| when is breaking the rules justified? |
[Apr. 11th, 2005|10:58 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  too much work | ] |
| [ | music |
| | radiohead-there there | ] |
first of all, it must be said that you have to look at things from a perpective that favors or opposest social darwinism (forgive me for sounding trite... i know i do). When people join and create rules or laws, society leaves a state of nature.
Social darwinism can only really be applied to its maximum extent when people are in a state of nature. When in this state, individuals adhere to laws dictated by nature. However, nobody really knows what these laws pertain to because they are unwritten. I guess the guidelines should come out of one's own conscience but that would be the same as having no rules at all. If the rules were completely subjective and applied differently to each individal this would break the implication that a law or rule sets a parameter for doing something. thus, in a state of nature (which, it could be argued, holds no rules)social darwinism would kick in immediately. stronger people would do whatever is in their best interest. Alliances, if there were any in existence, would be broken as soon the opportunity cost of keeping them were surpassed by something else. one could argue that people would not break trust (which is kind of an implied rule) because in the long run it be beneficial for them to behave nicely. anyways i lost track of what i was trying to say. ohh ok... if we look at it from a social darwinisim perspective, if breaking the rules gets you ahead, then go ahead and break them...
The problem is that we do not live in a state of nature so breaking the rules is seldom justified...the rules are there to protect those people with less ability from those with more ability... since there are always people with more ability than us (at least at doing different things) the rules are there to protect us. we prob shouldnt break them then. sometimes breaking the rules brings about a change that is good, but this is not very common... rules should be broken when the breaking of the rules will bring benefits to a group of people larger than the group it will affect... this is not ussually the case in video games... in this case, idiotic players try to alter the rules of gameplay in order to achieve things that ussually benefit them and nobody else. For example, what good does no-clipping cheat that a player uses do to the gaming community? none. all it does is give that player an advantage over other players in tha game and make their honest efforts to succeed become futile... im sorry but i hate people that cheat in games... the great thing about games is that they have they ussually put everybody in an equal playing field. this allows players to actually measure their strengths and weaknesses against each other and determine who is better at what... games provide pure competition becuase few things outside of the game influence each player's performance and this reduces everything to adaptability to rules and pure skills. Then an idiot comes along and decides he will break the rules. this immediately destroys the nature of the game because it adds in other factors. competition is no longer pure... other players will never be able to know if the cheater is really better than them or if they are in fact better than the cheater...
i remember i used to love age of empires and i thought i was pretty good at it... then one day i saw my ranking had dropped incredibibly because i was getting beat by people that sucked in the ranking, but were somehow defeating me... i found out they were cheating and after that it was completely pointless for me to play... i was never gonna be able to know if i was in fact better than them...
so dont be stupid and ruin the game for everyone by "exploring" what you can do by "expanding" your options... unless what you do will benefit more people than just you and your buddies. |
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| parlor games |
[Apr. 4th, 2005|12:03 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | kings of leon | ] |
i have to admit i didnt play any parlor games when i was a child. Other than thumbs up seven up (which we played in school) i didnt really play anything else... the problem is that, like i mentioned in my other blog about playing as kid, i didnt really have any neighbors my age to play with so it was hard to play games that required people. I didnt play in school a lot because the only time we would play was when the teacher told us to... (we would get detention otherwise). Also, the games we played seemed to be more geared towards physical activity... during recess we always played soccer or marbles and if we didnt we would try to build forts and things like that in the playground... I guess parlor games are kind of a cultral thing because other than thumbs up (which is an American game) Ive only heard of one parlor-like game that my mom told me she played when she was a kid... the game dealt with remembering certain words or phrases and having people ask them at random times...
Now that i think of it i didnt play parlor games because i had other things to entertain myself with... we had nintendo... and now kids have computer games and xbox and ps2. Why would you put effort into designing and playing a completely imaginary game if someone has already designed the game for you and it looks great?
sorry that i dont have much to say in this blog but i just havent experienced any parlor games so i cant really talk about them. |
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| childhood game |
[Mar. 23rd, 2005|10:19 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | its all good | ] |
| [ | music |
| | freedy johnston- this perfect world | ] |
There were very few children my age in the neighborhood i lived in so i ussually just played with two other kids that lived down the street. Since our group was pretty small, we didnt have a lot of gaming choices. Most of our playing revolved around this game we called "explorer". The game consisted of following somebody each day and exploring things that that person was interested in. When the person found something to do, (it went from throwing a rock to polevaulting over pigs about in places we weren't supposed to go to)he would do it and call the rest of us out to do it. Not doing would result in becoming a chickend and losing all sense of dignity. The game had pretty much no parameters and the only rule was that you had to follow what the leader for the day said needed to be done. For example, i remember making my friends roll down a hill in an old asphalt barrel and being forced to try to touch a bull's tail in a nearby farm (again, a place we weren't supposed to go to).
I think that the whole point of the game (even though we didn't realize it then) was to get to know our limits as far as strength, intellect and dexterity went. We ussually picked tasks which we had not performed before and tried testing our limits with them. We were also exploring the limits of the things around us. I have to say at times this was extremely stupid and dangerous. For example, I remember one of my friends throwing a bottle full of gasoline (we stole it out of the lawnmower) into a fire just to see how big the explosion would be. Needless to say we could have gotten killed. When we were somewhat comfortable with the things around us (by this I mean our yards and the surrounding streets) we started moving out farther and farther from our houses, our limits. This is when we started walking about 3 miles so we could go fishing and bother cattle and pigs at a farm we had no permission to go into.
Most things got old when we felt we understood them and had conquered them. For example, i remember that the farm lost all its allure after we found out the bull was very tame. However, the games helped us find our place in relation to our surroundings and most importantly in relation to each other. |
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| im a girl?! |
[Feb. 28th, 2005|11:05 am] |
My job in the in class experiment was consisted of being questioned. I thought it was pretty cool because it gave me a feeling of control that I had not previously experienced in the game. In the game im a guy character and have a guy name and pretty much act a guy role so my in game sexuality had never been questioned. Even if it had been questioned it probably would have become evident that i was a guy.
The experiment was cool because I got to play with my in game sexuality and actually control (to a certain extent) what people thought of me.
I have to say I dont know how i felt about people thinking I was a girl. I think it either A. shows I pulled off the exercise correctly, in which case im really happy because I understand women a little more than I thought I did when I did the other gender execercise, or B. the generalizations used by the questioners were not very effective.
The problem is, in my opinion, that there are these smaller details that separate men and women (things such as liking gossip or liking sports (great generalizations right?)but that the core values are what determine the person, and that there are very specific and small things within that core value which actually determine sex. I have no idea what these things are, but I think that they are things ingrained in our minds because of what we learn in life as opposed to what is taught to us. For example, most women, in our society, are taught to be girly and delicate at a young age. We therefore guide our general perceptions of what women are by what we teach women and expect them to be. However, you then get people like Sarah Connor who break every mold applied to a woman (she could beat up anybody in this class). Is this person asexual because she doesnt really fit the mold, physically or behaviorally? who knows... like i said those are smaller details, generalizations. You realize that she is a woman because she ultimately becomes a mother... her purpose of living is to nurture, and she decides to do this only until she has a series of life changing experiences. Her core motivation is to be a mother (but it is so because she experienced it, not because it was taught to her) so she is a mother.
ok i have no idea what i just said but i know that it didnt really make sense. lol. Its kinda true though, i think that it is experiences that end up determining the role we take and it is that role which we assume which makes us man or woman... ok... again it didnt make sense...
Anyways i thought the questioners were lead to thinking that i was a woman because they were using smaller "details" which cant really determine who you are... they shouldve used something else, but i dont know what that is and im sure they dont know either.
ps: im comfortable enough knowing that im a big burly beer-drinking belly-button picking man to not be bothered by such an exercise or such an outcome... lol. I actually thought it was interesting how small of a distinction there can be between guys and girls. and if you dont think so ill kick your ass! |
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| research topic |
[Feb. 28th, 2005|10:47 am] |
hey guys, sorry i hadnt posted anything on my blog in a while but first I was pretty sick and then went to Mexico (no access to computer). Hope you guys had a good time during the Second Life Lecture, I am getting ready to look at the slides in a little bit.
For my research topic, I wanted to do work having to do with buffer zones and gaming vs. real world consequences. As I talked about in class, I believe that there is somewhat of a conflict between the level of immersion that can be reached and how much of a "game" WoW is. In class, we keep talking about how people get into the game and how much they play it and to a certain extent live their lives through it. There seems to be an overall praise for the "reality" of the game: how nice the scenery is, interaction between players in different countries, etc. We also debated (and it is still being debated on forums) the cost of death and the implications that dying had in the game world. Most of us believed that there should be a cost of dying because it would make gaming more realistic. However, not one of us (i think i was the person who pushed for the most expensive cost of dying)wanted a really definitive death. Most of us are not willing to deal with the real world's consequences in the game world. All of us want a buffer zone between the real world and the game world. In other words, we dont want our actions to be definitive.
I plan to study where or how the line is drawn between realistic and "too real". I want to deal with buffer zones and how they affect gaming behavior and social motivation. |
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| im just a girl in the game world |
[Feb. 14th, 2005|10:05 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  exhausted | ] |
| [ | music |
| | tribalistas- ja se namorar | ] |
First of all, let me say that playing as girl, especially a hot one, is a COMPLETELY different experience. Let me talk a little bit about my character and how it was treated. First of all, I made a female human priest on the Dunemaul PvP server. The girl conforms to what a consumer oriented society tells us is beautiful: She looks like one of the girls from the Virgin Suicides. The fact that she is a priestess makes her assume one of women’s more traditional roles: the caring, protecting mother. This, I believe, added to the appeal of my character (putting aside the fact that priests –male or female- are very sought after when its time to form groups) because it made her seem more vulnerable. This “vulnerability” (the fact is she is just as capable as any newb character) made, in my experience, guy players feel somewhat responsible for my well being.
Ok, so I created my character and landed in the human newb area outside Stormwind. First off, I went and got a quest and started doing it. I finished it and started a second one but had to go somewhere and logged off right in front of the newbie guard station. On my return, I saw a congregation of male paladins and hunters dueling right next to where I was standing. I, following the opposite of my gaming style, stood there trying to be shy. One of the hunters won and bowed in front of me… I didn’t laugh or anything but said “thx” and that was it (again, I was being shy). The avatars kept dueling but none came over and talked to me… It was like being six all over again because they kept showing off in their manly duels and kept trying to give them a good angle which to look at but still kept my distance. If I hadn’t spoken, I strongly suspect they would have come over and pinched me and I would have had to put gum in their hair (isn’t young love a beautiful thing?). However, I did speak because I was getting bored. I said hi and asked where Stormwind was. Normally, when I ask somebody where to find a place, I have to do it on the general chat so that somebody takes pity on me and replies after I have typed the same question five times. Not so with a girl avatar. Not only did they tell me where it was, the two paladins offered to escort me all the way over there. I was real happy about it and thinking I was going to get free stuff for my other character to sell when one of them goes “ok let’ go but, cant you take your clothes off or something?” I was totally taken off guard and, pretending I was a girl, tried to show a lot of finesse by walking away and politely saying I would find it on my own. At this point, the other paladin said “I think we should escort the lady all the way over there” and I got my personal security force. I felt like Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq.
I started “opening up” to conversation (I think that if I were a girl I would a huge tease… or worse) and they started telling me about their lives. At first, we were running but they suggested walking to keep the conversation going for a longer time. I kept trying to role play the characteristics of the opposite gender by telling them they had cool muscles and stuff ( I know it was the corniest stuff ever) all while claiming that I was not a geek (like I am in real life) and had a great social life because I was on my high school tennis team. Note that I also tried hinting to the fact that I had a hot body by saying I was not only an athlete but played tennis (tennis players don’t get very big muscles). I have to say though, it was quite challenging to role play like this. I felt like a huge meathead because all I could think of for my role playing were stereotypes about girls. I believe that such generalizations are not only degrading but actually prevent role-playing. I say this because, in order to role play, one has to really get into the character. Generalizations are usually wrong and when they are correct they are usually pretty shallow. Anyways, I ran out of “girl expected” talk and let the guys do the talking for a while. I was pretty distraught because I realized how little men know about women (or about anybody but themselves for that matter) and was about to quit when, after killing a thief, one the paladins goes “I got a big stick to protect you with”. If I were a girl, I would have felt really offended. I actually got angry at the guy (although I didn’t say anything) for being so disrespectful to my character. That allowed me to have a little more insight about what role playing really feels like and how girls actually feel when you say stuff like that to them. I was able to role play (somewhat) a girl, but was unable to role play another personality.
Like I mentioned earlier, I was unable to act timid. First of all, I think that wow does not really make things easy for timid people. The game is made to allow interaction, but the interaction itself depends on the willingness of the players. Much like in the real world, there are only certain places in the game in which random interaction is simplified for shy people. For example, in front of an NPC that gives quests out. All a shy person has to do is ask to do the quest with a player who is getting the quest as well. The same is true for the real world. The workplace forces people to interact no matter what their social skills are. Aside from these and a few other places, it is not very common to just have people in the street come and talk to you in wow or the real world. However, it must be said that random interaction is more common in mmos because players have a buffer (avatar) and because being in a game world is in itself something all inhabitants of this world have in common.
Perhaps it is good to clarify what I mean by a buffer zone. In the gaming world, (as this blog makes evident) it is easy for people to assume any role that they want. For example, I am a heterosexual guy and was able to play a flirty girl. The games allow people to create idealized personas. This, in turn, allows people to omit their defects (or what they believe are defects) and thus reassures them. If you are who you want to be, why would you be shy? You would have nothing to hide. The game also creates a buffer zone by allowing anonymity. As we read in class, the fact that people are not bound to their character (unless they choose to) allows them to behave in any way they want. This is not so in the real world, where actions last and people cannot be changed like avatars can. That is the fundamental difference between real world interaction and game world interaction. |
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| orcs vs trolls |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|11:18 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | protonradio.com | ] |
in my opinion, wow provides players the tools to play in groups but does not necessarily encourage group play. The game is set to allow players of all classes and levels to interact. Also, the interface allows for the customization of looting in order to avoid conflicts between group members. Experience points are also divided evenly among group members in order to create a sense of "fairness" in the gameplay. Even though these things make it much easier to create groups and play in groups, there are still some things which (again, this is my opinion) somewhat overshadow the advantages and ease of playing in groups. For example, when playing with characters which are not in the same level as one's own, there is a point distribution problem. I had not been able to notice this problem until I got to about lvl 12 and played with characters in levels lower than mine (i ussually teamed up with higher level avatars). When playing with lower level characters, it was evident that, in certain quests, I did not recieve amounts of experience proportionate to the effort I had put into the mission. I was dealing the most damage (and spending the most to stay healthy (potions, jerky, etc) and was recieving amounts of experience points that were almost useless (getting say 15xp per monster when my level up is 8000 points away). In certain ways, it would be better to spend more time doing the quests on my own and getting say, 50 xps per kill than playing with 3 others and getting 15xp per kill. Granted, the quests are finished more quickly and its sometimes good to have buddies when creatures aggro in unexpected ways. However, the time saved in killing monsters, which, in theory should be used for gaining more xp, is wasted while traveling longer distances in order to find more quests because the quest you did with your group didnt give you the expected amount of xp. that was a run-on sentence. wasnt it? It mustve been really annoying for higher level guys to play with me, so i play with newbs in order to return the favor. I think that in a way, reciprocity is more of a group creator than the game interface is.
I don't completely disagree with Yee but think that, at least in wow, establishment of leaders (and therefore acquiring of leadership skills) is very dependent on character class. In my experience, players with ranged attacks or stealth ussually lead the groups. The beasts in the game react to certain proximity levels in relations to the players and the other beasts, so ranged attack characters are ussually used to bring "pull" creatures in one at a time. For example, in a field, the hunter will attract the beast toward the group by shooting at it. This reduces the risk of tripping another beast's proximity level during hand to hand combat. If a group of warriors charged at a humanoid before the hunter attracted it towards a "safe" area, chances are that their movement would trigger the attack of other other foes. So, the group waits for the ranged attacker to make the move into attack. This automatically puts the player with the ranged attack character in a position of leadership whether he wants to or not: He must decide which and enemy to attack and when to attack him. He must lead the group. Even if another character class wants to lead, it would probably take him/her too long to type every action that must be taken. One has to take into account that typing greatly hinders one's ability to control the character. This also hinders group cooperation. Even so, there are some people that dont use ranged avatars and are great leaders. I do believe that leadership skills learned in the game can be transferred to real life, especially in the way leaders say things. |
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| january 24th blog |
[Jan. 23rd, 2005|10:31 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | relaxed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | gondwana- ignoracia | ] |
This is the first time that i play a mmorpg seriously. The only other mmos that I had played intensively were CounterStrike and Day of Defeat (these are first person shooting games which run on the Half-Life engine.
In comparison to the games mentioned above, the interface for wow is a lot less user friendly. I learned the interfaces for the shooters in about three hours of gameplay but I still struggle with the wow interface sometimes (for example, I misused my first talent point because the choices I had were not very clear). I believe that the game developers could further explain certain things about the interface. For example, some mining equipment (such as mining explosives and this other device which supposedly rids minerals of flaws) have no description or explanation so one can never be certain how to use them. This creates skepticism at the time of buying/trading and, at least in my case, reduces the amount of bartering that goes on.
However, it must be said that the first person shooters are very simple games with very limited commands. The result is an easy to learn interface. World of Warcraft tries to focus on all aspects of human interaction and day-to-day living [aquiring a profession, resting, maturing(levelling up),] and therefore has a far more complex interface. For example, while first person shooters' interfaces ussually have an interface consisting of equipment options, wow's interface ranges from reputation ratings to engineering skills.
As far as the world goes, the visual aspects are incredible. The level of detail achieved, considering the expanses of the terrain, are beyond anything I could have imagined. However, the level of detail plays against you at times. For example, when one reaches a town or the site of a popular quest, a noticeable lag kicks in and reduces the quality of gameplay. I read in the message board that what happens is that computers have a hard time processing "the million things flying around".
Despite the occasional lag, the gaming experience is very enjoyable and lends itself for more interaction between players than any other game I've played before. But I'm saving that for another blog. lol |
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| my profile and and my alter ego |
[Jan. 19th, 2005|06:09 pm] |
Hi. I'm Kjell. I recently added the class and therefore have no clue what you guys discussed during the last two classes. Since I do not know what the guidelines are for describing my personality, I will try to describe the traits I like about myself and other people and how these traits relate to the characters I pick in games.
First of all, I take pride in my loyalty. I tend to insist on having my friends (and myself) follow strict codes of loyalty and honesty. While this is ussually a good thing, sometimes I carry it too far and make huge deals about minor things such as telling white lies. Also, the belief that one should always just come out and say things (like I ussually do) makes me come off as arrogant and has gotten me into trouble quite a few times. Nonetheless, I try to do what I expect of people.
Another quality that I admire in people (and probably require a little of) is courage.
Following this precedent, it seems like the character which would suit me the best would be a paladin dwarf. Paladins are "champions of a cause". In order to be this way, they have great courage and strong codes by which they live. Their world is black and white (ussually white), leaving no space for the interpretations and gray areas that plague the actions of our lives. Dwarvers are great warriors and are always willing to rise to the challenge (think of the dwarves' last stand in the hobbit). |
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| sorry |
[May. 7th, 2004|11:48 am] |
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sorry, the link is the following: http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/kvonsnei/final/mainpage.html |
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| tips for designing |
[Mar. 29th, 2004|09:46 pm] |
i think that my first skill assignments for the class contained all or most of the things that people hate about sites... here are the things most useful things i came up with in order to correct such problems:
1. when designing your color scheme, try to copy the color schemes that you see naturally. An example of this is blue... when it is used in different hues and cooler tones are used, the design of the page is very appeasing to the eye... kinda like the ocean. hahaha.
2. never abuse anything. if you like animated gifs, try to limit them to one or so a page... there is nothing more annoying than being distracted by the same repetitive animation over and over again.
3. Stay away from layouts that invoke peoples opinions. Music falls into this category and is a definite no-no. While you might think that a certain song is supercalifragilisticexpiralidotious, someone with different tastes might see him/herself forced to leave the sight because of the annoying cacophony that is coming out of the speakers... Music also tendos to be very repetitive in websites because the longer the sound file the heavier the page is... thus, even "hey now" gets old after listening to the chorus 30 times in 2 minutes.
4. People need consitency... wacky, varied backgrounds are simply distacting and ussually (the colorful ones mostly) interfere with the readability of the page.
Basically, try to make the design as neutral and as free-flowing as possible |
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| final project |
[Mar. 28th, 2004|11:24 pm] |
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for my final project, i plan to explore the effects of technologies on those who have it and on those who dont and compare the lifestyles of each. It is my opionion that technology (ie. the internet) allows people to categorize themselves according to their interests. For example, as elizabeth pointed out, harry potter fans can have the ability to interact solely with other harry potter fans (if they really want to). However, in doing this, i believe that they pass up interacting with people who have different interests and thoughts and in doing so they block out the heterogenity promoted by the internet. |
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| annoying sites |
[Mar. 25th, 2004|02:38 pm] |
hey all!
www.resnet.trinity.edu/kvonsnei/4thassign/warnings.html |
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| for test |
[Mar. 1st, 2004|05:36 pm] |
short answer questions:
Do you believe that the spread of new media and the easier access to media serves to diversify people's beliefs and opinions or do you believe that it actually creates main currents that make people's thoughts more homogenous? support your answer with theories discussed in class.
was the overall outcome of the interet bust positive or negative? explain yourself.
identification questions:
what do toffler and toffler regard as the major waves of progress in human history?
what exactly is the internet?
*bonus question: where did Dr. Delwiche work in Hong Kong and which website he designed busted as the internet bubble burst? |
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