Assessment activity #4

Ethnography v. Analysis

Both of these genres require experience in the subject you're looking at. The difference lies mostly in the deliverance and the subject choice. An ethnography's focus is on social groups; whereas an analysis is usually done with things and events. Both are meant to be informative, no argued points or debatable topics, and allow for the writer to put in his or her 2 cents on the subject being researched. For my ethnography I chose Mormonism, and for my analysis I chose the video game Lost Odyssey. I actually interviewed one of my ex-Mormon friends and got a lot of good information; sadly, I actually bumped into two missionaries a couple of weeks after I had finished my paper and, if I had still been writing, they would've been a great resource. In contrast, my analysis paper was completed after I finished playing the game. Once I had gathered a lot of background information, read on other people's experience with the game, and formatted how I wanted to write the paper, I put it all together under a couple of key aspects that I thought made the game great.