Second Life thoughts

So our group has been working in Second Life for about 4 days now, creating an event that brings awareness to gamer stereotypes.

Some thoughts:

• We've decided that Second Life is a little "clunky," but maybe it's just because our generation is snobby when it comes to technology.
• Why participate in Second Life when you can experience real life?
• For the most part, people in Second Life are really, really nice. We couldn't have created our coffeehouse without them. They give you furniture, make you things if you ask them and are usually willing to chat with you even if they've never met you before.
• Having a Avatar is both a plus and a minus as far as social networking goes. It's harder to judge people when you have no idea who is actually chatting with you, but at the same time, they could be really sketchy.

To post in 10 minutes or to not post...? That is the question. =]

Alright, so I'm in a bit of a time crunch to write this post since I pretty much burned all the available time on Guitar Hero-ing... but I'll manage. This one week deal has started out quite well with all the video gaming and all, but... I don't think that contributes to acheiving the pretty serious objective that this entire program is aiming for (y'know, getting girls immersed in the technical parts of technology). Don't get me wrong, I think this is reallyreallyreally fun and IT IS summer and all (nobody wants to focus their minds on something serious over the summer...), but this program really needs to do something more... hard and objective. Mmm, I still have had a great time though in these last couple semesters, but I wanted to throw this out there, for once. I hope I've communicated this idea in other ways before publishing this post, but hey... blogs are feedbacks/commentaries, so this is a good place to put some thoughts.

As for Sweetwater... West Texas has definitely grown on me during this summer. I spent 5 weeks at Texas Tech University at Lubbock earlier this summer and had an absolutely amazing time there. I guess I've slightly associated that experience with this one, so I'm optimistic. If otherwise, I'll get through this day by day. :D

Hmm... random sentiment, I'm definitely really tired of Guitar Hero at this point in time. =/ Maybe a couple days of separation would do me good. Hokay, 'til later people! <3

Games and my day

Today was a lot of fun, and I played Guitar hero for the first time. I know I'm such a loser haha. Oh well, I'll be cool one day hehe. So today we talked a lot about video games and who we think are the targeted audience for those games. The games inculded Smash Brothers, Mortal Kombat, Halo, and a Wii game called Monkey Ball. The differences between those games are pretty far from each other. The ones with all of the fighting and shooting or stabbing such as Mortal Kombat and Halo are geared towards the male youth I think. The women in Mortal Kombat fight in low cut tops and tiny skirts and high heels. I can hardly walk in those let alone fight a large winged beast. All of the outfits of course are for entertainment value but how entertaining can it be to a 17 year old girl...honestly? I think in some ways that kind of thing is degrading to women but it doesn't offend me in the slightest. I'm just worried about beating down who ever is trying to kick me at the time. That's about all for today...

Who woulda thunk?

Today is the first official day of Summer Academy. Today we played various video games in this extremely air-conditioned room, including SmashBros. on Game Cube, Monkey Ball on Wii, Mortal Kombat on PS2, Halo on XBox 360, and Guitar Hero on XBox/Wii. Some I liked more than others but I was especially surprised to have enjoyed playing Halo. I've played it once before but never really gave it a chance until today. I was actually pretty good at it after a little while. After playing all these games, we discussed the stereotypes and issues surrounding video games. We mostly agreed that girls are inferior when it comes to video games. We all observed that even though there are female characters in popular video games, their outfits are sexy and barely there. At the end of our discussion, we were asked who considered themselves a "gamer". Out of 21, only 4 girls (I was not one of them) considered themselves to be gamers. This showed how real the issue actually was when only a handful of girls were big on games, concluding our discussion. All in all, I enjoyed today because it was really fun playing these games for the first time....in a very long time.

On the First Day

Today was the first full day of our wonderful Sweet Water retreat. Starting at 9:30 a.m, we entered the Game Room and played different games on 4 different types of gaming systems. On the XBox, we played Halo which was a little hard, but fun once you got the gist on aiming and shooting ability. On the game cube we played Smash Brothers where we got to play against 3 other people and fight a lot. The character I mostly chose was Bowser because he was one of the biggest creatures and he looked like a ginormous porcupine. I played Mortal Kombat on the Playstation and was surprise by how easy it is to win when you press random buttons. On the Wii, I played MonkeyBall which was a tad hard depending on which game you selected.

After lunch, we came back to the Game Room and got into groups to discuss the suspected target audiences of each game and how women were portrayed, if they were, and how that may influence the gamer's thoughts and ideas. All in all I thought today was a very interesting day. I got to play games I had never played before and lose at Guitar Hero.

Girls and Games

I've noticed that "women as lesser" applies to video games too. Which isn't fair really, because if you were in this room right now with all us girls you'd understand we're very good at video games. All sorts too! We've got Mortal Kombat, Guitar Hero, Super Smash Brothers and all sorts of things... Video games are meant for all sorts of people. Not just boys. I mean, duh, its just moving some character around on a screen with a controller. Is that so hard? Can anyone gender be better at hand-eye coordination? And if you're technically speaking, women would be better since our minds scientifically move faster than boys and can process more at once than boys.

Basically, its a silly stereotype.

First Day of Gaming

Before coming here, I never had full access to Guitar Hero, Wii, Halo, etc. Having a whole day specifically set out to 'game' is pretty much amazing.
It's definitely a new and different experience seeing the gaming world, because I've never been a "gamer". During the school year, I'm so caught up in homework and extracurricular stuff that I don't have time to play Guitar Hero and what not. We had a discussion today about what audience the companies gear their games towards, and it was interesting because it's mostly towards guys ages 15-22. Even though most games are violent, there are some that appeal to girls, like Wii. My favorite was Wii because it was active and forced you to move around a bit. I definitely don't like the 'guy' games (basically the ones with all the violence and blood). It's interesting to see the different characters and the different cheat codes on the various games. Some people are so good at it that they don't even think twice about the cheat codes.
Overall, today was fun and I can't wait to start Second Life and see what it's all about. I'll admit I'm a little skeptical of the purpose of having a "Second Life", but I'm definitely open to learning more about it.