I want to start of my last blog by saying that I enjoyed this class. Since our last class I decided to do a little research on WOW and my last blog is going to be about how can people become so obsessed with WoW then end up becoming sick of the game after a time. This might sound stupid but what I have found is that WoW is just like any other game. Yes their fans might be more intense but it is just like other games and people still get burned out. In my research I have found many videos of WoW player flipping out after losing or their characters getting killed (really funny). Anyways these people seem to be so involved in the game that after a devastating loss the user start to lose interest. Another reason for this lost of interest is the user plays Wow so much that they not longer gain a challenge from the gamer and start to loss interest. This is what happens to many of the gold farmers in the Dibbell articles. I have a roommate that use to play Wow and I asked him why he stopped and his response was that he played so much that he had lost interest in the game because after a while he felt like the game did not change after a while.

            This complete by my room ate is a valid one but WoW has taken steps to stop this loss of use. Unlike other video games WoW adapts and changes its game play slightly over time so to keep the game new. This is an ingenious strategy is the reason for WoW prominence in the gaming world and is the reason why WoW will continue to thrive in this technology age.

            I hope everyone has enjoyed all my blogs throughout the semester because I know I enjoyed reading everybody else’s. Also this class was great and I hope to be in class with everybody again.

Sincerely Lyman

 The Dibbell article that we read about the Chinese works was one of the most interesting pieces that we have read all year. It amasses me that a person can play video games for a living. In the article Dibbell talks about how the gold farmers after awhile loss there interest in the game. This is not a surprise occurrence to me as a person who played a fair amount of video games in high school I found out that after a while I begin to loss interest in the game after awhile and would need to switch to a new game. What is amazing to me is how the gold farmers continue to play the game after they have lost their interest in it, at least for me when I loss interest in a game I can’t even force myself to play anymore. But I guess that the gold farmer is the optimal of a job and not a career.

            The second thing that I would like to talk about is the amount of time people put into WoW. It seemed from the article that for people who did play for 12 hours a day they would not have much time for work, sleep and school. This to me is one of the bad effects of video games because it allows people to interact through a computer screen and not in real life leading to people who can not function as normal people in society.

           For my blog I decide to discuses Fifa 10 in honor of the world cup draw happening today and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. While these two games are very different I believe they will work well with my blog.

           First things first here are some background on the games. Fifa 10 was released in 2009 by EA Sports it is part of a long series of Fifa games that come out every year. Fifa 10 is a sports simulation type game where you are a manager of a soccer club. Grand theft auto: San Andreas was the 5 games in the GTA series and was one of the most successful. It was released in 2004 by rock star North. The game play of GTA is a third person shooter.

            Between these two games there are some similarities and some differences. Lets start with the similarities. The first major similarity is that machine acts in both gamers are very similar. Fro example in Fifa the computer controls the weather and the time of the day this is also true for GTA. Another similarity is that in the game play of the matches in Fifa the user is in the third person and in GTA the user is always in the third person.

            The differences in the games is that in GTA you can only play as one player where in Fifa you can switch between players and clubs for a Varity of different game play. Secondly the story in GTA is important but not necessary. For example you cannot follow the story line and just run around the virtual city doing what ever you want and still have fun. While in Fifa you must follow a strict story line, the story line is based off of a schedule and you must follow this schedule to be able to play. The third differences is the amount of characters that the user can use in GTA the user can only use one player despite the abundance of different characters in the game. In Fifa the user can use any character in the game with no restrictions.

            I hope you enjoyed my breakdown of Fifa 10 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. If anyone is looking for anything to do tomorrow I have a squash match at 2 against university of Toronto and it should be a fun time.

 Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. In reading the Murry article I came to realize every game has a story. This requirement of a story can be small and seemingly in consequential or it can be a key part to the story line. One example that Murry points out how Tetris has a story line. While Murry does not go into details about the story line I think I am able to grasp her reasoning for her idea. I have come up with two aspects of Tetris that so a story line. The first is the blocks on the bottom they tell a story of your past success and failures. The second aspects of Tetris that shows a storyline is the levels, The levels show a story line because when you achieve a new one many times you think back a think about how easy the level before was this happens particularly more often when the user loses. The Tetris style story line is not a common type of story line used in games most games use a complex storyline. One group of these types of games would be the Fifa series of video games. While some people do not see Fifa as having a complex storyline I disagree. Fifa story line is based are the management of a soccer club and the achievements of bettering your team through acquiring player and cup/League wins. So in doing this blog I have come up with a challenge. The challenge is to find a game that does not have any type of story line to it.

 In class yesterday we talked about how race is portrayed in media and especially in video games. In this blog I want to reinforce my feelings on this subject. I feel that people who say that video games purposely promote racist stereotypes are just trying to cause an issue out of something that is not. I feel that video games to the best of their ability try to show the reality of the issue. The best example of this is sports games like Fifa and Madden where you play as an actual people.

            Many people say that games truly promote racism when a player designs a character that is not like themselves. An example of this is to say a teenage white user creates a black character that has tattoos and piercing. While some people would say that the game is promoting racist views I disagree. The reason why I disagree is because when I create a character in a game I try to make it in an image of a person that I want to be and I feel that most people do the same type character creating.

            It was also brought up in class on how media promotes stereotypes this was shown in the slide that had advertisements and another person playing basketball. All these images were depicting an African American person performing a task. This was brought up that all these items were promoting a racist image. I disagree with this comment with one exception, which is the advertisement. My argument is that besides the advertisements all these images show a truth or what a person what people to preseeve as a truth. While I see that the advertisement as racist I would like to point out that there are plenty of advertisements that depict a white person that could be considered racist. This idea that an image of a majority can still be a racists symbol was disputed in class when someone said it needs to be a image of an minority for something to be racist. I disagree I found a definition that says racism is “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race” (m-w.com). This proves to me racism can be shown in anyone and because of that it is not promoted in video games when they show realities.

 Sorry for missing my last post I have been sick for the past couple of days. The article Mattathais Schwartz was the most interesting article that I have read all year. In this article Schwartz talks about cyber trolls. I found my-self going from complete hatred towards trolls to wonderment of what trolls accomplish on the Internet. After finishing the article I came to find myself wondering how any person can be so proficient at the internet to be able to accomplish just one task that the author talks about. The part that really scared me was when the author made the comment that the troll Weez was able to get the authors social security. This made me think about someone figuring out my social security number and opening up an account in my name this made me consider going to one of those free credit report sites but I then decided against it because I felt that they were the places where the trolls most likely get their info from. This brings me to another point in some ways trolls are the best of the Internet users and at the same time the worst. Trolls to me push the bounders of what is possible on the Internet but at the same time people like fortunately and Weez take these bonders way to far.

            My questions for this blog are how does someone become a troll and how do trolls function.

            This article was so compelling that it made me go to encyclopedia dramitica to see what trolls are all about. Hopefully see you in class tomorrow.

 Lyman 

 Now I am not a racist and many of you will not agree with comments but that is what is great about this country. The article High Tech Blackface -- Race, Sports

Video Games and Becoming the Other by David J. Leonard I found very offensive and it seemed as though the author was looking to find an issue that would cause controversy not only in the video game world but in the large scale of race politics.

            The author said many things that I found deeply disturbing. One of these was the way he approached the topic of African Americans in sport games. It seemed from the beginning. While I cannot refute the claim that white characters are more prevalent in video games, the author makes it seem as though the video game industry has conspired in away to only show African Americans in a bad light.

            Another problem that I have with the articles it argument that the makers of NFL Street use the “getto” field as a symbol of the typical place where African Americans play football. As a person who has grown up with football being the major sport that he watched and played as a kid I can tell you that these sciences are very common. As a kid we would play football where ever we could I have been known to even play on the top level of parking garages (personal my favorite place to play). This is a Caucasian kid who played on a parking garage with his friends; this parking garage is similar to the places where the video game NFL Street has its characters play in.

My third issue is the comment “A study by Fair Play concluded that eighty percent of African American sports competitors engaged in verbally and physically aggressive behavior, compared to fifty-seven percent of white characters” (Leonard 3). This upsets me because you look at the games that African Americans are the most prevalent in are games like Madden and NBA game that are violent by nature. To say that video games portray blacks as more violent then whites is not fair because African Americans are more prevalent in sports games that are violent by nature like football while Caucasians are in a Varity of games such as golf where violence is absent from the game.

My final issue with this article involves the comment, “the voice Chick Hearn ‘the mustard is off the hot dog’ or the voice of any number of announcers that habitually condemn and demonize (black) athletes for excessive celebration” (Leonard 3).  To this I get really upset because these comments are no directed at the person just because of their race but because they have made a bad play or were being stupid. As you can probable tell this comment has really upset me because there is no truth in this comment it is just a person trying to use examples to further their agenda.

            As I reread this blog I have not addressed a question so here are my questions the first is who is this author and what is his background. The second question is how was the study involving black athletes in video games taken and what games did the study focus on.

 After reading the transmedia blog post on the Koji taco stand I thought I would enlighten the class on buffalo best late night snack. It is called Jim’s Steakout or as we buffaloians call it Jim’s. Jim’s is the one place where young Buffaloians go after being away from buffalo for a while. I have been eating Jim’s since I was little and have never looked back since. At Jim’s there only two things that a person gets late night one is the chicken finger sub (my favorite) and the other is the six year in a row buffalo’s best steak hoggie. The reason why Jim’s is not just a amazing place to eat but also a transmedia place is a fairly new item on their menu its called the stinger. I have never had the stinger and in fact it was invented while I have been away from college. The stinger is also interesting because it does not show up on the menu. For the past months I have been getting emails and texts from my friends at home about how good the stinger is and how it is the best item ever. Right now you might be wondering what is a stinger from what I have heard the stinger is the combination of Jim’s two most popular items the chicken finger sub and the steak hoggie. This my sound weird and discussing to you it did for me when I first heard about it but my friends say that it is really good. Another example of how Jim’s and the stinger are becoming transmedia legends, about five days ago I was talking with my best friend from home named Phil. Phil goes to Boston College and I had called him to talk about coming up for a weekend before I knew it the conversation switched to things that we love about Buffalo and what do you know Jim’s and the stinger were the first things to come up. Phil said that he found the stinger was weird and was completely a wrong thing to do with two great items. While I understood I said everything at Jim’s looks weird and wrong but everything is so good. Anyways Phil tried to persuaded me to not try the stinger and guess what I am and its going to be the first thing I do when I get back to Buffalo. Know you know the greatness of Jim’s and if anyone is in Buffalo and wants to experience a true buffalo classic then go to Jim’s on Elmwood and Bidwell and get the Chicken finger sub who knows I might even see you there.

 In the 2008 New York Times article “Serving Up Television Without the TV Set” the author Brian Stelter discusses the effect the Internet will have on the television.  Stelter does not really take a side on what will be the future of the television but he does point out many interesting peaces of information. One point that Stelter makes is that the profits that companies make off of Internet advertisements will never come close to the profits made off of television advertisements. Stelter also draws to the readers’ attention to web sites like hulu.com where viewers can watch TV shows from their computers. In this article there are few questions that one could ask but there are also some very obvious questions. My first question is what is the future of the television in regard to the internet is the television going to be taken down by the internet like the television took down the movies. My second question is regarding the future of advertisement on TV shows shown on the Internet.

 In my last post I focus on what the future of movies. In the first post I talk how I am not the type of person that goes to websites after movies to figure out plots. In the past couple of days I have talked to many people and they also seem to have a similar pattern to watching movies. For this reason of how people are not likely to look at movie information after a movie I disagree with the people who believe that movies are moving towards this style of movies. While some people points out recent movies such as Cloverfield and the Matrix three of movies where you need go to web sites to figure out the plot of the movie. To the people who think movies like Cloverfield is the future I point out that these types of movies are in the minority and that in recent year there has not been a major movie that uses these methods.

            The other question that I addressed in my blog was the whether the makers of movies do these types of post movie stuff for economic purposes. I say yes it is the movie producers do. For me there are two reasons for them to do this one is that they do it for a successful series that is about to end and they wish to gain more revenue. The second is that they do it when movies are unsuccessful and they are trying to make the most profit of the small number of people that enjoyed the movie. Both of these are the companies trying to gain revenue off of people while I understand why the companies are doing this method is makes me angry.

            I need to sign off now and go pick up my prospective student and show him a fun time at Hamilton College. See you Tuesday Lyman