Dylin Maust's Blog

The Video Game Culture and Theory class investigates what defines the words “game” and “fun” and uses video games as a lens to look at video game and outside culture.  Recently, we have invested most of our effort into research and a presentation.  We have also looked at how games can convey a message, like the game Phone Story, which reflects the horrible conditions of an Apple plant.

In this portfolio, I will reflect on previous work in various dimensions–depth, interaction, discussion, timeliness, and coverage.

Depth
Entries with depth demonstrate insightful analysis and complex thinking.  An entry that displays depth goes above and beyond to connect concepts to cultural phenomena.  I put a lot of effort into responses–effort that can be seen in each comment’s depth.  In Leroy Jenkins, Ph.D., I draw information from several sources, including economics concepts, and gameplay videos, to convey my message.  By investigating several aspects of economics present in World of Warcraft, I drive home the idea that WoW has its own economy.  Additionally, I draw real world comparisons to management positions.  How can WoW make me a better leader?  

In another blog post, I examine how pranks force innovation in the gaming industry.  I connect to Bogost’s original claim, and share my experiences with Syobon Action, a game that breaks the typical platform conventions.  I then travel up Bloom’s Taxonomy, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating Bogost’s claim.  How does pranks cause innovation?  What if we replaced Call of Duty Black Ops’ zombie mode with puppy mode, instead?  What makes us so afraid of zombies?  What is our fascination with zombies.  Read my blog!

Interaction
Interaction involves responding to peers, citing their work, and discussing it.  In Presentation Responses, I briefly summarize each student’s presentation.  I then synthesize all the information into one final thought.

In the Presentation Progress Moodle forum, Jessica and I reflect on thoughts regarding my presentation.  Because she didn’t understand a reference I made, I elaborated via a forum post.  By doing so, I know that I could have written a more detailed explanation in my original blog post, so that no one, regardless of their video game background, would be confused.

By interacting with peers, one learns to question one’s own ideas and analyze games through different lenses.  It also encourages other students to try new things.

Discussion
Discussion involves putting effort and insight into forum posts and blog responses.  Did one’s comment generate a lot of responses?  Did one revisit earlier posts and continue the conversation?  I think, for Participation Portfolio 3, this category should also include peer review for essays 1 and 2.    I invested a lot of time and effort in an attempt to help students improve their writing and their revision grade, and in doing so, saw mistakes in my own writing and thought processes.  

Additionally, my blog post, Leroy Jenkins, Ph.D., generated an insightful discussion between Dr. Jerz and I, and Jessica and I, and it allowed Jennifer to understand the concept behind an MMORPG game.  By discussing the blog posts and comments with our peers, we look at ideas in a new light.

Timeliness
Timeliness is reflected in submission times.  Did one post last minute, effectively ruling out other peers’ responses, or did one post early to encourage discussion?  I actually enjoy working on assignments for this class, and I feel like it is evident in my blog posts and comments.

Just looking at today’s assignments, I completed my Presentation Response blog, the Refuse of Video Games blog, AND the Final Reflection paper before they were due.  I am also currently working on the revision that’s due at 3:00 PM, which I will surely turn in on time.

This timeliness encourages other students to respond early and takes the pressure off of last-minute entries.  I feel like it helps, and it’s nice when other students reciprocate.  I didn’t complete every assignment on time, because it is difficult to maintain this extreme level of focus and devotion, I did exert extensive effort (alliteration, anyone?) and I feel that it shows.

Coverage

Coverage refers to completion of assignments and blog posts.  I have completed every assignment, usually well before the due date.  There are some exceptions, but the posts do not lack depth.  In addition to this, I always use the “Blog Me” button and post my blog’s URL on the assignment page to create a two-way link.  This simplifies grading, and I’m sure it saves a lot of time.  I also have incorporated outside sources to entertain, question, or offer insight.  For example, in Leroy Jenkins, I include two graphics that explain supply-and-demand and opportunity cost, as well as a video that shows gameplay from World of Warcraft.

via Participation Portfolio 3.

My presentation suggests a relationship between video games and economic concepts, and takes a deeper look at teamwork in World of Warcraft.  I find it interesting how games, MMORPGs in particular, relate to real-world concepts.

DJ‘s looks at games as an art form, investigating how Assassin’s Creed uses aesthetics and writing to create a game that can be reviewed and critiqued by gamers around the world.  Indeed, all games convey messages through aesthetics, story (or lack thereof), and mechanics, and it is awesome to see a game by studying it rather than just playing it.

Jessica takes a detailed approach to examining how horror game music affects the player experience.  She describes the brain and characteristics of horror genre music, and goes on to compare the horror genre in games and movies.

Allyssa looks at video game desensitization and chemical release in the brain upon playing video games, and relates her ideas with Koster’s and Bogost’s to drive home her point.

Lastly, Jennifer examines pornography in gaming culture through Japanese and United States’ rating systems, games, and hentai.

There are a lot of themes in the gaming world.  Collectively, the class covered several.  How are games art?  Why are games so addictive?  What effect does the soundtrack have on a game?  What are some game taboos?  When I began to understand and relate the course material to games I have already played and am playing, I saw the games in a new light.  I never knew the intricacies of Pac-Man, that each ghost had a name and a particular strategy, before reading the Pac-Man Dossier.  I never realized the real-life connections to World of Warcraft until I researched the topic.  For games to be a successful art form, we can’t just play them.  We have to analyze them.  What are they trying to tell us?

via Presentation Responses.

McGonigal takes this apocryphal story as evidence of the power of games to sustain people and ease them through troubling times. Yet read ahead in Herodotus and discover a part of the story that McGonigal leaves out: “…In this way they passed eighteen years. Still the affliction continued and even became more grievous.” The story ends with the king exiling half of his people from the country, forcing them out to search for food on their own.

So, McGonigal’s opening story omits the tragic ending.  No surprise, really, from a woman who considers games as the solution for energy issues and famine.  She is really optimistic about games, and I think it clouds her judgment and prevents her from being realistic.

However, I’d like to discuss the prevailing theme from the article.  Games like Phone Story do an excellent job of describing the horrible conditions in outsourced factories and mines, but they really depict the greed of major corporations, willing to overwork and underpay underage workers to save money.  It’s not just technological giants that utilize this exploit.  Even Nike, who was criticized for its heavy reliance on sweat shops, has reformed.  CHINA: At Nike Plant, no Sweatshop, Plenty of Sweat, an article from 2005, describes that Nike plants in China have proper ventilation, running water, and earplugs for the “pounding of rivets.”  However, the plant still pays extremely low wages:

Yet the Golden Prene factory, which makes about 25,000 bags a day and generates $80 million in annual revenues, is hardly a carefree place. Assembly workers toil long hours at repetitive jobs. Many of them endure separation from families. Their wages are higher than incomes back on the farm, but meager by U.S. standards at an average of $5 a day, including overtime. Workers’ modest dreams reveal difficult lives.

Even a supposedly reformed corporation still underpays and overworks factory workers, which speaks volumes about the greed of American corporations and business.  But it’s not just Nike and Apple.  According to the 2010 Sweatshop Hall of Fame, Abercrombie and Fitch, Hanes, Gymboree, Walmart, and other companies all use sweat shops:

Most of the companies listed employ laborers who toil for long hours under dangerous working conditions for poverty wages. When these workers attempt to form a union to voice their collective concerns, they face threats from management and risk being fired or even beaten.  Many of this years’ inductees use suppliers that practice illegal tactics to suppress workers’ rights to organize.  Some of the companies mentioned weave shame into their clothing by continuing to use cotton sourced from Uzbekistan where harvesting is accomplished through forced child labor.

So, let’s not just focus on the technological giants like Apple, let’s expand our focus and see the big picture.  American corporations churn out billions of dollars of revenue, yet refuse to respect human life, underpaying and overworking underage employees just to save money.  What can we do to stop it?  Certainly, people would rather buy cheap groceries from Walmart than boycott the store, or wear their favorite clothes from Abercrombie and Fitch.  If we continue to support these companies, we continue to support the unfair labor they rely on.  The public needs to know.  We could write to the CEO of Walmart, voicing our disapproval.   We could write to the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, sounding our concerns.  We could write letters to congress, hoping for change.  But they’re just as greedy as the rest of the corporations.  America is corrupt, there’s not much we can do about it.

via Sample, What Comes Before the Platform: The Refuse of Videogames.

Nearly 11 million people play World of Warcraft, a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game.  Players begin their journeys killing bears and other woodland creatures, building up their gold supply while constantly looking for better equipment, and completing quests to gain extra items and gold.  Soon, the law of diminishing returns takes over, as the bear and quests yield too few experience points and gold to notably progress the avatar, forcing the player to move on to the next area.  The cycle continues.  Kill things.  Do quests.  Level up.  Buy equipment.  Next area.  Kill things.  Do quests.  Level up.  Buy equipment. However, for one to break out of the cycle, he or she can utilize the online auction house–provided he or she knows how the economy works. Everything I Know About Business I Learned from World of Warcraft, an article by Josh Kaufman, describes 11 business concepts that a player can learn from World of Warcraft, I will touch on a few I find most important.

The Law of Supply and Demand:

Kaufman describes how some items, like linen cloth, are easily obtained through quests and low-level creatures, while other items, like Netherweave cloth, are very rare, and hard to find.  This explains why some items are cheap and some are extremely expensive.  Note the supply and demand graph.  The red curve (the demand curve) intersects with the blue curve (the supply curve), and the point where they intersect dictates the price.  In this example, the initial demand curve (D1) is shifted to the right (D2), as more consumers are looking for a specific product, driving the price up, although the supply hasn’t changed.  Likewise, one could see how the supply affects price, regardless of demand.  Imagine moving the supply curve to the left, indicating a very low supply.  Now, the intersection point is much higher, dictating a much higher price.  Indeed, this is why Netherweave cloth is so expensive in-game, as the in-game economy utilizes the law of supply and demand. Arbitrage:  Using this new concept of supply and demand, one can watch the auction house for a particular item’s market price to fall.  For example, maybe there’s a specific weapon that regularly sells for 5 gold.  Today, it dropped down to 3 gold.  If you buy the weapon now, wait, and sell it for 5 gold, you’re making free money.  Well, kinda free, which brings me to my next point.

Opportunity Cost: They say “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” when referring to opportunity cost.  If you are invited a company dinner, where your boss pays for your meal, you might think, “I can’t pass this up!  Free food!  I hope there’s booze there.”  Hoewever, it’s not technically free.  The meal comes at an opportunity cost.  Your boss could have used his money and time for something else, like investing into the company.  Likewise, in the comic above, the man could have been going to work instead of walking his dog, effectively losing out on money.  Similarly, in World of Warcraft, there is an opportunity cost when benefitting from the law of supply and demand and arbitrage.  One could spend all day watching the auction house to see a lower-than-market-value item pop up, only to make 1 gold in profit.  This person might have been better off doing quests and killing creatures.  For making 1 gold at the auction house, the opportunity cost was potential experience points (or even leveling up, which takes a long time depending on your level) or even gold!

Marketing:  Marketing is prevalent in everyday life.  In fact, people get paid to incessantly  spam your inbox.  Companies place ads on television, radio, and billboards.  WoW players also use marketing as an effective tool.  Sometimes, the trade window gets cluttered up with people, telling you to “buy gold from [this] website.”  Other times, players will advertise their chosen skill set, “opening lockboxes in [this area],” or “enchanting weapons [over here]!”  Lastly, a player may market their class in an attempt to join a guild or raid:  ”High level tank here!  Godly equipment!” or “Best healer around!”  Marketing is an important tool to promote business and improve oneself, in WoW and real life.

Through the online auction house, it’s clear that World of Warcraft reflects some aspects of macroeconomics and business.  In fact, Stephen Gillett, CIO of Starbucks and youngest of any Fortune 500 company at that time, cites World of Warcraft for his success.  But his success stemmed from leading a guild, a large, organized group with the same interests:  ”You have to be able to influence and persuade people–not order them to do things. Ordering people in most of these guilds doesn’t get you far.”  Certainly, guilds require focus and communication, but, another team-based activity, raids, must require more.

By studying raids, in which players cooperatively take on groups of extremely strong creatures, one can see how WoW teaches players communication skills and teamwork.  Leeroy Jenkins, an iconic YouTube video featuring a WoW raid, demonstrates the level of precision, planning, and cooperation required for raiding.  Below is the video, note some excessive language.

As you can see, the players sit around the raiding area, as one describes who should do what and exactly when.  It’s certainly a leadership role.  But, mid-speech, “Leeroy Jenkins” charges in with his iconic war-cry, getting the attention of all the high-level enemies in the area.  Subsequently, every player charges in, attempting to save the mission, but they all die.  The video really demonstrates that each player must execute perfectly, or else the mission fails.  Teamwork is important.  Team members must know each other well, and the team leader must know the tendencies of each player.  ”Well, this person usually tries to break off from the group and do his or her own thing, so I’ll make sure to tell him to stay with the group.  And this person didn’t heal fast enough last time and a player died so I’ll make sure he or she knows to do that this time.”  While it may seem simple, keeping track of all the intricacies proves to be difficult.

The leadership role taken by guild and raid leaders reflects skills seen in management positions, like the case of CIO Gillett.  One has to know their employees well.  What are their strengths?  What are their weaknesses?  What can be done to improve this person’s weaknesses?  Will my employees work well together?  One has to carefully evaluate each employee, or else “Leeroy Jenkins” might happen.

via Presentation.

“Soon gamers will be the anomaly. If we’re very fortunate, they’ll disappear altogether. Instead we’ll just find people, ordinary people of all sorts. And sometimes those people will play videogames. And it won’t be a big deal, at all.”

Bogost draws attention to the stigma that is currently associated with the word “gamer.”  In some people’s eyes, the word “gamer” is closely related to “geek,” or “nerd.”

Consider the following rant on a blog by Jason Schreier that discusses the stigma associated with gaming:

“So why does the stigma still exist?  Why does the title World of Warcraft evoke such an odd mixture of pity and disgust from your average non-gamer?  Why are videogames considered a waste of time when it’s “productive” to watch movies or read books?  Why are hardcore gamers treated so much differently than hardcore film geeks or sports nerds?”

http://media.gamespy.com/columns/image/article/113/1136797/the-male-gamer-stereotype-dissected-20101130023041677.jpg

It’s true.  Movie aficionados, music lovers, sports fans, and wine connoisseurs receive no such criticism.  Rather being picked apart for enjoying what they love, they just blend into the crowd.

However, with the popularity onset of the Wii and casual Facebook games, the video gamer stigma could soon disappear.  Moms now stay in shape with the Wii Fit.  Grandmothers can play a simple game of pinball on the big screen.  Dads and grandfathers can hunt big game using a physical rifle.  Toddlers can exercise with Just Dance Kids or play Elmo games.  Yes, video games now target a much broader audience, and it’s becoming much more commonplace for people of all ages and interests to play them.

However, the media still “[condemns] and [demonizes]” video games, often citing video games for violence.   Roger Ebert, popular movie critic, notes that video games cannot ever be art.  Movies and television portray gamers as socially isolated.  Media stereotypes belittle the progress that video game culture has made in society.

The “gamer” stigma will continue as long as the gamer stereotypes in the media are prevalent, regardless of how popular they become.  As Bogost notes, “if we’re very fortunate, [gamers will] disappear altogether.”

via Bogost 3.

Airport Security satires the dynamic nature of airport security, with seemingly random items being disallowed and allowed frequently.  The game utilizes wacky items, like snakes, pressurized cheese, hummus, cow skulls, and hemorrhoid cream to make a statement about airport security.  Additionally, a sign on the wall demonstrates the seriousness and ludicrousness of American airports by representing a ban on jokes.  

In Darfur is Dying, one must choose a character from an adult male, and adult female, and male and female children to forage for water in the desert.  However, one cannot even pick a the adult male, because he is “likely to be killed by the Janjaweed militia.”  In this manner, the game shows how families depend on women and children to provide essentials.  In the first play-through, I picked the adult female.   I wanted to get caught by the Janjaweed militia to note the outcome.  “[The adult female] faces a grave risk of rape and abuse if caught.”  In the second play-through, I picked a young girl.  ”Girls in Darfur face abuse, rape, and kidnapping by the Janjaweed.”  Lastly, I played as a young boy.  ”Boys face abuse, capture, and possible death.”  One can see how a seemingly simple task, like fetching water, can easily become deadly.  By introducing the gameplay inside camp, one can see how daily life is affected by lack of water and food and an imminent threat of attack.

Lastly, Timez Attack tests and develops either multiplication or division skills in a cool game.  I wish I had this game when I was younger.  Instead, we had Word Munchers and Number Munchers on Apple II floppy diskettes, which were awesome back then, but I digress.  The player starts in the “Dungeon of Ignoruntz,” which made me laugh, and must use his or her multiplication or division skills to get out.  One must quickly answer questions or risk failure.  This part of the game is considered the pre-test, and is a way to test one’s knowledge before the learning part of the game, establishing a feedback system to let the player know how he or she performed before and after.

The games I looked at all had a purpose–Airport Security satires airport security and generates controversy, Darfur is Dying encourages change, and Timez Attack educates its players.  Games can be a great vehicle to generate interest in a topic.  Rather than writing out multiplication tables, children battle monsters and save lives by completing increasingly difficult problems.  Rather than asking people to read a research paper on the genocide in Darfur, Darfur is Dying presents its case in a more casual fashion, one that may generate more interest from and exposure to casual computer users.

When you think about it, all games really have a purpose, whether that purpose involves developing skills, sending a message, urging self-improvement, or providing controversy to generate exposure.  Battlefield 3 encourages teamwork through different soldier classes.  Dark Souls pushes timeliness and persistence through deadly enemies.  The Legend of Zelda series encourages exploration.  Ethnic Cleansing, the game I covered in my research paper, “The Most Politically Incorrect Game in Existence,” sends a pro-white message through plot, character depictions, and an offensive soundtrack.  Life teaches players about investment, family, careers, and education in a leisurely way.  Pac-Man teaches nomadic survival skills.  Wii Fit teaches exercise routines.  Every game has some purpose.

Ready for a challenge?  Find me a game that has no purpose, and make your argument here!

via Rhetorical Game Sampler.

Bear with me.  It’s rather late, or early if you prefer to look at it that way.

As I read Bogost’s How to do Things with Videogames, I was impressed.  I shared similar viewpoints with Koster, and I clashed with McGonigal, but Bogost captured my feelings toward games as a whole.  Like him, I recognize worth in the details of video games–texture, environment, and immersion–rather than the broad value of “save the world” provided by McGonigal.  Bogost is much more pragmatic.

I have nights where I just want to relax and play simple games.  Relaxation.

I recognize the value of video games and how they can be used not only recreationally, but for marketing and promotional material.

I go to parties where I just want to play games without having to read an instruction manual.  I don’t want Kings, I’d rather play beer pong.  Throwaways.

In life, I focus on the journey rather than the destination.  Transit.  Sure, the Eiffel Tower is beautiful, but did you take the time to appreciate and reflect on the plane ride–a marvel of technology–that brought you from Point A to Point B.  Did you note the clouds outside the cabin, and realize the process that goes into making them?  Did you think about the people around you, your friends and family, that make the trip worthwhile?  Did you see each blade of grass in a field, each brick in a wall, each animal in the pasture?

I don’t see video games as a way to cure world hunger and famine, I see them as an art with millions of little details that separate each game from the next, each with a specific purpose.  I see how gamers identify with certain games, and what that says about that gamer.  

via Bogost 2.

“Angry Birds sucks!” I thought to myself as I read the assignment.  Zen Bound 2, I choose you!

It was uncharted territory.  I play my fair share of games on my iPad–Fruit Ninja, Geared 2, Solipskier, Cut the Rope, World of Goo, The Impossible Game, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Sudoku, Four in a Row, the list goes on and on–yet I never heard of Zen Bound 2.  A few taps and touches later, the Apple App Store described Zen Bound 2 as a “meditative puzzle game of wrapping rope around wooden sculptures.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound very fun, but it’s either this or Angry Birds,” I noted, before I hit the “Download” button.  Scrolling through the screenshots, my eyes grew wide.  The models, the textures, and the backgrounds were all photorealistic.  I had dabbled in Autodesk 3DS Max and Maya, software for creating three-dimensional models, so, naturally, I was impressed by the game’s attention to detail.

“Installation complete.”

I quickly opened the game, eager to finish the assignment and head to my soccer game.  In the menu, I spotted a “Tree of Introduction,” whatever the Hell that means, but I instinctively entered it, hoping to learn what this game was all about.

Numbered lanterns hung down a tree, with a tag depicting a bird hung between them.  I scrolled up and down, left and right.  This is a strange place.  I touched the lanterned labeled “1.”

“Touch a hanging wooden tag to begin a level.”

A-ha!  So now I know how to actually begin the game.  Out of curiosity, I touched the number 2 lantern, which told me I needed to collect 2 flowers to light up the lantern.  Cool, a goal I have to reach.

A beautifully modeled wooden bird sculpture laid before me, with a rope tied to one end. I rotated it around.  Nothing.  I rotated it some more.  There was a nail sticking in the bird’s back.  ”What the Hell am I supposed to do?” I said, setting my iPad down as I left to get a drink.

I continued on my adventure.  Now, I noticed that, as I rotated and turned the sculpture, it changed from brown to a grey where the rope was contacting it.  Weird.  I rotated it some more, observing the percentage bar gradually increasing until 100%.

“Tie up the glowing nail to finish.”  Ok.  I did so and proceeded to the next level.  Boring.  For the sake of the class and discussion purposes, I powered through three or four levels. No challenge.  I didn’t feel rewarded when I successfully wrapped an arbitrary object with rope.  Perhaps the later levels added difficulty, but I didn’t care.  A game has to earn a player’s affection from the very beginning; this one certainly didn’t.

However, as I looked back on my experience, I made a connection with something Koster said:

Traditionally, we have needed instructions in order to play a game. But now we’re often invited to learn as we go. We explore the game space, and the computer code effectively constrains and guides us. We learn how to play by carefully observing what the game allows us to do and how it responds to our input.

In this regard, Zen Bound 2 can be considered a good game.  The lack of instructions really made me curious.  First, I explored the game space in the tree, rotating and scrolling.  The first lantern really set a precedent–I assumed that each lantern would offer me hints before each level, and I was correct.  But as I got into the actual game, where the goal remains unclear, I still had no idea what to do.

But increasingly, the feedback systems are what we learn first. They guide us toward the goal and help us decode the rules. And that’s as powerful a motivation to play as any: discovering exactly what is possible in this brand-new virtual world.

Koster makes a valid point here, one that is applicable to my experience playing Zen Bound 2.  As I rotated the first wooden bird sculpture, I thought to myself, “what is the goal of this game?”  But as I progressed, twisting and turning the rope around the geometry of the bird, the percentage bar in the bottom left corner gradually increased.  I assumed it was the percentage completion of the level, but how could I be sure?  The game affirmed my thought when I reached a certain percent completion, by instructing me to “tie up the glowing nail to finish.”  But there was another piece of feedback I was particularly unsure of, a measure of distance in the bottom-right hand corner.  I soon learned that the amount of rope was a finite length.  ”So there’s the element of challenge,” I laughed.

So what did I learn from this?

 I learned that humans are pretty good at figuring things out without rules and a clear goal.  Zen Bound 2 excellently demonstrates my point, but other examples, outside of games, seem to reinforce it.  In fact, infancy perfectly reflects this idea.  As an infant, there is no clear goal or set of rules (I guess you could argue, what is the goal as an adult, but I digress).  An infant learns purely by feedback.  He or she may think, “what happens when I push this button?” or in baby speak, “boo bee bah bah.”  Parents reward their kids with feedback for positive actions, smiling and shouting, “good job!”  This lets the kid know where to go in the future.  Each time a parent praises their child, the proverbial Zen Bound 2 percentage bar increases, and each time a child does something bad, the parent takes a little more rope, or freedom, away from the child.  It’s a way of saying, “no you’re not allowed to do that in the future.”

In this manner, one can see that a good feedback system is all a human being needs to understand rules and decode a clear goal.  By playing Zen Bound 2, even if I didn’t enjoy it, I still learned something valuable, something applicable to the outside world.

via iPad Game (chosen by class).

Bogost examines an independent Mario Brothers clone with a twist:

A better example of a game convention prank is Syobon Action (Dejected Action), a Japanese platformer also known in the West as “Cat-Mario” or simply “Mario from Hell.” The game is playable, challenging, and enjoyable, but it is constructed in a way that defies every expectation of Mario-style platform conventions.

I have had the delight of playing Syobon Action before.  It’s like Super Mario’s evil Japanese brother.  It is really difficult, as it challenges the usual Mario conventions.  Bogost discusses some of the pranks the game pulls on the player, such as an end-level flag that actually kills the player, and enemies that spawn from coin blocks, that make the game really difficult and question the usual platforming designs.  

Another game, Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors, is a collection of prank games.  One such mini-game has two players competing in a shooting game, but one always wins.  If the loser asks to switch controllers, there’s a secret button combination to reverse the fated winning controller.

So, what do pranks tell us about video game culture, and how can we learn from them?

Bogost notes that Syobon Action, in particular, causes players “to stop and reflect on the conventions of platform play that have become so familiar that they seem second nature.”  The game is so challenging because it differs so greatly from what gamers are accustomed to.  The game is innovative, because it travels off the proverbial beaten bath.  The game makes us think, “how can we change other games to be more challenging and difficult?”

What other game could one apply pranks?  Looking at my video game collection, I picked out one game in particular, Call of Duty: Black Ops.  It’s a little dusty.  Anyways, the game features a survival mode named “Zombies,” a mode where players face wave after wave of increasingly difficult and progressively more numerous zombies.  I won’t go into too much detail, the only thing that matters is that zombies are hungry.

But what if the developers pranked us gamers in the next Call of Duty release?  What if, instead of “Zombie” mode featuring undead, flesh-eating, growling zombies, the mode actually featured cute, little puppies and kittens, still Hell-bent on destroying you?

What is it about zombies that particularly frighten gamers and non-gamers alike?  Do we fear that a zombie outbreak is looming?  Do we fear our own deaths?

The Walking Dead, a television show covering the events that unfold after a zombie apocalypse, demonstrates the world’s curiosity and interest in zombies.  Countless zombie movies depict zombies.  Other movies, like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland, poke fun at the zombie phenomenon, pranking the genre.  The world loves and loves to hate zombies, and by pranking, we see valuable insight.

via Bogost 1.

“As the legend goes, and it’s absolutely true, all productivity ceased for about a week as people attempted to solve it.”

This statement spoke volumes about how innovative the Colossal Cave game really was.  As Dr. Jerz notes in the video, people really enjoyed being able to communicate with a game in quasi-English and have it respond to them.  This got me thinking, is there any type of game or genre that would accomplish this same feat today?  People were focusing solely on a video game.

Something that really drove the point home, around the 20:30 mark in the video, is that “magazines provided programs to type in to play additional adventures.”  Those programs were literally thousands of lines of code.  Typing a single game out would consume time and immense focus.  Oh, and if you mess up one line, the program won’t compile.  So good luck with that.  I bet you couldn’t find a handful of people that are willing to type that many lines of code for a pre-existing game, today.   But I guess that’s an unfair comparison, because we have the internet.  However, the dedication required just to play a game really shows how influential the interactive fiction game genre was at the time, and the fact that it still exists demonstrates its staying power.

Lastly, one can see how much players enjoyed the game by actually investigating how they played the game.  ”We got to the point, finally, where Bruce went in with a binary debugger to get the last couple of points.”  As Koster would see it, Bruce cheats and groks the game.  He may have been stuck, unsure what came next, and decided to invest more work and energy in order to find the solution.  He didn’t simply quit.  He wanted to experience the reward of victory.

via Get Lamp.