Do Games Count Too?

About 9 weeks ago, I would have told you that games do not count and do not deserve the same attention as great literature, art, and film. That was because I am not a gamer, thus have not played many or researched many games. After looking at game pieces such as That Dragon, Cancer, I can now honestly say that I believe that some games should be given that attention. That Dragon, Cancer can be looked at as a journey of hope in the shadow of death. This narrative video game offers an engaging story about a four year old boy, Joel Green, who is fighting cancer. Like several pieces that we looked at, this took a personal story from the author and gave it an interactive layer. The trailer can be found here:

Not all games with Transmedia elements are augmented reality. Take for instance this year’s “Quantum Break”. A live action series was produced in order to help enhance the story. When players play through enough action scenes, they will have to make a decision from the villain’s point of view, a perspective rarely seen in video games. A one hour show will play after each decision is made, showing the consequences of the choices. Halo is a well known game series, and it has expanded its universe to have novels, a direct to dvd film, and even an upcoming Showtime series. When it comes down to looking at interactivity, most games are letting the player “help” the story move on. In games like Battlefield, players are just given a laundry list of objectives, and once the laundry list is completed, the game is finished. Other times, games will actually let the player steer the story. These games will often have multiple endings which can be reached in different ways. A game might choose an ending for the player based off of their choices (Call of Duty Black Ops 2) or based off of a decision making scene at the end of the game (Grand Theft Auto V), typically found in a “who do you want to sacrifice” scene. Games can also interact with players like in the case of Grand Theft Auto V, where the in-game shrink gives you a complimentary evaluation about your in-game behavior. (This was mine)

Either way, I promise you that games play a very big role in digital humanities.

Video Game Meme

Uncreative Writing

For this post, we created uncreative writing by reacting to an exercise in class where our group of four had to simultaneously transcribe what we were hearing from a set of videos into a Google hangout. The videos we transcribed were Shia Labeouf’s original “Just Do It”, a press session with Marshawn Lynch, a selected segment from Oprah Winfrey’s commencement speech at Stanford, and a mash-up of Donald Trump quotes. After we finished with all of the transcriptions, we took the chat and put it into a google doc, removing our names and time stamps. Take a look at our poem, Millennial Force Just Did It, to better understand what this blog is talking about!

To start, I looked at our transcript of the Shia Labeouf speech. Interestingly, it looked a good deal like something that Eminem would rap, especially with how often certain lines were being repeated. After this portion, we transcribed the Marshawn Lynch “interview”, where even the reporters gave up on trying to get him to speak. As several people know, Marshawn Lynch is a notorious recluse around the media. With Lynch being the only speaker, reading this sounded more or less like a toast given after getting out of prison. When we reached Oprah’s speech, we somehow stumbled across her complaining about going bald after a hair perm. This led way to a part where she complains about how she did not want to be reporting, yet she wanted to be helping out instead. The only way I could see these two transitioning smoothly was with Oprah complaining about hate. The last we heard from Oprah was her choice to be a better Oprah. After this, we took a look into a mashup of Donald Trump, which was where things started getting hectic. This started off with Donald Trump’s notorious habit of firing people, and then diving into his presidential campaign with clips bragging about his wealth and how he considers himself to be a nice person. The next portion was a rapid fire of Donald Trump saying China. Since at this point, I was getting completely bored, I decided to spam China into our chat repeatedly (and also later in the video when he stopped saying China I still spammed it in a little). After this, Donald Trump points out how assertive he is, using things such as saying that he personally would be the best for striking fear into ISIS, threatening to sue someone over the phone and then hanging up, and saying how it couldn’t have been any better. If we had to put this all together and give it some sort of storyline or meaning, I would say it was a rap/speech about how a man gets motivated to leave prison, going bald, doing charity work, and suddenly teaming up with China and earning a huge reputation, and then looking back on their life.

Now, the real question is, is our poem considered plagiarized? Our poem consists of lines that other people have spoken, that are in no way original to us. Although we have taken the lines from multiple videos, I don’t think our poem should be considered plagiarized because we only took small fragments from each video. It reads as if the random lines in the poem could have been taken from anywhere, since there is really no context surrounding them. What this unique type of poem does is make for an interesting mashup of popular videos featuring well known cultural figures, which also makes for a very interesting read. Though, the way we acquired the information for this poem might make some wonder if there is really any true meaning in it. Because of the comedic nature of the specific video clips that we selected, I’d say that there really is no deep meaning of this work, other than it’s ability to make you question what you’re reading. However, I do think that if a poem like this would be comprised with of videos with more substance, such as motivational or inspirational videos, readers could be able to individually interpret it. Any poem can be very meaningful or not meaningful it all. The meaningfulness of a poem relies on the reader’s unique mind and opinions, making it possible for different people to find different meaning in anything, even if most people view it as meaningless.