Shift to Low-Tech games Bad

With ultra-realistic video games like Call of Duty: Black Ops and Crysis being developed by major video game companies it is surprising to see the strong pull for two dimensional flash games offered by smart phones. The popularity of these games has been a source of concern for video game producers as reported by Joshua Brustein of New York Times.

The emergence of smart phones in the video game market has disturbed the progressing video game experience. With every year, video games become more challenging and more realistic however the recent pull for the games on smart phones has pushed back this development significantly. Video game producers who are creating games based on the progressing video game experience are suffering because of the abnormal trend that hit the video game market due to smart phones.

The smart phone market is forcing video game producers to delegate resources within their company to cater to recent pull to lower quality games. Nintendo, creator of the notorious Super Mario Series and interactive Wii system, told game developers that “smart phones were driving a trend towards lower quality, and economically unsustainable, video games.” These lower quality games are not economical because resources put into creating these game end up losing their appeal relatively quickly whereas a quality game lasts for a longer time.

As a gamer I tend to agree with the Nintendo. Games on smart phones last for a couple weeks before they lose their appeal. I appreciate challenging and realistic games like StarCraft 2 and Call of Duty over overly elementary/repetitive games like Angry Birds. Games like StarCraft 2, ten years from now, will continued to be played which goes back to what Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s chief, says regarding video game development, “Maintaining high value games are top priority.”

Interacting with a Screen

I remember when I was a child, my younger brother and I would sit on the floor of our family room right in front of our television playing our Nintendo 64. Our favorite game was Donkey Kong. If our parents had let us, we would have played the game for hours each day. Of course my mother knew better, in that eventually sitting that close to the t.v. would impair our vision and damage our brains. Today, the world of video gaming is being transformed into an entirely different realm, opening doors for children everywhere.

Recently, Xbox invented new technology that allows video game users to actually interact with their television screens. Instead of sitting on the floor or on the couch while playing, children are required to stand up, move around, and play active games. Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer reported to the New York Times that, "The Kinect technology is a new way of communicating with computers." Despite my addiction to video games as a child, I am no longer an avid video gamer. However, when I was shopping at Best Buy a few weeks ago, the store happened to be doing an interactive demonstration with Xbox Kinect. Children and their parents were lined up to test the new technology. For once, being able to play a video game might actually be something that parents support thanks to this new interactive technology.

Xbox Kinect has certainly been a popular item for children, selling over 8 million machines in the first two months available to consumers. While it certainly provides new opportunities for children, what possibilities does Kinect offer to society as a whole? Truthfully, the technology developed for Kinect will most likely spread into other aspects of our lives, to take over more than just the video game market. Microsoft's computer technicians have already begun developing software similar to the Kinect that would have the capacity to control "home applications." For example, "smart" technology would allow us to create avatars for our homes, just like in the movie "Smart House." We could potentially control our entire house with just one machine that operates itself. Thanks to the Kinect technology we will someday be able to control our entire lives and homes just by waving an arm to relay our message to a remote.

Interactive technology not only opens doors for children in the video gaming world, it also gives adults opportunities to simplify their lives. The possibility of interacting with our technological devices would continue making the work place, education, and communication more fast-paced. While it will obviously take adjustment and change, overtime we will be able to adapt to new technology. Starting with a seed as small as Kinect and video games, our constantly connected society can surely use interactive technology to our advantage.

Trolling and the Evolution of Online Culture

In 2006, eighteen year old Nikki Catsouras crashed her father’s Porsche into a toll booth in Southern California. Authorities arrived at the scene to find Nikki’s dead body and what little remained of the car. Police officers took routine photos of the gruesome accident and closed the case; however, the photos were leaked onto the internet and Mr. Catsouras soon found them in his email inbox.

It was found that the leaked images began circulating on the internet shortly after the accident. An individual then found the photos and took deliberate actions to cause strife in the Catsouras family. Though this story is extremely unfortunate, it is not the only occurrence of an individual taking deliberate actions to evoke the emotions of another. This act, known on the internet as trolling, has become extremely common. Some websites, such as 4chan or Encyclopedia Dramatica, have even embraced the concept.

Trolling, according to the PC Magazine Encyclopedia, is the act of “posting derogatory messages about sensitive subjects on newsgroups and chat rooms to bait users into responding.” These trolls will often insert controversial statements or commit such acts in an attempt to cause the victim to react. Sometimes, trolls will pretend to be genuinely concerned about another individual in order to allow the victim to open up to him or her. The troll will then use this vulnerability to lash out in the most harmful way possible, leaving the victim hurt and defensive.

Many consider trolling to be form of cyber bullying; however, it is a part of online culture and a standard mode of behavior for many internet users. Websites exist that teach individuals to troll and, often times, trolls are considered the “popular” people of internet videogames. Unfortunately, the internet culture of trolling has begun to cross the lines from the internet to real life. Such was the case with the Catsouras family.

I was inspired to write about trolling because, as an avid videogame player, I have noticed a drastic increase in troll behavior on many social videogames. Previously positive gaming environments have turned into cesspools of social degradation. Instead of having normal conversations, people would mention crude or controversial subjects just to begin arguments. I found that I could no longer find a friend as easily as I had in previous years, and that most individuals I encountered only wished to evoke a negative emotional response from me.

Perhaps trolling has become more common due society’s increased reliance on the internet. The more people use the internet, the easier it is for one to have an impact on its users. Perhaps individuals believe that it is easier to have a negative lasting impact on an individual than a positive one. Whatever the reason, trolling and internet abuse is a looming concern for millions of internet users. Perhaps if we take a stand against these internet abusers, we may make a difference in this social decline.

A New Perspective on Gamers

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of a gamer? Face it; you think about a pale-skinned, antisocial guy who spends a majority of his time playing a video game like World of Warcraft--at least I do. It wasn’t until I saw a 2006 report on 60 Minutes, titled Cyber Athlete Fatal1ty, that my view of gamers changed drastically.

Correspondent Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes introduces the best cyber competitor in America, a man in his mid twenties by the name of Jonathan Wendel, better known by his gamertag Fatal1ty. During an era when parents and experts discourage an extensive amount of video game playing, Wendel is making a living as a professional gamer. Over his six year career, Wendel earned over $300,000 in tournaments and was projected to make an additional million dollars from his “Fatal1ty” products. Wendel is one of many cyber athletes who are emerging from an increasingly popular sport: professional gaming.

As outrageous as that statement sounds, every sport has a beginning and its share of skepticism. Who would have thought that throwing a ball into a basket would become the global attraction known as basketball? The same can be said for soccer, which is basically eleven guys competing to kick a ball into a box. Professional gaming is an up-and-coming sport that has already hit its stride in South Korea, where Starcraft tournaments attract 100,000 viewers. Its top players make hundreds of thousands of dollars in addition to being some of the most adored people in Korea.

In 2006, 60 Minutes anticipated that the competitive gaming scene would hit America soon, just as extreme sports had done a decade earlier. Today, professional gaming exists on a much larger scale. South Korea is still home to some of the highest level Starcraft gamers, and the recent release of Starcraft 2 brought even more players and craze to cyber gaming. Major League Gaming, the governing body of cyber gaming in America, hosts tournaments attracting a plethora of cyber athletes.

This new perspective has been quite illuminating for me. I always thought that gamers were people who did not have their priorities in the right order, and I never thought that they could make a living from gaming. Little did I know that there was a world where people play video games for a living. I cannot help but feel envious of them; after all, is it not everyone’s desire to find a fun job that they love? As much as we’d like to deny it, Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel has fulfilled that desire.

List of Sources: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/19/60minutes/main1220146.shtml?tag=mncol;lst;6

No More Make-Believe: the Death of Healthy Childhoods

When I was a kid, all of my spare time was spent reading or playing. Winters were spent curled up in front of the fire reading every book I could get my hands on and summers were spent running around outside, practically naked, for every moment of daylight. Stories in my head came alive in make-believe games; everything I did came from my imagination and was brought to life with my bare hands and with whatever I could turn into toys or props to enact my stories. My friends and I made hundreds of miniature fairy villages out of stones, twigs, and leaves, dressed ourselves up as pirates, princes and princesses, and romped through the mud until we became brown mud-monsters that were not allowed anywhere near the white furniture. This was my entire childhood; there was no Internet, no television, and no constant input of media. I was always happy, energetic, and, albeit constantly muddy, healthy.

Now, I look at my ten-year-old sister and how she is growing up. She was introduced to the Internet and television when she was about seven years old. I watched her slowly become more and more addicted to online games, social gaming networks for kids, education software, and Disney TV shows on Youtube. It’s as if her entire daily focal point is on the computer in the living room. She tunes the entire world out for hours everyday and her eyes gloss over as her brain hooks into the world of cyberspace. Getting her to just look up and focus on us when we are talking to her is a struggle.

Instead of using and expanding her imagination by reading and playing, my sister spends the majority of her leisure time online. I worry that all of the media is adversely effecting her development. I am not sure to what extent the constant connection is affecting her neurological responses, but I do know that her personality and reactions to social situations are extremely different from my own personality and reactions when I was her age. She is extremely volatile; after being constantly stimulated by media all day, any extraneous stimulation or stress throws her into a completely over-stimulated state. Temper tantrums are frequent and her real-life friendships suffer as she spends less and less time playing in person with her friends; they all have their own online gaming accounts and choose to spend their time together via the computer.

My experience of endless outdoor playtime and make-believe seems to be a foreign concept to my sister’s generation. In the book After the death of Childhood; Growing up in the Age of Electronic Media, David Buckingham explores this idea of the misplacement or loss of healthy childhoods. He explores the argument that electronic media is causing the disappearance or “death” of the type of childhood I had. Buckingham also touches on the idea that there is an ever-growing gap between different generation’s relationships with media and technology. He points out that the lines of what defines "childhood" are getting progressively fuzzy as the constant influence of media catapults children into pre-mature adulthood. 

The thing that is the most disturbing to me is that the amount of time my sister spends online is below the average of all of her friends and other kids her age. Everywhere I look, kids are plugged into their iPads, cell phones, laptops, Wii video games, etc., instead of spending their time actively playing with real-life toys and friends. My question is that is the world of cyberspace forcing healthy, playful childhoods into the backseat, or even destroying them all together? Can children develop properly with the constant stimulation from all of the surrounding media? I worry for the repercussions of this on my sister’s generation. 

~Cherise Glodowski

A Virtual Reality

The BBC reported that in 2009, a South Korean couple returned home from a local internet cafe to find their infant daughter dead in her crib. The couple called the police and lied about their previous whereabouts, stating that they had found their daughter after waking up in the morning. The case was placed under investigation and a later autopsy determined that the infant had starved to death after suffering from long term malnutrition. Further investigation found that this couple had constantly left their daughter home alone, only to return once a day to give the child a single bottle of milk. The couple was arrested in March of 2010.

Authorities later found that the couple spent both day and night at a local internet café, raising a virtual daughter instead of their own. In essence, this couple was constantly connected to their video game. They had become so immersed in this game that they ignored anything unrelated to it. This couple was playing a massive multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. An MMORPG is a genre of computer role-playing games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world. This genre includes games such as World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy and Prius Online. Such games allow players to customize their character’s appearance, actions and behaviors. These players are then immersed into a unique virtual world and are allowed to grow as a character and form relationships with other players. To many, these games offer an opportunity to reinvent oneself in a virtual world and can become very addicting.

One might ask how a video game can become addicting enough to inadvertently kill one’s own child? Police officer Chung Jin-won told reporters that the Korean couple "lost their will to live a normal life" after losing their jobs. Prius Online gave them the opportunity to escape to a new world, one which they could easily control and live happily; however, the couple became lost in the game and forgot about their daughter and their lives at home.

The incident in South Korea certainly demonstrates the destructive nature of video games and their addictiveness. I, however, am one of the 15 million people who play these games each year and I, like most individuals, am able to lead a normal, healthy life. I believe that MMORPGs, like any activity, have various positive qualities when taken in moderation. They provide many new opportunities to video gamers and offer new ways to form friendships over long distances. Such video games have also been found to relieve stress and foster prosocial behaviors. These positive qualities may cause the addicting nature of MMORPGs; however, it is rare that events like those in South Korea that should serve as a warning to the potential danger of being constantly connected.

My Cat is Better Than Yours

iPhone applications (commonly known as apps) have come a long way since when they first debuted as primarily a tool for the investor and entrepreneur. However, with an ever active community of hackers and developers, the app library of the iPhone and iPad now has some off the most addictive games ever created (admit it, you’ve all spent hours playing those games). Soon, people started making games not for the iPhone owner, but rather their children. Disney games soon started to populate people’s devices, and children soon started to want their parent’s iPods to play those games. Now who would have thought that the next natural step would have been to create games for one’s pets, specifically cats! Well according to developer Nate Murray (developer of the now popular Game for Cats), it is indeed the future.

The idea of the games are simple, entertain your pet with your electronic devices. Apps such as Game for Cats, App for Cats, or Cat Toy are all currently on iTunes available for download. Conceptually, all of these games are the same, some kind of sprite moving around a screen. What’s interesting is how successful these apps seem to be. If you had told me even 5 years ago that one day this would be the future even I would have been skeptical. 5 years ago I would have never guessed that our society would become that dependent on their electronic devices to even rely as forms of entertainment for our pets.

However, watching this shift in culture has been interesting. I wonder if in the future when holograms become all the rage, will they be an acceptable form of entertainment, for both people and pets? Will one day people give up actual adventures into the woods to be replaced by journeys to places recreated purely by technology? Does this represent a fundamental shift in how people are now going to spend their time, forever getting more and more addicted to their portable electronic devices?

Photo Credits: http://www.thevine.com.au/resources/imgthumb/cat-ipad-fun-thumb_190410103144.jpg

 -Peter Yao

Lost in a Digital World

With ever growing numbers of people beginning to play online video games there has been an increasing trend in gamers becoming “addicted” to playing. Online games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest, are well known for having addictive properties. These games both fall under the category of MMORPG’s, massive multiplayer online role-playing games, and as such they do not have a fixed ending like most console based single player games, which are played offline. MMORPG’s are all carried out online and in many cases players are required to team up in the game and work together to achieve a common goal, which would be impossible for a single player, such as killing an extremely powerful boss or opening a door that requires numerous switches to be activated at the same time. I formerly played World of Warcraft and found the game to be very engrossing. I would not go so far as to say I was addicted, but I did spend large amounts of time playing on a regular, if not daily, basis.

In order for gaming to be considered an “addiction” the five main criteria are; salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse (Grusser et al. 2007). In a recent study 12% of gamers surveyed fulfilled three of these five criteria for addiction with regards to their gaming habits (Grusser et al. 2007). Gaming addictions are now thought to follow the same patterns as alcoholism and compulsive gambling, although simply spending large amounts of time playing video games does not necessarily mean that one is addicted (Chappell et al. 2006). While video games can take up large amounts of time, they have been proven to relieve stress and to provide players with an escape from their daily lives in a positive way.