After listening to Jane McGonigal’s TED talk, I have a few conflicting opinions about her talk. I think it’s interesting to use games as inspirations to solve worldly problems, but I think that her comparisons are a little stretched. Games are addicting, but there aren’t as many risks in games that are present in real life. I do think that games can bring people together and break boundaries as well as teach people to keep certain good habits.
I can see in some of my friends the gamer qualities she mentioned. I noticed that people who tend to be good at games were also very good at academics. They seem to work hard at everything.
She says “EPIC” a lot.
I think libertarian paternalism can definitely be pushed to the extreme. It reminds me of those make your own adventure books. The reader chooses his/her options and paths, but somehow always end up at the same or similar conclusion.
Prompt: “Photograph a scar on your body or on someone else’s body. Make it a close-up shot so that it shows just the scar. Include a story (write it on a computer as a separate file, don’t write it on the photograph) about how the scar happened. Please do not send images of wounds that are fresh and have not healed. Only images of scars will be accepted.
D O C U M E N T A T I O N >
Send in either the actual photo or a digital (scanned or copied) version of the photograph along with the story.”
Among the many mysterious scars from clumsy accidents, this one is probably the most prominent. I got this one this past summer while spending time at my grandparents’ farm. My two dogs Bandit and Neko stay with my grandparents at the farm and being outside dogs, they get really dusty really easily. On a sunny afternoon while I was brushing Bandit’s fur, he was suddenly startled by a curious rustle in the bushes. As he lunged up, my hand slipped and down stroke of the brush landed across my arm. If you aren’t familiar with dog brushes, the barbs are made of metal and since Bandit has a thick coat, I was brushing rather firmly. At the time, I had three large gashes across my forearm. It was pretty unfortunate. I’m glad only one of them left a scar, but hopefully it goes away eventually.
I went to the Game Fest expecting it to be in a large open field and was really surprised that the games were concentrated in a small fenced area. After wondering around a bit, I managed to play around three games: Turtle Wushu, A gulfball throwing game, and a Nashville card shooting game.
The card game was my favorite because the playing ground was a lot larger than the other games. We walked around in two teams and fought each other with cards. The player with the higher card gets to steal the loser’s card and in the end the two team leaders dueled. There was a funny moment in which I had to duel someone from across the street. Turtle Wushu was also an enjoyable game. The game involved players balancing toy turtles on your hand and knocking off turtles of another player. It reminded me of a varied version of Ninja. I think the most challenging game was the gulfball tossing game. You had to spin a pair of gulf balls at the right speed so that they would rope around metal bars. The challenge made the game a lot more enjoyable though.
The idea came to me while I was sitting on a bench in a hallway trying to think of what to do for this assignment. Time was ticking and I was desperate. I remember thinking, “I could really use some moral support or encouragement right now. I have no idea what I’m going to do”.
The notion of having predetermined roles for players in an MMO game is very fascinating to me. Each player picks a character and depending on the stats of that character, he/she create builds in the game that would best use utilize those abilities. The major roles in MMO games are DPS, Tank, Healer, and Support. Each role class plays an important part to the team so players must work together to win the game. The DPS carries out the most amount of the damage in the team; Tanks usually have large amounts of health and can take a lot of damage while inflicting damage; Healers aid the other players by healing them and supports help various other roles to clear waves of enemies.
Following this thought process, I decided to create my own new class called Moral Support for League of Legends. The role of the Moral Support would be to follow a character around and give him/her large amounts of moral support and encouragement. Before carrying out my destructive plan, I predicted that players would become extremely angry since they are essentially losing a player on their team. However, after several games, I noticed that the players actually were really happy with my role and even endorsed me after the games. I think it is both because they receive enough amount of hate from normal players and due to the fact that I stated out my role as Moral Support in the beginning of each game. This experiment actually makes me want to keep this account.
After the first game, I gained a new friendAfter the second game, I gained two more friends. You can see our post-game conversation and my score here.
