Beyond Boundaries

The last article about the importance of community in online gaming that I read for my Game Design class this semester was "Online Game communities are social in nature" by Cindy Ahuna. This article is a little older and talks a lot about the past of online gaming and how multiplayer games started. Reading through the article, this paragraph stood out to me:

"In a global point of view, the Internet is the living organism that hosts many online systems. Boundaries of geography, economy, culture, degrees of education and family traditions have disappeared. Gamers are co-authors that take part in the experience. Communities are playing fields for social interaction. When gamers send messages to other gamers, they are free to exchange email addresses and meet beyond the game community. Communities have become an extension, a new medium of human touch."

I thought that it was interesting that Ahuna described online communities in this way. If I think about it, I'd say I agree, it is an extension of human contact. It breaks boundaries that previously held people back and lets people talk and learn with and from whomever they so choose. Community is probably one of the most important parts of online games because it exposes you to other people and lets you learn.

Girls with Games

I read an article called "Gender and Sexism in Online Gaming Communities" by Matt Rafalow. This article talked about how female gamers are treated within the community and how cultural norms and expectations shape women gamers. I'll only be looking at one part of the article (that really interested me) for this blog post.

Rafalow begins by talking about how there is an increase in female gamers, but often cultural ideas about women and their role/what they do  affect how they game. Some research he looked at showed that there were three directions that women went when it came to games. The first was all out gamer who got involved in the creation of games as well as enjoying playing games. The second was a casual gamer who played games to relax and maybe was involved in forums and such, but they didn't get involved much more than that. The third way they could go is not seeing any point in games at all and moving toward more traditional 'girl roles'.

Unfortunately, very few women are in the first category. Having both male and female in a community shows that it is a healthy and growing community that can come up with brilliant ideas that otherwise would not be possible. The (gradual) balance of genders in the community is probably going to help games and the gaming community become better and better in years to come.

Player Rights

I read the essay "Declaring the Rights of Players" by Raph Koster. This essay was published in 2000 and I found it in a book of essays that I borrowed from my professor called "The Game Design Reader: A Rule of Play Anthology". (Sorry I borrowed it for so long!)

This essay started by talking about the idea of giving rights to online avatars. The author wrote up a 'Declaration of the Rights of Avatars' that was based on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by the National Assembly of France on August 26 of 1789 with Articles based on the US Bill of Rights. (To say the least, this document was very loftily written and I had a bit of a hard time getting through it.) The author then sent this document to "a collection of the smartest virtual world admins and designers" that he knew. Their responses to the document were rather critical and defensive, like they didn't want to give players written rights like that for fear that their power as admins and such might be taken from them.

So the author revised the document into more modern English (thank goodness), using common words rather than dictionary terms used in laws and such. The document said the same things, just in simpler and more friendly terms that made it seem like guidelines rather than an imposing law. He had some of the same people review the new document and it turned out that they were much more supportive of this revised version.

The author concluded that rather than have the rights of avatars, we should have general guidelines (like the ones he wrote) that are there to hold a standard for admins and have something players can hold admins to in order to ensure fair play.

I thought this essay was interesting. It's a bit old, but I think it still applies to gameplay today. At first I wasn't sure where the author was taking it, or how it would tie into my research idea of community in gaming; but after finishing the essay I realized that it was all common sense and common courtesy. The character, be it admin or not, has a human being behind it. The revised document states this right off the bat: "[Game] players are people. They don't stop being people when they log on." If both players and admins remember this and just treat each other as people, a lot of problems would be solved within gaming communities.

(Pro tip: The same goes for real life too.)

The Linguistic Turn

Philosophers were great thinkers; they thought about a lot of things and wrote down what they thought. Their thoughts were so important that we still read them today. But they forgot to give thought to a very important aspect that makes them readable even now. Language. The philosophers didn't think about how they wrote their thoughts down, or how language made it so that they could. They took language for granted, and it wasn't until the Linguistic Turn around 1900 that people started thinking about how and why we can communicate with language.

The Linguistic Turn was a shift in how people thought about language; the phrase "Linguistic Turn" was popularized by Richard Rorty as the title of a book of essays that he published on the topic. People started thinking about how language allows speech and how we find meaning from language, and how meaning is constructed. Looking into these things, people also realized that what is true in one language and culture is not always true in other languages and cultures. An example of this that was mentioned in class is that in English we have words for the past, present, and future, but in one of the Native American languages (I don't remember which one) they don't have a word for past or future. They only have words for "manifest" and "non-manifest"; everything is in the present.

Art and Copy review

In the documentary Art & Copy that we watched in class, the things that stood out the most to me are the following:

• Good advertising is marketing joined with entertainment. What made this stand out to me was that ad firms used to keep their art directors away from their writers and out of the conference rooms. But once a firm put the two together, the ads that they made became very successful.
• Theatrics play a part. One of the women who worked for a very large firm was commenting in the documentary about how her background in theatrics helped immensely when working on ads.

Ideology and Consciousness Notes

In our in-class study of semiotics, my group was looking at Ideology and Consciousness. These are my notes.

Ideology is the values and morals we were raised around. They were other peoples' values that became our own because we grew up with them.

The main examples that my group found on ideology are Russel's Teapot and Plato's cave.

False Consciousness (I looked at this more than plain consciousness) is when the ideology that you grew up around shapes the ways you think (consciousness) to the point that you act without thinking why- you don't think through what you're doing because that's just the way it's done according to your ideology.

Game Abuse

This week, I read the article "Game Changer: Why gaming culture allows abuse... and how we can stop it" written by Katherine Cross. This article talked about a few instances around 2006 where women who stood out in the gaming community by playing, commentating on, or even designing games were verbally abused and sexually harassed by a (substantial) portion of male gamers (as in, they made national news). Cross explains one of the reasons that this harassment took place, then goes on to tell how the tides changed and a greater portion of the gaming community stood up for the women who were under attack.

The main problem that caused this harassment, Cross says, is that the players doing the harassing felt threatened. She says that previously, games and video game playing was mostly done by men. Cross says that the world of games was kind of like a mens locker room where they can go and be themselves and no one would care. They could go to games and be the most important person in the world. (I'm completely summarizing the article, by the way, sorry.) So when a woman was entering that world of games, a portion of male gamers felt like their dominance was being threatened. Thus, verbal abuse and sexual harassment was used to "put the women in their place" so to speak in this "mans world of games."

Cross goes on to say that because of the sheer amount of abuse and harassment from the few instances that she spoke of, these issues were brought to a national level and gamers from every walk of life stood up for the women who had been harassed. One of the organizations who's employee had been attacked with harassment donated to an anti-bullying charity, and the subject was talked about in news sources a lot. Some of the more public figures who did the harassing apologized as well.

So, how does this article relate to my research topic of community in online gaming? Well, behind every player in-game is a human being in the real world. Something like verbal abuse or sexual harassment towards any player, regardless of gender, is that action to those people in real life. Sometimes, people think a game is just a game, but it is not. A game brings people together from all over the world, and bullying or hurting those people builds up walls between people as well as hurts the person on the receiving end; and that is simply not acceptable.

Looking at Ways of Seeing

After watching the first episode of the Ways of Seeing series by John Berger, these are my thoughts.

The most important topic in the video to me was the idea of the camera diminishing the worth of original paintings. Berger spoke of this frequently through the program. He spoke about how the invention of the camera re-invented the paintings in a way because they could be reproduced and viewed all over the world. Later on in the program, Berger said that these reproductions distorted the meanings of the paintings, and even destroyed those meanings.

"The camera, by making the work of art transmittable, has multiplied its possible meanings and destroyed its unique original meaning." -John Berger, Ways of Seeing

This in a way shows how peoples ideology shapes how they view things like images. As another example of this, Berger showed a picture of a painting to some young children and each of them came to a different understanding of what the image meant. Their own experiences shaped how they saw the painting.

As for what I find the most interesting from the video as well as the Media Studies course so far, it would be the idea that each person can view and interpret the same thing differently. It's a concept that I am still wrapping my mind around and I think it's very interesting.

Crazy Old Aunts

This ad is for the Lung Cancer Alliance, and it's point is to make people realize that just because someone has lung cancer does not mean they "deserve" it. The advertisers portray this in what seems like an opposite fashion. They say "Crazy old aunts deserve to die" so clearly but the real message of the ad is in the smaller text that a reader has to take the time to actually focus on to see. The advertisers use the large text to catch a readers attention so that they don't flip to the next page. 

The ad uses name calling, one of the topics we covered in class recently, as a way to grab one's attention. The name calling here is calling the woman a "crazy old aunt." The ad also uses the topic we covered about a subject in an ad being captured. It's not very noticeable even though it's in the forefront, but the woman is behind the text. This confines her.

Analysis using Frith's Methodology:

The Surface Meaning: There is an elderly woman who seems to be wealthy as the main part of the ad. The woman is holding a small glass of some sort of liquid and she is wearing a fair amount of what looks like expensive jewelry as well as having a fur draped over her shoulder. There is text placed over her and the background is a neutral grey-blue.

The Advertiser's Intended Meaning: The large text in front of the woman, "Crazy old aunts deserve to die," is intended for shock value to make the reader curious and have them read the smaller text which is the real meat of the ad.

The Cultural Meaning: The ad plays on the idea that many people have that one crazy old aunt who is wealthy and confident and lives in New York and travels the world and looks down on everyone but especially likes their one niece/nephew (the intended position of the reader).

By the way, if you can't read the small text, here's what it says: "Many people believe that if you have lung cancer you did something to deserve it. It sounds absurd, but it's true. Lung cancer doesn't discriminate and neither should you. Help put an end to the stigma and the disease at NoOneDeservesToDie.org."

Multicultural Test Run

In Omerta, a mafia style international text-based MMORPG, players have been deciding to not let Turkish players join their in-game "families". This is according to Melinda Jacobs' article "Multiculturalism and Cultural Issues in Online Gaming Communities".

Jacobs' article looks at why many players don't want Turkish players in their in-game "families". She says that through surveys, players said that many of the Turkish players (though not all) didn't follow the rules laid out by the individual in-game "families" and often acted on their own, causing problems for the other players. Therefore, players stopped inviting Turkish players into their "families" because of the potential risk.

The author broke down what exactly made this discrimination against Turkish players. She looked at if this was racism or nationalism against the Turkish players, but ruled these out because the refusal of inviting Turkish players was based on their actions/potential actions rather than their race or nationality. She decided that this was culturalism, which she defines as "discrimination against the actions/nature of a person which are influenced and created by a culture's ethnocentric approach, traditional mindset, and beliefs in a specific culture/nationality." (Jacobs)

The Turkish people are a very proud people according to Jacobs, and this is part of what causes the problems in-game with the other players (along with the fact that their English skills are not very good according to one of the players surveyed). Jacobs says that the Turkish players will take something said the wrong way and act out in order to defend their pride. Defending their pride is a part of their culture, so in an online setting where acts to save that pride are not particularly smiled upon, problems occur.

The author concludes that the closest analogy of how this problem would best be worked out is this: Europeans when they visit America must abide by the rules about alcohol such as the drinking age even though in most of Europe the drinking age is between 16 and 18. In the same way, in the online game setting, players must abide by the rules of the people in charge, even if those rules are culturally different from their own.

Jacobs finishes the article off by saying that these international games online are like test runs for the ever increasing multicultural and global world we live in and that it is important to see these problems and learn to fix them now so that we can avoid conflict in the future.

Altruistic Gamers

This week, I read "Sharing Tips with Strangers: Exploring Gift Culture in Computer Gaming", a study done by Chuen-Tsai Sun (Ph.D.), Holin Lin (Ph.D.), and Chheng Hong Ho (M.A.).

This study looked at the altruistic behavior of gamers when it comes to sharing tips about games and in the case of MMORPGs, sharing equipment in-game or helping another player establish themselves in the game. The main point of study was on tips provided on message boards and from one person to another. The authors made the point that one players expertise can often get them respect and status among other players, and sharing that expertise about a game can spread their influence.

The authors noted that in online games like MMORPGs, players acts of kindness and also expertise/tip giving could be seen by others immediately, so they could therefore be recognized for their acts immediately whereas console gamers often played alone, so they were more likely to share tips online or make walk-throughs as a means of recognition. I thought this was interesting because I think that this may be true. I see help and tips for console games many places online, but there are very few (if any) tips and walk-throughs for MMORPGs- at least, I haven't ever seen any.

The authors concluded by saying that it is arguable that one is never playing a game totally alone because there are scoreboards and tips and walk-throughs which are also a big part of gaming communities.

Gaming leads to Leadership

The article "Exploring game experiences and game leadership in massively multiplayer online role-playing games" talks about how in-game leadership in MMORPGs can affect real life leadership. The authors, YeiBeech Jang and SeoungHo Ryu, surveyed 820 South Korean MMORPGers and did a study on the data they gathered.

They found that the people who played the games in groups were more likely to take leadership roles than those who preferred to play the game alone. They also found that those people who took leadership roles in-game were more likely to take leadership roles in real life.

On top of that, they found that among those who took leadership roles in-game, there was no significant difference in gender. Both men and women were equally likely to take a leadership role. The authors noted that "this [was] an interesting finding. Despite many people's stereotypes of males as dominant leaders and females as obedient followers in Asian cultures, this result acclaims that cyber worlds offer more chances of experiencing leadership regardless of gender." (YeiBeech Jang, SeoungHo Ryu)

At the end of the article, the authors made the point that MMORPGs could be used in the classroom to teach students leadership skills. Also, companies could use them as a cheaper alternative to the leadership trainings that many companies pay a lot of money to have their employees go through.

Of course there are flaws, as with everything, but the authors made some pretty good points about how leadership in-game can positively affect one's leadership in real life.

VW Happy - Superbowl Commercial

Surface Meaning:
The ad is set in an office building and begins with some people riding in an elevator and commenting that they hate Mondays. Then, One guy with an interesting accent begins responding positively to everything from massive amounts of work to office coffee, and he even has a positive attitude when the boss says things are "Looking pretty dismal." Then it cuts to a red VW bug driving down the road and pulling up at a building where a man is waiting and informs the occupants that they are late, to which the one in the back seat replies cheerfully as does the boss who it turns out is sitting in the passengers seat. the three men in the car laugh as the man who was waiting for them begins to back away as if unsure what to think of these happenings.

Advertiser's Intended Meaning:
The intended meaning is that if you drive this car (the VW bug), you will be unbelievably happy and cheerful no matter what the situation (even if you're stuck in the cage of "the daily grind").

Cultural/Ideological Meaning:

• The Jamaican accent- Jamaica is generally associated with being very laid back, care free, and happy. Dave (the main guy in this ad) has this accent because it sets him apart from the other workers. While everyone else is fretting, Dave is very content, and that is shown in the ad through his accent- an accent that later one of his co-workers, and even his boss pick up from riding in the Vw bug.
• Office workers- The ad uses a lot of "office worker troubles" like "I hate Mondays," office coffee (which I've heard is pretty yucky...), and stacks of folders on the desks with everyone in there own personalized gray box. The ad plays on these ideas of office work that society has kind of declared as what office work is actually like. (The monotonous gray boxes sound especially terrifying if you ask me.)
• The red VW bug- They chose RED! Red is a warm color, usually associated with happiness, excitement, and energy- all things that Dave enjoys supposedly because he owns his red VW bug.

Media Studies and Critical Theory Comm 403

What in the world is media studies? And is it even important? Is it relevant to the rest of the wold? What point is there in studying it anyways?

Maybe I went a little overboard on the questions, but really, some of them are pretty good questions. Not a lot of people know or understand what media studies is and what it's even here for. So, hopefully I'll be able to explain what Media Studies is and how it is relevant to the media production and consumption marketplace. I will be looking at the relevance from a critical theory perspective.

So the main question to begin with is: What exactly is media studies? Are we talking something like surfing Facebook or checking Twitter every 10 seconds? 'Cause most people have that down already. Well, yes and no to that. The definition of media studies that I find easiest to understand is this:

Media Studies

- the study of the mass media, esp. as an academic subject.

That definition doesn't cover everything, but it does get the basics. So, about the yes and no of the Twitter and Facebook statements above- I say yes because social media is becoming more and more of a part of mass media in a way; but I say no because media studies deals more on an academic level. Media studies also looks at the history of media and what effects it has had.

So, what is this critical theory stuff that I mentioned then? Critical theory "provides a better understanding [of] present social conditions." (Application of Critical Theory) Critical theory looks at society from all sorts of fields- psychology, history, economy, and sociology just to name a few. The main goal is to look at society and see how it can improve- and try to help it improve.

OK, so now that I've explained media studies and critical theory to the best of my ability, it's time to move on to the main point: How is this relevant to the media production and consumption marketplace? Well, media studies looks at the impact of mass media, and critical theory looks at how the society can improve, so the point of relevance is looking at mass media and seeing how using it can help society improve somehow. Looking at mass media can help to shape the media and change it.

So, to answer the questions at the beginning, or at least a few of them, media studies looks at the impact on the society  from mass media and it is important for shaping the media. Without taking the time to look at what works, media would be ineffective. 

The Most Important Part

Why do online games include features like a chat-box or messages? You'd think that if you're playing an awesome game, or if you're in a tight situation in game, you wouldn't want to stop and type to some random people from who knows where.

But, clearly it must be an important feature of the game, otherwise the developers would have left it out. If it wasn't an essential part of the game or the game's experience, why would it be included?

And why are there groups for people who all play the same game? Why do people go out of their way to find people who play the same game as they do?Is it really that important?

I think that, yes, it is that important. That is why this semester, I'm going to be researching the importance of the community in online gaming.

"Who will create tomorrow?"

I've always loved watching the commercials on TV. It's impressive how pictures wrapped with music and text can leave such a lasting impression on a viewer. Who would have thought that watching a car commercial would make you feel like one car would protect your children better than another? Or that a soda commercial would associate the drink with open fields of farmland?

The commercials that I've linked above are some of my favorite ads because of the impression that they leave on a viewer, but neither are my favorite ad campaign. My favorite would have to be the Art Institute commercials.

The Art Institute ads are very well done, in my opinion. The way that they take out aspects, like the food or dress or interior design features, and fill it with white draws the viewers eyes and attention to that object. It makes the viewer wonder, "What should be there, what if it were like this?" And that is exactly what the ad is meant to do.

Not only do the ads make one's creative juices flow, they also show something that most people don't often think about or realize: Opportunity. The ads draw attention to just how many opportunities are sitting there waiting for someone creative to make something amazing, whether it be the images on a screen or the images in Times Square; the food you eat or the clothes you wear. I think that the commercials really show that there really is something that you can do with your creativity, and that opportunity is just waiting for you to take a chance.

Running the Camera

The role in studio production that I like the best so far is running the camera. I like it for a few reasons:

1. I like running the camera because I get to control what the image looks like within the boundaries set by the director. The process of finding the image interests me quite a bit.

2. I really like cameras. I've always been fascinated with how someone can capture a moment in time with a device that is sometimes only the size of a person's fist.

3. By running the camera, I am not in the image that the camera is recording. This means that I'm not as nervous as I would be if I was on the set. Not being nervous is very useful in the studio because it minimizes the risk of mistakes.

The Studio Experience

Working in the studio on campus was a very interesting experience. Originally, everything in the studio looked very complicated and difficult, but when our class tried all of the different positions in the studio it turned out that studio work is a lot easier than I imagined.

I am very fond of running the cameras and helping set up the lights. I also liked acting as the floor manager and the director, though those positions require a lot of responsibility that I am not used to and am not entirely comfortable with yet.

I wasn't very fond of running the audio board during our trial shows, but that may be because I don't understand how it works very well. I will have to learn more about it before I am comfortable with running the audio board for a production again.

There is a part of me that really enjoyed being on set, but the part of me that did not like being on set wins out on this position. I was very nervous when I was on camera, and I couldn't keep the conversation going very well when I was acting as the host. I'm very lucky that my guests helped to fill in during the moments where I couldn't come up with anything.

Along with learning more about audio, I would like to continue working with the cameras and lighting. Those are the areas that I think I am the best at in the studio.

Music Video: Production Notes 1

This is an update on the progress of my music video assignment for Shepherd University's Music Video class.

Due to the lack of a song as well as a deadline on my part, only the lead singer of the group I was originally working with could be the talent that I am making a video for.

My talent already had a song recorded, so that song has been chosen for the video. The song is called "Home Coming" and it has a very patriotic theme. Due to the patriotic theme in the song, I will be looking for creative commons footage of soldiers to use with the permission of the creators.

The introduction of the song lends well to the image of an American flag against a clear blue sky. I will tie that image in throughout the video, for example later in the song the lyrics mention looking into the sky to see a single airplane flying high above.

I will be using the studio to record some footage of my talent for the video; specifically I would like to back light my talent for part of the bridge of the song. My talent and I are in contact about when she can come to the studio to record.

I went to an event that my talent was performing at and took some footage, but the lighting was not the best, so I'm not sure if I will be using the footage or not.

Music Video: Pre-Production

Pre-Production for the music video has come; following are my plans so far:

The band for my music video is a group of friends from my church who just formed a band recently.

The place that we will be recording is most likely the sanctuary of my church, however if permission is not given the back-up plan is to record in the Shepherd University studio.

The band has not recorded any songs yet, so I don't have a song to work with and decide how I want to shoot yet. When a song is decided, we may record live as we shoot the video. There are at least three ways that we could record live:

• We can use one microphone -strategically placed- and connect it to a digital camera to record the video and audio. Then, after filming, I can alter the track through imaging.
• We can use two microphones and record while we take the video footage.
• We can use the church recording equipment to record the sound as we take the video footage.

There is no set date to record yet.

COMM 360 Syllabus

COMM 360- Studio Production is a class that on the first day of class I was wondering if I should actually take. I don’t know the first thing about production for television, so I was very nervous. However, when we went through the studio as a class looking at the equipment and talking about how things worked, I started to feel like this is something that I can do.

 As I was reading the syllabus for this course, I kind of felt the same way. Yes, there is a lot that I don’t know about studio production, but the syllabus talks about a lot of the things that we will be doing in class this semester. The most helpful bit to me was the list of tasks in studio production. It gives very simple and understandable descriptions of what each of the people in the studio do.

While Studio Production is not the specific job I want to do for the rest of my life, it will be a good set of skills to have. If I eventually work in sound or lights for live performances, it is going to be helpful to have a background in production skills. If I work as a video editor, it’s still important to be able to work in a team, and in studio production working as a team is quite essential.

Overall, Studio Production is going to be helpful no matter what I do in the future, so I’ll just get over my nerves and do the best that I can.

COMM 333 Syllabus

The course syllabus for COMM 333 – Music Video has a lot of useful information. It outlines what will be taught in the course this semester and provides information on COMM Department policies as well as University policies. However, probably the most important thing in the syllabus to me was the statement “COMM 300- level courses are, for the most part, practical, hands-on and intellectual, critical-thinking courses” (p8). I learn by doing, so hands-on is really the best thing I could hope for in a class like this one. Hands-on experience with video making software like Final Cut Pro is extremely helpful for finding a job when I graduate. Getting experience with cameras and lighting is amazingly helpful as well.

Also, many of the videos we will be looking at in class will be outside of my personal frame of reference. I listen to and watch Asian and European music videos more than I do American music videos. In the media field, I need to be familiar with American media as well as what I would normally be interested in. Expanding my frame of reference can help me to understand what references in other media may be and can help when I make videos and other media.

This course will be giving me the opportunity to up my chances of getting a job when I graduate by a) giving me hands on experience with video making software and equipment as well as b) expanding my frame of reference.