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The Games I Play…

I’ve been playing Max Payne lately. THe bullet time, while interesting, is kind of pointless. I found it odd and gimmicy. However, it was fun.

Over Labor Day weekend, City of Heroes gave a free weekend of play, so I got absolutely nothing done that weekend.

I’ve applied to the SCMS‘s conference in Vancouver. I don’t really want to go, but it seems like everyone in my department thinks it is hot shit, so I want to go just to show them that I’m not just sitting on my ass playing games all day! Luckilly it is at the hotel across the street from the DiGRA conference, so I know exactly where it is if I get accepted!.

The main game I’m playing is still Urban Dead. Besides the fact that it is about zombies, they are still adding features to the game, so it is intersting to see a game in progress and how the game changes as new features are added. …and plus it is about zombies…

First day of class…

Today was the first day of class here at IU. I’m back to teaching the dreadfully dull public speaking, but only for the semester. At the end of the first day of class, I always go around and have the students say what they know more about than anyone else in this room and, of course, I always say, “I’m Bryan-Mitchell Young and I know more about videogames than anyone else in this room.” I always get an interesting response, mainly in the form of people asking me what games I play. Today, however, I said that I do ethnography on videogame players and then asked if anyone knew what ethnography was and in both classes at least one person asked if it had anything to do with videogames. Damn kids. Like it’s my job to teach them or something… oh, wait!

Since it was the first day of class, it was short and I found myself having more free time on my time than normal. Of course I filled it with playing Urban Dead. Or rather, I spent it checking out if my character was OK. Since you have a limited number of moves a day and build up one move every half hour, I don’t want to waste them, but I want to make sure my character hasn’t been attacked by any zombies. So we talk about pervasive gamines, but I wonder if this is some sort of pervasive games, but it seems like we the players have made this game pervasive. We check on the safety of our characters, how secure our safehouse it (and no I won’t tell you where it is, you damn zombie sympathizer!). Someone set up a wiki where people update intelligence and strategy. We’ve taken to looking for the websites and messageboards of other players to see their strategy and working with other groups of human survivors.

Then I think about the gamers I wrote a paper about last year that played Counter-Strike and Starcraft. They would email each other about gaming. They would plan ahead on when they could play. Is that any less pervasive? What about the time I spent looking online for Euchre strategies? Or for a good walkthrough for Max Payne?

I understand that pervasive games are typically about fictional web sites and fictional emails, but are those types of games any less pervasive, any less than the way I am playing Urban Dead? I don’t think so.

Does the APA know good science if it hit them in the head?

I know I said I was taking a break from videogame violence stuff, but every time I ttry to get out, they pull me back in…

It seems that the American Psychological Association is in full press release frenzy. First off, I wonder why they bother. Every year they have their convention which is followed by a bunch of press releases. Is there the thought that this serves the public interest, or is this simply an association trying to hype themselves and prove that there is a reason for their existance?

Regardless, like clockwork, they have released a press release about a paper delivered at the conference and resolution about videogame violence. Of course it have been covered by tons of web sites. On Slashdot, there was much discussion about videogame violence. Always currious, this is the post I made:

I took about five minutes and went to the APA’s website and found that this great new study isn’t based on original research, but, according to the APA’s press release is simply a review of the research. So this “news” isn’t anything new at all. And, if you bother to read the subtitle of the press release, it says, “Boys Play Games Longer and May Be More Vulnerable to Increases in Aggressive Behavior.” Note the use of the word “may.”

If you read through the press release, we find that the lit review is presented by “Jessica Nicoll, B.A., and Kevin M. Kieffer, Ph.D., of Saint Leo University.” Those in academia know that it is kind of unusual for a prof to collaborate on a paper with an undergrad. Looking at his webpage I didn’t see any paper that seem remotely close to violence or media effects stuff. THe press release says they are from St. Leo, so a search of their website finds that on April 21, 2005 Jessica Nicoll gave a paper called “Violence in Video Games: A Review of the Empirical Literature” (page looks like ass in Firefox). That panel was chaired by Dr. Kevin Kieffer. So, unless the paper underwent serious revision between then and when it was given at the APA, this is really Jessica Nicoll’s paper.

That’s right, this paper that is getting a press release and all sorts of media attention is the work of an undergrad. While it is wrong to judge the quality of the paper without having read it, it seems safe to say that *gasp* just maybe this is being blown out of porportion a little bit…

This post says that she is a graduate student but I didn’t find any evidence of that and all indications are that the original April 21, 2005 paper was given when she was an undergrad.

This seems especially true when WebMD quotes Kieffer as saying

“The bottom line is we see three things,” Kieffer tells WebMD. One is short-term change toward more aggressive behavior. Two, there are gender differences: Boys play more often and they are more likely to be at risk of behavior changes. And three, some more vulnerable kids are drawn to these games — kids who are already more violent, and those with low self-esteem.”

…none of which sounds all that groundbreaking to me and pretty tame.

Furthermore, this post links to the APA’s “Resolution on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media.” If you look at the press release about that resolution you will see that at the bottom is states:

Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media: Elizabeth Carll, PhD, and Dorothy Singer, EdD co-chairs; Craig Anderson, PhD, Brad Bushman, PhD, Karen Dill, PhD and Lilli Friedland, PhD.

As this post points out, If you look at the resolution’s references we see 3 papers authors by Elizabeth Carll, 4 by Dorothy Singer, 6 by Craig Anderson, 5 by Brad Bushman, and 2 by Karen Dill. OF all the people on the committee, Lilli Friedland is the only one that has not listed as a reference for the ill effects of videogames. One more cynical than I might think that these people have an agenda or something… (And this doesn’t even mention that they start the resolution stating, “…decades of social science research reveals the strong influence of televised violence on the aggressive behavior of children and youth..” as if were a given fact that too much tv makes you violent.)

Oh well, I suppose I should be thankfull that they didn’t bring up the old myth of rape in Grand Theft Auto since there is no rape in GTA…

lazy days of summer…

Not much going on. Doing some reading. I finished up First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. The first part is good. There is some good stuff in the ludology and narratology stuff for people that have no info on it. The second half, however, how you say… sucks… Note to authors: Rather than tell me how cool your art project is, why not just show me your cool art project. Talk about dancing about architecture… Don’t get me wrong, the art projects all sound cool, but I didn’t enjoy reading about them.

On the gaming front, I’m playing Urban Dead. Zombies and gaming? Two great tastes that taste great together!

Back and ready to kick some ass!

My computer is back in action. Here is the email I sent a collegue:

> SO I got windows to install completely. Guess what I did? Unplugged my
> MICROSOFT usb keyboard and plugged in my old Emacines PS/2 keyboard. stupid
>
> microsoft!
>
> i haven’t plugged the ubs keyboard back in yet to see if it will work now,
> but at least i got windows up and running again…

of course my friend, who shall remain nameless since I didn’t bother to ask him if I could post his email here, was very sympathetic:

Well, this is what you get for using some exotic, unsupported hardware. I mean, you don’t seriously expect Microsoft to know about every single piece of equipment ever produced, do you? I’d laugh my ass off if it wasn’t so tragic.

In other news, does anyone know where I can find a copy of the GTA pressconference that Hillary Clinton had? Or the open letter about the Sims that Jack Thompson sent out?

Since everyone else has had something to say about the hot coffee, I won’t really bother. I’ve been talking about videogame violence for years and I’m tired of it. I’m taking a break from all the hot Grand Theft Auto, jack thompson, “What about the children?” sex (even if it was consentual and not rape) and crap like that.

Running into the limitations of technology…

My main computer is out of action, hopefully temporarily. Of course it was working fine and then I decided I would try to dual boot linux. So I got that done, then screwed up one config in linux and it wouldn’t boot, so I eneded up trying to reininstall linux, which screwed up the grub bootloader, when ended up in me trying to reinstall windows except it keeps hanging. So no videogames for me for a while. oh well, that gives me time to catch up on my reading. .. except I can’t update my endnote bib because the I’ve got everything backed up on a second harddrive… inside the computer that won’t restart! grrrrrr…..

We Could Be Heroes…

I’m probably only the millionth person to make that pun, but oh well…

I’ve been playing City of Heroes lately — I’m a level 11 technology blaster. Thankfully, it is only a 21 day trial because otherwise I would flunk out of school!

I tried Anarchy Online back when they made their basic game free, but I only lasted about an hour before I gave up. I couldn’t figure out what to do or where to go — and since they just made it free, everyone on there was just as clueless as I was! So City of Heroes is my first extended experience with a MMORPG. As a comic book geek, I couldn’t resist (check out my eBay auctions! I need rent money!!!), but although I enjoy the game and like the world, there are some interesting aspects.

For those that don’t know anything about it, basically, you are a superhero of your own making and you get assigned missions and defend the normal citizens. Some of the missions, most in fact, require you to team up with other heroes to successfully complete the mission. I’m sure most of the other MMORPG’s do that too, but, at least in the beginning, you don’t know anyone playing the game, so you have to ask strangers to team up with you. When you think of it, for computer nerds and comic book geeks, this is kind of odd. The game is basically forcing you to talk to strangers. I don’t like to ask people in a store for help! It creates a very odd situation where you are forced to socialize and work together to survive, but at least in my case there is no bonding at all. I’ve played 3-4 hours a day for a couple weeks and still don’t know anyone. So am I just anti-social, or is this a situation where we are learning to work with anyone without having any personal bonds? I won’t even get into all the waiting around that goes on…

Another interesting aspect, which, again, I’m sure is common to many MMORPG’s is that around every corner there are bad guys. In City of Heroes, they are mostly gangs and are usually robbing someone. However, sometimes they are just standing around, but you can attack them any way. That is kind of an odd message: “Regardless of what you happen to be doing, if you are a certain type of person, it is not only ok to attack you, but it is GOOD to do so.”

Then there are also the citizens. They are totally defenseless. Without you they will be eternal victims. Sure it’s a game, but it would be nice if these automatons had some sort of agency. I might be interesting if they combined City of Heroes with the Sims.

OK, well, I have over 2000 points in debt that I need to work off! Spoon!

Now that we’ve decided that no one knows what cinematic means…

I got a couple interesting comments on my last post about “cinematic” and I’ve tried read a couple things that might relate, but nothing to change my opinion that cinematic is really a vague and nearly meaningless term. I think that a lot of it has to do with perception. I often read people writing that a game is “just like being in a movie” and I really don’t know what that means. I am much more likely to feel like I am actually THERE rather than in a movie. Is that a different way of experiencing the world or is that just a difference of word choice???

Moving on from that issue, I’ve been thinking about another term that gets thrown around. This time I’ve been thinking about “medium.” I’m not sure that this term actually means anything. Even if it does, is it a useful term? Are videogames a medium??? My thing is that I always like to think of videogames as kinds of games. So are cards a medium? Are board games? I don’t think they are. If they aren’t, then why are videogames? Is this a useful distinction to make???? Any thoughts? Should we ban “medium” from our thoughts and vocabulary from our hearts and minds????

Can you define cinematic???

One of my least favorite words is “cinematic” because it seems to mean practically anything — especially when it comes to videogames. How often have we heard something in a videogame called, “cinematic?” The problem, however, is that it is an undefined term! What does cinematic mean???

Sure, cinematic, at it’s simplest level means something “like or of cinema” or “having the qualities of cinema.” But no one ever talks about the unique qualities of cinema when they use the term when talking about other mediums. It seems to me that when many people use the term, they aren’t even talking about the unique qualities of cinema, but qualities of cinema that may be evident in other mediums.

So my question is, does anyone actually define what they mean by “cinematic?” While some of the medium specificity stuff from early film theory is useful, I’ve not been able to track down anyone who actually defines cinematic. Surely someone out there has bothered to define it, haven’t they? If anyone knows of a definition of cinematic, please leave a comment!