Literature review afterthoughts

Having spent the past 2 weeks drafting my literature review for my Design Research module, I managed to explore my research area through academic texts. I found that there were a few people who had at least researched into areas relating to my own and it felt encouraging to know that more people than I realised cared about the same issues. My research question is: How can South Asian representation be authentically implemented in fantasy video games?

Although I thoroughly enjoyed reading the relevant texts I chose to compare and critique, writing the review itself was an uphill struggle. I found that I had lots of points to make but not all of them relevant to my research question, and initially I had over 4000 words of notes (the word limit being 2000). Editing was therefore my worse nightmare. Also, there were a few times I contemplated changing my research question so I could write about a different topic I was interested in (!) I won't go into that too much...

Overall, I did enjoy having the opportunity to write a literature review as I was able to not only critique other's work but understand their perspective and how it can be implemented into my own work. I realised that ethnic minorities are heavily stereotyped in video games much more than I anticipated (and I already knew it was bad) and was able to learn more about the patterns of cultural depiction that is rife in fantasy and strategy war games. Analysing the power dynamics that play out in these types of video games was so fascinating and I can only hope that my review clearly lays it out and provides a well thought out critical analysis. 

From my review research I realised that many players who use video games for escapism often do not consider 'why' they want escapism, only caring that it exists. This was especially hard hitting as my literature review looks at ethnic minorities who wish to also find escapism in video games find they cannot do so as the video game environment mirrors their real-life struggles. On a final note, I leave this quote related to video game escapism (due to word limit I had to leave this quote out of the final text, so I am including it here):

"players did not really care to escape from the social problems of material life as much as, perhaps, the unfair, real-life dimensions of these problems." 

- Leigh Schwartz in Fantasy, Realism, and the Other

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Street View, Colour Schemes and Finished Maya Model

Image
Due to illness I have been unable to post here recently, however I will recap on the work I managed to do in the past 2 weeks.  Firstly, I have been developing upon my 'street view' of the South Asian fantasy world. I believe in the terms 'South Asian' and 'fantasy' there is a heavy emphasis on the colour used in order to make these terms believable. Fantasy is to push the boundaries of reality into the surreal, and I believe it is my role to create a convincing fantasy to the viewer. I have started to do this with the use of language on signage (in this particular image I am using Urdu, a language I know and therefore can verify its meaning). As an additional note, I wish to continue with this 'street view' perspective and create different environments of my fantasy world which incorporate class structure (wealthy/poor) reflected in its different architectural styles, clothing, food etc. I have started on my colour study test by separati
Read more

Mage & warrior design development

Image
In the last week before Easter I was able to try different versions of the jewellery warrior design I had started. I played around with the headgear and weapons. I chose two opposite types of headgear: heavy helmet and light sequined mask. As this was still a preliminary stage I wanted to see how the character would differ depending on type of armour used. With the lighter sequined headpiece I felt that the character looked more like a dancer(?) than a warrior. With the heavier one, the character looked almost bull-like but more like a warrior as the material seems solid and more protective. I researched into long range lasso type weapons and was interested in the blade/hook combination as it was a physical weapon which could be thrown/spun/twisted in various forms to create exciting combat as a potential video game fighter. In addition this weapon type was asymmetrical which I'd learnt from character design videos was good for design as it drew viewers in.  In contrast the oth
Read more