Skyrim is all about the players. Everything you put into Skyrim is what you will receive from it. If you enter it with an open mind to learn from the game and understand the game, then you will receive much. Yes the game can be approached from the same angle from many players and the same choices will be made, but the ways players invest themselves and approach the issue in the game will be different. No one plays this game with the same mindset and reason that any other player does. Different play-throughs of the game offer players a different experience, a different way to learn about the games rich lore and world. Interacting with everything in the game allows in-sight into a very lovingly crafted world.
In conclusion Skyrim gives us a mirror to look at our world through the lenses of something just less real. We face many relevant issues in the game that can be applied to our world. While racism is given a fantasy treatment in the game, it parallels to how racism is still around in our own world and that is indeed based off more on history and stereotypes than personal relations. Personal growth and pursuit of knowledge which is treated as character and skill progression in the game is akin to students struggling to gain more skills, experience and academic knowledge to out beat others in a competitive major field. War will never leave the humankind, it's something engraved in our history just as war is as engraved in Skyrim's world. Morality? While Skyrim does give a rather hyperbolic view on this aspect of life, it allows an outlet for players to really define their own morality and allows players to reflect on how these decisions would compare to their own personal choices.
Monday, June 8, 2015
Plog Introduction
Skyrim. How does one go about turning this into a tool of academic purpose? The answer is treating it like one. Games serve as mediums for entertainment, escapement and now academia. Skyrim is a game that is inherently a role playing game set in a fantasy realm of adventure. To captivate an audience and to make them desire to be in this world and contribute to it's already populated game space, is to make the player care about this world and relate to the game. So to do this, the people behind the game inserted morality issues, current day issues, and game world history into the game so that the world can be understood and related to. To further immerse the player, they are given the choice to make their own character and walk their own paths to further their own personal story.
As one walks through this well crafted world, their avatar will define the choices these players make thus reflecting themselves or how they wish themselves to be reflected. This is how people in real life proceed in their interaction with others. We choose how to present ourselves to others and just like in the game, make our own choices to define ourselves. Further drawing similarities to the game is how we choose to interact with distractions and crossroads in life. We are constantly given obstacles in life and ways to solve it, but we could also ignore them and proceed with our main objective at that moment in our life. These obstacles can be issues of morality, self progress or monetary gain. To us, those obstacles can be hugely relevant or not but it is up to us to decide how to figure that ourselves. Just like in Skyrim, which is just simply a game.
Defining Skyrim as more than a game required multiple perspectives looking for what makes this game applicable as literature. To remedy this, students were require to have plogs (play logs) that were intended to express the game through the student's own methods. I myself chose a narrative based approach that looked through the eyes of my game avatar which ended with my own personal analysis of the literary devices the game had utilized. I chose this approach to give the plogs a story based element to keep my audience drawn to my material while still accomplishing the intended purpose of the plogs.
As one walks through this well crafted world, their avatar will define the choices these players make thus reflecting themselves or how they wish themselves to be reflected. This is how people in real life proceed in their interaction with others. We choose how to present ourselves to others and just like in the game, make our own choices to define ourselves. Further drawing similarities to the game is how we choose to interact with distractions and crossroads in life. We are constantly given obstacles in life and ways to solve it, but we could also ignore them and proceed with our main objective at that moment in our life. These obstacles can be issues of morality, self progress or monetary gain. To us, those obstacles can be hugely relevant or not but it is up to us to decide how to figure that ourselves. Just like in Skyrim, which is just simply a game.
Defining Skyrim as more than a game required multiple perspectives looking for what makes this game applicable as literature. To remedy this, students were require to have plogs (play logs) that were intended to express the game through the student's own methods. I myself chose a narrative based approach that looked through the eyes of my game avatar which ended with my own personal analysis of the literary devices the game had utilized. I chose this approach to give the plogs a story based element to keep my audience drawn to my material while still accomplishing the intended purpose of the plogs.
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