ENG 225 Rhetoric and Gaming

Lavigne, C. (2015). "I'm Batman" (and You Can Be Too): "Gender" and Constrictive Play in the "Arkham" Game Series. Cinema Journal Vol. 55, No. 1 (Fall 2015), pp. 133-141 Lavigne used Batman: Arkham City (2013, Rocksteady) to create a qualitative review of dangerous tropes in mainstream games. The article shows that the character Batman “advances heteronormative, hypergendered stereotypes” with his “ripped” physique, justified violence, and having to rescue almost every female he comes in contact with. Catwoman is brought up as an equally dangerous character in regards to tropes. She fights in heels, kisses thugs, and is programmed to show all of her curves while playing as her. This, in addition to NPC interactions with her, make Catwoman a dangerous stereotype. This article shows that mainstream media can be instrumental to stereotypes being brought forward. It also shows that game design is still entrenched in the “typical male fantasy”, and that...

Sarkeesian, A., Petit, C. (2019). Female Representation in Videogames Isn't Getting Any Better. WIRED 2019. This article proves that representative equality in the video game industry is still far behind where it should be. Sarkeesian & Petit used data from the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E 3 ) from 2015 to 2019 to quantify gender representation in the video game industry. The time frame is significant due to Gamergate in 2014, a misogynist movement that used video game as its platform. While open character creation options are more prevalent than in previous years, games with only a female protagonist are few.  Sarkeesian & Petit quantified the data by counting the number of games at E 3 with male, female, gender-ambiguous, and open character options. The data show that in those years, there were 3-10x more male protagonists than female. Sarkeesian & Petit also counted presenters featured at 2019 E 3 , and found that there were about 4x as many male prese...

Giannakos provides examples of design methodologies for mathematics education in games. The following is my annotation of the paper. This article establishes a system of design rules that create simultaneously educational and serious video games then provides examples of games designed with these methodologies in mind. It uses a wide array of papers related to serious video game design to arrive at the conclusion of 4 different design principles. For serious games to succeed in mathematics education, they must: 1) engage students with a narrative. 2) engage students with familiar game mechanics. 3) allow error to be an opportunity to try again. 4) engage students with collaborative learning. While the experts behind this paper performed no experiment or meta-analysis, they implemented its design rules in a series of games based off of classic video game titles. They first designed a game with narrative that was based off of side scroller video games. Then, they developed a dif...