#hannahyu

I told myself I was going to be super productive today. Bomb threats cancelled all of my classes. I was going to knock out at least half of one of my final papers. What did I spend the entire morning doing?

Playing Angry Birds.

Seeing Reality Hunger on the syllabus this semester was bitter sweet. On the bright side, I didn't sell the book last semester, but saving a few dollars was my only excitement towards the novel. Like I said on my note card, I didn't enjoy this book the second time around. The only thing I remembered from it from last semester was "Tell the truth but tell it slant" which was my favourite quote.

This time around I think I payed more attention to the quotes and the meaning behind them. One that I spent a lot of time thinking about was "We're only certain ("certain only"?) about what we don't understand" pg 138. I reread this statement several times, trying to see where he was coming from. If you're sure of something, then you understand it. Or does he mean that we only don't know what we don't know?

Although most of Galloway's "Gaming" article went in one ear and out the other, I was able to grasp the concept of diegetic acts vs. nondiegetic acts. I found the section that he focused on pausing quite interesting. It made sense that pausing is a nondiegetic act as the player has complete control over when the pause takes place and how long it lasts for. I found this interesting because there is no pause button in World of Warcraft. While I was playing the game, I would always want a pause button when I wanted to get a drink or go to the bathroom but was in the middle of a quest and surrounded by raptors. Sometimes I'd risk it - I'd try to hide Yennijolla in the field against a near by mountain and run to do whatever I needed to do, only to come back to her standing in a graveyard with a big red arrow directing me to find her corpse. At first I was annoyed by this, but I've eventually realized that a pause button would've made WoW less of a world. There is no pause in our world. If you stand in a field full of lions, they will smell you, find you, and kill you. Putting a pause button in WoW would've made it more obvious that the player is playing a game. 

The machinema I have chosen to analyze is titled "What Happens During Server Maintenance" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2JB6oRdnE4). I chose this machinema because I have server maintenance - it was always going on when I wanted to play during philosophy. I imagine a million nerdy looking boys typing really fast on different computers doing things I'll never be able to understand. 

The machinema takes on the viewpoint of the characters in the game during server maintenance. It reminded me of Toy Story - the toys (characters in the game) came to life and played by themselves after we've left them alone (but really we can't get to them for the time being), and go on adventures. The "adventures" in this machinema are really characters checking up on each other. One asks another if they have the rent for the month ("Its been a little slow this week."), and asks another business owner how their sales are ("Do some stupid pet promotion then, everyone loves pets!"). After all their business is taken care of, they derp around for the rest of server maintenance and have a dance party.  

I found the concept of quests in World of Warcraft interesting. Before we started playing in class, I didn't know that quests were a part of the game. I knew it was an online role playing game, but had no idea that tasks were given to complete. Quests were what drew me into the game and what made me want to keep playing. I get excited whenever I saw the yellow question mark over someone's head, and even more excited when I would complete the quest and receive a reward - even though I'm still grasping the basics of money and what to do with the rewards. The section of chapter 8 titled "Does the Content Matter?" was an accurate representation of how I play the game. After I press the yellow question mark, I automatically hit accept and then look to the right to see what I need to collect or need to kill or destroy in order to complete the quest. To be honest, I have no idea what the narrative behind the game is, and don't really have much interest in that aspect of the game. 

The chapter I was most drawn to in the second assigned reading was chapter 10. I'd never heard of Three Tales before (a quick google search informed me it was an opera), but its combination of history and technology quickly had me interested. In addition to loving video games, I'm also a history buff. What I found most interesting were the specific events that the authors chose and the reason behind it. The "tales" were of Hindenburg (an incident just before WWI), Bikini (the atomic bomb testing site), and Dolly (the first successfully cloned animal). The first two events were on the brink of two world changing moments, while Dolly was world changing in a scientific breakthrough way. Later on, the authors explain how they considered using the 1986 NASA Challenger disaster as their third event, but opted for Dolly instead because Challenger held too much sadness. This to me was mind boggling. I'm not saying that the event wasn't sad, innocent lives were taken and it was a national tragedy, however I would put it on the same level as the first two parts of the story. In my mind it would've made sense. 

Also, has anyone listened to the disk that comes with the book? I put it in hoping it was an audio book so I wouldn't have to read (no cigar) - its super weird. I tried listening to it as I wrote this, but much prefer my Coldplay Pandora station.