Week 8

Ah... The week we talked about gaming all lesson.

Now it's no secret that I love a bit of a game. I've got a Wii, XBox 360, Nintendo DS and all the previous generation of those as well with a large collection of games to go with them. In addition all the books I own that are non-fiction are about video games. So, naturally, I quite enjoyed this weeks topic.

In the tut;

What games do we play?

So easy question for me heres the 5 games (franchises) I have played for a LOT of time;

1. The real Pokemon games

2. Halo

3. Call of Duty

4. Metroid Prime

5. Super Smash Bros.

So being a gamer I could go on and on about which games I play and whats the best, I have a feeling that most of the class do not actually play games such as I do.

I think this is because most of them are girls and unfortunately gaming is still very much male-centric despite Nintendo's efforts to change this by releasing pink Nintendo DS consoles.

"If the console is pink then girls will buy it. Girls love pink! Amirite guys?!"

Anyway the rest of the class answered this question with about the same thing.

iPhone and mobile games. Oh and farmville. Farmville...

So the class is a very casual gaming class. Something that made me mad when everyone was talking about video games as if they knew them and they don't even play them!

Is gaming a social past time?

Okay so maybe a decade ago gaming wasn't seen as social as it is now. A gamer was a nerdy guy who sat in the basement eating pringles and was too busy gaming to go to the toilet.

However not necessarily true, back in the good old days we'd pack up our controllers, run over to a friends house and play games all day on a tiny screen made even more tiny by the split screen multiplayer games. Oh and trading and battling Pokemon. Thats basically all we did in primary school until that got banned. I was the coolest kid in school for a day when everyone found out I had a level 100 Pickachu without cheating.

So it's pretty social then.

I find it strange that gaming is seen more social now than it was a decade ago.

Gaming has turned to the internet and now you can play with hundreds of people anywhere in the world at anytime and even speak to them. You can also play with your friends online if you don't want strangers. So this is pretty social but it is certainly not as social as when you went over to your friends house to play something with them. Many games aren't even including that option anymore saying that you MUST play this online and not with your mate sitting next to you on the coach. Thankfully games aren't all like that, Halo is still the best split screen game you can have at a party and casual games like Wii Sports are both brilliant at bringing friends closer together in real life rather than through a series of networks.

Gaming certainly is social. Don't be a player hater.

Is gaming addictive?

Case 1; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm

Case 2; My friend Thomas wont shut up about Pokemon lately. Sure he doesn't play it all the time but that fact that he keeps thinking about it is a sign of addiction.

Case 3; This video was posted about 1 and a half days after the game was released. Look how many hours these guys have put in already...

So yes, gaming is addictive. Watch out.

So for the rest of the tut we discussed;

Do video games effect behaviour?

This conversation went on for an epic-ly long time about wether or not they do cause problems.

We decided that the parents should be a bit more strict when buying children video games.

In the couple of weeks after this tutorial there has been a couple of things about tis very problem in the media, here are two links;

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20003448-38.html

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/video/default.htm?pres=20100503_2030&story=5

The first is a news story discussing laws that are upheld in some states in America that have actually banned sales of violent video games to minors.

The second is a feature from a gaming program that asks the same question we did this lesson.

As for the reading, the author basically tells us that adult gamers have to explain why they're gaming rather than just saying they like to do it. One of the examples is someone said they bought their XBox because it plays DVDs.

What a load of crap! Everyone owns DVD players these days. You bought it because you want to play Halo and Forza Motorsport. Don't be such a closet gamer!

Thats enough text for this week. See you next week!

Pop Cosmopolitanism Summary

Alrighty heres a quick summary of last weeks readings by the god-like HJ.

• A pop cosmopolitan is a person who embraces cultural difference, they seek to escape their own pop culture and embrace culture from another place far away. Because of the globalisation of media a cosmopolitan instead develops a taste for international culture(Example; people who enjoy japanese style comics or "manga").
• HJ thinks that particularly younger people are drawn towards pop culture from other cultures. I think this is changing just like there is an increase in the age of gamers in Australia there is an increase in the age of people who enjoy foreign media. For example I find that people who are true massive japanese manga or anime fans are closer to their mid twenties and thirties. Children do enjoy a good dose of Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh but they rarely go looking for less Americanised products.
• He gives examples of TV shows that have been edited (or Americanised) to be more suitable to our western culture. I would argue that by doing this a product that was originally Japanese begins to lose that Japanese identity. Anyone who only appreciates these mutated "Japerican" TV shows and not purely Japanese products surely could not constitute as a pop cosmapolitan.
• He believes that the amount of media and influence we can obtain from other cultures is larger than it used to be. I agree. I think its a good thing also.

Week 7

This week the main focus was on this question;

What does it mean to live in an era of global media entertainment?

We talked about this topic for a while in small groups and then in a larger group.

I'm not sure what the class discussed really answered the question but this is what I think...

• The types of media we view is not just Western culture made anymore. Because of media being exported out of other countries we receive a number of different media from other cultures.
• Because of the amount of globalised entertainment franchises our own culture is increasingly being influenced from other cultures particularly Asian and American (Note; I think it could be argued that American culture is too similar to ours to be considered having a cultural influence. I would argue that American culture have just been in our media for longer and perhaps we have received so much of it through our media it has already had an enormous effect on our own culture).
• People are drawn to the exotic strangeness of a media product developed by a different culture. This creates fan bases that are particularly interested in a media product that isn't from their own culture. Fans of japanese anime for instance.
• Finally I've noticed that Australian media has constantly been attempting to re-create shows made famous in other countries. Some work. Others don't...

Next question was;

How does globalisation change the ways in which media is produced, distributed and consumed?

• Even if a certain media, such as that obscure japanese manga about transforming hats, isn't available in our shops it is still possible for us to get it through the internet. Distribution is not just done in shops anymore but through online stores which can stock almost anything they want. It gets better if the product is digital because you get it almost instantly and theres no postage costs.
• Quite often media from other cultures that might be profitable in western culture is changed slightly before being distributed west to make it more accessible to us. For example; Pokemon episodes were edited to change japanese food into doughnuts and segments of the power rangers were re-shot in California to make it more American.

A lot of these questions are answered in this weeks readings which I'll do a short summary on later.

At the end of the tut we watched some remediations ready to inspire us for our next assignment.

Heres another one I like;

Essay due in two weeks;

Choose two texts you have used in your portfolio or discussed in tutorials.Drawing on these texts as examples, write an essay response to the following question:
How does convergence effect the relationship between users and producers of media texts?

The texts I want to use, I haven't used in in either so I'm just going to dump them in my portfolio and therefore can use them as examples. Woo.

Example 1. Halo 3 and http://www.bungie.net/

I wanted to use this as an example because the creators of Halo 3, Bungie, have purposely included tools in their 2007 game to allow users to create their own content using the in game engine. They actually encourage users to create great things, often giving away prizes to the best. In fact, the image on the multiplayer map pack expansion disk that was released last year wasn't created by them, it was created by one of their consumers. This type of stuff is just what I need to answer the essay question.

Heres an example of prosuming too,

I'll think of another later, I feel like playing Halo 3 now...