Reflection – Page 4 – Play Make Write Think

Comparison Essay Reflection

November 10, 2020 Jiachen Student Posts

In order to write this essay, I have replayed the two games that I talked about, Gone Home and Gris. During the replay, I discovered new elements like Terry’s story that I didn’t notice in the first time. Completing the puzzle is what I did right after I finished playing the two games and before I write the essay. I intentionally hided my thesis until the last paragraph for the readers to discover. I organized my essay through pieces that seems irrelevant by at the end and will come together as my thesis. I think the new structure went pretty smooth overall, despite there could be some inconsistency.

Game Comparison Reflection

November 10, 2020 Olanna Student Posts

While writing this essay I realized how, not being given a very specific structure affected my writing. I still had little to no problem completing this essay but I just found it interesting that I had to create a whole structure by myself. At first I start with my introduction then the body paragraphs switch from each game and they are compared with each other. I was surprised by how much I picked up my typing speed from the 3rd page because the first two pages were not as exciting in my opinion.

Game Comparison Reflection Post

November 9, 2020 Yono Student Posts

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

November 9, 2020 David 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?

Game Comparison Reflection

November 8, 2020 Anusha 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.

Player Narrative Reflection

November 7, 2020 Wendy Student Posts

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

November 5, 2020 Rishika Student Posts

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.

Podcast Reflection

November 1, 2020 Jiachen Student Posts

In the episode of Oxenfree, I am the assistant producer this time. We are consist with our previous decision on the task involved. As the assistant producer, I need to assist the discussion on the game, make the transcript, and attend meetings including the meeting with Professor Morgen. Compare to the previous podcast on Temple Run, I think we are much more organized. Instead of deciding on our game the day before the meeting with Professor Morgen, we decided on the game about two weeks before the due date. For the last episode, we had to probe on how to record in zoom, who is doing what job, and we had to record several times before the final version. Yet, for this episode, everything is simply going as smoothly as possible

Moreover, the goals and main talking points had shifted. Since we had barely nothing to talk about for Temple Run‘s mechanics, we focus more on its relationship with COVID-19. But for Oxenfree, there are tons of information and themes. We first did some research on the game. For instance, I discovered the meaning of “Oxenfree” and its connection to the pandemic. Therefore, with this abundant amount of talking points, we focus more on the mechanics and meaning of Oxenfree. If I had more time, I would delve deeper into the plot and reference more specific moments in the game.

As we have more attempts on the podcasts, the ability to “demonstrate collaborative skills in classroom discussion and while working together on projects and presentations”, as stated in the Learning Objective page, will significantly improve. With the projects, Anusha, Hayden, and I had definitely became more comfortable working with one another. Although learning how to cooperate is a gradual process, we had made clear progression to mastering this skill.

Plague Inc Podcast Reflection

October 26, 2020 Wendy Student Posts

For this week’s episode, I was the producer. With the experiences of creating the podcast from last time, we made a quick decision on the game that we planned to make the episode on and scheduled the meeting afterward. The game Plague Inc is a real-time strategy simulation video game that enables the player to create and evolve a pathogen to infect the human population with a deadly plague. Unlike Roy and Ryan, I had no experience with the game, so I think it will be better next time if I can play the game more to really get a player’s familiarity. All of us think the game Plague is interesting and is relatable to this pandemic. It is a game that provides deep thinking about the public health and reflections of the current society, it allows players to actually learn how to stay safe in a pandemic. After deciding the game, like last time, we split the script, and spent about 2 hours writing the script together. Since it is the second time for us to produce a podcast, we all have a more decent understanding of the whole process of the production of a podcast.

Podcast Reflection

October 18, 2020 Pratyush Student Posts

So, for the first episode I was the producer for the first episode of the podcast from our team. We met a total of 4 times- decided on a few talking points, a meeting with our executive producer to brainstorm on some interesting point and how to move forward with the podcast, working on our script and decided on some questions for interview’s and the podcast recording day. We thought that instead of dividing up work and working individually we should meet together, which I think is particularly advantageous as I think it was crucial that we met as it was a good way to get to know people and bond in this virtual environment.

Before we even started the podcast, I decided that I would not listen to other podcasts as I felt that, even though it might have its disadvantages, I would have not been able to make points totally different than other groups and analyze the game in a similar way. I did listen to them after them and I really liked them. But one thing we did completely different from what anyone had done was to have 2 guest speakers in our episode, which I really thought was interesting and a fresh perspective as we loved to hear from someone who played the game just for “fun” and not from the point of view of analyzing it.

Initially we did have a bumpy start as we debated what game would we analyze. It had to not only an interesting game, something that would appeal to a larger crowd, but also a game that had more depth to it than just say a game with rolling a die and moving three spaces forward. We ended up choosing Secret Hitler. We discovered that there were variations of the game. But, the reason the game was so successful, was – the underlying message “politics”. Politics is one of the most discussed topics throughout the world, and especially with the events of 2020 I felt that it was something that people particularly related to making the game even more successful in 2020. I think what made this assignment interesting and little restricted at the same time was that the fact we had to make it into a podcast and not just a narration of something we had wrote. All my life I have been used to writing essays so I think it was a challenge as we couldn’t frame it in such a way that it would be an actual discussion, however, when we recorded the podcast the first time, it did not sound good at all. Eventually, we came up with some basic tricks like to emphasize on things we said and talk a little slowly, making us happy with our end result!