Instructions: Throughout this course, we’ve had several approaches to thinking through digital games in relation to both anthropology and new media criticism. Your job is to pick one topic and write an essay about it. You will need examples – either from gaming cultures or from a specific game. Be specific – “Identity and games” is too broad, “Gender and Games” is good, “The appearance of Women in League of Legends” is even better. As part of this, you are required to use at least two texts from class and one academic text that you find. You will also need a I can help you do this.
As a reminder, here are the units we went over:
Unit 1: Why Talk About Games?
Unit 2: What we talk about when we talk about (Digital) Games
Unit 3: Ethnography into Gaming Community
Unit 4: Playing with Identity
Unit 5: Games as Metaculture
Unit 6: Metagames as Culture
Prompt: Choose a topic or problem from the class in 8-10 pages, please…
Introduce the topic or problem you have introduced
Write a thesis about the topic based on your research
Describe what the authors you chose have to say about the topic
Use your game to reinforce, refute, or complicate what each author says
Explain why the topic matters
Goals: This essay is intended to help you practice doing some of your own research on a topic that you choose. You will want to be especially careful about the way that you structure your arguments. Here are some tips:
Assume your reader has not read, played, or heard of whatever you’re about to talk about.
Make sure every paragraph relates to the thesis clearly.
Use examples to help explain your point – especially if they are abstract.
You’re giving relevant summaries of each of the authors you name
IMPORTANT: I appreciate the large amount of writing that went into this Daniel, but there are several adjustments that need to be made for this to be successful. The first is that your new topic seems to be two separate topics that don’t have a strong relationship between them argued – if you wanted to make an argument about micro-transactions in relation to gender, I think you probably need research beyond the scope of this essay UNLESS you can find research that clearly argues the points that I made. I suggest choosing one to focus on – either otome games and gender OR micro-transactions. Additionally, I cannot stress how necessary it is for you to review the texts that you are citing. The majority seemed to have no connection to what you were writing, which would substantially lower the score that you get on your final. Please make these changes ASAP; the rest of the essay is going to be challenging without those changes.
