Skyrim


 * 1. A brief description of the game.** media type="youtube" key="PjqsYzBrP-M" height="312" width="521"

Skyrim is the fifth installment to The Elder Scrolls saga, taking you on new adventures in the realm of dragons and other mythical creatures. Skyrim is a single player action role-playing game based in an open world format. The overall objective of the game is to defeat Alduin, a Dragon god who is prophesied to destroy the world, but due to its extensive map, a player can wander the land as long as they want, putting off the Alduin as long as they desire. The setting takes place in what might be considered the Dark Ages, however with a heavy dose of fictitious characters, there is not much to base the location in any sort of reality, but what would a good video game be without fantasy and imagination interwoven. Your character is free to explore the map as much as he or she wants, however if you follow the intended storyline, you encounter characters that set you up for missions and objectives to meet. It is a game of travel, adventure, peril, and excitement and certainly not one that any fantasy fiend should miss.


 * 2. The kinds of learning involved (i.e. What specifically did you learn from playing the game?). Think about the game tasks, objectives, terminology, etc. What skills did you need to learn to be successful at the game?**

Although this game is one in a series, it does a decent job at not assuming the player has had any previous experience with the other games, or at least not that I detected. The game begins with your character in first person traveling in a cart with other prisoners. You are not told why you are there, but the story line begins to establish that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are about to meet the same unpleasant fate as the rest of the rebels you are travelling with. I will preface with apologies to anyone who has played this game and knows the storyline better for any inconsistencies or inaccuracies I may claim. The dialogue moved quickly and there was a lot of domain specific verbiage being used that might take me a little longer to tie together than just the brief time I was playing the game. Your first “lesson” is a simple prompt on the screen to move the RS to look around. As I was brand new to any terminology used in gaming, I did not know what RS meant, however I deduced that it was the right stick that gave me the ability to look side to side and up and down. Later, I would be forced to coordinate my right hand (RS) with my left hand (LS) in order to navigate my character around the map which was no easy feat in and of itself. As me and my band of jolly men arrived at our destination, I was unloaded from the cart and my second lesson began. I needed to create my character’s identity, first by choosing which species I was going to be and second I was able to adjust simple features like hair, eyes, and gender. I chose the High Elf, primarily because it was the most effeminate of the options; however, a more experienced player may have chosen another character based on the abilities and talents that species possessed. I believe learning experiences such as this one would most benefit players who were already familiar with the game or knew that they had a certain personality in mind, like wanting to possess higher amounts of magic or to be a better thief. In those cases, the player would have background knowledge to base their decision off of, versus a person, like myself, who would not know what the benefits and drawbacks to certain characters would be, so they are more likely to choose at random.

After you choose your character, the opening storyline continues to build, automatically guiding you through the motions of the game. You are lead to the block were you are about to be decapitated for being a rebel when a dragon swoops down on the town and begins terrorizing the village. At that point you are released from the automation and you are forced to fend for yourself. The game instructs you which buttons and toggles to use to navigate yourself around with and sends you on your way. The game is not timed, meaning you are not on a race against a clock, so I quickly (and rather disoriented) ran to building where, by all accounts, I felt like I was going to be safe for the time being. There I started to get a feeling for the controls, how to move forward and backward and adjust where I was looking. At this point, I also had time to take a look at the players guide provided with the game. This helped me just as much as the prompts on the screen because it gave me more information about extra or hidden information that my character had access to, like a map of the world, my inventory, and my ability to transport myself from place to place once I had discovered a new territory (very useful when you need to get somewhere that is a great distance from you in a short amount of time). The manual also taught me about the compass that was located on the top of my screen; this tool gave me an indicator of which way I should be heading, where places I had already discovered were located and the locations of enemies in close proximity to myself.

After I got my bearings about me, I began exploring to small area I was in and found a way out. With the aid of the game teaching me how to jump, I plunged into a dilapidated building below the tower I was hiding out in and was greeted by a hurried voice instructing me to follow him. From then on, this man assisted me through the map, telling me more about the storyline and teaching me useful skills. There was a lot of dialogue involved that helped me understand what I needed to do as well as prompts on the screen instructing me on what buttons to push to achieve my target, i.e. looting, picking a lock, or engaging in combat. Once you reach the designated destination with your chaperone that the game has predetermined, he stays there and you are now set free to pursue your own adventure and accomplish your own missions.


 * 3. The kinds of teaching involved (i.e. How did the game teach you?). Think about the kinds of feedback, rewards, guidance, and information the game gave you, and how it paced and structured your learning. Which Principles of Learning did the game utilize?**

In reference to James Paul Gee, I believe he would determine that there are a number of learning principles that are utilized in this game that make it fun and interesting for players with different abilities and with different levels of devotion and purpose when playing. The first principle that struck me as having been incorporated was the **Multiple Routes Principle**, which simply gives players different choices and options of how they want to complete a task and make progress in the game. This was evident to me when my husband came home from work, after me playing the game for an hour or so, and upon him noticing what point I was at in the game he asked, "Well did you visit this person to get the quest?" (or something to that affect). I replied that I hadn't and did not even realize that there was an alternative method to getting the information I had received. This made it clear that the game, in order to make it interesting and re-playable, worked in alternative methods of discovering the same or similar information. Ultimately, he and I would have got the same quest, but he knew to look in other places and play the game to it's fuller potential. In addition, the game map is not very restricting in terms of how you must travel through it, true there are certain areas where objectives must be played out, but it allows a lot of trial and error for players to experience with little to no consequence (except maybe some wasted time if you're goal oriented like I am).

A second principle that I associated with the game was the **"Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle**. Although this principle might resonant better with games like the Call of Duty series, where players get to act out dangerous, real life situations in the safety of their own home, I feel that it can also apply to Skyrim simple because the player gets to engage in action adventure fighting and looting and other adult situations without suffering any real life consequences themselves. They can battle wolves and thieves all night and simply turn off the console and retire to a peaceful night's sleep in the comfort of their own bed. In addition, it is a single player game, so all actions or blunders that a player might make only affects him or herself, and doesn't work against a high score or other team members who might be relying on you.


 * 4. A brief description of the kinds (and quantity) of online sites, forums, wikis, etc. devoted to the game. What game activities (e.g. walk-thoughs/guides, databases, cheats, theorycrafting, modding, etc.) are most-commonly discussed?**

Skyrim is a hugely popular game. After breaking records when it was released last November, the game certainly did not have a shortage of online families that talked, wrote, or demoed the game to help inform others of it's greatness. After browsing the internet for a short while, I could not say definitively what game activities were most commonly discussed because there is such an abundance of input from so many sources it would be hard to make a definitive determination. I don't even feel justified talking about what is really out there, because most of what I looked at was information that I had not even experienced in the short time (2 1/2 hours) that I played the game. There are discussions about different parts of the world in Skyrim, as well as the characters, game play, quests, and other things like Easter eggs and bugs that might be out there.

The game was released on XBOX 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows, so you could imaging, for everything that is explored and explained on the web about the game, there are three times the resources for each system that it functions on. I learned that quickly when I was trying to find my way to a town and I was lost, so I looked on the internet for some help and discovered that I had not idea what some of the terminology they were referring to was because they were basing their instructions off of a PC's controls and I was using an XBOX. The great thing about there being multiple systems to play the game on is that each area can create their own sub-family, functioning in their own semiotic domain to discuss issues that are relevant and interesting to them, all while discussing the same game.


 * 5. Your overall reflections on playing the game.**

Overall I really enjoyed the game. Although I had it set on novice, the game did not seem to rely too heavily on violence or fast action. I assume you could increase this aspect of game play, but I much more enjoyed receiving quests and meeting the objective set forth. I am a goal oriented person, so games like this seem like they would suit me well. The graphics and music were also very visually and auditorily stimulating, both gave the player a calm, comfortable feeling, rather than being continually suspenseful. I appreciated the time the game allowed you to become accustom to the commands and functions of the game play with out assuming that the player had a vast amount of prerequisite knowledge of the world. The guide at the beginning of the game was also very helpful. He (the game) made me feel like I was eased into the game, rather than just been thrown to the wolves and have fend for myself. This is certainly a game that I would continue to play. I started the game alone because I didn't want to find myself falling back on my husband's skills too early and I wanted to have that sense of accomplishment that I learned something on my own, but now that I have the hang of it, I think it would be fun to play the game with both of us in the room, taking turns and helping each other out to make it through the quests. That has been one of my primary goals with this course is to find a way to make some of these seemingly solitary hobbies turn into something we can both enjoy, and this might be one of those games that could bring us closer together.