Stephanie

On Monday I had brought up wanting to know actual recruitment figures for the army after the game America's Army was released. I decided to look it up online for my show and tell article, and it was really, really hard to find statistics about the army and generally any website that gave army information or even talked about the army in a negative light. I thought that seemed pretty sketch because...there's way too much anti-military sentiment going around right now for there to be hardly ANY anti-army opinions floating around the internet. Or maybe there isn't? Maybe the rest of America thinks war is great? Anyway, on to my findings...
Like I said, there wasn't much in the way of hard numbers online, but in an article about America's Army on Wikipedia I found a couple of interesting things:

"At the United States Military Academy 19 percent of 2003's freshman class stated they had played the game. Enlistment quotas were met in the two years directly following the game's release. But another recruitment breakdown in April 2005 proves the game's recruitment power is still quite limited, in light of the recent casualties that American soldiers experienced in Iraq."

It's really hard to know how much the game, if at all, contributed to the dramatic increase in enrollment, but the fact that the army did so much to promote itself as being hip and cool probably was a large factor. I think that the army having to promote itself in such a gimmicky way in the first place is pretty pathetic anyway...

The "game" I chose was an art installation piece by Robert Praxmarer made in 2004 called (T)error. The person's movements are captured on camera and they are put into a game in whih they can choose Bush, Bin Laden, Tony Blair, different flags, etc to fill in their body shape.

Praxmarer writes: "The concept of the game is quite simple, the player first can choose his axe of evil, that means who he wants to be, like the countries contributed in the war, George Bush, Tony Blair, Bin Laden, etc., then the game starts and you have to grab for dollar signs and oil pumps, kill civilians and destroy their houses, which gets you score, on the other hand you have to avoid fighter planes, tanks and submarines.
For me it was a counterpoint to use a game as a platform for my work, because all the war, all the world politics is like a game as well. On the other hand console kiddies are playing “First Person Shooters” and aren’t interested in politics at all, so maybe I am able to reach them with my installation. Where they can play around and maybe get the point I am trying to state."

I think that this is an interesting idea but the game itself, at least from the video demonstrations, doesn't look compelling enough to make people really question the concepts of why we play games or why we engage in warfare. I do think it is interesting that you can choose to be any of these people and see that they are all sort of equally involved or "bad guys," if you will. But I don't think this game will speak to kids because how many kids make it to these gallery exhibitions, really?

http://www.servus.at/cubic/(t)error.htm

From just reading about the game and not playing it yet, it seems pretty abstract and more about ideas and tactical planning than fighting or actually moving around in an environment. It seems pretty complicated and I'm not sure how it really works. In each scenario there is a regime that's controlled by AI and you have to try to accomplish your goals, whatever they are. Each scenario is really different and your tactics are different based on your character, your role in the movement, etc. The factors seem to all be considered very carefully and from how it is described, the people who made the game worked really hard to try and foresee all the angles of gameplay. It seems very well thought out. Hopefully I'll get to play the game since I couldn't make it to class today. My sinks backed up and flooded like 2 rooms of my house so I have to wait for the plumber to get here and in the meantime mop up sewage and muddy gross stuff out of the bathroom and kitchen. Yikes.

I found this really interesting computer game published by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in which you distribute food to third world countries to help them become self-sufficient. It's downloadable for free and there are competitions in which if you score really high you can win prizes. I think it's a really good educational tool and seems to be marketed to children and teens for them to learn more about what the UN is doing to help world hunger and the realities of the situation around the world.

http://www.food-force.com/index.php/game/

That's a way sweeter name than "Storytron." Anyway. Honestly I've been having a bit of a hard time understanding what this software actually does and how's it's different than other software that makes games already. Does it create graphics? Or is that a separate program. I think it's because I don't understand too much about game programming or computers to begin with. So my understanding of the Storytron is that the guy who made it thinks that narrative is bad because it's not truly interactive. He thinks the solution is to make a program that allows the game designer to be a "storyteller" and think of a general scenario and then throw these characters into it to randomly act within it. The game maker doesn't set any specific events or make the characters do specific things, but they simply react to what the protagonist (the player) chooses to do based on their inclinations which are given them by the programmer. Supposedly this set up allows for the player to truly be creative and make the story happen in reaction to their personality or how they make their character act. It's an interesting concept I think. It can be frustrating sometimes to know that the decisions you make while playing a game don't really change what happens to the story because it is, ultimately, linear. Especially with cut scenes, which really make it obvious that you aren't changing the story in any way. The story unfolds based on if you achieve a certain goal and reach the point at which you get to see the cut scene, or proceed forward into a set storyline. I really like this style of game. But the possibilities that a program like the storytron opens up for a totally new style of game could be really really cool if it works successfully. I'm looking forward to seeing if anything comes of it. One thing that I wasn't so into about the storytron is how unimportant the idea of scenery and stages are to the creator, because I think moving around in an environment is a big part of "interactivity" and to dismiss that is a huge mistake on their part. To make the environment just like a background that characters go to based on their inclinations is pretty boring, or that they need to be there to make something happen. Exploring environments to find stuff or just look around is one of the most fun parts of any game, I think.