Hello; my name is Luke Bale and I am currently studying Bsc (Hons) Comnputer and Video Games at the University of Salford. I am just about to entry my third year and starting to research the topic for my 3rd year dissertation.
Now I have already thought of an idea for this Dissertation blog; which was called Rage On The Streets and that was going to focus on the Streets of Rage game and how they portray Gang culture. But I have had a change of heart about the topic as this project is all about doing something that I am interested in and it gives me time to research deeper into one of my favourite game series; the Sonic The Hedgehog games.
Now I am not going to include the latest titles at the moment as I do not feel that they are the same games as the ones created within the Mid 90s, but I will look at thse titles in the future of the project.
Now I have called the essay; Owning The Stardust Speedway. The inspiration of this title is a famous level from the Sonic CD game where you fight against Metal Sonic; but I want to look at the games and Sonic The Hedgehog himself imparticular as a figure for Capitalism and see what capitalist elements are within the titles such as collecting golden rings and searching for the rare Chaos Emerelds which give Sonic the power to turn into Super Sonic.
Not only does this project give me the chance to play two of my favourite games; Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and Sonic CD once again; but explore elements of the game that I did not initially think when playing them for the first time.
I hope you like the research and enjoy reading these blog entrys; I will enjoy the game playing and also finding out about how the Capitalist system works in details.
I would look at ideas of collecting in games as this would go a fair distance to cover the areas of capitalism. There is a great chapter in the book
ReplyDeleteJones, S., 2008. The Meaning of Video Games 1st ed., Routledge.
that focuses on Katamari Damacy but you could apply some of the same ideas to sonic. My advice is to choose which games you are going to look at and which ones you are going to skip and have a good reason for what makes a sonic game and what is just a game with sonic in, what makes a sonic game a sonic game.
I think that there is good scope here and i'm looking forward to seeing it develop, you should talk about sonic reinforcing capitalist ideologies. Maybe look at the original sonic design docs (if you can get them) and see what inspired charicters like Doctor Robotnic and what he might symbolise.
I can't believe i spelt Robotnik wrong...
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