Assassin’s Creed Podcast Reflection

The podcasts from the Gamecast series contain some noticeable patterns. Each podcast included background information on a video game, which someone then played and related to a chapter in Ian Bogost’s novel, How to Do Things with Video Games. My partner and I liked this structure, but it was obvious that most of the podcasts were scripted and sounded artificial. We attempted to make a non-scripted podcast because we wanted people to know how we genuinely felt. Without a script, though, our podcast sounded like disorganized rambling. We ended up using a semi-scripted approach in order to have both real emotions and organized content in our podcast.

Neither Colin, my partner, nor I had previously completed a podcast or used Audacity, and we did not know what to expect. We chose the Assassin’s Creed series as the subject for our podcast because it contains some of my partner’s favorite games. My partner also wanted to convince me that Assassin’s Creed could be used as a teaching tool, just like a history textbook. At first, I was skeptical because the only games I had ever learned from were walking simulations, which we played in class. My partner argued that Assassin’s Creed allows the player to view different things that can’t be found in a textbook. For example, when we played Assassin’s Creed Unity we visited different locations in France during the French Revolution. We walked to the top of Notre Dame, into a church and to other places around Paris. Looking at depictions of people burning crosses, cannons in a church and homeless peasants crying on the ground had a an emotional impact that’s difficult to obtain from simply reading a textbook.

Although Colin was able to convince me that Assassin’s Creed could be used as a teaching medium, he could not convince me that it should. Playing the game as a teaching medium can get boring, and I enjoyed playing the game more when I was just playing for fun. Students also could play the game instead of reading a textbook and, as a result, not get an understanding of the historical importance of what the game is simulating. We concluded that in an ideal situation, Assassin’s Creed could be used to supplement a textbook as a teaching medium, but using just the game would be difficult because most people don’t view Assassin’s Creed as a teaching medium.

In the next podcast, I hope to play a game I am more familiar with because I want the opportunity to view the game from a new perspective.