I have spent time in both MMOG as well as virtual worlds though I have had a much more extensive time playing MMOGs I spent a round a year playing World of Warcraft (WoW) and one of my classes had us spend a lot of time in second life even as far as holding a class in second life which was a bit of a unique experience. One of the main differences I noticed was how much players identified with their characters. The players of a MMOG will often make decisions related to the playability of their character: stats, abilities... Continue reading

At tech I have taken a lot of project based classes that usually fall on the shoulders of one or two people to complete the majority of the work. This class ended up not being one of those classes. While working on the project I felt like there was a work flow with every one contributing what they could. Each person’s role felt unique to where I knew who to ask for what, who needed what and who to talk to if something needed to happen. On our team I was the programmer. Actionscript is a little bit of a... Continue reading

Play the game Made by team ADD. Pay attention to the lecture or distract yourself its up to you. Continue reading

Play the game Made by team ADD. Pay attention to the lecture or distract yourself its up to you. Continue reading

The game I chose for this post is Portal (2007). Released in the Orange Box package. Portal is a short FPS puzzle game with a female main character, this character also happens to be the only human character to be seen in the game. I think the game is interesting for working with in the “Hegemony of Play”(Fron et al, 1) and creating a new game that is out side of the industry standard at the same time. While it is a FPS the player is only allowed to shoot portals, really just a tool for getting around a level.... Continue reading

Video games are unlike all other forms of games “Unlike board games or even sports, the rule structure of most digital games is opaque… they constrain players actions without recourse to alteration.”(Fron, p.4) In other words, the rules of video games often can’t be changed. For instance in Halo I really only have one way of interacting with non player characters, I can’t change the rules to decide that I want to try to be diplomatic about things I can only shoot. MIT’s Spacewar(1962) is an interesting game in that it has flexible rules that can be decided at the... Continue reading

Pokémon, a game made in the mid 90’s, was about the capture and training of creatures called Pokémon. The game was set in an alternate reality where you play a trainer who strives to be the best trainer. The main way to interact with the environment is through battling with your Pokémon. The trainer is very weak, in fact if all their Pokémon are knocked out the trainer passes out as well, and loses half of his money for some reason. Huizinga’s ideas of play are supported by this game: the “magic circle” (Huizinga, 103), “pretending” (Huizinga, 103), and “play... Continue reading

Chess is believed to have started in India around the sixth century. The game back then had many differences from the game we have today. It also had many differences from the game that would appear in European countries around the end of the first millennium. The game of chess that was played in Indian and Arab countries as well as Spain consisted of “the king, vizier (predecessor of the queen), elephant (predecessor of the bishop), horse (predecessor of the knight), rook and pawns.” [Yalom 14] These pieces would be abstract to honor the ban on “idols” in the Koran.... Continue reading