Today’s Plan:
- Sicart Analysis Paper
- In-Class Writing Time
Sicart Analysis Papers
Some bullet points:
- You will compose a paper (likely in the 1500-2000 word range, so 5 to 8 pages double-spaced) that analyzes your game and gameplay in terms of Sicart’s theory of ethical gaming, highlighting how the developers aimed to build (or failed to build) player complicity, avoid or encourage instrumental play, whether/how their choices reflect Sicart’s theory of wicked problems, and whether/how the game forces you to reflect on your decisions and thereby prompt an ethical experience.
This paper is meant to expose you to how humanities scholars analyze texts and arrange papers (our next project will show you how you do this in the hard and social sciences). Generally, this involves:
- Developing a critical lens (identifying, before you approach a text, what you will be looking for. Hence, the Sicart summary paper). So, you know going into this paper that you are looking for designer choices that amplify or diminish ethical decisions (or experiences). You know you are attempting to identify how designers try to engender player complicity. Etc. etc. I will go over this list more next week when I review your papers
- Applying the lens to specific moments in your “text.” I use text pretty liberally here–literally anything you examine is considered a text. Depending on the game you analyze, its mechanics and narrative structure, this can look REALLY different paper to paper. For instance, is your game one linear narrative? Or is it a choose-your-own-adventure, with branching paths? Thus, do decisions have narrative consequences? Or is the impact of decisions more centered on the feelings/reactions of the player? And–as we’ve discussed–do designers do something bad (from Sicart’s perspective) and tie in game powers/abilities/gear to making (what the game decides in advance is) the “right” decision?
-
Sicart Heursitic
Today I’d like you to get a head start on your paper by using my Sicart heuristic as a prompt.
Revise one of your journal entries using the heursitic as a frame. At this inventive stage of the project, you should be working to identify what is interesting about your game.
Homework
I’d like you to clean up your journal. So far, I’ve given you two opportunities to play your game–for an hour last weekend and then for another 1 1/2 hours coming into today. That means you should have two journal entries. We need to play more, so here’s the schedule:
- Journal Entry #1: 1 hour of play (Tuesday 13th)
- Journal Entry #2: 1 1/2 hours of play (Thursday 15th)
- Journal Entry #3: 2 1/2 hours of play (Tuesday 20th)
- Journal Entry #4: 1 1/2 hours of play (Thursday 22nd)
That gets us to 6 1/2 hours of play–which I think will be the maximum I’m able to provide you. The homework next weekend (due Tuesday the 27th) will be to draft the Sicart analysis paper (pulling the critical lens description/material from the Sicart summary paper and your journals).
