Having Class in Second Life?

After the session with Richard Bartle, I do not believe that Second Life and similar virtual worlds are very effective as classroom tools. On one hand, our class was able to converse with Richard here in Seattle while he was in the UK. Many of the students did not even show up to class and instead logged in from home. On the other hand, it was a lot less intimate and immersive compared to when we actually had lecturers in the classroom.

The entire flow of the conversation was largely dominated by one or two individuals. Most of the characters were snoozing, flying about, or doing random movements behind the seats. I guess that since the lecturer wasn’t in front of us, it was harder to pay attention. And even when I was trying to participate, it was hard to keep track of the conversation. When a person asked a question, there were at least five lines of dialogue before the question was answered. I think that if we had audio and visual, the experience would be a lot more engaging. The class had the video conference with Ryan Dancy and it was great. We asked him a ton of questions and utilized class time efficiently.

I am now curious about online classes. I just experience my first online lecture and it was not on the same level as real ones. Can online universities provide the quality of education? Is it fair when online classes are weighed the same way as normal classes in terms of GPA?

Game Movies

Following Tyler Bielman’s guest talks, I feel compelled to address why game movies are so horrible. Take a look at Dungeons & Dragons, Dead or Alive, and Super Mario. Part of the reason must be due to the “marketing halo”. If millions are spent marketing the game and toys, producers don’t feel a need to spend as much money into advertising. Therefore, there is less money spent on the movie as a whole. Also, directors and producers probably rely on the franchises’ reputations to draw a large audience. If a Halo movie ever gets made, all of my guy friends would go see it, regardless of whether it actually looks decent. After all, Halo has tens of millions of followers around the globe. Even if a small fraction of this population pays to see the movie, say 10 million, the studio will still make at least 100 million dollars in ticket revenues. Of course, I realize that I am not counting the budget that went into making movie.

Of course, a movie is not all about profits. There are many instances of movies that have gained popularity despite a lackluster advertising campaign and a slow start in theatres. Instances include Serenity, Shawshank Redemption, Equilibrium and Slumdog Millionaire. These movies went on to become cult classics and are still loved by many due to their original content and story depth. This is the fundamental dilemma of video game movies. The fan base already loves the game. The content is not original, and the story has a predetermined depth that has been developed by expanded universe fiction, fan-based media and at times, academic works devoted to the analyses of said phenomena. People know what is going on from beginning to end, so that the movie is heavily dependent on a brilliant director who can yank the plot in an unexpected direction, without being disloyal to the fans’ preconceived notions.

So then the question is: if one were to find a brilliant director to take on a project like Halo or WoW, why would they be troubled to tackle a pre-made project in the first place? The most likely reason is a very large salary and need to exploit previously-created ideas due to a lack of original ones.

Grieving due to Grievers

Last night, I saw a post on the EVE cooperation chat screen and noticed a post about forming a team to do level two missions. Frustrated with what I was trying to accomplish previously, I decided to give this a try. He was in a nearby system, so we quickly met up. I told him about how I kept failing this particular mission and how I had lost a cruiser already. He agreed to help. We warped to the location, expecting to be hit immediately by a barrage of missiles. Surprisingly, none of the computer generated enemies appeared. There was a glitch in the game, which meant that I still couldn’t finish the darn mission! Instead, we decided to head out to low security space to work on more profitable endeavors. Meanwhile, we were contacted by a third person who read the post. He however was quite far away and would take close to half an hour to reach our location. We decided to wait for him, since there was strength in numbers.

He finally arrived so we started to head out. As soon as we went through the gate, we saw two battle cruisers just camping there. One of the guys and I were able to warp to another location…but the guy that spent half an hour to meet up with us had his warp mechanism jammed. His ship was subsequently blown up. It was so sad! Disappointed, he logged off and we followed suit.

So why do people choose to be grievers? Player-player altercations are normal in Eve especially over territory but then there are players that are just plain malicious. You can easily choose to make money via missions or mining. EVE Online, represents a virtual reality in a perspective not previously encountered. Socioeconomic trends lead certain people to become dejected and violent in their pursuits for life. Hence, you have many law-abiding citizens in EVE, as well as pirates and extortionists who would rather not wait to get their fix. Although the sampling of EVE players is non-random and includes people with similar interests (and presumably similar walks of life) the population displays the dynamics of what would be expected in a randomly-selected population. With just 50,000 people playing on one server, players have either miraculously assumed societal norms and niches out of habit, or else have been compelled by the previously-engineered system to fill the necessary occupations.

Still one question remains, as it has since the dawn of time. Why do some feel the need to blow others up? Where is the love?

EVE

I got started again on Eve this week. I played for a couple of weeks a few years ago, so certain aspects such as the interface and story plot still seem familiar. However, I don’t remember there being quite as many different classes of ships. Did the Titans always exist in the past? These ships are so large that they may as well be considered floating fortresses. I am very curious how they are manned. Is each Titan owned by a single person, or is the ship owned by a group of people, say an alliance? This brings me to the class’s discussion with Ryan Dancy. I still can’t believe that we got to talk to the Chief Marketing Officer of Eve Online. I had always known that Eve hads hundreds of corporations and that a group of corporations form an alliance. I was not aware of the similarities that Eve’s political, social, and economic sectors share with their counterparts in the real world. If 50,000 people play on a server at a time, it certainly would be a prime environment for political analysts and economists to study. If you think about it from a scientific perspective, it’s really a very long ongoing experiment with a large population in a controlled environment. I guess my thoughts never stray very far from biochemistry.

I chose the Galente race because I played it in the past and I liked using drones. The Galente are also democratic…what can I say…I’m an American. My friends Brian and George were nice enough to lend me some money to start things off. They were trying to talk me into starting a mining corporation with them. I don’t know if I’ll stay with the game long enough though.

Ragnorok Revisited

In my gaming class, we were asked to list some of our childhood games. The first thing that came to mind was Ragnorok Online, a Korean mmorpg, even though I technically did not get into it until high school. My friends kept about it but I tried as hard as I could to ignore them. After all, I was constantly swamped with calculus homework and always had to stay behind after school. Yes...I was a drama nerd and even have videotaped performances and club t-shirts to prove it. I refused to play also because I assumed it would cost money. I was soon informed that a friend of a friend owned a free online server called Pimp RO. Thus, I was finally roped into joining towards the end of sophomore year. The game was 2-D and did not have spectacular graphics or anything, but it did have really cool character designs. Soon, I was spending hours on end grinding, killing pink puff balls that looked like meat buns. I was also unexpectedly attached to my pet ghost, which was always two steps behind me. Of course there was also hanging out with my friends. We used to go online together, and search for bosses in dungeons. It really helped that their levels were a lot higher, so I was able to gain experience much faster. At one point, we were obsessed with the game that we even made costumes and wore them at Sakura Con. I played as an archer, but ended up with a high wizard costume because a bow would have been hard to make out of wood. I don’t even really remember why I stopped playing. Perhaps it was due to college applications and harder classes. I kind of wish that I can log back in and revisit the Ragnorok world but alas, the server has since been deleted, including all of my saved data.