Day 5 lecture notes - video games and all that stuff

Today's lecture covered issues such as the future of the music industry, ownership of data and information online and our security of identity online.

Before this course I was aware that there are different formats of music files etc. But I have never paid that much attention to them as my husband has taken on the task of controlling all our music. We now have our whole collection saved on a portable drive and the kids load their MP3's as they please. My husband has an MP3 with huge capacity that he uses in the car through the cars own system. (no more CD's loose around the floor) At home our music is accessed through a media player and the entertainment system. Hope that is technical enough.

Anyway back to the course notes. The issue of illegal downloads etc raised some interesting points, like percentages of profit from the sale of CD's etc. The media hype up the loses to the musicians when people 'steal' on the internet. Yet they make the smallest percentage of profit and it is the record companies etc that that lose more. So maybe the muso's need to get technical and sell their own stuff directly to their fans via the internet. The cost would be greatly reduced for the fans and the muso's would probably make more money too. Hmmm food for thought.

We also touched on how to access without leaving your fingerprints everywhere. This is not something that I worry about just yet as although I use the internet substanially for research I am not doing business on there. This might be something I will look at later.

Video Games: Adams comment on his own experience of 'persistence of effect' was interesting. Also the comment in regards to the littel boy who wanted Dad to drive faster and bump into other cars 'just like in Mario Brothers' is a bit scary. I suppose this relates back to your own level of self-awareness. As with Adam, he became aware of his actions rather quickly. However, would this be the same for a less educated, less cognitively able person? I seem to be coming up with more questions than answers in this course!

Some of the benifits that I see in video games are the use of creativity in producing the graphics etc to begin with, the critical thinking needed in some of the tactical / strategic games and the fine motor skills in using the mouse, keyboard and joysticks etc. As a teacher's aid for special needs kids, I often use video games (educationally based) as a reward for effort etc. They kids have to use reading and comprehension skill to understand the rules and follow the instructions. They need to use fine motor skills to manipulate and navigate around the screen. A in some of the games the have to use critical thinking to make the right choices to help them win. We also use games that are not competing against other player, but rather are focussed on improving your own score, in other words working on improving their own skills.

The different aspects of the study into video games made sense.
Narratology being the study of the storylines behind the game, whether the stories are linear or not and the text or 'semiotics'.
Ludology studies the game play elements, deeming the story as incidental. (some games don't have a story). Questions raised here were 'if you don't need to know the story to play the game then is the story important? Why do we have it?'
Some new studies are looking into the hardware, platforms, consoles etc. They are also looking into the historical aspects, such as how chess ( a traditional games) has evolved to be played either against the computer or against other player around the world.

Good stuff!