The other night in my LIS 768 class we played video games. This was probably one of the funnest classes that I’ve ever had. A number of people brought in various video game systems (PS2, XBox, Nintendo DS, PSP) and we hooked them up to the projectors and played. We had DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) on one projector and Guitar Hero II on the other. I have seen DDR but never played it. I understood that it was a physical game, but I didn’t really understand how physical. By the time we were done playing I was dripping sweat (this was compounded by the fact that I was wearing a long sleeve and a t-shirt). I’ve decided that I’m going to start a workout regimen that consists of nothing but DDR.

I also had a blast with guitar hero. I was really impressed with some of the music that they had available. I was playing DDR when I heard Danzig’s “Mother” and I was instantly pulled toward the game. It was the chance to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a rockstar.

If there was ever a way to get people into libraries, this is it.

1. Cover image from Wikipedia
2. Cover image from Wikipedia

Mostly I’m thinking that this guy is going about this all wrong. It’s a good idea but it really isn’t his job to withhold video games. He could approach this from another angle. Instead of withholding video games from kids for poor grades, why not give a discount (say 10% – 20% off) on video games for good grades. Then this plan goes from being a negative to being a positive. Another idea is to give kids with good grades a 2 for the price of 1 on used games. Give them a reward for doing something right. We constantly punish kids for all the wrong things they do but sometimes it really feels like we never reward them for all the stuff they do right.

1. Joypad taken by FHKE

• Building your own army is fun. Whether it’s a platoon of cigar chomping grunts in powered armor or a legion of bioengineered, hive-mind alien beings, ordering up specific units to exploit specific weaknesses is fun.
• It’s modern day Chess. You have different pieces that can move in specified ways and have different strengths and weaknesses, just like Chess. Unlike Chess you can create more pieces provided you have the resources to create those pieces you can also have more that 2 players.
• Decimating your enemy with atomic fire has never been so satisfying.
• I enjoy completely obliterating my enemy. Winning is not enough. I want to erase every last trace of them as if they never existed. I will not finish a campaign until not a single enemy unit remains.

In the immortal words of Conan the Barbarian, “What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.”

1. Image from the StarCraft II cinematic trailer. ©2007 Blizzard Entertainment

1. They’re fun.
2. They can be intellectually stimulating.
3. It can be cathartic.
4. It’s escapism.

This doesn’t mean that I’ll play any game. I play games as escapism, so why would I want to play a game that closely resembles the real world? Take for example GTA (Grand Theft Auto). I’m sure it’s a fun game and I’ve had people tell me that it’s a fun game but I really don’t want anything to do with it. For me GTA mimics reality too closely. Other people can play it all they want. A good friend of mine who I would trust my kids with plays GTA and that’s fine. I don’t believe that it’s corrupting (and if it is then that person has bigger problems) I personally just don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t mind violence (God of War I & II). I don’t mind gore (Resident Evil 4). I don’t even mind dark subject matters (Silent Hill II). I guess it just really bothers me when a game mirrors reality and what is being played could be real. Then I’m a little bothered.

This is beside the point. Several months ago I purchased those two games and when I got the package in the mail, I was in for a surprise. I cracked open the box and pulled out StarCraft, Diablo II and World of WarCraft (WoW). At first I thought that WoW was a demo but upon closer inspection I realized that it was the full game. I checked the invoice and only Diablo and StarCraft were on it so I knew that I hadn’t been charged for it. Blizzard had sent me a full WoW game. What many people don’t know is that WoW comes with a one month free subscription (to try it out I guess). I thought about installing WoW and trying the one month free. I thought about it for a long time. I knew enough about WoW to know that it is one of the most addictive games created and that I probably wasn’t strong enough to keep it from eating my soul so I decided NOT to install WoW. Let me explain myself… I have a wife and kids (who I love very much), I have a full-time job and I’m in grad school. I just don’t have the time to commit myself to something like that. If my wife and kids died in a car crash, then I would install WoW and play it, but until then I won’t be playing WoW. I firmly believe that Blizzard sent me that WoW on purpose. Like a crack dealer they’ll give me a free fix to get me hooked and then they’ll start charging me full price. I won’t allow myself to fall down that slippery slope. StarCraft and Diablo II are enough, although I think I’m going to pick up the WarCraft III battlechest, and then there is StarCraft II to think about…

I’m a gamer. I really enjoy video games and occasionally I will get online to play other people. If my local public library were to offer something like this, I would probably go.

First off I should let you know what kind of system I was running SL on. I have an iBook G4 1.2 GHz with 1.25 GB RAM and an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics card with 32MB VRAM. I do meet the MINIMUM system requirements but not necessarily the recommended system requirements.

So I went to the (SL) site and clicked the “get an account” button. I had to fill out the usual info (name, email, age, “I agree to terms of service,” etc…) the one thing that I was a little annoyed about is that you could type in a first name for your avatar, but then had to choose from a list of last names. I don’t really understand why you can’t just type in a last name rather then choosing from some preselected names… If anybody knows why please let me know. When I was done I downloaded a 50MB file. When it was done, I dragged the application into my apps folder and fired up SL.

SL came up just fine and I logged in with no problems. The first place that I popped up was a place called “orientation island.” It was pretty straight forward, there is a path to follow with signs and little floating green hand icons along the way. The hand icons say “click me.” When you click one, they give you a little pop up text window that tells you how to do different stuff in SL. All in all the orientation worked out really well. I got my bearings and my SL legs (so to speak) and I was on my way.

I should note here that there were a bunch of other people around me also getting acquainted with second life. When you first create your account you can choose from several different basic avatars. Once you log in you can go the edit->appearance and actually edit the way that your avatar looks. Most of the people around me were doing this. I have to admit that I was impressed with the apearance editor. There was a LOT of stuff you could do with it although it seemed to take a long time to load each charactistic. I edited my avator to look somewhat like me and then I proceeded through the orientation.

Getting around in Second Life and doing stuff is fairly easy. The arrow keys move your avatar, holding option while clicking allowed you to look at stuff, holding control while clicking an object allowed you to manipulate objects with a matrix like telekenetic power (remember, there is no spoon). It’s kinda of funny, when you control click an object your avatar actually points his hand at the object and a magical stream of translucent… magic… shoots out of the avatar’s hand and raises the object off of the ground. (size matters not). Did I mention that you can fly? There is a fly button, you click it and your avatar spreads its arms and raises off the ground, you still control movement with the arrow keys, moving is just much faster.

Once I got to the end of orientation island I entered a “transporter” and ended up on help island. At this point I was ready to go do some exploring, so I opened the map (there is a map that gives you an overview of the SL world and allows you to search for places) and searched for library. I actually got a list of several library locations but the one I was looking for was info island, so I selected it and hit “teleport” (you can do that too). I instantly appeared at the library. The place seemed deserted. There seemed to be two to three other people someplace on the island (according to the map) but I couldn’t see them. I wandered around a bit and another visitor approached me and said hi. “She” (let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and say it really was a woman. She was wearing a female avatar… although the name was sexually ambigous, “Sam”.) turned out to be a college student who’s professor had talked about SL and how there were colleges that were offering classes in SL. (I’d like to mention that anytime somebody is typing a message, the avatar “air types”, like air guitar only with a keyboard.) We “talked” a bit and then I had to get off line to do some homework.

All in all it was a good experience.
The Bad: The graphics seemed to take a long time to load. When I first appeared in a place, the “world” would apper as sort of abrstract shapes. As time passed, the shapes would fill and eventually you would have a 3D world, but it took awhile. The graphics in general seemed choppy with low frame rates. I messed around with the video preferences but they didn’t seem to really make any difference on my machine. If anybody knows how to set preferences for my machine to get a smoother experience, please let me know. Would I get back on SL again? Yes, I would if I had something to do there, I might go back to explore a bit more but I don’t see myself spending much more time in there.

How could libraries use SL?

This is a tough one. If a library wanted to use SL they would have to make some pretty big assumptions. they would have to assume that there users have a computer and that the computer is powerful enough to run SL smoothly. Some people might get fed up with the graphic hinderances and just give up. The library also has to assume that the user has an internet connection that is fast enough for SL and that the user is computer savvy enough to figure out how to use SL. It’s one thing to get people to use blogs, flickr, wikis, IM, etc… SL is a different kind of story, there is spacial reasoning involved and a certain amount of 3D video game literacy that is needed to navigate the SL world and interact with it. This might be a real stretch for some users.

After you get past all that stuff, a library could set up a virtual space in SL for people to visit and interact. Perhaps a librarian could be staffed there working SL reference while working real world reference at the same time, they would have to switch between the two. It would make great PR. I suppose you could have virtual terminals in SL that would give you access to the libraries catalog (I don’t know if that is possible in SL) or other reference sources. Then again a user could just go onto the libraries website and use the catalog there. The library could ask authors to do virtual visits to their SL space where patrons could go and have chats with the author.

I’m not sure exactly how this technology could be used by libraries. Anybody have any ideas?