gender-based analysis.

2) Whether you choose Tomb Raider or something else, look at your game through the lenses Laurel supplies... that is, examine the game not based on whether you personally would choose to play it during your leisure time, but rather apply Laurel's lenses and evaluate the game based on what it has to offer in terms of values, role-models, depictions of power, and the kinds of stories it tells.

3) Come up with a thesis -- a claim, framed in such a way that it invites discussion. 

Make a claim about your chosen game, following a general formula such as "Although [examples that work against the claim I am going to make], [details 1, 2, and 3] suggest that [here's where you put the claim].  

A claim like "The sky is blue" or "Hitler is evil" is not really worth arguing about; neither is "Point-and-click games are more relaxing than button-mashing games," since that's just an opinion that depends completely on your personal definition of what means to play a relaxing game. 

Since there are so few female video game protagonists to choose from, it is appropriate to feel grateful to Midway/Naamco for creating Ms. Pac-Man, who can in her game do anything and everything that Pac-Man can do in his game.  Because the ghosts in Ms. Pac-Man move randomly rather than in set patterns, and because there are more portals that the player can use to teleport from one side of the screen to the other, Ms. Pac-Man require more lateral thinking and more multitasking -- skills that women are traditionally better at than men. However, the animation sequences that take place between levels, depicting a growing relationship between Ms. Pac-Man and Pac Man, and culminating in a stork's delivery of a baby Pac, reinforce a traditional hierarchy.  The world of Pac-Man has meaning in and of itself.  Only when that circle is changed through the addition of red lipstick or a bow can a generic yellow circle take on female characteristics, but note that Pac Man sports no icons of masculinity, such as a mustache or tie; when we see his pure form as a featureless yellow circle, we are expected to accept him as male. Like the "Ms" in the title and the pink color of the maze walls, both the game and the between-level animations are an echo that depends for meaning on the existence of the masculine world, and as such the game is hardly a feminist landmark, but rather a cynical attempt to get quarters from women.

I think that thesis is a bit strong -- I'm really only making this claim in order to demonstrate the difference between writing a response and offering  a claim.  In fact, the history of Ms. Pac Man is even richer than that, in that it began as an unauthorized hack that caused some legal troubles for its creators. If I were working this claim into a full paper I might note the ways in which Ms Pac-Man improves on the original game.

I'm not actually asking you to flesh your thesis out into a full paper; rather, I hope you will make a claim that sparks a discussion.

As part of the discussion, remember to read what your peers have to say, and offer thoughtful commentary.