McGonigal Part 3 Response: Truly an Epic Win and End

Well damn, just gotta start off saying that this was the most epic ending to any book I have ever read. The incorporation of all the fixes and such made it that much better. Not sure about anyone else, but when I was reading this I had some epic fight music playing in the back of my head and I felt like I could take on the world after reading it. Never have I ever finished a book feeling so epic!!!! For this post, I will be pulling out some quotes from the final chapter that really spoke to me. "Very big games represent the future of collaboration. They are, quite simply, the best hope we have to solving the most complex problems of our time." This quote really spoke to me as I am in complete agreement with McGonigal's theory. We find that through collaboration, we can achieve something greater then without it. Collaboration brings together the best of all different ranges on any topic of discussion and it's something we need to do not only as a society, but as a species if we want to continue to live on this planet. There are signs that we could be heading down a path that has no return from, we need to get on these issues now and work together to reach peace and solitude. "Games don't distract us from our real lives. They fill our real lives, with positive emotions, positive activity, positive experiences, and positive strengths." Again, fabulous quote and couldn't agree with her more. Now one may say my opinion is swayed due to my love for video games and such, but that really only makes it more true. She also mentions that we need to integrate videos into our lives more instead of using them as just an escapist tool, and that I believe also plays into this positive idea. We can use gaming to enrich our lives through story telling, game play, interaction with others, and the list continues. Most people that don't know this world simply write it off as a waste of time, waste of money, or simply used for leisure and has not academic value. If I have learned anything from this course, it is that gaming can do anything, including improving my academics. This class proves that the incorporation of gaming elements can make school work 100% more fun and also increases the drive to obtain the maximum amount of points. I have never taken a class where striving for an A felt so damn good. I don't see how people today don't see gaming as something more positive. There is so much evidence to show that it can be used in such amazing ways and could really benefit our kind. I really like how McGonigal talks about the possibility that we will repeat what the Lydians did with our society today. It is hard to say how exactly it will play out, but I will be praising her word when/if it does. Since taking this course, I have passed along all this enriching knowledge to my friends and family and I can tell that the more skeptical ones have come around since the beginning. My father especially was very distraught by the idea that I was taking a class where my grade was based off something that I did in my "leisure" since I was very little. I said to him, "Well haven't I been reading and speaking since I was little and still use it? Why can't I find new ways to incorporate gaming into my life, and even now in an academic way." I hope that my dad will read this book once I return home for summer. I would just like to end this post by thanking you Dr. Mortimore-Smith for this amazing opportunity to widen my horizon on the gaming world and incorporating all these wonderful aspects that have filled my life with joy into my final semester here at Ship. I honestly couldn't think of a better way to end it then by taking a class that was fun, educational, and socially enriching as I got to spend it with great friends that I already had along with all the new ones that I made in this class. I wish the greatest luck to my fellow classmates in their time here at Ship and afterward. I know that each class that you will teach will have it's own uniqueness, but I hope that you always remember this class, because I will never forget it.

McGonigal Response: Happiness Hack

To start, I really enjoyed this section the most out of our reading because I found it not only interesting, but very useful. I can say that I participated in some of the simpler happiness activities without really being aware of their implications on myself. Having now read this section and analyzing it, I really hope it benefits me more now rather then me taking notice and requiring a more integrated event to really make me happy. I was taught at a very young age to always hold a door open for a woman. I still, to this day, passively check my surroundings when walking to class to see if I'll be letting someone into a building before me. I get praise almost 95% of the time, while the other 5% consists of individuals not paying attention, and occasionally a scolding look. When that happens, not only do I make a mental note to not do it again for that person, but it then brings me a bad feeling, which is the opposite of what my mind is trying to get out of the practice. I never really considered this a happiness activity until after reading this section, I always just did it out of habit and being a nice thing to do for others. I want to also take this time to discuss the three bullet points that are in the beginning of the chapter and how they are completely spot on. I can say that I see myself as a person who thinks of others over myself a good majority of the time as I seem to get more satisfaction out of other people's happiness then my own a lot of the time. For instance, I would rather go out of my way to drive my girlfriend to work and pick her back up then have her do it herself. She has her own car and lives closer to her work, yet I offer to drive her every time that I can. I do this not to get any kind of reciprocity, I do it simply because it makes her happy and appreciate me.So in a way you can say there is some kind of trade off, but there are very few times that we can say that we don't live in an exchange type relationship kind of world. Regardless of the size of the trade off, there still is something that everyone gets out of certain relationships. As for the death practice, I can say that I don't go out of my way to think about death daily, but having read this chapter I probably will pick up the practice. I have a very strange thought process when it comes to anything, and it leave me with a very unique way of thinking. I tend to process my decisions based on a very extensive thought exercise where I run various scenarios of each individual situation through my head to pick the best outcome. This goes from something as simple as planning out my day regarding when I may eat to whether or not I go out a particular night if I think the weather could lead to a horrible outcome. Like I said, it is a "unique" way of thinking and it has lead me to a variety of good and bad outcomes over my life. It also requires me to over think things a lot of the time and if you had the opportunity to ask my girlfriend about it, I'm sure she could rant on about it for quite awhile (hahahahaha). I do find myself thinking about death more frequently then I thought was normal and it does give me the sense that McGonigal proposes in this section. I will see if I actually remember to think about death each and every day after this class is over. With all the insanity surrounding the Boston Marathon, I can say that my mind is more on death then normal as I have been following all the updates provided by the Associated Press, which I get as often as once an hour. Now on the topic of the dancing, I find myself jamming out almost every single day whether I think about it or not. I am a very musical person, in the sense that I almost always have my headphones on listening to just about anything. My taste in music is semi-broad, but there are still plenty of styles that I do not enjoy, like hip hop and country. Currently I am listening to a Daft Punk song while writing this entry and jamming out to it in the computer lounge with people occasionally taking note as to "how into the music" I am getting. I tend to also do a good bit of jamming while walking and a bit more when I am with friends. If Tyler happens to read this, he can attest to how me and him have rocked out to some of our favorite bands while playing Halo and Gears of War, and when I say rock out, we even have our characters in game head banging at some points (and my god did it create some of the biggest laugh sessions in our friendship). I also would like to point out how correct McGonigal is when she says that happiness activities are best executed in groups. My friends and I my sophomore year would do almost everything together and it would result in very few times when I would feel depressed or alone, or need to be alone for that matter. We would eat, go to class, play games, and just sit around doing "nothing" with each other all the time. It has made it hard to move on with people changing locations and not having that constant influx of people all the time, but it also allows you as a person to reflect and appreciate what you have and that at least brings me a good bit of happiness.

Gee Ch. 3 Response: Achievement Unlocked!!!!!!

Oh boy! As soon as I got to the part in Chapter 3 of Gee and saw the achievement principle I knew what I wanted to talk about for this week's response. It is safe to say that if you were to ask any of my close friends about me and achievements, you'd get a response like "oh boy how many has he gotten now?" or "What? Did he get to 100,000 yet?" I have been playing on Xbox 360 since the release of Halo 3, which was back in September of 2007. Since then I have played over 180 different retail and arcade games on the 360. I have played games like Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Castle Crashers, and many more. I was first hypnotized by achievements back when I played the game Dead Rising. Still to this day, I have yet to find a game that rewarded me as well as this game did for obtaining its achievements, and I'll explain why. With games on Xbox, each achievement is assigned a score that goes into a player's overall gamerscore. These achievements are (generally) given value based on the skill level required to obtain it. So in case you aren't following yet, an intro stage may land you 5G of gamerscore where beating the game on the hardest difficulty may land you somewhere in the 100-150G range. People go nuts over what achievements are attached to certain games, and for some people (and yes I will admit I do this sometimes too), they won't play some games simply if the output of the gamescore they think they can acquire isn't worth the time. I do this very rarely, but it has happened with some games that I have considered playing. One example recently is the game Dark Souls. I have only heard bad things about this game in the respect that it is very hard to obtain the achievements and only if you really want to spend the time playing the game should you get involved. I heard the game is good in regards to the content, but I have chosen to opt out simply based on the time and frustration I will be avoiding by not playing it. Wow, completely lost where I was going, oh right Dead Rising. Now in this game, all the achievements were worth 20G, and since there were 50 achievements it totaled the 1000G that comes with retail games. This meant there were some really easy achievements that you could get right off the bat and I obtained a higher gamerscore to start because of it. But this also meant that the really hard achievements, where there were a decent amount, were also only worth 20G, but overall it evened out. As I played the game I soon discovered that I had unlocked some in game items from completing some of these achievements, and this is where my addiction started. I soon found out that completing the "Zombie Genocider" achievement resulted in the player obtaining a MegaBuster (Megaman's cannon) for use in the game. I had to kill the population of the area the game took place, which was 53,594 zombies in the course of one play through. It is safe to say I spent at least 15 hours driving a car into the parking garage area of the game and farming zombie kills until I got it. After obtaining the weapon, I felt like I was invincible, and this leads into how the principle is defined. We find value in obtaining these achievements to meet our needs as gamers. The only disappointing thing about me getting this item was my assumption that all games took on this meta. WRONG!! Now I will say that some games award players in game items, armor, etc, but it never felt the same (in my opinion). Game have been getting better with allowing players a secondary reward from completing achievements. Players can also now be rewarded with in game items from doing tasks that aren't combined with the game's achievements. An example is with Halo 4, completing the in game commendations will unlock you armor that can only be obtained this way that aren't linked to any achievements. Some of these challenges can be more difficult then completing the hardest achievement for the game. I still enjoy finding games that unlock me as a player in game items and it continues to drive me to play each game more to unlock these items, obtain the gamerscore, and further the overall score of my account to show that I am a hardcore player, and I'm glad that there is a way to show that off sometimes, and I mean it when I say "sometimes" :P