Monthly Archives: April 2010

Rentals on Youtube

As I recently went to the youtube homepage, I saw something new on the sidebar. There was an add for the youtube store, curious at this new development I clicked on it. It turned out to be an online movie rental store run by youtube. The movies ranged from new releases to popular favorites and even hard to find indies and the prices were from .99 to 5.99. The format seemed normal enough and was pretty much a copy of similar online rental sites such as itunes, blockbuster.com, or netflix. However, the interesting thing was that this store was being run by youtube.

This factor alone made the whole concept of the site utterly and completely ridiculous. I mean how ironic is it for youtube to try and sell movie rentals when you could probably find most of these videos on youtube for free anyway. Further more, if the average Joe is aware of this fact then the execs over at Google should be aware of it too right? They are trying to to tap into the market of users that go on youtube to watch movies, however while it is much harder to find full movies on youtube, it is not impossible which is why it is doubtfull that this store will be especially lucrative. Similarly the quality of these illigally uploaded movies are also getting better and better, which is why I think that the appeal of an HD quality movie rental will not sway the average user to shell out that additional fee. Who knows, in the future this format might prove to be extremely successful, however for now that is not the case.

For those who want to check out the store for themselves, go to this link:

http://www.youtube.com/store

Video Games Dispute

After reading Jones’s The Meaning of Video Games, and computing all that he says about the complexity of video games I couldn’t help but wonder: which games are better simple or complex ones?

Using Jones’s example of Katamari Damacy, I know that even a game with a simple basis can have many elaborate layers that extend beyond the sphere of the actual game. Yet, one must ask are these games really that accessible for the everyday person?  For anyone who’s ever tried to casually join in on a game of Halo, Grand Theft Auto, or any other popular game, you know that it’s pretty much impossible to be successful at it. Without the skills to navigate the universe of these games, the games themselves pretty much cease to be fun. Speaking from personal experience I’m not really interested in playing these games because I don’t know how and I can’t learn how to play without putting in a significant amount of time. Furthermore even if I do put in the time, beating these games would take another myriad of sleepless nights. After reading the story behind Katamari Damacy I questioned the necessity of the story itself. I mean when people are playing these games are they really that worried about the narrative and where it’s going? In my experience during game play you are almost completely enraptured in the game itself and everything else is just extraneous. I mean who does wish they could just skip though all of the intro videos and transition pages?

After playing Rockband in class last week, I was able to confirm that this was more my type of game, something you could just pick up and play, albeit not perfectly, but still easily. Thinking back it also seems like all of the classic great games of the past are all fairly simple ones in context. After all Pacman doesn’t need an elaborate back-story, it’s just fun to play. Maybe times are different now with the new technology that’s available to elaborate these games, but one thing remains, while complex games may come and go with the fads, simple ones will stand the test of time in longevity. People of all generations will always be able to play simple games like Tetris, Pinball, and Pacman because they will never forget how to play once they learn. However, the same thing cannot be said about these intricate cross platform narrative games and that is why I feel as though their presence, while strong amongst certain demographics, is ultimately fleeting in the overall population by comparison.

Greetings from Second Life.

So I’m gonna have to agree with the rest of the class and say that Second Life pretty much blows. It’s like a slower, lonelier, and more boring version of the Sims. The fact of the matter is that while I was on Second Life I think I ran into a total number of 3 people. Also you can’t really do all that much without any money, and we all only have $500. Anyways, here are some pictures of my time in the world of Second Life, while some of the locations are pretty interesting to look at graphically, I would still say that the ability to visit different exotic landmarks is not enough of a factor to entice me to use Second Life. Also I don’t understand why sometimes I have hair and sometimes I’m bald on Second Life.

This is me at the Welcome to Second Life sign it’s on the far right. This is me at the space museum. On the Middlebury Island I took a Picture in front of a sign that reserved the area for Spanish speakers only, which I though was kind of funny.

pic 1pic4pic 2

Here is me in Australia. pic3

Here is me in at the Space Museum.pic4

Here is me in front of a religious park, random I know. Untitled

Here is me at the Moulin Rouge. pic5

Here is me in Morocco, which looked pretty cool actually.secondlife-postcard-1

Virtual Subjectivity

The idea of virtual subjectivity to me is kind of like an oxymoron. I mean how can these virtual experiences be deemed as real when, the whole foundation behind them is the fact that these experiences are happening in virtual reality and not actual reality? Is it too old school for me to think that interactions in virtual realities such as second life are not real because it’s not actually real reality?

You can have conversations, “visit” exotic locations, and do much more in a virtual reality. However, none of these experiences in my mind are real because they lack the physical relevance of real life. For example, the rapes that were described in “A Rape in Cyberspace” were disturbing, but at the end of the day for the victims it was their avatar that was raped, and not their actual self. They might have been temporarily disturbed by the events, but ultimately they would get over it; the same would not be said had the rape occurred in real life. Similarly, if you got stabbed online, would you bleed in real life, obviously not. This argument might go in one ear and out the other to adamant users of virtual realities because the fact is they are adamant users because of the fact that virtual realities are an escape from the real world.

Online, one can control what they look like, the world that they live in, and the experiences they have. But the fact that all of this is predetermined makes it artificial and contrived. Instead of living out your life online in a virtual world, people should instead go outside and experience the actual one for themselves. This idea is taken to an extreme by the recent movie Surrogates.

The movie describes the world in 2017, in which everyone on the planet has a surrogate android by which they live their lives. Their real self lives at home, while they live life through these physically perfect Surrogates. While the plot of the movie takes the idea of having an avatar online to a much more intense extreme, its ideas are not so farfetched. I mean is it a stretch to assume that people would want to take the chance to be able to experience life though a perfect body that they could design. *Spoiler alert* the movie ends with the protagonist destroying all surrogates and forcing the population to interact once again with their actual bodies. This pretty much summarizes my point about virtual realities; they are okay to visit every once in a while, but once you start to prefer your second life to your first one you have a problem and need to bring yourself back to reality, pun intended, pronto.