Play Make Write Think

Author: David

Final Portfolio and Reflection Letter

Quests

Length: 1000 – 1250 words (4-5 pages)

Due date:

Look back over the writing you’ve encountered and produced this semester, and then draft a cover letter for your portfolio that explains how you have met the learning outcomes for this course. This letter is an opportunity to think about your writing and clarify — for yourself and portfolio readers — how your skills and awareness of your writing processes have grown this semester. Think of each piece of writing included in your portfolio as an “exhibit” that you are analyzing and reflecting on in this letter.

What should your letter do?

  • Explicitly address the course outcomes and how you encountered them throughout the reading and writing for the course.
  • Guide your readers through the exhibits, discussing your writing while looking for larger patterns. What do you see about yourself as a writer when you step back and look at the work you’ve produced this semester?
  • Discuss at least one piece of writing in depth, considering the stages of the writing process as it developed. How did you think about audience, purpose, or genre while you wrote this piece?
  • Explain how you have applied (or will apply in the future) insights from this course in your other classes or other rhetorical situations. Use specific examples, if possible.
  • Employ evidence to support your claims. Just like in the other writing assignments you’ve completed this semester, you will need evidence to support of your argument; however, in this case, the evidence you will use is your own writing.
    • Remember that you need to incorporate quotes into your own writing with clear framing language.
    • Also remember that you always need your own interpretation and analysis of any quote you use in order for it work as evidence.
    • Forms of evidence from your writing exhibits could include, but are not limited to: quotes from your own finished writing (embedded in sentences or longer quotes in blocks); quotes from early drafts of your writing or notes; reported or quoted feedback from others; illustrations or quotations that show how a particular exhibit evolved; or screenshots or images from your work.

Publishing your cover letter

The reflection essay should become the new home (or index) page for your course site and should begin with a note indicating that the site is an archive of the work that you completed as part of ENG101 at Emory University during spring semester 2020. You should link to the course site, so that a reader who is going through your work can easily find out more information about the course you were in.

You should organize the work on your course site into a finished portfolio showing all the work you have done this semester. Make certain that your entire course subdomain looks complete, coherent, and like you’ve given some thought to its overall design and aesthetics.

Just like with any assignment you’ve completed this semester, your reflection letter should include at least one image (though you can certainly include more than one. You might consider using your Assemblies image as the primary or feature image for your letter — hopefully constructing that chart will help you to think about how the work you have completed this semester fits together, and hopefully it will help to communicate that understanding to your readers.

Twine Game

Quests

Overview

For this project, you will work in groups to develop a Twine game that focuses on a social issue related to this course. It might be a personal story, such as the one in Depression Quest, or it might be more process-oriented, such as a game which walks players through structuring a college curriculum. It might be a resource management game that explores, for instance, the economic realities of being a student during the coronavirus pandemic. The possibilities for types of games and themes to explore are practically limitless.

Twine

Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. You can develop browser-based text games -- and, with a bit of coding, you can add images, variables, conditional logic, and/or CSS -- that walk the player through a series of decisions that lead to multiple different outcomes.

You can download the software from The Twinery at the link above. It's a relatively easy program to use, though you should expect it to take some probing and exploring to figure out how to make it do what you want it to. There is lots of help available on the Twine Wiki.

Role and Responsibilities

All members of the team will share responsibilities for the project and all of you should work in each of these areas; however, it is useful to have one or two persons designated with primary responsibility for an area so that the group functions in a healthy manner.

  • Asset Manager: This person is responsible for gathering game text, images, and other game assets from the entire team, organizing it, ensuring that it's all fair to use, and that each asset has proper attribution information. Later in the process this person probably serves as a bit of a project manager, keeping everyone aware of agreed upon deadlines.
  • Game Compiler: This person is responsible for compiling the assets into the finished game and play-testing it to be certain that it works.
  • Story Manager: This person is responsible for ensuring the voice of the game stays consistent, in spite of having multiple authors, and that all entries meet the expected level of grammatical and stylistic sophistication appropriate to the game.

Requirements

You do not need to have a finished game at the end of the project. I want you to develop enough of a game that you can show it as a prototype and explain what social issue you are engaging in, how your response is a gameful response to that situation, and why you are structuring the game in the way you are. You should be able to explain what additional elements you might add if you had the time and resources to flesh it out more fully (in other words, "if we had 2 more months to work on this and the funds to hire a dedicated programmer or illustrator, etc. during that time, here's what we would direct them to produce for the game and why").

Reflection post prompt here.

 

Game Comparison

Quests

Due: 11/8

Length: 4-5 pages

Cathy Caruth was one of the key theorists of trauma in the 1990s. Nasrullah Hambral provides this overview of her work in the field:

"In the traditional trauma model pioneered by Cathy Caruth, trauma is viewed as an event that fragments consciousness and prevents direct linguistic representation. The model draws attention to the severity of suffering by suggesting the traumatic experience irrevocably damages the psyche. Trauma is an unassimilated event that shatters identity and remains outside normal memory and narrative representation. Fragmentation or dissociation is viewed as the direct cause of trauma, a view that helps formulate the notion of transhistorical trauma, which suggests that trauma’s essential or universal effects on consciousness and narrative recall afford the opportunity to connect individual and collective traumatic experiences."

All of the games we have played this semester have dealt with characters who are undergoing or processing trauma. Thinking about the quote above and the discussions we've had about these games, choose two of these games and analyze how they represent trauma (and/or healing).

Edited to add:

Structure

This is a comparison essay, where you are looking at two games next to each other in order to better understand what each is doing. I recommend that you write your essay in a 3-part structure:

  • Compare (and contrast) the two games around one theme or idea (e.g., fragmentation)
  • Compare (and contrast) the two games around a second theme or idea (e.g., no direct linguistic communication or how memory works in these games)
  • The first sentence of the final section should be your thesis sentence, which will pull together something you have learned from discussion of the previous two ideas and develop a slightly broader statement about what you have observed in these games.

Do not write a five-paragraph essay!

Audience

Assume an audience who is familiar with the games, but like you before you started working on this paper, maybe hasn't played them in a few weeks. So you do not need to summarize important information about the game for your reader unless it's important to your argument, but when you explain something that's central to your argument, you should give very brief contextual clues to remind your reader what you're talking about.

In fact, for your audience you should imagine that you're writing for your peers in this class. Assume that you are just a little bit smarter than everyone else in the class, that you understand the two games you are analyzing a little bit better than anyone else in the class, so you are helping them to understand how the two games you're analyzing portray or analyze trauma and/or recovery from trauma.

Publishing

Your essay should be published as a page. You'll need to then write a reflection post that links to the page in order to turn it in.

 

Player Narrative

Quests

Due: 9/20

Length: 500-750 words

Following up on the literacy narrative that you have already written, now I want you to write a similar narrative essay about your experiences as a player of games.

Pre-writing

Just as you did with your literacy narrative, you should complete the x-pages prewriting assignment described here; however, this time instead of writing about experiences you’ve had with reading or writing, think about any experiences you’ve had playing games. They can be any sort of games at all — video games, board games, memory games, or games you made up on the playground as a child. Remember Mary Flanagan’s argument about hopscoth. The New York Times had a really interesting piece in December about hand-clapping games played by children around the world.

Once you’ve finished that prewriting exercise, you can begin drafting the literacy narrative itself. Spend a good 45 minutes to an hour on the prewriting exercise.

Prompt

Now that you’ve done some brainstorming, write an essay in which you analyze one or two moments from your life as a player. What sorts of skills or ways of thinking or socializing have you learned from playing games?

Take a step back and reread the freewriting you did, looking for any interesting patterns that you surfaced about your history with reading and writing. You do not need to directly address the freewrite or your answers to the questions in the pre-writing exercise, but hopefully in the process of freewriting and thinking about those questions, you’ve recognized some issues or patterns that are interesting enough for you to analyze more carefully.

Nuts and Bolts

Publish your narrative as a page (not a post) on your class website (make certain to add it to the menu, so we can all find it).

As with everything you publish for me this semester, you need more than just words for your narrative — you must have at least one image, video, or audio file with your narrative. You’ll need to provide a caption and give credit to the creator of the image (even if it’s your own). I’ll have some additional resources on Creative Commons and finding CC-licensed images with Flickr.

Reflection Post

Once you have published the page, you need to also write a separate blog post. That post should link to the page you have published and reflect on the process of writing it.

Further instructions for the reflection post here.

Literacy Narrative

Quests

Due: 8/26

Length: 500-750 words

Pre-writing

Before you begin to write your literacy narrative, you should complete the x-pages prewriting assignment described here. Once you’ve finished that prewriting exercise, you can begin drafting the literacy narrative itself. Spend a good 45 minutes to an hour on the prewriting exercise.

Prompt

Now that you’ve done some brainstorming, write an essay in which you analyze the key experiences that shaped the way you read and write.

Take a step back and reread the freewriting you did, looking for any interesting patterns that you surfaced about your history with reading and writing. You do not need to directly address the freewrite or your answers to the questions in the pre-writing exercise, but hopefully in the process of freewriting and thinking about those questions, you’ve recognized some issues or patterns that are interesting enough for you to analyze more carefully.

You’ll have opportunities for revision and later in the term I will ask you to combine this and your gaming narrative into a larger piece, but for now just focus on drafting this essay.

Nuts and Bolts

Publish your narrative as a page (not a post) on your class website (make certain to add it to the menu, so we can all find it).

As with everything you publish for me this semester, you need more than just words for your narrative — you must have at least one image, video, or audio file with your narrative. You’ll need to provide a caption and give credit to the creator of the image (even if it’s your own). I’ll have some additional resources on Creative Commons and finding CC-licensed images with Flickr.

Reflection Post

Once you have published the page, you need to also write a separate blog post. That post should link to the page you have published and reflect on the process of writing it.

Further instructions for the reflection post here.

Games Podcast

Quests

Overview

This semester, we’ll all work together to produce a podcast series about games in which we’ll share our thinking with each other and with listeners outside the class.

Early in the semester, we’ll spend a class period developing a more specific plan for how we want to structure the series, coming up with a title for the whole series, and making some decisions about the process. We will also work together to record an introductory audio segment, which will go at the start of each episode of the podcast, and to design a logo and other visuals for promotion.

Here is the podcast planning document where we'll keep track of the schedule.

Read on for further details so you have a sense of what to expect.

Executive Producer

As instructor for the class, I will be the Executive Producer for the series. In this capacity, it will be my role to consult with the individuals responsible for any given episode, to provide some guidance in order to ensure that each episode maintains the standards of the whole, and to provide feedback on the production.

Producer

Each student in the class will be responsible for serving as Producer for one single episode. The Producer initiates, coordinates, supervises, and controls all aspects of the podcast episode production process, including creative, technological, and administrative. A Producer is involved throughout all phases of production from inception to completion, including coordination, supervision, and control of all other talents and crafts, and publication and promotion of the completed episode.

Assistant Producer

Each student in the class will also serve as the Assistant Producer for one episode. As the title suggests, the Assistant Producer helps the Producer to create a finished episode. The Assistant Producer will come in at the beginning, with initiation of the idea for the episode, and will help to think through how to bring the Producer’s ideas to fruition, including providing assistance with research, storyboarding, recording, and editing. The Producer is ultimately responsible for final decisions and should be the primary coordinator for the entire process, but the Assistant Director should be included as a collaborator in the entire process.

Line Producer

Each student will also serve as a Line Producer for one episode — the creative decision-making process is reserved to the Producer and Assistant Producer but the Line Producer serves to assist them where necessary. The Line Producer probably does not need to be involved in the initial planning and research of the episode, but can come in just before it’s time to record and help with final steps in the process. In your individual teams, you can decide reasonable boundaries around this role, but I’m imagining that the Line Producer can be responsible for technological assistance and overseeing the recording while the two primary producers are in the midst of generating the content for the episode — they can watch sound levels and listen in on headphones while the producers speak to check that the sound quality is good. Probably it’s too much to expect the Line Producer to be the primary editor for the episode, that’s something the primary producers should focus on, but the Line Producer can offer suggestions during the recording and editing process.

The Producer and Assistant Producer will be together as a team for two episodes, taking turns as to who is in charge between them. The Line Producers can rotate however makes sense with regards to availability.

Episode Rules, Structure, and Content

Each episode should be approximately 10-15 minutes in length. Once you deliver your part of the episode to me, I will add the series intro audio bumper, which will be the same for all episodes.

Your production will begin with the audio introduction for your specific episode, which will identify the title of the episode, its primary subject, and name the Producer and Assistant Producer. Then there will be the primary content of the episode itself, and finally a closing segment in which you thank your Line Producer for assisting you, provide credit for anyone else who was involved in the episode (for example, if you interview someone in the episode, make sure to name them in the close), provide the URL for the publication information for the game you’re analyzing, and let listeners know that you’ll provide citations for all of your sources in the episode description.

[More details here about the episode rules, once we decide on them as a class]

Conferences

For each episode, the Producer and Assistant Producer should attempt to schedule a conference with me in advance to brainstorm and discuss ideas and structure. I’m not going to make it an absolute requirement that you meet with me, in case schedules just preclude it, but if we can’t meet in person we have to at least touch base before you start recording. We can meet at whatever stage before recording is most useful for you — if you want to come in as soon as you know what your episode subject is and do initial brainstorming that’s fine, or you could also come in after you’ve done research and are pretty certain what the key aspects of your argument are. The goal of these conferences is for me to be in a collaborative space with you, where I can help identify questions or strategies that might be useful. I’ll also be ensuring that there is some consistency across episodes, so that the series as a whole coheres.

What you’ll need to turn in

Once your episode is completed, you’ll need to send me a finished MP3, including your episode intro, the body, and a close. I’ll add the series introduction and then publish it.

You will also need to provide the following, all of which I’ll publish along with the audio:

  • A square image that is the cover image for your episode. (Your image should be a creative visual image that represents your episode — please don’t simply copy & paste the logo of the publication you’re analyzing.)
  • A paragraph that describes your episode — it should both serve as a summary of the episode, covering the questions and issues that you address, and as an invitation that encourages an audience to actually listen to your episode. This writing should be clear, succinct, engaging, and creative.
  • A list of sources. Any source that you explicitly quote in your episode needs to be included, but you can also include other sources that readers would find useful if after listening they want to do further research on their own. The subject of your episode will probably greatly affect the number of sources you include, but I’d say you should have at least 3 and no more than 10 sources listed.
  • Image and/or sound credit listing, if applicable.
  • If you do interview another person in your episode, you will need to have that person sign a media release form and provide the form to me (I won’t publish the form, but I need to have it). Note that the media release form asks the person how they should be identified in the episode — please follow the wishes of the person you interview and use that name in the episode and in the close.

The Producer and Assistant Producer should each also write and publish to their sites a reflective blog post soon after submitting their materials to me.

Further Instructions and Information

Here’s a post with additional information about some of the nuts & bolts of producing your podcast episodes.

Side Quest 1: Avatar

Side Quests

Due: 8/30

Tag: sq1

Objectives:

  • Very basic photo editing
  • Introduction to the concept of Creative Commons
  • Uploading and publishing to your new WordPress site
  • Visual images as representations of complex conceptual topics

Avatar

Once you’ve created your web site, you need an image to represent yourself and/or your site for the class: an avatar. Your avatar can be whatever you want it be but try to create something that both reflects your personality and speaks to the topic for this class in some way.

Start by choosing one or more of your own photos as the basis of the avatar, drawing something yourself and scanning it, or finding one or more CC-licensed images on Flickr that you can modify. Make certain to keep a note for yourself of the URL for the photos you use if they are not your own.

[Edited to add: The link above has just broken, so here’s some additional instructions. Creative Commons licenses work with copyright law so that creators can share their work in a way that allows others to use it with attribution. The video on the left gives a good overview of the concept of Creative Commons licensing. The one on the right gives more explanation of how they work. They are short and worth watching.

You can find CC-licensed images by choosing licensed images on Flickr or with an advanced Google image search.

A screenshot of the Flickr search page, showing the Advanced tab and then the selector to search only licensed images.
(click to embiggen)

(Click images to embiggen)

You can also search through public domain photo archives like Unsplash for images that you are free to use without restriction.]

Crop and otherwise edit the photo(s) in a photo editing application (like Photoshop, if you have it, or Pixlr is a free online photo editor that should work perfectly well for this task). You can create a layered or collage effect, if you’d like. Add your name on your badge in such a way that it’s legible — it can be your full name, just your first name, or the nickname you want to be called this semester.

Your final badge should be square and at least 512 pixels wide and high. Please make certain your badge is square so that it will fit into the design on the student sites page.

Publish

When you’re done, you’ll need to put the image two places, with an optional third:

First

Load the badge into your Media Library and publish it to your site in a blog post. (If adding it as a feature image means that the entire square image won’t display, then also insert the image into the post itself.)

Include information and links in the post about the source(s) for images included in your badge.

Write a paragraph or two about why you chose those images, what aspects of yourself and your interests are represented in your badge, and/or what difficulties you faced in creating the badge.

Please tag your post with the tag “sq1,” plus with any additional tags that you think are appropriate.

Second

Go into your dashboard to Appearance > Customize > Site Identity. Load the image as your site icon.

Finally

If you do not already have a gravatar, create a gravatar account and load your avatar there. From then on, your avatar will show up as your picture when you leave comments here and on other students’ sites.

Role-Playing Games: Alice is Missing or Fiasco

Quests

ALICE IS MISSING is a silent role playing game about the disappearance of Alice Briarwood, a high school junior in the sleepy Northern California town of Silent Falls. During the game, players use their phones to send text messages to each other as they unearth clues about what happened to Alice.

The game runs over a single session of two to three hours. In the first 45 minutes, players create their characters, their relationships to Alice, and their ties with each other. The next 90 minutes follow the characters’ text message conversations as they uncover Alice’s fate.

FIASCO is a game about powerful ambition and poor impulse control. It is an award-winning story-telling game inspired by cinematic tales of small-time capers gone disastrously wrong. You’ll tell a story about ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control! Lives and reputations will be lost, painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, you just might end up back where you started. You probably won’t be lucky. Although there is no one standard setting, each game of Fiasco uses a "playset" that indicates the setting of that specific game.

The classic version of the game has been out for a long time, but the new edition (which is streamlined and much more friendly for playing remotely over Roll20) just came out on August 12.

 

In groups of 3-5 players, you will play the Roll20 edition of one of the two games listed above. We'll spend some time setting up your games and preparing for play in class, then you'll play in your groups online on your own.

After you've played, you'll each write reflection posts analyzing your experience, patterns of behavior you noticed with the other players, and the logic and structure of the game itself.

[More details coming soon.]

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