*Spoiler Alert: If you haven't played Zork yet, proceed with caution because some of what I say in this entry will potentially "spoil" the story for you.

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Yesterday, when I started to play Zork, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I started out in front of a white house, on the edge of a forest. I thought this would be similar to the experience of interacting with Eliza, a simple exchange of user prompts and computer-generated responses. Boy, was I wrong. As I found out after several hours of stumbling around in Zork-world, the white house and forest actually sit on top of an elaborate underground empire called The Great Underground Empire, complete with secret rooms and monsters to kill!

I’m still fascinated with the debate over the purpose of video-games and, more importantly, the effects that people attribute to them. Games can “teach” violence, knowledge of another historical period (Oregon Trail), math, etc…but, of course, their main purpose is to allow the user to have fun, or else they wouldn’t be called games. I really liked Frabby’s post on the computer game conference at UC Irvine and the idea of whether computer games can teach ethics. As I said earlier, I enjoyed playing the Sims because of the fantasy world I could create that still allowed me to “be” myself. I thought that I would try the game KF mentioned in class—Eliza—and see if I liked it for the same reason. Did I? No! I guess it’s expected that Eliza can’t do much, but I didn’t even have fun trying to upset her. Every time I answered “no”, even to questions that almost required that answer, she asked me if I was being negative. I think I need to see a real therapist after using her.

I have a bit of a confession to make, although perhaps others will say that they did the same thing I’m about to admit. I used to play the Sims a lot, and I got really into it. I created worlds that resembled mine. Actually, they were more fantasy worlds than my own surroundings, and that’s where my confession comes in. My friend I used to pick boys we liked and “create” them, and (I bet you can see where this is going) create ourselves, too. It was great: it was like playing a grown-up version of house, complete with cooking dinner, getting a job, and making babies together. Of course, it all seems a bit sophomoric now, but I definitely used it as an escape. For this reason, I loved reading about the different author’s analyses to the Sims in First Person. Ken Perlin’s article especially resonated with me. I liked the Sims because I became a sort of author, yet that “willing suspense of belief” (17) that the characters were real never came to me. Granted, I did get extremely caught up in the people I “created” in hopes that their actions (which I, of course, controlled) would come true. This ties into thisismycheese’s discussion of the different types of immersion. The Sims made me feel mid-way between the two types of immersion thisismychesse describes: I felt like I was in the game, as a character, yet I never truly felt like I was really there. And I certainly never felt the same emotional immersion I feel when I read novels.

Alright, so I'm trying to play Adventure. Rather enjoying this next week's assignments, great procrastinations. In theory, that is. In practice, this is utterly infuriating. I am not a gamer in the slightest. I know very little about any computer games, save solitaire and 8+ year old "educational" games, except they usually look kinda pretty, and are apparently addictive. The extent of my knowledge of video games is being jiggly puff while my friends play smash brothers and i stand on edges, watching my little guy wave his arms around trying to maintain balance while everyone else beats the blazes out of one another (the one time I won this way, they wouldn't let me play again all night).

I don't know how this whole game thing is meant to work. And quite frankly it's really ticking me off. It doesn't make sense! Help?

Case and Point:

Several people have offered confessions of one sort or another on our blog, including Grumpymutt's confession that he really enjoys playing video- and computer games, marmalade's confession that she is addicted to reading the New Yorker, and Shock and Awe's confession that he had never really thought about videogames from an academic perspective until the past couple of weeks.

Well, I have my own confession to make: I am not competitive. And I worry about this because it's a stereotypically female trait. Perhaps I should clarify: I am competitive about some things; I strive to do well at things I enjoy or I think are important. But there is a difference between competition and diligence, and although I am regularly diligent, I rarely feel that that diligence is of a competitive nature-- and if it is, then it's more of a competition-against-what-I'm-capable-of-doing-type thing.

Shock and Awe's "Virtual Morality" (about the WoW virtual massacre)and Grumpymutt's "Confessions of a Potion Drinker" have twisted my mind about the intersection of reality and games.

At the risk of stopping everyone from reading my entry, I'll quote Michael Joyce: "There's no simple way to say this."

In six steps :

1) I knew that WoW players burn hours and weeks "farming" for iconic "gear" that changes their gameplay circumstances and capacities.

2) I know that many players actually buy such gear -- I mean with real US dollars and similar currencies.

3) I've been told that such purchases actually make sense. I'm skeptical, but after all, one does put in the time "farming" to get the items; the time represents a real-world sacrifice that thus requires, I'm told, real-world compensation.

Evidently there’s a computer game conference going on at UC Irvine today, and some of the stuff they’re discussing is somewhat interesting. Looking through the topics, one title really caught my eye, “Teaching Ethics: Can Video and Computer Games Evoke the Empathetic Involvement that Fosters the Altruistic Perspective?” The authors (two women) are looking into the possibility of creating a game that provokes empathetic feelings (which in turn becomes actions) in players. A possible scenario for such a game would be where a player is a rescue worker in a war.