csua.org/u/l6o -> www.metafilter.com/70365/The-Myth-of-the-Media-Myth-Games-and-NonGamers#2063862
Subscribe "Inevitably, after I finish speaking, the strong opinions come. It happens the same way every time: People listen and then they say what they've been feeling.
James Gee's video game book has been trotted out before (and even I think by me in some cases), but it is a really interesting read and related to this topic. I am in Education and I regularly cite Gee when discussing video games--or weblogs, or social networking sites--with teachers. What a lot of those teachers (and other people) who do not regularly get into games don't realize is that the video game industry is light-years ahead of Education in being able to design effective learning environments. Reading a novel is just as solitary and sometimes just as violent as playing a video game, but we tend to look at people who read a lot as introverted-but-smart and people who game a lot as antisocial nerds.
I admit it's possible then that Outside may be a disappointment, too concerned with trying to snag the "casual living" market at the expense of the hardcore social players. And First Life definitely seems to cater to the social aspect more. Some people have the patience to play two, even three games at once, but I can't handle the pressure. I just regret that I have but one life to live living my life.
I heard they were talking about running a public beta, but as far as I know it's still private for now. All I need is a beta key to open the door, and I'll be able to explore Outside all I want.
Traditionally Outside receives extremely high ratings by those who like to see others play it, and these people are in many cases comfortably ensconced Inside themselves. Outside was released many years ago, it was in fact the first massively multiplayer game, and yet it has always managed to avoid the double-edged Retro tag. In its favor, continual user updates have kept Outside current; Participants are permitted, to some extent, to modify their own areas of Outside, which is a large part of the fun of the game. However it seems that in the end one is modifying Outside largely for the sake of it, and having done it, there is a distinct feeling of "now what?" In terms of the traditional target age content metrics, Outside is remarkably high in sex, violence and challenges to traditional values, despite the strong child-focussed marketing it receives. Many would go so far as to say that for a child to develop the ability to cope with Outside is essential, as long as the harm incurred is not too debilitating. Children injured playing Outside are usually comforted by parents, and soon encouraged to go Outside again; this leads to the conclusion that somehow Outside has escaped any and all of the usual moralizing that surrounds the videogaming industry. One might say that Outside gets a free pass from the Jack Thompsons of this world. The physics system is note-perfect (often at the expense of playability), the graphics are beyond comparison, the rendering of objects is absolutely beautiful at any distance, and the player's ability to interact with objects is really limited only by other players' tolerance. The real fundamental problem with the game is that there is nothing to do. In terms of game play the game sets few, if any, goals: the major one is merely "survive". What goals a player sets, are often astonishingly tedious to actually achieve, and power-ups and gear upgrades, let alone extra weapons, are few and far between. Some players choose accumulation of money, one of the many point systems in the game, as a goal, but distribution of this is often randomized and it can be hard to tell what activities will lead to gaining points in advance, and what the risks will be. Other players choose to focus on accumulation of personal abilities, the variety of which greatly exceeds the capacity of any individual to accumulate; again, the game requires players to engage in years of grinding to achieve any notable standard with a skill or ability. Players are issued abilities and characteristics largely at random, and it is entirely possible for a player to be nerfed beyond any reasonable expectation of being able to play the game, or to be buffed to the point where anything he or she does is markedly easier. Unfortunately over time, player abilities tend to degrade, unless significant effort is made to keep skills up. This reviewer cannot emphasise this enough: Outside requires a huge time investment to build up player abilities, exceeding any other massively multiplayer game on the market by some three orders of magnitude. Players are encouraged to focus on social interaction, which can be engaged in in a variety of ways. In fact it's extraordinarily difficult to solo anything whatsoever in Outside, apart from basic skill and knowledge accumulation quests. One of the major forms of social interaction in the game is based largely around the addition of new players to Outside, and is both complex and, in comparison to the storyline-driven romance quests of, say, Baldur's Gate or Mass Effect, they are immensely difficult. Dedicated players of Outside, however, report that the romance quests are among the most rewarding the game has to offer. The sheer amount of resources that went into development of the Outside environment is staggering to consider. Outside is a world of tremendous size, containing examples of every known real-world terrain type and inhabited by every known real-world animal. On the other hand it is somewhat lacking in the traditionally expected, more interesting, zones where the developers would be given the opportunity to show off their skills in varying the physics and graphics of the game. There are, for instance, no zones where gravity varies to any significant degree. The respawn rate of objects and players is ridiculously slow. A dead player can expect to wait for years to respawn, and will be set back to zero assets and a tiny, nearly helpless form. In terms of the social environment, almost anything goes. Outside has a vast network of guilds, many of its players are active participants in designing the game's social environment, and almost any player will be able to find company to undertake their desired group quests. On the other hand, gold-buying is rife, the outskirts of virtually every city zone in the game are completely overrun by farmers, and the developers have so far proven themselves reluctant to answer petitions, intervene in inter-player disputes, or nerf broken skills and abilities. Indeed this reviewer will go so far as to say that the developers are absent from the game entirely, and have left it to its own devices. Fortunately, server uptime has been 100% from day 1, despite there being only one server for literally billions of players. On the whole, Outside is overrated, and many gamers will find themselves forced by friends and family to play it against their will, but it still deserves a high rating. I give it 7/10, and look forward to improvements in future patches.
The last thing I need is a bunch of up-and-coming smart whippersnappers coming after my job just because they're more qualified. No kids, it's traditional athletics for you, and a long future in the service industry. This is the same reason I'm all in favor of increasing up college tuition rates. Of course I bundle this sentiment in the guise of fiscal conservatism.
Until the number becomes significantly smaller, I could care less about what people think about my hobby. I think I'll have plenty of great games to play in the future, regardless of what Jack Thomson threatens.
I liked videogames when they seemed simple and not so all-consuming... Frogger, Pac-Man, now they were some righteous characters that never picked up a prostitute or blew a cop's head off."
This sort of Banduran monkey-see-monkey-do mindset is getting tired. Was there a rash of concern about people leaping into traffic because arcade denizens saw a pixelated frog do it when Frogger was all the rage?
It's possible I just have an addictive personality*, but I think it's more likely that there's something about video games themselves, whether it's self-identification with your avatar, or level design that rew...
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