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.

Creating an introduction (14/2/2014)

* Having been ill during the session itself, I worked today on making a practical opening for my research document as I was told that the lecturer wanted to look at it after reading week.

During my writing I was able to include a new beginning by using the article ‘Goodies and baddies: A tiny personʼs perspective of game characters’.

I was also able to add to the sections for 'Mario', 'Metal Gear Solid', 'Assassins Creed', 'The Walking Dead' and 'The Last of Us'.

Presenting new possible subjects (10/2/2014)

* When I shared my ideas with my lecturer, he said he was interested in the psychology one, but felt I needed to be clearer about it. Whereas, he loved the idea of the relationships' one as it was based on both physical and non physical relationships and could include many movie examples e.g. buddy cop movies.

He then recommended that I come up with clearer, to the point descriptions of what I might cover, then show him next session. Ok with this, I wrote the following, having done some extra research in order to make sure I had enough reference material for both.

* Relationships:
How have character relationships been portrayed in video games from past to present, and have they been portrayed positively or negatively?

• Amirkhani, J (2013) The Most Realistic Video Game Romances. Available at: http://www.complex.com/video-games/2013/02/25-of-the-most-realistic-video-game-romances/ (Accessed: 10/2/2014) Unknown (2014) LGBT theme in video games - Wikipedia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_themes_in_video_games (Accessed: 10/2/2014).
• Amini, T (2013) Saints Row Does Relationships Better Than Most Video Games. Available at: http://tay.kotaku.com/saints-row-iv-has-one-of-the-best-relationships-in-gami-1442430571/1442493914/@tinaamini (Accessed: 10/2/2014).
• gamesradar (2012) The 14 best videogame couples. Available at: http://www.gamesradar.com/the-14-best-videogame-couples/ (Accessed: 10/2/2014). 
• Leonhart, C (Unknown) Top 5 Most Enduring Relationships In Video Games. Available at: http://www.sticktwiddlers.com/2013/02/14/top-five-most-enduring-relationships-in-video-games/ (Accessed: 10/2/2014).
• Polanco, S (Unknown) 10 Video Game Relationships Actually Worth A Damn. Available at: http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-video-game-relationships-actually-worth-a-damn.php (Accessed: 10/2/2014).
• polishtheconsole (2011) Relationships in Video Games - Time to Evole. Available at: http://www.polishtheconsole.com/2011/09/15/relationships-video-games-time-evolve/ (Accessed: 10/2/2014). 
• Yee, N (2006) The Psychology of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage. Available at: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/02_04/Yee_Book_Chapter.pdf (Accessed: 10/2/2014).

* Psychology:
How does using music, environments, imagery and characters represent or signify important aspects of a video game? And how have these things been represented from past to present?

• gameinformer (2012) Site. Available at: http://www.gameinformer.com/blogs/members/b/subsaint_blog/archive/2012/07/10/seeing-is-believing-video-game-symbolism-and-logos.aspx (Accessed: 10/2/2014). 
• Leibovitz, L (2013) Five Popular Video Games With Religious & Spiritual Meaning and Symbolism. Available at: http://terminalgamer.com/2013/12/23/five-popular-video-games-religious-spiritual-meanings-symbolism/ (Accessed: 10/2/2014).
• reddit (2012) What are some great examples of symbolism in video games? Available at: http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/piwjv/what_are_some_great_examples_of_symbolism_in/ (Accessed: 10/2/2014).
• Wahlberg (2011) Symbolism in Gaming: An Exercise in Overthinking. Available at: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/markwahlberg/blog/symbolism-in-gaming-an-exercise-in-overthinking/76029/ (Accessed: 10/2/2014).

* However, I have to admit that looking back over all the work I have done so far I feel that I may just want to stick with my previous research. After all, I am incredibly into the subject and the only thing stopping me is the articles I need to find to back up my work. It would also be a shame to waste what I have done already and although I like the idea of the two above subjects, I feel a stronger connection to the concept of good and evil in gaming.

Therefore, I will try and broaden my search for suitable articles by maybe looking up the same field of research in films and books as a contrast to games. I will also have another look in the college library for any materials I may have missed last time.  

Possible New Subject Areas for Context (9/2/2014)

Unable to find any articles relating to the original idea I had for my project, I decided to make a list to show my lecturer tomorrow in order to see if he felt any of them would make for good replacements.

Making sure that the following had available articles, I came up with the following possible ideas...

• Symbolism for narrative, characters and worlds in video games e.g. how do games reflect the inner most thoughts of the characters and the world around them? Titles I could use include ‘I have no mouth and I must scream’, ‘Persona 4’, ‘Eternal Sonata’, ‘Catherine’, ‘Heavy Rain’, ‘Spec Ops: The Line’ and possibly modern survival games which focus more on the player e.g. ‘The Walking Dead’ and maybe ‘The Last of Us’. Granted this could be quite nebulas / vague. 

• What is love? A look at video game character relationships (both romantic and just friends), and how they have changed over time. Are they realistic or forced? Do they work within the context of the genre they are from? Is it true love or just about sex? With this subject I can use research on gender, sexuality and relationships in gaming that I have found information on. 

• Fun in video games and recreating the joy you felt as a child. This could include research on the concept of play and I could use examples I remember from the past and recently that recreated the enjoyment that only video games can provide. Such examples may include ‘Mario’, the Lego games etc. 

• Continuing from the above example, I may wish to talk about how players represent themselves in games and whether or not they play as themselves or as another persona. Therefore, this could include reference to many RPG’s and both the game and previous research I have done for the pen and paper game ‘Dungeons and Dragons’. 

• Music used in video games in order to convey emotion and personalities. Although an interesting subject, I feel that my lack of musical knowledge would hinder this as well as a feeling that I wouldn’t have enough to write about.

• History and its accuracy in video games. How it has been represented over the years e.g. how has it been incorporated or adapted and does it work or not? Such examples could include ‘Assassin Creed’, ‘Call of Duty’ and the so called historical game that included giant enemy crabs. However, as above, I would need to do research into history which I enjoy, but would take up a lot of time.

Further research (30/1/2014)

* Listened to a presentation named 'Kick Starting Your Research Writing' and wrote down the following notes...

• Make sure to include 2 to 3 pieces of research such as articles.
• Make sure to write in detail what they were trying to get across, how this can shed light on my subject and the main points/purpose of their work. What connections and issues does this raise?
• If we go over the word count then the blog can include any 'spill over'. The actual word count is 2500-3500 words.
• Try and get 'primary research' in the form of interviews with key names in my field of research. Should include well considered questions. 
• Questionnaires are not as strong at this level as you would need to get a massive audience to take part. 

With the little time we had left he asked us to find some more primary research in the from of articles and books. Therefore, I decided to look back home at the collection of narrative books I have in order to see if any of them relate to my work.

Also try and email some people in my field of research and ask for their opinions on my topic.

* Before next session we must email our lecturer a literature review of 500 words. What should be on it is covered on the presentation he showed us today which is now on Moodle.

In short, review a piece of text I have read. As simple as that.

Literature Review (1/2/2014)

* Today I decided to do some research for the 'Literature Review' which the lecturer wanted emailed before the next session. Therefore, I decided to do the following research (2 hours) before writing it...

First I read some video game related books so as to find tips on how developers make characters unique through the changing techniques from the past to the present. To do so I used two books I own, 'Gaming Writing Handbook' by Rafael Chandler (2007) and 'Level Up: The Guide To Great Video Game Design' by Scott Rogers (2010). Although both had great advice for writing characters and putting them into the game, neither of them unfortunately explained the process I needed.

With the books I hoped would help... well, not helping... I decided to try and find online articles relating to my concept.

Next I decided to look up the 'Why Mario is Mental' video I had thought of using as an example for when to talk about if the classic plumber was in fact the bad guy and not Bowser. However, I found the video to be more nit picky than anything and not relevant to my work as it was more a parody than anything. Therefore, I decided to leave it as a possibility.


Typing up 'morality in gaming' got me the same results as before of the choices of good and evil in gaming, but not the characters themselves.

I then tried to look up 'the development...', ' the growth...' or 'the process of good and evil characters in video games' ended up with me only finding links relating to the video game 'Beyond Good and Evil'. This was a pain as sites relating to this one game constantly popped up instead of the information I was looking for. Therefore, I wish I had thought of another way of describing my subject as it is constantly being confused with the existing game listed above.

When the above failed I decided to play with the synonyms of 'good and evil' changing them to 'heroes and villains and even 'goodies and baddies'. The first new search only gave me links to super hero MMO's and information on the spiritual successor to 'City of Heroes' named 'Heroes and Villains'.
The second one after sifting through some kid sites surprisingly led me to an article named '10 pathetic video game baddies you should feel bad for killing' by Simon Gallagher. The article itself wasn't really meant to be considered serious, however, I did find many of their examples to be compltetly wasted with the possibilties they could have written about.

Unlike the 'Why Mario is Mental' video being more comedic, this article and its example annoyed me purely because they had a great enemy type that you should feel for, and yet didn't give the best reasons why.
Therefore, I decided to use their example of the head crabs from 'Half Life 2' as seen below.

Literature Review:

10 Pathetic Video Game Baddies You Should Feel Bad For Killing
Read more at http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fatally-unimposing-video-game-baddies.php/3#aqrCCLLo9OwOkVg4.99

10 Pathetic Video Game Baddies You Should Feel Bad For Killing
Read more at http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fatally-unimposing-video-game-baddies.php/3#aqrCCLLo9OwOkVg4.99

10 Pathetic Video Game Baddies You Should Feel Bad For Killing
Read more at http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fatally-unimposing-video-game-baddies.php/3#aqrCCLLo9OwOkVg4.99

Finding the article '10 pathetic video game baddies you should feel bad for killing' (by Simon Gallagher), I found that I just had to write about it as for a subject, that should generally be interesting, it fell short. This is a shame as it brought up one example that I had never considered until now. Yet, when I thought about it I found myself astonished (almost angry) that he hadn’t gone into far greater detail. Therefore, I decided I would.

The article itself as the title suggests is a list of ‘pathetic video game baddies you should feel bad for killing' yet, although he includes genuine examples, I find calling the head crabs from 'Half Life 2' (fig 1) pathetic is just wrong. I know he means in terms of being able to beat them, but my focus is on the other term he used, ‘feel bad for killing’.

Fig 1:

Head crabs are named after the horrible creatures that attach themselves to the heads of humans, thus turning them into zombie like creatures. However, these are not your ‘run of the mill’ zombies, despite them being slightly faster than an average shuffler, these ‘baddies’ as the article suggests are nothing more but victims.

Why? Well, I had discovered a while back from ‘Did You Know Gaming?’ that the people being controlled by the head crabs were screaming in reverse “Help, god, help! Help me!” as seen below (fig 2). This is interesting as listening to them again I find myself able to hear them this time round.

Fig 2:

Continuing from the examples above I decided to link them with my subject of whether they are good or evil.

As mentioned before we know them to be victims, yet they can cause more harm than good in that state. Does that make them villains? Not really, they are just victims after all. Yet how about those that kill them? You have to ask yourself, is it moral to kill zombies? Are those that go around destroying them heroes for saving the day, or in fact monsters themselves for killing those in torment? Furthermore, when considering a regular zombie is it right to put down someone who has been infected, but hasn’t ‘turned’ yet? Thus stopping them becoming  “one of them”.

Personally I think it all depends on the circumstances. If they are rotten corpses with no means to be ‘cured’ then they should be put out of their misery, as is especially apparent with the head crabs so as to free them from their misery and stop them from hurting others. Yet if someone was just ‘infected’ by say a normal zombie and could be cured then I would say try and keep them alive for as long as possible. At the end of the day it really depends on the situation.  

I find the above things interesting to think about due to my love of the survival genre, therefore, it would be interesting to include the information found today perhaps within the context of my ‘Walking Dead’ example in my main project. 

Having written the above I realise that it doesn't quite fit the lecturer's brief of reviewing an article, nor does it quite cover my chosen topic as my literature review covers morals rather than the development of good and evil characters in video games. This is unfortunate as I need to find some articles which are both relevant and in depth rather than just web site opinions. Therefore, I will ask my lecturer the next time I see him if he can help me out, and if I should consider changing my subject despite not wanting to.

Harvard Referencing: ADD BOOKS!!!

• Fig1: Gallagher, S (2013) 10 pathetic video game baddies you should feel bad for killing [Online Image]. Available at: http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fatally-unimposing-video-game-baddies.php/4 (Accessed: 1/2/2014).
• Fig 2: Did You Know Gaming? (2012) Half Life 2 [Online Image]. Available at: http://didyouknowgaming.com/post/24272971121/half-life-2 (Accessed: 1/2/2014).
• Chandler, R (2007) Gaming Writing Handbook. United States of America: Charles River Media.
• Rogers, S (2010) Level Up: The Guide To Great Video Game Design. West Sussex. A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication. 
• YouTube (2013) Game Theory: Why Mario is Mental, Part 1. [Online Video]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WMSQNVhMqA (Accessed: 1/2/2014).

Articles on good and evil in gaming (23/1/2014)

* During today's session we continued to focus on key words and texts so as to expand our research.
Therefore, I decided to try and find some examples online and look back at some previous ones already recommended to me.

• Read the article I found two weeks ago 'Babies know the difference between good and evil at six months' (2010) in which it discussed a study about how children reacted differently during a puppet show. Findings showed, that they reacted positively towards the helpful puppet and negatively towards the naughty one. One child even punished a naughty puppet with a smack. It was an interesting article, but I felt the evidence wasn't conducted on a wide enough demographic. I even  found a comment stating that the research should have gone further. For example, they should have had an adult puppet tell two child puppets not to go into an area as it was dangerous, therefore when one tried to go in and the other stopped it it would be for their safety, not as a an obstruction which may have been seen without any context. Still, it is an interesting field of research which suggests babies may be born with some 'understanding' of good and evil even before nurture and environment influence them.
• I then looked at the article 'Moral Decision Making in Fallout' which was recommended to me AGES ago. In short it related rather closely to the example below which I read just before.

* Adam who is also looking up morality in gaming recommended that I include the characters' motivations and shared with me an article on Dorkly '5 Mistakes Every Videogame With A Morality System Makes' (2013).

Reading it I found that, although games may provide a morality system there is never a middle ground. In most examples of these types types of games you will never see anyone swap between the options good and evil. This is especially obvious whenever you choose to be evil as it is often cartoon villainy in comparison to the villain you are tasked on defeating. 
Often most players will pick just the one morality and do that for the whole of the game, especially since a lot of games reward players for becoming completely good or evil. However, often it is only the good path that leads into the sequel and not the evil path, thus your decisions that should carry over don't completely.  

However, it was good to point out that 'Dragon Age: Origins' and the 'Fallout' series deal with morality appropriately as it doesn't state whether you are good or evil, instead the people around you see you differently and either agree or disagree with your decisions. This is interesting as I had already used the 'Fallout' series and 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic' (almost identical to 'Dragon Age: Origins') as examples of games with morality since I remembered them as being unique.

* The lecturer also recommended that we use the website http://gamestudies.org/1302 to find more gaming articles that may relate to our work.  

* Overall, I will need to try and find an example that grabs me the most as, although some articles talk about morality they don't cover exactly what I want to talk about.

Harvard Referencing:

• Takacs, M (2013) 5 Mistakes Every Video Game With A Morality System Makes. Available at: http://www.dorkly.com/article/56575/5-mistakes-every-videogame-with-a-morality-system-makes (Accessed: 23/1/2014).
• Game Studies (Unknown) Game Studies. Available at: http://gamestudies.org/1302 (Accessed: 23/1/2014).

Advice on my context project (16/1/2014)

* For this session our lecturer talked to all of us in order to find out how we have been getting on and whether or not he could recommend any resources for us to use.
The lecturer and my peers gave me the following advice...

• Use the term representation for referring to good and evil. 
• Look up 'Media and Morality'. 
• Try and find subtle examples e.g. someone who creates a polarity between two things, thus making one thing sound good and the other evil. One real world example could be George W Bush who claimed America were the good guys during the Iraq war. This could then easily blend in with the 'Call of Duty' games as you seem to always be fighting people of other ethniticities, therefore I could reference my work done in my Digital Arabs work last year.
• 'Borderlands 2's Handsome Jack is a villain who believes himself to be the hero.
• 'Grand Theft Auto's gameplay as the game encourages reckless and out of control gameplay. 
• In general try and include some real world examples to further back up my work with broad theories. 

* I also continued to work on the presentation and word document, noting down the new advice provided and finding images for my document.

* Next week we will discover more key texts that we can use in our projects.
He also recommended that we continue to find and read research online so as to keep expanding the areas we can look into.  

Key Word for our Project (9/1/2014)

* Today our lecturer spoke to us about our chosen projects and how we can become so absorbed in trying to find something to write about, that we don't realise it doesn't exist or is in another field.

Therefore, he suggested that we narrow our search by trying to find existing articles and papers based on similar subjects such as film and TV. By doing this we find out what others have written and whether or not it is relevant at all to our ideas.
My research included... 

• Looking up numerous movies that have clear examples of good and evil within them, such as 'The Lord of the Rings', 'Star Wars' and 'Harry Potter'. 'Star Wars' is an especially good example as it involves the battle of good and evil between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, yet Vader redeems himself at the end by saving his son Luke from the evil Emperor.
• Whereas, in TV I remembered the great show 'Survivors' in which the characters are portrayed more as humans with the instinct to survive rather than being solely good or evil.
• Looking online, I found an interesting article that claimed that babies of six month old's could tell the difference between good and evil, thus I could perhaps mention this in my work.

* We were then asked to write down a broad description of our chosen topic, using a key word to focus our search on. I chose 'Alignment' (a term used in Dungeons and Dragons for morality) as my overall discussion is on good and evil in gaming.
After doing the above we then shared our key words with the group in order to see if anyone else was doing something similar.  
I found that Adam would be someone useful to share resources with, as he will be writing about morality and indoctrination.

* With my key word chosen, I then used it to further expand the material I looked at today.
This research included...

• Finding many images that people had made of characters from both video games and movies showing each one as one of the nine alignments which included Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic all within Good, Neutral or Evil.
• I also found numerous examples of video games (mainly RPG's) that include alignment through the moral choices players make, such as 'Fallout' and 'Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic'.  

The lecturer also gave the following advice...

• As always keep researching things and add useful discoveries to our blogs, as this will show your work efforts outside of college. This is especially useful since we should be doing the same amount of work outside college as in.
• In general we should support one another, so if we find anything that could be used to help others in the group then we should share our resources. Therefore, a Facebook page will be put together in order to share things.
• We will need to have a presentation ready in order to showcase our concept to the group at some point, so I should start to create one.

Harvard Referencing:

• Derbyshire, D (2010) Babies Know the the difference between good and evil at six months, study reveals. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1275574/Babies-know-difference-good-evil-months-study-reveals.html (Accessed: 9/1/2014).

Research Proposals (12/12/2013)

* Today we worked on our research proposals by filling in forms.

We did this so the lecturer has an idea of what we wish to write about in order to give us feedback. This also gives us a working document that we can use and refer back to.

* If we do contact anyone for their input/knowledge on our chosen subject, then we should include it in our work as this all adds to our research and evidence. We also need to make sure we explain what we are doing and why we are interested in a particular person's work so as to link to explain why we contacted them.

* I also decided today to figure out which examples I wish to write about in my project that I have so far entitled 'Beyond Good and Evil in Gaming - How has this changed over time?".
These examples include...

• Pacman and the Ghosts
• Contra's heroes that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone
• Mario and Bowser 
• Kefka from 'Final Fantasy'
• Snake and Liquid from 'Metal Gear Solid'
• Lee and the survivor he stole from in 'The Walking Dead' game
• Joel and David from 'The Last of Us'.

* In the third year we will have another written project which the lecturer would prefer to follow on from this year's one. However, we will be starting the third year's writen project next year so as to get a head start.