Overview of the Class

Hello everyone, for one last time.

Haven just taken the class survey, I figured I might as well give some opinions here as well. Especially since I am out of ideas.

Overall, I felt that this class was excellent. Simply put.

Whether you are in very familiar territory or unknown territory when this class begins, there is something for everyone to learn (some more than others though, obviously). There is no reason to feel pressured or forced because everything in the class is up to the students to participate or not (except for showing up and the weekly readings). The class covers both mediums very well and thoroughly; Shannon picked some very nice texts for us to read (although I hated Maus and Gee, though Gee was mainly because of how the author wrote). I legitimately have nothing about which to complain aside from what I mentioned in the parentheses above. Speaking of which....

The strictly enforced weekly reading where there was no choice in what we read (aside from Watchmen/V for Vendetta) was, to me, undoubtedly the worst part of this class. The entire class is setup to be like a game and offer choices and allow the students to make their own pathway through the class in order to get a grade. However, there was no option for the readings (aside from how to 'respond' to them). I feel like this is a huge negative because, while it is the only non-choice in the class, the fact that a non-choice exists in a choice based class makes it this huge negative that really stands out when compared to all other class material. Admittedly, the readings act as the 'main story-line' so to speak, so it makes sense. However, in practice, I feel it does hurt the class. This is an even bigger problem when you consider that the texts are what facilitate all the critical thinking and analyzing in the class, which means they are legitimately required.

However, that is where my complaints end. I fully support everything else the class had to offer. It was a very enjoyable experience.

Finally, I feel that this class was more of a 'happy gathering' or even a 'family' that just another class. The fact that it is over is considerably depressing. I know I will miss spending time with the people in this class, even if  there were some I barely knew.

Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go silently cry in a corner.

*THE END*

Tabletop Games

There are currently a lot of tabletop games available for play via the various quests and general classroom use, so I figured I would write about the ones I have played (which I believe is all of them).

Battletech: I have not played this one for years and I did not have the opportunity to play it too much. However, my impression of it was that, while fun, it would not stay that way for long. To me, it felt like there was a very obvious optimal build to use for your mechs, and at that point it was all about positioning and luck on the dice rolls. To me there was not quite enough openness to it and I felt that took away from it.

Pathfinder: I have not actually played this particular variant before, but I have years of experience with D&D 3.5. I absolutely love how open and utterly unrepeatable the experiences in this game are. Because the story-line somewhat alters how your character develops (if you have a good DM, anyway) any two characters cannot be the same. Of course, you can get two characters to be quite close to one another through classes, feats, etc. More than anything, though, is that I love how anything can happen since there is no board and it is purely imaginative. I have not had the chance to play D&D for about 2 years now, but I still love it.

Arkham Horror: I actually got introduced to this game very recently (after the class began) but before Jon offered it for a quest. Right from the beginning, I felt that the game was terribly easy. As long as people are not stupid, it is really hard to lose at this game (unless you get Cthulhu as your boss and are not prepared enough). I have been told that the expansions help this problem out a lot and as a result I really want to give it a try. But until then, I am unimpressed by this game.

Twilight Emperium: I have only had the chance to play this game once (and we did not even finish) but I enjoyed how expansive it was. I particularly enjoy game boards that are player created per session. It makes the experience much better versus other static game boards. There is a lot to be had in this game though, making it particularly overwhelming on one's first play. I really want to give this game another go now that I am more versed in its objectives. Despite that, I still enjoyed this game.

Settlers of Catan: I just had the chance to play this last class and I must say this game is awesome. It also has a game board that is created per session and is not static, which is an immediate plus for me. It is quite simple in nature, so there is not a lot of thinking to be had. Apparently the expansions make it far more rich in diversity though, so I really want to try those. Only played it once, but I thoroughly enjoyed this game. I especially want to play again now that I know the rules thoroughly.

That is my take on the currently offered games via the class. I do not believe there are any more games than these that have been offered via the class. If there have, I am not sure I have played them anyway.

My Take on World of Warcraft

Since we had to play World of Warcraft for class this week, I thought it would be fitting that I did this week's blog post on my opinions of the game.

Many years ago I tried WoW before. And I played for an entire month before quitting, as I could not find it within myself to justify paying the monthly fee for the game (the first month came free with the battlechest). That being said, I rather enjoyed my time that I spent on the game. I just did not like it enough to justify the continual spend of money on it.

Flash-forward to present day when we had to play it for class these past 2 weeks. My verdict on the game is now as follows: it is an abomination. I honestly have not a clue how I ever stomached this game before. It is infinitely worse than what I remembered from years ago.

Since playing WoW I have played Ragnarok Online for 3 months (was not a terribly big fan of it either, thus why I did not stick with it for long) and Tera for over a year now, which I still play currently. Playing these, in my opinion, superior MMOs, has obviously made me realize that WoW is even worse than I originally thought. In all honesty, I find that remarkable.

The combat is not actually all that terrible (though I have been spoiled by Tera's Real Action Combat System). In fact, I was rather floored with how unique some of the bosses were when we played this week. A fair amount of them had more than just the hack and slash element to them. That being said, most of them died rather quickly, which was terribly disappointing. Going along with combat, I thought it was not very user friendly either. The bosses tended to move around quite a bit. This means that so was your party. This made it rather complicated to track where all of your members were.

Particularly on the one boss my group faced (some goblin bomber, he was the second boss of one of the dungeons), who hopped on your party members' faces while other goblins came in and started attacking. You had to either be really focused and attentive as a group and stick together and make sure to keep on top of him, or you ended up running around like a bunch of headless chickens because it was not exactly intuitive what you had to do. Naturally, my group did the latter because we did not expect it. It felt so clunky and terrible and I thought it was highly stupid despite the rather unique mechanic used by the boss that I thought was interesting and enjoyed somewhat strictly because of its uniqueness.

All this being said, the reason I find this method of combat to be clunky and not user friendly is because of how much bosses moved. As a tank, having to move to the boss constantly instead of maintaining aggro is a burden, not to mention that if you lose aggro he could run across the entire room after one of your members, and you have to run the entire way over there. As a dps, having to re-position yourself constantly instead of focusing on dps is a burden. As a healer, this is a nightmare. With all your members constantly moving, not to mention on top of one another constantly, it becomes nigh impossible to get your job done right. It becomes hard to tell who needs healing and who is fine, not to mention it becomes hard to actually heal them with everyone moving around on top of one another, making clicking them nigh impossible to provide the necessary healing. Essentially, I think the combat is a tad too fast-moving.

Another gripe about the combat, I hate how when you are trying to level and you accidentally aggro two enemies, you better start running immediately or else you are going to die. You are leveling a battle-hardened warrior who is going to try and save the world, and yet you cannot take on two merfolk fish people at the same time? I am sorry, but what the fuck. That is retarded. It was infuriating the first time, and it was infuriating the 100th time. Especially considering it is nigh impossible to 100% avoid it.

One other thing that was really frustrating was that icons only function on your mini-map, and nothing is displayed on your world map besides area names and quest markers. It becomes much harder to find NPCs, such as equipment repair NPCs, and other tools affiliated with the icon system.

Not so much a gripe, but I found the death system to be very weird. Why do I have to run all the way back to my dead body? Why do I not just resurrect like in every other MMO forever? Granted, it allows you to easily get back to where you were, without penalty, to continue questing That is why this is not a gripe. I just did not get it. And even though it was for your convenience, I found it annoying every time. Why? Because you were required to. If you did not, you were not doing anything because you did not have an actual body anymore. Making your users have to do something that they are not naturally willing to do: bad.

Anyway, that is what I have to say about WoW. Needless to say, I will never be playing this game again. I am going to continue to enjoy Tera and the FFXIV:ARR Beta.

Visual Novel: Kira Kira

As a supplement to Kevin's massive composition of Visual Novels, I decided to do a blog post on Kira Kira, which is my #1 Visual Novel. I decided to do this because, first of all, I have a lot to say about it, and secondly, Kevin has not read it himself yet and was not able to compose a personal opinion of the game as a result like he was able to do for many of the other Visual Novels he has listed.

Kira Kira is a Visual Novel about music and, more particularly, about bands, making a band, being in a band, etc. I mention this now so that I can provide a bit of a background as to why this Visual Novel matters so much to me.

When I was going through Elementary and Middle School, I was suicidal. I had been bullied to the point of mental breakdown and destruction and killing myself was the only out my younger self could perceive. This period of time lasted for roughly two to two and a half years. I will spare the details, but this was a really critical point for me in my life. I did not know how to overcome these challenges: the bullying, how to cope with the bullying, and, most importantly, how to overcome myself and my mental state that suicide was the only salvation available to me. However, towards the end of this period of time, I started discovering music to which I could relate emotionally.

Particularly, Red was the most impactful to me at this time, having just debuted. Stone Sour also played a part in this and helped as well, having also just debuted back then. My favorite English band to this day, Five Finger Death Punch, debuted a bit later than these two and thus only helped after I had overcome a large portion of my obstacles, but they also played their part in helping me. Needless to say, I can honestly attribute a large portion of my being alive to this day to music, particularly these bands. Their music became a vital coping mechanism for me back then when I needed something onto which I could cling. As a result, music has become a rather meaningful hobby in my life.

Now then, back to Kira Kira. Kira Kira, as I said previously, is a game about music and the bands behind the music. So it is pretty obvious to see that, unless the game was really terrible, this was already going to be quite a read for me. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

Kira Kira starts with a traditional high school setting and at first, minus the intro, the involvement of music is not readily see-able. Eventually the plot gets rolling and the involvement of music presents itself, but the characters in the Visual Novel are not as into the music scene as one would first expect. They have to learn along the way and get taught the 'tricks of the trade' so to speak. There is a large learning experience for both the reader and characters simultaneously. That being said, as this 'learning' is happening, there are a large number of embarrassing events that occur that quite honestly made it painful for me to read at times (I suffer from second-hand embarrassment to a rather extensive degree). At this point, my expectations had dropped for the potential of the Visual Novel. I did not know where it was going to go, but given the start of the game, I was not sure that I wanted to know. I had to push through the game and, to some extent, force myself to keep going. But once I finally started to see the 'innards' of the game, so to speak, I realized that, yes, I do want to keep reading. From there it was quite a ride all the way to the end. Once again, needless to say, I was not disappointed.

This game uprooted the very foundation of everything music for me. How I listen to music, how I appreciate music, how I think about music, how I care about music, everything. Literally everything music was turned upside down on me by the time I was done with this Visual Novel. I had a whole new level  of appreciation and understanding of music that I did not consider possible before I had read Kira Kira. The amount of impact that that Visual Novel has had on my life is immeasurable. To this day, I listen to music differently than how I used to listen to music. The same applies for appreciation, thinking, caring, etc when it comes to music. The impact that Kira Kira had on me will undoubtedly be forever lasting. It has changed my life permanently and I would not have it any other way.

Kira Kira is not single-handedly responsible for this, however. The company that made Kira Kira, Overdrive, did another Visual Novel titled Deardrops. What little bit of foundation Kira Kira Kira did not manage to uproot for me, Deardrops supplemented it and did just that. That being said, Deardrops was not nearly as groundbreaking in terms of its impact when concerning music; Deardrops is #5 on my personal list of favorites (out of 22). Regardless, it is another Visual Novel with high recommendation from me.

So if anyone out there has a remarkable interest in music and Visual Novels, Kira Kira (and Deardrops) are for you.

Video Games in the Classroom

Once again, I will be making my blog post about the books we have been reading even though I did not want to be *that* person who always does.

When I was reading Reality Is Broken I felt a ton of truth in her words. What she described was just correct and spoke volumes to me. She is very good and persuasive at articulating her thoughts and arguments. Even though I already largely agreed with the benefits that video games have to offer us, I still found myself constantly surprised about how much clarity was in her words and how well she could articulate certain matters. It was really surprising to me that her book could have that effect on me even though I already largely agreed with her. Admittedly, she is rather optimistic about a few matters, and some of her points, while true, are not exactly viable to be implemented.

After reading this, I was on Facebook two days later and noticed that Nick was also reading it. However, his take was rather interesting to me. Even though he liked the book and the subject material, the fact that is was homework really hindered his feelings and impressions of it, or at least that is how I interpreted what he said. The fact that something that was fun to him was turned into homework and thus made not fun for him was interesting. That is when I came to realize that he had a very valid point. And that point is the same point of this blog post.

Video games in the classroom sound awesome. They are fun and enjoyable, versus most of the junk we are taught in school. It is a lot more active and not just getting talked at. However, putting deadlines and requirements on what you do in your gaming world(s), which is the one place you are supposed to have freedom, not defeating the point?

I will admit that I am enjoying playing FFIX for the class and am not having any issues with it. However, for our past two required readings on video games, I felt that, even though I enjoyed the books to some degree, my feelings were greatly hindered by the fact that I could not just put it down and stop when I started getting tired of it and felt like it was beginning to wane on me. Instead, I had no choice but to keep trucking along until the assignment was over. And that sucked. It was just not enjoyable. When this happened to me, specifically on the second book What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, I suddenly had this moment of clarity as to about what Nick was talking and I realized one simple thing: He was right.

Video games sound like a fantastic medium to add to the classroom and I admit there is merit to it. But there needs to be a balancing act of some sort that occurs here if it were to happen. Otherwise, video games would end up no different than the homework students currently have to endure. They would be thought of as not fun, terrible things. That is exactly the opposite of what is desired by the two books we are reading for class. There is this inherent contradiction upon which neither of them appear to touch.

Even though it is a really obvious train of thought to have, it never occurred to me. When it did, I was surprised I had never thought of it before. Even though I already knew a lot about video games and had a lot of thoughts on my opinion of their usefulness, including in the classroom, I am glad to have learned something more, which I did not expect to happen. I think that it is also quite ironic that I learned this in a class about video games.

Comics

Alright, so I didn't want to be *that* person who does all of their blogs exclusively on content/required readings done via class, but I'll be damned if I don't have something to say about Watchmen.

I have never liked Superheros. Quite hated them, in fact. I hated how unrealistic they were. I hated how they always did 'good' things. I hated how they were never wrong. I hated how they were incapable of screwing up. And more importantly, I hated how popular they were. To me, it always felt like they had a large portion of their popularity exclusively from the fact that they were popular and people, as a whole, largely couldn't find a reason to hate them. So it was not so much a matter of them being liked as much as a matter of them not being hated, and being largely popular as a result of that. And that fact in itself is the reason why I hated them personally.

Also, this is not to say that what I said above is necessarily the absolute truth. However, to me, this is how I felt about it when I was growing up.

Now, don't get me wrong. That's not to say I hated absolutely everything about them. I've always been a person to largely support justice and correcting evil/corruption and etc. I do believe that those in the wrong need punished and those in the right shouldn't have anything bad happen to them and should correct those who are in the wrong. Even still, for the reasons listed above, I just could not bring myself to like Superheros.

Going along with this, I also hated comic books. However, I had an even stronger hate for them than I did the Superheros themselves. And that is because of just how much of the comic book market is Superheros. Hell, I would hardly call it a stretch to say that comic books = Superheros. In my personal experiences, when you go to a comic store, almost exclusively, no matter where you look, it's incredibly dominated by Superheros, if there is anything else at all. And I always thought that was a damn shame. Because the medium itself, with the panels, speech bubbles, etc. was a really creative medium and I had a large interest in it. But the fact that I could not find anything besides all of the Superheros that I abhorred was absolutely infuriating. Why was the comic book market so exclusively focused on just one genre out of the hundreds of possibilities that exist in the world? I just could not understand it. And as infuriating as it was, it was also depressing.

That being said, after Shannon and Conner's presentation on Wednesday covering the history of comic books in America and the CCA (Comics Code Authority), I am glad to at least finally, after so many years, understand the why to my question from when I was a child growing up.

Going along with this even more, reading Watchmen also opened my eyes quite a bit on the matter. I never realized that a darker side to the Superhero comics actually existed. I never realized how mislead I was growing up and not truly understanding the medium enough. I never realized that the common conceptions of what Superheros were was not all there was to be. And I was astounded. I mean, sure, I was also rather young back then. So it goes without saying that there would be some things that I wouldn't realize or understand. But for all of my hatred I had for comics as a kid to be so utterly unfounded was really... crushing. I can't believe I was so misguided this entire time.

Now, I am exaggerating a bit here. It's not like I was 100% clueless. Growing up and having movies like The Dark Knight be released in cinemas, I already knew that some of my conceptions from growing up were actually misconceptions. But reading the Watchmen first-hand and then also having the presentation that Shannon and Conner did in class was incredibly eye-opening. I feel like I have been missing out on something for a great portion of my life that I could legitimately enjoy.

Tangenting a bit from all of this, my hatred of comic books not for the medium itself but for the stories they contained was how I came to have such an interest in manga. Manga largely cover far more genres than comics in America have even tried to cover. Though the art styles differ to some degree, it is largely the same idea. And that's a hobby I have been following for years.

Anyway, that's my take/rant on comic books and how I've evolved right alongside them.

Introductions

Hello everyone. My name is Garin Dangler. I am a Computer Science/Software Engineering major with a Mathematics minor in my senior year. I am a commuter student, though you probably would not be able to tell considering the amount of time I spend on campus.

I have been enthralled by graphic novels and video games since I was very young. I began playing video games at approximately four years old. I had severely bad allergies as a child, and as a result I was not able to go outside for extended amounts of time at all. Video games were the means of entertainment that my parents bought me to occupy me since I could not go outside or do sports or the like. By the time I was about 9 years old, I was a complete video game addict, playing for 16 hours a day on average when I had no school. On school days, I would get home at roughly 3 p.m. and play until I went to bed at roughly 10-11 p.m. I continued this routine until I started attending college. I still play them, but it is far more sparingly.

As for graphic novels, I started gaining an interest in them as a result of cartoons and anime on television. I was in a comic books store as a child and noticed graphic novels of one of my favorite anime at the time, Inuyasha. That is what introduced me to the world of graphic novels. To be more specific though, these graphic novels were actually manga (or, in other words, Japanese graphic novels). I did not read terribly many of these, or for long. But I still do every now and then and do enjoy them quite a bit.

On a side note about manga, look forward to Elliott Wilson’s Guru quest!

Besides video games and graphic novels, which are the topic of the class, I have another hobby that is among the same category. That hobby is anime. I first got into watching anime from shows like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z being on Toonami as a child. I would always watch the anime that aired on Toonami and, eventually, Adult Swim. Eventually I discovered the world on anime on the internet and have not looked back since. Anime is so much vaster than what is shown on American television. However, anime on American television has been expanding over the past few years, growing bit by bit, including the revival of Toonami by Adult Swim.

On a side note about anime, look forward to my Guru quest!

Yet another similar hobby that is among the same category as video games, graphic novels, and anime, is visual novels. This is my most recent obsession, only having been introduced to this form of media in the past two years. Visual novels are like a book in the way that you read text, but like a graphic novel in the sense that you have pictures to go along with the text. Also, the pictures are a combination of sprites, animation, and entire backgrounds. There is also accompanying music to go along with it while you are ‘playing.’ All in all, they are a very unique and entertaining way of experiencing, rather than just reading, a story.

On a side note about visual novels, look forward to Kevin Ross’s Guru quest!

Lastly, I will mention my MMO experiences. I have not played terribly many of them. I was introduced to them via Runescape, which I played dedicatedly for three years. After that I quit MMOs for quite a while, until I was convinced to try World of Warcraft. I played that for only one month before I quit, as I did not think it was worth spending $15 a month on it. After that I did not play any for quite a while again, until I decided to give Ragnarok Online a try because a friend was a huge fan of it. I played it for an entire summer break, but was not entertained enough by it to continue playing past that. Around that time, I heard/saw about Tera. I waited until the official North America version launched, and I have been playing that dedicatedly for almost a year now.

If anyone wants to give Tera a try, it’s now free to play as of last week. The combat is quite unlike any other; I highly recommend it. Let me know if you want to give it a try, I can help/explain things.

That’s about it for me and my previous experiences before enrolling in this class. I look forward to a fun semester with everyone!