Today’s Plan:
- What Game Are You Playing?
- Procedural Paper Heuristic
- Papers Please
What Game Are You Playing?
Let me get a sense of how you spent your week?
Is there something mechanically interesting about your game?
What Do I Mean By Procedures and Mechanics?
There’s three dominant senses here. The first speaks to the action of the game–what, as a player, you have to do. Is there something unique, specific, interesting, about the way you move through the game? For instance, the Last of Us creates immersion by making you shake the controller as if it is a flashlight dying. Conversely, Detroit: Become Human The second relates to the scoring system for that action. How does the game reward you for what you are doing?
Let me stress that I do not expect your papers will have such a sharp critical lens. I use this as an example because a major crux of EC’s critique falls on the scoring system embedded in the game. It also is an example of how a real world system (sex slave trade) can be (mis)represented in a game.
Here is a list of heuristic questions that might help you develop your paper. Not every paper will address each of these questions (please, god, don’t try I don’t want to read 25 page papers). Whatever questions you address should be supported by examples (plural in most cases) from the game. Every paper should address the first question.
- What does this game represent/do? [What is the theme? Rhetorical Purpose? Argument? Message? What does it want to say about being human or living in the world?]
- Does the game model a real world system? If so, does research suggest it is a fair representation?
- Is the game making an argument about how we should behave in the real world?
- Is the game addressing a human problem we might face in the world? How does it suggest/teach us to deal with that problem?
- Mechanically, what stands out to you? Is there anything interesting here?
- What mechanics does the game use to support that representation?
- What are some potential arguments made by the game’s scoring systems? What kind of behaviors does it reward?
- In what ways do the mechanics match the argument?
- In what ways do the mechanics clash with/ignore the argument?
- How might we modify the mechanics to create more procedural harmony/aesthetic impact?
- Phenomenological: how does this game make me feel? Are my feelings what the developer intended them to be?
Other paper requirements:
- The paper should be written to someone who has never played your game. You probably want to take a paragraph or two to explain the game–what is the goal? What is the setting? Who/what is your character? What are the basic mechanics? Is the game an established genre or a play on an established genre?
- The paper has to offer a definition of procedural rhetoric. It should draw on the Bogost reading to do this, using at least one if not several direct quotations. This part of the paper is “building a lens” through which to see the game. This part of the paper shouldn’t exceed one page.
- The paper needs to have a thesis paragraph. This is usually the first or second paragraph in the paper. YOU WRITE THIS PARAGRAPH LAST AFTER YOU HAVE WRITTEN THE PAPER. I will talk about this more next week.
- The paper needs to have a title that does not suck.
- The paper will be as long as it needs to be. Last year’s page length by paper grade:
- A+: 9, 7, 7, 7, 5
- A: 7, 7
- A-: 15, 7
- B+: 9, 5
- B: 9, 8, 6, 4, 4, 4
- B-: 5, 5
- C+: 6
- C: 5
- D: 6
Papers, Please
