Dude looks like a lady March 27, 2007

Or, more aptly, avatar looks like a lady, but I’ll get to that later.

Video games, just because I don’t know much about them doesn’t mean that they don’t fascinate me. As stated before, my time deficit has really stopped me from enjoying the multiple hours of multiple player fun that I could have been having while I was instead wasting my time on academic essays. But once I graduate, it’ll be a life of gaming for me…until my parents kick me out.

Of all the articles, the Jakobsson & Taylor on about EverQuest peaked my interest the most. As a die-hard RPG fan (can you says Paper Mario?!), I’ve always found the ability to fall in love with a game that has a plot but it wasn’t until my first encounter (think 1995) with online gaming that I realized a game’s very nature is changed when other unpredictable people are a vital part of your gaming success. Like the article discussed, the gaming becomes more like applying group-devised strategy to chat room interaction…only now it’s more than chat room interaction, you have a physical character on the screen of most of these (post text-based) games, also known as an avatar. Therefore, just as social capital and cultural capital are very useful resources in chat rooms, blogging and other interactive online activities, they have become imperative to successful online gaming. As this article highlights the importance of abiding by norms, building a good reputation, and building social networks, it becomes easy to see how real life skills are essential to successful multiplayer gaming.

Which brings me to the topic I’ve been dying to talk about, this falls under the relevant category of lived experience pertaining to video games. As we all know, video games can become popular by gaining hype and, like everything else that’s popular, it usually doesn’t matter whether the hype is good or bad, hence the way many of us played Doom when we were obviously too young to be killing horned goat demons. In the same way, I was told to stay away from Second Life; that it’s weird and the people who spend all their time on it are pathetic and need to get more fresh air, and people always scrunched up their faces when talking about it. Then one day, I decided to just do it anyway, I was looking for kicks and I wanted to see this grotesque spectacle with the many ‘losers’ who pay homage to it.

Typed in the website, created an avatar, downloaded the free software, studied for a midterm, and then double clicked on the icon. BAM. Suddenly, I am this character running around on the screen who can fly (how cool is that?!) and, even though it’s 1am, there are at least 10 other people in the same area as me (and 1 million in other areas). I can talk to them, I can learn the rules of the game through interactive training challenges, I’m given some spending money and I have the ability to change my appearance. Alright, so now it’s like, ‘fine stef, you discovered a game, good for you, get to the point” … WELL, here are the highlights condensed for your reading pleasure:
- you can look ANY way you want, this means instantly changing your body shape, size, hair, clothes, etc. It’s so different from real life (RL) where you need to jog every day for a month to just get rid of 5lbs
- I arbitrarily picked an avatar of the opposite sex, mainly because a lot of the females looked scary or skanky, and so it was very weird to go through a game where people treat your avatar as YOU and to be a man, which is not me. I really didn’t know how to respond when people said gendered things to me. I found myself pondering gender and power relations as a result of this.
- the vast amount of opportunity is almost overwhelming. If I were researching this game and the way it works, my juiciest bit of field notes to date would be about a conversation I had with someone online. I asked, so what can you do in Second Life (SL)? She responded, “You have two options, you can do in SL what you do in RL … or you can do in SL what you can’t do in RL.” I then made my avatar run away incase she was expecting me to pick the second option, if you know what I mean.

The point is this: millions (5 million+ on SL alone) of people are playing these types of games for huge amounts of time. Why would someone forsake their RL in order to spend hours in SL? Perhaps because of the opportunities the game gives. Not only are social capital and cultural capital a huge part of this game, like in EverQuest, but you are given more ways to gain them. More than just purchasing things, you can sell them, you can write programs to make your own objects and advertise them, you can gain capital by manipulating your appearance in a split second, and you can get to know millions of other people. Perhaps the rapid expansion of the popularity of these games is connected to the idea that they allow you to gain more capital in easier and more fun ways than you can in real life. Therefore, those who are disenchanted with their first lives find an environment where they easily excel.

But don’t worry, I won’t quit my day job, my computer keeps crashing every time I play for more than an hour.
If you don’t want to risk going to the website and getting hooked, here’s a pretty good clip I found about the game:

Random Poll #2 March 26, 2007

Question A:
What is your favourite ‘video game’? This includes online games, flash games, shareware (if you remember that!), gaming console games, etc.

Question B (for if you don’t have a game crutch to pass time with):
What do you think about the LARGE AMOUNT of media coverage of environmental issues in the media since 2007 began?

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There, that’s officially the end of the post, since people don’t like reading really long entries. However here are my answers just incase you’re curious (or incase you’re enraged that I can expect people to write back when I won’t spend the time on it and you’re feeling rather deprived of my opinion on the matter).

Question A: Fav game
Well, I have been known to be an RPG junkie, as addressed in an earlier post about BBS games, but since post-secondary I’ve pretty much had that preoccupation diminish. This is primarily due to being too broke to upgrade my shoddy N64 with its 5 games to one of the newer consoles but also a consequence of the lack of time.
However, the other day I was sooo stressed and annoyed and bored (from school, what else) that I used Stumble Upon(TM) and found the most delightful flash game. Not only does it combine very simple controls with huge point amounts, it also has soothing classical music in the background and BUNNIES. It’s called Winterbells, check it out.

Completely unrelated to my bunny madness is my recent experience with Second Life, which I will probably devote a whole entry to. Every time I learn more about it, it blows my mind – not in the ‘what a wicked game’ way but in the ‘man this is messed up but I still want to play it’ way.

Question B: The environment and crappy sappy CBC continual coverage.
This morning I woke up to someone recounting their experience in one of Al Gore’s environmental boot camps. Apparently, he personally holds training sessions to equip people to ’spread the word’ (actual phrase used in broadcast) about global warming. He divulged strategies for subtly bringing up the subject with friends. Much of the conversation, which I groggily took in, sounded like the top ten ways to become evangelical… about the environment.

I guess I don’t exactly view that as a bad thing. I think as people are becoming more and more disenchanted with organized religion, they have passion leftover for political/activist causes and might as well use it – AND if the strategies used in religious movements work, then alright. I’m a Captain Planet kid, I cried during Fern Gully, I’ve known all along that we need to practice the 3 (or 4) Rs and learn how to reduce our ‘environmental footprint’ … I guess I’m just getting kind of depressed hearing that none of my personal awareness is paying off, it’s not making a difference, we’re still all going to fry in the global warming hell.

So the media coverage is becoming more of what I’ve heard before and I change the channel because I already know what they’re going to say. But I’m hoping (and seeing) that it does eventually have a bottom up effect, which causes the big environmental players (corporations and governments) to think again. Heck, with all these people tired of hearing about global warming, there is no way anyone will get away with polluting. The media helps us be pissed off about the issue, I guess, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.

An aside: I filled out the Globe and Mail University Survey and flunked the U of L on its environmental practices. If we want to talk about the little people making a difference, I really think the students need to rally for some changes: recycling bins for paper cups (i.e. coffee cups!), styrofoam, and cardboard in every hallway; less wrapping on the food sold (i.e. the sandwich in a wrapper that’s in a cardboard box that has a separate identifying piece of paper); more motion-sensor lights so we don’t keep everything lit up all the time (i.e. the blinding light of the Wealth and Hellness Centre can be seen as I drive home from the bar at 2am), etc. So what can be done? Hmm?