#CTCS505

[skydemoness]

Barbie Taking Credit For Other's Work

Recently I came across an interesting but disturbing article about the new Barbie book for kids, Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer. Growing up as a little kid, I used to play Barbies with my sister and would usually enjoy myself.  Today, I know it is still a popular toy among little kids despite all the controversies about Barbie portraying an unhealthy body size.  One thing I did not realize was Barbie had it's own collection of books; but it doesn't surprise me because of how popular the icon is.  At first I thought from seeing the picture with the article, it was trying to encourage young girls that they too can pursue careers in programming but that was not the case.

The thing that disturbed me about the article was how the book was telling young girls that "Barbie can only contribute to the design of the game she's building," not the actual coding or anything.  "At the end of the book Barbie really does take all credit for the work that Steven and Brian do. She decides, without any actual coding experience, that "I guess I can be an engineer!"" (Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer)  

I have to agree with the author of the article, Aja Romano that the entire book is a farce and a horrible way to tell girls how to pursue a career.    The author, Aja, has opened my eyes up to the other Barbie books in circulation and how more often than not, Barbie bribes or somehow gets by without actually doing any of the work.  It is appalling to think that young girls out there are reading these books and thinking it is okay to do these kind of things to get a career or anything in life.  

I hope that parents out there abstain from buying these Barbie books for their children and teaching the correct ways of how to go about getting a career and that it is through hard work and dedication to being a successful career woman or man.  Especially to not cut corners or take credit for other's people's work.

Reference:

http://www.dailydot.com/geek/barbie-engineer-book-girls-game-developers/

[wednesdayoftherobot]

Cultural Influence on Games

In "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon," Johan Huizinga states that "play" is "not 'ordinary' or 'real' life" (SZ 103). Of course, he means to make a distinction between play and everyday life. To a certain extent, however, the type of play that we engage in reveals a lot about our everyday lives and the cultures we live in. In this way, play is almost indistinguishable from "ordinary" life, insomuch as it is culturally tied up in our ordinary lives.

For instance, the very fact that we feel the need to put a J in front of RPGs that are produced in Japan suggests that we view them as unique to Japanese culture and not to our own. Japanese RPGs, whilst similar to our own Western RPGs, are imbued with a cultural significance that feels distinct enough to us that we must label it as a completely new genre. Similarly, we often refer to German-style board games. Of course, many people in America produce German-style board games, but there is still something different enough about this style of game that we must label it as "German"--distinct from games in our own cultural milieu. 

Defining what makes games feel like they come from other cultures may quickly become problematic, however. We can always poke fun at our own culture, positing that Monopoly is distinctly American because of our extreme love of capitalism and its requisite trappings, but it is difficult to boil down other cultures in a similar way without being deeply offensive. 

Regardless, games are clearly influenced by the cultures that they come from. It's a subject that is worth looking at, if we can find a way to discuss it in a tasteful manner.

[skydemoness]

Can't We All Just Get Along

Race has always been a touchy subject; more so for those who are victims of discrimination everyday.  No one has control over what color or ethnic background they are born into.  But many people are still caught up on the fact of the old ways where 'whites males' were considered above everyone else.

Discrimination comes from everywhere.  You see it in the media all the time as well as you see it in the upbringing of children from their parents.  Discrimination is all around us, no matter where you look; whether it be a female being declined a job because she is not male or a black man being arrested for no reason just for the fact he seems suspicious because he's "black."  But various amounts of people are being brought up on the notion that discrimination of race is acceptable which is the underlining cause in the first place.

I grew up in an open minded neighborhood.   The families in the neighborhood were and still are quite a diverse group.  And everyone seemed to get along from what I remembered.   Yeah we as kids would have our fights now and then but we would never exclude anyone or make fun of them for being a different race/color.  All of our families were excepting of the other families and brought us up on the notion of equality which I believe every family should instill in their children.  But the likely hood of that happening anytime soon is far in the future from my understanding of the world thus far.

Many families are extremely racist and discriminate against others all the time but that does not make it right.  Those families are not going to change just like that.  The best we can do now is to promote equality and being discriminate is wrong.  As long as we continue to do that and build followers, the world will change for the better.  

I don't believe we will be able to completely eradicate racism and discrimination from all types of media because it is a part of our history.  A fundamental belief is we learn from our mistakes which is why history is so important.  But as long as we do our best to display racism and discrimination being wrong at a young, people in general will grow up more open minded and less discriminate of others.

[skydemoness]

A TOPIC I DO NOT LIKE TO DISCUSS

Personally I do not like to talk about rape or really feminism in general.  It brings up bad memories and are extremely touchy topics in my family because my sister has had multiple incidents growing up of being a victim to these crimes.  And she just turned 21 this past September with incidents starting since Elementary school.  Thus this blog post is going to be more abstract on the topic at hand for class.

Though growing up as a girl I have always loved the items/activities classified as "male" and I never had an issue.  I never thought an asle in a store was for girls or boys specifically.  I just looked at it as the isle with the pink stuff has the dolls and the frilly things and the other isle was the fun adventurous isle.  I have also grown up having more guy friends than girl friends because of what I liked to do.  And I have never been in the situation where I was looked down upon for liking to go camping or playing fighting games or playing football etc.  I was always treated as an equal with the guys and was always picked first for teams because I was competitive and a valued player.  My guy friends look to me for real opinions and are open about their lives.  

Even when I started playing online video games I was not ridiculed because I was a girl or told to sit in a corner and let the 'guys' do everything.  I was a leading front of the team effort of what we were trying to accomplish.  I have always been respected in my experiences of playing video games.  I do not act stupid or try to attract attention like some girls do.  I act like I want to play and not joke around.  Yes, with friends we will joke around and have fun.  But we also have our serious sides to playing.  

I also notice my brother and his friends have the same type of environment I did growing up.  Both the boys and girls get along together and do all the same stuff together.  There is a good 10 of them evenly spread out.  Yes some branch out and do other personal things they enjoy but no one seems to ridicule the other for doing what they like.  They all seem very tolerant.  My brother with some of the other guys will play dolls with the girls and the the girls will play hot wheels and legos with the boys.  They do practically everything together.  My brother is about to turn 13 and will be entering high school next year.   

I do believe how you are raised will reflect on how you will react to your environment.  My parents let me have whatever interests I wanted to pursue and never told me I could not pursue anything.  I also believe being brought up on being open to change can also affect how someone perceives the world.  My parents would/will give their opinions on topics but will never try to make us choose a side.  They like to make sure we understand both sides of the story.  I believe my parents did a good job at raising my family and they are accepting of the fact of my sister being a lesbian.  

On a side note:  ARTICLES IN ALL CAPS IS IMMATURE.   IT IS RUDE AND CAN COME OFF AS OFFENSIVE!

[skydemoness]

Houthoff A Serious Game or Not?

Houthoff is a game played in real time.  Law firms looking to recruit new lawyers host a game interview essentially.  The various lawyers vying for the position are split into teams and each assigned the same task.  "They have 90 minutes to convince enough shareholders of the target company to sell their shares and to come up with solutions to hidden problems.  In this time they will be confronted with video & text chats, films, mails, news, websites, social media and more."  (youtube video)

I consider Houthoff to be a serious game because it teaches the 'potential lawyers' what the company is looking for in how it's employees work and the process they expect their employees to follow.  It also teach the 'potential lawyers' how to work as a team and figure out problems on the spot that happen within teams.  In the Designing Effective Serious Games: Opportunities and Challenges for Research it says "serious games represent an acknowledged potential for instruction, because they are able to strongly motivate learners.  They can also provide immersive environments where advanced users can practice knowledge and skills, also exploiting multimodal interaction."

Houthoff presents a competitive environment which motivates players on its own and since Houthoff is a learning game it motivates to learn fast and enough to solve the issues arising because the players only have 90minutes to solve tasks.  Houthoff is also immersive because the players are being fed different media to help them solve their task thus they have to delve in and discuss what is happening in order to convince the shareholders to sell their shares.  They have to use the knowledge as well as skills they already possess plus what they are learning through this game play experience in order to complete the task successfully and before the other lawyer teams.

Thus Houthoff is a serious game that is immersive by grouping lawyers into teams teaching these potenital lawyer's playing how to go about solving an issue that a law firm company could present.

Reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhNW4uV-hro

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwKRax83BB87NFItYXhZSmJGd00/view

[skydemoness]

Larping Paves the Way to a Better Imagination

Role-playing through larping is a powerful method of teaching.  It gets a person completely engrossed and wanting to learn more about the character and fantasy world they will be engaging in. By participating in a larp event, you become part of the creative and world building process enabling you to become a better storyteller and expand your imagination.  Jane McGonigal states that “Nordic Larp is a rare and vivid glimpse into a fascinating gaming tradition.  If anyone knows how to imagine better worlds and build a more engaging reality, it's larpers." 

To create a larp event, many hours go into the planning and building of a larp world.  None of it being paid for.  If it was a paid to play thing; I do not believe it would be as popular or as engaging as it could be.  In the Nordic Larp book it states, "the larping scene is driven by its love for the new and the experimental, its wish always to be pushing some boundaries.  This commitment to expert amateurism allows authors to realize their visions without compromises, freely tackling mature themes and adult content."  The larping community is created for players to relate to the fictional world from the first person perspective of a fictional character.  This being said it lets the imagination flow and not be constrained or weighed down by having to please others who are paying for the experience.  Larping is a complete volunteer activity that lets the imagination go to create fantastical experiences.

From planning a larp event, you find yourself part of the creation process of building a fictional world and creating boundaries and rules for said world.   It teaches you how different societies can potentially operate as well as what questions need to be asked when creating the world for a larp event.  "As these games can portray any world or society imaginable, they are a natural tool for studying questions such as what kind of a world is possible, what the world should or could be like – and what our world actually is like.  Larps are great at showing alternatives, both good and bad.  It is one thing to postulate an alternative society on paper; constructing and living in one is another thing entirely. The compelling experiences of both utopian and dystopian ideas that such simulations offer are why larp lends itself so easily to critical play." (Nordic Larp) 

In order to become a great storyteller you need to be able to explain a world that the reader/listener would want to engage in and become a part of the reality of the story.  If you can get one person to become completely engrossed in your story you are on the path to creating engaging and exciting worlds that lets any lister/reader become lost in the fictional world.  Thus, the larping community is a great outlet for formulating ideas and figuring out what exactly needs to be asked when creating a world different from our own.  

Each larping event is never quite the same.  Each one takes their own path to create new and exciting endings that everyone is a part of and can contribute to, to make it that much more believable.  Larpers will stay in character in the play area for the entire event; and sometimes even offset to make sure they don't lose the fictional character they are portraying.  It lets others partake in a role they may not necessarily take in real life just so they can better understand what the character would be feeling and going through which could then even be related to people you know in real life.  This then lets you have a better understanding of their though process.  

By taking on different character roles in larping, it gives authors a great point of reference for creating different personalities and profiles for their fictional characters.  It lets the author portray the character in a more believable manner to the audience, hence the audience becoming more immersed in the fictional world the author creates.  

I believe larping should become the norm for a child growing up because it will expand their imagination and I believe will let the child become more excepting of different societies and races.  It will also teach the child the importance of networking and the building of a community.  "Nordic countries have a long history of self-organized youth and young adult clubs and societies, which both influenced the content of the games and provided organizational structure to the larping events." (Nordic Larp)  If we can adopt the Nordic countries larping structure around the world; I believe the world would become a better place as well as to expand our imagination for the better.

  Reference:

Nordic Larp by: Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola

[skydemoness]

Making the World Better Through Narrative

Everything has a narrative of sorts or a back story to go along with it.  If the mind cannot guess right away from what it is viewing it will come up with it's own narrative to make sense of what it is seeing.  Everything has a story whether it is interesting or not.  You can always learn something from any type of tale, but it is up to you to identify what to learn.

In the Bruner Narrative Construction reading, it states: "For to be worth telling, a tale must be about how an implicit canonical script has been breached, violated, or deviated from in a manner to do violence to what Hayden White calls the "legitimacy" of the canonical script."  I disagree with  White's consensus on when a tale is worth telling.  Yes the tales that do not deviate from say plain daily life, will not be as interesting from those that have a character do something unexpected and different.  But not all tales have to be interesting, some can be boring and plain but they can teach a lesson or show children for example how things should be done.  For example:  you show a tale where someone looks both ways before crossing the street and then crosses safely.  This shows a child how to cross a street.  Yes it could be more interesting if you show that and then show someone who did not and gets hit by a car.  But that is not always needed to tell a tale or teach someone something through story telling or a narrative.   

When someone tells a story, they usually want to attract their audience in someway through a shock value, whether it be happy, devastating, strange, etc.  This makes the narrative more interesting and grabs an audience's attention because they will start to wonder and speculate as to what will happen next.  If the audience's attention is grabbed, they will usually continue to listen more to the story to find out if their predictions are correct or they just want to know what happens next.  

But when teaching how to do something, say in a classroom, the narrative that is being told will not necessary have the attention grabber usually used in the entertainment world of cinema.  Growing up, almost everyone has had a class they thought to be dull and uninteresting but had to pay attention if they wanted to pass the test.  This was for the fact, the teacher used plain narratives to explain how to do something.  But the teacher was still able to through to their students despite the tale not having been 'breached, violated, or deviated from in a manner to do violence.'

Narratives will always be more exciting if they are how White describes when they should be told.  But White is wrong in the fact a tale is not always worth telling because you can always learn something from an uninteresting narrative.  

Another point I wanted to bring up, is from the reading, Game Design as Narrative Architecture by Henry Jenkins.  The author goes into describing how story is not always needed to have a successful game.  I would have to agree with him, because I believe story is an added mechanic per say to make the game seem more interesting or to make the player possibly relate to the game better.  

Having a story of sorts represented through the environment the character is interacting in, will make it more interesting and can possible help the player better understand the character they are playing.  On the other hand, a simple game like 'Piano Tiles,' doesn't need a narrative to make the game interesting and fun.  It is all about getting the most black tiles in a row without pressing any white.  

Story can hurt or help a game.  If done right and in the correct context, the game can become amazingly fun and make the player feel like they've stepped into a fantasy world.  This is where White's notion on when to tell a tale would be pertinent.  People who play games with a story telling aspect want interesting stores, ones that are 'breached, violated, or deviated from in a manner to do violence.'  Those who play games, play games to usually escape reality.  And more often than not, want something they wouldn't necessarily hear or see.  If you insert a narrative that is boring and plain into a game, it is highly unlikely your game will attract a lot of players and become highly successful.  But by inserting a narrative that has a 'shock' factor in the correct context of a game, will make a game that much more exciting and fun to play.

[skydemoness]

Escaping the Reality Through Play

Playing is accepted everywhere, whether it be animals or human beings or other living creatures.  By participating in play, it enables others to form bonds, to relieve stress and to escape the demands from reality for a little while.  "In culture we find play as a given magnitude existing before culture itself existed, accompanying it and pervading it from the earliest beginnings right up to the phase of civilizations we are now living in.  We find play present everywhere as a well-defined quality of action which is different from "ordinary" life."  I thought this quote from Salen and Zimmerman's book, The Game Design Reader: A Rules of PLay Anthologyl interesting, as I never really thought about playing always being present; but it makes sense.  If you look back to the earliest part of our existence, there was some form of play involved as it helps to create bonds, which helps to find friends or mates.

In the article, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” the couple had gone to Bali but upon arrival no one really seemed to notice them or to even try to notice them.  It was not until they ran like all the other villagers when the police showed up and pretended to be doing something else with another person of the village; that they were truly accepted into the village.   The couple could of just stood there and showed their papers and said they were outsiders observing but for the fact that they fled like the rest, they participated in the play and did not out anyone in the village.  Thus, they formed a bond.

It is the same with animals; especially young ones.  They want to play and make friends; to be accepted by others.  They have their own rituals and rules that seem to be instinctual when it comes to play just like how humans develop rules for the games they play.   Everyone wants to have fun; especially to have fun with others as it is that much more enjoyable.  

Roger Caillois stated, "play must be defined as a free and voluntary activity, a source of joy and amusement.  A game which one would be forced to play would at once cease being play.  It would become constraint, drudgery from which one would strive to be freed.  As an obligation or simply an order, it would lose one of its basic characteristics: the fact that the player devoted himself spontaneously to the game, of his free will and for his pleasure, each time completely free to choose retreat, silence, meditation, idle solitude, or creative activity.  It happens only when the players have a desire to play, and play the most absorbing, exhausting game in order to find diversion, escape from responsibility and routine."  I believe Roger did an excellent job on defining the meaning of play.  You must willing participate in play as not all types of play will be enjoyable to everyone.   But by participating in play freely, this is when others come together and find enjoyment and will more than likely seek each other out to participate in play again, thus forming a bond.  This is exactly what happened to the couple in Bali.

I believe play to be essential in life, otherwise life would be lonely and tiresome.  Play is rooted in our DNA because play is used to form bonds with friends and mates.  Finding a mate is embedded in our DNA as our species strives to live on and in order to do that reproduction is required.  In order to find a mate you like and get along with, you need to participate in a type of play to find out if you want to be bonded with them.   It is the same with friends.  You find out who you want to be friends with by participating in a type of play.  No one wants to be alone or bored.  By participating in play of our own free will, we find enjoyment and make lifelong bonds so we can be happy and healthy.  Hence going back to what was said in Salen and Zimmerman's book, play has existed before culture existed.

[skydemoness]

Space, The Final Frontier

Recently I attended my first class of graduate school and one of my favorite topics was brought up, Space.  I love that space was brought up in the lecture, despite it being a bit overwhelming for people.  I am personally fascinated with space and the different theories on space in particular.  It does not scare me.  My belief is that we are not the only intelligent lifeform out there.  If there is intelligent life forms already traveling space, there is probably some system set up where we as humans will not necessarily find them until we can prove we can travel the universe. These higher intelligent lifeforms probably use some form of cloaking device that we cannot detect as the technology has yet to be developed.   

My favorite space theory would be the one on multiple universes.  It gives us that many more places to explore and experience.  Just trying to think about how you could possibly get there, fascinates me to no end.  I love reading about fictional worlds different from our own and I believe if we could travel to another planet it would be like living out one of our fictional worlds humans have created throughout the years through different mediums.  

Traveling and exploring new places is one of my favorite pastimes.  If the option to ever sign up for deep space occurs in my lifetime, I will sign up no matter what is happening in my life.  I am curious though to learn more about game environments and creating interesting places for characters to explore and play in.  With our current technology, it is our way of traveling new worlds until we can physically travel other new worlds outside of our solar system.  Thus, I really hope we will have a lecture that discusses something to do with either environments, travel, cities, discovery, etc.  This way I will hopefully be able to expand my knowledge further to be able to create better exciting and immersive worlds for players to experience. 

Here's a link to an article on the multiverse theory:

http://www.space.com/25100-multiverse-cosmic-inflation-gravitational-waves.html