Hyperidentities

MMORG- Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. The most incredible phenomena to appear in recent years of interactive entertainment. In MMORG, there's no need for strict diets, exhausting exercise programs or cosmetic surgeries. The article elaborates on EverQuest where the action takes places in a land called Norrath. The game allows you to customize your avatar's appearance, class and personality traits. Throughout the game, you interact with other gamers' avatars and level up your character so he/she can become stronger and explore more of the game's environment. It's easy to notice that the MMORPG user situation is an idealized image of the situation of the postmodern human creature, in which the user can freely shape his own "self." According to Edward Castronova, the process of developing avatar capital seems to invoke the same risk and reward structures in the brain that are invoked by personal development in real life. The article accurately states that role-playing is one of the social life's rudimentary elements, and used in our everyday functioning.

The author mentions that identity is described as a rhizome. This model is a centerless universe that rejects any form of hierarchy and centralization while tending toward anarchy. Current games such as Final Fantasy 11 have continued to evolve MMORPGS by presenting detailed avatars with specific personalities, ethnicity, class, interaction with other characters and the amount of sidequest to icrease their combat stats. Other games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 have perfected FPS with MMORPG by allowing players to interact with one another in numerous maps, level up by killing other players to earn points to unlock and customize weapons and perks, earning trophies for acting out specific things in the game and countless hours of competition.

Archtypes on Acid

This article discusses the evolution of video games and its effect on players'. The author, Rebecca Tews, points out that the home market has outstripped the arcade market. Men and women feel more comfortable playing video games in their home rather than wait in line to put quarters in the machine just to enjoy the game for several minutes. Gamers dont have to feel rushed to reach the end when playing a game at home. Early research in the 1980s observed video games as a youth phenomenon. At the time, this may have been true but many adults play video games and share the experience with their children as a family fun interactive entertainment. B.F. Skinner demonstrated that most organisms will perform repetitive behaviors for little reinforcement. This theory parallels with gaming because the game environments reinforce the player for improving responses with additional points or to move up on a higher level. With violent, aggressive or antisocial games, we are reinforced for aggressive, quick thinking, blood thirsty behavior. Nowadays, games have reached new levels to bring out strong reactions from gamers that play violent, thrilling scary games.

Carl Jung argues that all societies share primitive and basic understanding of the world through archtypes that appear in our arts, dreams, and metaphors. Video games bring out particular behaviors from the player that reflects how engaged the player is to game environment. These behaviors include cursing at a failure, berating their poor choice of solutions, praising themselves for their success or acting out frustration on the equipment when progress is slow. This is common for players whom have broken their controllers or directed their frustration to people around them. Games that date back from the 1980s continue to present the same archtype where the conflict between the "good" characters seek fulfillment from the environment and avoiding evil characters.

Hot Dates and Fairy-Tale Romances

Upon reading the article, it helped me notice several things about FF9 and The Sims that I never paid attention too. I owned FF9 back when it first came out and it was a good game but it never occurred to me at the time that Zidane was animated with feminine features. According to Mia Consalvo, Zidane is represented as feminized by his long hair, phsycially small in stature, clothes with lace and a lack of muscles. Not to mention having a tail which didnt help him either. However, Zidane is persistent in maintaining his hetersexuality by acting girl crazy and pursuing his love interest, Princess Garnet. This act makes him still worthy of being a normal (heterosexual and male) hero. The article points out the erotic triangle theory. According to the theory, two men in a buddy action movie compete over a woman who is either single or the girlfriend of one of the males. Both men suddendly try to compete for the woman and their interactions become more intense as they vie for dominance. But ultimately they are not as interested in the relationship with the woman as they are intheir relationship with each other. Both guys displace their feelings for each other into the safe area of friendly competition over a woman.

But Mia Consalvo points out that if a gay male or heterosexual female plays FF9, their identity with the character, Zidane, becomes more difficult as they are forced to flirt with another woman (Garnet). In regards to the Sims, it's said that players have an option to only have heterosexual sims characters. Although heterosexual couples in the sims have the privledge to get married and have a baby, a gay couple is retricted from marriage and must wait for the game to decide when they can go to an adoption agency to adopt a child. I've never played The Sims but I found that a bit shocking and interesting that a popular game like that actually did that.

Surrogates

After watching Surrogates, it really made me think about how far technology has evolved. Watching this movie was like seeing a reflection of our world. Instead of robots, society is addicted to the internet. Almost everything is done electronically. The movie centers around Tom (Bruce Willis) who is a cop that sets out to find a killer who murders the son of the surrogates creator. He accomplishes this by using a powerful gun made by the company that builds Surrogates that fries the robot and its operater. The movie says that with your surrogate, you can be anyone, do anything and live the life you always wanted. What I found disturbing is every operator except for Bruce Willis lay on their seat plugged in to their surrogates for most of their days. Their surrogates would do all their work while they lay on that seat plugged in. That was very strange and it showed the strong addiction they had with technology. Of course, this movie also parallels with Existenz in the aspect of plugging in to your avatar. Several scenes looked out of this world with how advanced technology was and the surrogates were lifelike. It's a movie that is worth your money.

Art Form for the Digital Age

Dr. Jenkins quotes "So are video games a massive drain on our income, time and energy? A new form of "cultural pollution," as one U.S. senator described them? The "nightmare before Christmas?" As I read through the first page, I found those questions amusing and funny at the same time for the public's narrowminded mentality of video games. It's interesting to acknowldge the parallel Dr. Jenkins address about video games and cinema. He states that critics were suspicious of cinema's commercial motivations and technological origins, concerned about Hollywood's appeals to violence and eroticism, and insistent that cinema had not yet produced works of lasting value. What critics were not aware of during the rise of cinema is that actor's work restricted to release their names and show more emotion than needed through silent films because Hollywood companies didn't want the actor's to gain power.

He mentions that games represent a new art, one as appropriate for the digital age as those earlier media were for the machine age. Video games open up new aesthetic experiences and transform the computer screen into a realm of experimentations and innovation that is broadly accessibly. I fully support this because throughout the past decade we have seen game characters evolve from pixelated shapes to actual animated human beings with emotional expressions. We have seen other genres emerge that introduces peripherals that helps the player feel more involved; hence Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution and Rock Band. We have seen games with incredible storyline and graphics that has shocked the gaming world to its core. An evolution to multiplayer that once was accessible in E3 cafes and now available in your own living room.

What is true about this article is that games help children spark their imaginations, taking them to new worlds. No longer can they go outside and play because of the constant fear parents have of their children killed in a drive-by shootout or kidnapping. Appropriate video games gives children to opportunity to explore a fun world and solve puzzles. It's nice to see that video games are beginning to be viewed as more than just a "waste of time."

It's a Video Game, Certainly, but Is It Art?

This article left me amazed after reading it. It's a relief that a professional like Dr. Jenkins perceives video game as an art form. According to Dr. Jenkins, in 1999, the domestic box office revenues totaled $7.3 billion, while video game software sales brought in $6.2 billion. He believes that this digital age of video games will soon shake off its label as a diversion for adolescent boys. For a long time, video games has a waste of time that drains away a kid's opportunity to be productive. But now the media is paying much more attention to games by adapting them to film such as Hitman, Resident Evil series, the upcoming Prince of Persia, Doom, etc. Dr. Jenkins states that video games still have yet to reach the same artistic level of movies. That is human emotion. He quotes "I rarely play a video game that makes me cry." I have been told by others that the only game that has achieved that type of emotion from the player is Final Fantasy 7. Simply do to the strong story line. I have seen parts of the game and I can say there is strong human relationship among the characters.

Dr. Jenkins mentions that 10 yrs ago his students wanted to direct films but now they are more interested in being game designers than movie makers. That says a lot about video game's history of achievement. Since the 1980s, games have continuously pushed the boundaries to make the player feel more engaged in the gameplay and story itself. To feel lost in the fantasy created by the developers. Over time, games and movies are beginning to parallel with eachother. However, the only term that sticks to peoples mind about video games is "violence." The majority of games have to do with killing. Although developers have managed to soften that concept by justifying that it's ok for players to kill nazis, zombies, mercenaries, etc., game developers such as Infinitry Ward are attempting a move to make players feel uncomfortable about killing. But that is yet to be seen.

What the Bleep Do We Know?

What the Bleep Do We Know turned out to be an interesting documentary that links with the laws of physics. Everything that was discussed was applied to the story of a deaf female photographer whose husband cheated on her causing her view herself and the world in a pessimistic perspective. Eventually, she began to experience strange interesting things in her life which helped her love herself and the world around her. The video states that human thoughts can shape the image of water which was quite intriguing. The documentary had scenes of animated characters and their interaction inside the human body. I found the scenes of the wedding somewhat entertaining. The experts also spoke about how our eyes are like projectors that captures an image. As we close our eyes, we can still view the image as if we were staring at it with our eyes open. This documentary is not something I would watch on my own time but it was nonetheless education.