The relevancy of video games
We discussed Gee's and Squire's articles on technology. Bringing up topics of authenticity of virtual experiences vs. real life.
What are the values we get from video games? My small group looked at "Diner Town Tycoon."
We were asked to look at features of design and found:
1. regarding content: the storyline centered around driving a large corporate restaurant out of town (good vs evil), bright colors, lively music (happy sounding)
2. values/ideologies: support the small guys, eat healthy food (which is not in the corporate restaurants like "sneaky" Grub Burger) because unhealthy food turns you into a zombie... symbols in the game reinforce these ideals (such as hearts associated with healthy options and slugs with the Burger X)
3. ways of thinking:
challenge: each level is harder and you can lose
curiosity: being able to lose causes you to be curious about how you can win
learning through failure: you can see direct effects of your advertising and other choices, when you fail you are able to understand why and play differently next time
control: you can see direct effects of your advertising and other choices, you can pick how many restaurants you want to help (if you are good enough with only one, you can actually beat the corporate company with only one store)
developing identities: you work as a consultant for restaurants and you help the restaurants develop their own identities
fantasy: zombie flies and other characters, silly names
I am really looking forward to talking about this next week.
My question for class next week is please could someone explain internal and external aspects of the semiotic domains? I am still confused on this (from Gee)
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