InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I just work here."

emily5656 (emily5656) wrote,
@ 2008-03-28 11:11:00

Prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse
"We have blasted through malls and ghost towns full of zombies, but are you ready for the zombie apocalypse. No, seriously. guild wars gold After all the humorous books and online quizzes about survival, someone has been taking a real world approach for the past five years: Zombie Squad realizes that it is quite possible for someone to live their entire lives without encountering the undead nuisance. However, we hold fast to the belief that if you are prepared for a scenario where the walking corpses of your family and neighbors are trying to eat you alive, you will be prepared for almost anything. Have you even backed up your computer. The Red Cross has some guidance on how to prepare in case of fire, flood, or terrorist attack. wow profession leveling You have already learned the critical lesson of looking up for aliens on the ceiling. Check your smoke alarms while you are at it. The depth behind ARGs and MMO’s I poked my nose into The Lost Ring on Thursday night, and man, did I get sucked in. The Lost Ring is a very large-scale ARG designed by Jane McGonigal, one of the designers behind I Love Bees. wow leveln It’s tied in with the 2008 Olympics and they’re really making it a global event — the game characters all speak/blog/write different languages, the clues are all in Esperanto, and objects are scattered all over the world. Anyway, as I finally pulled myself out of the rabbit hole this evening, it’s occurred to me that there’s an important similarity between ARGs and MMO’s that tends to make them powerful experiences for those involved, and that is that both types of games are a lot closer to real life than other types of games. I’m not talking about sensory things, like graphics and sound (ARGs are especially good at those!).

I’m talking about higher-level gameplay mechanics like relationship building and teamwork. wow eu In the case of MMO’s, you also have things like economics and sometimes ecologies. Compared to mechanics like maneuvering tactics or aiming in an FPS, these are a lot more interesting than. They involve more parts of ourselves — more of our brain, and more of our heart. And they’re usually more relevant to the rest of our lives, as well. One of Raph Koster’s claims in A Theory of Fun (wow, $150 for a copy now. wow lvl service Time for a reprint, Raph) is that fact that much of the emotional feeling of “fun” is actually our brain’s reaction to learning something. I think it’s true, and I also think there’s potential for a deeper, more meaningful sort of fun when the things we are learning reach deeper into us and have greater relevance to our overall lives. " .