Focusing in...

Concept
As we discussed in class, my paper topic is "Video Games effects on the development of Morality and Personality." I believe, with the help of the class, we have determined that this topic can generate interest which is key to writing not only a interesting paper, but a good one. With this paper, I would be drawing connections between personality types and video game players (referred to as gamers in the paper). I would be looking at how video games helped "raise" people and what traits are congruent among gamers vs. people who didn't spend as much time on games. The morality issue would follow a discussion on personality because games are a specific type of media that let you "live the experience." Like books, television, and movies video games generally adhere to story lines. Unlike those aforementioned mediums of entertainment mentioned above though video games give you choice, letting the user decide how the story should progress. This simple ingenuity sets video games so far apart from the others that morality becomes a part of every decision in the games. Giving these experiences to children, letting them "live" as a spy who may have to make the decision to kill someone, or even a game like Sim's where choices are broken down so much as "when should I use the bathroom?" can have effects on the real development of morality in users.

Layout
 The layout of the paper has been on my mind mostly when trying to develop this paper. This is a personality trait of mine though to think of the paper first as a piece of literary work and second as my paper idea. Probably because I believe if done correctly, this paper can flow fluidly from topic area to topic area. Below is a list of topic headlines that may become the order of parts in my paper. Beside some I will offer a brief description on what will be in that section:

Title Page
Abstract

• Introduction-Will probably touch on the development of video games and its early history, probably focusing more on how the users of that day received video games and the first video game nerds were developed.
• Game Studies- This will be where the bulk of the game studies information will fall, it will be the research that lets me tie development of personalities and games effects on the human psyche.
• Gamers vs. the world- This section will encompass a comparison of personality types of gamers versus societal  norms, U.S. and World statistics. Differences will be made evident in the upbringing of the types. NOTE This section will probably be the hardest to write considering the amount of theoretical ties I will probably be making. Concepts will have to be made clear and evidence supporting it should be thorough.
• Development of Choice- This section will touch on video games again and their rise to give the gamer more power over what happens in the video games. Will mention games that had "groundbreaking" open-endedness in them and the ones that presented unique choices for gamers. This sections being a bridge to the next.
• Morality- Will have to think of a cooler title for this one but this is where I will talk about the issue of morality in video games and how they effect the development of morals. This section will also discuss some of the uses of video games and their draw to peoples moral query's and look to the reason why people make choices in video games.
• Cautionary notes- I'm sure I'm bound to stumble upon information identifying the negative effects of video games and there effects on the development of personality and morality so those snippets can go here for an encapsulation of this topic in this paper.
• Future- This section will look toward future applications of video games and see where the paper's shortcommings will be in the next few years :P Looking at developing technology and the direction the video games of the future as they shape the minds of future gamers.
• Conclusion- Final thoughts and shortcommings of the paper.

Felt good to get the layout down at least so I can see it. Know that this might not be the final layout of the paper and section headings may (and should) change when being developed.