Group Project: Grand Theft Auto

Wow, what an interesting experience this group project has been. I was looking forward to this project, as I don’t think I’ve worked on a group project for more than one class period in my entire college career (I’m a senior). My group members – Jon, Alex, Chris, and JoJo – and I decided to audit the Wikipedia page for the Grand Theft Auto video game series. It’s a very controversial series that is ripe with bias; the list of groups that are in both very strong support of and opposition to the series is very long. So, we had no issues finding plenty to research.

Meeting mostly at Jon’s apartment on Easton to work, we had lots of fun while still being productive working on this project. Everyone in the group brought their own dynamic and we all worked well together, bouncing ideas around and delegating responsibilities according to each of our skills. Jon, Alex and I worked mainly on research and auditing the page’s references – more than 50 of them. It was amazing to see how many of the sources were unofficial, unsanctioned fan websites, blogs, and the like. There were some legitimate sources, but most of these had no information about the series itself, only about the controversy surrounding it.

The main aspect of our presentation was our Power Point slide show. Jo Jo and Chris worked mostly on this part. We all contributed content for slides based on the research we had done, and then Jo Jo and Chris put it all together in a great slide show, which I think the class really enjoyed.

I was very impressed with the effort of each one of my group members. Not one did not pull his or her weight or slack off, although we were all tempted to do so on more than one occasion. That was the most beneficial characteristic of our group: though on at least one instance each group member felt tempted to call it a night and quit working, the other members of the group were always quick to offer encouragement and suggest that we bear down and push through to get the work done. In the end it paid off, and we produced, what I think, was a great audit and presentation. I deem my first and only Rutgers group project experience a success!