Today’s Plan:
- Homework
- Sicart Summary Papers
- Sicart Gaming Journals
Homework
Two Things:
- First, the Sicart Summary paper is due Friday at midnight. I said in class that you can take until Sunday at midnight if you need it. I will start grading these papers Monday morning, so make sure yours is there by then.
- Second, as a class we voted on whether to continue playing Walking Dead or move onto to playing a game from the recommended list I shared last class. The class voted to move on. So I’d like you to play your game for 1-2 hours over the weekend and then write for 15-30 minutes, using the Sicart Heuristic to guide your reflection [see below].
Sicart Summary Papers
I’ve written a thorough description of this project in a previous post. There’s also a rubric for the paper in Canvas.
Sicart Gaming Journals
We created Google Docs in class on Thursday and submitted an editable link to Canvas. You will put your gaming journal entries in that Google Doc. Simply label them with a date and time played. Open the entry with a very brief description of the content you played (some plot summary).
Over the next week and a half, you will play a video game for about 8 hours. After every hour of gameplay, you will free write for 15 minutes, using the heuristic as a guide. I do not expect a journal entry to be polished prose, but I am expecting about 250 words per entry. And I am expecting the entries to move beyond plot [details about what happened] and use the heuristic (so some rough analysis, thinking about what the developers are trying to accomplish, how they are trying to make you feel, act, or think). Move between concrete details in the story and/or game design/mechanics/systems, Sicart’s theory, and your phenomenological response (are you invested? frustrated? bored? did you care about making decisions? why or why not? Can you identify what the developer is attempting to make you think/feel/struggle with? Was their attempt successful?).
These journals are rough draft for our second paper–the Sicart Analysis paper–which will condense and revise the summary paper and the journal material together.
