This is a post including my annotated bibliography called this is a post including my annotated bibliography

Working thesis statement: Though many debate the potential for video games as art, theater provides a working model for how video games could become great art. Shakespeare's The Tempest provides the perfect framework for this claim.



Social Graph: I know some cool peeps

Teri Mae, my sister in law, has been a pretty hard core gamer for most of her life. She totally believes in video games and brings an intelligent (she's a microbiologist that works with anthrax on a regular basis) gamer's view to the table.

Ryan Thomson, one of my mission companions, is a new media major and a level one billion gamer. He's also very passionate about video game narrative (see his comments here). He brings a passionate, thoughtful voice.

My wife considers it one of her primary roles as spouse to help me develop ideas and keep me practical. She'll be a great soundboard to keep my writing clear and she'll punch right through all the holes in my argument.

My brothers, John and Kenneth, are both film graduates and, while John is much more of a gamer than Kenneth, they both know a lot about narrative and new media because they both work in the business (John works for the LDS motion picture studio and Kenneth works on the "I'm a Mormon" campaign). John's even done work on behind the scenes for Halo 4 and Assassin's Creed III, so he'll provide good perspective and might even be able to hook me to some interesting enthusiasts or experts.

Max Ogles, my boss, is a former student of Dr. Burton's Shakespeare class and knows a TON about the internet. He'll help me refine my argument and enlighten me on new resources.

Tracy, a coworker, has a hard core gamer husband and gives a great sideline view on the gaming world.

Also, for what it's worth, David, Steve, Rachel, Nyssa, Mikaela, and Britton are all great resources in class as well, bringing knowledge of games, theater history, and Shakespeare, as well as helping me develop my arguments.

New Media: Hello, Internet

Transmedial Shakespeare is a great site actually done by a professor and students in the Philippines. They did a specific post on Shakespeare and video games here.

I've found several websites featuring some kind of Shakespeare game. Trivia games are here and here.
Parody games include the Hamlet Text Adventure, Romeo: Wherefore Art Thou?, (which has 22 million players worldwide), and the Shakespeare battle game, in which you play Shakespeare battling with other people who supposedly authored his plays to prove that he really wrote them.

Other games include a BBC Shakespearean Murder Mystery Game, 'Speare a game made by CASP, a Canadian organization, that uses Shakespeare to teach literacy in an sci-fi arcade style game, and a game about staging Shakespeare produced by the Stradford festival.

A blog I've already used in several posts by Clint Hocking, ClickNothing.com, is all about video game design and issues with video games.

The Brainy Gamer is a blog that features "thoughtful conversation about video games."

Applied Game Design is Brenda Braithwaite's blog, who was the first to be dubbed "Game Designer in Residence" at UC Santa Cruz


Social Networks: Hello, people on the internet

Discussions about Shakespeare as a video game designer are happening/happened on Kotaku and The Escapist.

Twitter has been a big help, especially following Jane McGonigal and Clint Hocking.

Gooqus is a tool that searches Disqus enabled sites to find discussions going on around the internet. A Gooqus search of "video games as art" brings up several forums around the internet.



Traditional Scholarly Sources: Actually Also Awesome

This psychological research article talks about the "Macbeth Effect" new gamers feel after playing violent video games and feeling guilty for what they've done.

This master's thesis by BYU Grad Student Charlotte Smith claims that video games are a more efficient medium than film and novels in terms of Burke's idea of identification.

This ebook talks about 9 steps to game design, which talks a lot about understanding emotion--something Shakespeare certainly knew a lot about.

The Bard on the Brain by Paul M. Matthews and Jeffrey McQuain is a book that takes moments of Shakespeare and explains the psychology behind them, which will help compare to the psychology of what happens in video games and help me show how they line up.

Reason Not: Emotional Appeal in Shakespeare's Drama by Omry Smith will help me show how Shakespeare elicited specific emotional responses very similar to those game designers try to evoke in players (works well with the ebook above).

Shakespeare on the Couch by Michael Jacobs has a whole chapter dedicated to Prospero and Caliban's relationship, which helped me realize my argument about the scene of Prospero enslaving Caliban being a good video game candidate.

Eludamos is a whole peer-reviewed journal on video game studies. I haven't found much to help me yet, but I haven't had much time to search through it.

Other Articles that fit into more than one or none of these categories:

CNN covered a supreme court decision declaring video games are art, and therefore protected by the first amendment

The Globe and Mail (Canada) did an excellent piece on how video games are altering our view of history and the possible implications, as well as developments in video games as an artistic medium.

This Kotaku article discusses the idea of "writing" in video games and how it's different than just traditional writing.

The New Yorker did an article on video games as art.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed the designer of the Dante's Inferno game and he talked about Shakespeare as a game designer.