Dearest classmates,
Please fill out this survey so that I might get information for my final project. If you don't answer, gamers everywhere will be misrepresented. You wouldn't want that on you heads now would you?
Please fill this out by December 2, 2009.
Survey 1 "Defining the Gamer"
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=G10WBWK1bvp3Jb3dpMWRkQ_3d_3d
Survey 2 "Survey for Gamers"
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=w1H8csku2hAt_2fk7C_2bhAhOA_3d_3d
P.S. If you fill this out please tell me and I will give you candy!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Final Games Project
In my final games project I want to address the stereotypes that the non-gaming community has concerning gamers. In order to do this I want to do a survey in which I ask an undetermined amount of people in various age groups what their view of gamers are. I’m sure most gamers know of at least one negative stereotype against them. So I want to see what other people's thoughts or images are when they hear “videogames” or “gamers”. Some questions I wish to address are: if they consider themselves gamers, how videogames have, if at all, affected their lives, what they believe a typical gamer looks like (e.g. sitting in their parents’ basement playing D&D”), so on and so forth. I then want to take these information put them into figures and critical analyze them. I will be comparing my results to typical stereotypes and seeing which if any are true, and if so how they reflect on the gaming community.
Dynasty Warriors 3
How can a game that has the same plot as its two prequels still be worthwhile purchase? To find the answer, I decided to take on Dynasty Warriors 3 for the PlayStation 2. Taken from Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms, this game, which is part of a series, rehashes the same story, but still somehow has quite a large following.
I was first introduced to this game by a friend who was obsessed with Dynasty Warriors and felt that she had to share it with me. Being the first Dynasty Warriors game to have a multi-player mode, she thought it best for us to play together, so I could get a chance to fight, and she could help me if need be. Since she had already chosen her strongest character, Sun Shang Xiang, I was left to choose from weaker characters who only had their first level weapon. Needless to say I died… a lot. With this experience I couldn’t see what was so great about the game; I actually found it a bit annoying.
It wasn’t until my brother lent me Dynasty Warriors 4 that I broke down and bought the 3rd game. Enlisting my sister as the second player, I took another go at the game. It was at this point that I found what was so appealing about the game. While I had previously played only in Free Mode, my sister and I now played in Musou Mode (the actual story). Since the game is taken from the era in China called The Three Kingdoms, it is not surprising that when one starts, he/she gets to choose characters form one of the three warring kingdoms: Shu, Wei, or Wu. The first step is to decide which of these kingdoms to fight in. After a few moments the winner ending up being Wu, since it was the only one with a female, and it had the prettiest people. That’s right, Wu had pretty boys.
The controls weren’t as hard as I thought they were when I had first played. The main problem was remembering what the trigger buttons do. A note to all who plan on playing this game: you have to hit the L2 button in order to see the enemies’ health bars. Without these bars floating above their heads the regular foot soldiers will look just like yours, and you won’t know who is an ally and who is not.
The game had some standard fare for a fighting game. Weapons, items, and characters all had the ability to level up…you even got more bodyguards. While not unique to this game, these features did increase the game’s re-playability.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the game sometimes makes it so the enemies are invisible. Your character could be running through a deserted area when he suddenly finds himself in the midst of 20 enemies. This doesn’t mean you were ambushed, rather more like they decloaked around you… and they can hit you, but you can’t hit them. Since there is no “cloak” or “decloak” function in the game, I have to wonder if this is perhaps a glitch.
While the attacks, characters, and overall graphics are of high quality, the same cannot be said for the voice acting. I can best sum it up by saying that it is atrociously bad in a strangely humorous way. For example, during the Nanman Campaign’s opening cut scene, a peon appears before Nanman King. His message, “Meng Huo there’s a problem” is delivered in such a sniveling, whiny voice that my sister and I missed the rest of the message because we were laughing so hard. While bad voice acting usually makes a game unbearable, here it somehow gives it better replay value. Seeing Sniveling Dude before the level makes the rampaging elephants and characters that have to be killed repeatedly during the mission, almost bearable.
Other problems that occurred during the game were either the inability to remember everyone’s names, or not being able to remember how to pronounce them. Keeping with military tradition, we gave many characters nicknames. Most of them were based on a distinctive feature of the character. For example, Hat Boy is the only person who wears a hat, the Fan Girls are two sisters who fight with giant fans, and Pipe Cleaner Man has what looks like a large pipe cleaner on top of his helmet. These names are far from manly but when you’re trying to tell your partner who you are fighting or who you’re supposed to be following these nicknames are rather efficient.
http://kongming.net/dw3/portraits/
Overall this game is very entertaining and enjoyable to play. The replay value is increased by the ability to unlock new characters, weapons and items. When you finish a character’s story make sure to watch the ending, especially if you and a friend play as the Fan Girl Sisters… it’s awesomely hilarious.
I was first introduced to this game by a friend who was obsessed with Dynasty Warriors and felt that she had to share it with me. Being the first Dynasty Warriors game to have a multi-player mode, she thought it best for us to play together, so I could get a chance to fight, and she could help me if need be. Since she had already chosen her strongest character, Sun Shang Xiang, I was left to choose from weaker characters who only had their first level weapon. Needless to say I died… a lot. With this experience I couldn’t see what was so great about the game; I actually found it a bit annoying.
It wasn’t until my brother lent me Dynasty Warriors 4 that I broke down and bought the 3rd game. Enlisting my sister as the second player, I took another go at the game. It was at this point that I found what was so appealing about the game. While I had previously played only in Free Mode, my sister and I now played in Musou Mode (the actual story). Since the game is taken from the era in China called The Three Kingdoms, it is not surprising that when one starts, he/she gets to choose characters form one of the three warring kingdoms: Shu, Wei, or Wu. The first step is to decide which of these kingdoms to fight in. After a few moments the winner ending up being Wu, since it was the only one with a female, and it had the prettiest people. That’s right, Wu had pretty boys.
The controls weren’t as hard as I thought they were when I had first played. The main problem was remembering what the trigger buttons do. A note to all who plan on playing this game: you have to hit the L2 button in order to see the enemies’ health bars. Without these bars floating above their heads the regular foot soldiers will look just like yours, and you won’t know who is an ally and who is not.
The game had some standard fare for a fighting game. Weapons, items, and characters all had the ability to level up…you even got more bodyguards. While not unique to this game, these features did increase the game’s re-playability.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the game sometimes makes it so the enemies are invisible. Your character could be running through a deserted area when he suddenly finds himself in the midst of 20 enemies. This doesn’t mean you were ambushed, rather more like they decloaked around you… and they can hit you, but you can’t hit them. Since there is no “cloak” or “decloak” function in the game, I have to wonder if this is perhaps a glitch.
While the attacks, characters, and overall graphics are of high quality, the same cannot be said for the voice acting. I can best sum it up by saying that it is atrociously bad in a strangely humorous way. For example, during the Nanman Campaign’s opening cut scene, a peon appears before Nanman King. His message, “Meng Huo there’s a problem” is delivered in such a sniveling, whiny voice that my sister and I missed the rest of the message because we were laughing so hard. While bad voice acting usually makes a game unbearable, here it somehow gives it better replay value. Seeing Sniveling Dude before the level makes the rampaging elephants and characters that have to be killed repeatedly during the mission, almost bearable.
Other problems that occurred during the game were either the inability to remember everyone’s names, or not being able to remember how to pronounce them. Keeping with military tradition, we gave many characters nicknames. Most of them were based on a distinctive feature of the character. For example, Hat Boy is the only person who wears a hat, the Fan Girls are two sisters who fight with giant fans, and Pipe Cleaner Man has what looks like a large pipe cleaner on top of his helmet. These names are far from manly but when you’re trying to tell your partner who you are fighting or who you’re supposed to be following these nicknames are rather efficient.
http://kongming.net/dw3/portraits/
Overall this game is very entertaining and enjoyable to play. The replay value is increased by the ability to unlock new characters, weapons and items. When you finish a character’s story make sure to watch the ending, especially if you and a friend play as the Fan Girl Sisters… it’s awesomely hilarious.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Final Chapter
Hmm so yeah, I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be writing about this week. So in an attempt to do this blog I will more than likely just be rambling for about 400 words, maybe even less. I shall therefore apologize in advance for wasting your time.
Right, so a game studies project is just like any other research paper and/or topic, just with videogames as the topic. This chapter in An Introduction to Game Studies, while kind of boring and pretty much stating the obvious, told its readers how to do a research paper. If I had never written a research paper before, than this chapter would still be a little boring, but at least it would have been a great help. I am glad that this chapter was put into this book, because it is rare that one actually is given step by step directions on how to write this kind of paper. However, since I’m in my fourth year here at the University of Michigan Flint and am majoring in English, this whole chapter was pretty much just a review for me.
Overall if you don’t know how to do a research paper I think you should check this chapter out I’ll probably help you out quite a bit.
Right, so a game studies project is just like any other research paper and/or topic, just with videogames as the topic. This chapter in An Introduction to Game Studies, while kind of boring and pretty much stating the obvious, told its readers how to do a research paper. If I had never written a research paper before, than this chapter would still be a little boring, but at least it would have been a great help. I am glad that this chapter was put into this book, because it is rare that one actually is given step by step directions on how to write this kind of paper. However, since I’m in my fourth year here at the University of Michigan Flint and am majoring in English, this whole chapter was pretty much just a review for me.
Overall if you don’t know how to do a research paper I think you should check this chapter out I’ll probably help you out quite a bit.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
crack, alcohol and MMORPGs
My cat is attacking my shoelaces and my sister is helping her... wait that's not what this blog is about. That's right it’s about Massively-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) and people's addiction to them.
MMORPG is a needlessly long acronym that is just as difficult to say as saying the phrase itself. Ironically the game play also is needlessly long and complex. A coincidence? I think not.
I recently played the game "Dragonica." It was free (with cash options, which I am avoiding). I am wise to the trap and will not take the bait! Never will this game see even a penny of my hard-earned cash!
Anway to the point. The game is about.... well it tried to tell me the story at the beginning with a cutscene, but my computer was having...issues. I therefore missed large parts of the explanation, so I'm still not sure exactly what dragons have to do with the game. The game itself was fun that is once I got the hang of it. Your character can be from the warrior, magician, archer or thief class. Each has its own pros and cons. As I started the game found that I had a guide that was supposed to, well, guide me. I am sad to say that he failed at this task, epically. Not only did he not explain some of the basics to me, but when he would start talking they were at random times and the scroll bar was sooooo slow.
As with most MMORPGs, it is better to play with friends and form a party with them. However I fear for mine. I believe that they are becoming addicted to the game, and I don’t know if it is too late to save them or not. I started "Dragonica" with my friend whom I shall call Melilot (since I don't have permission to use her real name, her avatar's name shall suffice). She is currently a higher level then me, as is her boyfriend Stormbear (avatar name obviously). Normally this wouldn't bother me, but Stormbear started playing a week or so after Melilot and I did and his main archer is about the same level as Melilot. The second avatar he created while his warrior character is stronger than my thief (my only avatar). I admit that I try not to play that often, lest I fall into the trap that is MMORPG. The same cannot be said about my friends though.
I believe that MMORPGs are fun and are fine to play, IF you don’t allow them to consume your every waking moment. So if you’re reading this Melilot and Stormbear please step away from the computer and go outside and enjoy the fresh air and human interaction before its to late.
MMORPG is a needlessly long acronym that is just as difficult to say as saying the phrase itself. Ironically the game play also is needlessly long and complex. A coincidence? I think not.
I recently played the game "Dragonica." It was free (with cash options, which I am avoiding). I am wise to the trap and will not take the bait! Never will this game see even a penny of my hard-earned cash!
Anway to the point. The game is about.... well it tried to tell me the story at the beginning with a cutscene, but my computer was having...issues. I therefore missed large parts of the explanation, so I'm still not sure exactly what dragons have to do with the game. The game itself was fun that is once I got the hang of it. Your character can be from the warrior, magician, archer or thief class. Each has its own pros and cons. As I started the game found that I had a guide that was supposed to, well, guide me. I am sad to say that he failed at this task, epically. Not only did he not explain some of the basics to me, but when he would start talking they were at random times and the scroll bar was sooooo slow.
As with most MMORPGs, it is better to play with friends and form a party with them. However I fear for mine. I believe that they are becoming addicted to the game, and I don’t know if it is too late to save them or not. I started "Dragonica" with my friend whom I shall call Melilot (since I don't have permission to use her real name, her avatar's name shall suffice). She is currently a higher level then me, as is her boyfriend Stormbear (avatar name obviously). Normally this wouldn't bother me, but Stormbear started playing a week or so after Melilot and I did and his main archer is about the same level as Melilot. The second avatar he created while his warrior character is stronger than my thief (my only avatar). I admit that I try not to play that often, lest I fall into the trap that is MMORPG. The same cannot be said about my friends though.
I believe that MMORPGs are fun and are fine to play, IF you don’t allow them to consume your every waking moment. So if you’re reading this Melilot and Stormbear please step away from the computer and go outside and enjoy the fresh air and human interaction before its to late.
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