Follow me on Twitter RSS FEED

Week 8: 2.4 Play with me!: Having fun with media

Posted in , By Yvette 0 comments

Readings: 
Helen Thornton, (2009). Claiming a stake in the videogame: what grown-ups say to rationalise and normalise gaming.  Convergence 15 (2), 135-139
Very thorough take on gaming, analysis discourses of gamers, especially gender and sexualiy

Summary:
  • Argument: the political and social necessity of including gamers and their discourses into research on gaming in order to better understand the significance of gaming and gaming discourses on our social and political lives
  • The author indicates that games are simultaneously set up as escapism, fantasy and play but claimed by adult gamers as serious, rational and logical pastimes
  • ‘Pleasure’ is often used by cultural theorists and new media theorists, rarely actually interrogated
  • The issues of articulation enmeshed in issues of power, gender, class and context
  • The article focused on how pleasure emerges through articulation
  • The article also focused on the ways gamers rationalize, normalize and justify gaming underlying the factors: pleasure and play
  • The justifications gamers offer not only work to normalize gaming; they also seem to work to normalize it as particular kind of heterosexual, social and rational activity
  • If pleasurable aspect placed into defining parameters of the social, the pleasure of gaming is less about the games themselves and more to do with the presence of friends in a social environment
  • Conclusion
    • The author argue that it is precisely this unsettled relationship between pleasure and adulthood which makes the gamers quite defensive about gaming practices
    • Further investigation which takes into consideration the context, discourses and power relations upon which the activity of gaming is contingent in order to understand the complex relationship between pleasure, play and adulthood, which seems to mark both articulations and practices of gaming
Jenkins, H. (2006). The war between effects and meaning: Rethinking the video game debate.  In D, Buckingham & R. Willett (Eds.), Digital Generations: Children, Young People, and New Media (pp 19-31).  New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass


Summary 
  • Limbaugh ruled that video games have ‘no conveyance of ideas, expression or anything else that could possibly amount to speech’ รจ there is no constitutional protection
  • Limbaugh claimed that video games do not express ideas and they represent a dangerous influence on American youth
  • Effects are seen as emerging more or less spontaneously, with little conscious effort, not accessible to self examination
  • Meanings
    • Emerge through an active process of interpretation
    • Reflect our conscious engagement
    • Articulated into words
    • Critically examined
  • Games is partly a consequence of their growing importance in young people’s lives
  • Reformers argue that children are particularly susceptible to confusions between fantasy and reality
  • The author claims that education are being made in the public policy debates about video games; both sides talk about games as ‘teaching machines’
  • Grossman (2000), a retired military psychologist and West Point instructor believed that games represent a powerful mechanism for reshaping our behavior
  • But, Grossman’s model only works if we assume that players are not capable of rational thought, ignore critical differences in how and why people play games, and remove training or education from any meaningful cultural context
  • Games are most powerful when they reinforce our existing beliefs and least effective when they challenge our values
  • Students are encouraged to think about the media from the inside out, assuming the role of media makers and thinking about their own ethical choice


I agree that game actually is a very useful learning tool for educational function.  Children will prefer to learn knowledge from a game rather than a book.  However, violence element in gaming industry actually is a major issue that affects the impacts on gaming.  I suggest that we should control the playing times for children as children do not know how to differentiate both the positive and negative impact of gaming.  They will easily addict to game. 

In my experience, I seldom play games but I enjoy when I am playing.  I like to play Left 4 Dead.  It is very adventurous.  Normally I play game because of desire but not boredom.  I love to play computer games, but I control myself not to play too much.  Game is a kind of distraction for me.  



In this week tutorial, we are give a task to identify a video games.  This is the game that my group get:


This game is called Space War.  It is one of the earliest digital computer game developed by Steve Russell in 1962.  This game is a two-players modes.  Gamers control the game by using a front panel with four switches each.


Besides, the class also discussed a list of positive and not so positive impacts on gaming.

  • Positive:-
    • Relaxing
    • Entertaining
    • Killing Time
    • Stress reliever
    • Distraction
    • Passion
    • Fun
    • Educational
    • Exciting
    • Interactive
    • Challenging
    • Enjoyment
  • Not so positive:-
    • Violent
    • Wasting time
    • Disturbing 
    • Addictive
    • Mind consuming
    • Useless
    • Annoying
    • Corrupting


Week 7: 2.3 Entertaining the world: using media across cultural boundaries

Posted in , , By Yvette 0 comments

Readings:
Jenkins, H (2006). Pop cosmopolitanism: Mapping cultural flows in an age of media convergence.  In H. Jenkins, Fans, bloggers and gamers: exploring participatory culture (pp 152-172). New York University Press. 
Summary:
  • Pop cosmopolitan is someone whose embrace of global popular media represents an escape route out of the parochialism of one's local community
  • The increased centrality of teens and youth to the global circulation of media in an era where a teen's Web site can become the center of an international controversy
  • Corporate convergence (top-down) - the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of multinational conglomerates who thus have a vested interest in insuring the flow of media content across different platforms and national borders
  • Grassroots convergence (bottom-up) - the increasingly central roles that digitally empowered consumers play in shaping the production, distribution, and reception of media content
  • These two forces intersect to produce what might be called global convergence
  • Global convergence is giving rise to a new pop cosmopolitanism
  • The author use pop cosmopolitan to refer to the ways that the transcultural flows of popular culture inspires new forms of global consciousness and cultural competency
  • Imperialism argument blurs the distinction between at least four forms of power:
    • Economic - the ability to produce and distribute cultural goods
    • Cultural - the ability to produce and circulate forms and meanings 
    • Political - the ability to impose ideologies
    • Psychological - the ability to shape desire, fantasy and identity
  • Western economic dominance over global entertainment both expresses and extends America's status as a superpower nation
  • The rise of broadband communication enables the foreign media producers to distribute media content directly to American consumers without having to pass through U.S. gatekeepers or rely on multinational distributors.
  • Global culture produces local differences in order to gain a competitive advantage within the global marketplace
Am I pop cosmopolitan?
I was slightly affected by the Japanese comic called Nana (Manga).  It is a comic series written and illustrated by Ai Yazawa.  I liked the characters and the story so I started to buy the merchandise products.  After the comics, there are films,anime and video games produced.  



Nana in comic

Nana 2 in film

I think the Japanese punk style in Nana is quite attracting and cool.  That's why I love Nana.

Design by: WPYAG
Blogger Template by Anshul | Funny Pictures.