Journal Entry 7

When I was growing up I played a lot of PC games.  I mainly played real time strategy games such as Command and Conquer and War Craft3, but my favorite real time strategy game of all time was Age of Empires 2.  The premise of Age of Empires is that you must create and defend a city that you build with soldiers you decide to make as the world advances from the dark ages to the golden ages.  You could pick one of twenty different countries to be, each bringing their own special troops and buildings to the game play.

This game is a great example of self-as-source identification.  

Self-as-source identification is the ability of the gamer to recognize their own input into the game.  Creating something relevant to game play increases involvement in the game, and it is also a vehicle through which identity can be expressed.  When playing Age of Empires, everything that you do has an effect on the game.  If you create a certain building or create certain soldier, you can have a distinct effect on the outcome of the game.  Everything that happens to you is because of you and you have to make everything work.  That is what I love about that game so much, and that is why I love that game to this day.

Here is just a little game play video for you to see the Self-as-source in action.

You can design your cities to be enclosed in a series of walls, or you can have scout towers that shoot enemies on site.  You can also create heavy weapons soldiers that do max damage, or have soldiers that can ride horses for max speed and attack ratio.  You can play anyway that you want to, and that is what makes that game so great.

References: Sundar, Shyan S. "Interactivity as Self-expression: A Field Experiment with Customization and Blogging." Interactivity as Self-expression. AMC, n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2012.