Yesterday a shitload of people got laid off from 1up.com when they were acquired by UGO.com. Good for the site itself, but bad for everyone who actually made it the place I like to go to. Also, Electronic Gaming Monthly was CANCELLED!!! What the fuck! They didn't even get to do a final issue.
Since I made this blog so I could write about gaming stuff, I figured I should write something, but this sucks too much to just write a rambling, complaining wall of text that says things that the guys that worked there have already heard by everyone else.
So I used the different 1up Show theme songs, my favorite parts from podcasts, funny clips from the 1up Show, and photos from around the internet to make this video tribute.
Enjoy.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
The following is my term paper for SOCI 1510.007, Honors Individuals in Society. It really doesn't have enough research, and I could never quite pinpoint a main topic I felt was really good, so I ended up with this. Not my best, but I did what I could with the two days I had left to write it.
The Virtual Reality of World of Warcraft
and Why People Escape to It.
Jonathan Graham
Individuals in Society SOCI 1510.007
Introduction
The planet Earth is a pretty great place to be. There are tons of interesting places to go and people to meet, and while there are a few bad exceptions out there, its all mostly pretty cool. But in all the dark, dank, Cheeto bag filled basements around the world, there live monsters. These monsters thrive in the lonely darkness under the house, like cave trolls. When their defenses are finally broken down by hunger and full bladders, they are stricken by an agonizing blindness at the sight of sunlight, followed by spasms of panic and anxiety when attempting to make contact with the opposite sex. These monsters are generally known as “nerds,” but this rare species has an evolution tree with many, many branches. Some are known as the Dance Dance Revolution Nerd, or the Dungeons & Dragons Nerd, but a large rise in the population of a certain nerd, the World of Warcraft nerd, has led to a recent change in the perception and study of this creature. The research culminated in a expedition into the secret world of the nerds, and the amazing discovery of a portal to a dangerous world called Azeroth, the kingdom of the nerd.
Azeroth is the virtual world that the MMORPG World of Warcraft takes place in. MMORPG stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game,” a genre of video game that has steadily rose in popularity throughout the last 10 years, and continues to grow in the present. World of Warcraft is by far the biggest in the genre, with over 14 million paid monthly subscribers around the world. Blizzard Entertainment, the developer, launched the game on November 23, 2004. In the 4 years that the game has been active, a fully fledged community has grown and thrived. The recent release of the game’s second expansion, titled “Wrath of the Lich King,” sold 2.8 million copies within 24 hours of being released. This makes it fastest selling computer game of all time, beating out the former record holder which is, of course, the first expansion set, “World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.”
To be fair, World of Warcraft is not only played by nerds and people who have no social skills, it is actually played by a very diverse range of people. There are some who have full-time jobs and play maybe only an hour a night. These are the ones who constantly wonder why they waste so much time in a fake world and feel like they should stop and save the money they pay each month. While there are others whose job is actually inside the game world, through something which has become known as “gold farming,” in which they gain currency virtually to sell to other players, who pay in actual money. This allows them to basically play the game as their hobby and source of income simultaneously. A survey taken of another well known MMORPG, Everquest, even revealed that 40% of players would quit their jobs in the real world if in-game ones could yield a sufficient amount of income (Castronova, 2001). The wide range of reasons why people play World of Warcraft only serve to beg the question: Why do so many people play World of Warcraft, and what becomes of the “lives” that are being formed right now in the game?
World of Warcrack
The basic gameplay of World of Warcraft is not necessarily the most complex thing. There are many game genres, such as first person shooters, that at their base level are much more complex than that of WoW, at least in terms of playability. The player’s main goal in the game is to complete quests, which usually consists of running around the fictional world of Azeroth finding and killing a specific number of a certain type of creature to collect the item it leaves behind. Normally, this game mechanic of “level grinding” becomes a chore in other games and leaves the player bored to the point that they may just stop playing. But nevertheless WoW still has so much momentum, even with this tedious mechanic. The result of many hours of grinding is the eventual leveling up of a character, signaled by a bright ring of light that travels up your avatar and the now familiar “ding!” sound. Upon leveling up, new skills can be gained, and attributes like strength and endurance can be improved. This is one of the reasons why so much time is spent doing the same monotonous task for hours on end.
The natural addiction one feels while playing World of Warcraft seems akin to Flow Theory(Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Flow Theory has four experiential states: anxiety, apathy, relaxation, and flow. Immediately apparent upon examination of the game is that the states of anxiety and apathy are intentionally avoided in World of Warcraft. When a player is defeated in battle, they are transported to a nearby graveyard where they may then travel back to where they died as a ghost and be resurrected with no loss of experience or items. There is no sense of “this game is too hard,” or “this is boring,” because they are constantly moving about with a sense of purpose as to what they are doing or where they are traveling to. What keeps players motivated is the constant feeling of being on a mission, rather than just wasting time. The state of ‘flow’ is what really keeps WoW’s hooks in its players. The feeling of constantly having a job to be doing, and enjoying it all the while moves the player into a sort of trance in which they could play forever if the human body didn’t have limits.
Within the optimal state of flow, nothing else seems to matter, as theexperience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at a great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The optimal condition of deep enjoyment must be experienced under two prerequisites. First, there must be perceived challenges for action stretching existing skills, engaging at a level appropriate to one’s capacities. Second, clear proximal goals and immediate feedback of the progress must also be present (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).
The two prerequisites for the optimal state of ‘flow’ are met easily through simple game design. It is common practice for a video game to adjust the artificial intelligence and difficulty of enemies to give the player a fair balance of easy, relaxing moments and difficult, tense ones. Also, whether the game be a shooter, kid’s, strategy, or puzzle game, instant gratification is a concept central to good game design. Gaining experience points and leveling up in a video game is a very enjoyable experience, but it is not an original concept. It has been in practice for many years through the evolution of the games industry. But one thing sets WoW apart from others: virtual communities and personal interactions with other players.
The Power of Internet Anonymity
While it may seem like everyone plays World of Warcraft to just play the game that the developers created, there is much more under the surface. As with any other place online--message boards, blogs, youtube, etc.--the ability to be a completely different personality is an opportunity that many if not most individuals do not pass up. There is no pressure on physical appearance, and there are no real names to trace back anything offensive that is said. In an massively multiplayer game like WoW, this can add greatly to the immersion that the player feels.
The design of a MMORPG is such that it forces gamers to cooperate in high-crisis and trust-building scenarios. This leads to the establishment of relationships. This social aspect of MMORPGs, referring to the ability of gamers to construct friendships, build communities and engage in social interactions in the virtual world (Heckel, 2003), is often stated as one of the major motivations for the increasing popularity of MMORPGs (Burn & Carr, 2004; Friedl, 2003 Lazzaro, 2004; Rouse, 2001, Sherry & Lucas, 2003; Yee, 2004).
According to a 2003 study of MMORPG players, the social interaction aspect was the main draw to the experience, commanding 41% of the vote. Meanwhile the opposite side, the killing things to get stuff aspect, received only a measly 4% (Griffiths et. al, 2003). Were a sociological perspective to be placed onto Azeroth, it would most definitely be from the school of symbolic interactionism. The fictional world--though not a living, breathing place--is still full of life that was born and formed from the simple act of users speaking to each other through whatever form of communication they had available. After 4 years, those interactions have taken root and now continue to grow as more and more soon-to-be Death Knights and Blood Elves make the short but expensive relocation to Azeroth. There are even hookers! Well...not really, but they are female characters who will strip down to the least clothing possible and dance if you pay them.
Conclusion
World of Warcraft is a social phenomenon right now and continues to grow. But the reason behind its success is more than just a good marketing team. First, It’s a well made, well kept online video game, with a strong, successful company pulling the levers behind the curtain. But there are plenty of good games, online and off, that receive much critical praise but fall by the wayside in favor of more generic IPs that people feel safe playing. The reason that World of Warcraft succeeds is because of the balance that it creates between a challenging, satisfying game style, and a fully developed social network that expands in complexity as more Earthlings migrate to Azeroth. So when that rank, unshaven monster walks with exhausted steps up the stairs to the dining room for dinner 4 hours after you called him/her, remember: do NOT make any sudden movements, ask how the weather is in Ironforge, and wish them a good vacation.
References
Chen, V. , Phuah, S. and Duh, H. , 2007-05-23 "What Makes MMORPGs fun? An Explication of Enjoyment, Social Interaction, and Types of Gamers" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA Online
Forghani, S. , Sosnovskaya, E. , Chin, A. and Boyns, D. E. , 2006-08-11 "MMORPG Worlds: On the Construction of Social Reality in World of Warcraft" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal Convention Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Online
Goodbye 2008, Hello future!
It's been awhile since I last put something here, or at least something serious. So I figure now, when its 2:30 in the morning and I am on my couch at home pondering how to spend the last two weeks of my Christmas break, is a good time to give an update.
The end of the semester went pretty okay, I got my GPA back up to a 3.1 after the abysmal 2.5 that was last semester. I mostly got all the grades I thought I would get, some a bit higher, some lower. A in Japanese, A in orchestra, A in aural skills, B in sociology, B in theory II, and...a D in history. I was surprised at the theory grade, I was absolutely sure I was either going to get a D or F for the semester, even Dr. O hinted at it. Overall, I had a good semester, I worked hard but still had a lot of time to relax.
Ok, I guess I should address the glaring D grade I just mentioned. History was a fun class, I really liked taking it. My teacher was fun to listen to because he didn't just lecture about the facts from the book, he told us all kinds of personal stories that related to the topics. What killed me was that there was a lot of reading material to cover, and a lot of lecture material that he gave us. The grade for the class was made up entirely of 4 multiple exams that came from the non-lectured books, and a midterm and final that were derived from only the lecture materials. No attendance, participation, or extra credit, which is what should be expected from a class of over 100 students. It was hard for me to keep up with the readings, and when it came down to exam time, I had to speed read and cram a few nights before the test. I don't have the best short term memory, so I usually had a lot of guesswork to do on them. The midterm and final were a different story though, they came from the reams of lecture material I had to go through, some of which I had to basically translate from 9amhistoryclasssleepyslurredchickenscratchinese into english. Which basically consists of me trying to remember the second half of the sentence I had started to write before a line crossed the rest of the paper. Hopefully I'll do better in my honors history class this spring.
Oh, I almost forgot about the other adventure I had this year, one I plan to never go on again.
Tuesday night of finals week I made it to bed at about 2 am, pretty normal time for me, and checked that my alarm was set for the next morning at 7:30am. I had my U.S. history final at 8 am, and an aural skills hearing test scheduled for 11:35 am.
I awoke the next morning with a feeling like something was wrong, looked at my clock, and saw that it was 12:30pm! I leaped out of bed, pulled on the nearest clothes, and checked the office hours of my professors. Both of them were not scheduled for office hours that day, and only had the exams to come to campus for, as far as I could see. So despondently, and with heavy steps I walked over to the Honors college administration and asked if I could talk to the dean about what would happen to my grade if I have two Fs this semester. I found out I would still be okay as long as I got it back up to a 3.0 by the next semester, in case it dropped below that. It was about 1 pm by that point, and I decided to call my parents and warn them that my grade wouldn't be too good this semester. They weren't too happy and kept questioning me as to how I managed to sleep through my speakers at full blast for over an hour, something I myself do not know.
About 2pm I happened to look at my history syllabus again to check what percentage of my grade would be chopped off from the final being missing. I realized that for some reason I was thinking that it was thursday, and that he was actually in his office that day for another hour. I grabbed my keys and ran across campus to Wooten Hall to see if there was still hope. After some working up of courage to knock on the door, I knocked and sure enough, he was there. I explained my circumstances to him, among his dismissive glares behind the massive stacks of papers that lined the walls of his office, and he told me this was probably the 15th time he's heard this story.
After a couple of seconds of awkward silence, he asked me my last name, and turned to his computer. I felt a small wave of hopefullness pass through me, which broke as he started to read my grades out loud, "67, 55, a 47 for the midterm, a 100?, and a 78." To have your teacher read all your grades out loud to you as you ask him for a second chance at a test you slept through is a really uncomfortable experience. But after looking at my attendance, which he said was decent (big emphasis on decent), he decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, and led me to the testing center, blank test in hand. Yet after all that, I still managed to make a D. But hey, shit happens.
My aural skills teacher just answered his cell phone, and told me we could do it the next day, problem solved. I am definitely getting like 5 more alarm clocks, just for days when I have tests.
Fortunately, I didn't have as crazy a year as some people I know, and I'm thankful for that. Sometimes I feel like I wish I had some kind of drama like that, so I would at least have something going on, but I will probably regret saying that once I actually do. Until then, I will continue to put my time towards helping my friends who are going through really bad shit.
I smoked weed for the first time this year. It was really fun and I would definitely do it again, considering I screwed up trying to do it right a bunch of times and didn't get as high as I guess I could have. I have two friends who have connections though, so I guess that means it may become something that will happen more often in the future, which would be awesome.
I have a feeling this year will be good for everyone. We have a new president, I am actually starting journalism classes, Lauren is back together with Eric, all is right with the universe...or at least my own personal universe.
My New Years Resolutions:
- Get back on a workout schedule and keep to it.
- Get a job.
- Make some friends, friends like I have in Dallas, not just acquaintances from school.
- Start dating, I don't have much experience with dating, but there's no better time to gain some of it than now.
- Review every video game I play, unless it's a massive, unreviewable game that takes like 80 hours to finish.
- Be more active on the websites and forums that I frequently visit, I won't get any recognition if I don't say anything outside of what I say here.
- Post more on here. If I do it enough, I can probably form a new habit and it won't be such a difficult thing to remember to do.
It has been a pretty fun year, but it's over now. Here's to a great 2009.
túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.
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