Week 8

As part of this week’s tutorial task I took a tour on a 3-D chat room. I looked at “Active World” (http://www.activeworlds.com/) which is a virtual reality world. It was totally different from using MSN messenger which I have used in the past to have conversations only with my friends, and blocking out any unknown visitors.

In Active World I can join in on (or start) conversations with others (which is also in text form) by walking up to a character and saying “hello”. Active World allows you to see how many people are logged in, by looking around and seeing how many characters there are present.

During my visit to Active World I made the mistake of saying that I was a first time visitor to the site and everyone had a great time by responding with “LOL”. So I walked of and read a paper and listened to music, which are other features not available on MSN messenger.

After experiencing chat rooms in both 3-D and IM program environments, I feel much more comfortable using a format where I know the people that I’m speaking to, which in my case is MSN messenger. I do not like the idea of starting conversations with total strangers over the internet and would never go into an IM program which is open to anyone to join in. It’s as if I’m sending a message off into outer-space and waiting for a reply from an unknown creature, but that’s what Active World is, a way that total strangers can meet and talk to each other.

By using the 3-D format, Active World invites you into another world (a virtual reality) where you are free to move around in, explore and to socialize with others. It’s as if everyone lives in the same neighborhood which makes it much easier to socialize with others.

Week 7

This week’s lecture looked at video games. I watched the youtube clip “Nintendo Sixty FOOOOOOOOOOUR” again at home and remembered what it was like at our house on Christmas morning, although my little brother was never as bad as that kid in the clip. But it does show how video games have taken over in the toy market.

I’ve seen how computer game technology has developed over the last few years by being fortunate to receive computer games as Christmas presents like the youtube kid. For Christmas or birthdays my brother and I have received: a Sega, Nintendo Sixty-Four console, a Sony Game-Boy, an X-Box, and a Nintendo WII.

All of the above games that I’ve played (including Arcade games) all have a set of rules that have to be followed and a mission to complete (i.e. a way to win the game). Academics call this “Ludology” and the theory is that games are simply games that are there to be played.

However some games also tell a story and the player needs to follow the story in order to complete the game. I remember playing “Toy Story” on the Sega when I was around seven or eight years old and the game followed the movie storyline all the way through. The study of games that tell a story is known as “Narratology”, and while it may appear that computer games have been moving away from ludology towards narratology, the reality is that computer games are a combination of both.