Wallace, M. “Anonymity is not enough,” The Escapist, February 28, 2006.
Kim, A. Nine Principles of Community Design (discuss in class)
Oldenburg, R. Chapters 1 and 2, The Great,
Wellman, B. and Guilia, M. Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone”
Boyd, D. Why Youth Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life
Goffman, E. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, pps 1-58
Optional Reading
What Defines a Community? (6.5 minute youtube clip)
20 comments:
So after last week's guest speaker, I actually came across Cake Mania 2 on my sisters computer. So of course I was going to check out it. I guess it was meant for 35+ year old women but it was pretty entertaining. At first it was really easy but then it got harder and harder. I think I "died" after 3 levels or so. Even though the designers aimed it for that age bracket, it can really be played by people of all ages. I even had my sister try it out and she enjoyed it. It was really easy to pick up and everything is pretty simple. You are give very easy directions and all it does is slowly get more complicated. I think its a great game for every. If you haven't tried it, I would recommend trying it. It came free on my sisters new laptop but I'm not sure if it is free for download.
After hearing so much about cake mania, I decided to download it and play. I have to say that after 15 minutes i was hooked, the user interface was simple and intuitive to use. Even for me the non-avid gamer i was able to pick up the game and succeed in a few minutes. The initial goal was to get 200 dollars from baking and i was able to do that early on, as wanda mentioned earlier casual games really want you to succeed and it works. After playing it i can see why this was such a success. Overall it was really fun, it was more fun then i thought. Early on i wondered how much cake baking would hold my attention but i was engrossed within 2 minutes of play.
Ok so for this week’s blog thingy I think I will write a game review. So I played Fable II, which is actually not bad. First the pro’s, ok so the game has some great new features from the first one. First is the environment. They expanded the environment to allow you to travel almost everywhere instead of being stranded by roads, roads are still a majority of the travel and levels, but there are many areas where you can roam the land. Next is how the environment changes. I played the game one as good and one as bad, have not beaten it yet but did it for the sake of this review. So the environment was completely different when I was good versus when I was bad. This was amazing because the first one claimed to do this but Fable II succeeded where the one first did not. Ok so now the cons. First is the movement, when you move with your character, he seems to slide around it’s really annoying and weird, and last is the fact of the story, it was not that great. But other than that the game was great. So that’s my review, good game but has some bugs and a few problems.
^^^^^^
I too have been playing Fable II. I'm not proud of it but I've clocked about 30 hours already and it has only been out since Tuesday. The game is fantastic and defiantly has the Fable feel to it. With larger, more detailed environments, it is easy to get lost in the wood during a quest. One aspect of the game that I didn't like at the begining was you do not have a minimap to follow. There is one if you press start but its so small you cannot see anything. Lionhead did this for a reason because you have a faithful companion with you. your dog is supposed to be your guide. As you run around he points out treasures and dig spots and also growls when an enemy is near. Like I said before, I didn't like this at first but it has grown on me. I like the fact that there basically is no HUD. It makes the game feel more real. So far, I am not sure how far into the game I am. I have a feeling I'm about one third of the way done with the main quest.
My favorite part of the game so far is that you can buy and own every home, shop, or tavern. I've spent over 500,000 gold so far on real estate, but there are some pretty nice perks to spending so much money; about every five minutes I collect about 10,000 gold from renting out all of my homes, shops, and taverns. (Castle Fairfax is my next purchase with a listing price of 1,000,000 gold. Oh yeah)
Someone come play with me. My gamertag is ABigRedRocket3. I normally hang around in Oakfield or Bowerstone Market.
So after hearing about Cake Mania and Jojo's Fashion Show, I decided to talk to my little sister whose 11 years old and coincidentally named Jordan or, like everyone calls her, Jojo. Turns out the girl is pretty pro and knows more about gaming than I do. Of course she's not the typical girly girl just playing Cake Mania but also playing...you guessed it...Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox 360. I wasn't sure how to take this kind of news feeling as old as time itself but I asked her to show me everything! It honestly didn't take that long seeing at it was very user friendly...once you get the hang of things. Although it was easy to turn away from it because of my lack of interest...I recall my sister sitting at the kitchen computer for hours on end just playing those games. So that was my close encounter of the third kind...of "kiddy" games.
So thanks for making me feel like I'm an old fart. (Just kidding)
If any of you have the target market that includes 11 year old girls and need some questions answered...I'll be more than willing to ask her and her friends.
Ok peace out girl scouts.
I have recently been playing LocoRoco on my PSP. It is a game from 2006 so it is a little old now but it is still a really fun game. I think that it could be considered a casual game because of the gameplay and graphics. The gameplay goes like this: you are a blob that rolls around collecting plants to get bigger, and every once in a while you will need to make the blob seperate to fit through smaller areas. As for the graphics, they are just simple, colorful and two dimensional. I think that this game is so appealing because of its simplicity. I'm can't remember the exact background story for the game but basically you are trying to save the planet. If anybody wants to try it out I think that there is a demo version on the LocoRoco website.
after the speaker on tuesday I looked up cake mania 2. I think that it was a good. looking through the site many of those game are fun.
This week I heard that one of my favorite celeberity band was going to be on a habbo chat. I got really excited because I thought I was going to have the chance to get to the talk to them. Unfortunately I found habbo very difficult to figure out. When I had to design my character it didnt look like I wanted it to look like. It had dumb bunny ears that I couldnt make go away. Once my character was designed I had no idea what I was doing. I was trying so hard to figure out how to get into the chat room they were in let alone a chat room. Finally I think I figured out that you can go into different rooms through a hotel but I really dont like habbo at all. Honestly I wont use it again.
I see people are talking about cake mania.. i played it as well for my game blog this week. I thought it was a really good game at first i thought that i would be bored with it but then i found that i just couldnt stop playing. I kept wanting to buy more things to make my store better! I think it should go on addicting games!
This week I read the article about youth and networking. I found it to be interesting and very true. When I was transitioning from high school and junior high it was hard to keep in touch with those friends who were at different schools, etc. With the help of myspace and AIM I was able to keep in touch. I do believe that teenagers being active in networking on the internet not only helps social skills for real life, but it helps them come out of their shell and be more outgoing. With a profile on facebook or myspace, etc, someone can see how creative you are, and other things that you can't see just from talking or seeing someone. I guess the saying goes both ways you can't judge a book by its cover, you can judge a person by their looks or their online profile.
Just last night, I had the oppurtunity to check out Fable 2. I was a major fan of the first Fable but this one pretty much blew me away.
At first, the interface was changed quite dramatically over the first. It was slightly confusing at first since I remember always relying on the mini-map to guide me. This time, you have a dog as your guide, and it has some pretty awesome AI programmed into it. It can sniff out Treasure and 'Dig Spots' as well as help you in combat. Also, you can teach it random tricks like the Bunny Hop. They did a great job with creating a true companion.
Another slight confusion I had was with the orb system. They switched the colors for Melee/Will orbs so instead of Red/Blue, it is Blue/Red. Also, they took out the combat multiplier which I had learned to take advantage of all too well in the first. Now it has a behind the scenes combat mechanic which tells you if you've earned xxx% bonus experience after a fight is done. You don't really know if you're doing something good during a fight but only after it's over. I guess it keeps you focused more on what you're doing than on a multiplier but I had a major need to get my abilities maxed out in one sitting.
Anyways, this game turned out to be totally epic and I need to get my hands on it ASAP. On a side note, there's Fallout 3 coming out which promises to be just as epic, if not better. So many games come out at this time of year, it'll really hurt the wallet if you want to experience all the good stuff.
I was reading over the other peoples blogs and I noticed a common topic in most of them. It was cake mania! So I decided to try it out. I went onto shockwave.com and played the web version. I played six levels and reached the target goal every time. I got to the point where it just began to get boring because it was too easy. I did not ever have to throw away even one cake and I think I got the maximum points that you can get. I think it was also pretty repetitive a way to make the game more interesting might be if they added some sort of a twist to the game or like made something new or different happen on each level. Overall, I guess it probably would be a good game for women 35 and up but definitely too easy for someone my age.
On a different note, I have been playing Tibia recently. This mmorpg came out around the same time as Ultima in 1997. Yes, it is 2D graphics. But the game is surprisingly fun to play. On the forums, people seem to either love it or hate it. Personally, I argue that its better than 3D Runescape. Its casual play environment is easy to learn. I would highly recommend this to someone who wants to play a simple mmorpg. There are not too many skills, controls, buttons to confuse you. Give it a try if you tend to be more into the casual play.
Cake Mania looks great too, I'll give it a try and see if my family likes it.
Well as like everyone else half of these comments are on Cake Mania. So I as well decided to get on the bandwagon and try it out. I can see how Cake Mania can be addicting for some people however, for me it just got very annoying doing the same thing over and over again. Yes, you can make your store better and eventually have a bunch of other things to do. However the main objective of the game gets boring and makes me lose my concentration and just want to play something else. I would recommend older people and younger girls to play but for middle aged guys and maybe some girls. This game gets boring.. Fast...
First of all, I wanted to say I am enjoying this class. I can't say I am a game enthusiast of any kind (You all could hurl insults at me on Tuesday for saying that), but I find this all very interesting and thought provoking. I just wanted to ask the instructors what they would say to a parent who claims that their child is playing too many video games and is not focusing on things like school or work. The reason I bring this up is because I purchased a 360 for my cousins about a year ago who are living in foster care. I really want to say something to the foster parents because they have taken away their video game privileges for months at a time due to the fact that they "aren't keeping up with their studies." I have never had the problem with time management when it comes to video games because I don't play them, but it seems harsh to take away their game system for such a long period of time. Having some experience in the field, I figured I would run that question by you guys. See you all Tuesday!
I like many other students decided after hearing the guest speaker talk I would also download a trial version of Cake Mania, and play it as a game review. First off I really enjoyed the game towards the beginning and found it to be somewhat addicting. After beating about 4 levels of the game I found it to be quite boring and just wasn't entertaining me much anymore, so i stopped playing. I hope the 35 year old and up women have a better attention span for that game then i did!!
Cake Mania seems to be the flavor of the week for this blog. I'm not going to follow that path in this post. I want to talk about Fallout 3. This game is great. When I turned on the game and started playing, I was amazed by the sheer beauty of the graphics in this game. If you're playing Fallout 3 on the PC and have the video settings turned up, you can see almost a whole mile in the game. It's incredible. Now, I'm not too far into the game as some are but I can't wait to play more of it.
I was inspired to look into SandlotGames.com because of our guest speaker. I was surpirsed to see the man speaking, and the games on this website. The games were very colorful, and unique, for example games like Snail Mail about the speedy snail named turbo, is not the racing game I envisioned the speaker creating. Games like Super Granny, also was a different breed of game than expected, but what this made me realize is that game creators are not always creating games that appeal to there market area, as what I thought before I took this class, and that game creators create games that appeal to there target audience only, but for all audiences.
Although I don't consider myself to be a casual gamer I found cake mania to be entertaining to watch. It seemed like a game I might find myself playing if alternatives weren't available. Although I thought it was interesting to listen to industry professionals talking to us about the games they had created, it was only when I saw their games on the shelves of Gamestop that I realized how much they had achieved. While I was restocking at Gamestop I noticed how well Cake Mania and Bella Sara were doing. Realizing this made the guest speakers seem larger than life; seeing as how they had helped to put the games on the shelves.
After doing the second paper that we turned in last week I realized that shorter is not always easier. When we had to do at least 3 pages on the first paper I almost thought that it was a little too much and that I had to repeat myself a couple of times to make the paper longer. But when it came to writting the shorter one I realized it was hard to keep it all on one page. Once I finished writting it I had to go back through and cut out some things to make it fit on one page. Overall, I probably did like writting the shorter paper better still.
Post a Comment