My Blog

One common motivation between "Why We Play" and McGinigal's talk is that they both discuss challenges that people face when they play games.  Jane explained that World of WarCraft challenged people just enough to keep them playing.  And in "Why We Play" it is explained as the category of Goals,Challenges, and Rewards.  Meaning people play to meet goals and to advance in the games they need to defeat certain challenges. Another common motivation is known as Skills Practice in "Why We Play".  Skills practice in the gaming world helps gamers be prepared for real life problems and situations.  For example combat and war games gives the gamer an inside look on how fighting a war might be like.  Jane McGinigal also thought this was true.  She stated that playing games makes a hearty and collaborative person.  She also says an "epic win" excites the player to want to play more and learn more.  This skill makes a person want to learn more and more....

What Strenheimer means when she says "popular culture is frequently used as a proxy for hostility, and so we condemn a group’s cultural preferences rather than openly express it towards the group” is that we mask the real problem with the negative things that group associates themselves with.  In today's society we  don't  feel empowered enough to go after the real problem.  Our society is kind of like a relationship, w e just make a huge deal over the little things. We also tend to over think things like teenagers going through a rough patch in their lives.  For example when the shooters in the columbine massacre did their thing, the society blamed Marlin Manson and his music for their behavior instead of blaming their mental health or gun laws.  Today's society tends to over think things like teenagers going through a rough patch in their lives.    Another example of overthinking would be the 16 year old that went off to college in Michigan and ...

In the film, Digital Nation, they researched different schools on how multitasking effected the students work.  Children in the Bronx were given computers to help them study.  Many of the students were doing things other than school work on them. They were using the cameras as mirrors and etc. Students at a higher education level believed that they could multitask no matter the situation.  A study done on college level students says different. The results of the study showed us that the tasked were performed at a slower rate when more were thrown at the person being studied. Students from a young age are constantly multitasking between doing homework and checking social media accounts.  There were more cons than pros when it comes to multitasking in schools.  Students'  attention is pulled away from the i mportant educational things when they are allowed to use technology.  Kids are sneaky with most things they do on the internet and can easily fak...

Technology has made our lives so much easier, yet has ruined us.  We constantly need to be on our phones, whether we are checking a text or email or just scrolling through social media to see what our friends are doing.  Instead of calling a loved one we choose to type up a short little text to update them. We just aren't all that close to people anymore.  As Sherry Turkle said "we expect more from technology than from people."  Even when we are with our friends we are constantly on our phones and don't really interact face to face.  We are more into the conversation than the connection.  We much rather have a meaningless conversation with someone just to occupy or time and help us escape the real world for a few minutes.  Through texting it is very hard to get to know anyone personally.  This is because we can edit our texts to make us seem like the person we want to be instead of the person we actually are. The advancement of technology has ...