This is my re-copy and paste from comments into posts. Prior to week 9, I am unsure if my blogs were comments or posts. For the remaining weeks, I will copy and paste them into posts. Sorry for the confusion + thanks for the heads up email !

Brendan Downey

#50190372

DMS 448

Week 9

In week 9 of class, we were assigned to read Merritt Kopas’ “On Gone Home.” In the reading, Kopas discusses our gameplay session from last week; “Gone Home.” In this, we were given a deep story on an individual who feels connected with the “Gone Home.” Likely due to the nostalgia within the game, the author is drawn to its characters and landscape. In many ways, I relate to Kopas and her desire to become like Sam. Everyone loves a punk.

This week, we did not have class on Thursday in order to have more time to work on our final projects. Using this much needed time, I made a lot of progress on both my game and research projects.

For the research project, I have decided to do a Twitch.tv / multimedia project. For this project, my topic will be female roles in popular sports video games. Over this broad topic, I will be able to accomplish a number of ideas. For example, I will study trends in female representation through the years and how they relate to gender, race, sexuality or other identities. Also, this project will touch on how games are marketing to particular audiences. It does not take much research to find out that women are generally portrayed as attractive objects in sports video games. Based on what is posted on UBLearns, I will likely use XSplit

Broadcaster (Windows only) to stream one or more games on my PC. I know that I have NBA2k and Tony Hawk as examples, but would likely need to purchase other games or stream them online.

For the creative project, making your own game, I have decided to try Ren’Py because I was impressed with Joan’s examples she posted on the class Discord. After searching through their character presets, I found a lot of stereotypical female characters; young female students, large breasted females, blonde females with large hair, generally large eyes, “babyface” characters. This week, I am going to iron out a script. This is definitely my most daunting task, as I do not exactly know what kind of game I want to play. Due to Ren’Py’s limitations, it will likely be a narrative about female roles in sports video games. However, I do not see anything sports related in Ren’Py’s presets so will have to work around it. Once I have my script completed, I will be more confident and able to start working in Ren’Py from there. In a worst case scenario where Ren’Py does not work, my backup plan is to use my script to create a Twine game. I feel like I have done a lot of research for this project and have a great topic. Now, I need to translate that into an original quality game.