Tag: reflection

Fiasco Reflection

Dice by flickr user Devin Arndt

Fiasco was one of the most creative exploits I have been a part of. I had no idea what to expect especially because I did not know what exactly was a table-top role playing game. In terms of preparation, my group and I were at most skeptical, with the exception of Jake, who seemed like he had a broader sense of how this game worked. I thought I was more overwhelmed than worried about how this process was going to play out because of the enormity of rules we had to know. Everyone had some idea of how to play, but some had different interpretations than others. In fact, this variance of perspectives is exactly what drew our interest and got the ball rolling. Perhaps this was the essence of the game, we just had to find out for ourselves.

After setting criteria which we all agreed on, the game slowly began to take shape. Emphasis on the word “slowly”. Because no one was completely sure of what was going to happen, there was a tendency to “play safe”. Some of us wanted to keep our actual names for the game but others argued that creating a narrative from scratch might be the point of the game and yield more creative results. With this is mind, my group gradually became more comfortable through discussing the relationships, albeit random, we would be involved in.

I really enjoyed the set up of Fiasco even though it was technically the most time consuming aspect for us. The intricate web of characters and their relationships was exciting to create especially with a group of five students collectively giving their input. With the intention of creating the best story possible, our group dove into a flurry of narrative options while we each played out a scene. I found myself giving and taking advice about everything, which basically helped weed out some options that did not fit into our plot. Sometimes I would listen to the general consensus that I should not kill my client (I was a drug dealer) and other times I would stick to my gut and acquire multiple dangerous weapons to cause chaos and to protect myself.

This freedom of choice could not be more prevalent in Fiasco as the entire objective was to use our choices to impact the overall plot. The availability of choice reminds me of other games we have played that did not necessarily provide it. For example, Dear Esther was a very straight forward, linear type game that did not contain room for creativity and collaboration that Fiasco offers. Another important aspect of the freedom of choice in Fiasco is that it allows multiple scenarios to intertwine without completely complicating the plot line. Of course there is a possibility that a plot revolving around eight or so relationships can get extremely convoluted and confusing, but my group did a great job of walking that fine line between creating an intriguing story while keeping things relatively simple and clear.

During discussions, our professor really emphasized how Fiasco can be seen as an actual form of writing.  In other words, playing Fiasco is equivalent to writing an essay. I agree with this to a point. The idea of forming a well thought out structure that helps guide a story fits perfectly with the objective of Fiasco, but the involvement of several other minds and opinions distinguish the type of writing Fiasco employs. I seem to relate Fiasco more so to our podcast project. The notion of collaboration shines through both the podcast project and Fiasco. Without the collective thoughts of my group, we would not have been able to mold this dramatic and intense story that we are proud of today. Playing Fiasco not only exposed me to an entirely different mode of creative thinking, but it also shed light on how writing is not just a straight forward process.

 

 

 

 

Reflection – Fiasco

Suburban Zebra by flickr user MariAn[the Fog]

It is incredible that with merely dices, tables and index cards, players are able to orchestrate a story and tie all bits of seemingly irrelevant information together in a coherent chain. Before playing Fiasco, I was nervous about the fact that I have to improvise in the game, worrying that I might make up a boring story. Yet through the game, I discovered the wealth of my creative mind by piecing together scenes established by other players and identifying the logic inside it. Together we formed a comprehensive, consistent and attractive fiction with an unexpected ending.

My character, Julliet Grande, shared a criminal relationship with Crazy Carl, the character of the player sitting on my right, who made drug deals. While Crazy Carl was in urgent need to earn money from his deals, Julliet, an already respected drug lord, in fact wanted to earn appreciation from her boss (the character of the player on the left) of a medical institution where she worked as a client as her main job. The story took a twisted turn and became snaky when my object was “information”, and my boss with another player Jamie Jones, a divorced man who tried to obtain weeds, shared a mutual secret of mutilating and murdering. By joining the two facts together, I actively spoke up in the game and gave birth to the climax when I claimed I knew their secret, using it as a bargaining chip to publish my under-appreciated medical research paper, while leaking the secret to Jamie’s resentful ex-wife. This insidious act connected me with Jamie’s ex-wife, who was Carl’s sibling and thus also became involved in drug deals. Together we three formed an alliance against my boss and Jamie. The end act occurred in a shopping mall where Carl lured Jamie out on the pretense of selling drugs and intended to kill him in revenge for his divorced sibling. Yet my boss who went to meet Jamie was mistakenly shot and died immediately; at the same time the police, whom I called to investigate the secret murder, arrived and arrested both men.

It is noted that through this game-play experience, we subconsciously applied multiple principles for writing fictions. Fiasco is more like composing a story than simply having fun. The game itself resembles a brainstorming process, where we bring together pieces of information and create a whole picture, filling gaps by improvisation and imagination. For example, a need for conflict was never implied in the relationship between me and my boss, yet in order to mediate my two identities as a drug dealer as well as a normal client, I created this conflict to ensure that everything made sense. There is also an irony of situation when most people didn’t get what they longed for due to the natural development of the game. Such irony brought about an unforeseen yet understandable ending which is commonly considered as a trait of fiction.

Still, playing Fiasco is not completely identical to my traditional approach to writing a story. The game proposes a new way of writing which really helps me with rhetorical composition. The difference between this gameplay and the other work I’ve done is that “I didn’t do those with prior planning or purpose”.  While I usually have an idea of what is going on when writing an essay, the skills and strategies employed in Fiasco, such as creating the conflict and devising the vicious scheme, just came along spontaneously. There was no intention, no careful planning. The fact that we composed an appealing and structured plot despite the lack of outlining in advance shed a new light on my future writing method. As opposed to careful planning before writing, as I usually do, I learned that I could just set up a background and develop some clues, through which my thoughts are provoked and my story grows by itself.

Also, through Fiasco, collaboration of group members is invoked as we joined together to brainstorm and inspired each other during the process. A single step of one player can affect that of another. Therefore such domino effect requires us to align our thought processes in order to complete the plot.

It is wonderful to see the process of scattered information converging into a fluid and rich river. Overall, I believe that I really did improve my writing through this thought-provoking gaming experience.

Fiasco – A Way to Heal Writer’s Block

As I sat to play Fiasco, I has mixed feelings. The games are designed for entertainment yet playing it is my English assignment. As well as that this game is the first multi player game of a sort that we encountered in our class, so group work would be crucial. However, as we started playing, we felt more comfortable with each other. From creating the relationships between the characters to interacting with each other and developing the plot we were able to design a unique story. Thus, as the game developed I was surprised how engaging it was to create a story together.

I like writing; however it is a very intimate process for me. Editing would be the only time I would be fine in working as a group when it comes to writing. Thus, the fact that we created a story altogether with such an ease was very surprising. Now that I look back I realize that we followed the same process that I would if I were to be writing alone. First the setting, then the characters and the relationship between them must be established. From then on we can slowly make the characters to interact and drive the story to the climax. The only difference from my way of creating the story and the one we used when playing Fiasco was its start.

I find it rather difficult to start a story in medias res, however Fiasco does it easily. As we established the relationships and their details, some conflicts already came under the light before we even started to play. For example, Jake’s character and mine were divorced and I was seeking revenge for the way he treated me. As well as that Christine’s and Jakes’ relationship’s detail was something they shared in the past. This already created a possible mystery. These details made the story intriguing from the start.

The way how we cooperated throughout the game was also quite interesting. At first I thought that it would be extremely hard for a person to understand what I mean and act accordingly, however we were all quick to catch the cues. Granted, sometimes the replies would raise a couple of eyebrows; for example, in Jake’s opinion the secret that he and Christine shared was a romantic relationship. However she surprised him by suddenly saying: “Someone found the body”. Little yet crucial things like that helped to not only develop the plot but added the spice to the game as you had to react accordingly and very quickly.  This reminded me of some theater exercises that my English professor did in my high school. What is said is said, and you cannot take it back. You must go along and develop the plot. If things do not go your way, then you need to adapt and still try to reach your desired result.

The last thing that I found very enjoyable in this game is that somehow by the end we tied all the characters together. One way or another all of us were connected and were in the same place during the climax. These connections reminded me of a movie Pulp Fiction where in the end all the characters are somehow related. The fact that this was not planned but happened as the story developed was even more peculiar. We were trying to make sure that the story makes sense and in the end involved everyone. Also, again without any specific intentions, we had some character developments as well. For example, my character went form a housewife that cherished her engagement ring to a drug successful drug dealer that got all the revenge she wanted.

Truthfully, I did not expect to be that engaged in a table top game. Playing this game was very like writing a story, however it has its own little differences, which is why I would recommend this game to anyone who is having a writer’s block. This game helps one to look at writing from a new perspective that can give some crucial insights. As well as that one would enjoy it if they have a good company.

Reflection – Wolf in White Van

Wolves by flickr user AdamHallArt

Thought is an unruly gust of wind frantically pushing us towards the limit of our minds. It refuses to obey the helm despite numerous efforts to keep it in control. While inspiration and invention often participate in such mental flourish, its capricious nature at times worries us with anxiety and irresistible impulses, leading us towards unforeseen tilt — accidents — or even devastating outcomes such as suicide.

My analysis on John Darnielle’s Novel, Wolf in White Van, centers around the transformation of Sean from unable to resist bad thoughts, resulting in the traumatic event of he shooting himself, to controlling his imagination and resting it in his game, Trace Italian, through which he slowly recovers and gains access to the outside world.

The assignment helped me improve my critical thinking and reading resulting in writing skill. I learned to use ideas from the work as a way to analyze the book from my own perspective. I integrated the author’s point of view into my essay and bridged the gap between his interpretation and my argument. Another learning outcome is rhetorical composition. This assignment is very different from Unpacking Manuel’s Tavern and therefore I had to compose it in a different way. I assumed that the audience didn’t know much about the novel so I tried my best to guide them towards getting a sense of what it is about while at the same time understanding my main argument.

Reflection – Wolf in White Van

Wolves by flickr user AdamHallArt

Thought is an unruly gust of wind frantically pushing us towards the limit of our minds. It refuses to obey the helm despite numerous efforts to keep it in control. While inspiration and invention often participate in such mental flourish, its capricious nature at times worries us with anxiety and irresistible impulses, leading us towards unforeseen tilt — accidents — or even devastating outcomes such as suicide.

My analysis on John Darnielle’s Novel, Wolf in White Van, centers around the transformation of Sean from unable to resist bad thoughts, resulting in the traumatic event of he shooting himself, to controlling his imagination and resting it in his game, Trace Italian, through which he slowly recovers and gains access to the outside world.

The assignment helped me improve my critical thinking and reading resulting in writing skill. I learned to use ideas from the work as a way to analyze the book from my own perspective. I integrated the author’s point of view into my essay and bridged the gap between his interpretation and my argument. Another learning outcome is rhetorical composition. This assignment is very different from Unpacking Manuel’s Tavern and therefore I had to compose it in a different way. I assumed that the audience didn’t know much about the novel so I tried my best to guide them towards getting a sense of what it is about while at the same time understanding my main argument.

Wolf in White Van Reflection Post

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Once your essay is published as a page on your site, also publish a post that links to your essay and also does the following:

  • Invites readers to read the full essay by conveying what is interesting about what you’ve said and/or why they should care about your argument. This invitation can take many forms, but the gist is that I want you to recognize what is most exciting about your own essay and to convey that to an imagined audience.
  • Articulates, in a concise way, the controlling idea for your essay. Ideally, your controlling idea will be part of what is exciting about your essay, so this might not be distinct from the first bullet point. But if you don’t state clearly in your invitation what your controlling idea is, then make sure you say it someplace in your post.
  • Explains how your essay fulfills one or more of the course learning outcomes.

Podcast #1 Reflection

For our first podcast, Ross and I decided to go with Madden Ultimate Team 17 as our game of choice and tried relating the themes in Ian Bogost’s chapter on Habituation to those in Madden. We believed that this game was more than a typical sports game void of any meaning and that is exactly what we aimed to disprove.

Before we even began planning the structure of our podcast, we thought it was prudent to read the chapter thoroughly on our own so that we were comfortable with what we were working with. I created a Google document and shared my notes on the chapter with Ross. By cross-examining our notes and seeing which points we both highlighted or did not highlight, Ross and I were able to separate the main ideas from the specific points each of us thought were significant. This initial step was probably the most crucial one in terms of gaining confidence about the material at hand and moving forward to integrate them.

I volunteered to take charge of this podcast and Ross agreed to switch roles with me for the next one. I suggested that we go straight into recording just by looking off our notes in order to try and create a less scripted sounding atmosphere, something we originally wanted to execute. This quickly became a problem. Although this plan seemed great in theory, we realized it was in fact harder than we thought and we deemed this method unrealistic. So, we agreed on writing a script together to follow as a guideline and to keep the podcast going in the right direction.

Unfortunately, our script once again sounded very scripted and Ross and I had to figure out a solution to overcome this obstacle. What we ended up doing was revising the script in a more colloquial manner, something we would not have done for a formal essay. We hoped that writing like we speak would solve this issue but as a result, our podcast still sounded scripted to a certain point. In light of these events, I came to a conclusion that writing is a process. This learning outcome could not have related any better to our project because we tried a number of different ways to structure this podcast with each effort improving the overall quality of our work.

I think our willingness to attempt multiple modes of structuring this podcast really speaks to the learning outcome of collaboration. Ross and I worked tirelessly to ensure both our ideas were included and collaborated when it came to make decisions that would have altered this podcast entirely.

This was a great first experience in creating something I have never done before. I hope that our second attempt at making a podcast will be much smoother compared to this rocky journey.

Podcast Reflection

Gamecast: Mario Party and Relaxation

Similar to our last Podcast, Graciela and I picked a bright, energetic game, Mario Party. Both of us had a lot of experience playing it, so we figured we’d have a lot of interesting topics to discuss. In contrast to our last podcast, we tried to relate some aspects of the game to the outside world and other references past just our experiences. We both contributed to the general outline of what we were going to talk about and we spent time together editing the audio afterwards. We did not experience many obstacles this time around compared to last time because we now had experience and received feedback on we could do to improve for this episode. While we did have difficulties relating this game to a particular Bogost chapter, we eventually led ourselves to picking Relaxation. There were clear differences between games discussed in that chapter and Mario Party, so we decided to highlight the differences and tie it back to the world around us.

With this podcast, we wanted to relate more with our audience as we believed our previous podcast dealt a lot with just how we felt playing the game. Engaging the audience through relatable topics was a primary goal of us. We aspired to connect the game beyond Bogost’s Relaxation chapter and explain what some of the game’s concepts could mean and what it says about the world around us.

Critical thinking played a big role in determining the context of our podcast. Graciela and I had to connect reality and a game to get the basis of our argument so we could thoroughly analyze the relationship. I definitely think I could improve my own analyzing skills because only collaboration with my partner allowed me to get ideas flowing and engage more with the audience. Through and through I’m proud of this episode and I feel like I’ve learned many new things and others to consider when talking to an audience.

KRZ Freewrite

Hybridity seems to be an element of magical realism within Kentucky Route Zero that stands out the most to me. I would say one of the most aesthetically appealing aspects of this game is the concept of the Zero and how it transcends reality as well as provides a mysterious yet majestic means of transportation. The combination between what is real and what seems to be “fake” keeps the player in a state of curiousness and confusion. Flying around on a giant bird is not a realistic concept but in this game, it feels normal in a way. Also, the fact that Conway is gradually being crippled by his leg injury shows in the actual gameplay. Things become slowed down to a point where I felt as if I was making a trip back to the Island in “Dear Esther.”

Podcast Reflection

 

Podcast Reflection

One certainly doesn’t expect to make a podcast for English class, but when it happens – it’s great! Anika and I teamed up to create a podcast about the video game Candy Crush and how it relates to the terms “Branding” and “Habituation” used in Ian Bogost’s book How To Do Things With Video Games. The experience was actually quite rewarding and it was quite the rewarding experience. I feel talking about a certain topic and being able to express your ideas as soon as you think of them makes the feeling more spontaneous and you can share your experiences first hand, without tampering with the words and risking changing the meaning, unlike when writing a piece and editing it multiple times. Although editing material can prove to be beneficial, you might lose track of the original point you were trying to get across after editing it at a different time or if you have a different mindset.

Our primary goal was to be able to relate to our audience and be able to establish a connection between Candy Crush and everyday life. It was also to be able to analyze the game, compare it to literature and make a successful argument describing how Candy Crush has made a majority of people addicted to the game even though it’s algorithm is very simple. We included personal anecdotes so the arguments we described were more relatable and believable. I feel like this is a valuable lesson I learnt from the podcast. These are also useful in personalizing the writing. It makes you seem more human, rather than someone just writing blatantly about facts and figures that were researched. That is something I should incorporate in my writing more often.

This assignment definitely helped me, personally, learn about digital citizenship. While posting content anywhere online it is important to take on a specific role and keep in mind the connection you are trying to establish as well as the message you are trying to get across. With a podcast perspective in mind, it was quite interesting to write an audio script for an audience in mind that are listening specifically through the internet.

I used to host radio shows for 3 years back in Kathmandu where I had to write scripts and select songs to play on air. Creating a podcast, for this class specifically, was definitely different because of the analysis part of the task. It is necessary to stay on topic and not stray from the thesis of the analysis all the while keeping in mind that we maintain a role as a creator online.

Collaboration is again definitely another learning outcome that this podcast helped me, or us, achieve. We spent time talking to one another, what we wanted to include in the podcast and how we would divide each task. Although it was a little difficult managing time and picking out time to work together and sort things out, in the end it all worked out. We managed to get everything done as planned and I feel Anika and I worked very well as a team.

Overall, I’d love to do this again, and I’m looking forward to working on the next podcast!

 

 

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