IMS 103 Assignment Blog

I enjoyed the MOO class so much; I wish there were more classes online.
I feel that it really allowed everyone to participate much more than
they would have in class, because we could all talk at once. My kind of
class

My Identity:

I assumed the name “katamari!” to hide my identity. He’s from a wacky
Japanese video game, “Katamari Damacy.” He’s the Prince, and he’s
always responsible for cleaning up his father’s messes. In the game his
father accidentally removed all the stars from the sky, so he has to
put them back…definitely a Japanese game!

I picked him because it’s a cool thing to say. Katamari! Plus, it
sounds a bit silly and overall, it’s just fun. Using a pseudonym like
this allowed me to be a bit more silly and even more talkative than I
might be in class.

Background – Am I Unique?
I'd say that I'm unlike a lot of people in the class. Sure, they're
used to using IM and email to communicate with friends, family,
classmates, professors. However, I use IM and email 95% of my day.
Currently, I use IM/email in:

• Work. I work for IT Services, and IM is often the quickest way to ask a manager a technical question.
• Freelance work. I sometimes do freelance web design
work, and IM/email is the easiest way to communicate with a client.
Also, having everything in writing and showable prevents problems.
• Communication. I use IM/email primarily to keep up
with or communicate with a myriad of people online. I meet tons of
people, some who I talk to regularly, and some not so regularly. But
IM/email is the only way I talk to them.
• Game coordination. IM/email comes in handy when
trying to form raids or get groups together to do quests in World of
Warcraft.
• Personal organizer. I use a ton of different
methods for personal organization, but one that can’t be beat is
emailing myself something that needs to be done or printed.
• Socialization. I met my boyfriend online. Enough said.

I feel detached when I'm away from my inbox or IM for an extended
period of time. As it's my primary and preferred means of
communication, I think that's natural. I'd so rather jot a quick email
rather than pick up the phone. I'm not a person that prefers voice or
face-to-face contact, except with people I interact with daily. I'm a
hermit

Am I that different from other people my age? I'm not
sure. I got that feeling slightly when we were talking on the MOO,
because I adapted to it so easily while it appeared that others were
struggling. Interesting to explore, though.

Thoughts on MOO Class:
I loved how a lot of the discussion centered on online games. I’ve been
playing World of Warcraft (WoW) since August 2005, and I’m a total
addict; but I’ve also been using the game for research on different
aspects of play, player behavior, narrative, etc.

I argued vehemently that people who become addicted to games are just
as likely to become addicted to something else (and something else
potentially more harmful than a video game). It isn’t the games’ fault
that it’s addicting. This topic is similar to our debate on Powerpoint
– the tool should not be blamed for wrong uses by stupid users.

Additionally, I don’t agree with people who don’t think games are part
of real life. I’ve put a lot of time into my game characters, in WoW
and other games. I spend a lot of time thinking about games and my
areas of interests, and writing game journalism. To me, games are real.

I think that you can, to an extent, define “real life” as you want too.
I think that people try to be too rigid in their definitions of what
different things are (this is something I see in other areas of
Internet culture) and try to force their beliefs on others. I think
this phenomenon is more common online than in real life, although it’s
possible that I just notice it more online.

Personally, I know I’d much rather be sitting in my room playing WoW or
working on homework than out partying on Thursday/Friday/Saturday
night. (I don’t go out. Ever.) Now, a lot of people at Miami would tell
me I don’t have a real life because I’m not out hitting up the bars
every night; my definition of real life doesn’t match theirs.

Emotions and Text:
I believe that expressing emotions through text is possible; I do it
quite frequently. I met my boyfriend online; we have a very serious
relationship and have been together almost 2 years. We aren’t able to
spend much time together during the academic year, because he’s in
California and I’m in Ohio. We talk a lot on IM throughout the day –
it’s one of our primary means of communication. I know when he’s trying
to be funny or sarcastic. I know when he’s a bit down or excited. I
gather these impressions from his text – I know him well enough to be
able to do this. He does the same with me. We weren’t able to meet
until 2 months after we started talking, but this gave us a great
opportunity to actually talk with one another, and be forced to use
words to communicate. Because of this, we were able to build a very
strong base, which we expanded when meeting in person.

Long story, but I think it perfectly illustrates that yes, some people
are able to interact and get just as much out of text interactions as
they get out of face-to-face interaction.

First, I’d like to say that I had an awesome time during class today (Wednesday, 03-22-06); discussing games and different types of realities, as well as the cyber personas people present and if those personas are too damaging/addicting or not.

I was reading news today, and came across a writeup in the Washington Post about a controversy that’s been rocking the World of Warcraft community. "For Gay Gamers, A Virtual Reality Check" is the best article I’ve seen so far; and it really made me think about some of the comments made during class today.

To sum up the problem, Andrews created a GLBT-friendly guild and advertised her guild in general chat. A game monitor suspended her from the game, saying that she had violated the game’s term of use.

As an aside, I had something similar happen to a guild I was in – our original name was “The Left Hand of God.” A random player took offense to it and reported us, even though we weren’t violating the terms of service. The dungeon master changed our guild name without notifying us.

Back to the topic.

“The question is – why? What does being gay have to do with gaming. Isn’t the whole point to leave behind one’s identity in a realm of pure fantasy? Should the rules of conduct online mirror the rules of real life?”

Personally, I think the GLBT guild is a good bridge of bringing reality into a video game, but it appears that the game isn’t ready for it yet. Why should Andrews have to live in a virtual closet, if she’s already chosen to come out in real life? And if she’d rather play with players who are more sensitive and don’t throw the word “gay” around as an insult, isn’t that her right?

Additionally, I found this article, “Computer games help convicts cope.” It’s an interesting contrast to what some people said in our discussion today that people get too addicted to games and lose touch with reality; but here, games are actually helping convicts create reality.

One more article, “Chinese online gamer gets life for murder.” I’d mentioned this in the MOO discussion, but I had the details wrong since a year had passed since I’d read the article. The most important question this article raises is right are the rights of people who own virtual property? Granted, Qiu did go to police first, but was told he had no legal protection. Now, of course, he had to have been a bit mentally disturbed to murder Zhu…but at least he did try to see what options he had.