Lecture &Tutorial 7: Video games and File sharing

Video and File sharing and Peer-to-peer (P2P) was the topic for today’s lecture. We discussed the Video games that we use like arcade games, consoles, computer games, MUD’s and MMOG’s. We were asked questions like why do we play games and what are video games. I have dabbled in a few video games and will only really give a time of day to racing games as well as shooting games, nothing with too much thinking required. The academic viewpoint on video games is what do video games do to people? Does playing a violent game alter the way a person thinks after playing it? Is the persistence affect valid? An example of this would be playing need for speed and then getting into your car and wanting to race on the road. An interesting concept which I personally think is valid and does have an effect on people. Video games have now become a cultural activity; they are in every household in every form.

Narratology is the study of Narratives in a video game. Some video games tell a story and this is what is studied as literary works. The alternative of this is Ludology which says there are no stories to video games.

We watched a video called Steal this film which can be found at Google. This film was interesting because it highlighted the viewpoints of copyright laws and pirating. Copying is the reason for our existence like babies copying their parents to learn how to speak and people in life copy each other. That is what makes up how people communicate. Suspending copying would only encourage new technologies to be developed to over come current suppression and so it continues.

The task for the tutorial was to make a short movie using photographs we have taken ourselves and post it onto YouTube. I have not ever done something like this so it was exciting and I’m interested to see what the end product will be.