Natural Violence

Natural Violence

To supplement my point that video games CAN teach violent tactics, here’s an example of a practice among FPS “camping”. Yes this is also taught in movies, but with games, you reiterate the same thing over and over – sniping people in a bottle neck from an angle they weren’t prepared for. “It certainly works […]

Copyright hilarity

Copyright hilarity

I didn’t realize Tetris was so strongly protected. I now see why the peer-to-peer bit torrent client ‘µTorrent’ does this: Within µTorrent: 1. Select About in Help menu. 2. Press ‘T’ on the Keyboard.

Gambling in Games

Gambling in Games

I think back to my childhood of some of my favorite games and realize the concept of “chance” played an important role. In many games, the system is made to utilize random chance to extend playability. A game like World of Warcraft utilizes this in item/loot drops. Each enemy has a specified probability of dropping […]

False Dichotomy of Interactivity

I don’t see a categorical difference between the interactivity of video games and the interactivity of more traditional mediums like television/radio. On a long continuum of interactivity we could certainly place video games on a side of “direct-highly-interactive” and something like radio on the polar opposite; but we <i>do</i> interact with these apparent one directional […]

Moral rights and Harriette Potter

Interesting discussions today in class. Some thoughts and concerns: I find it quite reasonable to recognize copyright protections for expressions and NOT ideas. If the goal of copyright is to promote and encourage new works and the dissemination of these works, what would affording “exclusivity for a period of time” on an idea even look […]