English 299 Literature and Games

Zork 1

benaamot — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:20:21 +0000

I had never heard of Zork until you told to look it up. I had never played it until I downloaded it. I had no idea what it was about. As it turns out it is very fun to play. It’s all text based and you give commands to move the story along. It took some getting use to and I just kept exploring. I was really confused by the house then you go under the house and its a whole other world with canyons and dams. It was very strange. In my first attempt at playing Zork, I ended up in a private room atthe dam tourist center. I went in and pushed a button and the room started flooding. After that I tried everything I could think to stop the leak. Nothing worked and I drowned in the tourist center. I tired again but I got lost in a gallery and studio. I couldn’t find a new way to go. A couple things were frustrating about the game. First you can’t carry very many items, after a certain point your load becomes to heavy. Second you can’t scroll back to see where you have gone and what you have done. A lot of what I did was back track and I had to keep asking to look around, to understand my surrounding. The other website I checked out was 10:01 by Lance Olsen. I didn’t understand the purpose of it. I just didn’t get what was interesting about a theatre of people. I guess cause you can see what they are thinking. I don’t know, I played Zork first, so the next was a let down. The reading from First Person I didn’t understand either. I didn’t see a point to what the author was saying. Hopefully in class Trevor will better explain it.

Shooters

benaamot — Tue, 29 May 2007 16:40:26 +0000

I personally do not play a lot of first person shooters. I have trouble with not being able to see my character. It really messes me up trying to play anything different. I have only been able to get use to Metroid Prime series when playing a fps. I agree with Wark about the anxiety that comes with games. I am really nervous when playing Resident Evil 4. If I don’t kill the zombies in front of me then they will kill me. Your heart races and your palms sweat at an intense battle of a level. I don’t agree with what he says about story for it. In Metriod Prime the story drives the game. In the Legend of Zelda series its the story that draws me in to playing it. Since I have not played many other shooters, I can see what he is saying. For the most part most of them don’t have a story, you just try to destroy everything in sight. The graphic novel Shooting War was very different. It reminded me of Survivor because the main character gets thrown into the spotlight when he accidentally films that fire. It reminded me of Tender getting his national fame. Now the guy is in the middle east filming a war. I don’t think he thought that would ever happen to him. I think shooters give people a healthy outlet for their aggression to be released. People get angry and need to let it go without hurting any real people. Shooters are a great way to blow off some steam.

The Things They Carried

benaamot — Tue, 22 May 2007 16:19:50 +0000

This book is very interesting. I know some people that fought in the Vietnam war but none of them talk about it. I don’t ask because it is hard thing for soldiers to talk about. O’Brien talks about the death of guys in his unit so matter of fact. He says this is how so and so died and then continues on talking about the things in their rucksack. I think it is the attitude you need in a war. You have to stay emotionally dis-attached or it is to real. Watching people die all around you would have to be horrible traumatizing experience. A part I really like is on page 81 “You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference-a powerful, implacable beauty-and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly.” It’s very true, it’s like when everyone slows down to see a car wreck. It’s ugly but your eyes cannot help but look.

Did he Die???

benaamot — Tue, 15 May 2007 16:34:01 +0000

What an ending to a good book. It left me wondering if Tender survived the plane crash or not. I think he did survive because Fertility said he would figure it out. Since she can dreamabout the future and she has never been wrong. It was a very strange book. It was interesting when Tender left the spot light, all he wanted was to be back in it. He was so shy before. He was going through withdrawal’s from the attention and all the drugs they were giving him. I thought it was really funny how Fertility tricked him into hijacking the plane. The whole time Tender thinks he is going to stop the hijacker when it is him all along. Also how Tender told all the passengers how to eat or he would shoot them. I thought that was funny also. Over all I really enjoyed this book.

Game Proposal

benaamot — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:30:35 +0000

I am trying to work out a board game to design. I want it to have a lot of different elements in it. I played a game my parents had when I was a kid, it was called Dark Tower. It was a board game where you had an army and tried to take over the board and the Dark Tower. The Dark Tower would tell you if were going to win the battles or lose them. I remember loving this game and my cousins and I always wanted to play it. Until it stopped working, now it has faded from my memory. This game is my inspiration for my game. I am thinking there will be a battle situation with cards. I am not sure how it will all work. After playing Call of Cthulhu I want to have a way to tell a story through it also. Right now I am thinking of taking a normal deck of cards and dividing them into the four suites. These will be the player’s battle army. They will have to roll dice and add the numbers to see the out come of certain events. Like how much they will be fed, or how much they will be paid for their services. Rolling high numbers will make them strong and fight hard for you. Rolling low numbers may cause them to die, revolt or go look for work else where. Players will also have money to pay their army, make deals with other players, and what ever else. I want to have a deck of cards to draw from that will have good and bad twists on them for the players. The object of the game will be claim land over the board, conquer the other player’s army and end up with the most money.

Survivor

benaamot — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:29:19 +0000

So far I like “Survivor” by Chuck Palahniuk. It is a very strange but good tale about a survivor of a religious cult. The guy is smart and stupid at the same time. He knows a lot about cleaning. For what I understood he was trained by the church or cult. He has a really sick personality. He started a suicide hot line because his number was printed in the paper by accident. After that it was found out, he posted stickers to get people to keep calling him. I think it is because he missed out on the mass suicide of the cult that he wants to be able to tell people to kill themselves. He doesn’t give good advice, he tells people they should end their life. I would get very interested in the story, then I would get very bored. All the talking about fake plants put me to sleep the other night. Then talk with the girl Fertility woke me right up. If he does get to get in bed with Fertility, I think he will get scared and run away. He was brought up so religiously he hasn’t had any experiences with women. I think this book is only going to get better. At least I hope it does.

Scary Stuff

benaamot — Tue, 01 May 2007 16:42:32 +0000

These readings by H.P. Lovecraft and creating a character for Call of Cthulhu remind of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the Gamecube. In Eternal Darkness you are many different characters with different skills and you have to fight monsters created by these old deities. Through out the game you have gain the powers to take down these ancient gods. The best part is the sanity meter. If your character saw to all these monsters the character would start loosing there mind. When your sanity meter got low you would start having delusions. You would see yourself die in a very horrific way, the TV volume would turn down or turn off, and you wouldn’t be able to tell the right path to go. You can cast magic spells and enchant your weapons to take down the monsters. It is one my favorite games. While I was reading and creating my character, all I could think about was my experience playing that game. I think the game borrowed some influence from H.P. Lovecraft. If you haven’t played Eternal Darkness I highly recommend you do.

I was talking with the man in the mirror

benaamot — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:43:43 +0000

I think it would be great if we could get people to change. If people would stop hating on other people because race, sex, religion, social status and wealth. I just don’t think it will happen. To raise tolerance through video games is close to impossible. It would have to be the perfect game to get people into it. Lots of people are to stubborn to change and do not see the bigger picture. If people don’t change humanity will eventually die out. I don’t think Gonzalo Frasca article “Videogames of the Oppressed: Critical Thinking, Education, Tolerance, and Other Trivial Issues” was written well at all. The author fore shadows a lot by telling the reader what he is going to say next. Isn’t that a big no no in writing? I think he is right that a change is needed and getting discussion’s started is a good start. I just don’t know if change will happen in my life time. People are just too greedy and full of hate to really change the world.

WTF? End Game

benaamot — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 02:45:40 +0000

I read End Game by Samuel Beckett. To say the least , it is very strange. I think they are in some sort of post nuclear war civilization. Maybe even a some sort of disaster has destroyed the planet. I don’t know. The characters all seem to have some sort of restricted movement. This reminded me of chess pieces or some other character based game. They are all disabled. I also thought they could be in a mental hospital. It’s just very strange and hard to follow.

The End of Frankenstein

benaamot — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 02:14:08 +0000

So I finished Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein” and it is a good book. Though it has a lot of descriptive words that aren’t as necessary. The description of England was really good. I imagined it as game world. How it would look in a game. The colors and the lights and shading that would be used to create it. I was disappointed in the ending. I was expecting a big fight between Victor and the Creature. A final boss battle of sorts. So I was let down when Victor just dies and the Creature vanishes into the sea. I think it could be possible that Victor made up the Creature and he never succeeded in making it. I think Victor developed a split personality. I believe this because Victor gets such so often and for long periods of time. I think when he other personality takes over it leaves him so drained of energy. I think Victor killed his family because he went mad. He failed at his life’s ambition and went crazy. He couldn’t handle his failure. So he developed this idea in his head that he did succeed and made up this tale for Walton. On the flip side if he did succeed in creating the Creature what if he hadn’t rejected it? What if he had accepted it and not shunned it? I wonder what could have been then? Probably not as good of a novel but it’s something to think about.