Synthetic Designs of the World. Is our world really real or just an illusion?

The book Synthetic Designs by Edward Castronova is a book which takes a look at the world and culture involved in Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games[MMORPG’s], also none as M-Mor-Pegs. The book attempts to take a look at these games in a way which is seemingly all-encompassing. It looks at everything one can think of, even the economics of the game. Overall, the book covered these topics very in depth. He especially did a good job of covering the economics of these MMORPG worlds, which he called Synthetic Worlds. It is understandable that he did a good job with the economics because he wrote a huge paper on the economics of these worlds and probably integrated it into his book. It was a good book to read and shed a lot of light on the intricate systems of these synthetic worlds.

I felt the most important topics which the book discussed were those of the user and those of the possible future of synthetic worlds. When discussing the user, the book peeled back the stereotypical view that almost everyone who plays these games are weird and nerdy high school students who don’t do anything other than play these games. What it said was that many different types of people play these games, with serious and professional people possibly being highest on the list of those that play the game. It even went so far as to describe as many characteristics as it could about these different users of synthetic worlds and how widespread the use of these games really are in the world. When talking about the possible future of synthetic worlds, the author looked at what synthetic worlds could possibly evolve to. One of the ways was the Matrix type way where the last person in the world is a person who is hooked up to a computer and doesn’t even realize he is the last person in the world because computers are mimicking humans and it’s impossible to differentiate the computers and the humans and, since it’s impossible to reproduce with computers, people ended up not reproducing and dying off, while computers just mimic who they were when they die. The other way they looked at the possible future of synthetic worlds was with the view that they will lead to a way for families and friends to be close together over vast distances in an almost real environment.

In general, these are ways in which synthetic worlds can supplement our happiness and possibly even make work and society easier to function in. However, the author did not really give enough thought to the idea that synthetic worlds could possibly not take off like he really wants them too. Of course it does not really matter that much if they do not because he was only looking at them as possibilities. With the users being diverse, I mostly agree with what the author was saying. There are many users who make use of MMORPGs. I have cousins who all have full-time jobs, one of them even being an airline pilot who plays World of Warcraft. The other plays it with his wife, sometimes even just talking in the game rather than talking to each other in the real world, despite the fact that they are right next to each other. Many different types of people play MMORPGs, like a friend of mine who is a fashion designer who also plays World of Warcraft, which was completely unexpected for me to find out.

Outside of the book though, I find MMORPGs to be very interesting. They attract huge amounts of people as something for them to do with their time outside of school and work, and for a lot of people the games even start becoming what they do in place of school and friends. I actually do not like these types of games because they do take over people’s lives in some cases and I have lost some friends to this phenomenon. However, they do give people something to do with their time which can involve some social aspects, which may be better than other things they could do which would isolate them from the world, such as doing drugs or hanging out with destructive people. In this regard, they can make good anti-drugs or even good places of getting one’s daily dose of sociality.

Blog Assignment 3: Aggressive games make children throw controllers at each other? Nah, not really.

The debate I will be focusing on in my blog is the one about children’s behavior during video game play. A lot of the problems that people have with video games is that they, just like all forms of media, have a lot violence. People think that it is worse than the other forms though because unlike those ones, it is interactive. The reason why the interactivity is bad is because people think that by children indirectly carrying out acts of aggression. Thus, by carrying out these aggressive acts, they would learn to do it themselves. This would be vicarious learning, which is learning from seeing. Yet again though, people see violence in all forms of media, so they would also learn violence from those mediums. In essence, people are afraid that, while children play these games with violence, they’ll start getting violent while they are playing these games.

The Handbook of Computer Games looks at some research on how children act while they play computer games. The research they look at concludes, in essence, that, while kids play video games, they, rather than getting aggressive, they get more friendly and sociable. It basically says that there are no aggressive tendencies that come to kids while they are playing video games, they are just having a lot of fun. However, there are some limitations to this research. It does not look at the long term effects of playing video games on behavior of children while they play video games. It also only has them play video games for a short period of time, only six minutes. That is not nearly long enough to get into a game and really get good results. Also, they could not really control well for games that had no aggression because there are almost no games that do not have aggression in some form.

However, I still think that the research has a point in saying that kids are more having fun playing the games rather then getting more aggressive. Aggression, from what I have seen, happens more during game playing when frustration occurs. It does not come from seeing it in games. It is seen in many other places besides games, and could easily have been learned from those places. The research, though it was rather limited, did lend itself to somehow support what I understand about the process of playing video games in terms of aggressive behaviors. Overall, I would say that during the process of playing video games children do not become more aggressive.

Blog Assignment 2 - Metal Gear Solid

The digital game of which I have chosen to write about is Metal Gear Solid, a game for the first playstation. Metal Gear Solid is a game about a soldier of the United States government who is sent to infiltrate an Alaskan base that is occupied by terrorists. The game is labeled as an action adventure game, which means that there is an overall end purpose to the game of stopping the terrorists, and there is action such as fighting and running around. There is also the added element of needing to hide from your enemies to avoid unnecessary fights.

While the game tells you that it is an action adventure type game, according to Wolf, it could have a slew of other genre titles thrown onto it, such as escaping and combat, among many others(Wolf, 2001). However, these genres seem to be way too broad to be realistically used. The maker of the game, Hideo Kojima, when making Metal Gear Solid, seemed to have been trying to break away from consistent views of genres at the time which are still somewhat held today. As an example, there is the commonly held view that if the game is an action game, it will be quite lacking in storyline. Instead, a hugely amazing storyline was integrated into the game to almost make the action aspect of the game come second to it, which was really breaking free of the invisible chains thrown on the genre. The storyline would quite fit into the adventure aspect of the game, where Snake is going on an adventure with different twists, turns, and complications thrown in to make things interesting.

In telling the storyline, Metal Gear Solid makes use of narrative, mostly from the main character Solid Snake. The storyline unfolds in cut-scenes and codec calls where Snake interacts with other characters that are non-playable, what Wolf calls NPCs. The cut-scenes show characters interacting with each other in the environment, most often with enemies or a few beneficiary characters talking to Snake. The codec calls are walkie-talkie settings where characters not within close proximity talk to each other. It is in this unique way, where characters do not always directly face each other that Metal Gear Solid stretches the way in which storyline and narrative unfold.

Overall, Metal Gear Solid really seems to break away from typical genre views. It also throws in the aspect of avoiding battles in order to progress easier which, while it can be done in other games like Super Mario where you just jump over enemies, it is not emphasized so much. Wolf does not seem to have a genre for that, but a good name for it would probably be stealth. However, Metal Gear Solid is a game which blends all of these genres and the narratives within the genres together in order to make a game which, when presented to its audience, make them think about their own lives as well as those of the video game character along with having them enjoy the experience. It is in this way that the game draws the player in and makes them part of the experience of playing the game.

This is an example of one of the codec calls. As you can see, you can still see the faces of the characters, but they are not right next to each other.

The life of a console gamer

Hey,

My name is Chris, and I have been a gamer since I had the ability to hold a controller. My father started me into gaming with the Sega Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System(SMS and NES respectively). I have always been a console gamer, though I have dabbled into the realm of PC gaming. I have played a great variety of games, and I also have acquired many of the systems that have come out since my first two systems previously mentioned. I also still have all of my systems, even a few old Atari systems, which have one of my favorite games ever: Pong. I love too many games to say that I have one particular favorite, so I cannot quite choose one.

Over time, more specifically since I got to college, I have actually played less and less video games, but my love of them have not subsided. I just do not have as much time as I used to. I did once consider going into a career field that would involve video games. I tried programming but found I cannot program to save me life. I still consider writing for video games in some form once in awhile, but I tend to lose my motivation when I start on something. I have currently ended up moving into something not involving video games that I am actually quite good at: Psychology. I will not give up on my gaming life though. I still play them when I get the free time. I enjoy them very much and there is no way I could ever stop playing them.

A site which is very related to video games is gamefaqs, a site devoted to discussing, reviewing, and helping with computer and video games. I have frequented the site for many years, and it has given me great insight into video games as a whole and the people who play them.