Game Comparison Reflection

Essay: https://wordpress.com/page/andrewmagica.wordpress.com/163

Thesis: The vagueness and repetition used in Gris and Gone Home allow the gamer to be vulnerable and understand their own trauma.

For the majority of my writing education, I have been writing deductive essays. My usual formula for writing essays is to start with a general hook, connect it to my thesis, and then get specific. Even though this was an inductive essay, I still decided to start with a general hook just to let my ideas flow onto the page. I took it out after. I honestly enjoyed writing an inductive essay because the flow of ideas made sense to me. I started off by talking about vagueness in the games and providing evidence and context from the game. I then talked about what the theme allowed the gamer to learn about trauma. I then did the same thing for repetition. At first, I included vulnerability, a word important to my thesis, in my first paragraph because it explained my theme well. I realized however that vulnerability also connected to my other theme, repetition. I then decided to use the word as the key part of my thesis. The inductive nature of the essay allowed me to enhance my themes by bringing them together. Both themes allowed for the same effect on the player, so it made sense to do it that way. The difficulty in writing this essay was that it was difficult to find evidence. It’s not like you had a text that you could easily get information from. We played some of these games a long time ago, and I needed to replay certain parts, which took up time. In playing through the parts of the game again, I focused on how the game affected the player more than figuring out how the game works. This allowed me to see how vulnerability and repetition were used well in the game, and how the games focus on different aspects of Trauma.