Final XP Application

FINAL XP APPLICATION


I'll miss you guys!

Boss Project - How Games Can Benefit the Elderly

Here is the link to my Boss Project: 
 

ARG MATEY!  

My epic fail with the Alternate Reality Game "Chore Wars"

Since my family was preparing for a visit of 14 additional people for the Thanksgiving holiday, there was much work to be done.  I tried to get my family to play “Chore Wars” with me.  I set up the account and gave the sign up info to both my older son, Darren, and my husband so they could set up an account. 

My husband’s first reaction was “I’M NOT DOING THAT”.  He said I would have to set up the account for him.  I did that and tried to get him involved in choosing his avatar, but again he refused to participate. 

My son was more receptive and he set up his own account and created an avatar. 

I made up a list with various chores that needed to be done along with the XP that could be earned for completing, and I set about doing some of them.    I thought that maybe once I started pointing out XP for different chores that maybe the other two would start to come around and actually play along. So I'd be feeding the dogs and call out, I'm getting 5 XP for this!  It was truly a bit ridiculous!

It didn’t quite work that way.  My husband did a lot of chores, but he refused to enter his XP. So I did it for him.  I thought maybe he’d be encouraged to play along once he saw his score go up, but it never happened.  My son on the other hand, was willing to enter his XP, however, he was not motivated to do chores.  In the end, we “played” only for one day and my husband had the most points. He didn't care about the points, he was doing the chores because they needed to be done. Darren had the least points, he also didn't care, he was just not participating much because XP didn't mean anything to him and he hates chores. The screen shots below are of mine and my husband's results.

I think this game could be maybe used with smaller children, however, there is a lot of prep that goes into it and a lot of work for the participants to keep up with the scoring system. I also think it would have the tendency to encourage kids to adopt a "sticker and star" attitude wherein they only would want to do chores in order to gain points.  A sort of "what's in it for me" attitude, instead of doing the chores simply because they want to contribute to the family. It further reinforced my belief that fixing a "broken reality" cannot necessarily be done through a game. 

As for me and my family, this game was an epic fail and waste of time for me to set it up!

I DON’T BUY IT!

An academic Response to the TED talk by Jane McGonigal,  “Gaming can make a better world”

Janine Olah

                In the TED talk video by Jane McGonigal entitled “Gaming Can Make a Better World” in our class on October 23^rd , Jane McGonigal presents herself as a game designer who wants to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in games. She feels that in order to do this people need to be convinced to play bigger and better games. McGonigal points out that we spend about 3 billion hours per week playing online games.  She calculates that we actually need to play over 21 billion hours per week to solve problems like hunger, global conflict, poverty, climate change, obesity, and the like.  My first thoughts on this were: I don’t buy it! I do think we need to spend more time solving those problems, but I do not see how gaming can do it.  I do agree that gaming can help people learn some of the skills to solve problem and can help with collaboration, concentration and optimism, but I don’t think games themselves are the answer to the big picture problems.

                McGonigal’s point is that the intense concentration and optimism of a gamer on the verge of an epic win is what is needed in order for us to have the kind of deep focus that we need to solve big world problems.  An “epic win” is a win that is almost beyond what you think is capable.  So she feels that if we seek out to have epic wins against some of humanity's problems, we can relate our gaming skills to real world problem-solving skills. With this point I agree, but I don't think increasing hours online is the way to do it. 

                The problem is, McGonigal points out, that a lot of gamers feel they are not as good in reality as they are in a game world.  They are not as inspired to cooperate, not as motivated to do something that matters. IN GAME WORLD, they become the best version of themselves, get up after failure, stick with a problem as long as it takes, but in real life they feel overwhelmed, frustrated, cynical and even depressed. Still, McGonigal believes that if we can translate some of the skills gamers have into skills to use in the real world, we can solve big problems.  The main skills she claims gamers have are these 4 “superpowers of gaming virtuosos:

1.       1. Urgent optimism – Gaming fosters extreme self motivation and  hope of success

2.      2.  Social Fabric – Gaming builds up bonds, trust and collaboration with others

3.      3.  Blissful Productivity-People are happier working hard and gaming gives them hard work to perform

4.     4.   Epic meaning- Gamers love to be attached to awe expiring missions

                Towards the end of her talk, Jane McGonigal talks about up some of the games that have been created in order to help solve real world problems.  “World Without Oil” is a game where people try to survive an oils shortage; “Superstruct”, is a game with a premise that we only have 23 years left on the planet and teams were formed to invent the future of energy, food, health, etc; and “Evoke”, a game where social innovation skills were learned.  Here’s where I really don’t buy her premise. Yes, during those sample games, people were motivated to come up with ideas and solutions to problems, but I think that the majority of people when given the choice to play a socially-conscious game, or a fantasy game, would certainly choose the fantasy game. They are just more fun!  Even McGonigal admits that we use games to escape reality.  So if reality truly is broken, what would it take for people to want to stay rooted in reality, rather than fantasy? 

                I disagree with McGonigal’s notion that we need to spend 21 billion hours per week playing games.  I enjoy playing games and I think that there is a place for gaming in solving world problems.  I do think that skills that are learned in the games can be translated to the real world, but I don’t think the GAME ITSELF is the method to save the world’s problems. In order to solve the real problems, gamers actually need to budget their time in these fantasy worlds and take what they’ve learned within them into real life. Instead of increasing the time we spend playing games, we should increase the amount of time we do real-world epic winning in such spaces such as education and volunteerism.  Only then can the time we spend in-game translate to epic-wins outside game spaces. 

Sage Analyst Refection #2

Here is the link to my second Analyst Reflection for my Sage pathway,  It is for the class held December 2, 2015

Reflection #2

Taking advantage of the "flexibility", here is XP Application #3

Also, link to updated Game Log 

Required Response: CH. 2 & # Play Between Worlds

While reading the chapters in Taylor’s “Play Between Worlds” which mainly discusses the game “EverQuest”, I was surprised at how similar her description of how EverQuest works is to how Final Fantasy XIV works.  Both games seem to have very similar ways of operating. My observations of how the FFXIV world operates come from my limited, yet intense experience in the game over the past three weeks.  As in Taylor’s observation of EverQuest, FFXIV seems to have two different types of players, the casual players and the power gamers.  The casual players are content to focus on exploring the worlds in a slower pace and taking part in more of the social aspects, not being as focused on achievements, whereas the power players are much more focused on achieving goals and XP.  I first noticed this during my very first days when I was trying to work my way around, but was having trouble figuring out certain aspects of the game.  I noticed that even though I’d come across a lot of different players in the game, they rarely stopped to do anything but talk to the next NPC who would give them the next quest.  Hanging out at an Atherite, I saw many people pop in and out very quickly without so much as a “hello”. 

I learned a lot about myself as a player while playing FFXIV. First of all, as I mentioned in my game logs, I found playing with others much more enjoyable than playing my indy game by myself. Another thing that stood out to me was how my attitude towards the game changed once I found out that I had to complete up to a certain level by last Wednesday in order to compete in the dungeons.  Prior to that point, I was blissfully doing sidequests, trying to learn how not to walk into walls, etc.  Once I found out I still had like 18 quests to do in 2 days, I went into hyper power-gamer-like mode.  I ignored everything that wasn’t a main story quest.  No longer did I do any fates, sidequests or random exploring.  I also hardly read any of the dialog in the cutscenes,  Instead, I clicked through them quickly and didn’t pay much attention to what was happening with the story.  I was focused only on getting to the levels I needed to get to.  I had fun doing the quests, but I did notice a huge change in how much I enjoyed it when I became the other kind of player.  I am looking forward to now having a more relaxed experience in the game.

The parameters of the game make it so you do not need to have the company of others to play and to challenge yourself.  I enjoyed doing the quests and reading the story levels, even when no one I knew was online.  Roaming around alone, I felt less pressure to perform, and it was fun just to experiment with different facets of the game.  There were times, however, that I would have liked the company of others.  I like the fact that you could play at any time, without having to be part of a team, which is different from some real-life games. 

Specifically in my case, my success REALLY relied on interplay and exchanges with others.  The mechanics of the game were very hard for me to master and I found myself often on the receiving end of deadly blows.   Having classmates around that could help me “revive” was very helpful!  I also benefitted from the experiences of others and frequently was able to ask questions of them.   Later, when I was very much concentrating on getting to the levels I need to get to in order to play with the class online for the dungeons, I took to randomly asking strangers to help me. I was pleasantly surprised at how many were willing to cover me while I fought and therefore helped me be successful.  I feel that part of this willingness was the fact that I was “marked” as a newbie with a little sprout icon by my avatar.   I am wondering how this will play out in the future, now that I am part of the “rank and file”.

In “A Play Between Worlds”, Taylor talks about some changes in the game of EverQuest that caused some of the interpersonal aspects of the game to be eliminated, such as the systems of “porting”.  With porting, it used to be that Wizards and Druids would be the only ones who could port other characters, but the game was changed to allow self-porting and the creation of a centralized transportation hub with NPC porters.  This took away the need for characters to interact with Druids and Wizards in order to get ported.  In Final Fantasy XIV, one can use Atherites to transport, so I imagine it is a similar system to that of EverQuest.   You don’t need to rely on others to get around.  Still, when a classmate offered to “teleport” me within the game, I happily accepted this. 

Taylor writes, "In a game like Everquest where the social aspects of the game drive its success and some of the pleasure derived from playing it, the relationship between design and culture, and the importance of understanding the ways those intersections feed into the game, cannot be understated" (65).  I interpret this to mean that you cannot simply be a solo player in this game.  Sure you can travel independently for the most part, but there are many aspects of the game that require interaction with other players.  The game is designed to make you interact for some quests that involve dungeons , guildhests, or to defeat the more powerful monsters..  Also, once you fully buy in to the social aspects of the game such as joining guilds, etc., then the game becomes more and more addictive. It is addictive not only because it is fun, but also because you begin to feel a certain level of loyalty to your guild and you play so as not to let them down.