Are games a waste of time?

'Games are popular art, collective social reactions to the main drive or action of any culture. Games, like institutions, are extensions of social man and of the body politic, as technologies are extensions of the animal organism. Both games and technologies are counter-irritants or ways of adjusting to the stress of the specialized actions that occur in any social group. As extensions of the popular response to the workaday stress, games become faithful models of a culture. They incorporate both the actions and the reactions of whole populations in a single dynamic image.'
-Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Video Games Studies includes the following types of games:
Arcade, Games, Consoles, Computer, Games ,MUDs, MMOGs
Approaching Video Games in an Academic Way:Some Theoretical Considerations
Media Effects and Games;
The Persistence of Effect;
Games and Utopia;

Thinking about video games as a new form of cultural practise... in the same way we now think about old media like newspapers, radio, television, films...
what are some ways to approach thinking about games that might be unique to this genre?
Are there questions that are specific to video games that don't apply to any other form?

Narratology is the study of video games from the perspective of them being stories or literary works. People who follow this sort of approach think that games can be studied like 'texts' in the same way people study other 'texts' (most commonly the book, but the word text can include other cultural products like films, paintings or music). See the work of Janet Murray (her book 'Hamlet on the Holodeck' is a good example)

Ludology, in contrast to narratology, is not concerned with the story elements of games but rather with the Game Play elements. People who have written work that is classified as ludology tend to follow the argument that the story elements in many games are there for decoration only, and is incidental to just playing a game. See the writing of Espen Aarseth (starting with CyberText), Stuart Moulthrop, Jesper Juul and others.



Tutorial Task: Complete the Exercises below, and then write a report in your blog about your experience doing the exercise.

Using Microsoft Word

The exercises were to use easy and advanced methods on Microsoft word we did things such as mail merge, changing to bold and italics and track changes.

I had never heard of track changes before but it seemed pretty easy and lets you know what you are doing. I had done the rest before and had heard of mail merge but never really done it. Everything seemed pretty easy to follow especially with instructions to prompt you on the right hand side. This software will come in handy in the future. Especially for writing letters as with mail merge you can send a letter to many recipients without as much fuss.

Using Microsoft Excel

The exercises were to use easy and advanced methods in Microsoft excel. They were things such as entering information in cells, using different formulas, making charts and using new macro.

I have used excel a bit especially with maths and business. But it was interesting to see new formulas such as the gain and lost and I had never used the macro thing before which was confusing at first but easy to use after that. Excel comes in handy when comparing results and statistics and a easier way to see results through making graphs.
3D worlds and socialising on the internet

Tutorial task:

After you have checked out at least one of the 'sites' listed below, your task is to write a blog post that considers the following:
Presuming that you are a user of MSN, or other IM programs (or have used it before, or at least know about it)... Besides the obvious differences (such as ActiveWorlds is 3D and MSN isn't, etc) what are the qualitative differences between the regular IM program and a 3D environment?
What is different about the kinds of socialising that happens in these spaces? Does the 3D aspect make much difference? The 3d aspect makes it realer but the socialising does not change when its in 3d. You are still just having a conversation as you would in IM. The only real difference is that you can compete with each other through games.
In other words, are there things that are possible in one space that are not possible in the other? Could you think of where this sort of application might lead us?