Monthly Archives: September 2013

i’m a gamer

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you know, as much as i had never thought of myself as one, i found myself proudly putting my hand up in this weeks lecture when adrian asked who in the crowd considered themselves a gamer. i guess i’m not a gamer in what most people think of the term. i don’t sit on my computer or my console playing games 24/7, i don’t shoot

other people from across the globe, or battle them in magical duels over the internet. but i do play my games (more often now than i did in high school thats for sure) and i do love them. even if it really is only one or two games that i actually play (*cough* pokemon and kingdom hearts *cough*).

first off, there are many types of video games, and all of them are different (and this doesn’t count all the games that aren’t video games) so it’s hard to be able to make an overall, wholesome statement about all video games being hypertext or not. i think it was Elliot who mentioned that when hypertext first came around, people started calling it a video game. but there’s a difference. a video game, even if it does have a word that you can explore, is still set in it’s story (if it even has one, but we’ll get to that) whereas a hypertext can have nearly limitless possibilities, the story doesn’t have to result in this one specific conclusion like a video game. BUT! as Jasmine then pointed out, when playing a game, there can always be parts of the game that you haven’t yet explored or discovered and this is like hypertext, you cannot see all the possible paths. but is this enough of a connection?so, “what relevance does this have?” i hear you ask. well, you inquisitive reader you. one of the big points discussed in this weeks lecture was whether a video game can be considered a hypertext narrative. and there were so many differing opinions coming out from the symposium too. we had a resounding “NO!” from one side of the table and a yes! from another and then kinda just landed in the middle. so let me break down the points for you

i’m not sure. adrian emphasised the necessity of story and narrative within both the hypertext and the game. well, mainly that a hypertext does have a narrative but a game doesn’t have too. i mean yes, some do, but there are other games that obviously don’t have a narrative, like pong. or tetris. so where hypertext is about new and different ways of telling a story, a game doesn’t even have to have one, so how can it be a hypertext narrative? another point that adrian brought up was that “games are about winning” and that “you can’t win a story”. but, when you read a story,

isn’t reaching a positive outcome within the story kinda like winning? i mean, you want the outcome to be good and when it it you feel as if you have won.  i guess it’s still different types of winning. but with a video game that has a narrative rather than a competitive or points system, there’s also no real definite “win”. does beating the game mean you have won or just completed it like you have completed a story? take kingdom hearts for example, you play a single character, sora, and your quest is (in simple terms) to bring peace to pretty much everywhere. yeah, there’s fighting along the way, and you can win those individual battles, but when you complete the story, is that really “winning” or have you just reached the conclusion of the narrative? and some games you never win. like tetris or temple run, the aim is just to keep going for as long as you can, so really you’re only option is lose, there is neither a “win” nor a narrative conclusion. so really, there really is no proper way to answer this question. because there are too many different types of games to classify anything. as long as we keep playing and reading, does it really matter?

just one more small note from the lecture, i really liked Adrian’s point about the meaning not living in the text (or shot, as his example was in film) but in the combination of two shots or links between the texts. on it’s own, a text is nothing (similar to the theory that context cannot survive) but it must be combined with something else to have a meaning and different combinations can have different meaning. this reminds me of something we covered last semester in cinema studies about editing, what is known as the Kuleshov Effect and pretty much is about how the meaning of a shot can be altered completely by the following shot. check out this video below from none other than alfred hitchcock for a much better explanantion.

that’s all from me now, a bit long this post was. i guess there was a lot to talk about.

 

 

 

 

 

ok

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so, the title of this blog post will only make sense to bec skilton but to us it’s a pretty relevant summary of our activites in class last week. i would explain it to you, but it just wouldn’t be funny. and you’d probably end up just thinking i’m crazy (or crazier than you already thought i was). but, considering that there’s probably no one actually reading this, i don’t really have to explain myself anyway.

back to the actual point of this blog post, our class discussions. for some reason, most of them tend to involve a lot of rebuttal against stuff that’s been said during that week’s lecture. and last week’s class was no different. the main point that people didn’t like was adrian’s claim that context cannot survive the text. i both agree and disagree with this (i guess what i’m really saying is, everyone made good points so i’m on the fence). every text can only be written in the specific context of that time and really can only be read in the specific context of the time in which it is being read. so in that sense, no, it does not survive. but a text being written in a different context does not mean the author doesn’t exist, or their intentions don’t exist and especially doesn’t mean that we can’t try and work out what their intentions were. as someone in class pointed out, the second we acknowledge that someone has created something, it changes our view of it. i guess the consensus was that everything that had been said at the lecture was too absolute. i guess in this day and age we are a fan of ambiguity and blurred lines (but not the song). i’ve never really been such a fan of black and white anyway.

laws lost, networks or physics?

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so this week’s reading, “the 80/20 rule” is pretty heavy. i mean, it started off all well and good, tlaking about networks and links and nodes and hubs. but then it turned sciencey. and when i say sciencey, i mean physics. and i hate physics. and this is coming from a science student (well, i used to be, believe it or not, in high school i did chemistry, biology and psychology) but i could not stand physics.

now, the problem i found with this reading is that we were never given a really clearly defined definition of what this incredible “power law” was. i mean, it seemed like Barabási started trying to explain it then got carried away in his own thoughts and never got around to finishing that explanation. and that left me very lost for the rest of the article because a substantial amount of the content was about power laws and atoms and freezing water. and i’m not really sure what any of that had to do with the network. so instead i’ll discuss the actually interesting “80/20” rule.

the 80/20 is kind of like the opposite of the bell curve, where very few of whatever it is that your measuring have a large amount of whatever the other thing that you’re measuring is. well, that was a terrible explanation. sorry. i guess an example would help. ok. so the 80/20 rule is saying, as per an example from the reading, that 80% of the world’s money is earned by only 20% of the population. so, in slightly simpler terms, a very small part of the population earn a very large amount and vice versa (a very large part of the population earn very little money).

so, how does this work in relation to networks? well, i guess the whole point is like links on the internet. just a few of the vast number of pages or “nodes” have a lot of links connecting to them and the majority of pages will just have one or two connections. in that way, im kinda picturing google as like the king of the internet. one huge page with a million links going out, but each of the pages that google will link to will only have one, maybe two other links out. so google is what connects them all and creates the network, without which it would just be a bunch of pages that no one sees because nothing is connected.

like that nice little picture, which is a very simplified version, you can see that one person is linked to a lot of people while most of those are only linked to one or two. so that one guy would be the 20 and everyone else the 80 (not in exact figures obviously) but you can see that the smaller amount of people have more links out than the larger amount of people. and i think that’s the power rule. but, you know, when physics and maths become involved, you never know what’s really going on.

saving people, hunting things, the family business

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today marks the 8th anniversary of my favourite television show off all time, the one and only, SUPERNATURAL.

incredible to think that just 8 years ago, the world was yet to know the winchester brothers or what they would do for each other. a show that started out about two boys looking for their father in a world full of ghosts, demons, wendigos and countless other monsters, but turned into something a lot deeper and more exciting. the story of sam and dean winchester has been dramatic, emotional, hysterical and devastating, sometimes all of those emotions in just one episode too! who would have thought that a show about fighting monsters could be so heart wrenching and make anyone so emotionally invested in the incredible characters, not just the brothers but the family they have around them of friends and fellow hunters.

incredible that a show that can make me cry as if i’ve just lost a best friend at some of the saddest moments i’ve ever seen in television, can make me laugh until i cry, because when supernatural do comedy,

they do it better than most actual comedy shows out there (check out “changing channels” (season 5) or “the french mistake” (season 6) to see what i’m talking about). with an incredible mix of drama, horror, comedy and action, supernatural has kept it’s cult audience entertained for a full 8 seasons and is still going strong.

seeing the journey this show has taken both it’s audience and the winchesters over this last 8 years, i cannot wait to see where it’s going to take us this coming season and the next and it will be a very sad day indeed when those incredible brothers will no longer be on my tv screen, but hopefully that day is a long way away. thank you so much supernatural for being so incredible these past 8 years, keep going strong!!

can i control my blog?

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this week was a very interesting unlecture, despite us not getting to my question :(. i guess there were just so many good things to talk about in regards to the other questions that we just ran out of time for mine.

the biggest point i took away from it was about the amount of control the author can have? and how much is that? well, right now it doesn’t seem like a lot. that’s the problem with the gap between the author and the reader, you can never know just how they’re gonna interpret  your work. so, in a sense, emphasising your lack of control can give you more control. if we write something that allows for different interpretations, we are showing that we are understanding how our audience works. actually, i don’t know. i lost myself just then. but it made sense when i started, haha. it’s also about not being able to know exactly what the author was thinking or intending, we just need to take the work as it is and attempt to make sense of it independently of the author.

another aspect of this, which was also brought up in the unlecture was the notion that context cannot and does not survive the text. so how could we know what an author was thinking when he wrote a book 150 years ago because it was a completely different time with different social norms and ideologies. we can only interpret it the way we see it today because we no longer have access to the context in which the work was created.

i know there was more important stuff that was discussed but my brain is falling out on me, it’s been a long day at work. but the last thing i want to mention (which was actually the first thing adrian mentioned so working backwards here) was that awesome animal book (i forgot it’s name!!!!) with the ten animals that you could mix and match to create almsot endless possibilities. oh, how i would love to read that book. that book is probably how they make pokemon now a-days, seeing as how they are really running out of ideas for those little pocket monsters (fairy floss pokemon??? say whaaaat??). but, being the child at heart that i am, i really wanna read that book and see what cool animals i can make. it was an interesting point to, the difference between that and the “choose your own adventure book”. although everyone was talking about that because the reading mentioned something similar, the titanic online game/book was pretty much a choose your own adventure because there were more limited outcomes (well, thats what i assume, i haven’t actually read/played it). but the endless sonnet was cool. i wonder if anyone has done all the possibilities? i guess not considering it would take, what was it?, 200 million years. ok so maybe not, but there’s no harm in trying 😀

Back to blogging

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it feels like i haven’t blogged in a while. do you guys miss me? (do you guys even exist? probably not, haha). i guess we all took a nice break for the week. (just to say, at least our mid semester break was in the middle of our semester!!! deakin’s was in week four and monash’s is like in week 10! whats up with that?) and i haven’t really done or been looking at anything worth blogging about. and “why is that?” i hear you ask? because my new kingdom hearts 2 finally arrived (well, by new i mean i jsut got it, the game come out in like 2004).

now, for anyone wondering, kingdom hearts is by far my favourite game (yes probably even more than pokemon. ok, lets not get too crazy, equal to pokemon. but they’r very different) and i’ve played kingdom hearts 1 more times than i can count. who doesn’t love the magical adventures of sore, donald and goofy and travelling through the incredible worlds of the disney movies? (peter pan is obviously the best world). so, once i got that pesky little comm essay out of the way (which sadly took a lot longer than i had hoped due to some facebook/youtube/all time low obsession interference), it was a nice dive into the world of kingdom hearts 2. and it’s pretty cool. there’s some awesome new features, like double keyblades, and new worlds, like milan and lion king! its just awesome. and i know you think it sounds lame but trust me, the kingdom hearts series is regarded as one of the best games out there so get into it.

now, i’m so hyped up about this because they are finally releasing a kingdom hearts 3!!! but the killer line….. only on the new PS4 or new X-box! 🙁 which i don’t have and am not planning on buying. so depressing. how will i ever know if sora, donald, goofy, riku and kairi and up happy??? but they are also rereleasing the first game in HD with extra goodies and limited edition sketch books so i’m happy about that.

wow. that got off topic, i was not planning on going on for o long about kingdom hearts. well, thats the blog for you, start off in one place and end somewhere completely different. i guess it’ll be good for me to get back into regular blogging this week, maybe with some stuff to do with the actual subject involved. well, last week (or two weeks ago i guess, stupid holiday) it was finally my classes turn to come up with the questions for this week’s unlecture! now, there was some confusion due to the whole naming of the weekly readings in the blog, you know 01 reading for week 02. or the 05 readings for week 06 but we’ll discuss them in week 07. all very confusing. but we came up with some questions anyway. proudly, mine made it in!!! what is? no spoilers!!!! you’ll have to wait and hear it in the unlecture. but let me tell you, it’s a doozy! (ok, not really, i wasn’t even expecting it to be picked! but the others all liked it). but the others were pretty good and also brought up some good class discussions about what can be classified as hypertext or what kinds of hypertexts can be classified as academic or essay. and then we dove into the usual niki work.

but i should stop there. i’m rambling again and this post has covered a few too many things. stay tuned folks, hopefully more to come!

it’s a small world after all

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one of this week’s reading, “six degrees” by Duncan J. Watts was an interesting read about the science behind networks themselves and the ever popular “six degrees of separation”. now, haven’t we all at times tried to work out how far our 6 degrees can take us? i know i do. we all want to be connected to someone famous, even if it’s just through the simple means of knowing someone who knows someone else. it’s a pretty cool idea, even if i do still find it kinda hard to believe that little ole’ me could be connected to those people who live in completely secluded tribes in random parts of africa who have never had contact with the outside world. i mean, come on, they’ve never met anyone outside their tribe?!?! how could i be connected to them. but according to Watts and another researcher named Milgram, i am. if only it was useful. but i guess if everyone is in the same boat, it doesn’t really make any difference to anyone.

onto networks! now, i would describe this reading as having three distinct sections. one useful one about networks, one at the end about the previously discussed six degrees of separation. and a random chunk in the middle about the author’s experiences in college, his professor’s experiences in college, repeated mentions of fire flies and experiments on crickets. poor little crickets, thinking some other cricket loved them but it was only just a machine. ok, i’ll try and stop getting distracted. the networks. the article revealed a lot about the sciences of networks, or, how there isn’t much so far regarding the sciences of networks, but there should be. i like this reading because finally it gave me something real to think about in regards to networks. i mean yeah, the past readings have too, but this was all “networks” in big flashing lights, telling me how we’re all connected.

i thought the story/metaphor about the blackout on the west coast of the USA was great (once i could get the image of bug on a wire out o my head, so much talk of electrical power wires). it just demonstrated how people underestimate the power a

connected network has. like in the human body, sometimes even if one tiny little element fails, it can bring down an entire system because the network relies on everything working together. the relation to the science of networks is concerned with working out how each individual element knows how to come together and work together so cohesively to produce an operating network. this again raises the idea that individually we are all part of one huge network that just somehow manages to function cohesively. i think it’s interesting that this is an emerging field of scientific research, presumably because the notion of networks has been taken for granted as simply existing up until now. i guess the current rise in technology, especially with the network of the internet, that people have begun to realise that networks are a huge factor in our lives and that understanding them could be extremely beneficial to the future of our society.

 

the future of tv?

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gosh, kevin spacey is awesome. i really need to check out house of cards. but until then, this speech is pretty good. he definitely has the right idea about how tv should be done in the coming years. its about the networks and the producers thinking about what their audience wants. because american shows are reaching an international market, just not in the way that they would like. every day people pirate shows simply because it is the easiest and fastest way for them to access it before the internet becomes riddled with spoilers about the certain episode cliffhanger that is still 1 month away from being shown here in aux (if you’re lucky, i think supernatural is about 2 seasons behind down here).

i like the idea of a service where you pay a certain amount per month and you get instant access to every show you want when it airs live in the us. i’m not so sold on the netflix method of releasing a whole season at once. yes, i like to binge on my shows, i am always up for a good marathon, but only when i’ve already seen it. a major part of the draw of television is that cliffhanger. it’s what separates it (and IMO makes it far superior to movies). that drive that makes us want to come back next week, keeps us on the edge of our seat. think about it, would LOST have been so intriguing if every cliffhanging episode was immediately answered for us. that suspense is part of the thrill of television.

but, in all seriousness, tv needs to change. the ratings system is outdated and the major audiences jsut aren’t there any more thanks to DVR and the internet. if the big channels over in the states don’t come up with something soon, we may begin to see a decline in the quality of television as they begin to lose their market to the online pirates. anyone else ever wondered why theres now so much extra product placement inside the tv shows rather than just in the ad breaks? like when an entire episode of survivor each season is dedicated purely to showing off the sprint phone. because when people download, they don’t have ads, so now companies have to put their ads inside the tv shows themselves!!!!

in conclusion, we need better accessibility to the us shows when they air or the world of television will become lost to the internet