ENG101, section 05. Fall 2020. Emory University.
The only difference in my approach to this essay compared to the literary narrative I had to write is my excitement. I play games so I was very interested in writing this. My player narrative is basically a comparison of the past and the present and how certain things have changed. From writing my player narrative I’ve learned to analyze myself while I play certain games and keep a tab of it.
The idea of being thrown into a new environment without any idea of what you need to can always be troublesome. Through my journey into videogames, I started by playing games without help from the game itself until I get trapped by a ten year old girl. Within trying to pass through my rival’s obstacle in Pokémon Sapphire, I started to learn about balance, problem-solving, determination, applying information, and strategy. In my player narrative, I discuss how I went about beating May on route 110.
Check it out: https://dangerdolan801811591.wordpress.com/stepping-into-the-path-of-gaming/
This is the reflection post of my player narrative essay. I spent a couple of hours on this one. And I corrected some mistakes that I made in my literacy narrative essay. I paid attention to develop a clear thesis and find some different points to support it. So instead of just laying it all out there, I first had a clearer overview of I was about to write for this essay. I think that helped me a lot during the writing process. And I hope the points can support the main thesis as I planned. Some possible room for improvements may include repetition of words and expressions, lack of clarification on some terms, etc.
In my player narrative, I sought to explain how games served as a starting point for my creative aspirations. There is a nod to how I believe games allowed me to forge my own sources of engagement with other people, and how that focus helped me become self-reliant.
I think I had the same results in terms of the success of the free-writing exercise, but I do think the activity itself was easier to complete because I had more concrete memories of playing games. I think the structure of my player narrative was entirely different from my literacy narrative. Instead of feeling a wariness and back & forth about my identity like I did when I wrote my literacy narrative, I felt motivated by my previous experiences with games. Each paragraph tried to build off this increased sense of creativity and fulfillment.
I learned it was alright to delete writing that draws away from the point of the essay. There was a paragraph, that I felt was really well written, about my limited but favorite experiences playing games with my family. Ultimately, it didn’t add anything to my thesis and created more confusion in my essay. Deleting the section was a difficult decision, but once I did, I felt that my essay flowed much more effectively.
The controlling idea of my narrative is that games are similar to our lifes, and learning how to play games are a way to improve our perspective. Through this narrative, I further understood my point of view toward games, and I shared my way of living in a medium that I can better organize my thoughts. Different from my literary narrative, I incorporated more description of my experience. Those are the pictures when I free-wrote about games or hockey. My structure starts with an introduction to “my game”, and then I described one experience out and reasoned another point with logic, followed with a conclusion. There isn’t many new ideas. All of the ideas came from the free-writing exercise, I simply rearranged into my essay.
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.
My main idea in the writer narrative involves my two most important experiences in my life being a player of games.
I found this exercise quite difficult at first. I didn’t know what to write about. I decided to start off broad, saying that games are everywhere in our lives. We can call any unconventional task a game if we want them to be. I then moved on write about the so-called games that are important to me, those that helped shape my identity as a player.
Through writing the player narrative, I learned that there are so many benefits to playing games. I also reflected on my experiences on a deeper level. I have always been playing games but rarely I took the time to think hard about it.
player narrative: https://thisiselainecom.wordpress.com/player-narrative/
I started my player narrative first by reflecting upon my literary narrative. I thought that the most thing I could improve was the flow of details in the essay that could make the essay vivid. Getting the idea for an essay is quite important, so I had been brainstorming my experience as a player for a long time. I realized that games are not limited into digital form that I spent most of my leisure time with in childhood, but it also means any quest that I experienced, as long as I kept a “playful” attitude. Then my experience shifted to the recent, when Professor Morgen asked us to play several unique games with meaningful topic and delicate design. I found that the games I enjoyed in class echoed with one of my interests – escape room, which I had lots of memories with.
The main idea of my essay is that good games, like escape room, not only bring us to solve puzzles, but also lead us to experience a variety of emotions; reaching the end of a game successfully is not the purpose; enjoying the process of exploration and appreciating the artistic effects the game designed with are more enjoyable. To express my theme, I chose to first introduce my first opinion on escape room, and elaborate what I experienced in an advanced game to highlight the surprise and gain from it. Finally, I applied the mindset of a player into real life that if we can be “playful”, putting less concerns and more courage in the matter we are dealing with, our life might be filled with exploration and excitement.
Writing this player narrative makes me dig deeper into the experience I had in my life and try to reconstruct a concrete story into an exposition based on vivid memories. With the big amount of details contained in the actual game, I also learned to utilize the information and put them together to make the essay clear and simple.
My https://muditajainn.wordpress.com/player-narrative/ (player narrative) revolves around how liking board game made me an odd one out in my friend circle and how games inspire me to follow rules. Acknowledging these facts was already big leap for me, leaving the writing part aside. I employed a different strategy while writing. I let the conclusion drive me writing unlike my Literary Narrative. The narrative begins with analysing what my love for games led me to. It is followed by an instance where I discovered how being a player had impacted me. Writing this player narrative prompted my realisation that I had never actually broken rules inspite of not being fond of them.
Image: Clicked by me
Read my Player Narrative here!
My Player Narrative primarily focuses on the role of games in my life as ‘social tools to make connections with people’. At least for the past 18 years of my life, games have always been about the memories and relationships I created while playing them, and not really about how they have directly impacted the way I think and behave. Although I have to say, I have begun observing the latter more so over the past few weeks, thanks to the thought-provoking discussions we’ve been having in my English writing class in college.
While writing the Literacy Narrative, I believe I was more controlled and structured in my writing. I was afraid of how it would be perceived, and so I mostly steered clear of taking big risks. In the Player Narrative, however, I have really experimented with my writing style. I was more comfortable to write in a way that I’ve never written in before (a choice that could easily and terribly backfire). This time around, I tried to deviate from the 5-paragraph-like structure, to write paragraphs of inconsistent lengths, and to work with a more conversational tone. I’m not sure if this paid off, but it definitely gave me a lot more creative freedom to express my thoughts.
I think that the pre-writing exercise was even more helpful for this assignment. Before I did it, I could not think of anything that I wanted to / could write about. I knew I had to write about playing games, but I had no angle, no viewpoint, no theme. The listing of memories, and then particularly the continuous free writing let me spill out the total mess of ideas from my brain onto paper, and then systematically work through the mess and sort it out.
On the whole, this has not been one of the easier things I’ve worked on. I found myself procrastinating writing it until the day it was due, and even then had to deal with the non-writer’s equivalent of writer’s block. But somehow I finished it and produced a piece of writing I’m pretty unsure and semi-proud of.
