Essay: 1500–2000 words (6-8 pages), plus a bibliography (1 page)
For the term assignment, you will revise and expand one (1) of your completed Case Studies into a short essay of 1500–2000 words (6-8 pages, plus a bibliography).
(a) Your essay or presentation must build upon one (1) of your completed Case Study assignments. It should be clearly stated in your first paragraph which Case Study you are revising/expanding and which key issue you are addressing in your paper.
(b) Your essay or presentation must introduce a thesis statement (i.e. one central claim or argument) at the very beginning of your exposition.
*An effective thesis statement will encapsulate your main argument in a single sentence. For example:
“My claim in this paper is that Minecraft provides an excellent example of Henry Jenkins’s concept of emergent narrative; moreover, the game’s potential for open-ended story-constructing activity allows us to further refine our understanding of this concept.”
(c) In addition to the author(s)/reading(s) you focused on for your initial Case Study, you should research one or two (1-2) other scholarly sources and incorporate them into your game analysis and discussion.
*Scholarly sources normally include books from an academic press, peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. However, for this assignment is also acceptable to make use of non-scholarly sources if the content is equivalent in quality to academic writing and/or it is highly relevant to your discussion (e.g. an online news or magazine article, a blog written by a gaming researcher, a film/TV or web documentary).
(d) It is also possible to incorporate some creative/practical research into your paper. For example, you may include in your discussion some relevant analysis of your own experience with playing the game (in an online/multiplayer environment, creating characters/levels and/or other user-generated content, modding, cheating, etc.)
(e) You may reuse any written passages from your Case Study for this assignment; however, you must revise your text carefully rather than simply adding to your earlier text.
(f) It is not permitted to change the game example that you analyzed for the Case Study on which your essay/presentation is based—however it is acceptable to cite one or more brief examples of other games for the purposes of comparison.
(g) Your essay must include at least one (1) relevant screenshot or other illustration at the end of your written essay, up to a maximum of three (3) images. [*For presentation visuals, see below].
1500–2000 words (8 pages maximum), plus a bibliography (1 page)
· 12-point Times New Roman font, 1½- or double-spaced
· 8½ x 11” pages with 1” margins on all sides
· Do not include a title page. Place your essay title at the top of the first page and include your name and student ID in the top right corner
· Please place your screenshots or other illustrations at the end of your written text – *do not forget to label your image(s) (game title/publisher/date)
· You may cite your sources following any academic style manual (MLA, Chicago, APA).
· Your bibliography must also be correctly formatted based on the chosen style and should be placed on a separate page after your illustration(s).
· Written assignments must be uploaded to the course Moodle as an Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file
· https://cloudconvert.com/ offers a free online tool to convert .odt, .docx and other file formats to .pdf
* Written essays may be submitted in English or French
Evaluation Criteria:
Your paper or presentation will be evaluated according to the following five competencies:
(1) Appropriateness and relevance of the thesis or central claim of the essay/presentation
(2) Accuracy and thoroughness of the game analysis and close reading of the authors’ texts
(3) Quality of the research and use of 1-2 additional sources
(4) Clarity, coherence and concision of statements and arguments
(5) Originality of the contribution to the topic and of the student’s own reflections
