Assignment 2

1. Assignment 2 review

2. Website Titles • Websites only get the .com if it is a part of their official title. • Gamespot, IGN, Firing Squad • Amazon.com, Cracked.com • Websites and their sub-sites are italicized. However, current usage means you would not do so in-text (but it still is important on the Works Cited) • Sub-site titles might need to be edited so that they are descriptive of what you are looking at. Colons are the accepted punctuation for dealing with Title: subtitle G4TV » X-Play OR The Escapist » Zero Punctuation BECOMES G4TV: X-Play OR The Escapist: Zero Punctuation

3. Article Titles • Article titles are in quotes. • If a game title is in the post title, you do not have to italicize it unless it is italicized already. • “APB Greatest Game ever”

4. Argument

5. Opinions and Argument • Opinion – subjective belief or attitude, non-debatable • “I like Mass Effect 2” • “I like Plants versus Zombies because I love to pulverize the undead by any means necessary.” • Fact – known, verifiable, established, non-controversial • “Will Wright was lead developer on Spore.” • “BlOps sold 5.6 million copies its first day of release.” • Argument – debatable, controversial • “Mass Effect 2 is a great game.” • “Bejeweled brought about the casual game revolution.” • All arguments begin with an opinion, but not all opinions are arguments. • Just because somebody says, “that’s your opinion,” it doesn’t mean it’s not an argument. • In your analysis, don’t write, “the reviewer just gives her opinion” unless the review actually just gives opinion (claims without evidence).

6. Four sentence types • Declarative (sometimes called Assertive) • Statements • Most are arguments • “Angry Birds is fun because of the joy of predicting parabolic curves.” • Interrogative • Questions • Rarely arguments unless amended or reader-inferred; however, argument analysis of an interrogative requires that you address warrants • “What do you think is better, Halo 3 or Reach?” • “Are you going to waste your money on another DLC from Bioware?” • Imperative • Commands (with implied subject) • Can be arguments, but usually only claims without evidence • “Get a Life” or “STFU” or “l2p” • Exclamatory • Strong emotion • Can be arguments, but usually only claims without evidence • “This is so stupid!”

7. Argument Components

8. Arguments • Claim + Evidence • “Assassin’s Creed II sucks because it is just more of the same monotony that the first game was.” • [implied claim] + Evidence • “It’s because they rushed it.” • “Boring, mindless, button-mashing” • Claim [no evidence] • “Assassin’s Creed II sucks”

9. Finding Claims • Argumentative statements made that are debatable and controversial • “Assassin’s Creed II sucks.” • “You cannot get all the achievements in Gears of War 2” • “Old Republic feels more immersive than WoW.”

10. Finding Evidence • Supporting statements to the claims. • Usually proceeded by a subordinator: Because, as, since, assuming, if, whereas • “Assassin’s Creed II sucks because it is just more of the same monotony” • “You cannot get all the achievements in Gears of War 2 because it would take forever to kill 100,000 enemies to get Seriously 2.0” • “If you would rather watch your quests acted out by an NPC rather than click through a silly text box, then Old Republic is the game for you.”

11. Finding More Evidence • Sometimes a claim is followed by a larger or smaller claim which is then followed by evidence. In advanced argument analysis, the smaller claims are called PREMISES and the larger claim is called a CONCLUSION. “Phantasmagoria is the scariest game because of the full-motion video sequences. By comparison, a game like Resident Evil looks fake and not as scary because the characters are all computer graphics.” Premise [claim] + conclusion [claim] + comparison [evidence]

12. Naming Evidence Invented Evidence or Rational Appeals Anecdote – short story “…there was this one time” Analogy/Comparison – Comparing X to Y “…similar to Mass Effect” Consequences/Effects – A potential result or possibility “if it were that good, it would have achieved more” Contrasts – Demonstrated differences “…the buggy gameplay compared to KQ2 makes it inferior” Categories/Models – using a system or creating a system “…it’s a 3rdPFS and not a FPSRPG.” Examples – repeatable, non-verifiable case “every time they kill me”

13. Naming Evidence Found Evidence or Hard Evidence Facts – provable and verifiable “Bioware made Baldur’s Gate” “World of Warcraft was released in 2004” Statistics – descriptive or inferential probabilities “arcane is about 301.12 more dps than fire” Surveys/Polls – asking others to indicate preference “according to the poll at the beginning of my post, more people like KH1 better than KH: BbS” Testimonies – information by verified experts a developer, tech support, or other official member posting Precedent – established or verifiable rules or criteria “FPSs outsell RTSs by 3 to 1.” Interviews – information by verified experts from sources other than the forum “In an interview, Greg Street said that there isn’t any hybrid tax” Experiments – systematic study of a phenomenon “I timed how long completing it took, beginning from the first cut scene until the end credits. Textual Evidence – previous posts, precedent, interviews, testimonies, or any “found” evidence previously published.

14. What is a warrant?

15. warrant?

16. What is a warrant? • Warrant = assumption. You can use these two words interchangeably in a sentence. • Don’t say that a writer used warrants; that’s like saying the writer used assumptions. • Definitions of words in claims and evidence is the easiest way to find warrants. To take them a step further , what warrants are attached to types of evidence. • What is assumed by good, bad, fun, difficult, easy? • What is assumed by anecdote, comparison, facts, screenshots?

17. Warrant Example • Assassin’s Creed is a dumb game because all that flag collection is monotonous. • Warrants: • monotony = “dumb” • Monotony = unimaginative • Dumb = bad = not worthy playing • The only gameplay is flag collection • Only one aspect of a game is needed to evaluate the whole game.

18. Qualification • Refers to a writer acknowledging that some might disagree with the argument by qualifying (softening or inserting a probability) of a claim or evidence. Qualification can also over-emphasize a claim or evidence. • StarCraft II’s campaign is satisfying • StarCraft II’s campaign satisfies all • StarCraft II’s campaign satisfies many • StarCraft II’s campaign might satisfy a few

19. Finding Qualification • Few, more or less, Often, It is possible, In some cases, Perhaps, Rarely, Many, Sometimes, It seems, In the main, Possibly, Some, Routinely, For the most part, It may be, Most, If it were so, One might argue, Under these circumstances, • Modals (should, would, could, might)

20. Argument Analysis: At it’s most basic One way that invented evidence can be effective is through comparison. Bob uses comparison to support the claim that X = Y. He or she writes, “blah.” This could be effective evidence for the audience of this website because blah. Bob, however, assumes that Y is not a good thing, and this error quickly becomes the major problem in his argument. If Bob had simply added some qualification to his claim, that “for many people X might = Y,” the effectiveness of the argument would have been preserved and the review might not have devolved into a discussion on a different topic.

21. Present Tense • Habitual present tense is used any time you analyze a text. The idea is that the text existed yesterday, today and tomorrow, so it should be refereed to in the PRESENT tense. Use PRESENT tense when referring to the text you (the writer) are analyzing. • This doesn’t refer to the act of posting or responding or commenting (this can take place in the past). However, some scholars still use present tense to refer to the act of writing as well. Jonezingposted, “haters gonna hate…but seriously, the graphics in AC are so detailed that it felt familiar when I actually visited Venice in RL.” Jonezing successfully combines comparison (fantasy v. reality) and anecdote to support the claim that Assassin’s Creed’s graphics are realistic

22. Miscellany • Brackets not parenthesis – if you are replacing or clarifying a pronoun in a quote, write it in brackets NOT parentheses. • Smithsaid that it [KH: Birth by Sleep] was the only game worth playing on the PSP. • Game title abbreviations are italicized just as the game titles should be. But don’t italicize if they weren’t italicized originally. • WoW, BlOps, CoD, KH • Huddygrl writes, “AoE2 was so much better than AoM.”