In my discovery essay, I wrote about the positive and negative effects of playing video games. I decided to translate this into two pictures that I have drawn myself. I chose drawings because I think it can accurately portray how playing video games can have both positive and negative effects on their players. I can draw these impacts video games have on their players through their thoughts, interactions, and behavior

In the first picture that I draw, we see a video game player getting angry because he is losing a game of Call of Duty. He is yelling at the TV and has an angry expression on his face. This is to show the negative effects of video games and how playing video games can lead to aggressive behavior. I myself have acted like this when playing video games because it gets really frustrating to lose. In my discovery essay, I talked about how Dr. Craig Anderson believes that violent video games can lead to aggressive behaviors. He did an experiment where he saw that “Nonaggressive people who watched a violent movie clip displayed more aggressive thoughts than nonaggressive people who saw the nonviolent clip, but highly aggressive people were relatively unaffected by the movie clip manipulation” (Howe, Stigge, & Sixta, 2007, pg. 2). Though the authors of this research have studied the effects of violent movie clips on people, their findings can support the idea that violent video games can lead to more aggressive behavior in nonaggressive people.

In the second drawing, we see video game players tell each other that they’re having while playing Marvel vs Capcom. They express how they like playing with each other and have happy expressions on their faces. This is to show the positive effects of video games and how playing video games can lead to improvements in relationships. In my discovery essay, I said that when players were asked why they enjoyed video games, they all had positive things to say. They said they enjoy video games because of the social relations and storyline, relaxation, and curiosity(Heiden, Braun, Muller, & Egloff, 2010, pg, 5). This shows that video game players themselves can still enjoy playing video games and can have positive experiences

Reflection:

My discovery essay was about the negative and positive effects of playing video games. In my discovery essay, I talked about how playing video games can lead to aggressive and violent behavior among players. I also talked about how playing video games can be good and educational and can lead to good social relations. I thought it would be a good idea to turn this research into something visual for the multimodal creative project because then you can see how video games can have both negative and positive effects on players through their thoughts, behavior, and relationships. When I was drawing the two pictures, I was going off of some of my own personal experiences. I remember playing Call of Duty and getting really angry when things didn’t go as I wanted. I would get really competitive and almost addicted to playing video games. I would sometimes yell at my TV and get frustrated, so this is how I drew the negative effects of playing video games. I also had good experiences while playing video games. I have a lot of fun when playing with my friends. It gives us something to talk about and I think it helps in creating social connections, so this is how I drew the positive effects of playing video games. I also think it helps me relax when I am busy. I do not draw all that good but I hope the audience can understand the message that video games can have both negative and positive effects and it is not just one or the other