8th Week - "Are Games a Waste of Time?"

Notes on Lecture:

Spacewar – one of the first games, mid 1960s

Games are part of our Cultural life – we all at least know about games

Games are now influencing movies, as in the past movies would influence a game

Moral Panics – games influencing young children, Violence in Games. However, people are influenced by many things

Some games have STORIES

LUDOLOGY – the study of games, they don’t play games to hear stories but play for fun

NARRATOLOGY – the study of games – Story Element

Some game players would argue that story is just decoration to a game

History of video games might help us move forward

SEMIOTICS – Games as media – Cinema & Technology

In a video games world rules can change, different to everyday life

Aesthetics in a game – what makes a game fun?

Design – Virtual Reality

Fun doesn’t always equal real.

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READING; Trigger Happy

Notes
Video games aren’t always realistic
E.g., shooting lasers in a game are slow and if the target moves the laser will miss it, however in real life lasers are as fast as 300 million meters per second.

Why, then, do videogames get it so wrong? The answer is they get it wrong deliberately, because with “real” laser behavior it wouldn’t be much of a game. It would be far too easy to blow things up. The challenge of accounting for an enemy craft’s direction and speed, of aiming appropriately off-target, and the concomitant satisfaction of scoring a fiery hit, are artifacts of this unrealism.

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Tutorial-
There was two parts to this tutorial.
The first was a Microsoft Office and Excel task. The task was a set of instructions within the programs that may not be known by many people. E.g. Mail Merge, Formulas and graphs. The task was interesting and re visited the skills I was taught during Business class at school.
The second part was comparing chat rooms such as msn to a 3D environment.
Q. What is different about the kinds of socialising that happens in these spaces? Does the 3D aspect make much difference?
There is a noticeable difference with the two types of socialising.
Socialising with someone through chat rooms can be deceiving. People don’t have to be themselves.
Whereas in a 3D environment, although it can be challenging for some to be open with new people, I believe it is important to socialise in person and learn how to deal with different situations.