Short post today. I'm through with my first book for this class! It was really an excellent read, despite what Goodreads says. (Seriously, don't go through those reviews. I try not to, but every once in a while I get sucked in.) I still wouldn't consider myself a gamer in the way that some of my friends, or my boyfriend is. I just don't have the patience for it, I think. He can sit for hours and hours (he's doing so right now, blasting away zombies! I know who's team I'd be on for the zombie apocalypse...) and play a game, and I can barely watch a movie without feeling like I have to do something while I'm just sitting and watching. (As I post tonight, I have two other tabs open in my browser, and I'm seriously considering turning on Firefly to listen/watch while I do other homework after this.)
So what did I learn from this book, you ask Dear Reader? Well, for starters: a whole heck of a lot more about the history of video games than I ever thought I would know. The book went in mostly chronological order, so the later third of the book was about games that I recognized: Grand Theft Auto, BioShock (which started out under the title "System Shock"), Bejeweled, and many others. It was interesting to read about the history of these recognizable games. I wonder though, if these games are too dated for our students? Maybe not BioShock, but definitely some of these others. The latest in the series, BioShock Infinite was released in March 2013. And what a damn good game that was! But I digress. I'd be curious to know what my students are playing, if they play video games. I know some of them play the 2-D exploration platform game Terraria (one of my favorites, and they lost their minds when I told them I've logged 150+ hours on it!) and some of them love playing first-person shooters games like Call of Duty. But I'd love to know what games they're playing in the middle, between those two rather extreme examples. Then I might have a better idea on how to incorporate games in to my class.
Do you play videogames? Share your favorite game below!
Ok. That's that, let's put the kibosh on video games for now. Tune in next time for the first post from my next reading choice, Make Me a Story: Teaching Writing Through Digital Storytelling by Lisa C. Miller.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Friday, February 27, 2015
"All Your Base Are Belong to Us" post #3: Women in Videogames
Finally! Women in videogames! The chunk that I read for this post talks about Roberta Williams, creator of the King's Quest series. IBM had asked Roberta and her husband Ken for an adventure game that would help launch their new machine, the PCjr, complete with two ports for joysticks and scheduled for release in March 1984. Even though the PCjr failed miserably, King's Quest went on to be quite a successful game! And to think that it started just as a game that the Williams's sold for $24.95, distributed in Ziploc bags.
This quote from the end of the chapter interested me the most:
"Roberta was the only woman game company founder who consistently made creditable, bestselling series. The fact that she has not made another game is troubling. Women certainly have made strides in game making over the years. For instance, Jade Raymond produced the Assassin's Creed series for Ubisoft, and Amy Hennig directed and wrote the Uncharted series... Both have been bestsellers that consistently receive stellar review scores. But sadly, no woman since Roberta has had such a long-running impact on games and on game companies. Decades later, Sierra still represents the high point for women in videogames." (Goldberg 158)
No wonder! Who do young girls in this generation have to look up to in video game creation? That's certainly not to say that they can't look up to the men in this business who are making incredible strides for the genre. But when women are constantly ridiculed in the videogame world, such as during Gamersgate last summer, it's no wonder that girls are so often discouraged from following their gaming dreams.
That's it for this post really. I was just excited to share that I've reached a point in videogame history where women are starting to pop up in to the picture!
This quote from the end of the chapter interested me the most:
"Roberta was the only woman game company founder who consistently made creditable, bestselling series. The fact that she has not made another game is troubling. Women certainly have made strides in game making over the years. For instance, Jade Raymond produced the Assassin's Creed series for Ubisoft, and Amy Hennig directed and wrote the Uncharted series... Both have been bestsellers that consistently receive stellar review scores. But sadly, no woman since Roberta has had such a long-running impact on games and on game companies. Decades later, Sierra still represents the high point for women in videogames." (Goldberg 158)
No wonder! Who do young girls in this generation have to look up to in video game creation? That's certainly not to say that they can't look up to the men in this business who are making incredible strides for the genre. But when women are constantly ridiculed in the videogame world, such as during Gamersgate last summer, it's no wonder that girls are so often discouraged from following their gaming dreams.
That's it for this post really. I was just excited to share that I've reached a point in videogame history where women are starting to pop up in to the picture!
Monday, February 2, 2015
"All Your Base are Belong to Us" post #2
This one doesn't have a fancy title. Mostly because I've read way more chapters that what I would like to talk about in this post. But, here goes!
So I'm up to the point in video game history where gamers are just starting to see the emergence of the Playstation, and the great battle between Sony and Nintendo. Not long before this console's birth though, a little company called Electronic Arts (EA) created the widely popular Madden NFL games, collaborating with actual football players and coaches. One quote stuck out from this section to me, even though sports games aren't really my cuppa: "Yet Madden was the franchise that made history, earning more than $3 billion since it was first released. Much of that success was due to a new marketing plan for games, a kind of preplanned obsolescence and keep-up-with-the-Joneses business ethic...If you didn't have the new Madden, packed with this year's players...you weren't as cool as your game-playing who procured the newest version" (Goldberg 105). This mentality, in my opinion, is still around in video games today, but it's expanded outside the realm of sports games. If you don't have the newest Call of Duty game, or the latest DLC (downloadable content) for Dark Souls 2, you just aren't hip to the jive. There are, of course, gamers who could care less about the latest updates; they play the game for the story, which bring me to the next piece that stuck out in this section I read.
PC gaming found it's niche in 1980, with a text-based adventure game called Zork. (Text based games basically go like this: Computer: "You are walking along a path and come upon a boulder in your way." You type: "North" and based on that command, the computer will either progress your character or tell you you can't do that, forcing you to figure out the proper command.) Zork had zero graphics, which left everything up to the player's imagination, much like the role-playing games it was based on (such as Dungeons and Dragons). Zork led to other iconic role-playing games, most notably The 7th Guest. This was really the first immersive role-playing game that put players in to the world, through the eyes of the character they were playing as; the developers of The 7th Guest spent a tremendous amount of time and money creating the game to almost exactly resemble the experience one gets when they are watching a movie.
Now, RPG's are a genre in their own right, with popular titles such as: the Final Fantasy series, The Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Trigger series, Elder Scrolls series, and many others. The common element that all these games share: players spend a great deal of time becoming engrossed in the story of the characters. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that my boyfriend is a super serious gamer. RPG's are some of his favorite, and he's logged over 500 hours in Final Fantasy VII (not all in one-go, don't worry!) What interests me the most about this type of immersion is that the exact same type of immersion happens when readers get lost in an excellent book. So, that begs the question then O Reader, how can we engage our students who love video game stories, but hate reading, in the same sort of immersion that happens in their video games, but in literature?
Lots of food for thought, I know. And I did get a bit rambly. But I love this book and I can't recommend it enough!
Ok, 'til next time Dear Reader.
-C
So I'm up to the point in video game history where gamers are just starting to see the emergence of the Playstation, and the great battle between Sony and Nintendo. Not long before this console's birth though, a little company called Electronic Arts (EA) created the widely popular Madden NFL games, collaborating with actual football players and coaches. One quote stuck out from this section to me, even though sports games aren't really my cuppa: "Yet Madden was the franchise that made history, earning more than $3 billion since it was first released. Much of that success was due to a new marketing plan for games, a kind of preplanned obsolescence and keep-up-with-the-Joneses business ethic...If you didn't have the new Madden, packed with this year's players...you weren't as cool as your game-playing who procured the newest version" (Goldberg 105). This mentality, in my opinion, is still around in video games today, but it's expanded outside the realm of sports games. If you don't have the newest Call of Duty game, or the latest DLC (downloadable content) for Dark Souls 2, you just aren't hip to the jive. There are, of course, gamers who could care less about the latest updates; they play the game for the story, which bring me to the next piece that stuck out in this section I read.
PC gaming found it's niche in 1980, with a text-based adventure game called Zork. (Text based games basically go like this: Computer: "You are walking along a path and come upon a boulder in your way." You type: "North" and based on that command, the computer will either progress your character or tell you you can't do that, forcing you to figure out the proper command.) Zork had zero graphics, which left everything up to the player's imagination, much like the role-playing games it was based on (such as Dungeons and Dragons). Zork led to other iconic role-playing games, most notably The 7th Guest. This was really the first immersive role-playing game that put players in to the world, through the eyes of the character they were playing as; the developers of The 7th Guest spent a tremendous amount of time and money creating the game to almost exactly resemble the experience one gets when they are watching a movie.
Now, RPG's are a genre in their own right, with popular titles such as: the Final Fantasy series, The Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Trigger series, Elder Scrolls series, and many others. The common element that all these games share: players spend a great deal of time becoming engrossed in the story of the characters. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that my boyfriend is a super serious gamer. RPG's are some of his favorite, and he's logged over 500 hours in Final Fantasy VII (not all in one-go, don't worry!) What interests me the most about this type of immersion is that the exact same type of immersion happens when readers get lost in an excellent book. So, that begs the question then O Reader, how can we engage our students who love video game stories, but hate reading, in the same sort of immersion that happens in their video games, but in literature?
Lots of food for thought, I know. And I did get a bit rambly. But I love this book and I can't recommend it enough!
Ok, 'til next time Dear Reader.
-C
Saturday, January 17, 2015
"All Your Base Are Belong to Use" chapters 1-6
Being the overachiever I am, I bought two books to do for the reading assignment for my online class, LLSS 536. I chose to start reading "All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture" by Harold Goldberg. While this is a non-fiction text, it reads like a best friend telling you a really hilarious story about the history of their favorite video game. These first six chapters are jam-packed with knowledge, coupled with anecdotal stories connected to the fathers (no mothers or grandmothers of videogaming yet... still a very male-dominated field) of modern video gaming. My favorite thing to do while reading this book is to throw pop quiz questions toward my boyfriend, the biggest video gamer I know. Some of these facts he already knew, but even he is learning along with me, even after playing video games for the majority of his life.
The book starts with the creation of Tennis for Two, in the 1950's. This would eventually lead to the creation of Pong, by a tiny company named Atari. Everyone should recognize the name Atari, even if they didn't get to play on an Atari console. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, chose the name Atari from an ancient Chinese strategy game called Go, a game he adored. "The definition is the equivalent of the word 'check' in chess but also means 'you are about to become engulfed'" (Goldberg, 25.) And engulf the world it did. Through the good times and the bad, Atari has come to be an icon of the gaming industry.
Enter a curious young artist by the name of Shigeru Miyamoto. Starting from the bottom up, his name will become synonymous with one of the biggest video game companies today: Nintendo. Everybody, young and old, knows Nintendo and their iconic characters; Mario, Princess Peach, Link, Zelda, and many more. Nintendo is responsible for some of the biggest selling video games of all time, and they continue to be at the forefront of video game creation, as well as creating and releasing state of the art gaming consoles.
For me, the theme I keep seeing pop up over and over again in the stories of these early video game CEO's is determination. From Miyamoto to Ralph Baer (creator of Pong and the Odyssey gaming system) to Dr. William Higginbotham (creator of Tennis for two, the very first video game), each of these creators has faced adversity, often very challenging and/or difficult. They were rejected, laughed at, turned aside, and ridiculed. And yet the persevered, changing the history of video gaming forever. If our students learn nothing else from video games or, if we focus on no other aspect of video games in our classroom, we should at the very least try to instill this sense of determination in our students, in every aspect of their lives.
If you hadn't noticed, I'm super digging this book. :) so I can't wait to post more about it as I continue further in to the history of video games! Talk to you later!
The book starts with the creation of Tennis for Two, in the 1950's. This would eventually lead to the creation of Pong, by a tiny company named Atari. Everyone should recognize the name Atari, even if they didn't get to play on an Atari console. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, chose the name Atari from an ancient Chinese strategy game called Go, a game he adored. "The definition is the equivalent of the word 'check' in chess but also means 'you are about to become engulfed'" (Goldberg, 25.) And engulf the world it did. Through the good times and the bad, Atari has come to be an icon of the gaming industry.
Enter a curious young artist by the name of Shigeru Miyamoto. Starting from the bottom up, his name will become synonymous with one of the biggest video game companies today: Nintendo. Everybody, young and old, knows Nintendo and their iconic characters; Mario, Princess Peach, Link, Zelda, and many more. Nintendo is responsible for some of the biggest selling video games of all time, and they continue to be at the forefront of video game creation, as well as creating and releasing state of the art gaming consoles.
For me, the theme I keep seeing pop up over and over again in the stories of these early video game CEO's is determination. From Miyamoto to Ralph Baer (creator of Pong and the Odyssey gaming system) to Dr. William Higginbotham (creator of Tennis for two, the very first video game), each of these creators has faced adversity, often very challenging and/or difficult. They were rejected, laughed at, turned aside, and ridiculed. And yet the persevered, changing the history of video gaming forever. If our students learn nothing else from video games or, if we focus on no other aspect of video games in our classroom, we should at the very least try to instill this sense of determination in our students, in every aspect of their lives.
If you hadn't noticed, I'm super digging this book. :) so I can't wait to post more about it as I continue further in to the history of video games! Talk to you later!
Monday, January 12, 2015
Student Teaching Second Semester
Hi blog! Long time no see! Hope you like the revamping I've done :)
This semester, I'm taking an online class around digital literacies in the classroom. The cool part? Instead of doing essays on the book (or books, you know me...) I get to blog about it for 8 weeks and my classmates will come and read and comment on what I post.
So that's what we'll be up to this semester, ok?
Ok :) see you in a little while!
This semester, I'm taking an online class around digital literacies in the classroom. The cool part? Instead of doing essays on the book (or books, you know me...) I get to blog about it for 8 weeks and my classmates will come and read and comment on what I post.
So that's what we'll be up to this semester, ok?
Ok :) see you in a little while!
Monday, December 2, 2013
Catcalled Day 7
Nothing happened today. Didn't spend much time outside work and home today, then straight to rehearsal.
That's it for the Catcalled project. At least what's required for class. I'll probably keep it up, but only update if something weird happens.
Thanks for following y'all.
:)
That's it for the Catcalled project. At least what's required for class. I'll probably keep it up, but only update if something weird happens.
Thanks for following y'all.
:)
Catcalled Day 6 entry for 12/1
So I'm working on this show. And it's with a director that I know and have met before, long time ago when I was about 16. We were in a show together, but he was the lead and I was just a side part.
But ever since we started working together on this show, he's awkwardly comfortable with me. Like saying things (even in a joking manner) like "ok, so i think we should have a cast party and we'll all get drunk and naked. oh just kidding..." or finishing texting conversations with winky faces. You know, like ;). That happened yesterday after a text that said "thanks you're the best. Love you mean it!"
I don't know, he's never done anything forward or creepy but sometimes, yesterday especially, it just bugs me. Gets under my skin you know?
I mean, would you say something about it?
I don't know if I would. I dunno.
I try not to let it bug me too much. It doesn't mean anything, I don't think.
But if it gets any weirder than winky face texts then yes, I will say something.
But ever since we started working together on this show, he's awkwardly comfortable with me. Like saying things (even in a joking manner) like "ok, so i think we should have a cast party and we'll all get drunk and naked. oh just kidding..." or finishing texting conversations with winky faces. You know, like ;). That happened yesterday after a text that said "thanks you're the best. Love you mean it!"
I don't know, he's never done anything forward or creepy but sometimes, yesterday especially, it just bugs me. Gets under my skin you know?
I mean, would you say something about it?
I don't know if I would. I dunno.
I try not to let it bug me too much. It doesn't mean anything, I don't think.
But if it gets any weirder than winky face texts then yes, I will say something.
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