My Synthetic World

Edward Castronova’s book, Synthetic Worlds gives a fantastic view of the MMORPG genre breaking down key aspects. As a loyal World of Warcraft player, I felt that that the book did a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of the massively genre early in the book by explaining in easily understandable terms of how game play actually works. Key aspects such as player interaction, selling of items and the eventual belief that the player eventually becomes the avatar. This belief that the player of the game is actually in this virtual environment is very important because it is something that other genre do not do. This little avatar becomes a virtual representation of the player, for better or worse. The player gets a connection to this character and begins to care about what items this virtual creature possesses. This leads to the next part of the book which is the economy. The idea that real world dollars were being used to buy MMO items was not a shock to me but new ideas in the book were presented like what makes this virtual economy fun? The ideas of work vs. fun and profit vs pleasure in along with the ideas of building a fun economy are interesting topics. The book explains that virtual finances are controlled with trade and specialization; while your character might be good at some skills he cannot make as much profit without trading and buying other items. Making items consumable fuels this process as items and wealth will deplete and disappear after time. Castronova also brings up good points when explaining how the MMO world works and player interaction with the NPC. These non-playable characters act not only as a guide but as a virtual tester in the virtual world fulfilling multiple roles while giving the player tasks. Overall the book did a fantastic job at looking at the important aspects of the genre and breaking them down into something that was easy to understand.

As a player of MMORPG’s, it is easy to see that I am fan but they have created a new sort of world for people to interact in. Playing a game can now allow people to meet new individuals or interact with friends (near and far) from the comfort of their home. This can been seen as the MMORPG genre has never been more healthy with major companies such EA games, Bioware and even the local Bethesda planning new games in the genre. As it stands, the next big step in gaming seems to be the MMO and while it may not last, games such as Everquest and World of Warcraft have changed modern gaming and American culture.

The AO rating is the real kiss of death

The video game medium has faced many challenges in its short life but none has come near to the magnitude of video game violence. Violence in any media has always been an issue for the mainstream public and video games are no exception. In 1994 the ESRB was formed as a inter regulation system for video games which would measure and display the violence (and other actions) and give these games a rating. The major push for the ESRB stemmed from Joseph Lieberman and other politicians stating that video games such as Mortal Combat and Doom were too violent and the system of the ESRB was set up to essentially keep these games out of the hands of kids. Since then a new growth in video game violence regulation has stemmed with controversial games such as Grand Theft Auto have renewed the issue. Recently the game Manhunt 2 was released and we are now seeing a new trend in regulation which is shifting away from keeping violent games away from children but how to control what levels of violence the people 17 years old plus should be able to consume. The controversy stems from the Mature (17 or older) and Adults Only (18 or older) ratings as Manhunt 2 was not allowed to be released without having some of it’s gore and violence removed, levels lower then what the industry accepted when the original. While this might seem like a political issues it still falls on the idea that the media and maybe even the general public has negative views on Video game violence. People have been repeatedly told by the media that video games are violent and link these ideas to physiological studies but Jeffrey Goldstein shows in his chapter in the Handbook of Computer Game Studies that most of these studies are faulty and do not support a proper scientific basis. Violence as an issue in the video game industry has evolved from the protection of children to the regulation of violence in a medium that only adults would be able to access. The idea that violence should be regulated from the children is logical and forming of the ESRB in 1994 was a vital step for the industry but the censorship of violence for adults is one that makes no real sense.

EDIT: changed picture and added video 11-06-2007

Here is a clip showing the differences between the M rated and AO rated versions of Manhunt 2

YOUTUBE VIDEO IS NOT WORKING, USE SECOND VIDEO STREAM

My gyxpyx is broken and Cowabunga Dude!

It is easy to look at modern games such as Halo 3 or Final Fantasy and see all the fantastic things they are doing but it is important to see where these games came from. This is why I decided to analyze the classic game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (TMNT II). The Arcade smash hit that was released in 1989 and later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System rode the popularity of the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The game mostly contained side scrolling beat em up action, which by today’s standard looks simple but revolutionized the industry during its time. The game was recently released for the Xbox Live Arcade and features the games important feature of Cooperative play online.

TMNT II was not the first game to include cooperative play between 4 players but it did change the medium of video games. TMNT II used the aspect of 4 players playing together to achieve a goal but still had them competing for points and challenges. Players had to decide who would use limited resources such as life (which was represented by pizza.) Players could work as a team or fight for the resources among each player. While the game stressed cooperative play the game kept score of each player and the popular high scores list to keep a competitive aspect in the game.

For all the advances TMNT II had, it did not try and change the notion of genre. It instead attempted to master and refine how it was played. The game followed side scrolling action and followed other major games of it’s time by giving a semi 3D perspective and moving up and down the screen gave a feeling of depth. TMNT II used industry normals such as giving a boss fight at the end of each level and using a standard life bar system but focused more on making these experiences enjoyable by giving varied and differing backdrops. TMNT II did change many aspects from other arcade games as the game was considered easy for its time but had an innovation where the game would become more difficult with more players in the game, as there would be more opponents and creatures for the players to fight.

TMNT II cannot be called the best game ever or even the best game in its genre. What can be said for it is that it did create a sense of “meaningful play.” The Hand Book of Computer Game Studies (page 60) says that “Meaningful play in a game emerges from the relation ship between player action and system outcome... The meaning of an action in a game resides in the relationship between action and outcome.” TMNT II achieves this extremely well when many players play the game together. The games sense of competitive cooperation creates an enjoyable atmosphere where the group of individuals must work together to beat the game but work against each other to achieve a higher score. The balancing between this is where TMNT II helped evolve its genre and created a sense of meaningful play.

First Blog Entry, WOO!

My name is Abhinav Kumar and I am a current bio major in the premed program. I am attending this video game class because I have been interested in the field of video games for many years now. I own all of the current generation of video games and I am one of the many people who frequent sites such as ign and gamespot. I also frequent the news blogger site Joystiq that has gained popularity for breaking video game news before anyone else. While I am interested in Biology I am interested in the media and would love a job in game production even though I have no art or programming skills to my name. I would be more interested in the production or producing of games. I do not know if any colleges offer any classes in this field but taking a class on video games looked like a good place to start if I was going to change majors. I am also interested in many of the theories and ideas discussed in this class such as the structures of MMORPGS and the history of video games. Currently I am playing World of Warcraft and am waiting for Halo 3 and other big games from the winter season. Here’s a picture of me and here is the profile of my world of warcraft character (my rogue named Abhinav.) Well thats all for that this post, off to the World Of Warcraft i go.