Rationale 🤔
Kathleen Fitzpatrick suggests that while digital humanities can mean deploying “computing technologies to investigate the kinds of questions that are traditional to the humanities” that it can also be “ask[ing] traditional kinds of humanities-oriented questions about computing technologies.” Given what we have/will read/watch from Steven Johnson, Jesper Juul, and Anita Sarkeesian, we (will) have some tools 🛠 and language to ask some questions about video games. Ready, player one? 🎮
The Nitty Gritty 💪
You will analyze a video game of your choice, give a short presentation about it, and write a paper about it.❓It should be a game that you have played 🤹 recently enough to talk about it in detail. Almost any game will fit this assignment, although I imagine it will be easier with some games than others. ♟🎲 If you’re concerned about your choice, I’m happy to talk with you during office hours.
You will give a four-minute (maximum) presentation on some of what you’ve learned about your game. You will write a total of seven pages for this assignment’s paper (no more, no less 🤺). You have two options for how to write this paper; see more about this below.
Presentation
You will present your video game on Thursday, 21 October. You should do the following:
- Briefly describe your game, including its narrative (if it has one), who designed it, and what platform you played it on. (60 seconds max) ☝️
- Discuss how one (and only one) of the critics helped you think about your game. The easiest approach to this might be to pick the critic whose approach caused you to see the game differently than you had previously. (180 seconds max) ☘️
You should have slides to accompany your presentation that show screenshots and/or video of gameplay. Please share these slides with me ahead of time or email them to me no later than 10am on Thursday, 21 October. 📆 This will allow me to pull everything together ahead of time.
You will not be able to cover everything you have to say about the game. This means you need to decide ahead of time what you’re going to say. You don’t need to write out a talk, but neither should you improvise. Aim for a bullet-points-on-a-card level of preparation.
Paper
Paper Formatting 📏
Your paper will be written in 12-point Times New Roman 🇮🇹, double-spaced✌️, with 1-inch margins. (I am serious about all of these.) Your paper should have a title. Direct quotations should be followed by page numbers 🔢, in the case of Johnson and Juul, or approximate timestamps ⏱, in the case of Sarkeesian, within parentheses. See the examples below. You do not need to include a Works Cited list unless you cite works beyond your game and readings from our class.
Due Date 📆
The paper is due on Saturday, 23 October. Papers must be submitted on Learning Suite as PDFs by 11:59 pm. Please name your file “last name”-lessfun.pdf (e.g., croxall-lessfun.pdf).
Option 1: Do As I’m Doing 👯♂️
With this option, I provide you with a page-by-page description of what you should do. You do not need to have transitions between each section. You may even break things up with headings.
Introduction (~0.5 page)
Introduce the game that you are analyzing.🕵️♀️ In addition to whatever you might say to someone who has never played the game before, make sure you mention the game’s designer or design studio, as well as the publisher and platform(s) the game is available on. You should also indicate how much the game costs and/or what model it uses for income generation. 💸
Casual Design Elements (~2.5 pages)
In A Casual Revolution, Juul provides five 🖐 elements of game design: fiction, usability, interruptibility, difficulty, and juiciness (30). Analyze your chosen game through all five of these principles and then write a half-page for each of them. Please note: I am not asking you to decide whether or not the game you have chosen is casual or not; instead, I’m asking you to use his concepts to think about your game.
You do not need to spend much (if any) time defining Juul’s terms; you should assume that the reader is familiar with his (as well as Johnson’s and Sarkeesian’s) arguments. That said, you can quote Juul (and the others) when explaining your analysis.
Game Decisions and Fun (~2.0 pages)
In Everything Bad is Good for You, Johnson argues that “it’s not what you’re thinking about when you’re playing a game, it’s the way you’re thinking that matters” (40). 🤔 In particular, he highlights the importance that games place on “forc[ing players] to make decisions” (41). Decision-making in games, in turn, depends on the “intellectual labor” of probing 🛰 and telescoping 🔭 (41). Analyze how you experience both modes of thinking while playing your game and write one-and-a-half pages about them. For probing, you may need to think back to when you started playing the game for the first time. Again, be as concrete 🏗 as possible in your description of the thinking and learning you had to do while playing the game. Some games may feature more probing and less telescoping or vice versa. You do not need to give probing and telescoping equal amounts of time in your 1.5 pages but be sure to address both topics.
Finally, consider Johnson’s suggestion that gaming is filled with a lot of time that just isn’t fun (25). ☹️ Write a half-page that discusses which portions of the game are fun and which are not. To what degree does the fun outweigh the “un-fun”? ⚖️
Gender in Gaming (~1.0 page) ♀♂
In “Damsel in Distress (Part I),” Sarkeesian argues that in many video games, women are relegated to the role of objects 🪀🪁🚂 (~10:00) who are merely a plot device or central object in a competition between men (11:12). 🤷♀️ The game you’ve chosen may not feature the damsel-in-distress trope, but, in all but rare examples, it will include some representation of gendered characters. Write a page that considers how gender is portrayed within your game. What roles do men and women play in the game? What gender is the main protagonist (if there is one)? What choice do you have about any representations in the game? If you have chosen a game that does not include gender representations in any way whatsoever, consider the audience for the game as well as its marketing.
Reflection on Gaming (~1.0 page) 🧐
For the final page of the paper, write a reflection about this assignment. You might consider some of the following questions:
- What did I learn about digital humanities from this assignment?
- Which of the three critics did I find to be most compelling in helping me think (differently?) about video games?
- What would I change about this assignment to make it more relevant, challenging, or interesting?
Option 2: Do as You’re Doing 💃
With this option, you will write a six-page paper that analyzes your video game in terms of one critic whom we have read: Johnson, Juul, or Sarkeesian. Your paper must present an argument 🗣 about your game. An easy—but not the only—way to think about such an argument would be to ask yourself whether Sarkeesian’s arguments (or Johnson’s or Juul’s) apply to the game you’re studying. Your paper should have an introduction, conclusion, and present evidence (see more below).
After you’ve finished the six pages of your paper, write a seventh page reflecting 🧐 on the assignment. This seventh page need not have any transition; you can consider it its own thing. In this reflection, you might respond to the following questions:
A Word of Wisdom 🧙♀️ for the Benefit of All Y’all
You have probably never written a paper about a videogame before. While it might seem strange, 🤡 it’s important to remember that traditional humanities arguments (and really, all arguments) depend on the effective presentation of evidence. 🕵️♂️ Be detailed and show your reader what you are talking about. Try to come as close to the concept of direct quotation as possible while analyzing your game.
Keep in mind: this is not a review; it’s an analysis. The point isn’t for you to tell me whether the game is good or not but to talk about how you understand the game and its gameplay via the work of our critics.
Grading 💯
Presentations will be evaluated based on whether you stay within the time constraints, whether you present a compelling discussion about your game, and whether you have slides. Papers will be evaluated using this rubric. The presentation is worth 25 points, and the paper is worth 100 points.
Writing Center Extra Credit ✍️
The BYU Writing Center is an excellent resource for you as you’re working on any stage of your paper. In fact, I think seeking this sort of feedback is so important that I will award you 3 extra points if you bring a draft of your paper there. That is a 3% increase, which is the same as moving from a B to a B+.
The Writing Center can get very busy at different points in the semester. You should consider making an appointment sooner rather than later. Be sure to ask that your tutor notify me at brian [dot] croxall [at] byu [dot] edu while signing up for the appointment. They will send me a very brief outline of the tutoring session, but I won’t read it closely. What I care about is that you’ve gone.
Credits 🙏
This assignment was designed in Fall 2018. It obviously draws on the work of Johnson, Juul, and Sarkeesian. But I also appreciated the chance to look at assignments from Mark Sample and Edmond Chang, both of whose work in videogame studies and teaching is inspiring. I also appreciate Michael Call here at BYU who shared the syllabus from his recent course on gaming (IHUM 280R) with me. Based on feedback from students over the last two years, I added Option 2 as a new choice in 2020. Based on more feedback, I added the presentation in 2021. Apologies to Steven Johnson for the assignment’s title.
