Primary Research

You will have to think hard about the best way to find out what pleasures players get from the different games, and what the difference is between a first person game where you are a cop and a first person game where you are a criminal (and a Sim game). Should you get them to play? Should you record sequences of gameplay and get them to discuss them? SHould it be as a group or as individuals? Can you post in some online communities?

Main texts

Looking at two computer games - GTA and Crackdown.

Exploring the ways that criminals and police are represented, and the pleasures these games offer their players. For example, what is the pleasure of playing a criminal in GTA? What is the pleasure of playing a cop in Crackdown? What sort of cops are they and what sort of representation of law and justice does this create?

#Reading academic texts on police narratives on TV and then relating the ideas to the newer filed of computer games, where little has yet been written.

Primary research will be to test out the ideas on a group of game players - why do they play? What are the pleasures they say they get from the games, and how does what they say confirm or problematise the theories about crime narratives? (For example, one theory is that so many crime narratives are available in our culture because we NEED to be REASSURED that society is basically good and functions well, and that criminals get caught. Another theory is that crime narratives allow us to experience transgression from our straight and narrow right side of the law lives...).

Your first thoughts

Crime and the Media

Good idea to provide an argument against simplistic “media effects” theories. See
http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm for a good destruction of the argument.

The trouble with your idea is that it does not quite fit into the Crime and the Media description. You could MAKE it fit, by focusing on games which DO REPRESENT crime, the police or criminality. GTA would work , but I’m not sure about the others – you’ll have to discuss them with me. Could you find a game where you play as a COP? That would make an interesting comparison.

Also, I think that what you’ll have to do is look at what has been written on crime and TV (cop shows, etc) and then see if it translates into computer games. So your hypothesis could be:

Why is there such a cultural fascination with crime narratives, and how has this fascination translated into computer games?

I can supply you with a few good chapters exploring crime drama on TV, as well as more stuff dismanting crude effects studies.

Your alternative, which would work, is to do Children and the Media, but because GTA is an 18 you would need to argue that it is played by many children (and you’d need evidence – which would be easy to amass, I would guess).

Either way we need to discuss this and look at the Exam Specs together.