VIDEO/GAME ANALYSIS
October 18, 2017

PROJECTS
Identity and Civility on the Internet
by Heather Harlow

The Power of Possession
by Virginia Warner

How to Feed a Sorority
by Lauren Becker

The Adventures of Frank Little
by J. Turner, K. McDonald, M. Sheble, PJ Shea, V. Johnson

Semiotic Domains (a game)
by Krystel Baker

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
TheJUMP+ is beyond excited to bring you Issue 7.1! A lot has happened at our journal over the last few years, and we are excited to bring you new content. As you can see, the website has moved over to WordPress, and the journal has rebranded as TheJUMP+. We now feature a blog and internship opportunities along with the expected multimedia content in each issue authored by undergraduates in undergraduate courses.

Issue 7.1, “Video/Game Analysis,” includes five pieces that all use video or video games to perform different kinds of academic analysis.

The three video pieces in Issue 7.1 do a fantastic job of using the multimodal affordances of video to present ideas, engage with and analyze sources, and present arguments. In “Identity and Civility on the Internet,” Heather Harlow uses drawing, voice over, music, and timing to discuss online identity and interactions, specifically analyzing the work of media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. In “The Power of Possession,” Virginia Warner skillfully juxtaposes a spoken exploration of the recurring narrative of exorcist films with carefully selected, combined, and timed scenes from various exorcism films. In “How to Feed a Sorority,” Lauren Becker gives us an inside look into food service in a sorority house through interviews, recorded footage, and voice over, demonstrating the hard work and behind-the-scenes processes involved.

Like the video pieces, the two video games in issue 7.1 use images, sounds, and language to perform analysis, but these projects also use qualities unique to video games to analyze and argue. In “The Adventures of Frank Little,” J. Turner, K. McDonald, M. Sheble, PJ Shea, and V. Johnson use archival images from Butte, Montana along with scenes, sites, and interactions to provide history and commentary on the life of Frank Little, an early 19th-century labor union organizer. “Semiotic Domains,” by Krystal Baker takes up with James Paul Gee’s Semiotic Domains learning principle by creating a game that models the rhetoric and games course in which her project began—using the very domain of the course itself as a launching point for unpacking Gee’s principle.

Overall, we feel this issue demonstrates how video and video games might be used to perform the academic tasks of analysis and argumentation. Please enjoy these projects as you read, watch, listen, interact with, and play your way through Issue 7.1.