Here is my final essay on the therapeutic benefits of video games. First I talk about how video games positively effect the brain in terms of size and function in terms of intelligence, connectivity of neurons, social skills. Then I move on to talk about the emotional benefits of playing video games such as in crease in self esteem, motivation, mood, and so on. I specifically touch on how video games have been shaped into helping those with specific diagnoses like autism. I specifically focus my attention of Autcraft, which is a Minecraft server offered exclusively for those with Autism. From there I begin to touch on how video games are being incorporated into therapeutic interventions. Video games are generally used for interventions in children, but have also been tailored to specific diagnoses such as cancer or PTSD regardless of age of the participant.

Overview of Final Essay + Link

I decided to go with the evolution of gaming and how it created a new and different type of community. The history of how gaming became what it is today is described in great detail. The gaming community is an ever growing atmosphere of people all over the world who share the same interests. This would not be possible without the creation of games and not to long after, the multiplayer capabilities we have today. Link: Gaming Evolved shows how all of these events in history tie together to create the great world of virtual communication. Take a look!

Final Essay Overview and Link

     For my final essay, I decided to do an essay on the concept of whether video games were pieces of art or not. Throughout the essay, I gave multiple objects that are considered to be art themselves that were involved in video games. For example, things such as narrative aspects and music. Along with these ideas, I also embedded links to examples of each of these. I also decided to involve some YouTube videos of different examples of music, as well as, a compilation of cutscenes from a chapter in a game that I found to be very moving and emotional to play. Lastly, I compare feeling after completing video games to feeling after leaving a concert at Heinz Hall and after leaving a movie at the movie theater.

I have learned a great deal in this class and will be able to take that knowledge with me in the future.

Link to essay: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kKCJX4gmYRbpu7C3wtpFUk6XYuUYAb-MNr6sknKfGEQ/edit?usp=sharing

Final Essay Link & Overview

Overview

My final essay is an analysis of communication amongst generations via social media with a main focus on Twitter and SnapChat since those are the two sites most frequently used by today's younger generations. I provided a few examples of how someone from an older generation such as Generation X would interpret various emojis or phrases used commonly in conversation amongst the younger group of Generation Y and majority of Generation Z - even though some people from the two younger groups interpretations differed which was interesting to see. I included hyperlinks to further explain specific points, provide statistics on social media usage amongst generations and give more examples of various things I touched on along with a lot of visuals some in hyperlinks and in the essay itself of different emojis and conversation examples on Twitter using emojis.

Analysis of Communication amongst Generations via Social Media

Thanks for an awesome semester Dr. Justus!

Essasy Exhibit Reponse

Our final days spent in the classroom we had the opportunity to preview our final essays in an exhibit piece for the rest of the class. This allowed us to voice our approach and the various angles we planned on taking in our final essay to get some feedback from fellow students and also our professor. 

The first exhibit I viewed was Ryan's, he plans on talking about repurposing digital media and who would have authorship. The first picture is his first main point which is music, he used the example of Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke explaining how the beat was similar to another popular song and the process of the lawsuit he went through. Even though Thicke lost his lawsuit, Ryan said how he thinks whoever repurposes the music or creates a remix of a song, that person should be deemed the creator even if they're using someone else's song.   

 The same thing was then said about videos on social media like YouTube, people are recreating videos all the time on sites like these by adding sound effects or making the original work into Gifs or memes. An example Ryan used here was a video of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton singing a song during a debate which I saw on Facebook (it's hilarious), but the question is who would have proper rights to things like this because the video of the debate got recreated probably hundreds of times, so would all those people have individual credit or the original post of the actual debate.

All around Ryan's exhibit sparked a lot of good discussion that I know will help him when he's writing his final essay, I think it'll be really interesting when it's all done.

Another exhibit I viewed and found interesting was Jacob's, he was discussing video games and violence which is always a hot topic. He gave examples of games that were considered "violence for fun" like Grand Theft Auto because it's not very realistic to most who play it, I my opinion it was a good example of violence for fun because not everyone is going to go around stealing cars, getting in high-speed chases or killing prostitutes. Games like these encourage violence and then there are games that have more have a solid storyline like military/war games which obviously contain violence the examples he showed had lots of blood and guts that made me cringe a little. Games like these don't appeal to everyone and are more of an accomplishment based game instead of strictly just killing people because you advance to different levels and can collect tools or even save people in them.

Since Jacob picked such a hot topic he's going to have a lot of research from other people to go off plus when I was viewing his exhibit me and a few other students asked him different questions which I hoped helped him develop different ideas as well. He has an endless amount of different angles he can take and talk about so I think his final essay is going to be pretty interesting as well.

I talked to pretty much everyone who showed exhibits on Friday and saw some really great ideas like Anna's on the different types of electronic literature and all the advancements people are making with that such as making them more interactive which I didn't know anything about so that was cool to talk with her about. Mike M. who's in my group went over the Evolution of Gaming from the 1960's to early 2000's (I think) which was another great idea because seeing all the different advancements in technology was amazing, it reminded us how far we've come from the early PlayStations and Xbox's to how they are now.

Overall, I really liked this final exhibit with the class because I got a lot of feedback from classmates and Dr. Justus that has helped me develop different ideas, talk more about my original ideas and finish my final essay with ease. I hope everyone had the same kind of experience I did with this because it was very beneficial to me, (Keep this final essay exhibit around!)

Response to Essay Exhibits

     There were many different ideas that my peers decided to do their final essay on. There were also many interesting and creative essay exhibit pieces that were in class today. However, there were two that I found to be very interesting pieces. The first one was Taylor's. She decided to write her final essay on Google Maps Essays. I thought this was interesting because of the fact that that is what I created for my original work of E-lit, and I felt as if I could relate to the topic better. The reason why I found her Essay Exhibit piece so interesting was because of the fact that she included her original work of E-lit, as well as Mr. Plimpton's Revenge. This was very helpful because it gave an example of what an original work of E-lit would look like from a peers perspective. Also, it allowed bridges to be made with Mr. Plimpton's Revenge because of the fact that everyone in the class was familiar with the piece. Overall, I enjoyed viewing her Essay Exhibit very much and believe her final essay will be very interesting to read.

The second Essay Exhibit that I enjoyed viewing very was was our tribe's vary own Sarah F. She decided to talk about how emojis are used in today's language. I thought that her topic was one of the most interesting because of the fact that most of this language and material comes natural to us. Sometimes it seem like we are talking a different language and that is why many older adults seem to struggle with communication with younger generations. The two things that i liked most about her Essay Exhibit piece was the picture she had on the first slide that showed all of the different generations on it. This was cool because it gave the reader a bunch of information about each generation. The second thing that I enjoyed most was the slides with many different emojis on the followed with what most young people would define that as meaning. Overall I enjoyed viewing this piece and thought it was cool to compare the different emojis to what I personally thought they meant. I believe that she will have a very interesting final essay as well. 

Final Essay Exhibits

In class today we had a chance to view project exhibits done by other students. The exhibit was a preview of what their final project was going to entail. All the projects were full of detail and creativity. One in particular described an online gaming community that evolved around the game of Minecraft. In his particular community evolved around the idea of a server that computer players that suffer from autism can join and feel comfortable playing the game. The online server goes by the name of Autcraft. Players wishing to play on the server must register and apply to be put on the whitelist. Once accepted, they can gain access to a world full of players just like them.

Another interesting exhibit was about social media and how it effects the way we view certain aspects of it. It also went in great detail explaining how in our modern online society, certain emoji's actually have different meaning than what they actually are designed to have. All the exhibits had interesting points and ideas which helped me further shape my final idea.