An important distinction between playing games and studying games is the ability to reflect upon the game play experience. An useful tool for being reflective is writing, and hence the game session logging (gamelog) assignments ask you to write about your experience playing a game.
You write your gamelogs at a site specially created for this purpose, www.gamelog.cl. To write your gamelog, you log into the site and write your gamelog entry. When you create your identity on the Gamelog site, feel free to select any username you wish, but do be sure to enter your UCSC email address (the one the registrar knows). This email address is the only way we have to connect your site id to you for grading.
You are also encouraged read the gamelog entries of other people in your class, as well as other gameloggers worldwide. If you find their gamelogs interesting or controversial, you can write comments about them. The process of reflecting on the gamelogs of other players is also valuable in expanding your understanding of the interrelationships of design elements in games, and players' reactions to those elements. You are quite welcome to keep gamelogging even after the end of the quarter; the value of this activity does not end once the class is over. You get out of gamelogging what you put into it.
Gamelog assignments ask you to play either a game of your choice, or a game from the course's list of classics (each assignment will specify this). For games that are primarily multiplayer, such as Mario Party or Super Smash Brothers, you should play with a friend. You may want to try some games that are outside your comfort zone, ones that are in genres you do not typically play, or older games you have never tried.
For each game, you are to play the game for at least two sessions, each session lasting at least 45 minutes. For some games, you should ideally play longer than this. For example, the tutorial mode in Final Fantasy XII (a game on the classics list) lasts about 90-120 minutes of play. After each gameplay session, you are to write about your gameplay experience in your gamelog. Thus, for each game that you write about in your gamelog, there should be at least two entries.
Why break apart the game play sessions, and hence break apart the gamelog entries? Good question. Past experience with gamelogging shows that having at least two separate posts on a given game encourages deeper exploration of gameplay, since people tend to be more reflective about their second game play session after having written about the first. Players often try different things in their second gameplay session after reflecting on their initial gameplay session. People often confirm hypotheses they have made about their gameplay, or verify observations they have made, or decide on things to try out to have something additional to write about.
Things to write about include:
You should pick several items from this list to discuss in your gamelog, or pick another issue that seems important to you, or relevant based on your game play experience.
You are also strongly encouraged to read and comment on the gamelog entries made by other students. Your comments will not affect our grading of these gamelogs, so please feel free to voice your opinions.
This assignment is inherently subjective: you're writing about your impressions of your gameplay experience, and there is no wrong answer. However, it is possible to write excessively short, trivial, or non-reflective gamelogs. It is also possible for students to neglect to do the assignment. As a result, grading of gamelogs will be on a four point scale:
Even though the conventions for writing on weblogs are very informal, for this assignment you are expected to write in standard English, using standard capitalization (especially of "I" and the first letter of the first word of a sentence) and spelling. Gamelog entries that deviate from standard written English will receive one warning, then receive a grade of Below Expectations.