Author Archives: pmalone3

Interactive Fiction

After watching the video introduction and reading about interactive fiction, I must say it was very hard for me to relate to or even understand what type of games this genre represented. I have never witnessed someone playing these games or even heard about them until now. This leads me to understand why they had not been analyzed until recently.

The idea of this type of game does interest me, but it seems incredibly limited. The fact that these games only recognize certain words could make the “work” difficult and therefore frustrating to complete. However, I find it interesting that it allows the interactor the ability to essentially make the story for themselves. Through the process of typing different words and commands into the computer, they are making the theoretical story for themselves and interacting with the fiction.

This obviously opposes the common form of fiction, books. In fiction, the reader has absolutely no control over what happens in the story. They cannot explore the repercussions of altering the normal route that the main character takes. Although stories can be extremely compelling, they do not offer the ability to delineate from the set path.

Overall, I think the idea of interactive fiction is interesting, but I believe I will need to play or experience one of these works first hand before I truly understand what they are about. Similar to the way fiction in books does not allow you to do some of the things that interactive fiction does, I do not believe reading about interactive fiction gives one the full effect of the IF game itself.

Morality of Videogames

At the beginning of class on Tuesday, we talked a lot about whether or not games that reenacted various events from history were morally OK and the consensus seemed to be that they were not. On the other hand, we said that books that retold such events were morally OK.

I would like to contend that in some ways games are in fact more morally correct then books. As we mentioned in class, books typically draw on internal emotions and in the case of September 11th may give the reader similar or even worse feelings then they experience on that day. This gives the reader no hope; the outcome is the outcome no matter what. The reader can only continue to read until the set ending is reached.

As for the videogame side, they generally represent external actions. If made correctly, a game could allow a played to truly act as though they were on a flight that is destined to crash into the World Trade Center, unless they do something. While a game like this may allow the player to reach a historically incorrect ending, wouldn’t seeing other people on the plane and being able to move about give you a historically accurate perspective of what really occurred on those flights? If a game can in fact do this, then morally isn’t it ok?

It is not striving to give you a false sense of what happened or lie to the game player. If they choose to doom the plane or act irrationally that is simply a part of the game, but the true purposeful winning route would hopefully give the game player a sense of reality. Perhaps, saving all those people in a game would give someone the true feeling of how terrible the loss of one flight of people is. Then, when the player compares this to the actual number of casualties during 9/11, maybe they will actually be able to absorb the entire scope of the attack.

Monotony as a form of Meditation

In Tuesday’s class we obviously focused extensively on the Relaxation chapter of Ian Bogost’s book. Part of the discussion that caught my ear was the way monotonous tasks can induce relaxation along with the introduction of “meditation” games into the videogame genre. The article I found talks briefly about how monotonous tasks increase the alpha activity of the brain. This phenomenon of increased alpha activity has also been seen in the early stages of meditation. Essentially, this means that simple monotonous tasks, such as clicking a mouse repeatedly, can in some way induce a state of relaxation or even meditation.

Keeping it Casual

While reading Juul’s article I couldn’t help but agree with a majority of his ideas about the casual gamer. Most importantly, I believe that his idea about the difficulty of a game is key to the casual gamer’s experience. As I consider myself a casual gamer, the difficulty and time spent playing a game are the fundamental problem I have with many videogames. I dislike spending hours trying to unlock the new level, mission, item, or world and become frustrated and eventually quit playing the game

Expanding on this issue, I believe casual gamers despise the stress and time spent playing the game that “hardcore” games require. The reason for this may be that stress and time use parallel real life feelings that people experience in the workplace and classroom. I personally experience the exact same stress and pressure level while playing a “hardcore” game as I do while writing a paper before a deadline or studying for a big test.

This could certainly be similar for adults in the workplace. The demands they face throughout the day may feel the same as those involved in game play and the reward they receive by being able to go home is similar to that of beating a level in a “hardcore” game. When a game parallels the stress to reward ratio of real life I think casual gamers do not enjoy it. Instead, casual gamers want to achieve a feeling of accomplishment quickly without the long term sense of being weighed down.

Asking the wrong question?

After reading Joel Johnson’s piece about the Foxconn plant and listening to the perspective of our class on Tuesday, I still felt torn as to whether the happenings at the electronics manufacturing giant were right or wrong. Still without a firm conclusion after a day of thought, I began to think perhaps we were asking the wrong question. Maybe we should not hold Foxconn to the standard of being inherently right or wrong. Instead, maybe we should look to see if they have positively improved upon, avoided, or learned from the problems that we view as massive failures in our own industrial revolution.

From this perspective, I feel the company has in fact been doing all we can ask of them. Not only are they improving upon past injustices by creating a much cleaner, healthier work environment (even offering counseling facilities), but they are attempting to better their worker’s lives even more by offering accessible dining and living facilities. Granted, these facilities may be labeled inadequate by some, but isn’t it the attempt that we should value and applaud Foxconn for? Of course, every new plan or program will have its flaws, but if it is in some way more successful or simply less wrong than the previous version, then aren’t we taking a step in the right direction?

Regardless of people’s feelings, with such a large share of the market, it seems Foxconn is here to stay for at least the near future.