“Tetris” Reflection
In this episode, Zamirah and I analyzed the popular game, Tetris. As the lead producer of this episode, I took on the role of developing the overarching argument in this episode. Having played this game when I was younger, I wanted to understand why it still remains popular today around the world despite its simplistic nature. Drawing inspiration from our discussions in class about Jane McGonigal’s, Superbetter, I also wanted to address how this game and the mechanisms and strategies of this game could apply to our real-world experiences. After playing the game through and doing some research, Zamirah and I came together to discuss and write out our thoughts. Using our notes, extra research, information from readings, discussion with each other and Dr. Morgen, we were able to develop a coherent and engaging script. I was in charge of the production and recording aspect this time, which was a little difficult through Zoom. We would often experience glitches in audio, occasional background noise, or poor sound quality and we would have to re-record. But we did our best with the resources we had! Since I’d had some experience working with audacity, I was able to input the recording and make the necessary edits considerably easily. However, finding music to fit the tone and attitude of our podcast was quite difficult. It took many, many hours and lots of trial and error. As with the last podcast I worked on, patience was essential in the developing process. I think this is where the learning objective “writing as a process” comes in. Working on something fairly new to me on unknown technology or applications was frustrating at times; I was ready to give up and settle with what I had. But taking the time to go through the process of research, drafting, editing, discussion, reflection – all of this was essential to produce the desirable end result. It’s rewarding to see the outcome of hard work and dedication.
I think I would still want to improve on content and audio quality if I had the time and resources to do so. This game is fairly simple, so at first it was difficult coming up with ideas and analyzing this game. However, this is where our readings came in handy like Superbetter and Steven Johnson’s ideas of probing and telescoping. But I think there was still opportunity to offer more personal insight and reflection about this game in the podcast.
In terms of skills and strategies I acquired as a learner, as I said before, the overall process of thinking critically and analyzing a game(even a simple one like Tetris), brainstorming, drafting, editing, etc, are all important skills to utilize with other various types of assignments I do in the future. In addition, I always find it beneficial and important to find ways to connect classroom topics or readings to real-life perspectives. Thinking critically and creatively has allowed us to do so in our podcast episodes and throughout this class.
