Journal Entry 3

During one of my usual video game study break I ended up finishing one of my favorite games from this generation of consoles, Red Dead Redemption.  Red Dead Redemption is an open world game made by Rock Star Games, the creators of the Grand Theft Auto series.  In this game you are placed in the shoes of John Marston, a family man recently released from prison who is seeking revenge on his bandit brother hood who left him for dead.  This game takes place in the late 1800’s, and the environment is incredible.  You will be crossing the border to chase down a murder, and fulfilling meaningless tasks for your friends around the south west united states. 

I share identification with John Marston. Identification is when us as game players share the perspectives of the characters.  No, we do not look alike in the slightest, or do I condone all of the actions he takes, but I do identify with him.  John Marston is a family man who always wants to do what is best for everyone.  I feel like I share those qualities with him as well, and this is why I have grown to like the character. 

The more of the game you play, the more you begin to grow closer to John.  You actually feel hurt when he’s hurt, and you feel bad when he feels bad.  I started having a parasocial interaction with John Marston.  A parasocial interaction refers to a media interaction between the game player and the avatar; it is a relationship of friendship between a gamer and their character.  Flash forward to the end of the game (SPOILER ALERT!!) and you see that John finally gets reunited with his wife and son, and everything is roses.  But that does not last long.  Soon, every person that John has crossed came to confront and kill him and his family.  Well, John dies in a hail of gunfire during his last stand.  When he died, I felt like I lost a friend.  He is one of the greatest characters in video game history and I felt terrible when he got shot.

References: Hergenhahn, B.R., & Olson, M. H. (2005). An introduction to theories of learning. Seventh Edition. Pearson: Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River: New Jersey.

Journal Entry 2

The NBA2K series is critically acclaimed as one of the best sports franchises of all time.  The game play and presentation is as realistic as actually watching an NBA game live at court side.  The best feature of the game, in my honest opinion, is the create-a-player mode.  In this mode, you can create and customize your player any way that you want to.  This player is your avatar.  An avatar is referred to by Farmer and Morningstar as a controllable, humanoid, animated character.  I created a slashing guard named Eddy “Easy Breezy” Booker.  Eddy went on to win Rookie of the Year, as well as MVP in the one year I played with him.  I created him exactly the way that I like players in the NBA to play…balls out and to the glass. 

I mean, what a baller, right? 

When playing with him I couldn’t stop to think about what we talked about in class that day, the Hagelian Dialectic. The Hagelian Dialectic can be used to find the relationship between the player and their avatars. 

The Hegelian Dialectic consists of three parts, the thesis, antithesis, and syntheses.  The thesis (sein in german) is a single idea or concept.  The antithesis is a conflicting idea, that which stands in opposition to the original proposition, or thesis.  The synthesis is the incorporation of both ideals into a new reinterpretation.  These three ideas can easily explain why I choose to make players that I create.  In this situation, the thesis would be the fact that I would love to be an all-star NBA player. I mean, how cool of a gig is that! The only problem is that there is no way in hell I could be anywhere close to an NBA player.  I wouldn't even make the UMD team!  The antithesis in this situation would be my create a player in the game.  He is an NBA all-star but he is in the virtual world.  The syntheses would be me actually controlling the avatar and essentially becoming an NBA all-star.  Playing the game helps connect the Thesis of me wanting to be an NBA player to actually being one by being able to control my player in the virtual world, who is the antithesis.

References: Downs, E (2010). Eighteenth century video games: Using the Hegelian Dialectic to explain the individual-avatar relationship in video game play. Presented at the Video Games Interest Group of the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, June, 20-24, Singapore, Malaysia.

Journal Entry 1

 After our discussion of Pavlov's theory of classical conditioning in class, I couldn't help but think of my favorite game of all time, Bioshock. Bioshock is an incredible game made by 2K Games and it is set in the greatest game environment ever created.  An underwater city called Rapture.  The game is set around the 1960’s, but the population of Rapture has been underwater since the 1920’s, and in typical video game fashion, they have caught a virus that turns them into psychopathic killers. So, as you can probably guess, there are creepy, crawly, scary as all hell enemies that would love to do nothing more than shoot or slice your head off your shoulders.  One of these baddies in particular scared the life out of me.  It was a heavily armored mini boss named Big Brother.  Big Brother’s main weapon is a giant drill that he has as a hand, and can kill you with two precise hits. Facing him is terrifying, but he is always accompanied by a creepy little girl that sucks a strand of a substance called “Eco” out of dead bodies around the map called little sister.  This reminded me of Classical Conditioning because when you are in the presence of the Big Brother, you would always hear little sister say “Come play Mr. Bubbles” or “Pretty Funny aren't they Mr. Bubbles”! Talk about creepy.  Every time I heard that little voice my heart would pump at max levels.  To this day, even if I hear one of my friends say “Mr. Bubbles” my senses get a little heightened.

I mean COME ON!! YOU DO NOT WANT TO PLAY AROUND WITH THIS DUDE.  AND THAT CREEPY GIRL! No thank you...

This is a trailer for Bioshock 2, but it is the same Little Sister, and she is still the same level of scary. 

With this conditioning there was also some generalization going on.  Generalization happens when a controlled stimulus is changed to something similar and the same conditioned response occurs.  In this particular case, the controlled stimulus was the sound of that creepy high pitched satanic voice of the little sister.  And the controlled response was me having to change pants, or being frightened if you will.  Throughout this game, the splicers that try to kill you always are mumbling to themselves before you engage them in combat.  Even when I hear the splicers mumbling it reminds me of the Little Sister, so I instantly get scared again.  These two stimuli are very similar because they both talk in a creepy voice, and this game will tell you that if you ever hear talking, something bad is about to happen.  The screams and the gun fire doesn't frighten me, but the talking does.  The absence of fright when I hear screams or gun shots can be classified as discrimination.  With discrimination, the tendency of me to respond to a very limited range of stimuli or only to the actual stimuli itself.  The different stimuli would be the screams and gun shots.  This doesn't affect me, but the controlled stimulus of the screaming will always scare me.  There will never be a spontaneous recovery either.  That is when after a period of extinction of the controlled stimuli, the controlled response temporarily reappears in response to the controlled stimuli.  There will never me an extinction of this conditioned response.

Reference: Hergenhahn, B.R., & Olson, M. H. (2005). An introduction to theories of learning. Seventh Edition. Pearson: Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River: New Jersey.