3 billion hours gaming for no external reward

When we talk about playing ‘the game’ we are abandoning our on morals and following someone else’s rules. The designer gives you freedom to work and discover new things but the player is still following the characteristics and rules of the game. The player is someone who follows others to complete a goal and will do what ever it takes to achieve it. The game matters in the player’s eyes, and we become this player when we interact with any game. 

 Bernard Suits writes, “ Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”

“Any well-designed game is an invitation to tackle an unnecessary obstacle.” What define games are the structures behind it. The goal, the rules, the feedback system, and voluntary participation are the fundamentals that hold it together. Things like animated graphics; competition, interactivity, narrative or the idea of winning and getting rewards is all to boost the player’s attention.

Addictive is a word that best describes games. We know that finite games are played to win. Infinite games are games that keep the user playing for as long as possible. High feedback games show how much the user engages with a game and this is found pleasurable and reassuring. 

Players want the satisfaction of the game ending but also don’t want their enjoyment to end. People spend 3 billion hours gaming for no obvious external reward what’s the point? 

Busywork is a phrase used to talk about focused activity in games. It falls under four different categories, mental, physical, team and creative. We would rather work hard than be entertained. This is why gamers spend less time watching television than anyone else. 

Fiero is the Italian word for pride and it is linked with hard work. It best describes the feeling that the player gets when achieving something. It makes the player happy by completing the hard work that we choose for ourselves provoking positive emotion. Games say you don’t have to do anything but if you want you can upgrade and get better if you try. 

Bibliography:

McGonigal, J., (2011). Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Penguin Press HC, (P.19-34)

‘Remediation’

In the twenty first century we can see ‘Remediation’ all around us. Films and advertising would be the best examples. It is a way that company’s can insure success from the success of the product its self. 

The new Dracula series and film is a good example of this. Vampires where first talked about in 1047 then 1897 Bram stoker publishes the novel Dracula. This was a popular base to work off as we still see it in the media in 2014 with hundreds of vampire films in-between.

In the book ‘Remediation’ written by Jay Bolter David and Richard Grusin in 1951 sees remediation as using and taking something from old to new or from one medium to another. They talk a lot about the different types of repurposing within the media, through technology and webpages films and entertainment.  When first studding ‘Remediation’ I thought it was wrong to use another product to your gain. I believe now that ‘Remediation’ is sometimes giving more to the product maybe making it more advanced and giving it more meaning. 

When studding the way ‘Remediation’ was used in art Bolter writes  “This kind of borrowing is fundamental not only to film and painting but also to literature,” (Bolter.2000, P45.) He also writes about the way arts and film directors learn from their predictors, so that sometimes they don’t have to make the same mistakes or improve.  

  

This raises the argument we will never learn to change or move forward if we keep falling back on the old. “We need to transcend the old to discover completely new worlds of expression.” (Bolter.2000, P45.) 

From researching and reading ‘Remediation’ is linked to a lot of different things in the media. It helps it move people more forward but at the same time they have to break out of the conventional way of doing it. 

Bibliography

BOLTER, Jay David (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media. London, MIT Press.

Technological Community

“The concept of ‘human’ is unthinkable without technology but we act as it is.” 

We cannot live without technology in our everyday lives. Shaw writes in Technoculture that technology defines whom we are as people from how we interact with technology. Shaw writes about the body doesn’t put thought into media and technology it coexists along side it. I can say growing up with technology around me has definitely influenced who I am as a person and what I am interested in.  It has also let me adapt to new software easily from all the imbed codes that I have from years of technology consumption. 

Shaw writes how handwriting was replaced with typescript and word processing. Another example is how learning skills has became so much easier by just looking it up. Creating time for people to do new things and push the body forward. Shaw talks about how the community before the advancement of technology was a machine. In the industrial age people went to factory jobs like well oiled machines it reminds us that we don’t need technology. Those jobs have now been replaced by machines that where made by machines.

It doesn’t mean that the body can’t live with out machines it means that because we are so used to it we became dependent on it. Some people cant even dream not having technology in everyday life. It has advanced so much it is hard to remember a time with out it. 

In the digital age now we can see how the community is the technologic machine. Communities are now creating technology like the internet, then other communities are seeing this and improving it then sending it back out for other communities to see it. So this is a never-ending cycle that has no ending. This is why shaw talks about the techno bodies because we are the technology. 

"the concept of 'human' is unthinkable without technology" (2008 pp.81)

Humans are the technology 

D. Shaw (2008). Technoculture: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Oxford Berg Press. 81-102.

Digital Culture

“A post-industrial economy is one in which an economic transition has taken place from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy.”

Our cultural conditions have changed in the rise of the digital age. We saw mass manufacturing in the industrial age. Then we moved into the mass consumption particularly in the 80s and 90s of, the cinema, television, newspapers, magazines and so on. The Frankfurt school talked about Americanisation and saw American media like Henry ford’s production line, constantly turning out advertisements and celebrities to keep us dumbed down.  

This is constantly being spat out to the consumers but in resent years the consumer has got the chance to become the producer and the manufacture. The viewer has the chance to make content based on what they like from their bedroom. Now with the rise in the digital age we are beginning to manufacture software and code rather than heavy machinery we stay at home and work from computers rather than going to work everyday. 

The change of the cultural conditions has shown that modernism has the power to change life for the better. We don’t have to make products in factories anymore because we have machines to do it for us, then machines to make the machines. We as a culture are making things more and more easy so we can focus on more important things like new technology. Technology is ever evolving and we as the consumers have to push it forward. These cultural changes are the by-product of consumer society. 

Today leisure and consumption determine our experiences in life rather than having work and production experience in the industrial age. Today it is far more social. We can pick and choose what we want to do, see or even change identities to fit what we want and don’t want. In the past there was limited things you do with your life. Now we can exploder our interests and likes and build our lives around that. 

Glen Creeber and Royston Martin (2009). Digital Cultures. Berkshire: Open University Press. 

Interactivity is nothing new

Modern technology of the human-computer interface is very interactive. Interactivity is built in to the structure of computers. The user interface allows the user to control the computer in real-time by clicking on different options on the screen. This has completely rethought how we think of new media. Once anything is displayed on a computer it becomes interactive. It is easy to click, specify and redirect to interactive structures like apps or programs. It is hard to work out the users experiences and relationships with these apps and companies try to convey interactive emotions through this. 

Visual art has always been interactive. People went to see sculptures, paintings, photography and theatre to interact and study them. Nowadays people interact in a different way, with a click of a mouse.

Modern media has decently changed how we interact with everything we can now recreate an artistic technique in seconds that would of took days to complete. These have become natural in everyday life. It has pushed techniques and designers to do more and create more and interesting products.  

The whole reason of computers is to solve mental functions on screen. When people get dependent on computers to carry out mental problems a psychological hypothesis forms. “Technologies externalise and objectify the mind.” Eisenstein thought in 1920 that film had the power to control thinking. Only if he could see that technology has become the main tool in changing perception of mental life. 

In the 1980s, Jaron Lanier talked about how VR can take over human memory and how you can playback memory and classify it. I often wonder if I will have a Facebook when I’m 80 years old and still have all of the photos stored publicly from my childhood. New generations will only know Internet sites like Facebook and YouTube and therefore be eternally locked in virtual reality caves, identifying with somebody’s mental structure. 

Bibliography

Manovich,L. (2001). The language of new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Digital Revolution

Convergence is merging. In this current technological culture companies are forced to merge and change to cross all media platforms. Those who fail to keep up with this participatory culture will face decline, the resulting struggles will define public culture in the future.

It is hard for company's to do this but some have already accomplished convergence but others never will. An example is Disney absorbing Lucas Arts, which means that Disney has acquired the rights to multiple other franchises such as Star Wars. This allows them to tap into more film, gaming and T.V. At the same time they cant control access and participation of the audiences to watch their products.

Marshal Mcluhan talked about this change in Technologies of Freedom (1983). It talked about force of change in the media and this was clearly true with cultural shift that is internet taking over in later years.

We as the consumers are depending on technological industry to evolve and to change our lives for the better. We can see this happening every year with cultural and social changes. Old media doesn't die or fade away, it merges. This helps us form and learn different relationships for alternative media technologies. Most of the time media is forced upon us, for example you can't buy a phone without that phone having a camera, mp3 player and internet access. Normal phones have become redundant due to the emergence of the smart phone. New phones consoles and computers are just black boxes, media convergence , and social networking which connect us, the audiences to the massive companies so they can feed us constant information and accelerate the flow of media content.

Watching the advert or consuming the product isn't enough anymore. Companies invite you inside the brand community. This expanding participation necessarily sparks further change this leads to more active consummation.

What they want is a universal media platform. This will allow hem to dominate and control the market. Connecting media companies is the first step. Once this has been achieved, technology will have progressed to a point where media and technology will be a fundamental component of people's everyday lives.