Today I would like to present the most recent assignment paper that I wrote as part of my final year studies on the B.Sc. (Hons) Computer Game Design & Production course at Northumbria University. I have also included the marks and comments from the lecturer, Dan Hodgson, in the hopes that any students who read this may be able to avoid the errors I made that were brought up in the feedback.
In this assignment, we were asked to write a paper, in the form of a position, a review or an investigation. This would be like an essay, but we were expected to write it to academic standards, similar to papers that are written for academic journals.
Since I had recently become enamoured with business models I chose to write an investigation on business models in the games industry.
An investigation paper is one which reports on some secondary research (drawing on other papers and sources to investigate some aspect). Typically this will ask a question (like the questions that those of you who have chosen an ‘investigative’ final year project are researching) but will not call for any primary research or experimentation in attempting to answer the question.
12038863 - CM0657 - Paper Assignment
| Category | Comment | Mark | Out Of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Presentation | Clear structure, useful abstract. There are a few (not many) errors in grammar or spelling. The tone of the writing is mostly strongly academic, except it is at times a bit flamboyant and metaphoric – for example: “…eventually usurped these relatively ancient colossi and became the goliath of the entertainment industry…” | 13 | 20 |
| Referencing | No issues with your referencing format. | 10 | 10 |
| Use of sources, examples and evidence | Outstanding breadth and depth of sources. | 17 | 20 |
| Quality of discussion and conclusions | This is outstanding work. There is depth and understanding, and a thorough grounding in literature and sources. This reads like a report on emergent business models in the games industry to businessmen in other industries, highlighting not just that actual practices, but the strengths and pitfalls involved. | 47 | 50 |
| Overall: | Excellent work. In this final comment, I like to highlight the most obvious route for improvement. In your case, I would say that this is to pull back a bit on the metaphoric language. The reason for this is clarity, especially for readers for whom English is not their first language, which is often true for academic publications. | 87 | 100 |