Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Fictional games?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_games

Decide which genre/artform interests you most from the examples above, and compile a list to add to a relevant discussion thread. Do these artists represent the games in ways that are familiar, or totally unfamiliar? Is a particular fictional game unfamiliar because of the rules, the strategies used, the purpose, the design, the artifact, or what? Have any of these fictional games produced actual versions that you can now buy, and are these still in the same form (a board game) or have they been translated into digital format?
Post your findings to the discussions forum in your journals or in the weekly discussion forum where relevant.



Fictional games? (Brainstorm list)

"Jumanji" from Jumanji (book/movie)
"The World" in Hack//Sign (anime)
"Liar Game" in Liar Game (Japanese drama series)
"Blitzball" in Final Fantasy 10 (video game)

Area that interests me?

"The World"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.hack//Sign
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.hack//fragment
Role playing games interest me the most, since I enjoy those sorts of video games. I particularly liked "The World" in .Hack//sign because it was familiar to me. The design of it reminded me a lot of my favourite game, Phantasy Star Online. There have been .hack games created but they aren't really like the game within the manga/anime. "The World" is presented as an MMORPG and the games based on the .hack franchise were far from this model of game. The games moreso simulated the idea of an MMORPG and the player journed through the story of the .hack series. One game for online play was created for the Playstation 2 but was only released in Japan and lasted for one year before the servers were closed.

"Hanufuda"
http://hanafubuki.org/
I saw it in an anime called "Summer Wars"

Pleasure Vs Enjoyment.

http://www.austega.com/education/articles/flow.htm

Please read the article "Flow" & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a review of a public lecture presented by Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Sydney on 17 March 1999, organised by the School of Leisure & Tourism Studies at the University of Technology Sydney. Post something about it in your online Journal.  In particular note the difference between pleasure and enjoyment. This article will serve as a starting point for you to approach this unit with a novel and innovative attitude.

Pleasure seems to be something that you can simply sit back and relax with and doesn't require a whole lot of effort on our part, but it does not offer us a sense of achievement. Wheras enjoyment is perhaps something you need to be more actively involved in, such as playing sports or a video game. You can win at a game but you can't win at a massage. I feel like pleasure is something you are made to feel guilty for spending your time/money on.

It's interesting to note that some people have no sense of self worth or happiness when they are not involved in doing something or have some sort of status like from a job. On some level I rather enjoy sitting around doing nothing and staring into nothing. Although I'm sure I'd become bored of it if that was all I was "doing" all day long. I think it's appealing to me because life is so busy and I like time to stop and have days on end where I have no commitments.

The observation of people sitting around watching television because it's something to do with no effort in initiation is true for me in the case of the internet. I don't watch television because the things I like aren't really shown very frequently. However I am addicted to the internet, where there are endless websites to browse on subjects I am interested in. I do become frustrated with myself for this addiction because when I waste hours on the internet I feel like I should have been playing a video game. Games give me more of a sense of an achievement but they also give me a sense of guilt because I like them so much and they seem to be associated more with "goofing off".