video games

As I'm trying to piece together my final project, I've run into a bit of a bump. See, for the paper (because I am at a lack of imagination for another medium otherwise - thank you, semester) I was hoping to see how language, image, and music mixed with interactivity creates or supports the narratives of different video games that either revolve around a musical premise or where the music itself aids in creating a narrative that it otherwise undefined.

The difficulty I'm having is that I forgot/underestimated the number of video games out there that "revolve around a musical premise." When I first drew this up, I had pretty much only Electroplankton, Lumines, Meteos, and probably Rez (though I haven't played it yet) in mind. But after reading through a few books, I realized I'd completely overlooked those games of Guitar Hero/Rock Band, the entire Beatmania (Dance Dance Revolution, etc.) series, those karaoke games and some other ones I'd never heard of before such as Buzz (some music quiz game), PaRappa the Rapper and so on.  read more »

when reading Cathy's book, i didn't really notice the adverts that were a source of controversy in the articles we read. apart from naming specific colors, most of the advertising in the book seemed necessary. just like in many movies and videogames, some advertising is necessary. if a character is walking in Times square, i would hope to see real advertisement on the billboards. the advertisement adds to the level of immersion in the game (just like Zach said about the advertisements in football video games, like madden). however, when advertisement is either unnecessary or way too obvious, this level of immersion backfires. when either an actor or an avatar breaks story in order to advertise something, immersion is completely broken. for instance, in "Transformers", the advertisement for Chevy was ridiculous. every scene seemed geared on advertising either a Chevy car or a Chevy truck. An example that has both necessary and unnecessary advertisement is "Guitar Hero". the advertise3ment for Fender and Gibson Guitars is everywhere, however, it is a necessary advert. the unnecessary adverts are those for "Amp" and "Mountain Dew" drinks.  read more »

I thought this was relevant to our discussion about shooting and realism of violence in video games on Monday:

Shooting for Realism: How Accurate are Video-Game Weapons?

In Avatars of Story, Marie-Laure Ryan writes that, "The drama of most games is only worth experiencing as an active participant; it is meant to be lived and not spectated" (117). So, why are almost all of my gaming memories of times when I was watching someone else play?

As I have said before, I didn't really play video games while I was growing up, so that is no doubt one of the biggest reasons. I never beat Dr. Robotnik, I only know that the princess was (not actually) in another castle because I heard it from a friend, and I have never watched a Sim of my own creation burn to death. Perhaps if I had played more games, I would have had more opportunities to become emotionally involved in actually playing them.  read more »

To be bluntly honest, I didn't find Photopia to be a particularly noteworthy experience, though certainly unique. I think this may be solely based upon the fact that the game has such minimal interaction. Between puzzle games, side-scrollers, and quasi- RPG adventure games, I've spent a lot of years minimally playing video games where you push a button and things happen right off.

In Photopia- which isn't exactly a video game, but a game all the same - there is a lot of trial and error as you have to figure out commands, which is hardly anything new in the spectrum of gaming. The chance that the action you just took two seconds ago could be rendered completely useless within seconds. Adding to this frustration is the fact that all the dead end running happens in an optically unchanging environment (meaning you're looking at the same basic format of screen outside of the changing colours.) When you run into dead ends at the start of Zelda games, you're probably looking at new, fullscreen, scenery until you start walking in circles or at least seeing your commands in action. In Photopia, some more text and a prompt appears and maybe border colours change - yay.  read more »

The first video games, such as Pong, lacked a storyline or in most respects, characters. In these scenarios, the object to win overwhelmed all other desires, but eventually the players needed or desired more incentive to save the Princess in Mario Brothers. How do we begin to justify playing a game for our whole day unless our immersion into the game suffices?

The answer becomes quite apparent in video games. Video games have adapted to create not only violent scenes or daring adventures of new worlds, but also to construct story-lines to entice the player. A video game can resemble a continuation of when children play “pretend” games, such as creating storylines for their Barbies or army men. For example, Ken marries Barbie, they drive around in their make-believe car, have babies, and sometimes fight with Kelly, Barbie’s younger sister. Or maybe the scenario in your storyline was completely different. Yet, as children and adults, we crave to become immersed in a story different from our own, such as in Final Fantasy.  read more »

First I have to apologize for my track record in blogging: traveling out of state without my computer every other week and spending the time in between preparing for a dang audition has totally taken a toll on my ability to write - in both the sense of typing something out and typing it out coherently. (Apologies for my terrifyingly awful arguments and writing in advance, too.) My notebook is laced with blog post outlines which were to be elaborated upon and incidentally, it is now that I take a break from the midterm to flesh one of them out. Oh, the irony.

Getting to the point and going very far back, when we watched the Activision promotional video, there was a good amount of talk regarding "having fun with your friends" as you play them - interaction was the thing to have, be it between person and game or two people drawing out a story together by playing the game. With these games and such simple "win-lose" scenario, the narratives were created between the people playing since there wasn't too much to the story in the first place. Shoot the alien before your friend. You saved the planet hooray. Gloat. Repeat.  read more »

Somehow in class Friday we managed to avoid the greater debate of video game violence, where the line is drawn, and how much video game violence affects youth violence. If you spend enough time talking about video games the topic eventually comes up, and maybe at some point we'll discuss it, but I worried about the recent shooting in Illinois affecting that kind of talk.

It seems kind of quaint that not so long ago Space Invaders had to be tailored specifically to avoid human vs. human combat. I remember spending a lot of time in middle school (around the N64/PSX generation) just dying waiting for the day when graphics were realistic enough to be on par with blockbuster Hollywood violence. I guess we're pretty close now, with games like Gears of War letting you take a chainsaw to your enemy and watch the blood spray all over the camera.  read more »

During our class discussion, I found it very interesting how video games are censored and criticized due to there graphics and/or symbolized violence (or lack thereof). When thinking about entertainment of the past I found it rather fascinating to compare Gladiators to video games. Although there seems to be an outcry on how realistic and detrimental these games are to young peoples perceptions of actual violence they really aren’t any worse than the entertainment of the past. In fact, modern society seems to have used technology to reduce the physical pain that comes from violence while still managing to entertain. By removing ourselves from the pain we are really mimicking what is taking place in our society. Wars which are fought today are done so with such advanced technology that those fighting often are doing so from thousands of miles away. Maybe, video games really are a “Prospective of our existence” as suggested in the documentary we watched.

It has never really occured to me to think about the impact that video games have had on the world.
Basically, when I think of video games, I think of Guitar Hero. Every once in a while, Rock Band or Dance Dance Revolution occurs to me too. But that's about it.
But when my brother (for example) thinks of video games, it's not just one or two. It's Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto, James Bond, Madden, and most importantly, Halo's 1,2, and 3. There are probably more.
But the effect these games have aren't just to give us an escape from the real world, as much as they help with that. This year, the UF marching band did a show during one of the games that was exclusively video game music- Zelda, Super Mario, Halo, etc, showing that these games not only have an impact on what we do with our free time, but also how we think about pop culture in today's society.  read more »

After watching the documentary on video games and listening to the commentary in class I was very interested in cross cultural comparisons of females and their roles in creating video games and how the roles differed in Japan vs. America, I'm also going to talk a little bit about comic books and manga because that is a topic that I know more about than video games. Looking at video games in a narrotological fashion it becomes clear that while the original video games had a semblance of gender neutrality the latter generation of video games, our generation, has made the video game industry one made by males for males. We talked a little bit in class about Grand theft auto, a classic example of a popular video game. The dangerous explosions, callous disregard for lives and vulgar humor seemed to be aimed at the adolescent male, the one who thinks that the epitome of high class humor are toilet jokes. Comic books are pretty much the same. Simply by looking at the costumes that females wear make it very obvious that the writer is a male writing to a male audience.  read more »

The Rise of the Video Game documentary we saw in class brought up an interesting point about the connection between the military and video games. I had never considered the military's influence on technology with relation to video games, but it seems the two are inextricably linked. I find it funny that the same technological advancement fostered by the military for purposes of war and destruction gave way to the creation of something as recreational and lighthearted as a video game. The military's influence is evident not only in the technology itself, but in the content of video games as well. There are a lot of games out there that try to recreate the "war" experience as realistically as possible. Games like those of the Call of Duty series recreate armed conflict and allow gamers to experience it with the element of safety that Crawford discusses in his book. The violence presented is highly stylized so as to give gamers a feel for the casualties of warfare without putting them at actual risk.  read more »

Crawford writes: "Computer games are too trivial, too frivolous to be called art."

This reminded me quickly of what I've read in the realm of criticism, which tries to define abstract concepts, such as "art," "experience," and "emotion." Duchamp's "Fountain" barely seems artistic to some.Duchamp's "Fountain"

I. A. Richards, considered one of the founding fathers of modern criticism, explains that art must communicate. I'm paraphrasing him here, but this same idea is apparent in Crawford, who writes: "Art is something designed to evoke emotion through fantasy." This is exactly what it does. Richards further explains that art communicates, through emotion, an EXPERIENCE. This is the guiding light of art. Now, how well it communicates that experience, and satisfies impulses, determines "good art" from "bad art". I will simply refer to these as "high art" and "low art," respectively.  read more »

As I was playing my Xbox 360 this week, i began thinking "when did video games become male-dominated?". Between graphics in the games, westernized views of beauty and even the Ability to play female characters, the whole concept confuses me. Video games started as a sexless idea- the documentary even said it was part of women's liberation- the first thing a woman could actually beat a man in an equal playing field. But it seems that when characters were introduced, the male became the center of the gaming world. Could male dominance stemmed from women's unwillingness to play the games, or just from men trying to repress women again?  read more »

I found it highly amusing that the video shown in class today ended with the man talking about the someday existence of a video game which would make him cry as I had read [this article] just yesterday.  read more »