This week we’ll talk about Anime Con Carne, Portal, and all the crazy Nintendo news that dropped this week. Anime on Carne was a blast, Oizys won a prize. We support the effort totally and are going to rock that stuff out hardcore next year. Nintendo news!~ Sonic vs. Mario?! Finally?! Games games games?! Miyamoto’d all over us. Lasty but not leasty, we fanboy over Portal, a masterfully crafted game. Come drool with us.
EndgameRadio Prime: Episode 176
Published on October 10, 2007 by Tom Mannino | 0 commentsCategories: News, Reviews, Raves, Endgameradio Prime, Wii, PC, Asian, Cosplay, Conventions, First Person Shooters, Psychology, Local Events
OKSHOW #70
Published on June 19, 2007 by pen | 2 comments »Categories: OKSHOW, Controversy, Psychology
LOL OKSHOW HAS REACHED LEVEL 70, LOLOLOL.
Today we will talk about insensitivity and the internet. Do they go hand in hand? Does anonymity really change the way we look at things? Has Pen turned into a giant prick? Are we all being numbed by violence and media? Do we all think tree hugging hippies should just jump off a bridge?
Google is in your base, griefing your dudes
Published on May 14, 2007 by Aaron Matthew | 0 commentsCategories: News, Ludology, Psychology, Google, Cyberpunk
Uh oh. Google overlords may just spot the next dangerous level-designers before the cops do. Google, you are walking the line between awesome [ludology] and awesome [dystopian cyberpunk world that sucks to live in but is awesome to think about].
Procrastination Formula
Published on March 14, 2007 by Aaron Matthew | 0 commentsCategories: Theories, Psychology
U=EV/ID
Where: Desire to Complete Task (U) = Expectation of Success (E) * Value of Completion (V) / Immediacy of Task (I) * Personal Sensitivity to Delay (D)
Not my theory, but I’ll buy it. This theory comes from a psychologist who’s spent 10 years studying procrastination (or maybe 10 years putting off his eventual study and thesis on the subject, and a month working on it). “Real” Science doesn’t look much more professional than my style of Phở Science.
Boing Boing: Science of procrastination or go directly to Procrastination Central
P.S. You may notice this article is from January. I guess I just kept putting off posting this.
Yet another 4chan jackpot
Published on February 21, 2007 by Aaron Matthew | 0 commentsCategories: News, Second Life, Psychology, Fan Fiction
I seriously can’t make this shit up (well, I could but that would be dangerously close to FAN FICTION).
The summary is: Second Life seems to be exciting the Netherlands’ Ban Hammer. While virtual child porn is already banned, virtual sex with virtual children is not (adult players acting through child-like avatars) but this is looking to change fast. A prosecutor with the real name Kitty Nooij will start bringing cases to the court to set precendence.
So uh, what’s the “Time until Kitty” when someone takes on that name or persona as a Second Life avatar? I see penii in the near future. Also, Dutch psychologists are calling Second Life “by definition a school for paedophiles”. Funny, I thought that was called Elementary School.
Maybe it’s my warped way of seeing things, but after reading this article I immediately thought of an alternate reality episode of “Saved By the Bell” meets “Doug” where they’re all in middle school, and some furry cereal-box-top character named Kitty comes to warn them of the dangers of the 2006-real-world version of Screech. If someone re-enacts this episode in Second Life, I want royalties.
Shit, so much for narrowly avoiding the Fan Fiction tag.
Spexercise
Published on February 17, 2007 by Aaron Matthew | 2 comments »Categories: Journal, MMOs, World of Warcraft, Theories, Exergaming, Addiction, Vocabulary, Psychology
spex·er·cise [spehks-er-size]
–noun .
- Doing a repeated activity that is painful or tedious with the intent of building up skill or attributes, on a virtual character
- Exercise for your specs, ’speccing out’
Example: “I’m going to see how many whelps I can kill in 1 hour… starting now.. and GO”
Example: “Anyone here going to hit the raid (gym)? I need someone to spot me.”
Example: Murloc villages may not have much variety, but they make for good spexercise
[Origin: 2000+, ’specs’ + ‘pectorals’ + ‘exercise’]
Addiction and WoW
Published on February 6, 2007 by Tom Mannino | one commentCategories: News, MMOs, Griefing, Sociology, World of Warcraft, Controversy, Addiction
Nothing new here, but just some interesting things I’ve stumbled across in my research and study of a few recent things, especially the discussion on Griefing.
A few friends at work have been teasing someone for her new found entry into the World of Warcraft. It’s mostly tongue-in-cheek but it’s come up in my mind that a few of these people talk about TV shows a lot. They asked her how much she played she of course skirted around the issue. Nobody wants to admit it, because you know exactly how much you /played. Sure enough, The Daedalus Project already had numbers to back it up:
MMORPG gamers spend on average 21.0 hours per week playing the game (N = 1996), and spend on average 7.7 hours per week watching TV (N = 1996). The national average for TV watching per week is around 28, which is what the above averages add up to.
A person who plays MMOs invests the same total amount of time having fun as someone who doesn’t. The only difference is, there’s no /played command for seeing how much time you’ve spent watching TV. Looking at the comments for some of these things, I also notice that the rift of MMO-players and non-MMO players is still there and very present. The general consensus that these games steal away your life is still out in the open, when it looks like the average person spends no more or less time playing then other people spend watching TV.
The comments that appear accusing people of spending that much time gaming as being addicted are the ones that entertain me the most, and speak to exactly what I’m talking about here. Don’t get me wrong, I spend quite a bit of my time in some form of game or another, but I’m not addicted. :3
The book on gaming addiction is still somewhat open, as far as I can tell. I’ve been reading more of the Theory of Fun, and as Koster talks about it, it’s completely possible; we ultimately play games because that squirt of chemical that goes off in our brain whenever we accomplish something feels good. It’s possible to get addicted to that, so that’s that.
WoW insider points to a 9 minute minidoc that went up recently about these same topics. It’s nothing new, but another good summary if you’re interested in catching up.
Tyra Banks Show - Addicted to WoW
Published on January 29, 2007 by Tom Mannino | 0 commentsCategories: News, MMOs, World of Warcraft, Controversy, Addiction
My favorite part is when they shredded the disks; any of the 8 million people who play can tell you, you don’t need the disks to play the game. I was also a bit confused that they blacked out the name of the game on the CDs but were fine with saying it on the air.
YouTube - tyra banks show.. addicted to world of warcraft part 2