Time after time

This course has broadened my perspective of video games. I never before considered much of what happens behind the games that we actually play and invest ourselves within. I now apply many of the terms and concepts that I have learnt to other areas of my life, starting to every now and again critically analyze it. For example, with digital immigrants and the newer generations who are being born into technology, my niece who is not even two years of age is able to take my sister's Samsung Galaxy and go onto YouTube.  Not only can she do that, she then proceeds to scroll through the content. Every so often she'll select a video to watch, most often being songs such as Glee or Gangnam style - (this is how I managed to stumble upon Minecraft Gangnam style).

There are so many perspectives of video games that also develop from different generations. The younger you are, however, and/or more accustomed you are to the culture of video games displays the depth in your understanding of how this new medium as a technology works. Mainly since these are the individuals being affected by it. With the term 'affect' I mean in relation to video games, parts of society use either negative or positive connotations to follow it. Everyone has their own opinion and experience with video games. It's mainly how the information is fed that can determine how the individual may then perceive it. For example, in the media, video games are glanced upon with very negative perspectives that seem to stretch across tangents that create correlations and/or connections linking this to that (i.e., this man committed a crime, he played shooter games in the past = THIS MUST MEAN SOMETHING).

Talking about video games is messy. I know that for sure. This is because of all the different opinions that everyone has. It's obvious to show that the younger parts of our society get silenced out because they are viewed as being vulnerable and not knowing any better. But relating back to my niece scrolling through YouTube and actually finding clips that she is looking for, I must admit is fucking amazing, yet it also scares me. My niece is more technologically competent than my mother who has only just reached her 50s and still needs me every time she wants to upload a photo. If my mother ever touched my sister's Samsung Galaxy, she'd prolly end up frustrated from not knowing how to make it work the way she wants it to. Even I didn't know that through this phone you can swipe the screen sideways and bring up more content to look at on YouTube .. not until my niece showed me.

Another important thing to take note of is how the individual can become so invested in 'virtual' online worlds. It can be fun, no doubt about it, spending hours on end grinding to get to that level you've been working for just so you can venture through that cave at the end of the map and destroy these monsters and get the best weapon and then sell it for gold in order to better your character's appearance (tldr).
People can be bored! Some times there's nothing better to do than spend your spare time invested in starting a new game in Fable, Skyrim, or Pokemon.
Games are social! From personal experience, the group of friends that I've hung out with since high school and leading into uni have been the ones that I play League of Legends with. This is awesome, not only because we're friends in real life, but since we're able to stay constantly in contact with each other through a new medium where it might be unlikely we'll see the other the next day. It also creates great conversation since we all know what the other person is talking about :) sadly not for our other friends who don't.

Back to the point I was actually trying to make with this, which was, well, games are growing and we're growing with them. Games will continue to change over the years and are likely to never stop (or at least, not any time soon). Games do adapt to new changes in technology and to the media. It didn't take long for most societies to start abusing the use of video games and Androids for commercial purposes.
What I mean by we're growing with games,  is that younger generations are becoming more adaptable to technology. Technology is broad, but with video games, we do have our own world that we live in which our community of gamers exists.

On a post I made a week or so ago about sexism with video games, a girl in our class pointed out the difference between her and her friends playing League of Legends. She noted how different it was experiencing the game in comparison to her friends because of how they had been playing for such a long time and knew how to play, whereas she was new to the game, and didn't have the same mindset straight away. The point here is that there are those already within this world, and those who are slowly entering it. From when we enter the game, context means everything in terms of how we experience the game. When a new individual enters this space, they will begin to understand it from their own perspective over what they initially go through.

Before I make this any longer to become an extreme TLDR, I just want to note about how enjoyable this course was and how great an experience it was to actually study something that a very wide range of people are a part of and enjoy.

I'm prolly now going to start playing Mass Effect, since I only just got it and know for sure that my experience playing this game will definitely be different to anyone else :)

- Georgia Cob.

I also became so increasingly addicted to the hexagon game. Sadly investing so much of my life I managed to clock 117 seconds. yay.