4. Writing up permanent and brainstorming notes
These notes should be posted by 10am, Tuesday October 3.
This week, I want students to complete two notes:
A permanent note answering the question, "What is a game?" based on the two assigned Nguyen readings and perhaps some additional research.
The second is a brainstorming note that asks you to reflect on your experience playing games.
The goal this week is to create one note from a template and one note from scratch.
1. Permanent note
The two readings by C.T. Nguyen provide students with the basic building blocks for answering the question, "What is a game?".
A. Read through the two works, highlighting and annotating with on Perusall so that you will be able to reconstruct their key arguments and idea.
with your annotations make sure you have made clear your thoughts about Nguyen's ideas/words and provide some mental context so that you can make sense of the text from your annotations alone
when you are reading through Nguyen's texts, identify terminology that seems key, but is new to you. To make these easy to find by you later, tag new terminology with a tag such as, "#NewTerminology" or "NeedToDefine" or "KeyConcept". You can also use a hierarchical system "Game/Definition" or "Game/Purpose" (which allows tags to be formed into groups and subgroups).
From the past two exercises, you have had experience writing literature notes, so I will not ask you to hand these in, but you may wish to do anyways to organize and store your thoughts/ reactions to Nguyen. We are proceeding as if you have done this, however.
B. Create a new permanent note from the template, with a title something like, "YOUR NAME - What is a Game", "What are games?" or "Games: a definition" or something that makes sense to you.
C. Add a new header, "Terminology" underneath "Tags" header. You can autoformat text as headers by clicking on a drop down menu on the tool ribbon in google docs. We'll come back to this later.
D. Work to Understand the idea a bit more.
Drawing on terminology and concepts you identified as key in your annotations, add a list of words (under the new header "Terminology" that you have read but might not understand or that you think are important fundemental ideas that you want to know more about (these might be words you tagged as "Terminology", "DidNotUnderstand" or "KeyIdea" or something similar.
list all the words that you didn't understand from the readings in your note;
distinguish between words which are new to you (which you are learning for the first time) and other words which you already know, but seem to be used by Nguyen in a new way. Some words are just academic jargon (using a higher register of English to sound academic) and others are precise conceptual terminology. Put the terminology that seem like the latter (e.g. percise conceptual language) in its own group.
e.g. you all know what agent means, but maybe not in this context
e.g. you know what "achievement" or "striving" means, but not when Nguyen distinguishes between "achievement-play" and "striving-play".
then find a way to define these words (provide links to proper definitions from one of the two references works below for future-you.
I recommend the online Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms (English "ludic" is an adjective derived from the Latin, ludus – game, play, sport, pastime). It is a useful and developing resource for studying games.
I also recommend the Oxford English Dictionary (OED Online - subscription through the library) for looking up terminology. It provides a compilation of historical uses (i.e. when a term first appears, how it changes over time) to help you understand the conceptual linkages words have.
E. Populate your note with a few paragraphs summarizing Nguyen and your ideas about how to define a game.
Historians argue either by using evidence (primary sources) or using what other authorities have already said about the topic (secondary sources). The 2016 article shows Nguyen using secondary sources to make his argument, but the 2020 book draws mostly on evidence (anecdotes, games he has played etc.).
By embedding notes from your annotations of Nguyen's texts, provide key supporting material for your definition of what a game is. Be selective of any quotations to make sure that they are absolutely necessary and couldn't be said in your own words. The key is, however, if you reproduce a quotation, you still need to explain it in your own words afterwards to the reader its relevence.
In historical writing, we argue based on fundamental evidence. We either base our arguments on what scholars have written (secondary sources) or we use evidence of the past (primary sources). For this course, our primary sources will tend to be games or written accounts/ descriptions of games. Nguyen's writings provide a secondary source for your argument. You can also draw on your own experiences with games to supplement, support or contradict what Nguyen has written.
Your goal is therefore to link together your ideas from the annotations, Nguyen's words and other material in order to organize this material into a logical order/argument. You may want to create subsections in the Idea section (use headers to differentiate sections) to distinguish between defining what a game is (according to Nguyen) from how a game has been defined by people like Huizinga, Caillois etc.
Once you finish the idea sections, then add tags.
F. Congratulations! You're done the hard part.
2. Brainstorming note
This note is meant to be the kernel of a future index. Nguyen's work will give you some things to think about and some different ways of categorizing games. I want you to take that thinking and turn your analytical focus on yourself.
Create a blank note in google docs and call it "YOUR NAME - My Games", "My Game Log" or "Games I have Played" or something similarly titled that works for you. You might want to add a date (September 2023) in case this is something you want to update or use to track your game play chronologically.
Start by making a list of all the games you think you have ever played. I mean ever. Like even when you were 4 years old.
Partly my goal in getting you to do this, is to show you that you have all played a lot of games. Nguyen ultimately sees everything as a game (anything involving winning points can be treated as a game by him - including grades in school), so make sure you have a good sense of what YOU think is a game before you get started.
For any game you have played that you think could be classed as "medieval" put the name of that game in bold. Anything from Dark Souls or Minecraft to D&D to Chess counts.
What game genres do you like playing? (Feel free to add your own)
Non-digital games
Card games
Board games
Sports
Playground games
Digital games
Puzzle games
Adventure games
Role-playing games
Action-adventure games
Turn-based strategy games
Real-time strategy games
Racing games
Sports games
Casual games
Art games
Massively multiplayer online games
Massively multiplayer role-playing online games
Social games
First-person shooter
What do you play for?
Problem-solving
Achievements
Socializing
Exploration
Learning
Finding the optimal strategy
Relaxation/stress management
Self-improvement
Curiosity
How many hours do you play?
Not at all, this is homework.
1–5 hours a week
5–10 hours a week
10–15 hours a week
20+ hours
When you have made your big long list, try to see if there are commonalities. If you play a lot of digital games do they show overlapping genres (hack and slash fantasy, first person shooters, racing games, abstract spatial games etc.)? Do you play games that take intense mental concentration (puzzlers) or short games that you play on the bus....
Spend a bit of time trying to categorize your game experiences into groups. And add a short paragraph at the top of the note summarizing them. Based on your responses, write up your own profile as a player.
What types of games do you know best?
Which ones are you good at?
Which games do you not really play?
Why do you like the games you like?
You may realize that you play different genres for different reasons, so your profile may need different sections depending on the genres you play. This exercise will help you make explicit your own biases, not only about games, but also about how others may play games – if they are different from you.
Final Step
And then you're almost done. Upload/ link these two notes to your Student Work folder on Teams and you're done!
[Adapted from Fernández-Vara, 2015, p. 29-30]
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