Reading 06- Rough Chapter

 

This week’s reading task involved using the themes I had created and summarised and the annotated bibliography to create rough paragraphs of my assigned chapter.

 

So far, I must say that I found this whole process and research method very beneficial, the steps involved, from the early reading stages of doing research, to collecting a list of research materials, to building a review matrix and an annotated bibliography to now.

 

At first, I found it difficult to understand why I was using this detailed research method, but it has all become clear now. I was able to write my paragraphs for my final chapter with ease and flow, I do not believe that I would have been able to write this paragraph if I did not have the well-rounded knowledge from the previous research task that I had completed prior. I’m looking forward to applying this research method to all major and future college projects as I believe that there is a significant difference in not only the quality of research papers but also the quality of the writing as I had a well-rounded knowledge on the research topic.

 

My assigned chapter is called The psychology of why people are playing games/gamer psychology and it can be found here

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Reading 05- Thematic Process

This weeks task was slightly difficult to grasp at first, but after watching the assigned video several times I was finally able to grasp the task needed to be carried out.

In my own words simplified, the task for this week involved taking the annotated bibliographies that have been completed from the weeks prior and using these bibliographies to create a thematic analysis.

From my understanding after watching the reference video, a thematic analysis is used to identify key themes from your research text, define it and use it to begin writing or composing your research question.

 From my annotated bibliography I was able to draw 5 main themes and use them in the thematic analysis.

 

The themes can be listed as follows:

 

The positive psychological effects of gaming

The negative psychological effects of gaming

Internet Gaming Disorder

Gaming Addiction

Why are individuals continuing to play games?

 

This reading task proved quite useful for this week as I am now aware of how I can begin writing my book chapter and how I would like to structure it. It was also useful as it allowed me to identify some limitations in my research. I found that the theme titled “ Gaming Addiction” had quite limited information on it, so moving forward I will have to decide if it is something that I will want to include in my research chapter or something I will leave out. Other than that I feel confident in my findings and I am looking forward to producing a piece from my collated list of resources.

My annotated bibliography can be found here 

my thematic analysis can be found here 

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Learning challenge: Health and Happiness: Principle's for Success

This week I was tasked with reading an article based on the theme of health and happiness.

My chosen article was from Entrepreneur Europe’s magazine.

The article is titled “The 9 Principles That People Who Feel Successful Say They Live By”

One thing that this article had confirmed for me, something that I already knew was that the people who are successful are hardworking and often creating things, such as concepts, business ideas, art and so much more.

This was an interesting read as I was able to learn about the necessary steps for success, something which I had not considered before was the ability to be “resilient” which is necessary for overcoming obstacles and bouncing back from setback positively, something that will occur on the road to success

 One thing that I am going to take away from this article is the term “Pursue Meaning”, the article recommended different methods of pursuing meaning such as volunteering, or joining a humanitarian group, for me to pursue meaning in my career it would look something like taking up an internship or an unpaid role in order to gain first-hand experience in my desired sector.

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Analysis of Research

Continuing from last week, this week’s reading task involved building upon the already established list of articles collected. I now have several solid articles relating to my chapter topic of the “Psychology of why people are playing games”

 This week my focus was to work more on understanding specific psychological terms relating to why people are playing games, delved more into the topics underlined below:

Direct causes of gaming on psychological wellbeing

 Pathological factors involved in gaming

     What is internet gaming disorder?

 Why do individuals continue to play games?

 Gaming addiction

At this stage in my research the quality and number of articles that I am sourcing are beginning to come more limited, the more defined my chapter topic is becoming by researching articles, the less material there is out there to support the claims.

I used the three-pass method and my review matrix to sort and analyse each paper to assess its validity.  So far, I am finding this method of research and reviewing articles quite useful I have been able to critically assess each article in detail and can now decide which articles that I will want to use and the exact direction I want to take when it comes to writing my chapter.

 

My Review Matrix can be found Here

 

My Annotated Bibliography can be Found Here

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Beginner Scripting: Scripts as Behaviour Components

 

By attaching the script to the object, you can add a value to a specific object and decide how that value will affect that object, this value may be speed, colour, or movement. I have been using scripts in unity for a while now, and I am just beginning to learn that they are behavioural components and are essential for game development. This was a useful video tutorial providing a good refresher of the scripts.

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Unity Tutorial 03

For this week’s unity tutorial, I continued working on my chosen path, which was the 2D game option.  Like last week I was able to build upon my unity skills from the week prior whilst learning new unity skills. Something new that I was able to learn this week was the health stat option, I learnt how to give Ruby ( the game sprite) a health status and also provide prefabs for her to collect to revive health, at first I was struggling with the health status script as I kept on making mistakes and creating errors or bugs in the game, I went over this tutorial a few times and was finally able to fix the errors and work through the rest of the tutorials.

The second part of this tutorial allowed me to add in a game object that could damage my game character, by adding this conflict or obstacle to the game it makes it more realistic. I found this too quite useful and it is something that I will definitely implement toward the end of term when it comes to creating my own game.

So far, I am enjoying these unity tutorials, but I still find myself struggling to understand a lot of the concepts behind why I am doing what I am doing, especially with the coding tasks, I think doing some further reading and watching some video tutorials down the line is something that might be beneficial for me.

source: screenshot from Unity Hub

Meme Generator Tech Tip

Great Tech Tip task learnt this week! I learnt how to make my own memes! this is great, The platform I used can be found here! I will definitely be using this down the line for my Twitter. 

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