Lien 1

Historical Learning through Historical Assassins

Creed III

Throughout our lives, we do a variety of actions to survive and to enjoy our survival of
life. One of those actions, is seeking out information and learning. Although while we are
children, we dont intentionally look to learn, as we grow into adults, we start to seek as
much knowledge as possible from school and college, along with work experience and
even hobby knowledge for fun. Its the mixture of education and entertainment that I
plan to research in this project by studying the benefits of video games and comparing
them to successful novels.
This project is aimed to shed some light on the benefits of video games to the public
and to help break the negative stigma thats currently against video games and results
in them being seen as a waste of time. This will be an interesting project and hard to
prove because the intellectual nourishment of reading books is so deeply ingrained in
our assumptions that its hard to contemplate a different viewpoint (Johnson 18) I will
be comparing the historical game series Assassins Creed, specifically Assassins
Creed III, which revolves around the Revolutionary War, to Jane Kamensky and Jill
Lopores novel Blindspot, that is also about the Revolutionary War and look at both of
their educational value, cultural value and entertainment value. While both of these
sources will not be perfect for education since they are fictional, I will be looking at the
literary techniques and historical accuracy between the novel and game to see what I
learn from them and try to piece together as much of the Revolutionary War from it,
showing how much one can learn from both playing a video game and reading. I hope
to use this to show that video games as a pass time can actually be quite beneficial.
As myself and many other gamers have experienced, many parents and educators
have labeled video games as a waste of time or even as a contributor to violent
tendencies or even dangerous addictive hobby. Simon Parkin talks about the dangers of
video games in Death by Video Games, including some examples of people dying
because of them. I hope to show this side of the argument and disprove these examples
with both my sources and my own research. A great outside perspective of video games
is when Dr. James Gee tries a video game for the first time he states As I confronted
the game I was amazed. It was hard, long, and complex. I failed many times and had to
engage in a virtual research project via the Internet to learn some of things I needed to
know. All my Baby-Boomer ways of learning and thinking didnt work (Gee 1). He had
to work his mind in new ways to solve problems. This is something most gamers do on
a daily basis and this project aims to show the positives to video games that are often
over looked, like problem solving, and to help them be more accepted, possibly even
encouraged as a positive hobby.

Lien 2

Video games can have cultural values that both reflect the creators and create cultural
understanding for the players. When talking about Assassins Creed and its influences
with culture, Magy Seif El-Nasr said we discovered that each one of us had a different
experience with the game (El-Nasr 1). And these experiences can help reflect from the
game to the players. In Assassins Creed III, you play as a native American during the
Revolutionary war, taking a unique perspective of history and throwing the player into a
different culture to experience. Putting yourself in anothers perspective is something
novels and video games commonly do, but in video games you play as a character and
follow their story and lead them through it, instead of simply following the character in a
novel.

Objective:
To see how successful these video games and novels are in entertainment, I plan to
research the success rate of Assassins Creed III and Blindspot at the same time. Using
their success, I can determine how popular and common they are. I hope to show that
video games like Assassins Creed III, are incredibly popular and should no longer be
seen as a negative but instead as a positive hobby that can possibly be beneficial to the
player. I plan to persuade educators, parents and possibly even health care
professionals through research and experience on video games by comparing their
educational, entertainment and cultural values to a novel, since novels are already
accepted by society. I hope to not only find that video games are very similar to novels
in positives, but also to find other positives from video games that novels do not have to
show they can fill a niche that novels cannot. Especially since the reading craze of
recent years cruelly taunts the 10 million Americans who suffer from dyslexia (Johnson
20).

Methods:
I plan on researching the awards and sales that both Assassins Creed III and the novel
have received to see how well they have been accepted by the public. This will try to
look at the entertainment levels people get from reading the book or playing through the
game and see how popular it is, because if either of them are popular and beneficial, we
as a nation to do our best to incorporate and accept them for as many values they have.
Im focusing on popularity because its not about tolerating or aestheticizing chaos; its
about finding order and meaning (Johnson 62) and by finding that meaning to video
games, we can even help them become more beneficial.
I also plan on using a Learning Log in this project. I will read through Blindspot and
track anything new I learn from it about the Revolutionary War, and then do the same
with Assassins Creed III. After that, I will fact check both lists of learned information

Lien 3

and compare them. In the end, I will compare how much of an overall understanding of
the Revolutionary War that both gave me and look at the literary techniques both have
used to tell their story. To find the benefits books and video games have, I plan on
looking at the educational effects from both and seeing if one is better than the other in
different aspects of learning. Especially by focusing on literary techniques and active
learning. I also plan on looking at any other benefits both might have like simple handeye coordination, problem solving and deductive reasoning. And lastly I plan to look at
the cultural aspect of the games and their overall acceptance.

Timeline:
Task:

Sept.

October

Oct.

Oct.

Oct.

Oct. 29-

Nov.

Nov.

25-30

1-7

8-14

15-21

22-28

Nov. 5

6-12

13-19

Break

Proposal
Academic
and
Learning
Log
Research
Annotative
Bibliography
Design
Research
Conference
Put it all
together
Revise
Present

This Gantt Chart displays my work load and schedule that I plan to follow for my
Capstone project to be efficiently researched and put together. Research is a large
section of this project as I need to effectively find the sources I need to get end
results. My research will be finding academic sources showing that video games are
not a negative hobby. I also plan on stating the reasons why educators or parents fear
video games and hope to disprove them. But the research will mostly flow into the
end of the project. So I have six weeks for research and another three weeks for
design research. My design research aims to find ways for me to properly design my
learning log, design my project paper and properly present it. Revising my project is
also a large section both towards the end of the project and a little bit in the middle.
I plan to be constantly revising to find the best end result, to make it as great as it
can be before it must be presented.

Nov.
27-3

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Sources:
"Assassin's Creed III Sales." VGchartz. VGchartz.com, 3 Sept. 2016. Web. 04 Oct.
2016.
Bogost, Ian. "Persuasive Games." Design Philosophy. Web. 04 Oct. 2016.
El-Nasr, Magy Seif, Maha Al-Saati, Simon Niedenthal, and David Milam. "Assassins
Creed: A Multi-Cultural Read." Simon Fraser University, 2008. Web. 27 Sept.
2016.
Gee, James Paul, Dr. "GOOD VIDEO GAMES AND GOOD LEARNING." (2007): 1-13.
Web.
Johnson, Steven. "Video Games." Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's
Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead, 2005. 1762. Print.
Kamensky, Jane, and Jill Lepore. Blindspot: By a Gentleman in Exile and a Lady in
Disguise. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2008. Print.
Parkin, Simon. Death by Video Game. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2016. Print.
Prensky, Marc. "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." From Digital Natives to Digital
Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning Vol. 9.No. 5 (2001): 65-87.
MCB University Press. Web.
Sliwinski, Alexander. "Journey Takes 'Game of the Year' at DICE Awards."Engadget.
Assassins Creed III awards. Web. 04 Oct. 2016.
Ubisoft. Assassins Creed III. Ubisoft, 2012. Playstation 3.