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Game Comparison Reflection Post

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In my Game Comparison essay, My argument is that Gris and Depression Quest demonstrate that success in recovery from trauma stems from consciously and actively working towards healing. I do this by showing that in the way they differ, Gris portrays a better picture of improving oneself while Depression Quest demonstrates the danger of being passive in recovery stages. Writing this inductive essay was weird – I’m not used to putting my thesis at the end, and my final paragraph had reasoning of its own, not just echoes, which was also new. One thing that surprised me about games in this essay is that game development is very complex. From the player end, it seems very basic apart from a few graphics, but there’s a lot of thinking that goes into each character and the decisions they make. Finally, I thought that writing this paper was a very interesting task – I’ve never actually analyzed a game (much less two) in an analytical essay, so this was a new experience for me. I think the discussions we had in class made it clear what evidence we should use in our argument.

Games Comparison Reflection Post

Quests

After you’ve published your games comparison as a page on your site, write a post that links to your essay. The reflection post should provide a very brief (one or two sentences) preview of the argument of your essay: what’s the thesis of the essay?

Then write a substantive paragraph in which you reflect on choices you made as you wrote the essay and what you learned while writing it. Some questions to consider:

  • For this assignment, I asked you to write an inductive essay — in other words, building up from specific claims to the thesis statement near the end of the essay — rather than the deductive essays you are more comfortable with. What did you notice about writing in this new structure? How did it go for you?
  • Look back over the essay you wrote and think about how it’s organized. In a few sentences describe just the broad structure of the essay — how many parts are there? what are the claims that organize the big pieces of your essay?
  • What did you learn while writing this essay? What surprised you or what was something you hadn’t understood about these games until you were writing the essay?

I K.O Batman

Student Posts

I recreated a scene from the Christopher Nolan Batman series. This scene is during Batman: The Dark Knight Rises where I impersonate Bane, the antagonist of the film, and easily K.O Batman. Filming this was only described as cringe. I tried my best sounding like Bane, but my voice just wasn’t low enough in some places. Also, I clearly don’t know where to look when I film myself. However, this SQ assignment was extremely fun to make and I had lots of laughs in the process.

The original scene here

Game Comparison Reflection

Student Posts

I was incredibly nervous about writing this essay, because I was unsure about how I could use parts of games as evidence for my ideas. I also needed to refresh myself on the games, a time consuming process, as I initially played these games some time ago. When I started writing, however, I felt that looking at these games in a critical lens was not entirely unfamiliar. From class and especially from the podcast episodes, I realized I had been analyzing games all semester. 

I also thought the proposed essay structure would be difficult to follow. I actually did find it necessary to break the structure in my first part by having an entire paragraph on GRIS. I wanted to flesh out the analysis without confusing the readers between that and Life is Strange. Otherwise, though, it was incredibly odd to not have my thesis be in my semi-introductory paragraph. On the other hand, I did find that in placing my thesis in my third part, I was able to seamlessly conclude my essay with a sort of “so what?”. In the end, I really liked the way in which I intertwined trauma with the idea of alternate realities in the two games. 

Game Comparison Reflection

Student Posts

Before deciding what my these statement of my game comparison essay was going to be, I first spent times replaying the games, such as the Depression Quest, Gris, Gone Home, and Life is Strange. Then I made a decision to analyze Gris and Gone Home. With the experiences of Podcast episodes, compare and contrast did not take much of the time. After replaying these games, I found more interesting details to write about that I was not able to notice on the first time playing them. On the first section, I argued that both Gone Home and Gris illustrated the relationship with others after the main character undergo the trauma. On the section section, I included Cathy Caruth’s quote, saying that the traumatic event remains outside the range of the consciousness to portray the event as a narrative.

Gris Liveblog

Student Posts

The opening scene of this game was a little girl woke up in front of a statue. The background music was really nice. I felt like I was watching a film. As the game started, the main character Gris simply broke and lost her voice. I recalled the similar scenes in the Little Mermaid. Watching her falling down was awful, I thought I could fast forward the falling scene like other games, but I couldn’t. I began moving along with her. 

I guess I stepped into the second stage, since the color changed from balck and white to colored red. I assumed we needed to go somewhere to get her voice back. This stage was overwhelmed by sandstorms. I had to hide inside the buildings from time to time. There was nothing else I could do except moving forward. I felt this game is more like a journey of healing, bringing back Gris’s voice, at the same time, adding more color to this world. 

Now I gained the ability to jump. There was a scene, as I was sliding down a large hill, the sun behind Gris rising up little by little, such an amazing and beautiful scene. The art style of this game became more complex over time, it was like a hand-painted watercolors.

The following stage was in the theme of green, strong sense of nature. I love the bird tweeting and chirping sounds. She started to gain more ability in this stage of game, and had more interaction with others. Then, the color theme changed to blue. I had a feeling of entering an underwater palace. Little by little, the color blue diminished, everything around started to color in black. I got chased by a dark object. I had no where to go except to follow a yellow light. This was such a long journey.

There were more and more colors. All of sudden, black and white was back. Gris began falling and falling. Floating around, I found the broken statue, the giant hand at the beginning of the game. Those pieces started to reconstruct. Gris found her voice, as she started to sing, the world was awash with vivid colors again.

After I finished this game, I remained silent for short period of time. This is a powerful and beautiful game. This game is about the journey of grief, or in many ways, it could also be a journey of healing and recovery. The ending was so strong, as the statue rising in pieces from the darkness and reforming piece by piece, Gris voice gets louder. The music quality and art style really add strengths to the game, makes it not like a 2D game.

Screenshot by me

Player Narrative Reflection

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Link to the Player Narrative

The overall message that I wanted to address through my narrative is that, there is a gap in different generation’s opinion toward playing video games. As I mentioned in my paper, “In my parents’ stances, they believed games are designed for problematic teenagers.” Followed by that, I discussed my own video games experiences with the two games that have influenced me, Minecraft, and the Chinese MOBA game. Minecraft has been a constantly evolving outlet for me to be creative, and the Chinese MOBA game not only taught me lessons of teamwork, but also became a connection tool for me and my friends in China. As I grew up, games started to influence more to my life. “Games have always been a place to find joy and serenity.” From playing game, I learned to be patience, be creative, and to be a team player.

Podcast Reflection: Hidden Folks

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The beginning phase of the making of this podcast episode was pretty bumpy, especially when compared to our first episode on Secret Hitler. This was mainly because we could not figure out which game we wanted to analyze. This was worsened by technical difficulties, like not being able to download certain games. After much consideration, we finally decided on Hidden Folks.

The thing with Hidden Folks is that it is a seemingly very simple game. ‘Here’s a drawing. Find stuff.’ So, our overarching challenge was to look at the game in a different light and try to identify the implicit messaging and objectives of the game. What exactly did this game do to our minds, and how it is relevant in our everyday lives. These were not particularly obvious answers, but after having a couple of conversations and discussing our experiences playing the game, we found an angle, and some direction. We then created a Google doc to formulate a basic script for what we wanted to say.

One of the aspects we touched upon in the episode is how the game rekindles childlike fascination and wonder. As we grow up, we lay too much emphasis on ‘getting stuff done’ and being productive. We tend to not (intentionally) waste our time, energy and attention on something unless we have to, or it may directly benefit us. We try to block that unnecessary information out. Hidden Folks needs you to do the exact opposite, which definitely seems out of character and uncomfortable initially. It lets you just be in this monochrome landscape of dancing monkey-villagers, it lets you look around freely and explore it. All this for no apparent reason. It helps you to just slow down and take a moment away from the chaos and craziness that has swamped this world, especially this year. Every time you find one of the objects and a tiny celebratory sound is made, you feel satisfied, almost as if you are a child once again– excited about little things in life.

We were also interested in why Hidden Folks is different from Where’s Waldo, despite a very similar premise. Where’s Waldo is a game that has been immensely popular for decades. So, there has got to be something about Hidden Folks that makes it stand out and attract so many players. We think that the interactive nature of Hidden Folks was one of the key differences.

Additionally, we spoke about how the absence of a ticking clock enhanced the experience of the game, the visual and audio design, and what skills we can hone by playing Hidden Folks. At the end, I have to admit that I was pretty surprised about how many facets of this game we were able to uncover and talk about.

The last part of the production was editing the audio. This was much simpler than the previous episode as I was now well-versed in the workings of Audacity. We were also mindful to make fewer mistakes while recording the podcast, and this made the editing process easier.

On the whole, I think the task of creating the podcast episode was definitely not without obstacles. But I did learn a lot from it, including working with my teammates, how the audio medium is very different from the written word, and technical skills like sound editing. Most importantly, though, the experience taught me how to articulate an experience (in this case, the game-playing experience) into words, and how to interpret this experience as well.

‘The Underlying Lessons of Valorant” Reflection

Student Posts

A couple weeks ago, I took a passive role as the line producer for my group. This time around, I took initiation as the Executive Producer. When I was thinking of which game to study on, I looked at the gaming categories on the largest gaming platform, Twitch, as the viewer counts give an idea on which mainstream games are the most played. As expected, the most concurrently viewed game was League of Legends. Scanning through the other games, I saw a game called Valorant. I had heard of Valorant before; I knew that it was released only 6 months ago and that it was a blend of Overwatch and Counter-Strike:Global Offensive, both games that I had previously played before. I downloaded the conveniently free game and tried it out. It had the same mechanics as CS:GO and the different agents had unique abilities like Overwatch. I played a couple games and got hooked. Transferring my knowledge from Overwatch and CS:GO, I was able to adapt to Valorant pretty quickly.

My primary goal for the podcast episode was to explain Valorant in a way that would be easy to understand for the typical non-gamer. Valorant isn’t a complex game; it doesn’t have a steep learning curve unlike League of Legends. Valorant, however, has several components to the game which made it slightly difficult to explain the game in just a short explanatory paragraph. The biggest challenge our group faced was analyzing the game. After all, Valorant is just an FPS game. When our group met up with Professor Morgen for a progress check, we were able to write about Valorant that was more than just describing the game. In the end, I was extremely satisfied with the final product. I don’t think we would have done anything differently with a time extension or under different circumstances. Our group performed well together; I am thankful to my group that they were responsive whenever I needed feedback or when it was time to record. Making the podcast was a unique and fun experience. I was able to achieve the learning outcome “summarize, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the ideas of others as you undertake scholarly inquiry in order produce your own arguments”. By connecting ideas to novels like Jane McGonical’s Superbetter, my group was able to talk more than the basics; we were able to scrutinize the game and find The Underlying Lessons in Valorant (episode title). Overall, I am super proud with the outcome of the episode. Also, I am happy that I thought of recording the podcast via individual home recordings rather than a Zoom group meeting recording because the quality also turned out pretty great.

Recreating an Iconic Movie Scene

Student Posts
Shot by, edited by, and starring me:)

I love watching movies, still it was impossible for me to think of an iconic movie scene to recreate from Hollywood. When it came to Bollywood, however, it took me less than 2 seconds to think of this scene from the 20-year old film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, which in many ways, defines Bollywood– the drama, the slow motion shots, the music, and the over-the-top visuals. Of course this video is technically catastrophic, and the only thing it does perfectly is embarrass me. I am pretty proud of it nevertheless. (Also shoutout to my aunt for singing the background music for me!)

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