So without further delay, let's begin. This week we learnt how to assemble and write a bibliography. Why you may ask would we need to learn to do that, however, it is in-fact a very crucial tool and something that not just Games Designers but in-fact everyone should take the time to learn how to do properly. Citing people's work and research when writing an essay is crucial as it shows that you actually aren't some form of super-genius who is able to do everything on their own with no outside help whatsoever and it also shows that you are deeply analysing and looking at what it is that you are writing about.
Part of making sure that this citing is done correctly is learning how to actually style a bibliography and as it turns out there is more than one way of doing such a thing and there are different ways to do it depending on what you are citing - for example, citing a book is different from citing a magazine entry. The most common way to cite (and the way in which I do) is the Havard way - this in my opinion is the clearest and easiest way to see where exactly the work is coming from, below are the ways in which Havard cites different sources.
Books
Author or Editor Surname, Initial., [Subsequent author(s) or editors] Year of publication. The full title of the book: italicised or underlined to indicate it is the title. Publisher: city of publication.
Contribution to a Book
Author Surname, Initial., [Subsequent author(s)], year of publication. The full title of the article, without inverted commas. In Editor Surname, Initial., [Subsequent editor(s),] The full title of the containing work: italicised to indicate it is the title. City of publication: Publisher. page span of the work cited.
Journal/Magazine Article
Author Surname, Initial., [Subsequent author(s)], year of publication. The full title of the article without inverted commas. The full title of the journal: italicised to indicate it is the title [volume and part if given and/or] Month, or Season, or volume/part number.
TV Programme
Episode title: Series Title. Year. [TV], Channel, Date.
So there we go... it's not that difficult, especially if you are properly using the source to it's full extent and should have full access to all the required elements to properly cite the material. As a part of a task we had to undertake I have made 6 bibliography citations, 2 for each type of written source, on games design books and articles. Below are the books that I found as proof that I looked up these various books and have cited them correctly.
Bibliography
Books
Perkins, T., 2008. Nintendo Wii Flash Game Creator's Guide Design, Develop and Share Your Games Online, New york: McGraw Hill.
Van der Spuy, R., 2009. Foundation Game Design with Flash, Berkeley (Ca.): Friends of ED.
Articles
Chun, R., 2004. Design Simple Flash Games. , Macworld, Vol. 21, Issue 4, pp 62-65.
Stevens, C., 2004. Custom-build your own flash game: dip a toe into the ocean of Flash possibilities--without getting out of your depth.(flash games). , Internet Magazine, Vol. 118, pp 72.
Contribution to a Book
Barrett, K., Harley, J., Hilmer, R., Posner, D., Snyder, G., Wu, D., 2003, Pseudo Interactive’s Cel Damage, Grossman, A., Post-mortems from Game Developer: Insights from the Developers of Unreal Tournament, Black & White, Age of Empire, and Other Top-Selling Games, San Francisco, CA, pp 41-50.
Caillois, R., 1962, The Definition of Play: The Classification of Games, Salen, K., The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, pp 122-155
So there we go, this ends this blog entry. 'Til next time - that's all folks!
Great post! The contributions to collections don't need the year the work was originally published (eg, Caillois). It would be something like: Caillois, R. "The Definition of Play: The Classification of Games". In Salen, K. ed (date of publication of the collection) etc.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, with the multi-authored article, the word "in" before Grossman would clarify the fact that it's something that can be found in a collection edited by Grossman.
When citing the place of publication, it's usually just the city that's given. However, when there may be scope for ambiguity (as with The Game Design Reader, which is published in a an American city called Cambridge) the abbreviation for the state is given to avoid confusion.
BTW, was this hand-rolled, or did you use Zotero?
The contribution ones were the hardest for me to find which is why they may not be perfect - I did try my best though, I'll know what I did wrong ready for next time.
ReplyDeleteIt was kind of a mixture of both hand-rolled and Zotero - I had Zotero get what I could and had to fil in the rest myself.