Thomas W.

 
NYU is planning to offer degrees in the design and development of video games. I'm assuming they will be offering courses similar to the one we've been taking this semester. Click here for the original post.

     My favorite educational game growing up was probably Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I'm not sure what version I played and the game logistics are a little hazy but I remember there was a strong emphasis on logic and that it required a basic understanding of world geography. The object of the game was to travel to different countries and ask witnesses or suspects questions in order to track down those responsible for whatever crime had been committed and eventually catching the main target, Carmen Sandiego. 
     I didn't actually own the game but a friend of mine introduced me to the game probably around 1995 or 1996. I liked playing with him because I usually knew the answers to the harder questions and he was one grade above me. We must have played every weekend for about four or five months but, as it goes with most childhood toys and forms of entertainment, we grew tired of chasing Carmen around the globe and resorted instead to shooting alien ships in the original Descent. 
     These are all now distant memories and I have trouble remembering all the games I played as a child. I remember playing Mario Teaches Typing and Math Blaster but not much else. The educational game market has boomed since those days but having played some of the classics back in my day the new games seem so worthless. I was helping my 5 year-old cousin play his favorite computer game over the summer and I saw very little educational value. The game involved wrapping presents for Santa and delivering them to children. The only skill I could see being developed was that of eye-hand coordination. Shooting toys into gift boxes and then shooting them down chimneys seems like it's only preparing children to play games with an emphasis on eye-hand coordination. The only thing being trained is my cousin's trigger finger. I didn't catch the game manufacturer's name but I'm curious to see whether it might be responsible for the release of some more mature games. Could it be possible that kids are being primed for violent games? Parents need to screen these so-called "educational games" before exposing their kids to them. 

If you thought the race for the White House was complicated and confusing just visit www.superobamaworld.com. This Gen-Y friendly game takes the events of the campaign and presents them in a 16-bit format that makes me feel nostalgic for the good ol' days. This has just made my week. This is something that all the young voters of America have probably experienced and shows just how much the nation has changed. Our generation has spoken.

 There was a game I played a few times when I was younger, at birthday parties and on field trips, that was very similar to mafia. The game required a moderator who chose an assassin or vampire (that's what we called them). Everyone would put their head down and the moderator would walk around the room and tap the assassin on the shoulder so that nobody else would know who the assassin was. People would then walk around the room in circles shaking peoples hands as they passed each other. The assassin, however, would shake hands and squeeze twice in order to indicate that that person had been poisoned. The person would die three handshakes later (as victims we would take the opportunity to be as dramatic as possible). The goal of the game was for the remaining players to identify the assassin before he killed everyone. After each death they were allowed to nominate someone as potential assassin but if they were wrong that person had to die a wrongfully accused innocent death. 

I think this game could be played in Vanguard by using the different chat functions. The social interactions would need to take more time and it would make it a lot easier (more fair) if each time people interacted they sat down for a few seconds but the idea of the game, really, is to have people milling around, getting confused about whose hand they just shook and who they think is the murderer. The key, though, is to have the avatars interact in some way. Since shaking hands isn't actually possible i think the "rope" command could be an interesting way of having people come in contact with one another. 

 So this guy rocks... I'm not sure where he found the time/energy/money to do this but it deserves a look.

www.geekologie.com/2008/10/guy_plays_36_world_of_warcraft.php

"If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison or a fine up to $5,000."

Read the story for more.

 www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/24/asia/virtual.php

    I've always been a fan of language. I love words and etymology. Virtual worlds are creating entirely new arenas in which language is being used, abused, created and destroyed. Some people are of the opinion that one of the worst things to happen to language is the advent of instant messaging and texting but language has never been something static. Some of the Terranova posts I encountered for the month of April 2007 discuss issues like language creation, virtual-world dictatorships and FBI intervention in VW activities, all of which could affect in-game chatter.
    Most of us know that many of the terms we use today in-world are the product of either gamer creativity or typing expedience. The list of created words has become so vast that people have started compiling glossaries to aid those who are unfamiliar to the gaming jargon ("Worldstruck and other In-World terms" April 1, 2007). For many gamers this seems to be one of the most enjoyable and entertaining aspects of MMOs. Grinding can become a drag so people take advantage of the freedoms "guaranteed" to them by the chat window as a way to "influence" the world they're in other than the structured game environment. But to what extent is this really true? In the April 20th article "Tomania, Tomania" the writer argues that virtual worlds are actually dictatorships. Chat-logs can be monitored and forum posts removed from websites because of the large amount of control the game developers possess over the game content and goings-on. The article goes on to propose the creation of democratic virtual worlds where gamers control content and governance. I think this might actually have a positive affect on the negative trends in language as a more engaging game where players are potentially trying to establish a utopian playing environment would distract them from negatives attitudes towards other gamers. I could, however, be very, very wrong.
    Another interesting aspect of virtual worlds is the attention the FBI has been paying to chatter and "illegal" activities ("Calling in the FBI", April 5th, 2007). Linden Labs expressed their concern with the legality of gambling and casinos within SecondLife. The FBI's involvement isn't stopping there. There were rumors not long ago that terrorists were planning attacks via MMO chat logs. How will this affect behaviour in the chat logs of virtual world games? What do people think about an FBI presence in virtual worlds? Is this surveillance a bit extreme? Are chat logs doomed to be unscrupulous havens for verbal-griefers? For me, the articles seemed to raise a lot more questions than they answered but I'm assuming that's the point of this website; to encourage future research.  
    

     Hello again! So I've been researching guilds and I came across two kinds of them; the first are guilds that tolerate foul language and the second are those that do not. I think it'd be interesting to investigate the role language plays in the demographics of a certain guild. I would like to join two or more guilds to try to determine through interviews the age, race, gender and highest level of school finished. I would then continue to ask more questions about the reasons or circumstances for their foul speech. 
     I found one guild online that was particularly fond of using foul language. This guild is called "Pain." Pain is very competitive and frequently taunts other guilds by using doctored or found images on its forums to illustrate what they mean. I'd like for both guilds to be highly accomplished to reduce any differences between the guilds I choose. The other guild I'm interested in is named Fabled and currently has the most guild members and seems to be doing very well. They, however, prohibit the use of foul language. I could tell right away by the forum posts that these guilds had differences in median age and gender just by reading the forum posts. 
   I'm not planning on provoking players to swear but rather observe the channels of communication to record the swearing that is already occurring in game. What does this do to player self-esteem? Is it being used as a way to rally the users, to inspire them to play better?these are all questions I'd like to answer.

       I thought I was a killer. The stats tell a different story... According to Bartle's quiz I'm 80% Achiever, 67% Killer, 53% Explorer and 0% Socializer. Since I'm fairly new to the world of MMORPGs I would argue that the results of the quiz are probably inaccurate. Let me explain. Most of my MMORPG game time has been spent in the classroom, Wednesdays 6:30-9:00, with my group members and other classmates. This set-up has significantly limited the time spent socializing in-game. I'm a sociable guy but I'm used to having my friends in the room with me when playing the game. This does not mean, however, that I enjoy that more than killing the enemy. I would probably guess that the other three traits should be closer percentage-wise, with the Killer trait leading the pack. The reliability of my self assessment may sound questionable but I think that the design of the quiz limited my choices so much that I was forced, under many circumstances, to choose one of the two choices even if I felt that neither answer was representative of my playing style. The fact that I've never felt inclined to play MMORPGs like Vanguard (or any of the others recommended to me by the quiz results like Guild Wars, WoW, and Everquest) before this class may have made the quiz particularly difficult to complete as honestly as possible. I believe most of my answers were probably based on my experiences playing Diablo II but I never played online and so never had a chance to really socialize.
     I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm excited to enter this final frontier of gaming. I'm a social/sociable guy but the limitations of internet gaming in Costa Rica prevented me from engaging in MMORPG social interactions with other gamers and, since coming to college, I've had neither the time or the capital to pick up MMORPG game-play again. I'd like to take the quiz once i've been playing the game a little longer. I'm really beginning to enjoy Vanguard and I'd like to find out whether my dynamics change once I leave the Isle of Dawn. 
     There is, however, no doubt that the quiz needs to be redesigned. The quiz is fairly simple and was probably designed to keep the number of variables down. Furthermore, the quiz is probably meant for hardcore gamers and may alienate casual gamers by suggesting that their attitudes and habits don't fit into the MMORPG world. I have two suggestions, either creating new categories for gamers or expanding the questions and clarifying the definitions of the different categories to be more inclusive for casual gamers.

    It doesn't surprise me that people have found a way of exploiting the burgeoning media literacy in developing countries in order to reduce costs (time and money) within virtual worlds and expedite their way to the top. China is a particularly interesting example of how interest in the modern and competitive job markets have pigeonholed these young individuals into becoming these gold farmers (or "professional gamers"). A study mentioned in the BBC.com news article "Poor earning virtual gaming gold" estimates that there are a half million gold farmers in developing countries earning approximately $142 per month.
   Gold farming bothers me because I see no future in it for the hundreds of thousands of players currently involved. The problem is that Westerners don't associate the sweatshop-like conditions of other exploitative enterprises with the practice of gold farming. A computer loaded with WoW that is connected to the internet is a luxury in most third-world countries and a job that involves playing WoW all day must seem like a dream job to most of the goldfarm clients. 

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7575902.stm "Poor earning virtual gaming gold"
2. http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/08/study-gold-farm.html "Study: Gold Farming is a $500 Million Industry"
3. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061227-8503.html "Korea considering gold farming regulation"
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMS8K_Swu10 "BBC: Chinese Gold Farming"
5. http://www.mmogap.com/ 
6. http://www.wowmine.com/
7. http://www.toonstorm.com

http://beyondthescreen.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/academic-interest-in-virtual-worlds-and-games/ Blog discussing Virtual World Research

    I was... completely lost. It's been a good 6 years since I played Diablo II so I'm not too embarrassed about my initial, seemingly wayward actions. Then it all came back; rushing back like an avalanche of experience points (experience points I had racked up in games like Diablo II and Heroes of Might and Magic VII). I was grinding hunters, freeing slaves, and killing animals. What I like about MMO's is that the basic goals of the game are never difficult to understand and the controls seem to have some overlap from game to game. What makes each game so hard to master, though,is the insufferable amounts of steps and items that players need to memorize to complete what should be a simple mission or quest. I can't wait to begin!
   What I liked most about our first gaming session was listening to the different kinds of language, both in the chat logs and what people were saying out loud, that was being used. The session started out pretty tame; people were getting to know their avatars... their avatars' hopes, their avatars' dreams, their avatars' ear hair. As time went on and the coffee started to kick in people got more vocal inside and outside the game. The topic of conversation quickly shifted from frequent "how to" questions to repeated swearing, taunting and guttural sounds. I've never been much of an in-game chatter. I prefer chatting with people live as it doesn't interrupt my game-play as much.  I just hope that RCC-402 doesn't become too competitive an atmosphere. 
    There are a few pressing questions I must ask. What's the best way to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome? Would people be interested in having another gaming session in the lab on the weekends? Has anyone found any interesting/hilarious fan fiction based on Vanguard? 

Now just for fun... for those geeks out there I'd like to recommend the site www.geekologie.com for its zany analysis of tech news.

     I'm terrible at introductions. It isn't easy to condense 16 years of gaming into an intro but I'll take a stab at it. I saw the movie "Toys" with Robin Williams at the tender age of 7. In case you've managed to miss this modern masterpiece, it's about an army general who takes control of a toy company and starts fitting the toys with weapons to sell to the US army for use in combat. His plan also includes using children as the remote controllers of his miniature arsenal due to their vastly superior eye-hand coordination. Children taking over the world with "video games"!? I felt very powerful.
     That's how I got hooked. I was determined to take over the world. I've been killing goombas, koopas, commies, killers, children, dragons, bowzers, zombies, prostitutes, etc. ever since. It's a colossal waste of time and I feel like a colossal waste of life when I play them but, "Just five more minutes," can sound so harmless when you've got a European Championship to win in FIFA '07.
      So that's what I'm hooked on now and it was really the first game (FIFA '94 that is) that had me hooked. I played all the difficulties and every team back to back to back to back. It's a game that many hardcore fans will never get out of their systems. Growing up in Costa Rica gave me the opportunity to be surrounded by a very diverse group of people who enjoyed a wide range of games. My closest friend was addicted to WoW my senior year of high school, as well as FIFA, fantasy football and gambling on online gambling sites. I'm guessing there are more people with similar addictions. I'm interested in finding out whether there are groups/guilds within Vanguard that live double lives as both active participants in the game and as fantasy football users and maybe even gamblers, and I'm interested to see whether or not some sort of structure exists in which these players might discuss these interests within vanguard.