Blog Assignment 4

I was never one to get into MMORPGs. Mainly because I felt it was silly to pay a monthly fee and the fact that its on a huge server with several other players never really appealed to me. My brief stint into MMORPGs was when Ragnarok Online was first introduced, and even then I didn’t get on the server that much to play.

In Edward Castronova’s book Synthetic Worlds, he describes the way MMORPGs work. With how they are set up, and how different users can interact. The first chapter is written as a brief introduction to those who are not familiar with MMORPGs. It goes into detail about the Terms of Service and Code of Conduct that is established on MMORPGs. And on page 53 he lists several MMORPGs and breaks it down into the number of subscriptions, release dates, subject and headquarters. Although I expected to see Myst on the list, seeing as that MMORPG has a huge following.

Castronova covers various aspects of online games through his book such as the social, political and economical points. Reading through the Free Commerce chapter, Castranova brings up excellent points that I never thought of before. “Every synthetic world has an economy, without exception” (pg 173). Every MMORPGS, even console games, have an economy within it. Where you have to do something to receive money. And thinking in a broader aspect, the worlds within games are modeled after reality and just have different elements that make it into a synthetic world. Honestly, I never thought of an MMORPG as something closely related to our world till this point. In fact, it should’ve been obvious. But I guess when one thinks of a game you just think of the fictitious aspects as opposed to the similarities it has to our world.

It also makes me think of how people use synthetic worlds to escape reality. But when you look closely, that synthetic world is very similar to our world except that you have more control over things than you would in the real world. Looking at that from a psychological aspect, you can’t help but side with people who want to escape from their every day life to a video game where they are a bit more in control. But that doesn’t necessarily condone people to ignore their lives for a synthetic world.

While personally for me, I don’t see the enjoyment out of playing an MMORPG. Even when playing a console game, I cannot sit there and play all night, yet some people can do that without sleeping or eating for long periods of time. Not to mention the fact that you have to spend money on the subscriptions and other add-ons. But of course in our society we are always looking for the negative, always believing that it’s “too good to be true”. People look down on those who play these games for long periods of time and ignoring the outside world. Maybe it’s their way to cope with things that happen in real life. Castranova is trying to make a point that the synthetic world could be taking over reality and I disagree with him. Synthetic worlds are becoming a part of reality by giving another means for people to find relaxation and communication with others as long as certain limitations are enforced.

Blog Assignment 3

When we think of video games we generally think of children surrounding a TV and playing against their friends. And you can’t help but begin to wonder how these video games affect the children psychologically. That is one of the mainstream debates surrounding video games; how these games affect children’s psyche.

In Handbook of Computer Video Games, the essay entitled Children’s Social Behavior During Video Game Play includes different case studies as to how video games affect children. The games they used on children for “aggressive themes” are Super Mario, Power Rangers, and Mega Man X3 & X7 (p.135). Considering that this case study was completed during the late 90s, I can think of several other games that have far more violent themes than those. For instance Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter which are actual fighting games. Using these two games would have gave the study more support compared to the games used for the actual study. The ‘non-aggressive theme’ games that were used were Kirby’s Avalanche, We’re Back, Mickey Mania, Scooby Doo and Mario Kart. The results of this case study were that children’s interactions were positive/neutral independent of the game type. Also, children were not aggressive towards each other while playing and “non-aggressive” games produced the most negative reactions, primarily from girls (p. 141).

Even if the results from the case study were reversed, I believe that it is the parent’s responsibility to monitor what their children are playing. It is good that some places such as EB Games/Gamestop actually refuse to sell Mature games to minors, but it is still the parent’s responsibility. Also the next generation game consoles are able to block the use of Mature games from being played on them by the parental control feature. Also, with video games becoming popular among children, I mean, it is hard to come by a child who doesn’t play video games, parents should take the initiative to find out what exactly a game entails before purchasing it for their child. A good example of this is my Aunt and Uncle buying Grand Theft Auto 2 for my thirteen-year-old cousin and didn’t know what the game was about. They just knew it was about cars and figured it would be suitable for their son who shares an interest in cars. They had no idea of the mature content that was in the game itself.