Text-Based Gaming

Text-based games are video games that use text characters rather than vector or bitmap graphics. What this means is that text-based games do not tend to show the player their surroundings in the game; they describe the room or area the player is standing in, listing the objects, other players and non-player characters in the area, as well as all of the exits. To carry out a task the player would type in a text command such as take apple or attack dragon. Movement around the game environment is generally accomplished by entering the direction (or an abbreviation of it) in which the player wishes to move, for example typing north or just n would cause the player to exit the current area via the path to the north.

In order to incorporate a multiplayer element into gameplay, text-based games are played as Multi-user Dungeons (MUDs). MUDs were fairly popular up until the 90s. So, naturally, by the time I was finally introduced to them, they were largely empty realms that I could explore on my own. This is fine and all, but that's all you'll be able to get out of most MUDs these days, because they have lost their player base.

However, perhaps there is still hope for MUDs these days. Since I have started this blog, I've received a couple of comments about integrating video games into language learning. If designed with language learners in mind, I would say that MUDs would provide learners with the opportunity to hone reading fluency, vocabulary recognition, and critical thinking skills in addition to stimulating and entertaining gameplay. But again, it really needs to be a game that is developed with language learners in mind. This means no  huge walls of text popping up 7 times per second (i.e. Medievia).

Please excuse the lapse in continuity here

As deadlines for projects draw nearer, I find myself having fewer and fewer things to say about video games. Normally, the last week or so of the quarter is completely devoid of video gameplay, or really any type of recreational activity. However, this is especially true for this quarter because in addition to completing all my final projects, I am also trying to get a teaching job for the summer, and on top of that we're also going to be in the process of moving into a new apartment over the next week or so. I managed to get by last week by talking about Pokemon, but now I've more or less exhausted my arsenal of things to say about video games that I haven't really been playing recently.

I need to finish tailoring my cover letters so I can send them out to employers soon.... a summer teaching job isn't going to just fall into my lap if I keep putting this off. On the other hand, I really need to finish off these other projects so I can meet all my deadlines. On the other other hand (third hand... I have three hands now), I just can't bring myself to let my boyfriend do all the work with moving--that really wouldn't be fair.
I also kind of need a haircut.

I'll sleep on it tonight and come up with something game-related to post about by tomorrow. My mind just isn't clear enough to think of anything else but work at the moment.

Fighting the Pokemon Liberation Front in Pokémon: Black Version

In the past, several animal rights groups have tried to ban Pokémon, claiming that pokémon battles closely resemble cockfights. This aspect of the controversy was actually touched upon in Pokémon Black and White.

The main villains in this generation are Team Plasma, whose  ultimate goal is to "liberate" all pokémon from their trainers, by either convincing the trainer to release their Pokémon, or by theft. This group believes that by catching and training pokémon, humans are enslaving them and denying them their right to live their lives peacefully in the wild. On a number of occasions throughout the game, the player must confront Team Plasma and force them to return the pokémon that they stole. Meanwhile, Team Plasma's leader, N, wishes for nothing more than to create separate worlds for humans and pokémon. He therefore works his way toward the top so that he can defeat the battle champion, which will thus make him the indisputable king of pokémon trainers. Once he has attained this level of power, he plans to force all trainers to set their pokémon free.

It's fairly clear to me that the existence of pokémon rights activists in this game was a direct reference to the same animal rights groups who have been clamoring for the ban of all Pokémon games. Based on the game's portrayal of Team Plasma, it seems that the game developers found these animal rights activists to have well intentions, but also to be severely lacking in common sense. The obvious flaw in Team Plasma's plans is that they are completely disregarding their beliefs by battling pokémon in order to ultimately set them free.

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about it. As a person who plays Pokémon, I certainly don't feel good whenever I see real animals fighting. But I'll admit that before I started playing Pokémon, I did find the overall concept of the game rather disturbing. I think what animal rights activists don't see is that when you actually play the game, you really come to love those pokémon that you catch and train all by yourself. There are even side-games where you can feed, pet, and play games with your cute little pokémon.

But it's not like the game really needs anyone to defend it. Pokémon is one of the most popular games in history, and will continue to be popular until it ceases production. No matter how well-intentioned, animal rights activists won't be able win this battle. There's just too much money to be made off of kids wanting to play with cute animals.

My completionism shines through in Pokemon: Black Version

I find myself unable to resist games that have some sort of completionist aspect to them. A completionist is a person who, when playing a video game, has to collect all of a certain item, or complete something in the game 100%. The one obvious completionist aspect of Pokemon is that players can strive to 'catch em all', with the intent to capture and store all of the monsters in the game. This is kind of pointless, though, because the game is not entirely consistent with making all of the pokemon in the player's pokedex (pokemon catalog) available to the player. For example, players outside of Japan are not able to obtain the time-traveling pokemon Celebi without hacking because only the players in Japan were allowed to access the event that gave them opportunity to encounter a Celebi. This is only one example, but it's the example that I find the most frustrating--Celebi is so cute. :-(

This, of course, makes Pokemon a bit of a masochistic game for the completionist in me. Yet the allure of catching all those other adorable animals keeps me from abandoning the game completely. I guess I also like the boring stuff like battle tactics and coordination of the pokemons' types and movesets. You know, the stuff that actually has an intellectually stimulating effect on me. I guess that's good too.

I'm a two-headed ice and fire-breathing dragon who just wants to help out

DOTA2 is a MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arena game, in which players are pitted against one another in teams of 5 with the goal of destroying the other team's base. This game provides players with over 100 different pre-made characters to choose to play as, each with their own unique abilities. Broadly speaking, some characters are made for killing enemy players efficiently, while others are made for supporting teammates.

Personally, I like playing as support characters because I get the most satisfaction out of being able to help out my teammates. In more recent matches, I have been selecting one particular support character that I didn't play much before now. His name is Jakiro, and he's a kind of weird-looking ice and fire-breathing dragon with two heads. What I like about Jakiro is how useful he is in a variety of situations. His ice-path move stuns enemies for a short amount of time, making it easier for my teammates to catch up to and kill (or provides my teammates a chance to get away if we're retreating), his liquid fire move primarily slows enemies' attack speed rating, but also has a lingering effect that can mark enemies so that they're easier for my teammates to track, and his ultimate move does a decent amount of damage over time in a limited area of effect, which is useful in teamfights where enemies don't have complete freedom of movement due to their engagement in combat.

Because I find Jakiro very useful as a support character, I get a lot of satisfaction out of being able to help my teammates in a variety of ways. This is no different from the satisfaction I get out of being able to help people in my day-to-day life, but it wasn't until recently that I realized that my preference for useful support characters was a manifestation of my desire to help others. I don't think I would have ever expected to see anything but cretinism in the way I play DOTA2, but this was something that I felt I could post about without being self-deprecating.

I need to remember to press the "Publish" button when I finish....

EDIT: I wrote this post on Saturday, and then apparently forgot to 'publish' it when I was done, and I didn't even notice that it didn't publish until this evening, lol.

I wanted to briefly talk about the topic of video gaming and the language classroom, since this is a somewhat new topic in language acquisition studies, and I have actually read a few studies on this topic over past couple years, but not for any research purposes of my own. However, all of the studies that I have read have been about how players can benefit from conversation/discourse-related aspects of gameplay. For example, Piirainen-Marsh and Tainio's (2009) finding that NNSs who repeat the words and phrases used by characters during cutscenes as they are playing the game shows that the NNSs are putting these words to use and analyzing them in a new context. This is really hard to explain without writing a huge wall of text about it, but it's a very interesting finding, in my humble opinion. At my previous university last spring, I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Dr. Piirainen-Marsh on this paper, and got to see the some clips of her video data. I would like to say more about it, but I feel like I'm already getting pretty long-winded about this one study, so I'll just have to ask you to peruse the article yourself if you're interested in learning more.

Piirainen-Marsh, A., & Tainio, L. (2009). Other-repetition as a resource for participation in the activity of playing a video game. The Modern Language Journal, 93(2), 153-169. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00853.x 

Just paste the title into Google Scholar--it'll be the first hit.

4 More Days for WildStar Open Beta

 I mentioned in my first post that the first game I ever played was DOTA2, and I learned a lot from it. But it wasn't until I was introduced to massively multiplayer online role play games (MMORPGs) that I was able to break down a lot of the basic skill sets needed to be able to function in video gameplay. The new MMORPG I mentioned in my previous post,WildStar, is currently in free beta until the 18th of May. Like many MMOs, WildStar is very newbie-friendly, and the only element with a steep learning curve would be the competitive player-verses-player (PVP) battlegrounds, which is not mandatory.

What makes RPGs fun is that there are many different ways that a player can take an the game; it is what the player makes it to be. For example, in WildStar, as you are creating your character, you need to select your Faction, one of two teams to fight for--this will influence your character's storyline, Race, which is what your character looks like, your Class, which is what your character's abilities are, and your Path, which dictates how your character interacts with his or her environment.

To illustrate, catpanties is a part of the Exile faction, her Race is Aurin, which makes her look like a cat, her Class is Esper, so her abilities include ranged combat and healing, and her Path is scientist, which means she can do side quests where she runs around with a little flying robot who will scan things in her environment so that she can gain extra experience points.

vidya gaems

Playing games has not always been a pastime for me; when I was a kid, my older brother was the owner of the game console, so all I ever did was watch him and other people play. About one year ago, I started playing games. Unfortunately, the game that I learned how to play games on was DOTA2.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about the specifics of games like DOTA2, but I suppose what does need to be mentioned is that it is a MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arena game, in which players are pitted against one another in teams of 5 with the goal of destroying the other team's base. It's really not for casual players. I probably won't be talking about DOTA2 on this blog, however, because I still suck a lot at it, so I really have nothing insightful to say about it.

I'll instead be talking about other, more casual games that I play in my free time; games that I actually have the time to enjoy at my own leisure. One of which is a new MMO that is currently in free beta for about another week called WildStar. Another game that I play much more frequently, is Pokemon, but I'm once again not sure how much I will end up talking about it, as there is a huge learning curve to that game, and I'm not 100% confident in my ability to synthesize the information needed to understand the topical content of posts. But we'll see how things go.