So I was thinking about games that I loved when I was in elementary school - the games that we had at good ol' Kuehnle Elementary were awesome.  We had Mario Teaches Typing, which was amazing; I credit Mario and Luigi with my mad typing skillz even to this day.  We also had Fraction Munchers which no one else seems to remember.  Essentially, it would just give you a bunch of fractions and you would solve them as fast as you could so you could move on to the next square containing a fraction.  If you were too slow, a little purple monster descended from the top of the screen and tried to eat your little crocodile guy...I can only assume that monster was called a "Troggle" because that's what he said...I'd be sittin' there trying to figure out what 5/4 was, and just FREAKING OUT because the Troggle was coming down and I had no idea what the answer was.  Oh good times, and great anxiety, in elementary school.

We also had Electric Coloring Book. Did anyone else have that?! I thought it was awesome at the time.  Looking back, it's essentially just a combination of a bunch of scanned coloring book images couples with the "Fill" tool from Paint, haha.  I still loved it, though.

My favorite game outside of the classroom was without a doubt Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego! That game was THE BEST.  My entire family used to gather around the computer and play Carmen Sandiego!  I remember it being exceptionally simple - it would tell you that the thief had red hair, for instance - but I was also crazy excited to catch the thief and would always pick the first person with red hair, be wrong, and feel dumb, haha. 

Oregon Trail goes without mentioning. It's a staple and a necessity to my life.  I couldn't corral the wagons or ford the river without it.

I'm a bit late on this blog posting...eek.  Strangely, I'd actually read through some of Terra Nova's archives last week and just didn't get around to blogging about my findings.

Rather than go back several months, I actually decided to focus on what was currently going on in the world of gaming and look at the most recent articles.  Though it was cool to see that people like Richard Bartle were regular contributors to Terra Nova, I was actually very interested in a different author.  I stumbled across several entries by Bonnie Ruberg, who writes for the Village Voice.  She posted several articles that centered mostly around sexuality in gaming worlds.  Now, some of them were admittedly pretty silly - like this one..."On Emoticon Flirting"...Really? Who's that article for - tweens or geriatrics?  Aside from that, however, she had a couple of postings that really made me think.

The author talked about a variety of different gaming scenarios - ranging from MMORPGs like Second Life to seemingly glorified chat rooms like Google's Lively, which I know next to nothing about.  I was fascinated by the fact that she went into playing these games seeking out sexual scenarios, and then talked about them so blatantly.  I'd like to think I'm pretty open-minded, but I guess I just assumed that people who were "cybering" in-game were pretty covert about the idea.  Perhaps that IS the case, and this is why the author feels the need to do research into the area - no one's talking about it, but there are potentially a large number of users taking part....could be an interesting starting point for a research paper!

In other gaming news, I "rolled" (yeah?) a new alt today.  She's a high-elf bard named Illithria.  I like her better than my main, I think...something about being a bard I really enjoy.  And the game dropped me just north of Leth Nurae under this huge beautiful tree that rains leaves on you and there's Enya-like music playing all the time.  I'm a little bit of a hippie, and Illithria is, too, I think, haha.

Okay, so time to choose a guild for Nostre, my now level 10 Wood Elf.  There seem to be a lot of factors that go into picking a guild. On the station.sony.com website, I really liked that you could sort guilds leaderboard-style.  It made the whole process a lot more manageable for someone like me, who wasn't entirely sure what I was looking for. 

Though I was tempted to sort by "most deaths per member" - after all, I do die 4 or so times a gaming session at this point - I thought better of it and considered other options.  Since I'm not too familiar with gaming in general and Vanguard is really my first experience, I'm not sure if it is possible to switch the server that your character is playing on.  For instance, right now, I'm playing on Seradon, so I thought it might be important to consider guilds that were on the same server that I am currently.  Obviously, if it's a possibility to switch servers, then the location of the guild wouldn't matter.  However, that's where I started.  I also thought that it would behoove (like that word? I do) me to choose a rather large guild with varying levels of players. 

For that reason, one of my top choices of guild is The Platinum Order.  They are the biggest guild on Seradon and have a wide variety of player levels.  I really enjoy that the guild is so big - over 1200 players.  That seems to me like a whole bunch of chances to find someone like me in a guild setting.

Continuing down the list, I'm also considering Oracles of Vanguard.  They're the second biggest guild on Seradon (just under 500 members).  It does worry me a little that 5 of their 9 "leaders" are below me in level, but so many of their other guild members are high-level that I'm sure I could find someone compatible no matter where I was in the game.

I almost skipped over the third-largest guild on Seradon, Safe Haven.  I admit to being a bit of a name snob, and honestly, it sounded like that was the guild for inexperienced goody-goodies.  I could just see their slogan being something along the lines of "Hey, are you tired of dying and people using naughty language! Us too! Let's hug!" I'm SO GLAD I didn't skip them, though, and looked into their website a bit.  Their founder, Jeff, says this is the mission statement of the guild:
Having fun and making good friends that you will still have 10 years from now. If that isn't the type of atmosphere you are looking for in a guild then I suggest you keep searching. We are not hardcore, pretty casual, I work fulltime, go to class fulltime, and I have a social life so my time is pretty occupied. We are not leet or drama filled either, we are laid back mature group of people. If you bring some drama type trouble you will be asked to leave. I would hope you guys would expect us to ask people like that to leave anyways. 

Yes, Jeff, I'm into that! I want some new friends, I want to have fun, and I want people not to be upset with me if I die a lot at the beginning, haha.  I want something casual, I want people that will talk to me, and I want people to understand that I don't play a whole lot outside of class.  Safe Haven looks like the perfect place for that, and I can't wait to apply.

So, in summary, my choices:
1. Safe Haven
2. The Platinum Order
3. Oracles of Vanguard.

Si. Adios.

Honestly, I'm a little torn on how I feel about my test results on the Bartle Gamer Psychology Quiz. It's funny, when we talked in class about the different types of gamers there were, I didn't really think twice about what I would be. I assumed that I would be a socializer, but I don't think I thought it through like I could have.

For instance, when we started gaming in this class, we began with the MUD Aardwolf. I wasn't that great at it at first, and it quickly became clear to me (after being killed by a fly and a punching bag, respectively) that killing things didn't come naturally to me. After that, I came across a "small elven child" when I was wandering around the game world aimlessly, and I spent a good ten minutes playing with it - inputting various actions like "tickle child," "hug child," and "smile child." I didn't tell my classmates about the elven child...I just had fun playing with him on my own.

Ten minutes later, my classmate and good friend Stephen, whom I've known since I was 12 exclaimed, "I JUST KILLED A SMALL ELVEN CHILD! HAHA!!" I was so upset, hah! Of all the things you could kill, why would you kill a baby? Part of me realizes that video game life is nothing like real world life - I'm not one of the crazies that thinks that because you kill a baby in-game, you're going to have baby-killing tendencies for the rest of your "real" life. But a little part of me was deeply offended that anyone would want to kill a baby. Because I had emotional reactions to the game like this one, I automatically assumed that I would be a "socializer."

Imagine my surprise to see that I'm almost 20% more "Explorer" than I am "Socializer," and that my levels of "Socializer" and "Achiever" are almost equal. When I thought of an "explorer," I thought of my sister's boyfriend, Brendan - a very witty, quiet-til-you-know-him, bookish young man who keeps to himself and is a math major. I think that being an explorer makes sense for me, though. Now that we have our footing in Vanguard, I find myself very drawn to simply exploring the different areas that I'm in. Even when I'm on a quest, I take extra time and say to myself, "Hey, I wonder if this little cave leads to anywhere" or at least scan the area very thoroughly to see what's around. I notice fellow players simply darting from mob to mob, and that's not my style. And my level of "Achiever" is higher than I thought it might be, too, but I think I may have sold myself a little short to begin with. I'm very anxious to level up and gain experience points, and I'm very proud when I even move one level (Hey, I'm level 6 right now...we're startin' small). I'm not surprised at all that my lowest level is "Killer" - that's not me at all. I kill things when I have to on a quest, but I would never think to just accost anything that crosses my path.

The section of quiz results that tells me what games other people "like me" play wasn't of much help to me. People like me evidently play WoW, Final Fantasy XI, City of Heroes, City of Villains, and MapleStory. I've only heard of the first two of those, and I don't really know what games I like to play as I'm pretty new to gaming in general. I suppose they could help in that they might provided a starting point in the world of gaming for me, but from what I've seen, I like the graphics in Vanguard much more than those in WoW, and I don't know how enticed I am to play it.

I think the Bartle breakdown of types of gamers is a good start. In the Yee, Caplan, et al article we read in class, the authors made a point to note that it seemed that Bartle simply lumped a lot of people in together and didn't distinguish enough - as in there could be many more types of players with further research. I do think that's the case, and I even think it might be useful to classify people as two things when warranted. For instance, someone who scored 92% explorer on this test would, of course, just be an explorer, but someone who scored 65% explorer, 59% achiever would be a hybrid of those two things.

First, I want to talk a little bit about the idea of buying a fully-leveled character on sites like EBay.  Essentially, I think it takes all of the fun out of the game.  The whole point of playing games like Vanguard and WoW is to level your character, but to do so through gaining EXPERIENCE, as far as I can tell.  My class character, Nostre, is currently a level 6, so I obviously don't know everything there is to know about the process yet, but I'm having a lot of fun playing her.  It just seems to me that you'd be much less attached to your character...I don't know, I think I would just be bored playing a character that I did not level myself.  The only example I can think of where buying a pre-leveled character might be acceptable is if you are joining a game like WoW much after your friends or people you want to be in a guild with, and you buy a pre-leveled character in order to level the playing field.  However, I still feel that a newbie player playing a level 70 character in WoW, for example, knows as much as a newbie character playing a level 3 character.  Actual experience playing a character teaches you how to play it, it seems to me - so cutting the whole middle process out doesn't seem very beneficial. 

I looked around for links to websites that sold leveled-up characters, and found this one. Clearly, the person selling this character is selling it to people who at least know the basic jargon of WoW.  That seems strange to me, though.  I assume above that people buying leveled-up characters are younger players who don't want to wait to level, but that also implies that these users wouldn't know the jargon of the game.  I can't decipher much of it at all, having never played WoW.  Maybe, contrary to my previous assumption, experienced players by leveled-up characters sometimes, too....perhaps if they're creating a new character after having reached level 70 themselves? Pure speculation, of course.

The idea of gold farming is a little different to me.  Honestly, the idea bores me to tears, from what I understand of it.  If you don't NEED to mindlessly kill the same monster or perform the same activity for 10-18 hours a day...why would you?  In an article we read in class, Anda's Game, the main character encountered a group of foreign young women who gold farmed as an actual job, making $1 a day that their families relied upon.  I think gold farming is a fascinating practice when that is the case, and I'd love to do some research into Asian countries where that type of gold farming is legitimately practiced.  However, ads like this one, seemingly marketed to English-speaking players, confuse me.  Ambition is clearly a major part of playing MMOs, but why relegate ambition to so lowly a hobby?

I'd definitely need to do some further research into gold farming, but it does interest me (at least in the arena of monetary compensation in very poor countries).  I'm also still considering examining gender bending, and outside of class, I'm considering making a male character and seeing the difference first-hand.

Okay! So day one of playing Vanguard was really interesting!  I was glad that we all played the same race so that we all got the chance to explore the same part of the game.  I thought the visual effects of the game were really interesting - I was really impressed with the details in the boat, camp, and characters.  I heard some of my fellow players say that they thought the game was "too easy," but I was really happy that it was designed in a way that was relatively easy for new players to pick up.  For instance, I was really nervous about "combat mode" going into today.  I pictured a virtual world in which I'd be casting spells with my right hand, clicking various keys to scroll through weapons with my left hand, and continually looking over my shoulder to gauge the distance of approaching enemies.  What a relief to find that I just had to right-click my targets and the game "auto-attacked" for me! 

I was surprised at how much fun I had playing as an orc.  Reading the articles, I related a lot with the "n00b" players who like to play human-like characters and play for the "good" side.  "If that makes me look like an inexperienced easy target," I thought, "so be it."  I had a LOT of fun today playing Solemna, the orc, though.  Maybe the evil green guys aren't so bad.  I find myself falling more and more into these games and how to improve in playing them.  I know I'm very competitive, but I also like the imaginative side of the game - most specifically, creating a persona with a name and physical appearance of my choosing.  I found myself brainstorming names for my next character throughout my following class.

I don't have very many questions about the game just yet.  To be honest, that's probably because I voiced all of my questions aloud and my wonderful group members, Grayson and Arno, told me the answers.  I suppose my biggest question would be how to avoid getting attacked by more than one enemy combatant at one time.  Today, I was doing great until I was asked to take bonemender's charms.  To my dismay, EVERY time I got close to killing a target, one of its friends would run up and double-team me.  So unfair! Maybe I'm just picking the wrong guys, but there didn't seem to be any outliers that were easy to target. 

I'm also curious about if there are ways to improve my attack mode.  Does being as close as possible to the target help? As you level up, do you earn defence or healing spells - or is that completely reliant on the "healing" class of your species?

I'm anxious to play more! :)

Hello, all.

I'm Meaghan, and I'm completely new to gaming.  Well, that isn't entirely true.  Growing up, I played computer games.  They just weren't much like the ones that we are studying in class.  On the vintage end of that spectrum, I played a lot of Frogger, Space Invaders, and Pinball on my dad's computer when I was 6 or 7.  I also had a Game Boy, and the only two games I remember having were Donkey Kong and Tetris.  I do remember that I always put "Zork" as my name when it asked for a high score, and how much flack my sister gave me about what a nerd I was.  Hey, "Meaghan" was too long. Over the years, I progressed in my nerdiness, and played a lot of really awful care giving games like Dogz and Babyz.  Has anyone even heard of those? No? Okay, moving on.  I played Neopets in my early teens, too. Finally, I got with the program and played a lot of The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon in my later teens.

So this class is pretty new for me! I've definitely never played games where killing people and stealing things from them is the objective, but I'm anxious to get better at it.  First goal for the semester - don't let the punching bag kill you.

As far as research questions go, I'm not entirely sure what I'd like to study yet.  The idea of gender bending is really fascinating me so far.  I guess I assumed originally that players who gender bended did so just for the visual representation of the avatar, but many of my classmates have explained that several gamers who play female characters also take on a female persona in their speech patterns and actions.  I'd like to look at what the reasons for that might be - is it just escapism or role playing? I'd also like to see if girls do the same thing with male characters.

I'm also interested in exploring the "work" idea behind games.  I'm not sure which avenue I'd like to take there either - the idea of using games as a tool in the workplace is very interesting to me, and so is the idea that playing games is equivalent to work in some players' minds because of the skills they achieve by completing certain activities.