Author: Jay

The podcast is another absurd and novel assignment, but this assignment intrigued me in a way that it allowed me and my partner to discuss about our favorite game. It did not take more than a minute to choose the game, since I already knew that Nick has an interest in the soccer and the virtual soccer videogame, FIFA. We both have played this game ever since we were young, so we both were excited to work on this assignment and delve into FIFA. I have never expected myself to talk or write about FIFA in writing class. Because the subject was so familiar to both of us, we first thought that the process of producing the episode would not be complicated. We both though that we could spontaneously produce the podcast opposing Ian Bogost’s idea about the music in video game. However, it turned out that we could not complete the episode without the script. The content itself was not argumentative and well structured enough that there was no flow, since it was based on what we talked improvisationally.  After unsuccessful recordings, we made the decision to write a solid script that allowed our content to be as argumentative as any other essay. Based on the research on the Internet and the Ian Bogost book, we incorporated ideas from different resources into one solid argument, which is that FIFA is considerate in choosing the soundtracks of the videogame. Through its soundtrack, FIFA supports diversity and acceptance. We both really liked our main thesis, because even though Nick and I are from totally different cultures and countries, we share a common value: the acceptance of each other, which underlies our main argument of Podcast.

Nick and I were good partners in a sense that each of us did not split up tasks, but rather we worked all together from brainstorming to writing script. It was really fruitful and productive to work with Nick. Our collaboration worked really well as a team.

 

In regards of writing an essay about wolf in white van novel, there were so many arguments I wanted to make that even my friends who were watching me writing the essay advised me to write as simple as possible, or otherwise I would be trapped with my own thoughts. With that advice, for the first draft, I just figured out what I need to say, instead of where my controlling idea was going to end up.

Then, we had a great opportunity to peer review each other’s works. This allowed me to gain more insights into my own essay not only from receiving comments from the peer, but also from understanding the expectation of the audience as I read my peer’s essay. The peer review helped me so much that I try to revise my argument in such a way that other people can easily understand.

My final essay can be found here.

At first, I had trouble organizing my thoughts about what was happening in the book. Once I started to realize what was going, I first thought that this book was similar to the games we had played before: Dys4ia and Depression Quest in a sense that the book and the games put readers and users in the shoes of people in social isolation.

Because of disfigured face from the accident, people did not treat Sean as they normally do to other people. I noticed several parts where Sean realized that some people did not want to confront his face. This impacted Sean to start isolating himself further from the society. As I was reading through the book,

Isolation in the hospital drove him to think internally and imagine creatively. Based on these thoughts, Sean wrote down what he thought and made it into the text-based game. Through this game, he was able to communicate with other people and stay connected. However, he never knew the outcome of it: causing a death of an adolescent. What Sean did was to break the isolation made by the society and wrote down his thoughts formed in the period of the isolation, but there was a trial to decide if Sean was responsible for one’s death. However, in this part, I felt odd that the society should be eligible of the death for causing Sean to fill up his internal world.

Dys4ia was very speedy and its art and graphics were low-leveled, compared to other games we have played this semester. Because the game was too colorful and the process of going to next scenes was too quick, I barely had time to think about the intention of each scene. And some of scenes were too abstract. In between the different scenarios, there were different short games we could play along, but I could not get the meaning and the intention of the game developers and their relevance to the game.

Depression Quest was like a literature novel, but with more freedom assigned to the readers. Depending on the circumstances, users had options to choose following actions. Indeed, as I was choosing every decision for the character, I felt more personally connected to the game. Since I was making decisions based on thinking what decision would this person make, the messages, Depression Quest trying to make, came to me more powerful and made me to reflected on the issue even after the game.

Even though Dys4ia processed too quickly and the details of it were too abstract, overall, I was able to get the purpose of this game. It tries to show the feelings of ones in sexual issue to those people who do not understand. Indeed, Depression Quest is a very similar game in addressing a social issue, depression.

In that sense, I think both Dys4ia and Depression Quest can be considered as artgames. Both games want users to understand the changes in feeling of ones going through sexual issue or depression issue through the indirect experiences.

But, I wish Dys4ia were less colorful and slower than the way it is now. Those two parts might disturb some users from getting the meaning of the game.

 

 

 

Unlike the Beginner’s Guide, Her Story was not a complicated game. Though it was a new type of game and I was puzzled when first encountered it, once I figure out what to do, it is very straightforward: finding out what happened to the missing man, Simon. I thought the setting of this game is brilliant in a sense that as users have access to data that can only be accessed by authorities, like police officers or detectives. Users are unaffectedly placed in the shoe of the authorities to solve the mystery raised in the videos, despite the fact that the shoes were not those of detectives, but those of Eve’s daughter. This really surprised me because I was firmly immersed in the role of a detective. Another reason I was so immersed is that users never get to see the women that she is talking with. Clearly, the women in the videos were being interrogated by whom they were talking to. I am not sure if the game developers intended to design it this way, but I felt as if they were talking to me, which made me to immerse more in the role of a ‘detective’.

Women in the video, Hannah and Eve, were giving out evidences, so our role was to piece them together to unveil what happened to the missing man, Simon, like detectives do. The Beginner’s Guide favors procedural rhetoric in a way that there are reasons for the order of the various games so the users can figure out the purpose or the intention of the game developers. Meanwhile, Her Story threw off nonlinear evidences, and even those evidences were offered freely. Users had to input specific keywords to search for the words-related videos. Going over the videos, users have the responsibilities to link the nonlinear evidences to solve the mystery of the missing man. I really like the game, Her Story, in a sense that users get assigned with more freedom, the freedom to think about keywords and to connect the evidences to build up the story.

I received an assignment, called Unpacking Manuel’s Tavern. Each of students gets assigned an image or a banner without knowing much about that object, and write about the representation of the object. I was assigned an image of Manuel Maloof, the former CEO of Dekalb County and the owner of Manuel’s owner at the lectern with MARTAlogo. I wish I could have done the reverse image, but no other images have been found. So, with the keyword, Manuel Maloof and MARTA, I have done research about it. At first, I could not find relevant information for a while, so I asked my professor for help. With the help of the professor, eventually, I found some great resources and the relationship between Maloof and MARTA. This process seemed to be similar to inductive thinking, as in the aspect of expanding an idea from a small beginning. My write-up can be found here.