Digital Media Production

Right, before I rightfully begin, I just want to get a bit out of the way because it's been bothering me all day:

I loathe "Choose it yourself" assignments. Now, a large part of this is because I've played enough games in my life that I'm fairly certain I've trained my brain to work better under constraints than with a completely open topic. I actually read a fascinating paper about how, when Grand Theft Auto 3 first came out and players were left with an incredibly open world, their first reaction was to do nothing. I'm like that, except with topics where I have to choose for myself. That's why even the smallest constraint, for example, medium or topic, works best. But that's neither here nor there, and it's not going to change the project in the future. Just something I had to get out.

For this third project, I continually return to a subject that I know fairly well. Now, I know I have carte blanche to choose whatever, but my mind keeps wandering around. I know and love video games, and there are assuredly some very interesting things that could be done with said generalized topic. After all, it's the fastest growing industry of digital media since... well, pretty much anything. It's important to recognize it, I think, and it's one of my expertises (Along with useless 80s trivia, useless 90s trivia, and a surprising amount of free time). And  this, in part, brings me, in a round about way, to my topic.

Identity in gaming is a volatile thing. Unlike nearly every other pursuit of entertainment, you're never locked down to one identity for fairly long. Sure, you may have an avatar, but you're not with it forever and always, as we are with our mental/bodily state. As such, it's a fairly important thing to consider, and it's exactly what I keep coming back to. I want to, at the very least, illustrate how gaming has changed.

Doing so is the fairly simple part. The image above is a rough copy of the Evolution of Man, a fairly famous illustration showing the evolution of man. My idea was to take the basic tenets, begin at the earliest stages, and then build up to the modern day. The only difference was I'd be using video game protagonists. An image like this could serve two purposes: One, pure entertainment. Not the.... loftiest of ideals, no, but there is something to be said for it. Or, and this is probably better, I could use it to illustrate changing perceptions of games through their protagonist, and I could take a batch of characters per level (So Pac-Man, Space Invader, @, etc for the earliest stage, and then work my way up). Seeing how gaming has evolved (or devolved) over the years in a manner like that could be interesting.

To spice it up, I could actually probably turn it into a video, or something with movement, like a prezi. And I just noticed that we don't need a whole huge thing. On the other hand, I feel somewhat better now I guess?

So right, topic: Identity in gaming as explored through the protagonist character model(s).