Category: David’s Posts

Peer Review Assignment

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Due: Sunday 9/25

Consult the table below. Find your name in the right-hand column; you will review the Unpacking Manuel’s page written by the student named in the left-hand column.

Read the student’s Unpacking Manuel’s page and the subpage outlining their research process carefully. Then create a document in the shared Google folder for the class with “[Student you are reviewing name] Unpacking Manuel’s” as the title for the document. In that document, leave feedback for the student that describes what you see as a reader by completing the following steps:

  • In a sentence, state the controlling idea or thesis of the essay.
  • Make an outline of the essay (it’s fine for this to be a straightforward bulleted list of the major pieces of the argument).
  • List the kinds of evidence the student uses to support their claims.
  • Identify any questions that you felt the analysis raises, or that are raised in the research process page, but that you felt were not answered or that need additional explanation. You don’t need to know the answers to the questions, but identify questions you are left with after finishing your reading.
  • Evaluate whether the student’s analysis does or does not meet the criteria established in the assignment prompt. (Note, this is not the same as judging whether the essay is good or not, but instead is an application of the criteria outlined in the assignment prompt to help the student notice any place where she or he has not fulfilled the terms of the assignment.)

Once your peer has left a completed review document for you, read it over and note any questions you have about the feedback you receive.

Check the list of conference times and sign up for an individual appointment. When you meet with me, be prepared to discuss your draft, the feedback you received, and any questions you have about those.

Firewatch Discussion Stuff

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In class on Tuesday, we’ll discuss Firewatch some more, so if you have not finished the game yet, make certain that you do so because we’re going to especially focus on questions about the ending of the game. I would also like for us to discuss further and more explicitly this particular game as literature — let’s compare the story it tells, how it tells it, and what sort of impact it has on us as players with how such a story would or would not work if it were a novel or a film.

The Ending

Duncan Fyfe, a writer for Campo Santo, has a fantastic piece up in the Quarterly Review (see below) called “The End of Firewatch“:

Some players admitted being taken aback by Firewatch’s it-is-what-it-is ending because they were anticipating a big twist. […] But I like Firewatch’s more prosaic take: that running away from your problems isn’t just a psychological flight of fancy explored in a daydream or a mind palace, but a real thing you can do, and if you do it, there are consequences. Firewatch is a story about real people who take the easy way out and end up making a mess.

Fyfe’s article is also interesting in the connections he makes between the game and the novel The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.

via GIPHY
Even if you haven’t read the novel, pay attention to Fyfe’s argument and think about the connections he is making between game and novel.

Here’s a video playthrough of the game that I’ve set to begin with the closing credits so you can see the photos at the end. The vlogger is maybe a little annoying, but you an see the photo that the Reddit user in the photo at the top of this post, is referencing in the video:

The Campo Santo Quarterly

The company that produced Firewatch, Campo Santo, runs a faux (??) literary/academic journal called The Quarterly Review, which is chock full of interesting articles about Firewatch and other topics, and also interviews with other game designers and fiction. For example, check out this interview of Steve Gaynor (the creator of Gone Home) that Duncan Fyfe published.

Connections between Gone Home and Firewatch

According to Justin McElroy, Firewatch and Gone Home occur in the same gaming universe. Did anybody find the copy the novel The Accidental Savior by Terrence L. Greenbriar (the dad in Gone Home) in one of the supply caches?

And Steve Gaynor, the aforementioned creator of Gone Home, seems to be a huge fan of Firewatch based on his Twitter stream alone. When Gone Home was released to gaming consoles recently, Gaynor retconned references to Firewatch into the game.

Work Cited

Fyfe, Duncan. “The End of Firewatch.” The Campo Santo Quarterly Review. N.p., 1 Apr. 2016. Web. 23 Sept. 2016.

Liveblogging Firewatch

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Remember that we’re going to be discussing Firewatch in class tomorrow, and it’s a longer game than the others we’ve played. You should be liveblogging your experience as you play. And check out the posts that are up so far by Andrew, Anika, Ben, Colin, Jasmine, Jose, and Samsara — and leave comments, responses, and questions on their posts!

Also, please make certain to go to Settings > Discussion in your dashboard and check the box to “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article.” If you don’t have the box checked, there won’t be pingbacks on the assignment post from your liveblogging posts.

Tribal and Error

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A new game (still in demo) someone who’s got a Windows machine might want to check out for the podcasts: Tribal & Error, in which you’re a robot sent back to observe the ancient times, but the ice age is coming and to save humanity you need to learn their language first. You’ll observe, repeat and master the cavemen tongue. From what I understand, the game is all about the process of language acquisition and is an attempt to produce a game that anyone can play no matter what language they speak. A fried said he got to play a demo version of the game at an event and that it seemed really promising and interesting, but at least for now it’s PC-only so I haven’t tried it out yet. If you do play it, let us know what you think!

Week 5 Ahead

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5 9/20 Firewatch

Bogost HTDTWV “Art”
9/22 Bogost HTDTWV “Empathy”

Peer review on Unpacking Manuel’s

Firewatch is a single-player first-person video game where you, as a man named Henry, explore the Wyoming wilderness after taking a summer job as a fire lookout. What is supposed to be a peaceful respite from your complicated life takes a turn when you start to question some of the things that are happening to you.

Your only human connection is over a handheld radio, which you’ll use to speak with your supervisor Delilah about the things both of you are experiencing.

I’ve only played the first few minutes, so will be playing along with you. How Long to Beat says it should take 4 hours to finish completely, so it’s longer than the other games we’ve played so far. Make certain you’ve played at least 2 hours of the game,  but it would be better if you can finish it.

As you play through the game, liveblog the experience. We’ll discuss the game itself, your liveblog reactions to it, and Bogost’s “Art” chapter in class on Tuesday.

Come to class on Thursday with drafts of your Manuel’s analysis written. There will be an opportunity for peer feedback in class on Thursday and then you’ll meet with me individually to discuss your draft.

Dear Esther Freewrite

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In “Family History: Source Analysis in Gone Home” Richard Bell compares the two games we have played so far this semester: “Where Dear Esther invites the kind of textual analysis at which students of literature excel, Gone Home demands something more akin to source comparison.” What distinction is Bell drawing between these two games — between literature and history — and do you agree with his distinction? What similarities do you see between the two games?

Just take 10 minutes and freewrite a response to those questions as a post on your blog. Just sketch out your ideas as quickly as you can, following to whatever is interesting for you and getting your ideas down into a post. Add the tag “freewrite” to the post, as a signal to readers that it’s an unpolished and perhaps unfinished piece of writing.

Podcast Discussion Recap

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First of all, note that next week on Thursday (9/15) we have a workshop day scheduled. Half of that class session will be devoted to the podcast, when you can meet with your partner and I’ll bring in a couple of microphones and maybe do a very quick 5-minute overview of Audacity.

I’ll revise the main podcast assignment page soon, but in the meantime just want to get some of the basic understandings from class today up here.

Title

We brainstormed some potential titles for the podcast episodes but didn’t reach a final decision. We all agreed to continue to think about potential titles and to drop any that we think of in the Google doc for class notes from today. We can vote on a title next week.

Co-Producers

We agreed that instead of serving as a producer for one episode and then as an assistant producer for a second episode, each episode will be co-produced by 2 students. Each pair will be responsible for publishing 2 podcast episodes (one between 9/30 and 10/21 and the second between 10/28 and 11/18).

Structure

  • Episodes will be about 10 minutes in length.
  • There was some discussion of agreeing to a shared 3-part structure — some analysis, some “ambient audio” of people playing the game and talking about it at the same time, and some sort of a question/answer section — but I think we did not resolve whether that structure would be a requirement.
  • We talked about, but did not decide, whether podcast episodes must be about videogames only, or whether other games are open to coverage.

Did I miss anything central? If you’ve got additional thoughts, or if I’m leaving stuff out from our discussion today, please drop a comment on this post with your thoughts.

New Feature: Subscribe via email

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I had intended to turn on a subscription feature from the beginning but somewhere along the line I forgot to activate it. I’ve now rectified that oversight. From now on, when you comment on one of my posts, there will be two checkboxes beneath the text window, one to receive an email if someone responds to your comment directly and another to notify you whenever a new post is published to this site. If you want to receive an email reminder every time a post goes up, just check that box before you post your comment.

Week_Ahead__3_–_Read___Write___Play

 

Week Ahead: 3

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3 9/6 Play through Gone Home to completion.
9/8 Richard Bell, “Family History: Source Analysis in Gone Home.”

Begin to discuss podcast assignment.

Check your email for a message from me about the games we’re playing over the next few weeks.

It should take you about 2 hours to play through Gone Home to the end. Publish a post to your course site with 2-3 paragraphs of observations you make during game play, or liveblog your experience playing if you want to try that.

Thursday we’ll continue our discussion of Gone Home by looking at Bell’s analysis of the game, and we’ll also spend some time making decisions about our podcast for this semester. I’ll ask you to listen to a couple of the podcasts from last semester before class on Thursday.

Edited to add:

If you have not managed to create your site yet, don’t panic but do send me a quick email or leave a comment here to let me know you’re working on it. And then play Gone Home and write your observations up in a simple document, which you can put in our shared Google folder. Even if you have not created your site, still play the game for tomorrow!

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