Description: You will need to choose a game, or genre of games, to play on a digital medium. Analyze the game(s) to see how they are constructed and how they act as communication. You need to describe all the context areas below. Include other questions to guide your analysis. Using your answers to the questions below, construct a critical argument about your game or a genre of games (5-6 page, double spaced paper) in relation to learning new media.
Use these questions as a starting point for your critique of your artifacts. Note any other information that you discover:
1) Describe the artifacts: What are they? Who “made” them? For what purpose? What context(s) did you find each of them in? Who has access to this/these context(s)? Who does not? (you may need to visit the library for this one. J)
2) System Appraisal:
a) What game are you analyzing? What is appealing about the game? Why? What is not appealing about the game? Why?
b) What console are you analyzing? What is appealing about the console? Why? What is not appealing about the game? Why?
c) What choices does the game/console allow you to make? Can you create your own character? Can you choose the level of game play? Can you choose how your character interacts with the storyline/narrative? What possibilities and limitations do these things allow?
3) Perspective Analysis:
a) What values appear to be embodied in the game and/or console? How do you know this?
b) What learning style(s) or intelligences does the game/genre appear to be privileging? What indicated this to you?
c) What socially and culturally constructed ideas does one have to accept in order to play the game and/or console? What does this suggest about your agency as a player? What does this suggest about the assumptions held by the creators of the game? Who do they think is most likely to play?
d) What is a/the narrative offered by the game and/or console?
i. What are the character “choices” in the game? What roles do they (you) play?
ii. Where is the location of/scene for the game? What agency do you have in selecting how you/your character interacts with that space?
iii. What is the/a plot in the game? What agency do you have in relationship to the unfolding of the plot?
Goal: To analyze a video game/system to better understand its creators’ perspective and the game’s context and where you and others fit within those structures.
Purpose: To understand the historical and cultural location of games and consoles and how that might influence learning.
Audience and Context: Your instructor and peers at Michigan Tech. I encourage you to use a first-person, narrative style.
Due Date: End of Week 14
