Preface note: after reading articles from the RSF: bloggers guide and recent national and international attempts of online filtering, I feel a little worried about dissing the US army. Especially since they were the first organisation to actually instigate the internet, hehehe. Also this post is still all over the place, but until I put it up I won’t know how best to edit it.
What a great idea: Lets promote war to the next generation...
PROPAGANDA? The US Army has a recruitment strategy to target the next generation via a free online game called America's Army. "Players undertake their first tour of duty alongside fellow soldiers and, without leaving home, experience something of life as a soldier in the army."
"The developers claim that the game is played by several million players. According to a survey, the game had between 3,000 and 6,000 players online simultaneously from 2002 until 2005."
a little link in the left hand corner.
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So what does this say about gamers?
Has the US Army realised the power and potential of the gaming generation? (that's a bit obvious I think)
lets just smash you with the JUICY facts!
GAMING: 2005
Is a $28 billion industry worldwide.
Around 10 million people worldwide play at least one of the 350 so
massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) like Everquest.
Phone games: 2003 sales around $587 million but are projected to grow
to $2.6 billion by the end of 2005.
First-day sales of Micrsoft's Xbox game Halo 2 were $125 million.
"You can't ignore an industry when people queue to buy a game at midnight because they are so desperate to play it… Nobody queues for music anymore."
Kevin Roberts, CEO Saatchi & Saatchi.
The average gamer age is 28 yrs old.
August, 2006, World Of Warcraft (WOW)
6million subscribers.
March, 2008 = 7,007,917
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php
Why do people love games?
Entertainment
interaction
disorientation and
intrigue
backed by the projection that technology will compensate for the physical disorientation.
The activation of the right side of the brain.
To dream
To be lost
Emotionally appealling
suspensful
a connection with virtual surrounds.
Immediate surroundings affect emotions
the senses
a personal journey of fluctuating sensations.
Appreciation of the human scale
To surprise and delight.
Anonymity
To be whoever you want whenever you want.
Socially
To be a part of or act out a team member, leader or group.
Maybe gamers want to go against or escape Sigmund Freud’s theory of sexual desire or libido as the primary motivational energy of
human life. Until some one can link libido to gaming.
The power of the story: the emotion of the narrative.
Story telling at its peak infuses drama, intimacy, mystery and the senses all on high alert. But don't forget they don't have to be first hand experiences at all. Stories are emotional by nature. They give us perspective and they inspire us to action.
"The essential difference between emotion and
reason is that emotion leads to action, while reason leads to conclusions."
What people want:
CHOICE
INTERACTION and thus FREEDOM.
We like most of all to do several things at the same time.
We want great stories.
example of a World Of War Craft story: from Wikipedia
Corrupted Blood plague incident on WOW:
The Corrupted Blood plague incident was one of the first events to affect entire servers. Patch 1.7 saw the opening of Zul'Gurub, the game's first 20-player raid dungeon where players faced off against an ancient tribe of jungle trolls under the sway of the ancient Blood God, Hakkar the Soulflayer. Upon engaging Hakkar, players were stricken by a debuff (a spell that negatively affects a player) called "Corrupted Blood" which would periodically sap their life. The disease would also be passed on to other players who were simply standing close to an infected person. Originally this malady was confined within the Zul'Gurub instance but made its way into the outside world by way of hunter or warlock pets that contracted the disease.
Within hours Corrupted Blood had infected entire cities such as Ironforge and Orgrimmar because of their high player concentrations. Low-level players were killed in seconds by the high-damage disease. Eventually Blizzard fixed the issue so that the plague could not exist outside of Zul'Gurub.
The corrupted blood plague so closely resembled the outbreak of real-world epidemics that scientists are currently looking at ways MMORPGs or other massively-distributed systems can model human behavior during outbreaks. The reaction of players to the plague closely resembled previously hard-to-model aspects of human behavior that may allow researchers to more accurately predict how diseases and outbreaks spread amongst a population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft
To be edited and continued...
visually taste some online games at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaTzJSFwqwI
"For the moment, though, Emotiv is developing the technology for video gaming. There are two reasons. The first is that video gamers are early adopters of new technology and Emotiv is hoping they will help it spread. The second, as I am about to learn, is that the Emotiv technology transforms the gaming experience into something almost magical: you can make things happen, move things, shoot things, kill people even, almost anything really, just by thinking about it." 
Not all realistic gaming interfaces will enhance technology. I cannot comprehend why people would spend their time learning a joystick that looks like a guitar rather than actually playing a real world electric guitar.
The next Jimmy Hendrix might never touch a real guitar.
