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.
- As we saw surveying theses statements from previous papers on Tuesday, these papers can argue a range of positions:
- That your game epitomizes Sicart’s ideas for an ethical game
- That your game reflects most of Sicart’s ideas, but not all [is there one thing they could change/fix]
- That your game falls into the trap of being a moral, rather than an ethical game
- That while you realize the designer’s intentions, you did not have an ethical experience [why not? Instrumental play? Failure to connect with characters?]
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?
- Today I want to emphasize that you do not have space in a 5-8 page paper to write about the entirety of your game. You likely have space to analyze 2-4 scenes, depending on how much detail you invest in each of them. The goal of the paper is to talk about player complicity, wicked problems (the complexity of choices–not all games will have wicked problems!), and how the game prompts reflection. I might start outlining the paper by thinking about the most important scenes and which of those three elements above are working in them.
Sicart Heuristic
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 heuristic as a frame. At this inventive stage of the project, you should be working to identify what is interesting about your game.
How to organize this paper
There’s two different ways to think about how to organize this paper–first, you can do something like this [NOTE that page counts are mere estimates, not rules]:
- Introduction (probably doesn’t need to be more than 1/2 to 2/3 of a page
- Sicart’s Theory of Ethical Gaming (lay out all three concepts here in 2 pages. You will have to condense your summary papers, revising sentences and identifying the central ideas a reader needs)
- Analyzing Scene 1 ( 2 pages)
- Analyzing Scene 2 (2 pages)
- Analyzing Scene 3 (2 pages)
- Conclusion (1/2 a page)
OR
- Introduction (stretches out to a page but gives a more thorough overview of Sicart’s core concepts)
- Player Complicity in Scene 1 and Scene 3
- Why Problems Aren’t Wicked in Scene 2 and Scene 3
- Unfortunately the game didn’t make me reflect
- Conclusion (1/2 a page)
OR
- Introduction (stretches out to a page but gives a more thorough overview of Sicart’s core concepts). Thesis: choices in this game are terrible.
- Player Complicity and whether this game has it
- Choice #1 is not wicked because
- Choice #2 is even less wicked
- Choice #3 made me lose my mind
- Conclusion
FAQ:
- Yes, there’s a lot more ways to organize/argue this paper beyond what I’ve laid out above. Those are just suggestions. You have 5-8 pages to show me that you understand Sicart’s ideas and have something smart to say about your game.
- Yes, you can insert screenshots of your gameplay (or other images) into your paper. APA has rules for labeling figures. You do not have to create a table of figures (like a table of contents).
- Rules for APA format can be found via the Purdue OWL. This paper requires a running head, a reference list (including citations for any video games mentioned in the paper), and spacing/formatting rules.
Homework
It is time to write your paper. Drafts of the Sicart Analysis paper are due on Friday midnight. HOWEVER, I need you to bring a paper copy of your draft to class on Tuesday–we are going to do some quick self-assessment and then some APA formatting checks.
