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).