Games and Culture Articles

What I took away from James Paul Gee's article, as far as notes go, were these:
Mind is like a machine, therefore, video games are now an accurate metaphor for the workings of the mind. Life acts much like video games in that both are action and goal directed simulations. Players will take on the characters goals as their own, while at the same time meshing their personal goals with the character goals. This leads to a melding of goals, leading a player to figure out the best way to achieve what the game has set out for them while also satisfying their own desires for going about the mission or level, etc. Much like games, people tend to simulate scenarios in their head, much like Gee's example of imagining a wedding. People tend to go through various scenarios, such as a happy wedding or a failed wedding, while also running through how certain people present will react to certain scenarios or conversations. Video games require players to do the same thing; how a character would go about accomplishing a goal, how the player would go about it, how the two can compromise, various outcomes to different courses of action, and so on. Actions determine meaning, like a glass being used to grab attention at a wedding or being used to have a drink. So, how a player uses the environment or items in a game also determine meaning, as shadows could be used for stealth to sneak by everyone, or they could be used as a spot to hide a body. Games and life interact in the sense that the real world offers the raw materials and scenarios for games, and games then determine a players actions in a simulation. A car comes from real life, but a game acts a simulation for a player who wants to jump it over 50 other cars, as a general example. As stated earlier, game surrogates have goals, and those goals become player goals. At the same time, player goals become surrogate goals. What I took from this is that it's a two way street of assumed identity. The player has to understand the motivations, thought processes, desires, fears, and strengths of the character, while the character has to be open to those very same things coming from the player, and when these two meet, then the best path or most desirable path to a goal becomes clear.


The other article I chose to read from "Games and Culture" was by Dmitri Williams, Tracy Kennedy, and Robert Moore, from the March 2011 issue, volume 6. It was an article entitled "Behind the Avatar: The Patterns, Practices, and Functions of Role Playing in MMO's." It was a study done to try and observe the demographic for role players, but also the social and psychological factors that go into role playing. The article started with two different theories: players used role playing as an escape to become someone they're not in the real world, or, that they used role playing to be their true self that was, perhaps, rejected by the majority or accepted groups of society. The article compared this practice to how adolescents and youths will try on different hats and masks to figure out some form of self identity. They will go through phases and different subgroups to figure out where they feel most comfortable, until patterns and habits start to form, leading them to a concrete idea of self. The other end was that adults might use MMO's and roleplaying as a safe harbor. Generally, adults already have a sense of being, a sense of identity, but, they may want an escape from this projected image. It's front stage versus backstage, where the person society sees may all be an act, whereas backstage, the mind may have a completely different persona as being true, and that persona can be acted out online, a safe haven so to speak. However, one area that was only mentioned in the article and no fully explored was how this safe harbor for identity might hinder the forming of actual relationships, in friendship or otherwise. There is a distance and gap when playing online games, so even if a player is being their true self, they are doing so because there is no immediate connection, there is a divide that they can hide behind, never having to truly commit if they do not wish to do so. The article then revealed some statistics from the study, finding that youths were actually less likely to roleplaying, perhaps because they are searching for "self" and therefore escaping from it or fully embracing it isn't fully possible. Role players in general make up a very small portion of the population, estimated around 5% in the study of 7000 participants. They also kept themselves distant from the general population of MMO players, preferring to keep to themselves and keep in a kind of bubble, an isolated world where their roleplaying would be fully immersing. Dedicated role players were also found to suffer more from loneliness, depression, addictions, or mental disorders than the average player.