By using the game principles such as winning, conflict, rules, goals, players, motivation, constant feedback, practice, intensity, and choice/involvement, students will learn that games are a concrete way to explore the critical thinking and writing process. This will happen both through the use of COTS as mentor texts and the study of written texts that explore these concepts further. Students will evaluate and come to understand the game mechanics that professional game designers employ to create games. Then, students will be challenged themselves to use the tools taught to them through these mentor texts, as well as through podcasts and vodcasts created specifically for further comprehension and engagement with the technology. With the idea in mind that most games employ implicit thesis statements and arguments, students will be asked to consider and critically think in order to understand and express the explicit meanings that should be apparent in their written texts.
Rigor of Assignments Through the study of rhetorical devices and appeals of video games as paratexts, students will complete three essays: a Rhetorical Analysis Essay, Evaluation Essay, and Proposal Essay, to demonstrate their understanding of the rhetorical and cultural situations that influence the construction of video games. Finally, students will create argumentation-‐based persuasive RPG games that are contextualized by current social and cultural issues with different rhetorical devices, so to keep their audience actively involved in both the cultural complexities/context of the game and the challenges that they set forth for their audience; students can design games using software such as RPG Maker, which provides a platform for RPG game creation, but gives students full control over the game’s development for their final project at the end of the semester. Through reflective writing exercises and immersive gaming, students will come to recognize the multiple contexts that contribute to the construction of the video game, and demonstrate this explicitly in their essays.
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