Gameplaying and It's Role In Our Culture

 

I just read an article online about how some people are now saying that playing video games can help people learn how to be more effective at work.  That's pretty well an opposite position on the end result of gameplaying than what I've seen in the media over the past twenty years...

Just as thought provoking are the comments at the end of the article... The last comment in the stream particularly caught my eye, the author of the comment was discussing how his skills in strategy acquired through gaming directly translated into his business skills... 

Now, I know that when playing games you learn through trial and error and eventually become comfortable with that game and it's environment in order to achieve your goals and ultimately (hopefully) win the game... 

 But you also learn how to employ strategy, you just have to learn it, or else you literally get nowhere!  Gamers that embrace strategy, discuss it with others and actively refine it progress a lot faster. 

So, incrementally, through playing games, the gamer learns to think in terms of strategy. 

This learning process is greatly enhanced by traditions that have appeared in games over time that are common to most games...  I'm sure the traditions grew out of convenience and a desire to make the user comfortable and acceptable thereby increasing the chances of the game's success on the market.  (In some cases, similar interfaces for inventory, battles, and quest logs... But there are more to the similarities than just that, it's more in that you have to work as a team and deliver on your tasks in order to be effective.

Of course this led me to search for definitions on Internet regarding what exactly this is called... After following a red herring called 'Game Theory' that looked pretty relevant to me, I found out through Wikipedia that what I'm discussing here is actually called 'Game Studies'.

Here is the Wikipedia definition:

'Game studies is the discipline of studying games, their design, their players and the role they play in society and culture more broadly. Game studies is largely a multi- and inter-disciplinary field with researchers and academics from a multitude of other areas such as computer science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, arts & literature, media studies, communication, and more.'

In fact, when I searched further on this topic, I found an article from Nintendo about the present social acceptance level of videogames and how acceptance is on the rise, but response is still quite mixed. And of course, the game companies constantly seek to make gameplaying mainstream, because they want to increase their market size. 

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• Nintendo Strives to Make Gaming More Socially Acceptable (godisageek.com)

Personally, I believe that this is a type of evolution in our modern culture.  A logical offshoot of computers becoming commonplace and the Internet becoming an integral part of industrialized culture.

A question even more enthralling is where is this all going?  Can gameplaying make the jump from entertainment over to a tool for industry and education?  I mean if the connection is made in popular media that gameplayers have better capabilities with regards to cooperation within teams and improved learning skills within their job environment, how far behind can software be that is developed primarily to help the employees learn better strategies for these very things?

Think about it.  How far in the future will it be that you go in for an interview and your aptitude test is a mini game that tests your teamwork, problem solving skills, aptitudes and capability to learn using computer simulation?

It really wouldn't be out the current realm of possibility, even now most games have some sort of elementary learning engines in place.  The trick would be finding a market for the software and translating that type of programming over to industrial and consumer applications.

At the risk of sounding like a science fiction author, what about software that helps you in the following possible ways:

Identify your interview weak spots and helps you learn to correct (adjust) them?

Identify your aptitudes and possible career choices, and fill in the blanks on what is weak in your current profile in order to pursue the job of your choice?

Learn how to problem solve and make decisions.

 Then again, like any tool, this would only be as good as the software programming behind it, and it could be used in very negative ways.  Discrimination based on aptitudes or current skill sets would definitely be an extreme repercussion to identification based on software tests.  Kind of reminds me of a movie I saw recently where your blood is tested at birth and the whole futuristic society is based around the end results of that blood test.  Gattica?  It's an older movie, but that theme has been used in science fiction in many forms for decades.

I guess you can't fight human nature, but like anything else, it's a two edged sword...  I'm thinking that the development of this type of software is inevitable.  It's a good thing there have been so many stories speculating about the social pitfalls of such tools.  Forewarned is forearmed!

Images by Teresa Young:

1. Fantastic Frogman - Aug.2010,  2. Floating In The Dark - Jul.2010, 3. Tribal Tribute - Aug.2010,  4. Blind Oracle - Jul.2010,  5. Searching For Camelot - May 2010. 

Painting Outside the Box...

 

I think I mentioned in a previous post that sometimes I have a tendency to paint anything that doesn't move too fast!

I don't know, maybe it's the three dimensionality that gets my motor running, but it seems to have a much different feel than painting in 2D.
And you get in the mood for a change, so it's all very interesting to explore...

I think it might have started with my

ex husband's motorcycle back in eighties, I had painted a nice surreal on his jean jacket that he was really attached to, it had a floating face above a marshy scene based on landscapes in photos I had taken around Nova Scotia, Canada somewhere. It was supposed to catch the feeling of the Maritimes, and it really did, in a very dreamy, bluish, sort of floaty way... After he decided his Yamaha 750 Virago had finally reached the point of needing a paint job, he really wanted that image on his bike!

Never mind that I had no experience whatsoever painting a motorcycle, had never used an airbrush and didn't even own one! Talk about being forced out of your comfort zone... But on some level, I think he did me a favour, I muddled through, did my research and it all turned out quite lovely. And I learned it's much better to step out and experiment than to get complacent and stop learning!  I wouldn't mind painting a few bikes sometime too if it ever came up, and I learned a lot about airbrushing, metal paints and so on in the process. So it was all good.

But back to the blog subject at hand... That was probably my first serious experience with painting on 3D objects. And it's got different design challenges, you have to keep looking at it as you do your design to see what the audience will see and try to balance it as much as possible to keep the composition working. It's a lot of fun, but you have to keep on top of things.

After that, periodically, I'd just paint something that caught my fancy, just for the sheer enjoyment of it!

When I was first separated and had no money, everyone on my Christmas list got homemade shortbread cookies and hand painted dough ornaments from me that year. The funny part of that was that when I eventually got more money together and things got better over time, my friends and family still wanted the cookies and ornaments instead! Hilarious;-) Thankfully, they finally got tired of them and I got tired of baking, so it all worked out.
Somewhere in the mid 2000's, I found a lamp in a thrift shop that looked like a clove of garlic to me. It was kind of attractive in shape, but was very, very ugly in colour and texture. So I decided, well, why not, I'll paint over it with acrylic and varnish it, it's plastic based anyway! The lamp turned out beautiful, and I've still got it. It got me to thinking about other objects...
Such as boxes.  Jewelry boxes, knick knack boxes, boxes for keeping keys, rings or pins in.  Why not make them more decorative and something people can enjoy putting on their shelf or mantle?  So after that, as a small hobby, I've always painted boxes, it's just something that satisfies that urge to create that doesn't seem to be quite as serious as a full blown painting.
I've noticed boxes have come back into style more in the last decade, maybe I was just getting ahead of the curve a bit... And of course, I've been experimenting with glass painting as well, maybe next I need to paint a glass box!

Images by Teresa Young:

1. Candlestick - Jul.2010,  2. Paper mache ring box - Jan.2010,  3. Small Jewelry box- Jan.2010,  4. Octagonal box - Dec.2009,  5. Circular box - Jan.2010,  6. 7. 8. Lecture Stand - 2009,  9. Painted Lamp - circa 2001,  10. Book shaped box - Jul.2010, 11. Eye box - Jul.2010.

 

It's A Comedy Of Errors!

 

Last weekend, I decided to go on a short jaunt and take a look around New Brunswick, Canada, just because I can...  I had a place to stay for a couple of nights in Fredericton, my friend Donna and I had been in the military together in the eighties and had stayed in touch over the years, so I was all set.  Or so I thought...

Now there is one little thing about me that is really relevant to know before you read the post, I literally have no natural sense of direction.  I could get lost in a shopping mall and have! But that's never kept me from driving around looking at scenery... I tend to think it just adds to the mystery of a trip if you don't really know where you are and how to get there.  But I've become very good with maps in compensation...

Well, I've done the road trip from Halifax to Fredericton quite a number of times, so you'd think it would be a no-brainer.  But I sometimes get inventive and veer off on weird tangents. 

And what they say about artists is true, they are eccentric, no way around it!  In some way or another, you're going to feel a twilight zone around at times when dealing with them...  And I'm no exception.

On the spur of the moment,  I figured out I was bored with the old route and decided to drive down the west coast of Nova Scotia and maybe take the Digby ferry across to Saint John, NB.

What the heck, I'd do it different this time.  Didn't check any schedules, as that would be a copout, sigh....  By the time I got there, it was just before noon and I found that the ferry didn't leave until four and it was an exhorbitant price. If I turned back around and continued driving back up the coastline, I could beat the ferry and get into Freddy Beach at the same time anyway. 

Not a problem, right?  Except I got lost going back up the coast around the bay of Fundy and ended up losing a couple of hours going in circles. It was beautiful, but by the time I figured it out, (I had to break down and actually check a map) I had added a couple of hours on to my trip.  Happens. 

I guess I could be the poster girl for GPS if I applied, but I hate being told what to do (pigheaded and five years in the military!) so I actually have one that I have never used.  Just couldn't bring myself to download that software and call myself lame at navigating! (No offense meant to Donna and others who swear by their GPS's)...

But I made it and saw some very beautiful and artistically inspiring scenery, not to mention sunsets, and I was very happy to arrive...

The next day, we all got up and went on our originally scheduled tour down to St. Martins, New Brunswick...  Or we tried.  On the way, just an hour outside of Fredericton, we heard a snap, clang and a crash and the muffler was dragging.

Oh this was hilarious!  I was so glad I wasn't driving this time, I'd just taken ribbing the night before on how I was pretty good at extending a short trip with inventive driving and unusual circumstances and this time, I wasn't in the driver's seat!  After I stopped laughing, we got out and looked at the problem. 

I looked at her trunk and really stopped laughing, booster cables, one screwdriver, no rope or wires, and one very sad emergency kit that was aimed toward first aid!  How could people drive around like this?  Ah well, not everyone is mechanically inclined, and she's not an ex-technician but an ex-finance clerk, so I guess it makes sense.  If I need help with financials, I'll call Donna, but not for anything like mechanics or practical things that require some type of tools...

So she called a garage and we found out that it would cost, cost, cost to tow, and while she was doing that, I found the muffler clamp so it could be wired up to get to a garage, saving her money...  It would still take 45 minutes and cost over a hundred bucks as it was. Yuck!  I'm sitting there, thinking it over, and decided I couldn't take it anymore... I asked her how much were her booster cables worth.  Ten bucks on sale... Alright!  Now we're talking!

I stripped the cables, jury rigged the muffler clamp back into place and she called off the towing guy.  She told him her friend was a former technician and mentioned my solution.  He laughed, called me 'inventive' and told it should work fine for a short jaunt.

We made it to a gas station and I bought what I could find, brass snare wires of all things, and wired it up tighter and it sounded better than ever!  So we decided to continue on to St. Martins.  No guts, no glory, right?  And it worked out fine, it was hot and sunny, I think we used up our set of weird things to go wrong by then and were due for a break...  If you want to take a look at the caves of St. Martins, which are well worth the trip, muffler or no muffler trouble, you can follow this facebook link and look at my shots of it.

After we'd worn out St. Martins, the T-shirt lady showed us the latest area attraction, the literature on the Fundy Trail... 

Ah well, onwards we go!  It was also beautiful, but I want to go back again to see that with the tide out next time. Here's a public Facebook link on that one as well if you want to take a look...

The next day, I was going to drive straight back to Halifax as I'd promised Donna I would!  But well, I tried, but ended up taking a side trip up to the Miramichi en route just to see if it still looked the same... It did, and then I went home!  Can't be too predictable now, can I?

Images (photos and paintings by Teresa Young):

1. Unnamed abstract - Oct.2003,  2. Map of Maritimes, courtesy of Google,  3. Covered bridge near St. John, NB,  4. Sunken Treasure - Jun.2001,  5. Blue Emotions - Jul.2002,  6. Caves of St.Martins, NB,  7 and 8. Fundy Trail, NB.