dobbins is a free elf

 

Hello.

Sup.

Here to clean out the tumbleweeds with an interesting article about a game we covered in the curriculum: Sweatshop HD, that one about hiring child laborers to make shoes and stuff in less than favourable conditions? Well Apple have removed the game from their App store, due to its satirical content. Here is the full run down.  http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/news/1025371.20130322.Apple-continues-to-remove-socially-conscious-games-from-its-App-Store/ Saw the article and thought of you <3 anyways hopefully more gaming related news can be brought here because, I don't know, I like the idea of chatting to a community that may or may not exist anymore, brings about a sense of adventure and intrigue! Here is an unrelated picture just to boil blood. :) :)

Webcomics are great!

I stumbled across this a few hours ago, been looking at as many of their comics as I can and I must say, it is bloody amazing.

Gamer.

Cat.

Yes.

http://www.thegamercat.com/

Good news guys, the course results are in!

It Begins.

Here we go:

Criminals are using headsets from gaming consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation to plan drug smuggling operations because conversations are private, police say.

Ahhh, privacy.  The eternal enemy of society, apparently.

We can expect to see more of this in future.

Plus, check out the picture associated with the article in terms of Who Gamers Are.

- Kevin

Welp.

Page has kinda died, don't know if it's because of the course ending or that it's exams. Oh well. As a final post relating to only video games, I'd like to mention taking a look at the Immersion series produced by Rooster Teeth (I think...). It's a series where they test features of video games in real life, such as side scrolling and driving cars from the behind the car cam. It's fun to watch :) so I suggest checking those out.

anywho, adios gamer amigos

- Georgia C

The game retail story

So I was reading this blog on stuff (http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/blogs/game-junkie/8298380/Retails-sales-down-but-Kiwis-still-love-their-games) that has an interesting break down of sales figures in games in new zealand. It appears that we are buying games in higher numbers than ever before. We as new zealanders have really taken to digital distribution as a platform. I find this interesting because of what the root causes could be.

For instance the classicfication system within Australia dictates that physical games that would be imported into New Zealand. This puts the brick and mortar sellers as a disadvantage because the media is still accessable through online services such as steam. A recent example of this would be The Walking Dead by Telltale games. Which was embargoed in Australia and NZ due to its R18 rating but was easially accessable through steam.

This inconveinence in accessablity is exasserbated by the costs increase in oppperating a physical store and providing a physical copy rather that the much more cost effective digital system. However I find it very interesting NZers are such early adopter of the digital means due to the assumption that the buy will have a sufficent internet connection and download cap to accomodate the download which untill recently was rather unheard of in this county.

Variety of Blogs

Throughout this paper I have been exposed to such a number of different games that I would have never have come across. I was actually really taken with some of the games on the list for the Stage 3 essay like The Majesty of Colours. I thought it was a really beautiful and emotive game that was different than I had ever played before. I hate fast games as I get overwhelmed and frantic playing them like that stupid Zombie Run game on iPhones. The Majesty of Colours allowed me to slow down and interact with the game however I wanted and I enjoyed that. I was also interested by the thought of ‘Amusement Capital’, as I and many of my friends are absolute suckers for it. As hard as it is to admit… I have to say that I was actually obsessed with FarmVille. I got jealous of everyone posting about their nice farms so I checked it out and became addicted straight away. It got to the point where I asked to use a friend’s computer when I was out as I had to harvest my crops. Trust me I know how sad that is but you only had half an hour to harvest them before they withered!!! It doesn’t stop there unfortunately. I then found SmurfVille. You not only build their village but you get challenges with steps up the entertainment level a notch. I think these simple time waster games are like the modern day Tamagotchi or Nano Pet. You build them from scratch so you feel like you are invested in them. If they fail, you have failed and wasted lots of effort. I was even one of those annoying people who sent out FarmVille requests (sorry!). For someone who doesn’t spend much time playing computer games, I became extremely obsessed which makes it clearer how the games then use this emotional investment to turn a profit. If you were an impatient person you could easily throw a few dollars on your account and buy plenty of crops and tools to build your farm. Hmmmm :/. From there I started noticing advertisements for free online Poker! Great! What better way to procrastinate. Again, it is very easy to chuck some money on your account and keep playing. My most recent addiction is a game by Zynga called Words with Friends. It’s like Scrabble but virtual and you play with people you know. As I was wasting hours on it a few days ago I started to think about this paper and how it was interesting that I was becoming obsessed with these stupid games and was embarrassed of it. They are like a guilty pleasure. A few years ago I was spending the weekend at and ex-boyfriends house with his little brothers and we decided to have a gaming night. Everyone got to pick one game and we decided to spend a bit of time on each game to avoid arguments. Away we went and when we got to the counter the boys had chosen pretty similar games like Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Combat and so on. I was pretty excited about my choice but when I showed the boys they were horrified. I got the Play Station version of Monopoly! Apparently we weren’t going to play my game though. The transition between real life games and digital ones is interesting… Monopoly played through a play station was much less cool (I guess in comparison to what they could be playing). It’s also interesting that people are prepared to pay $50-150 on a board game yet loading some money onto an internet game is a scam. A friend of mine got very excited about a board game involving Zombies so she made a group message and sent us a YouTube video of kids playing it. I thought this was bizarre in itself. It ended up with the group having an intervention with her and refusing to let her buy the game. Do we expect games to come free now that the internet provides so many?

What video games make me understanding

When I start this final blog, I have already decided to write this with a game mood. It is the last time to write on this blogger and have to say goodbye to Game Theory 328. But a serious game cannot easily been given up.

As one game own tens of thousands of players, it has been seen as one of mass media. In one hand, the players could have multiple interactions with each other. On the other hand, the video game is a carrier of text, image, audio and video which could propagate mess information, meaning even ideology. The space of game is a mirror world of our society. The new technology could bring us new media, and the new media like video game can guide us to the new life. People have to figure out both positive and negative aspects behind of this multiplex media.  

As McLuhan said before ‘games are the Extensions of Man’. After I studied this course, in my personal cognition of video game, it is a significant, valuable and funny life. Although the game space probably has a certain distance with our real life, but the space allows the player to gain a kind of interactive experience with others. It’s an extension of our life; it’s a tool of self-expression.

This means that the course is a game. How to benefit from it is the most important thing, which every player have to think about that. Otherwise, probably you gonna left it once finished it.

Affect in video games

From researching and playing games for the assignment, I realised that games can evoke an emotional response from players. I had previously dismissed this notion as I am not a gamer myself. I wondered how a mechanical and artificial media product could elicit a real response. After playing But That Was Yesterday, I realised that it was possible as I had my own emotional reaction to the game. The premise and storyline is relatable, making it compelling. I’m sure that not all games will have this effect but my experience of playing some of the cecil games far exceeded my expectations. Initially some of the games were frustrating as there is a learning curve and some rely on pre-knowledge in terms of the logic of play. These aspects only enhance the gameplay experience as there is satisfaction in figuring it out. There is satisfaction and a sense of achievement in this. However, the main affective factor for me when playing games comes from the lesson or moral of the story so to speak. The lesson that comes from having worked through the levels, acquiring skills and ultimately reaching the end. What is the message at the end? But That Was Yesterday ultimately has an upbeat, hopeful message of moving on from the past. This representation of the human condition is what makes the game so interesting and compelling.

Essentially, gameplay is about an experience. This experience can be thought-provoking and revealing. They shouldn’t just be viewed as repetitive or violent. Games can certainly have positive outcomes.

Renting out virtual space

 I was thinking about the idea of World of Warcraft as service as opposed to a space and how the whole idea seemed to blur the lines simply because the space in question is a virtual space.  This made me think about the idea of rentable access to spaces in reality that would be much clearer cut and under much less scrutiny in terms of rights of the users.

One example I thought of as a space in real life that can be rented for entertainment is snow planet, it shares many of similarities to the World of Warcraft but without the blurred lines of user/ownership rights.
 Skiers and snowboarders can gain access to the space of Snowplanet by renting it for an hourly rate or purchasing half year or yearly passes, in return Snowplanet provides a space to enjoy manmade snow and facilities to enjoy the environment including ramps, rails, boxes and those annoying rope pulley things to pull people to the top of the hill. This can be compared to users who access the World or Warcraft by paying for subscriptions, in return blizzard provides a virtual environment for users to enjoy.
The difference is when it comes to limitations; some are similar such as a snowboarders/skiers ability to perform tricks at Snowplanet being limited by the setup of obstacles as well as the rule of physics. World of Warcraft is limited by coded limitations that Blizzard has built into the game, framework that makes up gameplay. The difference is when it comes to “terms of use”, certain actions of the users/skier/boarders that are prohibited but are out of the hands of authorities,  actions that are punishable through suspension and banning from both spaces. Snowplanet’s rules are simply put in place to insure the safety of all users of the space where as the “terms of use” attached to World of Warcraft seems to be rooted in maintaining regulation of the space to maximize profit. The Terms of Use of World of Warcraft dictates that users do not in fact own anything to with the World of Warcraft, users only rent access to the Warcraft space, access that can be revoked at Blizzards own accordance. If one were to apply this rule to Snow Planet the idea would be ludicrous. It is like saying that Snow Planet owns the tricks a snowboarder performs at snow planet simply because they did the tricks within their space, doing nothing more than provide a space that people have used in their own way.
It seems that anything “virtual” is finicky when it comes to the idea ownership; the idea of whether or not someone can truly possess something that isn’t tangible is something that needs to be settled as virtual content continues to grow. Ultimately I feel as if more protection should be given those who devote their time to virtual worlds, the time and effort  a player puts into raising a characters level can be compared to the time and effort a snowboarder puts into learning new tricks and yet more value is put on sportsman than videogame players by mainstream society. It should be recognized that a 720 rodeo flip would gain just as much respect as a level 90 Orc to their respective enthusiast groups.        

ARGs, world-of-concern and fun

I do not know anything about alternative reality games or augmented reality games until the last lecture. It is definitely interesting to learn how ARGs are played and how actually players play as if everything is real. It is an interest phenomenon that players playing the game are trying to participate in the game and to play the game properly by not revealing the puppet master even if they accidentally or coincidentally found out it is 'just a game' or when searching the WHOIS registrant of the website. The fun is the process of people participating, bringing in findings and evidence and discussing what is missing in the puzzle on the Internet, which is extremely suitable for people who like problem-solving or who like to be private detectives. On the other hand, some games allow players to not play properly or play in a way that is not what the game originally intends, for instance, Team Fortress 2 in which players in rival teams cooperate together. These again tie down to the world-of-concern and the desire of having fun out of these games.

It is also interesting many ARGs claim their stories as real when it is not. Films like The Blair Witch Project and Forgotten Silver have some elements of being real. Yet some people may not realise that and presumes everything presented to them is real, but disappointed and turned angry later when they found out they were faked. I think ARGs have similar kind of problems when the boundary between real and fiction becomes blurred. However, ARGs have got quite a decent community that game companies could utilise it as part of the advertisement campaign of certain games, such as Dark Knight and Lost. To link back to the second last lecture on storytelling, ARGs do have a fixed plot for which the players explore, but things could go slightly different or veering away from the original storyline. The game companies could of course change the plot according to circumstances which would make the game experience entirely different. 

Gaming Stereotypes

Often when people think of gamers they picture a nerdy, white, mama’s boy who will still living at home at the age of 30 in the basement, or teenage boys who have no social skills what so ever. However this is quickly becoming less and less true as many people out there will have started to realise. For example my parents tend to spend more time gaming on their iPads and iPhones than I do. I can honestly say I that I have only used my phone for gaming in extreme circumstance and I hardly do so. More and more the trend of gamers are shifting away from the “white teenage boy” and moving to a much broader range. This is something that must particularly be taken in to account when research is done on gaming. Pretty much everyone is society is now a gamers. Sure there are different levels of gamers but in the end it is all having the same supposed effect on people. It is a milestone for the genre of gaming, it is time that society really did taken gaming serious as it has become something much more than just something nerdy teens do. Take Major League Gaming (MLG) for example, this is a full on proper league that is solely devoted to gaming. There is so much money is MLG just as there is in most sports. It is reaching the point where credit should be given where credit is due.

MMO space & service

MMO space & service

Thoroughly enjoyed the readings this week with more of a focus on the Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO), and Story-Telling spaces.

MMO's have always been something that's fascinated me, mainly as a result of my infactuation with Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre, the MMO's i've allowed myself to be exposed to such as WoW, Diablo, and LOTR online. Although there do exist MMO's with a less nerdy dispostion eg. The Sims, they have always bored me with their beige IRL format that was like starring into a crystal ball fast forward 20 years to a 3rd person view of my life once i'd finally tracked down someone stupid enough to settle in with me.

I feel like one of the major players in the MMO world, Blizzard Entertainment, has desgined the perfect platform for their games. It is a world in which us as players have such unlimited access to all the goodies within the game, and they're contastly dangling them in front of us via other users and through the online forums. "Last night I found a perfect skull inbued Lvl 45 Crystal Sword after my battle with Bael". The thing is you really must invest your time into tracking these specific items down.

Upon finding such items, you can then sell them off in the online WoW certified auction rooms to make real time money (RTM). And with the time invested into these items, as well as spec'ing up your character, you can be making hundreds of dollars at a time.
http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/141290/gaming/make_money_playing_world_of_warcraft.html

You have an invested interest, you are using the space of the game as a service. Not bad getting paid doing something you love

Alternate realities and the like

Alternate realities and the like

Alternate reality games (ARG) operate in a visual reality, and play on the user investing their time into playing what they think is a game, but is really a viral advertising format for any one product.
ARG's are are commercial, yet they function through not revealing their commercial nature. They are addictive to users as they are a puzzle they we need to follow in order to complete the game. ARG is a buzzword that is incorrectly applied - synonymous with social networking and viral marketing. It's most basic form is a website: not overt link to product that it is advertising

While ARG is commerical, it is only commerical through telling a story (in some cases). Augmented Reality game - can function without a specific web-presence

Some great examples of ARGs games are in the links below

http://toucharcade.com/category/games/augmented-reality/

http://www.gamezebo.com/augmented-reality-games

Afraid of MMOs

      In Shilo's entry this week on why she hates MMOs she states how the immersive components of World of Warcraft as a virtual world causes addiction that she has witnessed, and the very limitlessness of WoW should inspire caution. We often hear and read news items about people becoming addicted to World of Warcraft and it decimating their preexisting "real" lives; I recall there being a few 20/20 segments years ago on stay-at-home mothers who would used MMOs as a tool of escapism, told from the perspective that they were neglecting their children in favour of a fictional world.

 When I was thirteen, I attempted WoW for around half an hour. It was my brother's account and he wanted me to take over while he did his chores - wanting to be able to rush back into the Warcraft world as soon as he possibly could - and I simply did not understand the game. To me, it was pointless. I was wandering around, bored by the absolute feel of being able to do whatever I wanted in this online realm, and that "limitless" factor stopped me from being immersed because I didn't truly want to be there without a feeling of purpose or urgency. Of course, that is only my own personal short-lived experience of MMOs - I haven't dare look at online gaming since then, figuring it might just not be some peoples thing - where a lot of WoW players are able to be so immersed in the game because of this limitless notion, that it is a world where they can, within the rules, restrictions and reason, do and be what they want to and discover their own purpose.

  There is a strong social stigma surrounding MMOs as being highly addictive and time-consuming and this, perhaps, ignites some level of fear into skeptical non-MMO players who do not want to fall into game addiction or tied down to a subscription fee and I realise it is more than likely that there are other people out there who play videogames and have never played online due to that fear of not knowing how immersed they could be.

OCTODAD!

So I played Octodad in the weekend and gosh did I hate it or what.

So you’re an octopus pretending to be a human dad. The objective of the game is to carry on with your everyday life, without your family becoming aware of the fact that you are actually an octopus. The game requires a lot of attention throughout the game.

You must pick up and swing each leg individually; sliding the mouse around to gain ground and majority of the time you would end up in an awkward position. Controlling the hand movements was much trickier to control. I knocked more things than I picked up.

The view point for this game is third trailing. It performative involvement which refers to various modes of the game piece requires conscious attention throughout. And for someone like me who isn’t use to such controls was absolutely horrible at this game and I quickly become frustrated and annoyed. So, although I was involved in the game it was not affective engagement. My decision making and conscious game control to sustain the outcome was useless.

The store is suppose to keep you driven by having a check list, ticking them off and moving forward, however that was not the case for me. I think I didn’t enjoy the game because I don’t have the skill set to play this kind of game. I’m a causal gamer and I like simplicity. In this game I had to focus too hard on actually controlling the mouse then the actual game its self. I needed to get my brother to come show me how it works and he got the controls instantly. After several attempts I started to become okay with it. As long as they were tasks that involved more leg movement then hands. For example; I enter the son’s room where he has to score a goal and run around the room etc.   

The affective dimension of the game is very light hearted, no real, strong sense of environment and I wasn’t entirely engrossed in the game. Maybe because I was to focused on trying to make the controls works it took the potential immersion away from the game. The narrative of the game I believe is discourse narrative? It’s not presented in a chronological order where it has a beginning, middle or end, rather everything happens in segments. Once you have completed the list you move on to the next room and explore that section of the game.

I did release some dopamine every time I something got ticked off the to-do list. Became quite gratifying actually, however I’d get really agitated and frantic if I couldn’t do something right and the ‘suspicious’ bar kept rising up. I suppose near the end I did become diegetically immersed within the game. Thinking about it now the affective dimension works very well with in the game. The fact it seems so easy going almost contradicts itself as it proves to be quite challenging.

Is the label "gamer" even necessary anymore?

Having completed the course, and had some time to reflect on it, my mind keeps going back to the simple question – “What is a Gamer?” I’m sure we all remember the image Kevin showed us in one of the first lectures, of a crazy looking “large” guy wielding toy guns, and I’m sure for many, many people in the world today, this is exactly where their definition of a gamer begins and ends. For obvious reasons however this is completely unfair, and I feel that as technology continues to go along, hopefully this stereotype will fade and shrink away. I’m not holding my breath though.

I think that today's “gamer” is a much more broad term than it ever has been and I think it’s going to just get broader and broader. I’m sure many of us have seen people on the bus or train staring down at their phones, playing whatever the current fad mobile game is. Would these people be called gamers? I think most would say no, but if we actually talked to these people and found out their personal habits of gaming, it wouldn’t be all that far from what could be called an average PC/Console “gamer”.

I believe that the term gamer is nearing irrelevance, at least in the modern first world. Most everyone plays games at some point, many much more regularly then we or even they realize. Doesn’t that just make them a gamer? I think the definition should really just apply to anyone who takes some joy playing a game, and shouldn’t need to be an elitist term bandied around on internet discussion boards by so called “true gamers.”  So let’s do away with the idea of the “gamer” and instead just understand that it’s now so ubiquitous to our culture that it probably doesn’t even need a label anymore.

Define 'Friend'

The ability to game online has transformed not only the gaming world but also the manner in which youths are accustomed to socializing. I remember when I was about 14 and counter strike was just beginning to take off. In my opinion it can be considered the first massively popular first person shooter that was able to be played against other opponents online. Initially, in a social context, youths played at internet cafes where face to face interaction between players still took place, the bulk of people (at least in my own experience) played over LAN so were all in-fact playing each other and were all in the same room. Recently the emphasis seems to have shifted back into the home, can this be associated with the rise of consoles such as the PlayStation and Xbox?  No public space exists where a bunch of PlayStations are linked together and can be played online such as once existed with the humble internet café. Within the space of the game there is room for interaction with other players and one can even make ‘friends’ with other users, whereby their username is added to your friends list and you can see what they are playing and interact with them via messages at any point in time. Is this redefining the perception of what a friend is? The traditional definition of friend is “A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/friend). I am not sure that this definition can be applied to people who have met one another online. As pointed out by Talmadge Wright there are 5 general categories of coded online talk, these are:  

1) Creative game talk

2) Game conflict talk

3) Insult/distancing talk

4) Performance talk

5) Game technical/external talk

In essence all of these conversations revolve around the game; an online friend has nothing to do with once personal grievances or other personal issues. I find this to be of concern as many youths today do a large portion of their interaction online, are we becoming further apart as a result?

Steam - The Digital Distribution Juggernaut

Steam today is near ubiquitous when it comes to discussing digital distribution of games (and now even software) online, both legally and illegally. Steam today has over 1860 games, 54 million (and counting) users and approximately 50-70% market share of the digital distribution market. It’s this fact I’d like to discuss today.
Although there are few criticisms that can be laid at Steam, the monopoly tat Steam has over the digital distribution market seems to be the most worrying. Simply, it seems as though no one is going to be able to catch up, meaning Steam (and Valve by extension) are just going to keep getting further and further ahead of every other attempt at a Digital Distributions service. Indeed, the only company that seems to be able to sort of keep up with Steam is the service Good Old Games, and that’s only because they primarily deal in older games, which isn’t really where Steam has its catalogue at.
The problem in the future that I can see coming out of this is that Steam will end up in a near unchallengeable position in the market, and will thus be able to charge whatever they want for their product. We’re already seeing this somewhat in regional pricing, which though it is set by the games companies themselves, it doesn’t seem to be something that Valve wishes to concern itself with, which is troubling to say the least.
This could all just be overreaction on my part, but I feel it bears keeping in mind as we go forward. There doesn’t really exist a regulatory body for online sales of digital games yet, and this more than anything I think is the most worrying thing. I don’t believe it will ever really be a problem in the future, but still believe it pays to think about it, just in case.