Below are the 13 most recent journal entries recorded in gizmo571's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, April 12th, 2005
9:04 am	Breaking the Rules When if ever is breaking the rules justified? First of all breaking the rules in real life versus breaking the rules in a game are very different. But for some people the line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred. Some MMO players become so absorbed in the game that they consider it a second world or part of the life. For me, the line between these two realms is clear. In real life breaking the rules can be acceptable if a person has the right motives for breaking the rules. "Right" motives are to help someone in need, to stand up for what you believe in, and of course I can't leave out college kids having a little harmless fun. But for those people who enter a game world and not a place of fiction they tend to see the game having the same rules and consequences as in the real world. In my opinion, breaking the rules in a fame are ok if it does not disrupt others' game play. The MMO environment has rules set by Blizzard in order to create a fun atmosphere for all its players. In class we have talked about the incident where the characters met in a particular area and protested by taking off their clothes and jumping up and down. Those are pretty much the only details I am familiar with and with those facts alone, if they broke any rules, that was alright. But if this protest disrupted game play for other players on that server and negatively altered the gaming environment, they broke the rules in a bad way and Blizzard had every right to become involved. Discussing rules in MMO's is a very difficult subject because "rules" differ for everyone playing the game but not everybody's rules are the same. Some "rules" stem from what is appropriate behavior and what is rude or unacceptable. For example, some player may feel a rule has been broken if a person takes the items from the creature you have just killed. It's not fair that you had to do the work to beat the creature but there is no rule against it. If enough people find a "rule" that they all agree upon, the responsibility the enforce that rule moves to the players. The chat channel is there for players to communicate and to inform each other. "Informing" each other can mean going on general chat and telling all the other players in the community about their playing behavior. The rules set by Blizzard that require hacking are not rules I feel should be broken. Rules in life or rules in games are set in place to create a safe and enjoyable environment for all those who are a part of it. The rules are not their to hinder people from accomplishing their goals but to maintain a positive environment. Overall I think there are times in real life where breaking the rules is justified, but in games there are too many individual "rules" that are always being broken by other players who follow their own "rules." The only rules that people break that I feel should be punished are those that were established by Blizzard that require hacking. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 3rd, 2005
4:15 pm	More of Heads Up, Seven Up I wrote about Heads Up, Seven Up when the weblog was first mentioned,but now I am adding what the latest weblog requires. I already told you about the game, how it's played, and my feelings about it. Now I will analyze the game mechanics in terms of Salen and Zimmerman. This game is most like a Ludic activity described by Salen and Zimmerman. In this game the player is playing with structures such as different players, and whether or not others follow the rules. If players cheat by opening their eyes and peaking those players at the front of the room having to bluff and trick the others will never win. Playing with all the elements in the game is important in the game. For example, if players are aware of another player cheating they must make a plan to avoid that player or trick them. To trick the peaking player, two people could stand within the cheaters visual spot and appear to both touch the cheaters thumb. Because the cheater saw two people there is the chance he will guess incorrectly. These players who cheat are the ones labeled as the "Cheat player." They violate the formal rules of the game in order to win the game. The "standard players" are those that are honest and play the game the way the rules were designed for game play. When Salen and Zimmerman talk about "games as a subset of play" and "play as an element of games" I think both statements apply to Heads Up, Seven Up. The descriptive versus conceptual distinctions of those ideas are actually in a "relationship" which each other. Although not all play fits the category of games, Heads Up, Seven Up does. It is a type of play which is a game because of the rules that formalize the game. Play that does not fit into the category of games are those that do not have "rules" one always plays by. Play is like a fluid and flexible game that changes every time you play. (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 24th, 2005
8:21 am	Childhood Game From first to maybe fifth or sixth grade I used to love to play Heads Up, 7 Up. The reason I remember playing this game by grade level instead of age is because it was a game you could only play at school with your class. Maybe you could play at home with a few people, I never did, but the classroom had plenty of people to make the game interesting. For those not familiar with the game let me explain the rules. Seven people are chosen to stand at the front of the room while everyone else must stay at their desk. The lights are turned off and someone says, "heads down, thumbs up." All those sitting at their desks must put their heads down on the desk with their arms wrapped around, their eyes closed, and one thumb up. Once everyone has their head down, the seven people who were standing at the front of the room move around and choose one person to tag. To do this, one of the chosen seven will touch a thumb and as soon as that person has been tagged them must put their thumb down so that no one else can tag them. Once seven people have been tagged the chosen seven return to the front of the room and the lights go back on. Someone says, "heads up, seven up" and everyone is allowed to pick up their head. Those people who were tagged stand up next to their desk and must attempt to figure out which of the seven people in the front tagged them. If the one who had been tagged guesses the right person they got to take their place at the front of the room. If they were wrong they had to sit back down for the next game. The only variation, if it could be called that, that I ever played was when there were fewer people in class than usual. The version we played was call Heads Up, 5 Up. But we never really played the game with fewer people. Usually teachers would make us choose a different game on those days where a majority of the class was missing. I don't remember exactly when or why we stopped playing the game. If a class was willing to play the game today I would definitely play. I used to think that I stopped playing the game because it wasn't fun or it was too childish, but thinking about it now makes me think the game ended because of school. When you are young there is usually only one classroom you go to and their was free time at some point during the day. If you had indoor recess, before you could leave for the day, advisory, or any other free time that popped up. Once you get older, school changes. You move to different classes all day with a different professor who only has that time with you. There was no more recess; no more free time at school. (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 3rd, 2005
11:38 am	Terra Nova I just wrote a weblog and it all disappeared when I tried to "update journal." So very quickly I will briefly explain all that I wrote and then managed to lose. I had to review June 2004 articles and found the site interesting with the articles ranging from virtual space used as a sexual space to virtual reality. The two articles that I read in full were: "What have online games done to us?" and "What happened to virtual reality?" "What have online games done to us?" is an article about Chinese's obsession with games. "A 31-year-old Legend of Mir II addict literally dropped dead after playing the game non-stop for 20 hours in a Chengdu internet cafe. Soon after this tragedy, a Shanghai online game player suffered serious burns in an attempted self-immolation after the Shanda Customer Service Department expropriated his virtual equipment for The Legend of Mir II that he had bought from other players for 10,000 RMB." This article shocked me and makes me very uneasy about the power games has in our lives. It makes me wonder at what point games quit being games? "What happened to virtual reality?" is an article discussing the history of virtual reality and why it seemed to have pretty much disappeared. It discusses how technology was not up to speed and ready for virtual reality. Researchers and designers, as of June 2004, were optimistic that technology had advanced and computers were faster for virtual reality to be as great as everyone hopes. Terra Nova opened my eyes up to the fact that the gaming community is much bigger than I had imagined. I was pleasantly surprised that the site was not all about a particular game but had many topics that had some connection to games. Interesting site, but still, it’s not my type. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 27th, 2005
1:36 pm	TL Taylor I enjoyed the discussion with TL Taylor. I think this discussion went better than the first meeting we had with Nick Yee. Although the interface with Second Life had lag, people in the class waited to ask questions and did not horse around and distract attention from the speaker. Now that this was our second on line meeting, I'm beginning to appreciate the gaming environment for all it has to offer to subscribers. I never imagined that a computer game could be used or even would be used for such a purpose. TL had a lot of interesting things to comment on and throughout the lecture I had to continue to remind myself that TL is a girl. After discussing the reading for class, and then having the on line lecture, I still got the impression that TL was male. I just canceled my on line Second Life account and I guess I'm writing this as a reminder to everyone else. In Second Life I was impressed by all the options a player is given to create their character but the environment itself was not as good as WoW. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 20th, 2005
6:12 pm	Topic Guilds in World of Warcraft: What do they offer? I plan to interview players on their character's guild history and if they are currently a member of a guild. With this information I plan to ask questions about why the player joined, left, or never became involved in a guild. To understand what guilds offer to players, I will ask questions regarding what the guild means to them (i.e. social interaction, quicker advancement in a quest, etc.). The reason I am interested in this topic is because throughout my own play in WoW I have had no interest in joining a guild. I'm curious to see why others have chosen to join or not to join and also to see if there is a particular point within the game that joining a guild becomes needed in order to advance. (I was told to join a guild myself by a classmate and I am planning to before I begin conducting interviews.) (This is the topic I discussed in class and it is still in its very beginning stages. If anyone has any recommendations I would greatly appreciate it.) (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 17th, 2005
8:32 pm	Turing Test Presentations of masculine identity was the game the class played today. I was assigned to play as a performer. I took on the name David and although I did not convince all of the class that I was male I did trick a few people. To try to convince the questioners that I was male in real life I had to make sure I responded to their questions in a timely manner. Answering the questions quickly was important because if I waited too long to respond it would appear I was making up answers. In preparing for the questions I thought about all the things my boyfriend, other male friends, and my brother enjoyed. For example, I was asked what an ideal date would be like. To answer this question I thought about a date I had gone on, that was chosen by the guy, that I enjoyed the most. I felt that this would be an appropriate answer and maybe I fooled a couple of people. Also, when asked a question about what bands I would choose to listen to, I made sure I listed all the different types of bands that I enjoy. I avoided staying in one genre in order to confuse the questioners. While I was waiting to answer questions I would emote things that I felt were stereotypical of men and maybe not actions women would usually perform. I pointed at players, laughed, and saluted. I also watched the way I typed. I avoided capitals and most punctuation marks. Girls are stereotypically not as prone to make such grammatical errors so I felt it was important to avoid proper punctuation while attempting to convince the class of "my masculinity." I was actually very nervous about trying to portray a male in real life. I remember seeing some of the questions that were directed at the other performers and being very thankful that question was not directed to me. I think that role-playing a character of the opposite sex within a game is something very difficult to do. It may be something fun to try for a day but as far as trying to keep that character for a long period of time and convincing the other players, both male and female, would be a rather difficult task. I remember reading for class about the difficulty of role playing but really never thought about it being such a challenging task. I was even more surprised that one of the male performers was mistaken by a majority of the class as being female. I'm not sure if the class was just looking very closing at the characters every move or if presenting yourself in the game as your true gender is actually difficult with others not necessarily believing or trusting you. Do all players trust what other players tell them? In my case I don't trust anything I am told by another player in World of Warcraft or in on line chatting with a stranger. It's always good to be cautious, but to what degree are we too distrusting? Is trust even needed in the game regarding real life information? What's the difference between sex and gender? Sex is the anatomical differences between men and women. Gender encompasses all the expectations that society places on the sexes. The expectations of the sexes, gender, are usually what we think of as the stereotypical attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors a man or woman posses. During the activity today I, a performer, had to convince the other classmates that I was of the male gender. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 14th, 2005
11:26 am	Role-play The assignment from class was to create a character on a different server that is the opposite gender. When I received this assignment I was not too happy about having to play a male character because I almost always choose a female gender when presented with the option. I think I felt odd about playing a male character because it presents me to others as male and I am treated differently. As a male character I am expected by other characters to know how to play the game well and when I fail at a task or ask for help on "common knowledge" subjects in the game, other male characters are quick to poke fun at me. When I play as a female character other characters, especially male characters, have much more patience with me and are much more willing to lend a helping hand, give me gift items, or help lead me to what I am searching for. As a male character I was more on my own in the game than I am as a female character. The character I created was a night elf warrior on the Bonechewer server. I chose to be a warrior because I thought it was something totally different from my class character and stereotypically I felt that as playing a male I should be a warrior. I chose the server Bonechewer because it just sounded tough. A warrior fighting in the Bonechewer server just sounded masculine to me. I allowed the game randomizer to pick a name for my character, Jargaton. At first I tried to pick a name but I felt that they were too feminine or masculine. I wanted to find a middle ground for my character's name and the randomizer allowed me to do so. Although I let the game choose a name for my character I personalized it by changing the hair color, face, and skin color. This may not have been a good thing for me to do. Looking at my male character's physical appearance, it somewhat looks like the "metrosexual" night elf. All I wanted to do while choosing these physical attributes was personalize the character and make it look nice, but I think I made the character look more like a pretty boy. While playing the game few people came up to talk to me and I felt more alone in the game. I received quests and completed them with little conversation with others. When I received a quest to kill a specific number of animals it did not seem too different from other quests I had received as my female character, but I quickly found out that it was like playing a different game. As a male character the game is much more competitive. For example, when I was running around looking for animals to kill I would approach my target, just as I had before with my female character, get ready to attack, and then some other guy would run up behind me and kill my targeted animal before I even had a chance. I became frustrated because I am still new to the game and it takes me a little longer to complete tasks. I think as a female character other characters give you "space" to fight your own battles. As a male character I felt as though I was being timed and had to kill the animal as soon as possible. I disliked the feeling of being rushed. When I have played my female character I have had other characters ask me to join a group so that they could help me, whereas a male character I was as much a threat to them as were the monsters. Once I began to talk to other characters I realized it was obvious to others I was not a male in the real world. The first issue was the way I type. When I type in the game to chat with others I am rather informal. I also discovered how often I used smiley faces and how supportive I am, but not just like a "good job" and pat on the back but more like a cheerleader. I also saw that I use "....." a lot. Instead of ending a sentence I just drag it on with those little dots in all of my conversations. Once I stopped and actually ended my sentences I think it gave others the impression that I was more declarative and that is stereotypically more of a male characteristic. After all this was brought to my attention I became hypersensitive to all my actions and I feel I overplayed male characteristics and tendencies. It was either completely obvious that I was a female playing a male character or I was a cocky male who was just full of himself. As a female I believe in equal rights of the sexes but in the game world I'm not sure how much they apply or if I really care. Of course I wanted to be treated well and equal to a male character, as a female in the game world, but the super competitiveness in the male characters I approached was not at all what I would call fun. Although there really isn't equality I don't think this is a bad thing. If you are a male or female and enjoy a more competitive environment, based off my experience, I would tell you to choose a male character. I'm not saying that all male characters are hyper-competitive and are playing the game against everyone else, but I am saying that they appear to be more compassionate to female characters than other males. I feel that my first attempt as a male character was somewhat of a flop. I discovered the little things that give away gender of the player, regardless of the gender of the character. Knowing what I know now it would be interesting to see if next time I could actually "pull off" playing a male character. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 7th, 2005
11:00 am	Collective Action in Virtual Worlds WoW encourages group activity through it's quests. One with a high enough level may be able to accomplish a task on their own, but by joining a group the quest is much easier. Having a group containing many different characters (i.e. warlocks, warriors, etc.) appears to be almost essential to advance in the game to the highest levels possible. Some of the tasks that had to be carried out I know I would never have been able to win on my own. For example, certain monsters that the characters must kill are easily taken care of when you are with a group all fighting as one. The same monster fought alone, would have surely killed my character and definitely gotten close to killing some of the other characters if they had attempted to fight solo. The game also encourages players to communicate with other players in order to trade items. But the thing I felt to be the most appealing about joining a group was that it felt like a team effort. That you weren't alone in your quest and there were others with similar goals. I never became very involved vocally in the groups but I did pay attention to the other players encouraging one another. I still feel as though I need some more time spent in the game to be able to participate more in the group. I also noticed that people come and go from groups all the time. I'm curious as to see if more "hard core" players have their own groups that stick together and stay together. Although I was only in the group, A Rough Guide to Azeroth and Beyond, I noticed issues regarding the group following through on a course of action to pursue. The first issue I noticed was trying to keep the group together. It is likely that more experienced players don't have this same problem, but with my group of new players we are still in very unfamiliar territory. Within the group, picking a leader never really happened. The group arrived at our destination at different times and the one who knew the most lead the way at certain points on the journey. I felt the communication between our group members was very good. As I said before, our group was like a team and we helped one another out as much as we could. I'm really not sure that these games would or could lead to leadership skills to be used in the real world. I would have to play the game more to come up with a definitive answer, but as of right now my opinion is no. WoW is a game and that's it. As a player, you may be able to be leader of your group and lead them to wherever they need to go and if your successful you are applauded. If you fail as a leader in the game world, it's just a game. The game world offers "do overs" which are not offered in the real world. If a leader fails, the player could avoid that game for a while and has distance from these other characters thanks to his computer. In the real world if you make a a mistake you are held responsible for your actions and must go on. Real people can't run away any time they make a mistake. Also, leadership skills are of no use if you don't have communication skills to get your point across to the group. In virtual worlds all a leader needs to do is type out the course of action or just lead the way and not have any actual face to face interaction. If a leader fails to have the necessary communication skills mandatory for leadership in the real world, they fail to be a leader in the real world. I also feel that the virtual world does not prepare a leader for the unexpected. Sure there will be monsters and other things that "pop up" along the way, but in the real world unfortunately, there are sometimes things that "pop up" that no one could have guessed was coming. The game is supposed to follow some sort of code, where as the real world, is open with not as stringent code to follow. No one in the world could predict all the things that may or may not happen, but within the game world, someone knows that there is a possibility as to what may be an obstacle in a mission. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 3rd, 2005
9:16 pm	Bartle Test Here are my results: Bartle quotient - results (respondent #296190) Thanks for taking the test. You are person number 296190 to take it. Your type is: EAS. 9% of respondents so far fall into that type. The numbers below represent percentage of how many times you selected a given suite when given the chance. Since there are 15 questions for each suite out of 30 total, the number will add up to 200%. 50% thus means average for each suite, and 100% is the maximum score. Your answers were split as follows: Explorer 73% Achiever 60% Socializer 33% Killer 33% I think this is fairly accurate for me. I'm more of a socializer in real life than I am in computer games because I'm still in very unfamiliar territory. This makes me lean toward being more of an achiever because I attempt to figure things out on my own, not wanting to talk to anyone else. I want to achieve for myself, not to brag about it to anyone else. The killer percentage is higher than I would have thought, but it's a necessity for me to kill in this game. In answering some of the questions I would have liked to have been able to answer either neither or both. More options would make the test more accurate in my opinion. Interesting test. I'm interested to see what everyone else says about their results. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 27th, 2005
10:42 pm	Scavenger Hunt Day When today's class exercise was announced I was immediately displeased. I feared being part of a group and having no idea what I was doing. I also feared being of no help at all and actually a nuisance because I wouldn't be able to keep up. But thanks to Sebass and Matt the scavenger hunt wasn't that bad. Matt was the leader while I followed. Sebass had brought his laptop so he was able to pull up websites and find where the items (people) were located. If it had been a scavenger hunt to do by myself I would have never made it. Even though the scavenger hunt was a mission for our WoW characters I did not feel like I was role playing at all. In chatting between our party we used our real life first names whereas forming a guild with just the characters you encounter in the game, you may never know their real life names. I look forward to "role playing" in the future. I'm not sure if I will enjoy taking on a new "role" for my online character but it's definitely worth trying. Prior to forming our group for the scavenger hunt, a gnome came up to me and asked me to make a group with it. The character stated that it was just a beginner and that it wasn't very good at the game. I told the gnome that I was just a beginner too and it immediately replied that we were alike and should definitely be on a team to help each other out. It found it interesting that this person/character whom I had never met before approached me and wanted to be a group. I was curious as to why the gnome came to me when there were so many other characters to choose from. The first thing that came to mind was that we were both gnomes and that similarity in itself was something this other character felt we had in common. But I also find it interesting that as soon as this female gnome character approached me, I began to create a real life identity to this character. I automatically assumed the character was female, but I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps it was because the real life person chose a female character like I had. But I am aware that this in not always the case. I had never had a character, outside of those the class chose to represent them, come up and speak to me. It was actually kind of nice to have someone want to form a group with me. As far as research topics for the final project are concerned, I'm still thinking. One possibility, due to my recent encounter, is why people choose the characters they choose (appearance, gender, class, etc.). I know why I chose my character, but I am curious if my motivations on choosing a character differ very much from others. I haven't really put that much thought into the idea, but you have to start somewhere right? (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 23rd, 2005
5:36 pm	First Run at WOW Thursday was the first time I had have ever played a MMO. I did not get the, "full experience" in my opinion because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Everything from moving my character to fighting off others was new to me and I had to learn how to complete such tasks. Learning just some of the buttons took up a lot of my time on Thursday and I was not able to really "get into the game" at that time. Although I was involved in a game with many people I do not know, I still felt like the game environment was just our class. I did not talk to any other players outside our class and because I'm a "newbie" I'm sure that is why no one else spoke to me. I know this will change once everyone, and especially me, get better acquainted with the game. After my first experience, I must say that the game is difficult for me to play. I still have little understanding of the buttons and which one allows me to do what. I also find it difficult to maneuver my character. All this I'm sure will come in time. (Practice makes perfect.) Because I have not "mastered the basics" I have not become involved in the game yet. I accepted a quest but have no idea how to complete it. In my first gaming experience I was more concerned with the game mechanics and what my character needed to do to stay alive. Once I started to understand how to move my character, I hunted down and killed wolves and monsters. This is really all I know about the game so far. I never really left the area I started out in and traveling too much further actually scares me. I hardly know what I am doing in the environment I am in right now, moving to a new, bigger environment just leads to more problems and questions that I do not have the answers to. There were so many things going on all around me (my character) that made me feel disoriented. This game is so very different from the Nintendo Entertainment System that I used to play. With NES, there was usually only one direction to go and I was able to see everything before I got near it. Hopefully I will be able to better navigate my character soon. The graphics of this game are great, especially compared to the games I remember. When I watch someone play the game, it's almost like watching a cartoon on television. Even though I love the graphics, the game still confuses me. For example, I don't understand why a character would need to or want to dance. Dancing seems to serve little purpose in the game. My main concerns right now are learning how to handle my character and finding out what I'm supposed to do in the game. As of right now, if it were not for the fact that I am taking this class, I would never play the game again. But because I am in the class, I am trying to learn about the game and how to play it with patience. Hopefully my next gaming experience will open up new doors of understanding. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 18th, 2005
3:16 pm	First Entry My name is Nicole Granados and I am a Junior at Trinity University. I have never played a MMO before and I am actually nervous about playing World of Warcraft. Video games after the NES system became too complicated for me to enjoy and I fear it will be an issue when playing World of Warcraft. I chose to take the Interactive Multimedia class because I thought it would be interesting and it fulfills my major, Communications. I am a complete "outsider" to the video game/computer gaming world. My younger brother has always been very absorbed by video and computer games and by taking this class I might be able to understand his hobby/lifestyle better. As far as individual identities go, I am a daughter, sister, girlfriend, friend, student, and others. On a social identity level, in this stage of my life, the most important identity to me is student at Trinity University. I have and still am investing time and money into my education here in hopes to one day achieve a "higher" social identity I desire. What identity that is, I'm still not sure. To start off the game I must either choose to be a dwarf or a gnome. I think I will choose to be a gnome. Before I must create my character I will look into these two option more, but at the moment I choose gnome because it just sounds more appealing to me than dwarf. This class will definitely bring me into a world that I have never known before. By entering this world as an "outsider" I hope to learn a lot about MMO's and learn about the gaming culture. (Comment on this)