E Lesson Four
Introduction:
The next 6 lessons will cover the player/audience dimension of this topic. It will be necessary for students to view themselves as researchers and use volunteers to play the games if they are to distance themselves from the gaming experience satisfactorily and critically analyse the range of audience responses.
Keyword: Target audience as defined by
Age
Gender
Socio-economic group
Race
Use the text book sections on audience profiling to investigate this area further.
Area of Study:
Player catharsis and identification
Key word: catharsis using abbreviated version of Aristotle’s ‘The Poetics’. If students are also studying English Lit A-Level there will be a cross over here. Watching the ending of ‘Othello’ or any other tragedy may be helpful in aiding students to understand this more difficult concept.
Example game needed
Analyse how the player/character achieves catharsis in this game.
Practical Task:
Describe in chart form the various stages of a level of a well known game.
Leave a column to the right for inserting heart rate figure
Leave a final column for marking in moment of catharsis.
Look at the various stages provided and mark in where you think the moment of catharsis will occur.
Example:
Level 6 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Create a table with these headings:
Stage Heart Rate Catharsis
Using a heart rate monitor attached to a guinea pig student who may be a member of the class. Ask the subject to play a level of a game that he is able to complete successfully but which requires some skill/.concentration.
Researcher holds the monitor, assistant writes down the heart rate at the end of each stage.
Observe where the moment of heart rate dip occurs – ie the subject relaxes.Does it tally with the projected moment of catharsis?
The next 6 lessons will cover the player/audience dimension of this topic. It will be necessary for students to view themselves as researchers and use volunteers to play the games if they are to distance themselves from the gaming experience satisfactorily and critically analyse the range of audience responses.
Keyword: Target audience as defined by
Age
Gender
Socio-economic group
Race
Use the text book sections on audience profiling to investigate this area further.
Area of Study:
Player catharsis and identification
Key word: catharsis using abbreviated version of Aristotle’s ‘The Poetics’. If students are also studying English Lit A-Level there will be a cross over here. Watching the ending of ‘Othello’ or any other tragedy may be helpful in aiding students to understand this more difficult concept.
Example game needed
Analyse how the player/character achieves catharsis in this game.
Practical Task:
Describe in chart form the various stages of a level of a well known game.
Leave a column to the right for inserting heart rate figure
Leave a final column for marking in moment of catharsis.
Look at the various stages provided and mark in where you think the moment of catharsis will occur.
Example:
Level 6 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Create a table with these headings:
Stage Heart Rate Catharsis
Using a heart rate monitor attached to a guinea pig student who may be a member of the class. Ask the subject to play a level of a game that he is able to complete successfully but which requires some skill/.concentration.
Researcher holds the monitor, assistant writes down the heart rate at the end of each stage.
Observe where the moment of heart rate dip occurs – ie the subject relaxes.Does it tally with the projected moment of catharsis?
posted by Amanda Trehearn at 1:17 PM
1 Comments:
Yes it did work, although I didn't teach this module 'cos I was watching Buffy with you... I teach all boys as well but the Media Studies group numbers 4 and they are fairly bright and would grasp catharsis easily as 3/4 of them do A-level English Lit. Videogames is on the A-level syllabus so it's not all my genius, although I do take a large part of the credit....
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