Week 9 Reading and Writing

Reading and Writing

Looking Back

Looking back at all the readings I've done over the course, I feel that they've definitely helped expand my knowledge of topics I may have already been aware of or taught me something completely new. I feel that overall the readings have been going well however sometimes I feel like I can barely make a dent in some of the longer ones in the time allotted for reading content. The reading I felt that I enjoyed the most was this one I did about social psychology and Dunbar's number because it explores the psychology between bonds users make between each other in games through the use of Dunbar's number and also explored how game design can aid players in being social. I feel that the readings help me in my game creation and I definitely have discovered new reading strategies. I feel like I absorb more information when writing notes down as I'm doing the readings rather than reading all in one sitting and then writing afterwards.I'm relatively happy with my game project but I wish I had better resources to work on it such as a laptop that can actually run Unity smoothly and suitable assets for my game. I definitely consider my progress in creating my project to be the biggest achievement for me as I am completely inexperienced in making games and am proud of how far I've gotten with it so far.

Dunbar's Number visual

Source: Wikipedia

From my readings I like this image the most as it is a nice visual of the theory of Dunbar's number- this visual shows off the number of relationships that a person has in their life, the red 5 indicating intimate relationships, the 15 indicating best friends etc. 

Looking Forward

Looking forward I definitely want to improve in my reading as I feel that I tend to stop taking in information after a while, especially with the longer readings, and I tend to get overwhelmed with big blocks of text. I have been doing better with the readings ever since I started taking down notes as I read the content and hope that continuing to do this will improve the scope of the information I take in while reading. I also want to learn more from the readings that I could apply into my game design and help to improve it's gameplay and quality of life features based on the research from the readings. I'm looking forward to learning more about academic writing in the planned workshops in the near future as I feel that it'll help improve my writing overall and help me in my future modules when conducting research and writing.

Looking forward I want to keep improving my knowledge about the topic of games and game design as it will help me if I develop any more games in the future and it's also useful information to have when looking at games both critically and while I play them myself since I do tend to play games a lot in my spare time.

I am particularly looking forward to the following weeks as seeing my game develop is very exciting and rewarding and I'm very excited to see other people's games and get a chance to play them!