How I wrote a research paper about Assassin’s Creed 2

 

Have you ever been excited to have one of your parents watch you play a video game? I know I have. Back when I lived at home, I loved hijacking the family projector with one of my consoles and waiting like the Old Man at Sea for one of my parents to notice what I’m playing and sit with me to experience what their strange child is doing with his free time. It would always be worth it when I got any kind of positive feedback like, “This has a pretty interesting story” or, “Wow that must have taken some critical thinking to figure out."

If there’s one aspect of my personality I have figured out, it’s that I love to spread the word about stuff I like, especially to those with little to no exposure to it. Like many of those who enjoy video games out there, I want the world to know how my favorite hobby is becoming an important form of artistic expression on the level of film and literature. Naturally the world includes my professors, and thus far three of the major papers I’ve written in my college career have been about video games.

However, my most recent paper gets a blog post because of how surprised I was that I got the green light to write it. The class was Art History 142: Western Art since 1400. That’s pretty much Da Vinci to Monet. The professor: a man very excited about what he teaches, but not the best teacher (not that he’ll ever read this, but I’ll just not use his name here). Even still, the guy was clearly an expert and a pleasure to listen to. Eventually he assigned the inevitable research paper, but allowed us to choose a topic on our own. We had to “pitch” our topics to him in the form of a strip of paper with name and topic on it. If you’re idea was rejected, he assigned you one. 

After going through several potential topics for my paper, I kept drawing a blank. Nothing I came up with really felt like something no one had done before that I would actually enjoy writing. Then I remembered the amount of tangential learning I got out of playing through Assassin’s Creed 2 and LIGHTBULB! How cool would it be if I could be if I could write about the AC2 and how it taught me more than I would expect about Renaissance Italy? I could even focus on the way the artwork in the truth puzzles was creatively reinterpreted to create a historical conspiracy in the same vein as The Da Vinci Code! 

I decided if I was going to pull this off I’d need to go above and beyond the requirements. This started with the slip of paper with my name and topic on it. I decided to throw together a proposal with some quick facts about the game and why I wanted to write the paper. I admit I felt a bit of smug pride when I placed it next to the torn slips of paper my classmates turned in. You’re allowed to be proud when you put effort in right? All I had to do after that was wait to hear back from my professor.   

         

The proposal.

Oddly enough the fate of my paper was decided in the middle of an exam. I was having a complete brain fart trying to remember who painted La Grande Jatte when my professor decided to announce whose topics were rejected. I cringed, praying I wouldn’t be writing about 16^th century Dutch Landscapes, a topic I was about as interested in as Sonic the Hedgehog is in eating a hamburger. To my pleasant surprise, my name wasn’t called! After class I thanked the professor for the opportunity and ended up writing a paper I cared about and enjoyed reading. I even got 100% on it. 

So why am I telling this story? I want to encourage the 5 people who read this to do as I do. If you want video games to become a credible form of artistic expression, spread the word about all they can be! Incorporate important topics from games into assignments that give you free reign. Tell your professors how excited you are about your chosen topic. Any good professor will let you do it if you’re excited about it.

Now don’t get me wrong, video games shouldn’t be the only thing you write/report/whatever about. All I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t rule them out if video games are a medium you are passionate about.