Author: Daniel

Kino Maravillas and I chose Battlefield 4 as the game to focus our podcast on. Battlefield 4 came out in 2013 and sold over 7 million copies worldwide. Battlefield 4 was created by Swedish developers DICE under Electronic Arts. The game is a first person shooter game, so the mechanics of it consist of controlling a character as he or she completes tasks in battle. Unlike other first person shooter games, Battlefield 4 focuses on creating as realistic battle situations as it can. This objective translates to every part of the game from sound and visual effects to the actual game play. In contrast with a game like Call of Duty where your main objective is to kill as many of your opponents as possible, Battlefield consists of more team oriented goals such as capturing command posts, diffusing bombs, and attacking the enemy as a unit.

We decided to use the terms Drill and Empathy from Bogost’s How to Do Things with Video Games. In Bogost’s book he says that games are better at teaching us things than other mediums like video and written text are. In this same way, an individual is engrossed in Battlefield 4 far more than they would be if they were reading war novels or a film on battle. This creates a more realistic atmosphere if the game is done right. We argued that the creators of Battlefield 4 did a wonderful job in creating this realistic atmosphere. Battlefield 4 also fits with another Bogost term, empathy. The game puts the player in a situation far different from their everyday life and allows them to play another role. The real life visual and audio effects make the player feel like they are actually experiencing the situations they are. This makes them empathize with a soldier or someone who would be in this role in their occupation.

In terms of the nuts and bolts of creating the podcast, it was a little more difficult than I had anticipated. Kino and I put in a lot of work analyzing the chapters and connecting them to Battlefield, and we thought that we would be able to talk freely without a script. After several takes did not turn out the way we wanted, we transitioned into typing out a loose script to help determine who would talk when and which ideas we would talk about. The editing process was time consuming, but not very difficult to figure out how to work. Kino had the idea of adding the Battlefield theme music in the background, which turned out great.

The creation of our podcast was very similar to writing an essay, except we were obviously speaking the thoughts instead of writing them. The assignment helped me to satisfy the “Critical Thinking and Reading Resulting in Writing” learning outcome for the class. Kino and I had to work together to analyze Bogost’s chapters, while also analyzing Battlefield 4 as we played. We then had to synthesize all of the thoughts we had into an argument and articulate them. The podcast assignment also encouraged the “Collaboration” learning outcome for the class, because Kino and I had to rely on each other and would not have been able to get the assignment done without each other’s help.

Photo: Battlefield 4 (13) by Videogame Photography

I found the writing process for my Wolf in White Van essay to be difficult, but helpful. Darnielle’s novel was a complicated one that was difficult to dissect. Through the writing process, I learned more about Sean and Lance and how Darnielle attempted to portray them. I also learned some about where I am as a writer. I found it extremely helpful to not only have someone read and make suggestions on my draft, but also to do this for one of my classmate’s essays. Through reading someone else’s essay on the same prompt it opened up my mind to new ways of thinking about the same story. If you want to read my final draft of my essay click here.

The experience of playing Fiasco was very new for me. I have played many different types of games before, but a role-playing game was not one of them. Fiasco, unlike most role-playing games, does not have a game master to help facilitate game-play. While having a game master may have helped us get the game started, the two other people in my group were also first time players, so none of us were qualified to be game master had there been one. The first thirty minutes of the time we had allotted to play the game consisted of the three of us on our laptops looking at video tutorials and scanning over the instructions to try to fully comprehend how to start the game. We eventually found out how to properly set up our game and were able to get started playing.

We chose the suburban play set, but our story was far from ordinary suburban life. Our plot developed around an intricate drug dealing operation out of the local supermarket where I, along with my two partners, worked. My character, aptly named Pablo Escobar, was one of the members of our three-ring drug dealing business. The other two members were my separated spouse and my stepfather, the other two players in the game. All of these details were set before any of us began to take turns and layout how the scenes took place. The effort that we put in before the game started allowed for much easier, creative story telling once we began. It was like we had created the outline for something and needed to fill out the interior. I strategically chose to resolve for my first and second turn, so that I could make sure I got both a white and black die. I was trying to play the game the safe way and was doing all I could to protect my character to allow him to come out on top. However, once we hit the tilt, where we robbed the store where we worked and were on the run, I reevaluated my game strategy. I no longer was concentrated on keeping my character away from harm, but instead wanted to help create the most interesting story I could. I ended up rolling double zeros after my 4 turns and had the worst aftermath I could have possibly gotten, but that gave me the freedom to turn things south for my character in the darkest way possible.

The most interesting part of writing a Fiasco story was how we all bounced ideas off each other and collaborated to create the final product. Someone would start their turn and another one of us would add thoughts as they came into our head and we would begin to piece together an engaging turn. We all had different things we wanted to get out of the story and, through the structure of the game, we were able to not only entertain ourselves for a couple hours, but also create a hilarious narrative of three drug dealers living in suburbia.

I have started reading Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle. The novel is not in chronological order and is told in first person through the experiences of the narrator, Sean Phillips. After attempting suicide, Sean has to live with self inflicted, facial disfigurement that makes it hard for him to fit in with everyday society. Sean’s main connections to the real world now are through a role-playing game that Sean runs. Players send letters to Sean and he responds giving them choices of actions to take. The plot of the game is created in his imagination. Through the first seventy five pages of the novel the most important quote in my opinion is when Sean thinks, “In video games you sometimes run into what they call a side quest, and if you don’t manage to figure it out you can usually just go back into the normal world of the game and continue on toward your objective. I felt like I couldn’t find my way back to the world now: like I was somebody locked in a meaningless side quest, in a stuck screen” (Darnielle.48). I found this particular quote significant to the novel because it helps the reader to understand how Sean thinks and how his life has changed post injury. Sean simplifies things in the real world to something that he understands better, like gaming. As a reader this quote is interesting because we see the clear division between real life and games, but Sean tries to connect the two. It is possible that since real life is more complex than a game, Sean feels pushed away even more.

 

Works Cited:

Darnielle, John. Wolf in White Van. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014. Print.

Photograph of John Darnielle by Mark Leary found on Flickr

I have started reading Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle. The novel is not in chronological order and is told in first person through the experiences of the narrator, Sean Phillips. After attempting suicide, Sean has to live with self inflicted, facial disfigurement that makes it hard for him to fit in with everyday society. Sean’s main connections to the real world now are through a role-playing game that Sean runs. Players send letters to Sean and he responds giving them choices of actions to take. The plot of the game is created in his imagination. Through the first seventy five pages of the novel the most important quote in my opinion is when Sean thinks, “In video games you sometimes run into what they call a side quest, and if you don’t manage to figure it out you can usually just go back into the normal world of the game and continue on toward your objective. I felt like I couldn’t find my way back to the world now: like I was somebody locked in a meaningless side quest, in a stuck screen” (Darnielle.48). I found this particular quote significant to the novel because it helps the reader to understand how Sean thinks and how his life has changed post injury. Sean simplifies things in the real world to something that he understands better, like gaming. As a reader this quote is interesting because we see the clear division between real life and games, but Sean tries to connect the two. It is possible that since real life is more complex than a game, Sean feels pushed away even more.

 

Works Cited:

Darnielle, John. Wolf in White Van. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014. Print.

Photograph of John Darnielle by Mark Leary found on Flickr

The controlling idea for my revised analysis of my Manuel’s Tavern sign was to find the connections the sign had to the tavern and how this could have influenced the decision to put the sign on the wall. I researched the histories of Manuel’s Tavern, Budweiser, and the “When Gentlemen Agree…” sign, and found the intricate ways that they connected. I also scrutinized the sign to try and determine its message. Once I better understood all of this information, I could make inferences on why the sign was picked to be in the tavern. Only in my final draft was I able to connect the meaning of the sign to Manuel Maloof’s life and to what his tavern represents.

This assignment satisfied almost all of the learning outcomes of the class. The first learning outcome the Manuel’s Tavern project helped me to accomplish was rhetorical composition. One of the most important parts of the project and one of the hardest parts to keep in mind while composing my analysis was the different audience I was writing for. I was not writing my post for my classmates who were also doing an item off of the tavern wall, but writing for individuals on the internet who will go to examine items on Manuel’s Tavern walls. I did not want to assume that my audience knew as much background knowledge on either the tavern or the sign as I did going in. This meant I needed to explain the history and meaning of things even though they might seem obvious to some. Another class learning outcome that was addressed was writing as a process. I did not fully understand the meaning of the “When Gentlemen Agree…” sign until I finished my first draft and returned to the research step of the writing process. This project wasn’t as simple as going with my initial thoughts and sticking with them, but instead meant hearing the ideas of my fellow classmates and teacher and changing my ideas based off of the constructive feedback I received from them.

After completing the Manuel’s Tavern project I am most proud of creating something that not only impacts myself and my learning, but something that hopefully is used by Manuel’s Tavern to teach people about one of the items in their bar. I feel like it will be nice to have something I wrote put out there in the world instead of being restricted to just the classroom setting.