Task #9 – The Course so Far…
Part One:
Throughout the past five weeks my outlook on video games, gamers and virtual worlds has changed dramatically since the class started. I’ve changed my views in that I used to think that playing video games was merely a waste of time, and now I understand that many video games, especially MMORPGs have deeper underlying factors that affect the players on an emotional and psychological level. I also enjoyed analyzing the stereotypes and ideologies in the new digital media. I found it interesting studying these new mediums because we’ve been studying and picking apart traditional media to death and I really like applying the theories we’ve learned in other classes that we’ve applied to film, television, news and music and apply it to this new cutting edge interactive media in which, I believe, has a much greater impact on the audiences. I really enjoy studying this type of media because instead of looking at what types of media has been used in the past for communications such as the telegraph, telephone, snail mail ect., and looking at how people can use the Internet, and virtual worlds to enhance communication, essentially eliminating the constraints of time and space from communications as well as it being just the beginning of this new media and there is much more to come. I like to look at it as studying ‘future’ rather than history, which hold my interest much, much more.
Part Two:
As I’ve been working at my paper, there are many further questions that arise from my research. These questions include will video games be the new frontier for education, and if serious games can help teach people about these social implications then where else can video game be used in an educational atmosphere. It going to be interesting to see where the remainder of my research takes me and conclude to my research question.
