English SBA

Plan of Investigation
My Theme is Gaming, and my topic is The Psychology of Modern Video Games. I
decided to investigate this topic because, I thought it would be interesting to see
what the creator of a game intended for their players to feel. I choose gaming
because gaming is a widespread topic. As a student of English, the benefits of
doing this SBA would mean that I would enhance my written and oral
communication skills as well as vocabulary and comprehension skills, but also for
exposure to a different genre of writing. The three media pieces I intend to use is
a scholarly article, a magazine article and a YouTube video. I plan to source my
pieces via Google. The challenges that I may encounter is that they maybe
problems to find said media pieces and to meet deadlines. The expected
outcomes will result in more information and knowledge about the topic and
enhance research and communication skills.

Reflection 1
The first media piece is a scholarly article that was obtained via the internet from
the website: Celia Hodent. The knowledge gained based on the scholarly article
that is called “The Psychology of Modern Video Games” was that when designing
video games, the approach is to exploit and understand your/a video game. Based
on the article, I realized that gameplay is important rather than just coding
features into a game which has changed my thinking concerning this. The second
media piece is a magazine article called “The Emotion Bomb” which was found via
the internet from the website called “The Emotion Bomb Inside Video Games”.
From the magazine article, I learnt that the players of the RPG genre of video
games can connect to characters on an emotional level. The magazine article
helped me to see that players can connect to a game on an emotional level due to
the storyline and characters. The third media piece is a YouTube video called “The
Psychology of Video Games” which was cited via the internet on YouTube. It was
evident from the YouTube video that different genres of video games appeal to
different people psychologically. For example, sandbox games like Minecraft will
appeal to creative and imaginative people. The YouTube video was insightful
because it showed me that different genres of video games appeal to different
people according to their personality.

Reflection 2
The first piece is a scholarly article entitled “The Psychology of Modern Video
Games”. It is written in standard English. The tone of the article is formal, neutral
and personal. It’s written in the first person, the mood created is one of concern
and optimism. Metaphors were used to describe the experiences of players when
playing video games, an example is “They are a rich medium that offers a very
diverse pool of experiences”. The piece is argumentative /expository. The second
piece is a magazine article; entitled “The Emotion Bomb Inside Video Games”. The
article is written in standard English, the tone is objective and personal, it’s
printed in the first person, the mood of it; is concerned. The metaphor, “the
emotional landscape of The Last of Us” is used to emphasize the numerous
emotions evoked by RPG games, in this case; The Last of Us 2. It’s an expository
piece. The third piece is a YouTube video entitled “The Psychology of Gaming”. It
is essay structured as it introduces a speaker, speaking standard English, the tone
is one of interest, first person narration is used, the mood is joyful, and the
personification “even time itself stands still” is used to highlight the state of non-
existent time while playing, felt by intrigued players of different types of games
based on their personality due to different players who may be interested in
different types of games and while playing it feels as if time hasn’t passed at all.

Reflection 3
I decided to investigate the topic of gaming because I thought it would be
interesting to see what the creators of a game intended for their players to feel.
From the media pieces I learnt, how game developers try to understand how
players would react and interact with their players during the design process. I
also learnt that players could connect to games on an emotional level. Only in
some genres of games such as RPG games which contain characters and
storylines, players connect to. Finally, I learnt that different genres of games
appeal to different players according to their personality. I am now much more
aware of the topic based on my newfound knowledge surrounding it from the
media pieces used. I am also better able to summarize, sequence and edit in
terms of my writing skills. Individually, I benefited from this SBA in terms of
researching skills, and group wise; I am now able to work together with group
members better in terms of communication. My greatest challenge with this SBA
was condensing my media pieces and group members meeting deadlines.

Group Report