Week 8

“History of Military Gaming” written by Carrie McLeroy is about how video games slowly progressed to become a tool for the military. I found it intriguing that people as far back as the 1st Century began to use tactics and strategies to overcome the enemy though I‘d say it‘s safe to bet they relied a lot on brute force. Back then the tactics used were of simple basic planning but it was the starting point for devices used today to train the soldiers. Using video games and simulation to help understand what it’s like out on the battle field has many benefits that can cause a major decrease in incidents related to training and minimal waste of ammunition. Although training virtually can be beneficial, it can’t truly bring the emotion of fear unless your out there doing the real thing.

The Germans were so effective in their campaigns and winning battle after battle and careful strategizing and planning must have been a huge factor to their victories. “The Germans were creating the foundations of mathematically driven warfare that would be programmed on computers in the 1950’s.” as stated by Roger Smith, chief scientist and technology officer for the Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation. The Germans have taken the next step up with probability and advanced mathematics that have lead to today’s advanced simulations and understandings. Hopefully the continuation of video game developing for the use in military combat training is growing to prevent casualties amongst soldiers.

“America’s Army” is a video game developed with the help and the ideas of the US army. This link: http://www.americasarmy.com/intel/ is to the video game main website in which you can view the heroes of today and learn about the rankings of the soldiers and what they do. Video games such as America’s Army engages the player in the important aspects of what a solider in a real battle does. Besides using video games, I’ve always thought that the military had realistic cockpits and virtual simulators that can portray the image of war far better than anything controlled by a joystick. Upon reading the article “Military Training Is Just a Game,” I found that using virtual simulators were effective but it was extremely costly even for the military. Michael Macedonia, chief scientist at the army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation in Orlando Florida states “It’s not really about shooting things, learning how to shoot your weapon is easy. The challenging thing is leading.” Some games such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six PC game focuses a lot on the keeping your swat team alive and planning. Many war games put a strong emphasis on the gun where it feels as if you can take out the entire terrorist squad with a powerful gun. Games that are meant to train the soldiers must be more than about the weaponry and focus on leadership and how to react in times of danger.

Who ever knew that the military had a whole bunch of Xbox 360 and Wii controllers in their top secret lockers? According to “Wii All You Can Be? Why The Military Needs The Gaming Industry” by Glenn Derene talks about how the US military needs the help of some of the worlds top video game industries. When it comes to picking the best analog for whatever the military has up there sleeves, they seem to have favored the Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers because of the “portability, durability and easy ergonomics of the gamepad make it ideal for military use.” says Glenn Derene. I can understand how they prefer the controllers over the use of anything similar to a computer keyboard type layout because it’s a lot easier to use your thumbs to move the joysticks rather than having to type and click your way through.

Week 7 Post

According to Richard Heeks, author of “Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on Gold Farming”… “gold farming means the real-world sale of virtual goods and services produced in online games.” Making a business to sell virtual items for real-life money is definitely the dream job for any gamer. This informative article about gold farming was intriguing because of the fact that people, many people at that, are willing to spend money after money for online game services. While engaging in the article, I found that not only do the gold farmers make real money for online gaming services, it is one of the earliest form of online employment. Going online today, I see hundreds of ads online that is similar to gold farming, except it doesn’t involve video games. Every day I see ads that say that you can make as much as ten thousand dollars just for posting advertisements on other sites! As great and easy as it sounds, most are a fluke and many people fall prey to false advertising.

One would certainly think that playing video games while earning money is preposterous a few years ago but it has been something that has been going on for quite a while. According to Richard Heeks, “First, MMORPGs really began to grow in industrialized countries with the launch of Ultima Online in 1997.” The first MMPORG has boosted the gaming community and started the process of gold farming since 1997. I find that this kind of employment would usually attract students from high school and maybe some young adults. Upon reading the article, I found that gold farmers work a hard 12 hour daily shift while working seven days a week! Now of course, this job has positions and ranks according to research done by Richard Heeks, and it seems that the staff get paid a mere $140 US dollars/month while the higher ups get paid much more. Although fun as it may sound to play games and get paid, the hours put into gold farming does not equal in earnings for a $140/month, although it can be great for pocket change or if you simply just enjoy playing the game while earning some money. I can see great potential in this job for younger people but I don’t think it would actually make the cut on most people.

Cheating in video games? Who’s never tried to do such a thing? People cheat and there are consequences for doing so. That’s the human nature and people have been doing it for decades for many purposes. Some people cheat to get ahead in the competition, some people cheat because it involves less work, and some people cheat for the joy of it. Upon reading the article “Cheaters: A Special Report” by a Game Informer staff member, there are two kinds of cheating in the world of video gaming which I agree on. Playing in single player mode and cheating is a lot less harmful than cheating online during multiplayer. Although it is a lot difficult, gamers are willing to risk their gaming account because playing online and winning increases the points that other online gamers see and in turn can get the respect and bragging rights. Robert Bowling, Call of Duty 4 community manager at developer Infinity Ward states, “You always think your ahead of the curve, but no matter how much internal testing you do or how much we play the game ourselves, your endless community is always going to find things you didn’t see.” Cheating ruins other gamers experiences online and although game developers are trying to find ways to stop the glitches and cheats, new ways to spoil the game are always going to be there.

“The Social Network Game Boom” written by Sande Chen focuses on the social networking that involve some major social websites such as Facebook and Myspace. I am a victim of the mini games on Facebook and MSN especially when I find myself bored out of my mind unable to find anything else to do. One thing that I notice when I play these games is that I have the ability to play with my friends that are online. Being able interact with my friends while playing the game definitely helps to be more social while playing and it also benefit’s the game developers. Video game developers try to expand their product to a wide range of people and what better way to do so than posting games on popular social websites? A simple interesting game played on Facebook can be an advertisement to a upcoming game to improve their sales. Overall, I think that the internet is a powerful tool for advertising and obtaining needed information in which everyone can benefit from. Anything from online employment such as gold farming to having political debates, we would be back in the Stone Age if it wasn’t for the internet.

Food, Water, and The Internet

Our world is getting more and more advanced every year and technology is becoming more essential to our daily lives. The internet is important to our lives as clothes, food and shelter because we thrive on the information that we obtain. The World Wide Web has allowed people from around the world to obtain information that people without internet cannot. According to “Young Adults and Virtual Public Spheres: Building A New Political Culture” by Alan E. Rycroft, “young adults favor the Internet for news and information gathering.” I myself, use the internet 90% of the time whenever I need to gather information. Alan also says that the internet provides a more diverse culture and a more efficient way of gathering information from many points of view all over the world whether it’s politics or news.

Being accessible anywhere around the world, the internet provides the tools to allow people to express their thoughts and ideas. For example, there are many websites that allow people to communicate through the web which allows diverse opinions from people around the world about anything from video games to politics. Alan E. Rycroft states that “The fact that young people are now exposed to a wide variety of opinions, well beyond the narrow confines of corporate media reporting, and that many take the opportunity to learn more about issues that interest them, helps compel many young people to take action and use the Internet as a political communications and organizing tool.” I think it is in the human nature to take interests in things that we as an individual are intrigued by.

Using the internet for politics and news is one thing but using video games to portray what is happening around the world such as wars and economic crisis is a whole other idea. In “The Civic Potential of Video Games” written by Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, and Chris Evans, the question “Are teens that have civic gaming experiences more committed to and engaged in civic and political activity?” I think it does because gamers who enjoy games like “Call of Duty” and “Star Craft” become more interested in things that relate to the game. When I played the “Call of Duty” series, I was more amused at the storyline in the single player mode than I have ever been in any history or civics class I have ever taken. The story of the video game allowed me to play as a soldier of WWII and it was definitely more interesting than reading books about WWII. Playing the game kept me engaged and all the while helped me learn in a fun and interesting way about how WWII was like. Not many young adults like to deal with politics, especially if they would have to pull the books out, I think that there is no better way than to engage young students and adults about civics than video games that help engage in civics.

Alcoholics, Druggies and... Video Game Addicts?

Everyone knows that video games are entertaining especially at times when there is nothing to do, but not many, especially the adults providing their children with the games know that it can be extremely harmful. After reading those articles online, studies have proven that video game addiction is similar to that of having a gambling or alcohol addiction. It has never crossed my mind that addiction to video games can be classified as something so dangerous and life threatening. Although it is not as severe has having a constant state of yearning for alcohol, it can still ruin lives.

Every now and then I watch the news channel and I find that an emotionally wrecked thirty-five or forty-five year old male being put behind bars because he was addicted to alcohol. Can you imagine a sixteen year old kid reenacting that forty-five year old because he did what he thought he could do in video games? Maybe the kid, after playing countless hours of the violent games provided by the gaming industry today, thought that he can get imaginary and start shooting the “bad guys” with his or her daddies hand gun to be the hero. Video games can be fun but it also needs to be limited to a certain extent.

Video games are what kids do these days. Anything from Super Mario to World of Warcraft. I remember going to school and hear kids talking about video games throughout recess and lunch. I have also joined in a couple of the discussions they had putting my own perspectives about the “current” games. I’ve never asked or bothered trying to know, but I’ve always thought that as soon as they opened the front door to their house, they were on the computer playing games. With no disrespect to any of them, I really had thought that they had nothing else to do because they were so used to playing games to feed their addiction to everything. They were always in a group of two or three and was never social as they would not expand outside of their group. Kimberly Young, PsyD, Clinical director for the center of the Center for Online-Addiction stated “an intelligent child who is unpopular at school can “become dominate in the game.” “The virtual life can becomes more appealing than real life.” You can’t blame the kids for finding comfort in their games back home because it was surely a lot easier than trying to be “big” at school although, at such an early age, you can expect consequences.

One thing I’m sure we can all agree on is that games are definitely something we can all play to become the imaginary hero or heroine or the worlds greatest villain. Weather it’s just changing your characters clothes or finding the right hairstyle that you have always wanted on the video game character, you find it satisfying and for some, overwhelming. Being a hardcore video gamer is not the least bit dangerous as being an alcoholic or a drug addict but it does ruin the character you can be in real life opposed to that of the character you want to be in video games. Undeveloped social skills and poor physical activity can seriously ruin who you can become. In todays world, people that have strong social skills and a healthy physical appearance is prized and is favored among others. Engaging in the entertainment video games provide, exercise of anti-addiction for the game should be maintained with self control. Parents with young children should set a limit to the amount of time spent on playing video games, as I would expect that the last thing a parent would want to see is their own children struggling for their own lives after something they thought would be so harmless.