how to start essay about game

Essays About Video Games: Top 12 Examples and Prompts

Video games have revolutionized the way we have fun today. If you are writing essays about video games, check out our guide to inspire your writing.  

Few can contest the fact that video games have taken over the world. From the basic, almost “primitive” games of the 1970s like Pong to the mind-bending virtual reality games of the 2020s, they have been a source of entertainment for all. Moreover, they have proven quite profitable; countries like Japan and the United States have made tens of billions of dollars solely from the video game market.

Despite their popularity, much has been debated over the potentially harmful side effects that video games may have, particularly on children. One side argues that playing certain video games can lead to people exhibiting violence in the future, while others believe that video games teach players essential life skills. Regardless, they will continue to be a part of our lives for the foreseeable future. 

For engaging essays about video games, read the essay examples featured below for inspiration.

1. What electronic games can teach us by Kendall Powell

2. designers are imagining video games without guns by keith stuart, 3. playing video games all summer won’t make you feel worse by nicole wetsman, 4.  violent video games bad by andrea newman.

• 5. ​​The health effects of too much gaming by Peter Grinspoon

Writing Prompts For Essays About Video Games

1. video games: good or bad, 2. the benefits of video games, 3. what is your favorite video game, 4. do video games cause people to become violent, 5. video games in your life, 6. video games vs. traditional games, 7. is the video game rating system enough.

“In other studies, researchers found that gamers who trained on Tetris were better at mentally rotating two-dimensional shapes than those who played a control game. Students who played two hours of All You Can E.T., an educational game designed to enhance the executive function of switching between tasks, improved their focus-shifting skills compared with students who played a word search game.”

Powell explains a few possibilities of applying video games to education. As it turns out, certain video games can improve players’ skills, depending on the mechanics. Researchers are inspired by this and hope to take advantage of the competitive, motivational nature of gaming to encourage children to learn. New games are designed to help kids improve their focus, coordination, and resilience, and game designers hope they will succeed. 

“Imagine a game where you’re a war reporter seeking to capture the most iconic, representative images in a battle environment: You’d still get the sense of peril that audiences expect from action adventures, but your relationship with the environment would be more profound. It would be Call of Duty from the perspective of a creative participant rather than a violent interloper.”

The graphic nature of some video games is said to make kids violent, so it is only natural that some creators try to change this. Stuart writes that it is possible to maintain the fun that shooter-type games induce without using guns. He gives examples of games where you do not kill your enemy, simply stunning or capturing them instead. He also suggests photography as an alternative to killing in a “shooting” game. Finally, he suggests basing video games around helping others, making friends, and doing more peaceful, creative tasks.

“Any role video games play in skewing well-being that did pop up in the study was too small to have a real-world impact on how people feel, the authors said. People would have to play games for 10 more hours per day than their baseline to notice changes in their well-being, the study found.”

Wetsman counters the widespread belief that video games “destroy your brain.” Research done with a sample of 39,000 players over six weeks has shown that whether one plays video games for long or short periods, their mental health is not impacted much. There are some exceptions; however, there are not enough to conclude that video games are, in fact, harmful.

“Some people believe that the connection between violent games, and real violence is also fairly intuitive. In playing the games kids are likely to become desensitized to gory images;which could make them less disturbing, and perhaps easier to deal with in real life. While video games aren’t about violence their capacity to teach can be a good thing.”

In her essay, Newman writes about the supposed promotion of violence in some video games. However, she believes this violence does not cause people to be more aggressive later. Instead, she believes these games expose children to certain atrocities so they will not be traumatized if they see them in real life. In addition, these games supposedly promote connections and friendships. Finally, Newman believes that these “harmful” can make you a better person.

5. ​​ The health effects of too much gaming by Peter Grinspoon

“Gamers need to be educated on how to protect their thumbs, wrists, and elbows, their waistlines, their emotional state, their sleep, and their eyes. Simple education around taking breaks, stretching, eating healthy snacks, and resting and icing your thumb, wrist, or elbow when it starts hurting can address injuries early, before they become significant. For the eyes, gamers can try the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, try to look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds.”

Grinspoon discusses both the benefits and the health risks of gaming. Video games allow people to interact with each other remotely and bond over specific missions or tasks, and some research shows that they have cognitive benefits. However, some gamers may develop vision problems and hand and wrist injuries. Gaming and “staring in front of a screen the whole day” is also associated with obesity. Overall, Grinspoon believes that gaming is best done in moderation.

Looking for more? Check out these essays about hobbies .

Many parents believe that their children’s “bad behavior” is because of video games. Based on your experience and others, decide: are video games good or bad for you? Make sure to read viewpoints from both sides and write an essay based on your position. Would you encourage others to play video games? Discuss these pros and cons for an interesting argumentative essay.

Like anything else, video games have both positive and negative aspects. Explain the good that video games can do for you: the skills they can equip you with, the lessons they can teach, and anything else. Also, include whether you believe their benefits outweigh the disadvantages they may pose. 

For your essay, write about your favorite video game and why you chose it. What is its meaning to you, and how has it affected your life? Describe the gameplay mechanics, characters, storyline, and general impact on the gaming community or society. You can write about any game you want, even if you have not played it; just ensure the content is sufficient.

Many claim that playing violent video games can make you violent in the future. Research this phenomenon and conclude whether it is true or not. Is the evidence sufficient? There are many resources on this topic; support your argument by citing credible sources, such as news articles, statistics, and scientific research.

Video games have been a part of almost all our lives. Recall a treasured experience with video games and explain why it is significant. How old were you? Why do you remember it fondly? How did this experience make you feel? Answer these questions in your own words for an exciting essay.

There are stark differences between video and traditional games, such as board games and card games. For an engaging essay, compare and contrast them and write about which is more entertaining, in your opinion. Be creative; this should be based on your own opinions and ideas.

The video game content rating system is used to classify video games based on their appropriateness for specific ages. However, parents complain that they are not strict enough and allow the display of violent content to children. Explore the criteria behind the rating system, decide whether it needs to be changed or not, and give examples to support your argument.

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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How to Write an Essay about Video Games: Presenting Effective Arguments in Papers

Gaming on video consoles is becoming more and more common. In actuality, the typical gamer plays for roughly six hours each week. There are many who claim that video games are harmful to one’s health since they promote inactive lifestyles like prolonged sitting and isolation from the outside world. On the other hand, some people say that playing video games is a good way to unwind and relax, and they are not wrong. So, what is the real story of video games? Are they good or bad? The controversy of playing video games presents an opportunity for students to either be proponents or antagonists of the issue through essays. Accordingly, this article discusses how a learner can write an essay about video games.

It would be best to do thorough research before writing an essay about video games

Research is often the most challenging aspect of preparing an essay. While writing your video games essay, you’ll have to employ the information you get from research to define video games, describe different genres, and give relevant examples to support your claims. Students must recognize that the amount of research they conduct totally affects how good their essays turn out. Your video game essay will benefit greatly from your careful attention to detail and thorough investigation. Just keep in mind that you are trying to convince your audience to see things from your point of view. This is why having a great deal of background information is essential. Researching your favorite video game would give you an added advantage. Additionally, to support your claims, you must include relevant examples and research-based data.

You should develop an introduction that captures your reader’s interest

The whole point of the opening paragraph is to capture the interest of the audience. To achieve this, it should pose an intriguing topic or provide a contradiction or paradox. You ought to add a good hook to grab the reader’s attention so they can’t help but keep reading your paper. Given that there are numerous motivations for why individuals engage in video games, the introduction is where you have to specify the reasons. Moreover, it would be best to incorporate your thesis statement in the introduction. A thesis statement is basically the writer’s primary concept, summed up in one or a few sentences. A well-formulated thesis statement expresses the work’s central argument in a way that makes sense in light of the inquiry or issue at hand. It would be the correct response to the question, “What is the primary theme of this essay?” from the instructor. Nonetheless, you should perceive your thesis as an opinion that may be debated at any time, rather than an established fact or objective reality. In other words, now is the time to speak your mind regarding the impact of video games on today’s youth.

You must present your arguments in the body paragraphs

The arguments are what learners utilize to support their thesis. A single contention and one or two examples must each have their own paragraph. It would be best to provide your reasoning for your video game position and be sure to explain why you firmly disagree with the opposing viewpoint. Examples include your own experiences and, where appropriate, references to data from studies, forecasts, and statistics. Students should provide answers to contentious topics like “Do video games promote addiction and violence among players?” The arguments you employ ought to back your main point rather than contradict it.

You may offer vivid illustrations as you write an argumentative essay about video games

Learners should offer evocative examples of the genres and video games under consideration. Instead of stressing about whether the material you discover online or the game’s publishers are legit, dedicate yourself to writing a fun and vibrant paper for the person who reads it. This approach piques the audience’s attention and facilitates their comprehension of the argumentative essay about video games. Additionally, these vivid examples assist you in conveying your ideas in a manner that words can’t. Even if you aren’t convinced that your assignment requires an example, using one might perk up your reader and provide your arguments additional weight.

You should write a conclusion for your essay

The last section is meant to sum up the college essay. You may accomplish this by restating the thesis statement and briefly mentioning the arguments you presented in your body paragraphs. This approach will help the audience understand how you systematically addressed the issue and made conclusions. For instance, suppose you had to respond to the question, “Do games negatively affect us?” A topic like that can’t be satisfactorily answered by psychology, particularly when it involves something as novel as video games. Consequently, it is actually way easier to just pick a side and support your position with some research. In the end, your readers don’t expect the argument to be elaborated upon but rather summarized. No new material should be introduced in the last paragraph.

Identifying the sources you employed would be best

When you are writing an essay about video games, it is essential to cite your sources. That means you got to make a list of every resource you used in your paper. References to diverse books, scientific studies, statistical data, and remarks made by well-known experts are acceptable. It would help to make sure your research is from the past five years.

Proofreading is vital for developing a top-notch paper

Students must make sure that their essays about video games have been edited and proofread prior to submission. So basically, you are going to check your assignment for spelling, punctuation, and grammatical mistakes. Completing an essay that is free of errors increases a learner’s likelihood of academic success. Here are some tips to help you proofread your work:

• Read the text aloud. This will enable you to detect any mistakes.
• Take your time proofreading and revising your work. Spend sufficient time on it to ensure you catch any possible oversights.
• Concentrate on correcting a single mistake at a time. Avoid the hassle of searching for spelling and grammar mistakes at the same time. Prior to checking for punctuation and spelling problems, you may concentrate on grammatical issues.
• You may also create a list of the most typical errors that students make while writing essays, then review your work for each one.

Using these suggestions will guarantee that your essay is devoid of all types of mistakes that might undermine how persuasive your argument is. Alternatively, you can delegate your “ write my essay ” request to online essay writing services like CustomWritings which may allow you to complete a high-quality paper about video games.

Extra tips for presenting better arguments in essays about video games

Today’s youth often engage in video gaming, and this trend will only spread in the coming years. Composing a paper about video games can help you learn more about the subject while also providing readers with information they can utilize in their lives. Just consider the potential for them to be inspired by and gain new knowledge from your essay about video games. Following this article’s recommendations should take you a step closer to achieving your academic goals.

Nick Sinclair

Nick Sinclair, a gaming aficionado since the Commodore 64 era, studied Creative Computer Games Design in university before founding his own gaming company. Discovering a passion for content creation, Nick now helps gamers squeeze every drop of fun out of their favorite gaming hardware

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The Field of Dreams Approach: On Writing About Video Games

Tony Tulathimutte on the future of video game criticism

Every year, more and more great essays are published on literary sites concerning video games. In the past year I’ve especially loved entries like Janet Frishberg’s “On Playing Games, Productivity, and Right Livelihood,” Joseph Spece’s “A Harvest of Ice,” and Adam Fleming Petty’s “The Spatial Poetics of Nintendo: Architecture, Dennis Cooper, and Video Games.” But for each great essay there are a handful of others written like apologies, seemingly perennial pleas to take video games seriously as a form of meaningful narrative.

I hoped to have a conversation with a writer about games that went a little deeper. There were two main reasons I turned to the Whiting Award-winning writer Tony Tulathimutte. The first was because of his response in an interview with Playboy , in which he said that his interest in gaming probably “had something to do with my desire to bend or break formal conventions in fiction.” The second was his three thousand word essay about Clash of Clans , “Clash Rules Everything Around Me,” which was exactly the type of essay about gaming I wanted to see more of. Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens , which we listed as one of the 25 best novels of 2016 .

What I want is long-form literary criticism. But writers should just write what they want to read. The body of work will be there and the audience will follow it. The ‘ Field of Dreams’ approach.

Graham Oliver: Can we have this conversation without getting stuck trying to legitimize video games as a medium?

Tony Tulathimutte: “Are video games art?” “Have we had the video game Citizen Kane  yet?”

GO: That’s such a boring and overdone conversation. I think it’s more interesting to look at the ways in which video games actually do interact with literature, and not to hold the conversation just as a demonstration of our respect.

TT: Take the respect for granted and go from there. I thought about starting a literary magazine about video games a while back, but the discourse had by then become so toxic that, even with the most anodyne academic essay you could write, the best you could hope for was that it would be ignored. There needs to be more space for this kind of writing, but I just didn’t want to wade into it then. I feel a little better about it now, which is why I did the Clash of Clans  essay.

GO: What is the difference between video game-related essays showing up on a literary site, versus a site where the primary purpose is the intersection of video games and literature? What could that site do that can’t be done (or isn’t being done) otherwise?

TT: Part of it is just volume. You can’t have a general interest magazine like the New Yorker covering video games to the same depth or degree as it does film or music or even theater. Every big magazine at this point covers video games occasionally — I know the New Yorker has written about Minecraft and No Man’s Sky , for instance. New York Magazine just did a big essay on gaming more broadly.

But for some reason, there’s no video game editor at the New Yorker , no dedicated departments or verticals, except at newer places like VICE, Vox , The Verge . Unlike music or movies, video games aren’t equally distributed through the culture; it’s more compartmentalized. This owes in part to a marketing apparatus around games that caters to and fosters a specific audience, and because the audience for certain genres — responding to these pressures — became self-selecting, especially with respect to gender. Video games may be art, but they are also a STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] industry, which makes them no different from any other STEM field in that regard.

GO: It’s a question of access. I was thinking about your Clash essay; you have this entire paragraph that has to explain this massively popular and mechanically fairly simple game. Does that automatically turn off an audience who are already proficient in those basics? In which case, are you only writing for people who don’t game? I suppose that’s another conundrum of coverage in a general interest publication…

TT: If you read an essay by Susan Sontag or Martin Amis about the great books, or by André Bazin about film, they can assume a certain level of knowledge about the text or film from their audience. I can write that way about games on my own time and my own dime, but there’s no presumed canon or general readership for games, because they’re not taught in schools and not regularly discussed in big publications. So you either write for the diehards — the equivalent of film buffs or bookworms — or for novices.

GO: Is that why we haven’t had novels which interact with video games the way David Foster Wallace did with tennis, or Ann Patchett with opera? Neither of their books included explanatory paragraphs; it’s so ingrained in our culture that it seems almost impossible to have grown up without some idea of what tennis or opera are.

TT: Most people have played a game, and the average gamer spends six hours a week playing them. I think it has less to do with the medium inherently than just the failure of writers who have approached the subject. I haven’t read everything on games, but so far, the fledgling efforts have been too literal or kind of corny. Some writers seem to think that you’re supposed to transpose the form of games into fiction — to provide this very lightly remediated experience of reading a book so that it feels like you’re playing a game.

The last thing you want to do is create a watered-down experience of gaming in a text. A book should still work as a book. It’s the usual difficulty of writing about other mediums; there’s that old chestnut that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. But there are special considerations for how to write about any form in a way that conveys deep presence and vividness comparable to the experience itself.

GO: When you’re writing about games in one form or another, do you find you prefer to write for someone who is like you — very interested in both writing and video games — or is your preference for someone in that liminal space somewhere between them?

TT: I approach it as I do with all my creative writing, which is to write for the audience of Tony. That frees to me to write things irrespective of their publishability. Right now I’m working on a long essay about Metal Gear Solid  — the whole series. That’s between ten and twenty games, depending on which ones you call canon. The dialogue alone stacks up to something like sixty thousand words each. And the companion synopsis is almost three thousand words. I’m just trying to make points about the series that haven’t been made before. Would Kill Screen or The New York Review of Books ever run that? Hell to the fuck no.

If writers keep doing this, eventually there will be a readership equipped to deal with it. For the longest time there have been really smart people playing video games and wondering where all the good criticism was. It’s a discoverability issue, to a certain extent. There’s so much good writing out there about games, but most games-writing outlets cater to fairly niche perspectives. Action Button is extremely good, irreverent creative criticism, probably my favorite. Five Out of Ten is academically oriented, Kill Screen is mainstream journalism. What I want is long-form literary criticism. But writers should just write what they want to read. The body of work will be there and the audience will follow it. The Field of Dreams approach.

GO: You said earlier (and you’ve also mentioned it in your Playboy interview) that the discourse around games is toxic and partisan. Are you talking about within or outside of the gaming community?

TT: All of it. Partisan lines have been drawn within it for purposes far beyond aesthetic disagreement. In part because so much of this discourse occurs in a medium where people are not held accountable for their words, i.e. on the internet.

GO: How does that compare to conversations within the literary community? You’ve written before, for instance, about the MFA vs. NYC debate .

TT: I want to do my part to de-estrange gaming discourse. Not de-stigmatize or demystify, but de-estrange. This cancerous shit happens everywhere — it just happens in a spectacularly aggressive and organized way in gaming.

GO: When you’re not actually writing about video games, what place do they hold in your life? Are they the stress relief at the end of the day, the reward after two hours of writing? Or something you try to avoid when you’re in the middle of a big project?

TT: I’ve played video games since I was three years old. I have loved video games a lot longer than I’ve loved literature — which is not to say more. Actually… yeah, probably more. It just so happens that I’m a writer. I don’t feel the guilt that some people do who, even if they enjoy gaming, approach it feeling as if it’s a waste of time, or a form of entertainment which takes them away from their “real life.” You wouldn’t condemn a cineaste or a lover of literature. But a fug of non-respectability still attends video games.

That said, the reward mechanisms in most games are designed to get you hooked in cognitive motivational ways that don’t apply to most literature. So it’s absolutely possible for games to displace other things that you would want to do just as much. I don’t struggle to fit them into my life, but I probably would, if my life consisted of much more than just teaching and writing.

GO: I suppose I was thinking more about the effect on your mental state. For instance, I have to save video games for the end of the day, because I have a hard time going from the almost meditative state of game-playing into writing. How does it fit in, not in the sense of time but in how it interacts with your ability to produce writing afterwards?

TT: If a visual narrative enters my head before I start writing, it’s enormously difficult to pull myself back into writing. A huge amount of psychic inertia has to be overcome to transition from consuming a narrative to assembling one. I have a lot of wacko bird theories as to why. Perhaps language is such an information-poor medium that it demands a sparseness of input, so that you can have room to envision or create new stuff in your head. Maybe the act of viewing, which puts you in the posture of evaluation and judgment, beefs up the inner critic that makes it hard to write. That’s all pure superstition, I have nothing to base that on.

GO: What about when it comes to the type of video game? You’ve mentioned playing DotA 2 in other interviews, which is very different from more narrative-heavy single player games. In the middle of a big writing project, do you find yourself drawn more to one type of game over another?

TT: With the caveat that writers are the worst self-appraisers, I’ll say that I have not noticed any influence from the type of games I’m playing on what I write. I think games engage an entirely different part of my brain, which might also account for the difficulty I have toggling between those two modes. That said, I think longer games can work like long books — immersively — where you have to pinch your nose and take a deep breath before plunging into the Neapolitan books and it just becomes the medium you swim in for months. Some games demand a higher or more frequent degree of engagement to get any kind of nuance at all. You can play a thousand hours of DotA 2 , without coming anywhere near understanding it.

GO: How does that compare to the relationship between reading and your own work? Do you avoid other people’s writing when working, or do you keep books on your desk for the sake of referencing them?

TT: I do. I try to keep a messy puddle of books around my work area, in case I want to steal something from somebody else. But I Google as much as I refer to other books. I don’t disconnect from the internet when I’m writing, like some writers who have this almost mystical anathema against technology. I generally find I benefit from my procrastination.

You can have a rom-com game, a campus game, an adultery game, or a boring-but-important game that will get taught in high schools circa 2110.

GO: You referred to language as being information-poor a minute ago, which reminds me of the AGNI essay you wrote on boredom. The thesis of that essay was basically that boredom in literature is okay. Can you also apply that idea to video games? Can there be meaningful or productive boredom while playing, through the act of repetition, for instance? I just played Her Story, which I know you enjoyed, and while it has a super interesting story you have to slog through a certain amount of repetition to get to it.

TT: The democratization of game creation is producing a wider range of games, like the Super 8 camera did with film. You can have vignette-style games like Nina Freeman’s —  Cibele , how do you Do It? , Freshman Year , etc. You can have “walking simulators” that are almost purely meditative, like Gone Home , Firewatch , or Dear Esther . I just saw a piece on a game based on Thoreau’s Walden .

The impulses and tendencies that make people want to create literature are present. It will happen more as people are able to do what they want to do, without enormous corporate financial support or even crowdfunding, which, to an extent, just moves the bottom line to having to be crowd-pleasing. Games can be plenty boring in spite of themselves, even if that’s not what they’re trying to do. It’s a cliché by now to point out that the most time investment-heavy games like World of Warcraft consist largely of “grinding.” Or, if you play something like DotA 2 , queuing for a game.

GO: For DotA 2 you also have to spend a lot of time reading up on viable builds. Work that’s not in actually playing the game.

TT: Yes, although I will say that that intellectual work doesn’t feel like tedious labor to me. I have fun looking up builds. The deep strategy and understanding are coextensive with the pleasure of playing the game.

Moments of boredom are built into games for reasons that range from comedy to suspense. I think a lot about the moment in Final Fantasy VI where you’re directed to just wait at the edge of a floating continent for a character to come along. On the one hand you’re sitting watching a clock tick down. On the other hand, it’s extremely tense.

Contrasting aesthetic effects in games to those in other media is not always productive, because it’s like playing Twenty Questions. Can games do X like books? Can games do Y like films? In the same way we should assume games are art, and that there’s an audience out there hungry to make something of them, we should assume that games can do anything. You can have a rom-com game, a campus game, an adultery game, or a boring-but-important game that will get taught in high schools circa 2110.

GO: I go to these academic conferences where a similar conversation is happening among professors who write in the field of gaming studies. Some bring in literary and film theory, and try to lay that on top of video games, while others reject that. The tools and the language are already there from other fields, so it seems easy. On the other hand, it can be kind of reductive, and perhaps prevents you from having the more meaningful conversation.

TT: Right, or even just the conversation you’re trying to have. There are also those efforts to create a language around game studies, partly I think try to legitimatize it in the eyes of the academy. You get people going on about the Ludologists versus the Narratologists, about ludonarrative dissonance, copping these quasi-academic terms. I can see the point of systematizing things, but my favorite criticism helps you not to just describe and understand, but to enjoy stuff more.

GO: How much do you worry about the effect that being an “out” gamer will have on your literary career?

TT: If I were bashful or coy about my love of video games I wouldn’t do this interview. The same goes for pornography or television. Even the language of being “out” implies a political and social pressure or an importance that just doesn’t exist. I’d hate to believe that being a writer means living in a constant state of deposition, publicizing everything you do, think, or feel. The fact that I like video games isn’t interesting. Video games are interesting. I love talking about them with smart people, both within and outside of gaming culture. But I’m also perfectly happy to be left alone with them.

GO: Do you hope there’s a day around the corner where a game developer decides to make a narrative-heavy game like Life is Strange , Her Story , or Kentucky Route Zero , and they look at a list of literary authors to figure out who should write it?

TT: Not at all. I believe that I can do a lot of things in writing, but I haven’t felt an urge to create a video game since the third grade. It’s always good to have some kind of interest that is totally pure, where you’re going to be an eternal fan, because sausage-making can disillusion you fast. If part of the charge of art comes from mystique or sheer baffled admiration, that’s something I want to preserve in at least a few departments of my life.

GO: As a writer, you’re expected to be both a creator and a thoughtful critic as well. It seems like once you publish a book, there is an expectation that you’ll be reviewing or blurbing for other books for the rest of your life. How does your approach to writing about literature differ from your essays on games?

TT: I review books as a practitioner; I know what goes into putting one together, so I can pan one that isn’t well-made. I write about games as an appreciator, in that I want to take something I like and enlarge people’s sense of pleasure or wonder at it. This doesn’t mean that I can’t be critical of a game. I have negative things to say about everything. But because I’m not highly qualified to trivialize or disparage a game on the level of craft — for instance, a sunbeam in a video game might look shitty and aliased because of technological or budgetary constraints that I’m not aware of — my main task is to study its narrative and to add value.

GO: You’ve been thinking about games critically for a long time. I read that you wrote your theses — both in undergrad and for your first master’s degree — on video game interaction. What were you looking at in those?

TT: I majored in something called Symbolic Systems, which would be called cognitive sciences anywhere else. They add linguistics and philosophy to the standard curriculum of formal logic, computer science, and cognitive psychology. I applied the extremely specific language of human-computer interaction studies to video games. So I wrote pretty dry literature surveys of game-writing and interaction theory, and how the latter could be applied to the former.

One was about game controller design, which ended up anticipating the Nintendo Wii controller by a couple of years. I talked about the potential for modular design and gestural input. The second thesis was about menus. They’re the basis of turn-based RPGs, and in games their definitional boundaries are weird. Take the Warp Zone Pipes in Super Mario Brothers . You go over a ceiling and drop into a room where you’re invited to select one of three pipes to go through. It is very clearly a menu, where you’re selecting one of three options, but it’s also a part of the action.

God, I sound so stoned when I talk about this.

GO: I hate to keep mentioning Her Story , but I just started it today. In that game, the user interface also has this blurry boundary. You read a ReadMe file to learn how to use the system, but that’s all part of the in-game computer you interact with as part of the story.

TT: Yeah, it’s brilliant. Any computer interaction can be extrapolated into a game premise. Here it’s basically Database Search: The Game, but it’s fun and well written. To analogize with literature, there are plenty of stories whose premise comes from its formal conceit. My favorite is “ Going for a Beer ” by Robert Coover. He takes a simple sentence gimmick — where two things that happen at different times are written as though they’re simultaneous — and it becomes the conceit of the story. The story is, “what if your life was composed of moments with endings and beginnings but no middles?”

GO: Form matching content. That happens in all types of art, right? There was a piece on Hamilton which pointed out that, as the first half progresses, the Marquis de Lafayette’s rhymes get denser and faster, coinciding with him being in America and increasingly speaking English. The music reflects the plot.

TT: Form generating content, I would say. It’s a classical idea. Sometimes it’s done very explicitly, like with Oulipo. It can be super corny, but it’s a dependable source of inspiration.

It’s Tristram Shandy-levels of batshit.

GO: Going back to your idea for a game-writing website, were you imagining a place that just collected the kind of long-form writing you want to see, or were you also imagining a community that would be built around it?

TT: I am not too concerned with building community. The idea was simply to get critical essays on games­ — not fiction, poetry, reviews, or personal essays, but literary analysis. Like the essay I’m working on about the Metal Gear Solid series… So many of the male characters lose their hands and are sterile and have daddy issues and misinterpret the will of one female character, The Boss. Aside from the glaring Freudian overtones, what’s that about? This is not stuff that figures into the plot as it plays out, but is something that I think screams out for conversation.

GO: I was a Nintendo kid and then jumped to PC gaming, so I never got into the Metal Gear  games.

TT: It’s like the Infinite Jest of games. As far as I know, it’s the longest continuous scripted narrative in games. You can make a strained case for things like Zelda or Metroid , but this is the most sustained vision from an auteurist figure, Hideo Kojima, and it’s just bonkers. It’s Tristram Shandy -levels of batshit.

GO: Well, that sells it. I now have to ask the big, speculative question, since you just called it the Infinite Jest of games. What do you think David Foster Wallace’s writing would have been like, had he been obsessed with video games rather than television?

TT: This question is so enormously counterfactual it might as well be a novel. The guy was hugely tech-avoidant. He typed with one finger on an old computer. But games seem very contiguous with his concerns in Infinite Jest . Though who’s to say Virginia Woolf wouldn’t have also gotten equally invested in games? Wallace is a gimme because of the technological overlap, but to me the more interesting speculative question is, What would a game written by P.G. Wodehouse be like? I want to see an essay on  that .

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How to Write an Essay About Your Favorite Game

Writing an essay is a difficult task, especially if you are writing about your favorite game. Drafting a game essay is not always as easy as you might think. It takes dedication, commitment, and sheer will if you want to pull off the perfect game essay in English. Luckily, we have come up with some best tips.

Brainstorming

When it comes to brainstorming, not many people pay attention to this part of writing an essay. Of course, professional writers always start their work with brainstorming, but teen students nowadays often tend to neglect this crucial part. However, there are many reasons why brainstorming is imperative and inevitable if you want to write the perfect favorite game essay. Think about it. If you do not have the content in your mind, how do you suppose to jot it down in the paper? For instance, let us take an example of a situation. Imagine you are a very athletic person, and you have an interest in several games. After a while, you come down to two topic options. However, you are still unable to decide between basketball or football. So, what do you do in such a situation? Yes! You start brainstorming. Start jotting down the points you have in mind about both the topics and choose whichever you find the most suitable. To make it easy for you, below are written some of the steps which will help you in brainstorming,

• Start jotting down anything that comes up to your mind about basketball and football.
• Use the technique of mind-mapping to come up with the essay idea.
• Once you have the list of potential ideas or topics, start further elimination until you find the right one.

So, brainstorming can be much more beneficial than you think. It can help you ace your essay without any inconvenience. So, the myth about brainstorming being a wastage of time is not true. If anything, brainstorming enables you to save time.

Opt The Desired Type Of Essay

One of the second and most essential parts in initiating the essay on my favorite game is choosing the story’s writing style. Yes! Some of you might not be aware, but there are several styles you can conduct writing an essay. It is imperative that you choose the type according to your desired topic; otherwise, your whole work would be irrelevant, consequently getting rejected by your teachers. Students worldwide struggle with this task, as it is challenging to choose a style and start writing on it. It would also help if you did thorough research, which takes up a significant amount of your time. However, worry no more because, luckily, we have come up with some of the most used and universal essay writing styles. After reading the points below, you would easily pick a style for my favorite game essay.

• Narrative essay – A narrative essay is mainly used for stories that need a background voice to guide their audience. The narrative essay type is primarily used for biographies and autobiographies. To use it in telling about your favorite game would be a smart move.
• Persuasive essay – A persuasive essay is pretty much self-explanatory. This style of writing is mainly used to convince someone for something or to request someone for something. You may have seen people using this style for writing letters or doing academic work. So, using this writing style in a favorite game essay would be irrelevant as you do not need to convince anyone.
• Descriptive essay – An essay with many adjectives and words that describe something is a descriptive essay. Using this style for your favorite game paper would be a wise move as it would keep the reader hooked through the description.
• Argumentative essay – An argumentative essay style is one of the most commonly used by students. Here, you have to use the kind of language which will support your claim. In addition, it means that you have to be defensive about something throughout the essay.

So, in short, out of all these essay types, it would be better if you used the argumentative, narrative, and descriptive essay style. However, if you are new to this type of writing, you can always find argumentative essays for sale on any topic at EssayZoo.org.

Researching

‘I want to write about my favorite game essay in English. Will you help me?’ A question we all have been asked by our juniors at least once during student life. However, many fail to help them as they are unaware of the main component of writing a perfect game essay. If you are one of these people, do not worry because we are here with the answer, researching! Yes, when it comes to writing about games, researching helps you a lot, even if you know a lot about the topic.

There are two types of teachers, one who lets you decide your own topic, the other who assigns you one. If your teacher is the latter, you have tough luck, as now you would have to start researching from scratch. On the other hand, if your teacher gives you the option of opting for your own topic, you can easily pick the easiest one, something you remember around the back of your head. In such situations, researching can be disadvantageous. For instance, if you have a little time and already know a lot about the topic, then it is suggested that you go on without researching. This will save you a lot of time and resources. Some of the benefits of researching are,

• Widens your knowledge base
• You have the updated information
• Your content is more credible
• Your scope gets narrow

Creating an Outline

When it comes to writing an essay about your favorite game, an outline is crucial. An outline may not seem as impactful as you think, but in reality, it is the forty percent reason why your essay is good. The outline of your essay is like a road map to your work. Wherever you get off track, you can always track back from where you drifted off.  That is why it is highly significant that you always draft an outline before starting.

Proofreading and Editing

Proofreading is one of the crucial parts if you want to ace your essay about your favorite game. So, to gain an unbiased opinion of your essay, ask anyone but your friends to proofread your work. A teacher would be better because they would tell you about your mistakes from the point of view of an expert.

Writing an essay will always be a daunting task, especially if it is about your favorite game. However, that does not mean that you stop trying after the first few tries. Remember, nothing is perfected overnight; everything takes time. Apart from that, you can always take help from the points mentioned above.

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How to write a video game story

I took a game writing course. Here’s what I learned

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My first attempt at writing a video game script begins with the socialist journalist and activist Marina Ginestà, a remarkable woman who died five years ago, at the age of 94.

Although she lived an eventful life, she’s most famous for a photograph taken of her when she was 17 years old, standing on the rooftop of a Barcelona hotel, a rifle slung over her shoulder. It’s one of the most arresting images of the Spanish Civil War, in which young, idealistic Europeans like Ginestà fought for democracy, against a coalition of fascists and aristocrats.

I’m going to use that photograph as the first building block of my game. You see, I’ve signed onto an online course called Story for Video Games , a six-session investigation of interactive narrative. By the end of the course, I hope to have created a fully fleshed story for a game. There’s no coding or art. I only have to write.

The course is run by John Yorke, the author of Into the Woods , a book on how stories work. He also runs courses on writing novels, plays, movie scripts, and TV dramas. He’s spent most of his career in British television, holding senior roles on the BBC’s most popular production, the rollicking soap opera EastEnders .

Yorke tells me that games pose a particular challenge because of their interactivity, and their reliance on spectacular visual effects.

“In games, the writing often takes second place to design and technology,” he says. “If developers invest more in the writing, in the very best screenwriters, that’s going to take them to the next level.”

Yorke says he plays “AAA, blockbuster games, when I can find the time.” He is assisted by experts in gaming, including Caroline Marchal, CEO of studio Interior Night, which is currently working on a narrative game for Sega. She formerly worked at Quantic Dream, where she was lead game designer for Beyond: Two Souls . Quantic Dream is arguably the world’s most ambitious studio when it comes to interactive narratives and character-driven gaming, seen in its most recent title, 2018’s Detroit: Become Human , which has sold 2 million copies.

“The big difference between movies or novels and video games is that, because they’re interactive, the audience is actually part of the experience in a way other media doesn’t offer,” she says. “So the journey they’re going through is the same as that of the protagonist. That creates challenges as well as opportunities.”

The session’s first exercise is to create a protagonist. Yorke asks that I mention the game’s genre in my written presentation, but he’s much more interested in the character at the center of my game than in the way the game plays. He says games are beginning to escape a long history of character cliches and stereotypes, and he’s looking for his students’ work to reflect that progress.

“I’ve seen a lot of really basic, James Bond-level characterizations in games,” he says. “It’s done out of a desire for safety. The games companies think that’s the easiest person for players to empathize with. But I think they’re wrong. That’s not how empathy really works. Empathy is about finding something inside a character that’s flawed and damaged; that you understand.”

Yorke and Marchal’s introduction to the course states their belief that today’s games should focus as much on stories as on activities. They point toward the recent success of narrative games in which protagonists (and antagonists) have displayed more depth and human resonance than in years gone by. Their gallery of examples includes The Last of Us , Her Story , Overwatch , and Reigns .

I want to find out if they’re right. Is character really as important in a game as it is in a novel or a play? So I’m going to write my story.

Creating stories

There’s one snag. I’ve been writing about games for decades. I’m deeply interested in how they work and how they affect me. But I have never in my life felt the least inclination to actually make one.

It’s not that I’m averse to telling stories. I’ve written two novels , so theoretically, I ought to at least be curious about writing a story-based game. But in the realms of fiction, I’ve always cared more about why people do the things that they do, than on what they actually do. My novels include few action sequences. The stories focus mainly on dialogue and relationships. This is how novels work. But it’s not how games work.

Most narrative-heavy games, like Telltale’s story adventures, are constantly introducing action elements that draw focus away from emotional problems and toward practical and physical puzzles. But we’re beginning to see exceptions, such as Florence and My Child Lebensborn — both of which were ranked in Polygon’s top 50 games of last year — which focus almost entirely on story and resonance.

Yorke’s course is attractive to me because it’s dedicated to the curious idea that novels and games are the same, at least insofar as how they allow us to inhabit other people.

”All stories are forged from the same template,” he says. “What that template is and why we need to follow it is the subject of this course.”

Traditionally, games have mostly been dedicated to inhabiting the physicality of their characters. Mario jumps. Solid Snake sneaks. Lara climbs. Their personalities and backstories are sideshows, or thin marketing exercises. The characters lack substance. Their motivations are arcane.

Marchal points toward woeful completion rates for many single-player campaigns. “If you look at the statistics for single-player games, the majority of players do not finish them. That’s a storytelling problem,” she says. Raptr estimated that only one in 10 players completed the final mission in the original Red Dead Redemption (which has, admittedly, a very long campaign).

She argues that, in many big-budget action-adventures, players lose interest in the mechanics, but a good story would pull them forward. Players want to care about the game’s characters and about the most important element of any story: What happens next?

“There’s a lot we can learn from the ways stories have been crafted for centuries, which can then be crafted to work with just about any kind of game, even if it doesn’t seem to fit any kind of traditional linear model,” she says.

To fix this problem, Marchal argues that game designers must rise to the challenge of increasing narrative complexity. Technology today — animation, artificial intelligence, dynamic narrative systems — allows for deeper characters than in the past. We can all agree that Lara Croft is a more complicated and interesting person than she was 25 years ago. Tomb Raider’s recent three-game reboot was built around the story of Croft’s growth as a character.

As players become more demanding and diverse, they desire more believable, flawed, identifiable characters. In his introduction to the course, Yorke points out that game stories and linear stories fit the same patterns, but that they are not the same thing. They require specific approaches. “Writing for a linear medium is difficult,” he says. “Writing for games is even harder. There are very specific challenges and pitfalls to overcome. The task gets even more complex when you consider that narrative needs vary greatly from one game genre to another.”

I’m interested in writing about people and emotions. So it feels like I ought to be able to explore my ideas through the medium of games. At least, I want to find out if it’s possible. I know my game is never going to get made. I just want to see how far I am able to run with Yorke’s ideas.

And so, my game character comes to life.

Murderous communist

Olivia Espinoza is a woman in her early 20s. She dresses in factory-issue clothing or in dark, bohemian garb. She lives in Paris, in 1942, under Nazi occupation. She is a communist, a political idealist who works for the French Resistance. She is also a cold-eyed assassin.

I am required to supply some sort of visual aid to my character. Although Olivia is older than Marina Ginestà is in her photograph, the image sums her up nicely.

My game could be a shooter, or action-adventure. I’m interested in a human adventure, like A Case of Distrust , a noirish game I admire greatly, in which dialogue trees and visual puzzles lead the player toward the resolution of a mystery.

I want to see Olivia move through wartime Paris, engaging in awesome conversations with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, with collaborators and resistance fighters. I want to see her cope with encountering Jewish parents, hiding from the round-ups.

My desire to model Olivia’s story on a niche game turns out to be a mistake. When I present Olivia, my tutors say nice, encouraging things to me. But they’re confused about what she’ll actually be doing in the game, and they want to hear more about her motivations.

They’re not familiar with A Case of Distrust, so I take the easy option and add $100 million to my imaginary development budget. It’s going to be a AAA extravaganza, more like The Last of Us .

But it’s important to me that this isn’t another game about killing people. I want to place severe restrictions on Olivia, so she can’t just run around Paris shooting Nazis. In my game, it’s going to be just as difficult to kill Nazis as it would have been in wartime Paris.

Of course, the game is all in my head, so I have unlimited access to the best coders, animators, and financial backers in the universe. But I also have tutors, and they warn me that my game must be created within the realms of the practically possible and the commercially viable.

They are kind enough to leave me with just enough wiggle room to ignore their guidance. I figure, if I’ve been given this opportunity to write my game, I’m not going to fret about what some bean counter at EA or Activision might think about it.

I understand, of course, that in the real world, my idea would have zero chance of attracting funding. It’s fine. I’m here to find out how interactive stories work. I already know how the game industry works.

Narrative arcs

Story in games can sometimes create an inherent friction between the writer’s ambitions, the designer’s goals, and the player’s desires.

Doom co-creator John Carmack once said , “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie: it’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.” Back in 1993 , Doom relied on its superb game design and graphical innovations to capture the imaginations of players.

But the world has moved on. Years later, the Doom of 2016 comes with a big narrative element that falls broadly into the same three-act pattern of a classic movie or play.

The unnamed playable character is faced with the challenge of closing a portal to hell. He resolves a series of crises, generally manifesting as hordes of monsters. He overcomes an antagonist and resolves the initial challenge. It’s true that he displays little in the way of personality — certainly, he’s no Hamlet — but he interacts with people who have motivations and flaws in a way that we do not see in the original game.

Overwatch is one of the most successful shooting games in the world, a modern successor of sorts to Doom . It is filled with characters like Tracer, D.Va, and Hanzo, whose backstories and personalities add significantly to the game’s appeal.

Like many creative writing tutors, Yorke argues that all great characters come with three things. They have to want something. They have to need something. And they have to demonstrate a flaw that the story addresses.

So I set to work on Olivia’s wants, needs, and flaws.

She is tasked by her resistance bosses with assassinating the Nazi chief of police in his fortified lair. What she wants is to complete her mission.

But she’s unhappy. She’s spent her life killing people, and yet finds no satisfaction, or reward, in her work. She needs to break free from her life of violence, while still staying true to her desire to defeat the Nazis and create a better world.

Olivia’s flaw is that she’s a dogmatic person who’s unable to understand her own despair. From a young age, she’s gained immense skills as a warrior, but in achieving excellence as an assassin, she’s denied herself basic humanity.

Inciting incidents

The course follows a pattern of investigation, followed by creativity, and then analysis. Each week, the students — there are about a dozen of us — watch YouTube clips, play games, and read story synopses from a variety of games. We offer perspectives on what we believe works well, and what doesn’t.

We look at motivations, antagonists, and inciting incidents, studying games as varied as Candy Crush , Ico , Evolve , The Crew , and Red Dead Redemption .

One element of game design that fascinates Yorke is the relationship between the player and the main character.

“There’s a contradiction between the agency a player has, and how that conflicts and contrasts with the desires of the game’s writer,” he says. “How you marry those two things together is difficult, but also an incredible opportunity, if you get it right.”

Some games, like multiplayer worlds, present “blank slate” characters that are built by the player, who fills in the blanks. But these stories cleave to narrative models based on heroes, villains, an inciting incident, crisis, and resolution. Resolution can come in the form of completing a mission or leveling up or acquiring a sword. These games are cast as “open-world” or as “sandboxes,” but they are essentially amalgamations of fairy tales, tied together with an overarching story.

I work my way through these examples, offering notes when required. My homework is evaluated by Yorke, Marchal, various tutors, and other students. Feedback is always delivered in a way that’s constructive and useful.

We move on to studying the classic three-act structure of stories, and how such a notion fits with games. I immerse myself in the detailed story arcs of Inside and Life is Strange .

The course addresses arguments about whether or not games, by being interactive, are fundamentally separate from linear forms. We look at mainstream literature and entertainment, from Macbeth to Jaws , drawing comparisons with games. We learn how linear structures work in the context of games, emphasizing how games bend and morph these structures in ways that are still being investigated by writers.

Redemption and rejection

I return to my project and try to apply what I’ve learned.

Yorke says it’s useful to be able to state a story’s theme in one word. My story about Olivia focuses on redemption. It’s about her relationship with deadly violence. The warrior-to-pacifist transformation has been told many times before, but rarely in the context of a video game.

Emerging pacifism throws up interesting challenges in the context of a game. I find myself struggling to find things for the player to do, while Olivia works through her journey. Again and again, my tutors try to correct my habit of longish dialogue tree sessions. I keep at it, honing my scenes to give the player as much agency and illusion of choice as possible.

Long story short, Olivia’s mission to take out the evil cop goes awry, and she accidentally kills the cop’s mistress. During her escape from the police station, Olivia kills two guards who get in her way. They are guarding a West African nun, who is being interrogated about the location of missing Jewish orphans. This is the inciting incident.

The nun knows an opportunity when she sees one. She wants Olivia to arrange for the escape of these orphans. The plan provides a short-term refuge for Olivia, so she agrees. But the nun has one stipulation. She asks that Olivia kill no more people during this mission. The nun sternly assures Olivia that while she is grateful to be free, the deaths of the soldiers are a stain on her own religious beliefs and eternal conscience.

This causes a friction between the two women, and within Olivia. Resolving this friction — the justification of violence as a means to an end — is where we encounter Olivia’s need. It also creates a challenge for the player throughout the game. Killing people will solve immediate problems, but will endanger the children. Stealth — which I have always loved playing — will be a core activity in my game.

As the game progresses, Olivia and the nun travel across Paris, evading patrols. They survive a series of dangerous encounters that allow us to explore cool Parisian locations, often converted for quasi-military purposes due to the war.

Missions often create practical problems that illustrate the pros and cons of the women’s competing ideologies. Pacifism is hard. It can also be dangerous and, in this setting, possibly self-defeating.

The gameplay structure is a little like that of A Way Out , which makes use of a variety of devices to tell a story about a prison break, and to explore the relationship between two very different convicts.

My dialogue tasks are heavily influenced by Mike Bithell’s superb work in Subsurface Circular , in which characters are revealed through conversations that also progress the plot. Olivia and the nun argue with one another while the story moves forward. In turn, the player is presented with provocative arguments, and a little levity, as the two women buddy up.

Olivia is forged by violence. The nun is heavily influenced by origin Christianity, and by the ancient traditions of her upbringing. In time, they will both be forced to confront their own inconsistencies because (of course) nothing is as simple as it seems, most especially to ideologues.

When he reviews my story, Yorke suggests that I find a way to physically manifest this exchange of ideas. So I have the nun present Olivia with a necklace: an enamel tortoise charm. In her home country, the tortoise represents peace.

This reminds me of a lesson about writing, one that I’ve always struggled with. Physically, writing is the act of stringing words together. The production is text. But weaving words is barely the point. Writers must think in terms of images, because that’s what the reader “sees” when they’re reading.

I’m a person who thinks in the language of words. It’s difficult for me to construct images and then write about them. I do it the other way around. This is a problem.

But if I want to write a game, even this leap, from words to images, is not enough. Game writers have to go farther.

Stories and history

A few weeks into the course and it’s impossible for me to play games without thinking about story. I play Red Dead Redemption 2 and Tetris Effect . The first is chock-full of characters and stories. The second has almost no story at all, but incorporates imagery that suggests narrative forms, such as discovery and redemption.

The dichotomy of story and not-story is at the center of gaming history. In the early days of games, those beeping, menacing Space Invaders arrived without any apparent motivation, inner conflict, or backup plan. We just shot them, and they shot us, and everyone was happy. The action game was born.

At the same time, text adventures appeared — Zork , The Hobbit , A Mind Forever Voyaging — that were wholly stories, with characters, motivation, flaws, and plot twists. They were smart, provocative, and commercially marginal.

Over the next three decades, these entirely different forms came together, and action games began to include narrative elements. Role-playing adventures, the descendants of those text adventures, became action-oriented exercises, interspersing killing and fighting with cutscenes or walking conversations between characters.

Commercial considerations and marketing drove the embrace of narrative and character. Sonic the Hedgehog was born from Sega’s desire to show off the Genesis’ ability to render fast-moving action. The company wanted a mascot who could compete and contrast with Nintendo’s Mario. Sonic’s main attributes were speed and a cocky, anti-establishment attitude.

This naked branding fed into comics and cartoons, as the character’s popularity exploded. But Sonic has always been trapped inside the mundane ambitions of his creators, and has never evolved into anything more than a funny mascot. (I accept that not everyone will agree with this view.)

Throughout the ’90s, stories became a creative consideration. Like all human beings, game developers had been brought up enjoying stories, and wanted to add gravitas and drama to their work.

But game developers were often better at coding than they were at telling stories. They made their games, and then they grafted on some hackneyed version of Lord of the Rings or Star Trek. A few games managed to stand out because of their devotion to story and to mythology, such as the Final Fantasy series.

Game publishers took note. Companies hired writers, usually to package up gameplay and art assets. Spinoff novels pulled convoluted series like Halo and Assassin’s Creed into some semblance of narrative form. Missions were cast as mini-stories, adding up to a baffling whole in which a princess was saved, a bomb deactivated, a tyrant deposed.

Critics began to write about games as stories, lambasting certain games for their ludonarrative dissonance in which the player’s actions are at odds with the personality or the aspirations of the on-screen character.

Big-budget games began to appear with more believable and compelling stories. BioShock, Mass Effect and Dragon Age explored the meaning of interactive stories, layering their narratives with provocative ideas about agency and heroism. They helped to establish games as fully rounded narrative experiences. Games now compete directly with the rest of the entertainment business, and must present themselves as coherent tales, in the same way as blockbuster movies. Many of the most highly prized games are seen as writerly endeavors.

The Witcher series is literally based on fantasy novels. The big games of 2018, like Red Dead Redemption 2 , Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Shadow of the Tomb Raider , all began life as stories about characters, not as tech demos in search of drama.

These days, game producers are more likely to view writers as central to big game projects. In press interviews, development team leaders like The Last of Us’ Neil Druckmann and Red Dead Redemption’s Dan Houser speak about themselves primarily as writers, and secondarily as producers or directors. When Square Enix rebooted Tomb Raider, it sent out its writer Rhianna Pratchett as a prime spokesperson. In interviews, she talked about Lara as a person, not as an amalgamation of polygons designed to deliver kicks to the player.

Diverse bunch

My tutors press me to tighten my story. They send me notes asking for more clarity, more interactivity, more drama, and more fun. What they really want, I divine, is more action. They poke at each scene. I rewrite. My game improves.

My fellow students are facing the same process. We chat with one another via forums. They are a diverse bunch of men and women from various countries, a mixture of mainstream writers who want to learn about games and game developers who want to learn about writing. The course costs around $1,600, and takes up maybe half a day per week for seven weeks.

Most of us have full-time jobs. So the only mandatory exercise is the writing of the game story; all the others are optional. It’s easygoing and good fun.

I’m fascinated by the diversity of the other students’ games and stories. One action-RPG tells the tale of a soldier’s lost pet. Another is a racing game about a group of cartoon couriers. One game follows the romantic adventures of a woman who does not conform to standard beauty ideals. Another takes on the god game genre, and delves into the Almighty’s personal relationship with life creation.

These writers are looking at ways to polish up their resumes or even to launch their own indie projects.

In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a remarkable growth of indie games with powerful stories and memorable characters. Among them are some of my favorite games ever, including Tacoma , Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture , Rakuen , Blackwood Crossing , Orwell , and Virginia .

Action games are wonderful, but we all occasionally (or often) want something else. We want games to make us feel the way the best movies and books make us feel. And games are now providing that. It’s amazing that, only a decade ago, “ can games make you cry? ” was a genuinely interesting question. Now, who among us has not shed a tear at a game story?

Final exercise

For the final exercise, we must present our game stories, complete with descriptions of fully interactive elements. In my story, Olivia and the nun both make accommodations with one another’s beliefs, in order to save each other and to rescue the children. Olivia encounters the chief of police. The player decides if he lives or dies.

The nun falls into the hands of the Nazis. Olivia breaks into the Nazi compound, but when she finds the nun, Olivia discovers that she has been tortured beyond any possibility of escape. The nun begs to be spared further torture and her inevitable confession. She must die in order for the children to live. The nun sacrifices her own beliefs in the sanctity of life, while Olivia sacrifices her warrior self. The last person Olivia will ever kill is the nun (again, this is a player choice).

The tortoise “peace” necklace makes its reappearance in the final scene, offering Olivia a practical strategy for shepherding the children past Nazi guards, and onto a waiting boat bound for Britain.

In the final scene, we see her on a Normandy beach, gazing out across the English Channel. She will win the war, but she will kill no more. Her want, need, and flaw have been resolved.

Useful lessons

I’ve learned a ton of storytelling tips and techniques that shape the story, that add to its most intense beats, and that create an ending that feels satisfying and whole, at least to me. I feel the class has made me a better writer, and it’s made me understand game design more fully.

I’ve also learned to further appreciate how games are taking basic theories about story and subverting them in the name of fun and interactivity. When I play Reigns: Game of Thrones , I’m struck by how cleverly each character, each quest, and each decision follows a pattern of inciting incident, crisis, and resolution (though not always in that order).

Few games can (or should) blindly follow a three-act shape. But understanding form is how artists learn to subvert and surprise. This is the value of the course.

The biggest lesson is that writers of games aren’t merely storytellers; they are kinetic designers. Like all writers, they must create words by conjuring imagery. But they must also operate in the realm of action. The story is about the characters, of course. It’s also about what the player sees. But, most importantly, it’s about what the player does in the context of the narrative. Marrying character, action, and player together is the trick. This requires three-dimensional thinking that I now know for certain is a tough skill to master. My admiration for good game writers increases.

I still have no plans to make a game, but I’ll write up Olivia as a short story for my weekly fiction writers group. She exists in the world now. She and the nun have taught me something about what it means to be a person.

I hope my fellow students will find jobs, or project backers, and will bring their ideas into the world. That would make for the sort of narrative resolution Yorke would enjoy.

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How to Write a Video Game Review

Last Updated: March 18, 2024

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Hannah Madden . Hannah Madden is a writer, editor, and artist currently living in Portland, Oregon. In 2018, she graduated from Portland State University with a B.S. in Environmental Studies. Hannah enjoys writing articles about conservation, sustainability, and eco-friendly products. When she isn’t writing, you can find Hannah working on hand embroidery projects and listening to music. This article has been viewed 287,415 times. Learn more...

The gaming industry is booming, and is expected to have a net worth of $137.9 billion as of 2018. [1] X Research source As such, video game reviews are becoming more and more prevalent. If you’d like to write a video game review of your own, play the game for about 10 hours, take notes on what you like and dislike, and give your own opinion on the game to create a comprehensive video game review.

Playing the Game and Taking Notes

• If the game has different levels, try to level up as many times as possible. If the game is an open world, explore as much of it as you can.

• Details as small as the trees waving in the wind or a character’s headband can help a reader envision the in-game world when they read your review.

Tip: Try to be specific. Instead of writing “The main character sucks!” try, “The main character didn’t have as many weapon options as I would have liked.” This will be helpful when you start writing.

• For example, you could say, “This racing game has more car model options, but less customizable pieces than their last release.”

Compiling Your Notes into a Review

Tip: If you are publishing a video game review on your own website or blog, you can choose your word count. However, your readers will probably appreciate a comprehensive review.

• For example, say something like, “After the success of Injustice, the newest game from the NetherRealm Studios is Mortal Kombat X. With this installment in the MK series, Nether Realm has mended all the shortcomings that Injustice had and added so much more. MK X is by far the best MK game we have seen in the series.”

• For example, “The movements of the characters and flair with which the executions and bonus moves are performed are one of the best we’ve ever seen. The blood and gore of MK coupled with the next generation graphics truly delivers an experience like no other.”

• For example, “This game breathes fresh air into the market by offering characters who each have a different playing style, offering you the opportunity to learn the combo moves of each character.”

• For example, “I certainly advise you to go pick yourself up a copy of this game. It might just be the best fighting game to come out in 2016. I rate it 8.8/10.”

• Your review may get sent back to you by an editor if it needs to be changed.

Video Game Review Template and Examples

Community Q&A

• Avoid giving out obvious information about the game like the publisher, year, and developer, as this is a review of the game, not a summary of the game's statistics. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/global-games-market-reaches-137-9-billion-in-2018-mobile-games-take-half
• ↑ https://www.freelancewriting.com/freelancing/writing-a-video-game-review/
• ↑ https://www.ign.com/articles/2001/03/22/you-got-game-but-can-you-write
• ↑ https://gamersushi.com/2011/03/23/how-to-write-a-video-game-review/

About This Article

To write a video game review, you’ll want to give readers an overview of the game’s different elements and provide your personal opinion on how good it is. You’ll need to play the game for at least 7 hours to get a real feel for it. Try to explore as many different parts of the game as you can, like its main story, side quests, multiplayer, and challenges. While you’re playing, take brief notes on the things you like and things that don’t work so well to help you write your review. You’ll want to cover topics like graphics, sound design, story, game mechanics, and how well it runs. You can also compare it to other games in its genre to show readers what’s unique about it. Give it a grade out of 10 or a star rating at the end. For more tips, including how to edit and proofread your game review, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Persuasive Essay: Video Games

Teenagers today often spend a great deal of time playing video games. These games are fun and engaging and young people often feel like playing games is a great thing to do in their spare time. However, you shouldn’t spend too much time gaming and there are a number of reasons for this: it’s unhealthy, you should spend more time studying, and you need to socialize more.

The primary reason to cut down on gaming time has to be that youths that spend a long time on computers and games consoles are often not getting enough exercise. With high obesity rates, it’s very important for young people to spend as much time being active as possible, especially since studies show that people who are overweight during childhood and adolescence are far more likely to become overweight adults than those of a healthy weight when they’re young. There is just as much, if not more, fun to be had in getting out and about and being active. This doesn’t have to mean going for long runs if that’s not your thing; team sports are both fun and great exercise. Dance or fitness classes are also a good option for those not into sports.

Secondly, getting a good education is that best thing that you can do for your future. If every teenager cut down on their gaming time by 30 minutes per day and used this time to study, the whole of that generation would achieve better results and be more likely to have the career that they want. With education, you get out what you put in, so it’s really up to you to put in the additional effort. If you want to go to a good college, extra study in your own time will be completely vital, but gaming can reduce your concentration span and make this more difficult.

The third main reason that playing video games too often is that it’s no good for your social skills. Some teenagers may argue that because they can now play their games online with friends, they are socializing in their own way. However, you can’t beat face-to-face contact, and if you want to succeed in interviews and build good relationships in later life, you need to develop some proper communication skills. This shouldn’t be a chore, or difficult, because hanging out with friends is far more fun than sitting indoors playing on games all day anyway!

In conclusion, there can be no doubt that spending too much time gaming isn’t good for you. You don’t have to stop all together, but it’s all about moderation. Cut down and allocate your additional free time to doing things that are good for you, and you definitely won’t regret it in later life.

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Essay on Video Games

Students are often asked to write an essay on Video Games in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Video Games

Introduction.

Video games are interactive digital entertainment platforms. They are played on devices like computers, consoles, or mobiles.

Types of Video Games

There are many types of video games. Some are educational, others are adventure-based or sports-themed.

Benefits of Video Games

Video games can improve hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills, and strategic thinking. They can also be a fun way to relax.

Drawbacks of Video Games

Excessive gaming can lead to health issues like eye strain and lack of physical activity. It can also impact social skills if not balanced with real-world interactions.

Video games can be both beneficial and harmful. It’s important to play responsibly and maintain a healthy balance.

Also check:

• 10 Lines on Video Games

250 Words Essay on Video Games

Video games, a form of interactive entertainment, have evolved dramatically from their rudimentary origins in the 1970s. They have penetrated almost every aspect of modern society, becoming a significant part of our culture and a powerful force in the entertainment industry.

The Evolution of Video Games

In their inception, video games were straightforward, consisting of basic graphics and gameplay. However, as technology advanced, so did the complexity and visual appeal of these games. Today, video games are immersive experiences, boasting high-definition graphics, complex narratives, and intricate gameplay mechanics.

The Impact on Society

Video games have a profound impact on society. They have transformed how we spend our leisure time, and have even created new professions, such as professional e-sports players and game developers. In addition, video games have educational potential, as they can develop problem-solving and strategic thinking skills.

Controversies and Criticisms

Despite their popularity, video games have attracted controversy. Critics argue that they promote violence, addiction, and social isolation. However, research on these issues remains inconclusive, and many argue that the benefits of video games outweigh potential negatives.

In conclusion, video games are a multifaceted phenomenon that has significantly influenced our culture and society. Despite criticisms, their popularity continues to rise, indicating their enduring appeal and potential for future growth. As technology continues to evolve, so too will video games, promising exciting developments for this dynamic medium.

500 Words Essay on Video Games

Video games, a form of digital entertainment that has dramatically evolved over the past few decades, have become a significant part of contemporary culture. They offer a unique blend of interactive storytelling, art, and technology, engaging players in a way that no other medium can. Video games are more than just a pastime; they are a platform for expression, learning, and innovation.

The history of video games is a testament to the incredible technological advancements of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. From the rudimentary pixel graphics of the 1970s to today’s immersive virtual reality experiences, video games have continuously pushed the boundaries of what is technologically possible. They have transformed from simple, solitary experiences into complex, social phenomena, connecting people from all walks of life.

The Impact of Video Games

Video games have a significant impact on society, influencing various aspects of our lives. They have revolutionized the entertainment industry, becoming a multi-billion dollar sector that rivals and often surpasses traditional media like film and music. Beyond entertainment, video games have found applications in education, healthcare, and even military training, demonstrating their versatility and potential.

The Benefits and Concerns

Despite the criticisms often associated with video gaming, such as addiction and violence, numerous studies have highlighted the potential benefits. Video games can improve cognitive skills, such as problem-solving and spatial awareness, and can also foster social interaction and cooperation when played in groups. They can serve as therapeutic tools, helping to manage conditions like anxiety and depression. However, it is essential to maintain a balanced perspective, acknowledging the potential risks and promoting responsible gaming.

The Future of Video Games

The future of video games is as exciting as it is unpredictable. With emerging technologies like virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and cloud gaming, the possibilities for innovation are limitless. Video games are poised to become even more immersive, interactive, and personalized, offering experiences that were once the stuff of science fiction.

In conclusion, video games are a dynamic and influential part of modern society, reflecting our culture, advancing technology, and impacting various aspects of our lives. They are a testament to human creativity and innovation, offering unique experiences that entertain, educate, and inspire. As we move forward, it is crucial to continue exploring the potential of video games, addressing the challenges they present, and harnessing their power for positive change.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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How To Write an Essay on Video Games in The Best Way?

People of all ages enjoy playing video games, and many people enjoy writing about them as well. If you’re looking for tips on how to write an essay on video games, you’ve come to the right place! In this blog post, we will discuss how to choose a topic, structure your essay, and much more!

About Video Games & Essays

If you’ve ever been asked to write an essay about a video game, you might have been at a loss for words. After all, how do you critically analyze something that’s designed to be fun? However, video game essays can be serious business. They provide an opportunity to understand and analyze the design choices that went into making a particular game, as well as the effects that those choices had on players. 

In other words, video game essays can help us to understand why we enjoy playing certain games, and what those games say about our culture and society. So don’t be afraid to dive in and start writing about your favorite games – you might just learn something along the way.

Different Types of Video Games

There are all sorts of video games out there – first person shooters, puzzle games, role-playing games, and more. And within each genre, there are even more sub-genres to explore. So when it comes to writing an essay about video games, students have a lot of different options to choose from. 

For example, you could write about the history of your favorite game franchise or compare and contrast different gaming platforms. You could also analyze the storytelling elements of a particular game or discuss the design choices that went into its development. No matter what angle you decide to take, you’ll come up with a unique and interesting essay.

And if you have writer’s block and cannot focus on your task, you could consider assignment help online . By working with a professional writer, you can get the help you need to overcome writer’s block and get your paper written. And, best of all, this type of online help is always available when you need it. So if you’re feeling stuck, don’t despair; they are just a click away.

Tips on How to Write a Strong Essay on Video Games

What could be more engaging than writing about something you’re passionate about? Whether you’re looking to analyze the story of your favorite game or discuss the impact of video games on society, there are plenty of topics to choose from. 

• Choose a topic you’re passionate about. 

When it comes to writing essays, any essay writing service specialist there’s one simple rule: choose a topic you’re passionate about. After all, if you’re not interested in the subject matter, why would you want to write about it? The good news is that there are plenty of potential essay topics out there, so you should have no trouble finding one that suits your interests. 

• Do your research. 

When it comes to writing an essay, it is important to do your research. This means more than just looking up the information you need in a textbook or online. You also need to take the time to think about what you are trying to say and how you can best support your argument. 

Remember, your goal is to persuade your reader that your point of view is the correct one. To do this, you will need to use evidence and examples from your research. So don’t start writing without first doing your homework! Otherwise, you might find yourself getting a lower grade than you deserved.

• Keep it organized. 

Just as a well-organized closet makes it easier to find what you need, a well-organized essay makes it easier for your reader to follow your argument. There are several different ways to organize an essay, but the most important thing is to make sure that your structure is clear and logical. Otherwise, your reader will quickly lose track of your main points. 

• Proofread your work.

Before you submit your essay, it’s important to proofread it to make sure there are no errors. Here are a few tips to help you proofread effectively: 

• Read your essay out loud. Catch errors that otherwise you wouldn’t have.
• Take your time. Don’t rush through the proofreading process or you might miss something. 
• Focus on one area at a time. For example, first read through your essay to look for any grammar mistakes, and then read through again to check for spelling errors. 
• Use a checklist. Make a list of common mistakes (e.g., typos, subject-verb agreement errors) and go through your essay looking for these mistakes specifically. 

Following these tips will help you proofread effectively and improve your chances of catching all the errors in your essay. Carefully proofread and edit your essay before submitting it, in order to avoid any silly mistakes that could cost you points.

Writing an essay on video games can be a fun and challenging experience. By following the tips above, you can choose a topic you’re passionate about, do your research, and write a well-organized and impressive essay. So don’t be afraid to get started – you might just surprise yourself with what you end up writing!

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How to write an essay about your favorite video game

Whether you’re in middle school, high school or college, essay writing is a huge part of your educational path. Because essays are meant to show your personality, interests, and writing skills, teachers love to assign this kind of task. The good thing is that, in many cases, you’re only given general instructions, so you’re allowed to choose your topic. If you have to write about something, why not write about your favorite things? Like video games.

Find the Best Essay Writing Topic         

For most people, writing is daunting. That’s why when choosing your topic, think about something that you really love and are always excited about. For example, everyone likes to play video games and writing about your favorite video game can be a rewarding and interesting challenge.

If you’re not convinced that video games can make great topics for a paper, you can browse some free examples online. Reputable platforms like studymoose.com provide free essays that can serve as inspiration and model for your assignment. Learn how to start an essay by example.

What’s Your Favorite Video Game?

Before the actual process of writing, you must know exactly what you want to put on paper. What’s your favorite video game, and what makes it so appealing to you? Is it the complex storyline, the diversity of characters, or its universe? Make a list of your favorite features and think how those relate to other aspects of your personality or life.

This part of the process coincides with the brainstorming stage, where you, as an essay writer, explore potential aspects that you could approach. At this level, it’s best to jot down everything that comes to mind regarding your favorite video game. This is when you seek connections, patterns, and arguments.

Write About Your Favorite Video Game

Now that you’ve settled on a topic, you must focus on the writing process. Even when your topic is your favorite video game, writing an essay is still challenging. While for some people, writing flows like a stream, others cannot write without planning in advance.

Some students agree that putting down the first sentence is the hardest part of essay writing.  This is a list of steps to help you tackle your essay writing task with confidence. They will help you find your writing rhythm as quickly as possible and make your ideas shine on the page.

How to Write An Essay

Develop a thesis.

The answer to how to start an essay is not putting down in writing all your ideas as they come to you. You’ve done that already in the brainstorming stage, and at this level, this will leave you with many disjointed paragraphs that lead nowhere.

A professional essay writer knows that an excellent paper must make a point, so develop a solid thesis at the beginning. The thesis can be one sentence that explains why you chose to refer to that specific video game.

Create an Outline for Your Essay

Once you’ve established the main thesis, you can create a basic outline where you make a list of the most powerful arguments and ideas. A good essay writer avoids meandering off his topic, so you must keep yourself in check by creating a good outline and then follow it accordingly.

The outline is instrumental if you want a well-organized paper with logical and precise arguments.  Additionally, the outline relieves you of a lot of pressure as you start writing because you will know exactly what each paragraph of your essay should contain.

Write the Main Body

With a good outline in your hands, you can start developing the paragraphs of the paper. If you followed all the steps correctly, this should go fairly easy. Don’t push too many ideas in a single paragraph because that will affect the flow of your essay and confuse the reader.

While filling in the outline with developed arguments, ensure that the transition from one paragraph to another is logical. To that end, transition words are very efficient and maintain cohesiveness. Don’t forget about the conclusion.

Revise, Edit and Proofread

Once the bulk of the work is done, you must reserve some time for revision, editing, and spell-checking. Re-read your paper several times and check for clarity and consistency. To make sure that the sentences flow well, you can read your essay out loud. Look carefully for grammar mistakes and typos.

In a nutshell, all questions regarding how to write an essay about a video game are easy to answer by following the typical structure for general paper writing . Think about what’s your favorite video game and how can you convince others of its awesomeness. Many wonder how to start an essay, but sometimes it is as simple as waxing lyrical about things you love.

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Video Game Narrative: The Different Types and How-to Start Writing

Grade 7 - grade 12.

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Date: May 7, 2020

Courtney Milne

About the author.

Courtney is an educator, beadwork artist and a Digital Steward at Pinnguaq. Courtney is of mixed Scottish, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee heritage from Chippewas of Nawash First Nation and Kahnawa:ke Mohawk Territory, currently living in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough, ON). Courtney has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Education in Language, Culture and Teaching. She has spent her adolescent and adult years being active in community, learning traditional knowledge and working for several Indigenous non-profit and charitable organizations. Courtney is passionate about bringing Indigegogy to the forefront of education and is an advocate for Indigenous rights, sovereignty, education, health and wellness.

Introduction

During this tutorial we will be talking about video game narratives. We will discuss a few common types of narratives and how each is unique. There will also be some tips on how to begin writing your own narrative! 

This tutorial is intended to give you an introduction to video game narratives and provide you with a starting point to explore further. This is not an exhaustive discussion but a good place to start for those wishing to begin learning about narrative creation as a hobby or for those who aspire to become video game developers. There is a lot of information available on the topic of video game narrative creation so for this tutorial, I referenced a few sources that are great starting points to explore further:

• The Evolution of Video Games as a Storytelling Medium, and the role of Narrative in Modern Games by Chris Stone at Gamasutra
• How to Write a Good Video Game Story by E.M Welsh 
• Practical Guide to Game Writing by Darby McDevitt at Gamasutra

At the end of this tutorial, you may create the beginnings of your own narrative using Twine, similar to this lesson or you may create a narrative for the “Colour Hunt” Scratch game we created in last week’s tutorial . For those who are new to Twine but would like to use it to write your narrative, check out our Introduction to Twine lesson here .

• Writing material: paper, pen or word processor, Twine
• Scratch 3 or Scratch online
• “Colour Hunt” game

Non-Computer Activity

To begin, it might be beneficial to understand the basics of storytelling before diving into writing video game narratives. Feel free to complete the “Story Storm” Storytelling Activity written by Tanner Big Canoe. It is a great activity to understand the basic elements of storytelling and includes a simple template to begin organizing your ideas! 

It’s important to understand that although narratives are prominent in video games, not every game has a narrative. Simply, not every fun game needs to have a narrative; the act of playing the game for what it is, is enough. For example, the very popular game Minecraft has no plot or story to tell, rather, it’s purpose is for users to build whatever they want using their creativity and therefore is open to individualized narratives that the player creates as they build (or just build cool things for the sake of it). Another example is the popular NHL and FIFA sports games; no narrative but very successful. 

For games that do follow a narrative, there are many different types and some games are even a combination of different types of narratives. Chris Stone at Gamasutra has outlined 4 main types of narratives: linear, string of pearls, branching narrative and amusement park narrative. 

• A linear narrative is a story progression that follows a very specific forward-motion set of events that doesn’t allow the player to back track, skip ahead or influence the storyline at all. Some popular games in this style include: Super Mario Bros, Sonic The Hedgehog, Prince of Persia.
• The string of pearls narrative model is when game play has a general linear progression but can be influenced by the player. This style includes a level of interactivity that gives the player freedom to choose different missions or side quests. Some popular games include: Final Fantasy and Uncharted,
• A branching narrative is a more complicated type of narrative which is central to the players choices. This narrative type allows the player to control the progression of the plot and changes the ending depending on their choices. An example is the popular PS4 (PlayStation 4) horror game, Until Dawn . 
• The amusement park model is similar to the branching model and is a common strategy for open world games. It allows the player to control the story through interaction but rather than completing missions or side quests, the player finds these branches through interacting with the NPC that is attached to that particular storyline. An example of this is the popular game series Assassin’s Creed and Skyrim .

[This is a visual of the different types of narratives outlined in The Evolution of Video Games as a Storytelling Medium, and the role of Narrative in Modern Games by Chris Stone at Gamasutra] 

Computer Activity

Video game narratives are a specific aspect of storytelling but what is unique to these narratives is the fact that there is lots of room for diversity in the type of storytelling. The beauty of video games is that there is something for everyone and this is where narrative is important. When you ask different people “what makes a great video game?”, you’re going to get very different responses because video game experience is so subjective. This allows for many different types of narratives to be accepted and successful, so be creative and write about something you enjoy! 

Using a word processor or Twine , we will begin writing our own video game narratives! 

E.M. Welsh has written a simple but effective guide to writing video game narratives (along with many other video game creation resources) which discusses the elements of video game narratives. According to Welsh, the two elements of a good narrative is the player-character dynamic and the interactive space/world the character is in. Welsh has outlined these steps to begin writing your story, however, recognizes that writing a story is going to be a much greater challenge than following a few steps. Simply, this is a great way to get started and begin practicing the process of narrative writing. 

Step One: Outline the Major Storyline

The major storyline will depend on the type of story you choose to write (i.e. linear, string of pearls, branching) but the goal of this outline is to identify the story’s path along with the major plot points you want your character to experience. For those who want to write a linear story, your task will be less involved than those who choose to write a more interactive story; however, regardless of your choice consider starting with these areas:

• Note all the major events for each character
• List at least three different ending possibilities (if applicable)
• Make your outline as large/detailed as possible

Step Two: Decide the Type of Game

In order to effectively create a cohesive video game experience with your story, you must consider game mechanics and the different types of games out there (this is where video game experience comes in handy!). The type of game acts like a framework for your story. There are many types of games including hybrid games, so the more experience you have playing several different types of games the better, as this can help you decide how you want your game to be structured. Common video game types include:

• Action-adventure (e.g. The Legend of Zelda series)
• Role-playing games (RPG) (e.g. World of Warcraft )
• First-person combat (e.g. Goldeneye 007)
• Puzzles (e.g. Professor Layton series)

Step Three: Develop your World

For this part of planning, you may want to create your main character(s) first if you have a really clear idea but E.M. Welsh suggests beginning with the world, as it aids in character development. Developing the world may be the most exciting aspect of story creation because a lot of the emphasis in video games is dependent on the world the player experiences. Begin creating ideas about your world with these topics:

• History of the world
• Setting (time, location, etc.)

It may be helpful to brainstorm some aspects of human/real-world history, mythology, aspects of pre-existing stories/movies/games that interest you so that you can take inspiration to build your video game world. 

Step Four: Create your Main Character(s)

If you’ve ever written an original story, you already have experience writing characters. Creating them for video games is similar, in that you flesh out who these characters are and what they value. The key for video game character creation is acknowledging and understanding the first-person relationship the player has with the character (i.e. the player is the character), in addition to narrative choices which change how the character may behave (i.e. non-linear storylines). A good place to start is to consider the prominent characters you want in your story:

• Protagonist or main character 
• Antagonist or villain(s)
• Companion characters 

Step Five: Create a Flowchart of your Major Story

Think of this step as creating a map for your story with the major pieces. This is where you will organize your work thus far in a flow-chart fashion as it will allow you to see the bigger picture. You can visualize your story and fill in plot points, update character stories, plan the progression of your story and locate where potential side quests would work. If you are planning to add side quests, don’t focus on the details of those during this step; simply mark on your flow chart where these may occur and focus on organizing your major story points. Below is an example of flowchart; this is to give you a visual of what yours may look like. 

Step Six: Start Writing the Major Story

Think of this step as filling in the major pieces of your story with the fine details. Likely, you will create multiple iterations of your story during this stage as this is where different ideas will emerge – this is great and will help you land on the core direction to take your game! Focus on writing the details of your major story and worry about adding side quest details and interactivity later. You may choose to write/organize your story in whichever way is comfortable to you but if you’re not sure, here are some suggestions:

• Write your main story as a summary
• Start writing scene-by-scene
• Focus on cutscenes that have minimal interactivity

Step Seven: Add in Small Details: Side Quests, NPCs, etc.

Once you’ve planned and written the major story, this step is where you can add in the interactivity and the really fun elements of your game. How you begin writing these details may be dependent on the type of story you chose to write. If you chose a non-linear narrative, you may want to start writing alternate versions of your story depending on what the player chooses, alternate endings and how the player would achieve those endings. For those who chose a linear narrative, those elements won’t be applicable. Some common areas to start writing small details include:

• Often characters that give hints, reveal something about the story/world, express their opinion, etc.
• Small storylines that may be related to the world, culture, lore, history, etc. or explore backstories of some characters
• Interactive items that enhance the story such as letters, gems, books or any other significant object; these items can have a story behind them that adds to the overall narrative

To apply your knowledge, I challenge you to use this lesson to create a very simple narrative for the “Colour Hunt” Scratch game we made in last week’s tutorial (keeping the game function the same). Additionally, you could write a more detailed narrative and remix the “Colour Hunt” game with new sprites, backdrops, sounds and basic function to tell your story!

Extra challenge: Write a brand new narrative using the knowledge you gained in this tutorial and create a Scratch game based on the narrative! Feel free to refer to our other lessons on Scratch and storytelling to help create your game:

• Interactive Storytelling with Scratch 
• Scratch Remix: Make your own Game 
• Hungry Shark Scratch Game
• Player Control in Scratch
• Player Control in Scratch: Basic Movement Techniques

Share your work with us! We want to see the awesome things you’re creating with Pinnguaq. Share online with us and tag @pinnguaq on Facebook , Twitter or Instagram for your work to be featured. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #LearnWithPinnguaq! Keep tuning into Pinnguaq for more lessons and fun activities!

• The Evolution of Video Games as a Storytelling Medium, and the role of Narrative in Modern Games by Chris Stone
• How to Create Video Game Characters by E.M. Welsh
• How to Create a Video Game World by E.M. Welsh
• Creating a Word Monster Game Using Twine
• Mythology Using Twine (choose your own adventure story building)
• Last week’s tutorial  
• Scratch website
• Scratch 3 Wiki page

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How to Write an Essay about Video Games and its Impact on Students’ Life

by Dorothy Jones

The essay consists of three parts – introduction, main part, and conclusion. An essay always contains a thesis – the main idea, the position of the author. The thesis can be at the beginning of the essay if the author already has a point of view on this problem, or in the conclusion if he comes to it as a result of reasoning. With all this in mind, it’s not surprising that most parents are concerned about the impact of video games on children today. As sociological polls show, many of them consider it expedient to severely limit the computer pastime for their children since they believe that it will not lead to anything good. But, we must not forget that any thesis must be supported by two or three arguments. The arguments, in turn, should be illustrated with two examples.

Algorithm for writing an essay

The following algorithm of actions will help to cope with the task:

• Carefully read the instructions for the assignment and the proposed topic of the essay;
• Draw up a plan for the described three-part structure: write the thesis and come up with arguments and examples supporting them;
• Write the text without exceeding the specified volume;
• Recheck the text two or three times and correct mistakes;
• Hand overwork on time.

This topic is quite complex, so it requires good sources to confirm your opinion. If the task seems too difficult for you, you can write an essay for cheap, there are many services to help you write an essay, for example, https://essayshark.com/ . But if you want to express your opinion, and you have enough reasoning for a good essay, then read the following recommendations.

Introduction

The task of the introduction is to grab the attention of the reader: ask an exciting question, confront him with a paradox, a contradiction. The introduction should intrigue the reader so that he cannot resist reading the rest of the text. Before we can say anything, we need to look at several studies related to gamers. Video games are one of the many activities people use to control their mood and maintain their emotional state. People play games for different reasons, and you need to describe the essence of the problem and it is in the introduction.

Statement of the thesis

A thesis is the author’s main idea, expressed in one or several sentences. A thesis formulation is a formulation of the main idea of ​​the text, which is consistent with the question or topic posed. If the examiner asked: “What is the main idea of ​​this text?”, Then the answer would be exactly the thesis. It is important to remember that a thesis is not an objective truth, not a proven fact, but a subjective opinion that can always be argued with. That is, at this stage, it is important to express your personal opinion about video games and their effect on students.

Any statement must be based on a foundation. The basis for the thesis is the arguments. One paragraph should be allocated to one argument and examples. Give your reasons for the opinion about video games, and of course, do not forget to indicate why you disagree with the opposite point of view. Examples include personal experience and, if applicable, links to statistics, forecasts, research. Answer the most common questions like “Can video games encourage players to be violent and addictive?». Arguments should prove the author’s thesis, not refute it. Moreover, they do not have to prove another thesis. Only those thoughts that have already been expressed in the text should be argued, and examples should be given strictly to the corresponding arguments.

The purpose of the conclusion is to summarize the reasoning. To do this, you need to briefly reformulate the thesis, if it was at the beginning of the work, or put it, if the author decided to place it after the arguments. And yet, answer the question “Do games change us for the worse?” Psychology is too controversial a science to answer such a question, especially when it comes to something as new as video games. Therefore, it is rather easier here to take one side and back up your opinion with research. The conclusion sums up the reasoning, not develops it. There is no place for new information in the conclusion.

List of sources

In an essay on the impact of video games on students, it is very important to cite the sources – this is a list of materials that the author refers to in his work. It is appropriate to refer to various works, scientific research, statistical data, statements of authoritative specialists. Also, keep in mind that research should be done within the last five years. To register a source, you need to indicate the name and surname of the author, the name of the source, the year of publication, and an electronic link, if necessary.

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How to Write a Non-Cliche College Essay About Sports + Examples

What’s covered:, what makes a sports essay cliche.

• How To Make Your Sports Essay Unique

Great Examples of College Essays About Sports

Where to get your college essay edited for free, or by an expert.

You’ve been brainstorming essay topics for your college applications, and you think you’ve finally found the right one: an extended metaphor likening your experience on the field with overcoming personal struggles. The problem: many other students have this same thought. 

The purpose of a college essay is to make yourself stand out as a unique individual, but when students write about sports, they often blend in. Because of that, students are usually advised to pick a different topic.

That being said, it is possible to write a non-cliche college essay about sports if you put in a little extra effort. Read along to learn how to make your sports essay different from all the other sports essays.

Sports essays are cliche when they follow a standard trajectory. Some of these trajectories include writing a story about:

• An agonizing defeat
• Forging bonds with teammates
• Overcoming adversity
• Overcoming an injury
• Refusing to quit
• Victory during a big game

Because sports essays have very similar themes and “lessons learned,” it can be difficult to make your story stand out. These trajectories also often focus too much on the sport or storyline, and not enough on the writer’s reflections and personality.

As you write your essay, try to think about what your experience says about you rather than what you learned from your experience. You are more than just one lesson you learned!

(Keep in mind that the sports essay is not the only college essay cliche. Learn about other essay cliches and how to fix them in our complete guide).

How to Make Your Sports Essay Unique

1. focus on a specific moment or reflection..

The college essay is a way for students to humanize themselves to admissions officers. You do not feel human if you are describing yourself as just another player on the field!

One important way to make your essay about you (not just about sports) is by focusing on a specific moment in time and inviting the reader to join you in that moment. Explain to the reader what it would be like to be sitting in that locker room as you questioned the values of the other players on your team. Ask your reader to sit with you on the cot in the trainer’s room as your identity was stripped away from you when they said “your body can’t take this anymore.” Bring your reader to the dinner table and involve them in your family’s conversation about how sports were affecting your mental health and your treatment of those around you.

Intense descriptions of a specific experience will evoke emotions in your reader and allow them to connect with you and feel for you.

When in doubt, avoid anything that can be covered by ESPN. On ESPN, we see the games, we see the benches, we even see the locker rooms and training rooms. Take your reader somewhere different and show them something unique.

2. Use sports to point out broader themes in your life.

The main risk when writing about sports is neglecting to write about yourself. Before you get started, think about the main values that you want to express in your sports essay. Sports are simply your avenue for telling the reader what makes you unique. 

As a test, imagine if you were a pianist. Would you be able to talk about these same values? What if you were a writer? Or a chemist? Articulating your values is the end, and sports should simply be your means.

Some values that you might want to focus on:

• Autonomy (you want to be able to set your mind to anything and achieve it on your own)
• Growth (you seek improvement constantly)
• Curiosity (you are willing to try anything once)
• Vulnerability (you aren’t afraid to fail, as long as you give it your all)
• Community (you value the feedback of others and need camaraderie to succeed)
• Craft (you think that with deliberate care, anything can be perfected)
• Responsibility (you believe that you owe something to those around you and perhaps they also owe something to you)

You can use the ESPN check again to make sure that you are using sports as an avenue to show your depth.

Things ESPN covers: how a player reacts to defeat, how injuries affect a player’s gameplay/attitude, how players who don’t normally work well together are working together on their new team.

Things ESPN doesn’t cover: the conversation that a player had with their mother about fear of death before going into a big surgery (value: family and connection), the ways that the intense pressure to succeed consumed a player to the point they couldn’t be there for the people in their life (value: supporting others and community), the body image issues that weigh on a player’s mind when playing their sport and how they overcame those (value: health and growth).

3. Turn a cliche storyline on its head.

There’s no getting around the fact that sports essays are often cliche. But there is a way to confront the cliche head-on. For example, lots of people write essays about the lessons they learned from an injury, victory, and so on, but fewer students explain how they are embracing those lessons. 

Perhaps you learned that competition is overwhelming for you and you prefer teamwork, so you switched from playing basketball to playing Dungeons & Dragons. Maybe, when your softball career ended abruptly, you had to find a new identity and that’s when you became obsessed with your flower garden and decided to pursue botany. Or maybe, you have stuck with football through it all, but your junior-year mental health struggle showed you that football should be fun and you have since started a nonprofit for local children to healthily engage with sports.

If your story itself is more cliche, try bringing readers to the present moment with you and show why the cliche matters and what it did for you. This requires a fair amount of creativity. Ensure you’re not parroting a frequently used topic by really thinking deeply to find your own unique spin.

Night had robbed the academy of its daytime colors, yet there was comfort in the dim lights that cast shadows of our advances against the bare studio walls. Silhouettes of roundhouse kicks, spin crescent kicks, uppercuts and the occasional butterfly kick danced while we sparred. She approached me, eyes narrowed with the trace of a smirk challenging me. “Ready spar!” Her arm began an upward trajectory targeting my shoulder, a common first move. I sidestepped — only to almost collide with another flying fist. Pivoting my right foot, I snapped my left leg, aiming my heel at her midsection. The center judge raised one finger. 

There was no time to celebrate, not in the traditional sense at least. Master Pollard gave a brief command greeted with a unanimous “Yes, sir” and the thud of 20 hands dropping-down-and-giving-him-30, while the “winners” celebrated their victory with laps as usual. 

Three years ago, seven-thirty in the evening meant I was a warrior. It meant standing up straighter, pushing a little harder, “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am”, celebrating birthdays by breaking boards, never pointing your toes, and familiarity. Three years later, seven-thirty in the morning meant I was nervous. 

The room is uncomfortably large. The sprung floor soaks up the checkerboard of sunlight piercing through the colonial windows. The mirrored walls further illuminate the studio and I feel the light scrutinizing my sorry attempts at a pas de bourrée, while capturing the organic fluidity of the dancers around me. “Chassé en croix, grand battement, pique, pirouette.” I follow the graceful limbs of the woman in front of me, her legs floating ribbons, as she executes what seems to be a perfect ronds de jambes. Each movement remains a negotiation. With admirable patience, Ms. Tan casts me a sympathetic glance.   

There is no time to wallow in the misery that is my right foot. Taekwondo calls for dorsiflexion; pointed toes are synonymous with broken toes. My thoughts drag me into a flashback of the usual response to this painful mistake: “You might as well grab a tutu and head to the ballet studio next door.” Well, here I am Master Pollard, unfortunately still following your orders to never point my toes, but no longer feeling the satisfaction that comes with being a third degree black belt with 5 years of experience quite literally under her belt. It’s like being a white belt again — just in a leotard and ballet slippers. 

But the appetite for new beginnings that brought me here doesn’t falter. It is only reinforced by the classical rendition of “Dancing Queen” that floods the room and the ghost of familiarity that reassures me that this new beginning does not and will not erase the past. After years spent at the top, it’s hard to start over. But surrendering what you are only leads you to what you may become. In Taekwondo, we started each class reciting the tenets: honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, courage, humility, and knowledge, and I have never felt that I embodied those traits more so than when I started ballet. 

The thing about change is that it eventually stops making things so different. After nine different schools, four different countries, three different continents, fluency in Tamil, Norwegian, and English, there are more blurred lines than there are clear fragments. My life has not been a tactfully executed, gold medal-worthy Taekwondo form with each movement defined, nor has it been a series of frappés performed by a prima ballerina with each extension identical and precise, but thankfully it has been like the dynamics of a spinning back kick, fluid, and like my chances of landing a pirouette, unpredictable. 

Why it works:

What’s especially powerful about this essay is that the author uses detailed imagery to convey a picture of what they’re experiencing, so much so that the reader is along for the ride. This works as a sports essay not only because of the language and sensory details, but also because the writer focuses on a specific moment in time, while at the same time exploring why Taekwondo is such an important part of their life.

After the emotional image is created, the student finishes their essay with valuable reflection. With the reflection, they show admissions officers that they are mature and self-aware. Self-awareness comes through with statements like “surrendering what you are only leads you to what you may become” and maturity can be seen through the student’s discussion of values “honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, courage, humility, and knowledge, and I have never felt that I embodied those traits more so than when I started ballet.” These are the kinds of comments that should find their way into a sports essay!

“Advanced females ages 13 to 14 please proceed to staging with your coaches at this time.” Skittering around the room, eyes wide and pleading, I frantically explained my situation to nearby coaches. The seconds ticked away in my head; every polite refusal increased my desperation.

Despair weighed me down. I sank to my knees as a stream of competitors, coaches, and officials flowed around me. My dojang had no coach, and the tournament rules prohibited me from competing without one.

Although I wanted to remain strong, doubts began to cloud my mind. I could not help wondering: what was the point of perfecting my skills if I would never even compete? The other members of my team, who had found coaches minutes earlier, attempted to comfort me, but I barely heard their words. They couldn’t understand my despair at being left on the outside, and I never wanted them to understand.

Since my first lesson 12 years ago, the members of my dojang have become family. I have watched them grow up, finding my own happiness in theirs. Together, we have honed our kicks, blocks, and strikes. We have pushed one another to aim higher and become better martial artists. Although my dojang had searched for a reliable coach for years, we had not found one. When we attended competitions in the past, my teammates and I had always gotten lucky and found a sympathetic coach. Now, I knew this practice was unsustainable. It would devastate me to see the other members of my dojang in my situation, unable to compete and losing hope as a result. My dojang needed a coach, and I decided it was up to me to find one. 

I first approached the adults in the dojang – both instructors and members’ parents. However, these attempts only reacquainted me with polite refusals. Everyone I asked told me they couldn’t devote multiple weekends per year to competitions. I soon realized that I would have become the coach myself.

At first, the inner workings of tournaments were a mystery to me. To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side. I learned everything from motivational strategies to technical, behind-the-scenes components of Taekwondo competitions. Though I emerged with new knowledge and confidence in my capabilities, others did not share this faith.

Parents threw me disbelieving looks when they learned that their children’s coach was only a child herself. My self-confidence was my armor, deflecting their surly glances. Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities.

Despite the attack, I refused to give up. When I saw the shining eyes of the youngest students preparing for their first competition, I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was. The knowledge that I could solve my dojang’s longtime problem motivated me to overcome my apprehension.

Now that my dojang flourishes at competitions, the attacks on me have weakened, but not ended. I may never win the approval of every parent; at times, I am still tormented by doubts, but I find solace in the fact that members of my dojang now only worry about competing to the best of their abilities.

Now, as I arrive at a tournament with my students, I close my eyes and remember the past. I visualize the frantic search for a coach and the chaos amongst my teammates as we compete with one another to find coaches before the staging calls for our respective divisions. I open my eyes to the exact opposite scene. Lacking a coach hurt my ability to compete, but I am proud to know that no member of my dojang will have to face that problem again.

In the beginning, you might think this is another cliche sports essay about overcoming adversity. But instead, it becomes a unique statement and coming-of-age tale that reads as a suspenseful narrative. 

The author connects their experience with martial arts to larger themes in their life but manages to do so without riffing off of tried-and-true themes. Through statements like “I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was” we learn about the students values and their desire to be there for those who depend on them. 

The student also brings it full circle, demonstrating their true transformation. By using the “Same, but Different” ending technique , the student places themself in the same environment that we saw in the intro, but experiences it differently due to their actions throughout the narrative. This is very compelling!

“1…2…3…4 pirouettes! New record!” My friends cheered as I landed my turns. Pleased with my progress, I gazed down at my worn-out pointe shoes. The sweltering blisters, numbing ice-baths, and draining late-night practices did not seem so bad after all. Next goal: five turns.

For as long as I can remember, ballet, in all its finesse and glamor, had kept me driven day to day. As a child, the lithe ballerinas, donning ethereal costumes as they floated across the stage, were my motivation. While others admired Messi and Adele, I idolized Carlos Acosta, principal dancer of the Royal Ballet. 

As I devoted more time and energy towards my craft, I became obsessed with improving my technique. I would stretch for hours after class, forcing my leg one inch higher in an effort to mirror the Dance Magazine cover girls. I injured my feet and ruined pair after pair of pointe shoes, turning on wood, cement, and even grass to improve my balance as I spun. At competitions, the dancers with the 180-degree leg extensions, endless turns, and soaring leaps—the ones who received “Bravos!” from the roaring audience—further pushed me to refine my skills and perfect my form. I believed that, with enough determination, I would one day attain their level of perfection. Reaching the quadruple-pirouette milestone only intensified my desire to accomplish even more. 

My efforts seemed to have come to fruition two summers ago when I was accepted to dance with Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet at their renowned New York City summer intensive. I walked into my first session eager to learn from distinguished ballet masters and worldly dancers, already anticipating my improvement. Yet, as I danced alongside the accomplished ballerinas, I felt out of place. Despite their clean technique and professional training, they did not aim for glorious leg extensions or prodigious leaps. When they performed their turn combinations, most of them only executed two turns as I attempted four. 

“Dancers, double-pirouettes only.” 

Taken aback and confused, I wondered why our teacher expected so little from us. The other ballerinas seemed content, gracing the studio with their simple movements. 

As I grew closer with my Moscow roommates, I gradually learned that their training emphasized the history of the art form instead of stylistic tricks. Rather than show off their physical ability, their performances aimed to convey a story, one that embodied the rich culture of ballet and captured both the legacy of the dancers before them and their own artistry. As I observed my friends more intently in repertoire class, I felt the pain of the grief-stricken white swan from Swan Lake, the sass of the flirtatious Kitri from Don Quijote, and I gradually saw what I had overlooked before. My definition of talent had been molded by crowd-pleasing elements—whirring pirouettes, gravity-defying leaps, and mind-blowing leg extensions. This mindset slowly stripped me from the roots of my passion and my personal connection with ballet. 

With the Bolshoi, I learned to step back and explore the meaning behind each step and the people behind the scenes. Ballet carries history in its movements, from the societal values of the era to each choreographer’s unique flair. As I uncovered the messages behind each pirouette, kick, and jump, my appreciation for ballet grew beyond my obsession with raw athleticism and developed into a love for the art form’s emotive abilities in bridging the dancers with the audience. My journey as an artist has allowed me to see how technical execution is only the means to a greater understanding between dancer and spectator, between storyteller and listener. The elegance and complexity of ballet does not revolve around astonishing stunts but rather the evocative strength and artistry manifested in the dancer, in me. It is the combination of sentiments, history, tradition, and passion that has allowed ballet and its lessons of human connection to become my lifestyle both on and off stage.

This essay is about lessons. While the author is a dancer, this narrative isn’t really about ballet, per se — it’s about the author’s personal growth. It is purposefully reflective as the student shows a nice character arc that begins with an eager young ballerina and ends with a reflection on their past. The primary strength of this essay is the honesty and authenticity that the student approaches it with.

In the end, the student turns a cliche on its head as they embrace the idea of overcoming adversity and demonstrate how the adversity, in this case, was their own stereotypes about their art. It’s beautiful!

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite. 

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. 

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

This essay uses the idea of sports to explore a more profound topic—growing through relationships. They really embrace using sports as an avenue to tell the reader about a specific experience that changed the way they approach the world. 

The emphasis on relationships is why this essay works well and doesn’t fall into a cliche. The narrator grows not because of their experience with track but because of their relationship with their coach, who inspired them to evolve and become a leader.

Have a draft of your college essay? We’re here to help you polish it. Students can participate in a free Peer Review, or they can sign up for a paid review by CollegeVine’s experts. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to start improving your essay and your chances of acceptance!

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• Knowledge Base
• How to write an essay introduction | 4 steps & examples

How to Write an Essay Introduction | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on February 4, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A good introduction paragraph is an essential part of any academic essay . It sets up your argument and tells the reader what to expect.

The main goals of an introduction are to:

• Catch your reader’s attention.
• Give background on your topic.
• Present your thesis statement —the central point of your essay.

This introduction example is taken from our interactive essay example on the history of Braille.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

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Table of contents

Step 1: hook your reader, step 2: give background information, step 3: present your thesis statement, step 4: map your essay’s structure, step 5: check and revise, more examples of essay introductions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.

Your first sentence sets the tone for the whole essay, so spend some time on writing an effective hook.

Avoid long, dense sentences—start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

The hook should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of the topic you’re writing about and why it’s interesting. Avoid overly broad claims or plain statements of fact.

Examples: Writing a good hook

Take a look at these examples of weak hooks and learn how to improve them.

• Braille was an extremely important invention.
• The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

The first sentence is a dry fact; the second sentence is more interesting, making a bold claim about exactly  why the topic is important.

• The internet is defined as “a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities.”
• The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education.

Avoid using a dictionary definition as your hook, especially if it’s an obvious term that everyone knows. The improved example here is still broad, but it gives us a much clearer sense of what the essay will be about.

• Mary Shelley’s  Frankenstein is a famous book from the nineteenth century.
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement.

Instead of just stating a fact that the reader already knows, the improved hook here tells us about the mainstream interpretation of the book, implying that this essay will offer a different interpretation.

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Next, give your reader the context they need to understand your topic and argument. Depending on the subject of your essay, this might include:

• Historical, geographical, or social context
• An outline of the debate you’re addressing
• A summary of relevant theories or research about the topic
• Definitions of key terms

The information here should be broad but clearly focused and relevant to your argument. Don’t give too much detail—you can mention points that you will return to later, but save your evidence and interpretation for the main body of the essay.

How much space you need for background depends on your topic and the scope of your essay. In our Braille example, we take a few sentences to introduce the topic and sketch the social context that the essay will address:

Now it’s time to narrow your focus and show exactly what you want to say about the topic. This is your thesis statement —a sentence or two that sums up your overall argument.

This is the most important part of your introduction. A  good thesis isn’t just a statement of fact, but a claim that requires evidence and explanation.

The goal is to clearly convey your own position in a debate or your central point about a topic.

Particularly in longer essays, it’s helpful to end the introduction by signposting what will be covered in each part. Keep it concise and give your reader a clear sense of the direction your argument will take.

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As you research and write, your argument might change focus or direction as you learn more.

For this reason, it’s often a good idea to wait until later in the writing process before you write the introduction paragraph—it can even be the very last thing you write.

When you’ve finished writing the essay body and conclusion , you should return to the introduction and check that it matches the content of the essay.

It’s especially important to make sure your thesis statement accurately represents what you do in the essay. If your argument has gone in a different direction than planned, tweak your thesis statement to match what you actually say.

To polish your writing, you can use something like a paraphrasing tool .

You can use the checklist below to make sure your introduction does everything it’s supposed to.

Checklist: Essay introduction

My first sentence is engaging and relevant.

I have introduced the topic with necessary background information.

I have defined any important terms.

My thesis statement clearly presents my main point or argument.

Everything in the introduction is relevant to the main body of the essay.

You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.

• Argumentative
• Literary analysis

This introduction to an argumentative essay sets up the debate about the internet and education, and then clearly states the position the essay will argue for.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

This introduction to a short expository essay leads into the topic (the invention of the printing press) and states the main point the essay will explain (the effect of this invention on European society).

In many ways, the invention of the printing press marked the end of the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Europe is often remembered as a time of intellectual and political stagnation. Prior to the Renaissance, the average person had very limited access to books and was unlikely to be literate. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed for much less restricted circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.

This introduction to a literary analysis essay , about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , starts by describing a simplistic popular view of the story, and then states how the author will give a more complex analysis of the text’s literary devices.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale. Arguably the first science fiction novel, its plot can be read as a warning about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, and in popular culture representations of the character as a “mad scientist”, Victor Frankenstein represents the callous, arrogant ambition of modern science. However, far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to gradually transform our impression of Frankenstein, portraying him in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

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• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

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Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

The “hook” is the first sentence of your essay introduction . It should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of why it’s interesting.

To write a good hook, avoid overly broad statements or long, dense sentences. Try to start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

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10 Fun Classroom Writing Games to Improve Literacy Skills

The best writing games to engage students

A colleague of mine recently shared these ten great writing game ideas to improve literacy skills in the classroom.  They are simple to play and can be applied to nearly all year levels. 

These are some of the best writing games that require minimal or no setup time and are an excellent option for substitute teachers looking to quickly break the ice with students or English teachers just seeking fresh ideas to brighten up their lessons. Enjoy.

Remember that if you are looking for more excellent free resources and structured guides to teaching all aspects of English, especially writing, be sure to visit  literacyideas.com .

Sentence Stretching

Start with a short sentence or group of words.  Pass it around to about 6 people, with the rule that each person must add (a word or a group of words) or change ONE word ( to another word or a group of words) to make the sentence more specific and more enjoyable.

Rebus writing

Students write sentences or longer texts and substitute drawings for nouns.

COMPLETE DIGITAL AND PRINT FUN WRITING UNIT

25 FUN and ENGAGING writing tasks your students can complete INDEPENDENTLY with NO PREP REQUIRED that they will absolutely love.

Fully EDITABLE and works as with all DIGITAL PLATFORMS such as Google Classroom, or you can PRINT them for traditional writing tasks.

It’s in the bag

Place an object in a bag- ensure the students don’t see it. Students feel the object in the bag and use words to describe how it feels. They take it out and add /alter their adjectives.

Touch and tell

An object is passed around a group of students. Each student suggests an adjective to describe it.

Alternative

Students provide an adjectival phrase or clause to describe the object

Students randomly select from a box a picture of an animal, person or object that moves. They brainstorm action verbs for the chosen object.

The students can supply verbs and adverbs

They can supply adjectives or adjectival groups

Read a text ( this case narrative ), and at a particular point, stop and ask students to select a character and suggest, for example:

• What the character is doing, thinking, and feeling ( focus on processes)

Change the meaning- change one word

Students locate and change one word that will alter the sentence’s meaning.

They share their alterations and discuss which part of speech was the most important in changing the meaning .

Locate and classify

Read a text and ask students to write nouns on cards ( red), adjectives (blue), and articles in orange. Rearrange words to create different noun groups. Students can also locate verbs ( green card) and adverbs (yellow). Rearrange all the words to create new sentences.

Students can locate adjectival phrases, clauses, or adverbial phrases and write these on other coloured cards.

Grammar toss- Sentence making

Players must throw a 1 before they can begin. The winner is the first person to make a sentence that includes all of the following:

• A group of words that tell what or who ( singular)
• A group of words that tell when
• A verb in the past tense
• An adverb telling how
• A group of words telling where

They can then rearrange the sentence parts to see how many ways they can make another meaningful sentence. 

Other parts of speech can be used for each number thrown.

Toss and write

Before the activity, a cube is prepared. Upon each face of the cube, a task is written that requires specific grammar knowledge. For example:

Make a sentence

Make a question

Provide two adjectives

Provide two verbs

Create a noun group (e.g. article, adjective/s noun)

Provide a noun and an adverb

Students select a subject ( noun) from a tin. They throw the cube, and whichever side of the cube faces up is the task they must attempt.

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO WRITING GAMES

10 fun writing activities for the reluctant writer

How to Write a Scary Story

7 Fun Writing Sub Plans for Substitute Teachers

To start a new game, just click the 'New Game' button on the top of your home screen!

OR, hover over ‘Play’ on the left-hand side of the screen, and select 'Play'

This will take you to a new screen where you can choose some options.

If you like the settings as they are, you can click ‘Play’ to start a new game right away! Otherwise, you can change the time settings by clicking on the dropdown above the Play button.

Clicking on the time will give you more time options, if you want to play a faster or slower game:

Live times show the total amount of time per side. Daily times show the amount of time each player has per move. For more info on the different time settings, click here. To learn about Daily games, click here.

Custom Game

Playing a Custom Game will allow you to further customize what kind of game you want to play.

Opponent: Random - the default setting is to match you with a random player. You can change this to challenge one of your friends instead by clicking on the word 'random'.

Rating Range - here you can choose a range for the rating of your opponent. There are many other options in this window if you are playing a Daily game.

Rated - toggle off if you don’t want the game to affect your rating.

I play as - Choose your color (this option will only appear if you toggle "rated" to OFF)

Variants - By clicking on the game type dropdown (where it says Standard in the image above) you can choose to play one of many kinds of variants such as Chess960, 3-check and more. Read about Variants here.

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How to watch Purdue Boilermakers vs. Gonzaga Bulldogs: Live stream, TV channel, start time for Friday's NCAA Basketball game

How to watch purdue vs. gonzaga basketball game, halftime report.

Purdue is on the road but looking no worse for wear. They have jumped out to a quick 40-36 lead against Gonzaga.

If Purdue keeps playing like this, they'll bump their record up to 32-4 in no time. On the other hand, Gonzaga will have to make due with a 27-8 record unless they turn things around (and fast).

Who's Playing

Gonzaga Bulldogs @ Purdue Boilermakers

Current Records: Gonzaga 27-7, Purdue 31-4

How To Watch

• When:  Friday, March 29, 2024 at 7:39 p.m. ET
• Where:  Little Caesars Arena -- Detroit, Michigan
• Follow:   CBS Sports App
• Online Streaming:   Catch select College Basketball matches on Fubo (Try for free. Regional restrictions may apply.)
• Ticket Cost: $210.00

What to Know

A Sweet Sixteen matchup is on tap on Friday as the Purdue Boilermakers and the Gonzaga Bulldogs will duke it out at 7:39 p.m. ET at Little Caesars Arena. Both squads will be entering this one on the heels of a big victory.

Purdue scored the most points they've had all season to find success on Sunday. They took their game on the road with ease, bagging a 106-67 victory over Utah State. The win made it back-to-back victories for the Boilermakers.

Zach Edey was his usual excellent self, dropping a double-double on 23 points and 14 rebounds. The matchup was his 12th in a row with at least 22.4 points. The team also got some help courtesy of Trey Kaufman-Renn, who scored 18 points along with eight rebounds and two blocks.

Meanwhile, Gonzaga's and Kansas' contest on Saturday was close at halftime, but Gonzaga turned on the heat in the second half with 46 points. Gonzaga put the hurt on Kansas with a sharp 89-68 win. That's two games straight that the Bulldogs have won by exactly 21 points.

Anton Watson and Ben Gregg were among the main playmakers for Gonzaga as the former scored 21 points along with six rebounds and two blocks and the latter almost dropped a double-double on 15 points and nine rebounds. Nolan Hickman was another key contributor, scoring 17 points.

Purdue is on a roll lately: they've won 17 of their last 19 matches, which provided a nice bump to their 31-4 record this season. As for Gonzaga, their victory bumped their record up to 27-7.

Purdue is hoping to beat the odds on Friday, as the experts think they're headed for a loss. Bettors picking them against the spread have some confidence (to put it mildly), as the team is sitting on a three-game streak of failing to cover when expected to win.

Purdue beat Gonzaga 73-63 when the teams last played back in November of 2023. Does Purdue have another victory up their sleeve, or will Gonzaga turn the tables on them? We'll have the answer soon enough.

Purdue is a solid 5.5-point favorite against Gonzaga, according to the latest college basketball odds .

The oddsmakers had a good feel for the line for this one, as the game opened with the Boilermakers as a 4.5-point favorite.

The over/under is 154.5 points.

See college basketball picks for every single game, including this one, from SportsLine's advanced computer model. Get picks now .

Series History

Purdue has won both of the games they've played against Gonzaga in the last 2 years.

• Nov 20, 2023 - Purdue 73 vs. Gonzaga 63
• Nov 25, 2022 - Purdue 84 vs. Gonzaga 66

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Sports Betting

UConn vs. USC expert picks and predictions: Spread, odds and start-time of Elite Eight game

The Athletic has live coverage of UConn vs. USC in the women’s March Madness Elite 8 .

The final women’s Elite Eight game features a tournament veteran in Paige Bueckers vs. a dynamic new talent in JuJu Watkins on Monday night. The odds for UConn vs. USC project a close matchup, supported by our experts being split on their picks to win. Our women’s college basketball writers are picking USC, thanks to its depth and explosiveness. On the other hand, our statistical model projects UConn, with its depth of experience, to have the advantage.

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As we head into the final two games to decide the women’s Final Four, we have lots of coverage of the women’s tournament. If you’re looking for the betting angle, though, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve got the odds for UConn vs. USC, our team’s picks, projected scores, players to watch and details on how to view the game. But let’s start with a quick rundown of the matchup, excerpted from our larger Elite Eight preview.

From our Elite Eight preview : 

It’s Paige Bueckers versus JuJu Watkins, but the USC freshman is bringing a few more friends to the party. While UConn labored to get past Duke with its six-player rotation, USC closed out Baylor by bringing in fresh role players in Kayla Williams and Clarice Akunwafo , a depth advantage that will be an asset to the Trojans on one day of rest.

The Huskies have experience on this stage, with three of their starters (Bueckers, Aaliyah Edwards and Nika Mühl ) featured on UConn’s 2021 and 2022 Final Four teams. But newness hasn’t been a challenge for USC, which has figured out how to adapt on the fly with a rotation featuring seven upperclassmen and Watkins, as well as a coach who has been here before. The Trojans have executed in close games all season long and have beaten a number of top teams, including Oregon State , UCLA and Stanford twice. On the other side, UConn didn’t beat any team that advanced to the Sweet 16 during the regular season despite having five chances. The Huskies didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory in their win over the Blue Devils , who were the lowest-seeded team remaining in the field.

Bueckers might be the best player on the court — mostly because her efficiency trumps that of Watkins — but USC has a track record of success against high-level competition. And even if Watkins isn’t quite at Bueckers’ level yet, the margin is essentially negligible. USC’s size, depth and unbridled confidence should be enough to carry them to the Final Four.

—Sabreena Merchant and Grace Raynor

How to watch UConn vs. USC

What: Portland 3 Region, Elite Eight

Tipoff time: 9:15 p.m. ET Monday

Location: Portland, OR

You can buy tickets to any tournament game  here . 

Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox. Sign up

UConn vs. USC odds

Odds are from BetMGM and update live. 

Expert picks and projections

Sabreena’s and Grace’s pick: USC to win

Austin Mock’s projection: Our “numbers guy,” Austin Mock, uses advanced statistical models and simulations to project the chances for each team to make it through each round of the tournament. Based on 1 million simulations of the women’s 2024 NCAA Tournament, here is our projected score:

• Projected point spread:  UConn -4.5
• Projected total:  137
• Projected scores: UConn 70.8, USC 66.3

Players to watch

• Paige Bueckers, junior guard, Big East Player of the Year, first-team All-Big East
• Ashlynn Shade , freshman guard, Big East Freshman of the Year
• Aaliyah Edwards, senior forward, first-team All-Big East
• Nika Mühl, senior guard, second-team All-Big East
• JuJu Watkins , freshman guard, Pac-12 Freshman of the Year
• McKenzie Forbes , senior guard, All-Pac-12

More NCAA basketball tournament coverage

• March Madness guide: Odds, upset picks, projections for all the NCAA Tournament action
• Women’s college basketball has made huge strides. How have sportsbooks responded

(Photo of JuJu Watkins: Keith Birmingham / MediaNews Group / Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)

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Red Sox vs. Athletics: Lineups, starting…

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Red Sox vs. Athletics: Lineups, starting pitchers, game times and how to watch

After opening the season on the road against one of the most exciting young teams in baseball, the Red Sox are now set to face off against the sport’s most moribund.

Coming off a 50-112 season, the Oakland Athletics are in a dismal spot. The club has announced its intention to relocate to Las Vegas, and with a roster striped bare of talent there’s little reason for fans in Oakland to come to the ballpark. That’s been reflected in the club’s attendance, and after drawing only 13,522 fans on Opening Day, the Athletics drew fewer that total over the next three games combined, averaging just 4,460 over that stretch. Given how well the Red Sox typically draw on the west coast, it’s entirely possible there could be more Red Sox fans in the Oakland Coliseum than Athletics fans this week.

Oakland lost its first series 1-3 to the Cleveland Guardians, dropping the first three before winning 4-3 on a walkoff on Sunday. Surprisingly, the Athletics actually stand fourth in the AL West ahead of the Houston Astros, who were swept by the New York Yankees in their first series. The Red Sox are currently tied for third in the AL East at 2-2.

Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming three-game set.

Red Sox starting pitchers

Tanner Houck will make his first start of the season in Monday’s series opener. The 27-year-old is looking to build on a strong spring training showing in which he posted a 2.40 ERA over 15 innings, striking out 16 while giving up only three walks. Last season Houck had a roller coaster season, posting a 5.01 ERA over 21 starts while missing nearly two months after being hit in the face by a line drive in mid-June.

Brayan Bello is scheduled to make his second start of the year on Tuesday and Nick Pivetta is in line to pitch the finale on Thursday. Bello allowed two runs over five innings on Opening Day, and Pivetta allowed one run over six innings while striking out 10 in a tough-luck 1-0 loss on Friday.

Athletics starting pitchers

Joe Boyle is scheduled to start Monday’s opener for the Athletics. The 24-year-old right-hander is making his fourth career start in the big leagues, having made a three-start cameo last September before earning a spot in Oakland’s rotation out of spring training. So far Boyle has fared well in limited action, going 2-0 while allowing three runs over 16 innings (1.69 ERA).

Alex Wood (0-1, 16.20 ERA) and Ross Stripling (0-1, 7.20) are listed as Oakland’s probable starters for Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.

Red Sox lineup for Monday

Jarren Duran LF

Rafael Devers 3B

Trevor Story SS

Triston Casas 1B

Tyler O’Neill RF

Masataka Yoshida DH

Enmanuel Valdez 2B

Ceddanne Rafaela CF

Reese McGuire C

Tanner Houck P

What time is each game?

Monday: 9:40 p.m. ET

Tuesday: 9:40 p.m. ET

Wednesday: 3:37 p.m. ET

How to watch?

All three games against the Athletics will be broadcast on NESN, WEEI 93.7 FM and in Spanish on WCCM 1490 AM.

Who’s up next?

After finishing this week’s series in Oakland, the Red Sox will have an off day on Thursday before finishing their 10-game west coast swing with three games in Anaheim against the Los Angeles Angels.

More in Sports

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How to watch Iowa vs LSU Monday: Time, TV for Women's NCAA Tournament Elite 8 game

Editor's note: Follow all the Iowa vs. LSU updates, scores, highlights and more as they face off in the Elite Eight.

The game may be taking place on April 1, but Iowa vs. LSU: Part 2 will be no joke.

In 2023, Iowa's Caitlin Clark and LSU's Angel Reese , two of the biggest stars in women's college basketball met in the national championship game , which ultimately led to Kim Mulkey's Tigers cutting down the nets.

While the two teams are meeting in the Elite Eight this time around, it will be the last meeting of the two stars in the college ranks: Caitlin Clark has declared for the 2024 WNBA Draft , where she'll likely end up as the No. 1 overall selection. Reese has yet to declare for the draft, but expect that decision to come sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, before they make their way to the WNBA, expect the sparks to fly and the nets to catch fire on Monday night. Here's how to watch No. 1 seed Iowa vs. No. 3 seed LSU on Monday:

FOLLOW THE MADNESS: NCAA basketball bracket, scores, schedules, teams and more.

How to watch Iowa vs LSU: Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese

• TV channel: ESPN
• Live stream: ESPN+ , Fubo
• Tip-off time: 7:19 p.m. ET

Iowa vs. LSU's Elite Eight matchup will take place on Monday, April 1. ESPN will televise the game nationally.

Iowa vs LSU Women's basketball date, time, location

• Date: Monday, April 1
• Tip-off Time: 7:19 p.m. ET
• Location: MVP Arena, Albany, New York

Iowa and LSU are set for an April Fool's date on Monday: The two teams will meet in MVP Arena in Albany, New York on April 1. Tip-off is set for 7:19 p.m. ET. The winner gets a ticket to the women's NCAA Tournament Final Four.

Iowa vs LSU TV channel, streaming for Elite 8

ESPN will broadcast the Iowa-LSU matchup on Monday night. For those with ESPN subscriptions, ESPN+ will carry the game on the streaming service.

For those who want to live stream the event, Fubo carries the ESPN family of networks, and will carry the game on Monday night.

We occasionally recommend interesting products and services. If you make a purchase by clicking one of the links, we may earn an affiliate fee. USA TODAY Network newsrooms operate independently, and this doesn’t influence our coverage.

How to Watch the Clemson vs. Alabama Elite 8 Game Online: Start Time and NCAA Tournament Livestream

The Clemson Tigers face the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Elite 8 today. Here's how to watch the game live.

Men’s March Madness  enters the Elite 8 today, which means it's time to crown the regional champions. The West Region final sees No. 6 seed Clemson and No. 4 seed Alabama play in Los Angeles to determine which team will secure a bid to the Final Four.

Watch Today's Game on Sling TV

After defeating top-seeded North Carolina 89-87, Alabama advanced to the Elite 8 for the second time in school history. Meanwhile, this will be the first Elite 8 for Clemson since 1980 thanks to a West Region Semifinal win over No. 2 seed Arizona 77-72.

Who will win the March Madness game and advance to the Final Four? Here's everything you need to know about how to watch the Clemson vs. Alabama game, including the start time and best livestream options. 

How to Watch Clemson vs. Alabama Without Cable

The Clemson vs. Alabama game will broadcast live on TBS and TruTV. If you don't have cable, most cost-effective way to stream the Elite 8 game tonight is through a subscription to Sling TV .

Right now, there is a Sling TV deal offering 50% off your first month — bringing the Orange package with TBS down to just $20, the Blue tier with TruTV to $22.50, and the comprehensive Orange + Blue package down to $30. Sling TV comes with 50 hours of free cloud-based DVR recording space, perfect for recording NCAA games when you're not home.

March Madness on Sling TV

CBS is not included in Sling TV's offering, but you can stream college basketball games that air on ESPN, TruTV, TBS and TNT live with Sling TV's Blue Plan — as low as $22.50 for your first month.

For first month

What time is the Clemson vs. Alabama Elite 8 game? 

The Clemson vs. Alabama men's college basketball NCAA Elite 8 game will be played on Saturday, March 30, 2024 at 8:49 p.m. ET (5:49 p.m. PT).

2024 NCAA Elite 8 Schedule

Here is the full schedule for the men's NCAA tournament Elite Eight games.

Saturday, March 30

Connecticut vs. Illinois , 6:09 p.m. ET | TBS/truTV

Clemson vs. Alabama, 8:49 p.m. ET | TBS/truTV

Sunday, March 31

Purdue vs. Tennessee, 2:20 p.m. ET | CBS

Duke vs. North Carolina State, 5:05 p.m. ET | CBS

What channel are the Elite 8 games on?

TBS will broadcast Saturday's East and West regional finals, while CBS will broadcast Sunday's South and Midwest regional finals.

2024 NCAA March Madness Schedule

Men's NCAA Tournament

The 85th edition of the Men's NCAA tournament begins with Selection Sunday on March 17, 2024. 

• Selection Sunday: Sunday, March 17 on CBS
• First Four: March 19-20
• First round: March 21-22
• Second round: March 23-24 
• Sweet 16: March 28-29 
• Elite Eight: March 30-31 
• Final Four: Saturday, April 6 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona
• NCAA championship game: Monday, April 8 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona

Women's NCAA Tournament

The Women's NCAA tournament also begins with Selection Sunday on March 17, 2024. 

• Selection Sunday: Sunday, March 17 on ESPN
• First Four: March 20-21
• First round: March 22-23
• Second round: March 24-25 
• Sweet 16: March 29-30 
• Elite Eight: March 31- April 1 
• Final Four: Friday, April 5 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio
• NCAA championship game: Sunday, April 7 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio

You never truly know what will happen during the  March Madness  championship tournament. Learn everything you need to know to watch all the NCAA Basketball Games online and on streaming.

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How did April Fools' Day start and what are some famous pranks?

By Aliza Chasan

April 1, 2024 / 6:00 AM EDT / CBS News

Historians aren't pulling your leg when they say no one is quite sure about the origins of April Fools' Day. 

April 1, the annual day of shenanigans, pranks, tricks and hoaxes, falls on Monday this year. While historians are unsure of the exact source of the tradition, they do know the custom goes back centuries, at least back to Renaissance Europe and possibly back to Roman times. Here's a look at what the experts say.

Theories, both real and false, tie April Fools' Day to Roman times 

Some believe April Fools' Day dates back to Hilaria festivals celebrated during classical Roman times. The festival was held on March 25 which, in Roman terms, was called the "eighth of the Calends of April," according to the Library of Congress. 

One theory tying the source of April Fools' Day to Roman times is a hoax. In 1983, an Associated Press reporter reached out to Joseph Boskin, a historian at Boston University, to discuss the origins of April Fools' Day. Boskin spun a tall tale to the reporter, assuming it would be fact-checked and revealed as fake. 

It wasn't. 

According to the story Boskin made up, a group of jesters convinced Emperor Constantine to make one of them king for a day. The appointed jester, named Kugel, declared it would be a day of levity. 

"I got an immediate phone call from an editor there, who was furious, saying that I had ruined the career of a young reporter," Boskin said in a Boston University post. "He said I told a lie. 'A lie?' I asked, 'I was telling an April Fools' Day story.'"

Middle Ages 

Some historians believe France is responsible for the humorous tradition, tying it to a calendar change in 1582, according to the History Channel . That year, France implemented the Gregorian calendar, shifting the start of the New Year from the spring equinox, which usually falls around April 1, to January 1. 

After the change, people who wrongly celebrated the new year in late March and early April were called "April fools."

The first clear reference to April Fools' Day is a 1561 Flemish poem by Eduard De Dene, which tells the story of a servant being sent on "fool's errands" because it's April 1, according to the Library of Congress. 

What are some famous April Fools' Day pranks?

In 1957, the BBC ran a broadcast on the Italian spaghetti harvest  that pretended the pasta was being harvested from trees. 

The BBC also ran an April Fools' report on flying penguins in 2008.

In Los Angeles, airline passengers were greeted with a banner saying "Welcome to Chicago" after landing on April 1, 1992, CBS Sunday Morning previously reported.

Taco Bell in 1996 advertised that it had bought the Liberty Bell and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell," according to the company.

As part of a 1997 April Fools' Day joke, Alex Trebek, host of "Jeopardy," swapped places with "Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak, according to jeopardy.com .

On April 1, 2015, streaming giant Netflix shared faux public service announcements to remind viewers to "Binge Responsibly."

• April Fools' Day

Aliza Chasan is a digital producer at 60 Minutes and CBSNews.com. She has previously written for outlets including PIX11 News, The New York Daily News, Inside Edition and DNAinfo. Aliza covers trending news, often focusing on crime and politics.

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