Writing our third year research proposal (8/5/2014)

This week I decided to work on the research proposal for my third year dissertation and got the following advice from my lecturer.

Lecturers Notes:

• Make sure to write something that has academic research backing it! Doesn’t have to be books, but it should be backed by professionals within their fields and universities. Newspapers can also be used effectively.
• Make sure the title relates to the topic.
• Do the research first so that I know it will be fruitful! Otherwise you are looking for very specific things.
• Can relate other fields to whatever I write about. 
• As always, he recommended using the online article ‘Moral decision making in Fallout’ as it is meant to be a good one and may also relate more to my current dissertation than it did the last one.
• ‘Can games teach morality?’ is meant to be another good online article I could use.

With the above in mind I may want to use books that talk about the subconscious, psychi and general play, especially since the game is based on a group of gamers going through tough times. Also look into avatars and how they represent players, since this relates to my work a lot.

I mainly plan to cover video game characters and how they react to environments and others through play. Also, how the environments and enemies featured in the game are based on the inner psychi of the in-game characters similar to ‘Silent Hill’ and 'Persona 4'.

Starting my Context for next year (24/4/2014)

As Context is over the lecturer explained that the rest of the sessions will be to help build up our research for our third year project. The research itself will need to be handed in around Christmas, thus working on it now is important.

Again, he reminded us to start our 6000 word dissertation which should continue from where our Context hand in ended. Thus I should try and find new examples for the subject and link it to my own intended project as the lecturer would like to see this.
Perhaps I could link this by talking about the characters I wish to portray in my game and the enemies the player fights. In short, do the characters alignments change depending on who they fight or who they play as since the characters will be role players playing a pen and paper game? 

Finally, he recommended that we plan ahead what deadlines we aim to complete first for the end of term. However, as I had done this already, I continued to continue to write my 'work process' which I have already started for the third year.

Last minute questions (27/3/2014)

* During this session I asked my lecturer some questions about the project and what I needed to do in order to succeed. After all, although I have finished mine, I do not wish to show my lecturer an early draft as I feel doing so at this point would put me under unnecessary stress before the deadline. Therefore, I will take my chances, as I feel I have done well on this project and look forward to hearing feedback on my work.

• Made sure to confirm the word count which is still the same as it was before, despite hearing differently recently. 
• I should add page numbers to any paged resources I have used (which I hadn't).
• As long as the question raised in my introduction is answered in the conclusion, then I should be A-ok.

Harvard Referencing (20/3/2014)

* Having spell checked my work last week, this week I worked on Harvard Referencing and tidying up some of my previous blogs.

I also made sure to add the publisher names for each game I referenced in my Research Project as the lecturer recommended we do so.

Finally, I added the total word count (3,804) to the bottom of my research project (just before the Harvard Referencing) so as to clearly show what should be counted towards to my overall words.

* We were also reminded that we are marked on our research paper, but he will also look at our blog so as to see the process we went through, a 'safety net' if you will, but still only secondary.

Spell checking (13/3/2014)

* As I am basically done with my writing and waiting to spell check it, I decided to look over my work one more time to make sure I was A-ok with the overall research project.

I was also able to ask my lecturer if including headings was ok for an academic level, he said it was. After all, the first thing he does is read the introduction and then the conclusion before reading the rest, that way seeing if the student answered the questions they wanted to answer.

Advice from my lecturer on my introduction (6/3/2014)

* Today my lecturer looked over my introduction and gave me the following advice...

• If I am referring to a book or even website then say so since ‘Ondskapens filosofi’ [The Philosophy of Evil] (2010) by Lars Fr. H. Svendsen confused him. Thus I need to mention that it is a book. 
• Remove words like 'firstly' in order to make it sound more formal.
• Use Wikipedia references, not the sites themselves since those can be edited by anyone. 
• Don't use the 'Free Dictionary, use the Oxford one as it is more academic. 
• Mention the occupations of the people I quote from since these can add to their importance and relevance e.g. scientist, doctor, professor etc.

Overall, the lecturer is really interested it is so far and likes the Western (ideological) and Eastern (mythological) examples of good and evil I have used.

* I then went back over my previous posts from last term and year one in order to see if anything I had originally covered would be relevant to my project. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything relevant.

Next year's dissertation (27/2/2014)

* Today our lecture discussed the 3rd year dissertations that will apparently be due in by January 2015 which, considering when we come back from the summer holidays (end of September) isn't very long. Therefore, it is worth at least thinking about it in advance as it will need to be around 6000 words which is double our current project.

Asking the question, if the 3rd year dissertation has to be related to what we plan to do for our main project, the lecturer said it can, but we shouldn't completely focus on what we think we are going to do until we know clearly, otherwise it may be a waste of our time.

 
* I then carried on writing my research project for the rest of the session as the lecturer said he would check my introduction next week.