Thursday, October 14, 2010

homework digital readings

OK here is some sites and readings
1. plant your pumpkins milk a cow and lose your self, and maybe your job and scholarship  and people said heroin was addicting!!
http://www.farmville.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/fashion/29farmville.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=farmville&st=cse

2.Im not putting a site for porn here id offend, get suspended, or give your or my computer a virus so read and use your imagination.  I found a game where you are this detective and you have two broads working for you and... Well use your imagination!!

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/copyrighting-porn-a-guest-post/?scp=2&sq=porn%20video%20games&st=cse



3.From sports figures, people in small towns, and dissidents in Iran speak your mind in a few sentences make them count.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/twitter/index.html?scp=1&sq=AIM%20instant%20messaging&st=cse

Sunday, September 26, 2010

oral presentation

In reading the work by Klevjer (2003) I was in such disagreement with his findings I set out to prove his findings and opinions, if not false, misleading. The issues I took with his writing were inconsistencies and a general lack of scientific data to back up his claims. I found the most inconsistency in his claim that “The First person perspective is not about immersion or about the self forgetting identification with a virtual reality.” and “Many games allow the player to switch between the first and third person view of the game without significantly altering the conditions for identification through the player avatar.” Yet, by the very definition a first person and third person shooter are completely different beings. One world is seen through the eyes of the avatar wail the other is seen through a god like perspective where one controls his creations. If we think of these two views what would be more realistic to us, looking through someone else's eyes where we only have a 90 degree of view and controlling them, or looking down at the same person controlling them from a building? In both it is true we would have a feeling of control, but when seen through a perspective that mimics our own we would have a deeper connection to the avatar because we see what he sees.
To bring up the lack of immersion in first person shooters that Klevjer states, he once again contradicts himself by saying “The quality of the gun, its realism, sound, looks and functions are essential to the success of a first person shooter. If we are to believe that we are not immersed in the game we are playing these qualities would not matter. We could shoot a rifle that made the sound of a train horn and we would not care because we are not immersed in the realism before our eyes. His statements about realism of weapons is correct, but it contradicts his assertion that we are not immersed in the game we play.
Furthermore he Klevjer states that the first person shooter is like the videos of a camera mounted on the front of a car or train. This in and of it self is full immersion in what we are watching. We don't just see the speeding car racing through tight curves and dodging people we are looking at it head on as if we were driving the car. The fact that most people will hold on to their easy chair and with body movements lean and grit their teeth with the direction we think the car should go or when we think there will be a crash shows that we are immersed in what we are watching. Therefore if we are immersed in this type of video and a first person shooter is related to this type of video it must be true that immersion occurs in a first person shooter, proving Klevjers assertion that a first person shooter is not immersive wrong.
To counter Klevjer and his argument about first person shooters the most informative research to counter Klevjer came from The University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom by Dr. Mark Grimshaw. Grimshaw (2008) states that both visual and audio stimulation lead to a immersive experience in the realm of the first person shooter. Grimshaw states that “the goal of the first person shooter is immersion. This is mental immersion, not yet physical, and can be defined as the players perception that they are in the games environment and that he/she is the the avatar who's hands, weapon, or a combination of the two is what he/she sees before them on the screen.
Grimshaw states that before the game even starts we begin to feel an identification that the avatar we are playing is ourself. Back stories address the player in the second person singular. One example of this given to us by Grimshaw is “you are Army Ranger B.J. Blazkowicz, you are about to embark into a journey in to the heart of the Third Reich, and only you can save the free world.” This gives us as the player the sense that we are who we see parts of on the screen before us. We take the role of someone we would love to be, someone who saves the world, and by these feelings we become them as we are playing because we don't want to fail at a life we would love to have, we don't want to die, because if we die on screen we feel the anger and disappointment of losing just as we would in real life if we failed, this is immersion in the purest sense.
As my research shows as presented in my power point, we are immersed in the games we play to the point our body mimics the physiological reactions of the body that occur to people experiencing the real version of the games we play. In showing this I believe I have proved Grimshaw correct in that First Person Shooters are meant to truly immerse us in a world in which we are living the life of who we see on our screen. Only the future will tell if technology will allow us to go to the next step and actually live our true life, fight real wars, and explore strange new worlds through a controller and monitor.

Friday, September 3, 2010

ass 2

In defining who I am through an cartoon representation of myself posted on this blog I must Cite Bells use of  Cheung where he argues that “personal websites offer their creators the chance to ‘reveal’ previously-hidden aspects of their identities; in this way, homepage authors suggest that it is
the ‘real me’ that it is presented on a site (even though many admit to self censoring,
and to ‘tailoring’ the presented self).”  And to this I must disagree with Cheung because I have no desire to change who I am where I am from or what I look like.  My avatar is as close of a representation of my self as I can make with limited computer skills and limited knowledge of technology.  As far as the presented self I must say that I presented myself in a way that depicts who I am through a picture, an avatar,  I'm a white man with a beard who wares black shirts and blue jeans and is a city kid.  These are all represented in my avatar.  I can see where others can only show the “real” version of them selves when they are online, but I'm a person who does not give two flying fucks what people think of me in real life or online.  If I'm in a classroom and someone pisses me off I will tell them “ Ill kick your ass” and if I'm in a chat room for some god unknown reason and someone pisses me off I will once again say “come meet me so I can kick your ass”  That's the real me a city kid who wont take any bull from anyone.  I also believe I proved just from the last few sentences that I wont censor myself online to create a different more clean image of myself.  All and all what you see is what you get in person or online. 
    I must also go to where Bell states the use of the LambdaMOO website where people can choose many different genders for themselves as something totally ridiculous.  Your a guy, a girl, or transgender.  You can not be anything other than one of those three things.  Yet why would someone want to deceive people?  I don't quite understand this my self as I am very forward in who and what I am.  But, I could see someone doing this if they are testing out something they want to become, perhaps a guy wanting a sex change operation or something.  I don't know the answer to all the reasons for not stating who you are, but these people need to be honest with others and them selves.  Just as Bell stated that people were angry when a Psychologist played a trick by saying they were something different than they were, I would be just as mad and so would you.  Honesty and telling the truth is half of that philosophers consider the basics of what makes a society and allows it to function.  If we are lying online how long until it spills over into real life, or as the internet is becoming more and more part of every day life it may be well on its way to affecting our society.
    I looked at Sydlexia.com and his blog about himself because it is a site I always go to about popular culture that was around when I was growing up.  He describes himself as a college grad in philosophy attempting to obtain a masters degree and writing a web page on the side.  He makes jokes that are crude and would offend some, but to me they are funny and sometimes self deprecating which I really enjoy.  The man says what he thinks and gives the finger to you if you have an issue with it.  His opinion seems to be “Hey this is my opinion and my thoughts and my site, if you don't like it leave”  I can identify with this so much I consider myself the same type of person and find it refreshing to see there are others who speak their mind with out being so self absorbed with a holier than thou attitude.  He is Direct contrast to what Bell said many people do online, the whole changing themselves, censoring themselves, and playing a role that is not them.  A person could tell just from what he writes about him self, what he writes on 80's and 90's culture, and what he writes about life as a whole that these three things match in style and tone.  If that sounds weird I will explain.  His writings are all the same because he never tries to be anyone but himself and that shows through online when you are reading different things from the same person. Also his avatar changes every so often, but it always a video game image from the 80's or 90's with long hair doing something funny.   This tells a lot about him, a guy writing about that subject of games and such, long hair, and has a site that if you get the humor is great for a good laugh.