Music

Diddy Kong Racing/Donkey Kong 64/Legend of Zelda, The: Majora's Mask/Mario Golf

I don't play a lot of video games ,I think I've written that in almost every blog I post, so to understand/recognize the songs I had to pull out some images of the games on google. I played a puzzle connect a song to an image. The colors and action being taken my the characters made would be matched with a song. A really happy upbeat song form Diddy Kong Racing would go with Pipsy and a humor song with a variety of beats would go with a Diddy.

When an image of Mario in a complex obstacle appeared I would place it with a song that had simple but fast beats. As the song played and the image was in front of me I could feel my hear beating faster. I imagined Mario missing the shot and I was filled with disappointment or hitting a good shot and could hear the crowed clapping. The song along was no good for me.

After hearing the songs I went to YouTube and listen to some classical music mainly Mozart and Brahms. I'm not a big classical music fan but when I listen to it I didn't need an images. The variety of tones and beats (and musical instrument) allowed me to just feel the music. War game songs (when being advertised) also made me feel this way.

Supperstruct: It wasn't what I expected I wanted more

The two first times I was "playing" (though I like to call it creating) there was confession running threw my mind. I dint know how to play or if it really was a game. As I created my profile it became more of a game. I wanted to play it like the game Clue. Where you base you outcome on the information your able to gain form the other players. The most important thing to me was to create a story where I could interact with other players and have them create my outcome. Sadly that didn't happen. I wrote stories and left a few comments on a few players stories but it just didn't work out. Even players that had good stories and great comments and ideas left by other players didn't relay on other players. I think the game was to open ended. It was like playing Clue with all the cards on the table. I wish it would have more rules.

I still want to play but I want to find someone that sures my rule base game theory. Maybe we can create are own community of Suppestruct and force people to interact and build stories based on other players.

Wednesday Class

In Video Games the Bad Guys Come in All Shades of Stereotypes

http://www.pacificcitizen.org/content/2006/national/aug18-lin-videogames.htm

Street fighter and other Asian fighting game base are my favorite kinds of games. I don't play much but what I do has combat fighting like Kung Fu Masters. I never really notice the stereotype just because that's what I was looking for. When I read this article I started to think about all the characters in my games. When I was younger I watched a lot of Anima and hated but also loved how the characters were not realistic. I liked the shows but at times I hated the stereotypes because I wanted a little more realistic. Example the characters were suppose to be Asian but they they Caucasian with big eyes and really really lone legs.

I think the student Robert Parungao is thinking to much into it. I watched those anima shows or play the Asian fighting games because that's what I want. If I wanted to play golf and played a girl in a bikini then I would find it offensive because that's not what I was expecting. I'm not saying that its OK to have stereotypes but if that's what the game is about then that's what the game is about. You cant go into a rated R movie and be angry because you saw a naked chick or heard someone say the F word but maybe you can if you see a PG13 and hear someone say the BiAtch. the B word is being allowed in PG13 as long as they say BiAtch. I don't think that makes it OK but other people don't see it as the B word.

Race and Video Games

http://www.gameology.org/node/834 & http://www.gameology.org/cfps/race_and_video_games

I find this sources harder to understand because you don't really understand the person that leaves the comment unless you go visit the sight they left you. I do like it though because it get my mind warmed up .

When I think of racism or stereotypes in the video game I almost always think of African Americans first. This might be because African Americans have been stereotyped and discriminated for so Long that its the first thing that comes to mind. Yet when I play a lot of spies games such as "no one lives forever" the teariest are Middle Eastern and this was before 911. In Wikipedia the the villeins are described as "colorful assortment of characters".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_One_Lives_Forever What is that suppose to mean? This game goes back to James Bond so we've been stereotyping Middle Eastern for a long time. How can we model what is going on in the world with out making it a stereotype to be used over and over again by future generations?

In the second article of Race and Video games I was amazed by the variety of ways a stereotype can emerge. My ideas of a Stereotype what have been race, culture, and language but this opens up my eyes to look at video games differently.

1. Excessiveness2. Invisibility/Visibility3. Minstrelsy4. Political economy of games5. Racial performance/passing6. Logics of race at the interface and beyond7. Default whiteness8. Token representation9. Blackness, Asianness, etc.10. Masculinity and race11. Race and gender12. Orientalism13. Character creation14. Race in game design15. Language issues16. Cultural borrowing17. Commodification

Representation in Media

http://www1.medialiteracy.com/representation.jsp

When I began to think of the game No one lives forever I realized that it had originated from James Bond like characters. If old video games are being reused and just made with better graphics and updated weapons/language how is it really representing us today. What about games in about the future what are they representing? Video games, as the article stated, are not able to truly represent us because of the variety of race, cultures, opinions exc. Does this mean that the gamers are being mislead? And if so how can we stop it, do we even what to stop?

If we , like I stated in the beginning, don't mind the stereotype because that's what were looking for can we really change the video games without change ourselves first? I don't want to give up playing street fighter so what can I do to not offend those that see it as a Stereotype?

RE:What is a Videogame?

As I stayed before, video games are a complex way of story telling. One in which the narrator becomes more involved with it. My ideas that video games have the penitential to became literature yet have not done so, that game playing has became more then just playing, and that video games have to have a profound impact on our generations as literature should. However threw out the time that I wrote my first definition of What is a Video game? my last idea "the profound impact on generation" is being tested. I don't know what kind of impact I'm looking for. All I know is that I feel that video games today are video game versions of Capetian Underpants. The more we explore video games the more I find games that are reaching literature.