January 15, 2008 Archives

Post a new entry on your blog, and highlight the best work you have done since the last blogging portfolio was due. There will be fewer entries this time, so depth and interaction are important.

This exercise is a quick check to make sure you have the research skills that will be necessary to do well on your term paper. If you've taken STW, then this will be a simple review.

A habit you may have learned in high school is to write a full draft of a paper that supports the point that you want to make, and then "finding quotes" from scholarly sources that agree with your position. But that defeats the purpose of writing a research paper... you're supposed to learn as you research... maybe you'll even change your mind, based on the information and argument you encounter. So, before I ask you to come up with a thesis for your research paper, I'm going to ask you to show me that you know how to find and read academic articles.

1. Find a peer-reviewed academic article on a topic of video game studies that closely interests you.  Some online journals include Game Studies, Kairos, and Games and Culture, but you will also find articles about games in many other journals. (I found 278 hits for peer-reviewed, full-text articles containing the words "video game" in the EBSCOhost database at Reeves Library... there are far fewer when I search for specific games, but as you'll see, it's OK if you can't find any articles written about the game you want to study. Supply a full MLA-style reference for the article.
2. Quote the author's main thesis. (That is, what is the single main claim that this author makes?)
3. What evidence does the author use in order to support the main idea? Please don't go through my list and answer "yes" or "no" for each pf the following suggestions... my goal is to get you to think about what evidence the authors are offering.
• Has the author conducted a scientific experiment, putting 50 kids in a room with video games and 50 kids in a room with TV, and then counted how many fights broke out?
  
• Did the author merely ask the parents of the kids to answer a survey about the level of aggression the kids showed?
  
• Did the author show 20 girls games about war and 20 boys games about make-up, and then interview the kids afterwards to see what they thought? 
  
• Did the author spend 6 months playing the game as a guild with other researchers, in oder to gain first-hand evidence?
  
• Is the author quoting from scholarly works, published reviews, interviews with gamers, Congressional testimony, or dialogue contained in the games?
  
4. What alternative or opposing ideas does the author reject (in order to build up support for the main idea)?
5. What are the sources for the author's presentation of evidence that works against the author's thesis?
   
6. How does an academic article differ from 6A) a traditional game review, and 6B) New Games Journalism?
   

http://www.fatworld.org/

Download it (for PC or Mac), play it, and use your knowledge of games (from Koster, Laurel, Juul, Aarseth, and other sources we have read) to analyze it. Take a look at the course objectives on the syllabus page, and do your best to demonstrate your ability to apply what you have learned.  

For tomorrow's discussion, construct a well-thought-out thesis statement, which makes a non-obvious claim (something deeper than "This game is fun/boring" or "This game makes a point about food").  Make a claim that a reasonable person might disagree with, rather than issuing a polished, carved-in-stone pronouncement that only a fool would dare challenge. Quote the exact words of the sources you consult; include the page number of the direct quote.  All this is practice for the skills you'll need to develop a good term paper.

The in-game tutorial is long, and it's not immediately clear how to exit out of some windows (the circle with the X in it is not close enough to where the information is listed), and when the message "enter" appears on the screen, I keep wanting to push the "enter" button (rather than space, which is what the game expects). Feel free to post your initial reactions about playing this game.