When I was in fifth grade, we got this computer game called Pirates of the Carribean. Happily (from my perspective) I came down with chickenpox and had to stay home for a week. I certainly had the pox, but I wasn’t that sick. I spent the entire week, in the middle of an unusually frozen Northwest winter, playing Pirates. It was awesome.

I have realized lately that I’m not hitting flow in anything at any point in my time. I pump every two hours at work. I am pulled in 20 directions when I’m home and usually do chores until I drop. I don’t even get to settle into sleep. I get woken up between two and six times a night by various dependents of mine. (On a bad night, that includes the cats.) I desperately want, need, to get completely absorbed in something until I am no longer conscious of the passing of time.

This is why, I think, I was so desperate to find a good computer game to play. But I’ve played all the ones I know I like until they didn’t quite fit the bill. Either I was bored with them or I knew they weren’t quite what I was looking for.

So last night, babysitter available, my husband and I went in quest of a video game. We struck out completely at one Gamestop. The second was better, but noticeable scarce on PC games. So we decided to stop by Target before admitting we’d been skunked. And guess what? They had the best yet selection of video games for PCs. And they had the 2006 remake of that pirates game.

Arrr!!!!

You’ll be glad to hear that before bed yesterday, I managed to become the 7th most feared pirate. I have yet to locate any of my missing relatives or buried treasure, but that comes next, assuming I can keep the troops from mutinying.

It feels GREAT to just veg out in front of the computer for a bit. I just wish there was another day or two of weekend!

Grey adds:

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Fry Cry 2 has gotten some DLC! The Far Cry 2 Fortunes Pack is available on steam for $4.99. The DLC has a silenced shotgun, yes I said silenced shotgun, a sawed off shotgun, and crossbow. The pack also adds two new vehicles to Far Cry’s garage, and five new multiplayer maps. In my opinion this is a very good price (especially compared to Call of Duty World a War’s Map Pack 1) and seems well worth it to those Far Cry fans.

This theory of Professor Susan Greenfield (and ongoing research by her and, presumably, others) deserves the widest circulation especially among those concerned about the effects of prolonged interaction with computer games and the many social networks which have proliferated on Web 2.0.

This important interview by the eminent TV journalist Kerry O’Brien has just been screened on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30 Report (ABC TV) on Thursday, 19/03/2009.

Introduction: “Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield, an eminent brain expert who commands enormous respect in her field has sounded a cautionary note about the screen culture of the computer age that she says may be changing our brains, in ways that could have a serious impact on personality and behaviour. As a pioneering scientist she heads a multi-disciplinary Oxford University team investigating neuro-degenerative disorders and also the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind, exploring the physical basis of consciousness. Professor Susan Greenfield speaks with Kerry O’Brien from Adelaide.”

Here are some excerpts from the lengthy interview.
Kerry O’Brien: “Susan Greenfield, you’ve warned that screen culture may be changing our brains. You obviously believe that it’s not a change for the better. First of all, what do you mean by screen culture?”

Susan Greenfield: “By screen culture, I mean literally that; a world of two dimensions where for six hours a day or more, people in the western developed world, more particularly kids, are spending time either playing games or on social networking sites and thereby putting themselves in an environment that is very much in the here and now, that has very strong audio and visual sensations, where at the press of a button you get instant feedback from whatever you’re doing.

“But at the same time, you’re perhaps removed from some of the aspects that we take for granted. Those of us who are older or those of us who are born in the 20th century, that we taken for granted. Things like metaphor, abstract concepts, logical narrative, conceptual frame works, long attention spans, imagination. The kind of areas we can explore in more detail, if you like.

“But it’s primarily a world of a small child, a world of the here and now, a world of a sound byte, a world of an instant frozen moment where nothing has consequences, and where everything is literal. Where nothing has a meaning, you’re not saying one thing in terms of something else, you’re saying literally, what you see is what you get.”
*
Read or view (13 minutes) the rest of this fascinating and alarming dialogue at:

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2521139.htm, or directly from the 7.30 Report website.

There is also a further 2 minute video clip of a web extra: ‘Extended interview with Susan Greenfield’.
Just another two appetisers in case you have not already opened the link:
Susan Greenfield: “What we know in neuroscience and this is getting really exciting, is that the brain is what we call plastic. That’s to say it’s very sensitive to the environment and that’s why human beings are so brilliant at occupying ecological niches than any other species on the planet. We don’t run fast, we don’t see particularly well, we’re not particularly strong - but what we do fantastically, more than any other species, is that we learn, we adapt.

“And because of this so-called plasticity, this means that your brain is different from anyone else’s for the last hundreds of thousands of years we’ve stalked the plan and it will be never the same again. And every moment you’re alive it’s modified and changed and revised by every little experience, literally leaving its mark on your brain.

“So if that is the case, it follows that the environment in which that brain is developing will be very much influenced by the kind of features of that environment. And if, for the first time - and this is my reasoning - that environment has changed in an unprecedented way, if it’s bombarding you with boom bang and bang images, what I call the “yuck and wow” scenario where every moment you’re having something flash up in your face and bombard your ears. All I’m suggesting is that that might drive brain connections and drive the configuration of your brain cell circuitry into the kind of mindset that mandates a short attention span.”
*

Susan Greenfield: “I think it can be a problem, like everything, if it’s done to excess. I personally don’t have a social networking site but I certainly communicate, like most people now with access to computers, through email.

“Of course, that’s not a problem. It becomes a problem if it’s your main form of communication. I met a young person who boasted they had 900 friends. And that made me rather sad as to what he thought a friend really was and what kind of quality of relationship that you might have with one, if there’s any one of 900. And how often, if you have 900 friends, how much time of the day do you spend in sustaining a friendship with 900 people when there’s only 24 hours of the day. And however advanced or slick the culture, the inescapable fact: you only have 24 hours a day and if you spend six hours doing one thing, that excludes you, by definition, of doing other things.”

*

Geez, the internet is great… I’ve been outed as an addict.

A Gamer Addict… By my friend the Parisite.

He has this to say on Gamers Anonymous [to which I don't belong - in fact, we merely speculate at its existence].

Are the twelve steps something like: ↑, ↑, →, ←, □, ○, x, L1, R2, ↑+□, R2+x, ↓ …?
– The Parisite

Ah… chuckles…

I hope he tells his gaming problem story on his blog soon.
– The Parisite

Well, probably not in detail - it’s kind of embarrassing. Not to mention that I get the ‘urge’ just thinking about it. I’m not fussy… in times of desperation, once I noticed that Windows Solitaire numbers each ‘random’ hand, I started to play them sequentially and got to 200+ before I stopped.

I first realised I was an addict while playing ‘The Sims’. I was congratulating myself on teaching my avatar to get up, go to work, pay the rent and maintain a relationship, when I realised I was late for work.

Two days late.

And I hadn’t paid the rent either.

So how did it begin?

I still remember playing one of the early arcade games ‘Maniak’ (?) in the downstairs room at Papa’s in Fremantle - where the illicit gambling is alleged to have taken place.

Yep, it was a den of vice, waiting for me to fall in. Figuratively, that is, I do remember being able to negotiate the stairs without incident. I was hooked.

My family never had much money, but somehow Mum scraped enough together for a second-hand Vic 20, but it wasn’t too long before I’d disappear to go to friend’s houses to play C64, then Amiga or even the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (ah…. Elite!).

Years later, Timezone opened across the road from Papa’s. I was a high-school drop-out by 16, at which point the manager offered me a job, on the basis that I was there all the time anyway.

Skill puts the cost/minute ratio in the gamer’s favour, and I had already started to get hooked on pinball games as they didn’t ever ‘end’, making it possible to play a single game for up to 45 minutes or so, all the time racking up free games…

I took the job, thus radically reducing the amount of time I had to spend playing games - a fourteen hour shift every two days meant that while I thought I was getting every second day off, it was more like working all day, sleeping for a day and going back to work…

This may have contributed to my surly disposition towards customers, but it was just as likely to be the frequent death-threats I’d get from bogans somewhat outraged by the fact that a geeky kid like me had the keys to all the games in the place.

I won’t tell you why I was fired, but I will say that the manager’s daughter had this tattooed on her ankle.

Classy place, classy company.

Next stop - servicing arcade games for an independent opeartor, and eventually building juke-boxes and other amusement machines… this is at about the time PCs started to become more common, but seeing as I was pseudo-homeless for the next year or so, I had neither the money nor anywhere to put one.

On the other hand, I did learn to play guitar. A real one.

I’m learning Rock Band now.

I ended up working with the independent operator, using the sideshow alley stalls he ran at the Royal Show (WA), the Ecka (Brisbane), Moomba (Victoria), Luna Park (Sydney and Melbourne) to travel the country a bit, but mostly based out of Melbourne, where I ended up running one of his juke-box hire companies, where I convinced him he really needed internet.

Next step - completely addicted to ‘Sanity’s Edge’ - a text based MUD (Multi User Dungeon) with a cyberpunk theme. People I met only as words on a screen, some of whom I am still acquainted with today. [Fuck me, it's relaunched. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Just when I had learned to have a real job/life/wife. FUCK!]

Do they introduce themselves using their handle/avatar, “I’m Draganslya44 and I’m a game addict”?
– The Parisite

They’re not all that self-reflexive, but it’s kind of true.

During the height first extended period of my addiction, I had many friends whom I knew only by their ‘nicks’ (who says ‘handle’, anyway?). I was friendly for years with a guy I only knew as ‘Bug’, whom I had ‘killed’ because he was true to his name… he was bugging the buggin’ bejesus out of me when he joined up as a ‘noob’.

In Sanity’s Edge, ‘death’ meant being saved at the last minute by paramedics, who would then rob you and throw you out of a moving ambulance into the centre of town. Moments after I killed this annoying newcomer, a voice came over the (text-based) radio…

Now I am small and have no pants.
– ‘Bug’

In a world that pre-dated massively over-hyped pieces of video software that ask you stare at the shallow gryrations of a half-dressed elven women avatars being made to dance by their presumably less desirable overlords, a statement such as ‘Now I am small and have no pants’ simply meant that the guy had a good sense of humour and knew how to take a joke.

I don’t even know how to explain Bug’s friend ‘Hadley’ except to say that it looks like growing up in Canberra fucks you up… in a kind of amusing way. Put it this way, I just tried to track down Hadley and he’s left this up on a forum as his supposed website address… It’s like he doesn’t want me to find him. On the other hand, my signature file on that forum contains the following Fight Club parody, which is strangely appropriate to this discussion.

You are not your magic fireball,
You are not your fancy costume.

The crudely animated MUDs soon followed, which is about when women who had liked MIRC started to play games too. Shortly after this, cybersex started to become commonplace, although I didn’t realise this for some time… I’d be happily hacking some computer-generated foe to pieces, quipping for my life when I realised that the rest of the party was being suspiciously quiet. This is because gamers can use ’scripts’ which tell their character what to do so they can gain experience while simply ‘chatting’ on ‘intimate modes’.

No, I don’t cyber. I have counselled lonely would-be cybers but that’s a whole other post, which will probably be called, ‘It sure is dark in this dungeon… wanna cyber?’. Nope. My character would be out the front, killing and joking, with an entire party set to automatically ‘follow’ and ‘assist’.

The internet is a waste of time, and that’s exactly what’s right about it
– William Gibson

I should also point out that these games were fun and more importantly, absolutely FREE.

Anyway… as some of you may know, I ended up being a pop culture reviewer for X-Press Magazine, where I suggested I write a computer game review section, which was transitioned into an X-Press offshoot magazine, ZebraPerth.

And that was pretty much the beginning of the end…

I had achieved Gamer Addict nirvana… Years before Tripod wrote Gonna Make You Happy Tonight, I actually said something like:

I’ll be in later baby, I have to finish this level…
No I won’t come now.  IT’S MY JOB!!!!
I don’t tell YOU how to do YOUR job!

Under the guise of ‘reviewing’ I had free games coming in from developers which I argued I was morally obliged to finish before I reviewed them. Unlike some music reviewers, I liked to watch the whole gig before making comments. Same with my movie reviews… And if the game says it offered 60 hours of continuous gameplay, I owed it to my readers to make sure that was true.

That’s what I told my girlfriends and that’s what I told myself. Even after the girlfriends left.

My wife was the most significant of these girlfriends, and she will quite happily tell you that at various stages of the last ten years, my addiction to computer gaming has threatened to kill our relationship.

In November 2007, I killed my computer by chainsmoking for two weeks playing World of Warcraft next to a PC without its sides on while my wife worked on an extended campaign. The motherboard is apparently coated in tobacco resin and cannot be fixed.

Which brings me to one of the Parisite’s other observations:

Do they need to stay away from pretty much any electronic device because that would be an enabler?
– The Parisite

I no longer own a PC.

I no longer own a PS2, and I never bought a PS3 or an X-Box.

I’m glad I never bought a Dreamcast, and I’m sorry for those who did.

My phone only has one game on it. I have finished it probably 100 times.

I still play free online games when my wife isn’t around.

I’m not proud.

But I’m happily married, I pay my rent and I get to work on time.

Except for when I’m trying to blog in the morning.

It’s for the readers…

Believe me?

A computer game called `House of the Dead, Overkill’ has made a Guinness World Record for being the most profane in the history of video games.
Designed for the family-friendly Ninetndo Wii console, the game features 189 uses of the F-word.
The F-word accounts for three per cent of all words spoken, and equates to just over one per minute in the game.
`House of the Dead: Overkill’ is a violent shooter game rated MA15+, in which players have to hunt down a crime lord in a small town over-run by mutants.

I just finished watching my seven-year-old nephew play an online game called Snow Drift. It was as engaging to try and figure out what the object of the game is as it was to observe the animated behavior of the little player as he pounded on the space bar and cursor keys to complete a thrilling level.

The truth is I never really understood what had to be done to reach the next level and as it was bedtime for the boy, I dared not strike up a conversation to be given the heads up on Snow Drift. Another time, perhaps.

He was so focused on the computer screen, as any serious gamer might be, the fingers of his left hand on the space bar and right index and middle fingers dancing on the left-right cursor keys. I actually enjoyed watching him more than the game itself. I’d see him move forward, jerk back, lean left or right, lift his butt off the chair, and raise a leg while at play, it was almost like a dance. And the face… a picture of concentration with lip biting, nose twitching and brows furrowing, not to mention the muttering and occasional shouts. I gotta say the boy has very deft fingers and his timing is incredible as he moved forward, jumped onto slabs of ice, slid down slopes of snow. Me? I’d probably have fallen off a minute into play and would likely be seeing the dreaded words: GAME OVER.

Yes, I do play computer games online myself… and there was a brief period when I got hooked on them, too. I like the virtual kind of games like some restaurant thing where you race against time — taking orders, putting together food, keeping customers happy then collecting cash. You have to admit, it can be quite challenging to sit down for one of those activities. Otherwise, I enjoy finding hidden objects, brain teasers, word and strategy games.

Am not particularly fond of those racing games, or those with a lot of jumping, sliding, chasing or riding stuff because they can really wear me out physically. It’s not just the hand-eye coordination thingy, but the heart pumping, the adrenaline rush, sweaty hands, and dripping beads of perspiration — not to mention the growls of frustration and the shouts of exultation — that goes with playing the games which can be so exhausting.

I’m thinking if we can be as focused in our lives as we are when we play computer games, then it would be a much better world. Obviously, people always love a challenge. That’s the main attraction why these computer games are so popular and addictive. We get hung up on beating the computer or beating records of other players. If games like Snow Drift challenge us so much, why is it that when God throws some obstacle our way, we’d rather shirk from it than face the problem head on?

See, life is a game, complete with a set of rules. But unlike computer games where we only depend on our skills and patience to win or beat a record, we need to rely on God to help us go through this game of life. Why? Simply because He made the “game”, set the rules and even planned out who will score this time or not. He just wants to know whose rules will we play by to win.

In games, there are winners and losers. And sometimes, even when we do our best and give our hundred percent effort to be successful, it still doesn’t happen. Some call this luck — tough luck, if we lose. But I think the outcome is more God’s will and plan. The important thing is to learn a thing or two from the experience. If we do and in the end become a better and stronger person after playing the game, then it makes no difference if we lost, because we still would’ve won — in the eyes of God.

Look, when we emerge triumphant in any game, we hoot, scream, shout, pump our fists, pound our chest, raise our arms, and go crazy because of sheer happiness. Happiness at beating the odds, for cracking the genius of the game creator, and just enjoying the experience of a game well played.

Don’t you think we ought to be just as jubilant, if not more so, when we play by the rules to win in the game of life? And when we acknowledge that God was instrumental in our winning the game, He’s likely to be wearing a big smile, too… or maybe pumping a fist saying “YES!” Now THAT is victory.

It’s not easy to set records in online games. You gotta keep on trying and just keep pushing yourself to do your best. I imagine that’s what God wants us to do in this game of life. Keep doing our best to live by His rules, so we can emerge victorious and in the process, honor Him for his awesome ways and great love for humankind.

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May 5, 2009 is the date when Electronic Arts will publish the Crysis: Maximum Edition, it is the entire collection of the world famous game, Crysis, which is the best pc game of the year 2007 developed by Crytek. Releasing May 5th Crysis: Maximum Edition will be containing Crysis, Crysis Warhead, and multiplayer game mode Crysis Wars all in one package for one low price.

Crysis Maximum Edition

This item is available for Pre-order at $39.99 with free shipping. If you want to pre-order it then Click Here!

We have in the past been constrained by the adopted acronym. We added an extra P for the most banal of reasons, that was access to a web address/ name.

And though we meant to have a broader remit - we ended up by default in the performing arts.  Although we never meant to.

Well here’s a more approprite P.  What abolut the ‘Participatory Arts’ . participation after all is fundamental germane seminal essential to the work we do.

so I propose 

methodology for a Pupil and Particpatory Arts-Centred Teaching    

as our new title.

any comments out there?