I approached this assignment similar to the first one, but the difference was that this time I had a clear idea of what I wanted to write from the beginning. I have a very personal history with games, so it was not very hard to write about my experiences as a gamer. In my narrative I contrast the time in my life before and after I played my first videogame. Remembering my life before I was able to play games was tough, as a lot of it was pretty bleak. I worked a lot and had little to no fun. My only real escape was reading, and as I explained, it was not really enough. I distinctly remembered my first game because it really was an important time in my life. I honestly have mostly good memories from my time with cancer, mostly because that was the time games came into my life, and I grew a greater attraction with books. Being in a hospital bed for weeks really helps you focus on building on yourself, and that’s what I did. My first game, Super Scribblenauts, was the perfect first game for me. It allowed me to use my experiences with reading to help other characters by typing in words and making them come to life. In doing this I was able to grow as a person. In writing this narrative, I learned more about how games can help people grow by calling on my past experiences.
Just started playing Gone Home. The opening screen shows a house in the forest during the night. The opening music is very ominous, so I speculate that this game is going to be very tense.
7:14 pm
Opening sequence: I was honestly pretty scared during the opening sequence. I could still hear the ominous music playing over the rain and occasional thunder which raised my heartbeat. There were also a few occasions where I heard the door creak, the wind gets louder, and the lights flicker from the inside of the room. The use of an audio message from the first-person narrator to her mom was a good way to establish character. It was nice how I could attribute a voice and personality to the character. I spent a few minutes looking around the front porch for more items, but I only found the key. I think the rest of the game will also be scary for me, although the sound of rain and thunder will be softer inside the house.
7:30 pm
In the main room: The first thing I did was go to the bathroom because it was the closest room. There was not much there. I also looked through the right closet, but I didn’t find anything. On a desk, to the left of the stairwell, I found a note claiming that my neighbor daniel was weird, and wanted our house back. There was also a message left on the phone desperately asking for Sam. I will most likely go left to see what I can find before going up the stairs.
7:50 pm
I checked the first drawer and found an obituary for the man that most likely owned this house before. In the closet next to it, I found a list and a journal entry implying that Sam might be depressed.
8:05
Inside the TV room: There was no door to this room, and the TV was on, so that really creeped me out. I looked through the room and there was another journal entry from Samyalking about making friends. Our dad, Terry, seems to be an editor of some kind. He also seems to be obsessed with JFK. I will go to the room next.
8:30
Secret room: I went into the secret room and it was really weird at first. I thought it must have been from Oscar, but it ended up being from Sam too. There was a strange red light in one of the rooms, I will check that out next.
9:30
Honestly, this really scared me. It was really unexpected. I was afraid to turn over the picture, but I was pretty sure that it would be Oscar because Sam claimed that the house was owned by a psycho. I am interested to see what’s in the attic, although I have a feeling it will be a dead body.
In the secret entrance, I picked up the crucifix and dropped it, and immediately the lights turned off. I immediately turned away and covered my head. I was almost too scared to continue the game, but my fascination drove me on.
End: I finished the game. Honestly, I am kind of disappointed. I am glad Sam is ok and happy, but I was really hoping there were some freaky things going on like Oscar’s ghost haunting the house. I think the game did an excellent job of subverting our expectations and placing things like red paint and scary games in order to build a false sense of fear. I enjoyed my time playing this game.
The first thing that came to my mind when I read about this mini-quest was to find an animal that had an object as a part of its name. Like a swordfish, or an angelfish. I decided to choose a hammerhead shark because I thought that it would be the easiest to crop, and I would have the most room for creativity. Now I could obviously just crop a hammer to the shark’s body and call it a day, but I wanted to be a little bit more creative. I wanted to stay in the theme of tools, as a hammer is a tool, so I decided to crop a wrench on the head of the shark. There are a few reasons for my decision. First of all, the head of the wrench looks like a mouth, so my final product could still somewhat look like an animal. Another reason I chose it is because of its symbolism. Wrenches are used to take things apart, but with the ultimate goal of fixing, while a shark’s ultimate goal is to destroy. I thought it would be the perfect tool to put on the head of the shark. In terms of editing, the main problem I had was that in order to fit the wrench head onto the neck of the shark, I needed to significantly enlarge the image, needing to move the picture up multiple times to enlarge the ends. Not only that, but the head ended up being too big. Despite these things, I think my combophoto turned out decently.
I started watching the anime Demon Slayer a few weeks ago, and the protagonist really inspired me. He is a character I aspire to be like, so I decided to make him my avatar. The anime starts with his whole family getting killed by demons, and his sister as the only survivor. She was not human, however, but was turned into a demon. Despite this, and despite her not being herself. Tanjuro (the protagonist) still stays with her, and devotes his life to trying to turn her back into a human. Throughout the whole anime tanjuro gives out kindness without the expecting anything in return, and his braveness and selflessness is somethin I inspire to have.
The main difficulty in creating the badge was getting to be a perfect square. I had to crop the edges continuously. Another challange was chosing color that did not look of place in the image, but also was visible. I chose white on green because it fit the best.
I actually quite enjoyed writing this piece. The recent few months have been so abnormal, that it was nice looking back into the past, although it was not that normal either. I relished reliving the early memories I had with reading, and the ones I had with my frinds in my ESL class, some of which I am still good friends with. It was definanlty tough trying to remeber things that happened so long ago, especially the feeling I had during those moments, but since they were very important to me, they were still somewhere in my head. This wasn’t one of those writing pieces where I took many breaks in between, which I often do. I wrote my litteracy narative in one piece. This is probably because I actually had a lot to say about my reading background, and have not really thought about it in a long time. This was deffinantly one of those assignments that I am relly glad I got to do.
