Week 10: Gaming & Virtual Environments

About Games, Gamers and Virtual Environments:

(Apologies for the length of information. Please feel free to only read up on the type of game you think you might like to play. Please also don’t feel overwhelmed by the number of game links. We tried to provide as much of a variety as possible to appeal to as many of you as possible. Please feel free to try out other games and explore outside of the ones we’ve listed, if you wish, but just remember to blog about it.)

Definitions:

ARCADE GAMES

These are typically games which demand a certain level of quickness and hand-eye coordination, such as Mario Bros., Frogger and Pac-Man, to name a few from the past. These types of games typically need you to pay close attention in each level or you may lose ‘lives’ and eventually lose the game. Some puzzle games, such as Zuma (see Pop Cap Games below), can also fall under the arcade category because they also require hand-eye coordination combined with speed and strategy / problem-solving skills.

BOARD GAMES

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Many of our favourite board games have been put into digital format of one kind or another and some aren’t even online (such as Scene It), but are designed to be a sit-down but interactive social experience. Monopoly, chess, checkers, backgammon and many others can usually all be found and available to play with others around the world.

CARD & DICE GAMES

This one is pretty easy to explain. Ever played Solitaire, Crazy 8s or Go Fish? How about Poker, Rummy or Yahtzee? These are card or dice games; so card & dice games online are just representations of these favourites. Easy, right?

PUZZLES, BRAIN-TEASERS & LOGIC GAMES

Crosswords, sudoku, word find, jig-saw puzzles, trivia games, memory games, etc. all fall under this category. It also includes some arcade games (again, such as Zuma from Pop Cap or Tetris). Essentially, any game which makes you stop and truly think about your next move (even board games such as chess) falls into this category. Anything which tests your brain and really gets you thinking is a puzzle, brain-teaser or logic-game. You can likely test and compare your time/high-score with other players (if the web version still exists).

MMORPGs

This stands for Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game. These are typically graphical adventure games in which many players can logon at once and either play at the same time or even play with each other or against each other. They integrate arcade style gaming with table-top role-playing, puzzles and games of logic and much more. Most revolve around a series of ‘quests’ which your character must accomplish to continue onto the next level, whether the ‘next level’ represents a new area on the game or simply new abilities and statistics for your character.

Some of them are set up like the older arcade style games, such as the Legend of Zelda and Mario Bros. with a miniaturized ‘imp’ or ‘avatar’ running around a relatively 2-D, cartoon-ish realm, slaying monsters, finishing quests, etc (e.g. Maple Story). And others are more 3-D and very realistic in their graphics, running in a third-person or first-person perspective, and even nearly resemble cinematic productions (in truth, some of their ‘teasers’ look like movie trailers). An example of this would be World of Warcraft.

MUSH (text-based environments)

A short-form for “Multi-User Shared Hallucination”. Simply put, a MUSH is an online, multi-user, text-based environment. Some are games. Some are social and technical support environments. And still others are research areas. Imagine a series of chat rooms strung together in which you can ‘move’ through and each ‘room’ has a description on it, telling you what kind of environment it represents (e.g. a cave, a living room, a forest, etc.). Now, for the gaming environments, toss in a game theme like Dungeons & Dragons or Vampire: the Masquerade, or even tv themes such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly and movies such as the X-Men, and you have a text-based roleplaying environment based on those themes.

The non-gaming environments are slightly different and some do have ‘themes’ that are more for background colour than anything else. Some are used for research purposes (MIT’s MOO, LambdaMOO, etc.) and some are purely social. Some MU* game hosting services have MUSHes set up to provide on-hand, real-time support to game owners who are experiencing technical difficulties as well as to provide a social environment for the game owners to meet in and ‘network’.

Social Environments

These are graphical or text-based environments online where the primary function of visitors is to socialize. These are kind of akin to sites such as Facebook or MySpace, but are even more interactive because they are set in “real time”, like MUSHes or instant messengers. Instead of leaving messages for people (although this is often an option as well), you can stand around and chat with people while they are logged in.

The most popular of these types of environments is Second Life, which we’ve been hearing a lot of as of late. This is graphical and ‘3D’ in nature where visitors create ‘avatars’ (sometimes called ‘toons’) to represent themselves. These avatars are extremely customizable, allowing the user to ‘look’ how they wish online.

Another example of a graphical social environment is IMVU, a graphical instant messenger program. Avatars can be fully customized with a multitude of appearance options, just like in Second Life. (Check out Kelly’s avatar page: http://avatars.imvu.com/libzombie)

And finally, some MUSHes also offer social environments as well.

Benefits of Gaming & Virtual-Living:

• relaxation / downtime
• enjoyment
• stress relief (there’s nothing quite like blowing off some steam while beating up a bunch of ogres!)
• (depending on the game) exercise for your brain!
• (depending on the game) encourages reading!
• encourages quick thinking / decision making in a threat-free environment
• meeting others you would never get the chance to meet otherwise —-> social benefits!
• academic uses of virtual environments have huge possibilities, including addressing space issues, distance, and more!

Activities:

• Try out a few games/virtual worlds & blog about your experience. (Several game sites are listed below.)
• Think about why gaming and virtual worlds are of interest to libraries. Post your thoughts to your blog!

Resources/Tools:

Arcade, Puzzle, Word, Card Game Sites:

• MSN Games – Free Online Games: http://zone.msn.com/en/root/default.htm
  Recommendations: Diner Dash, Mahjong Tiles
• Pop Cap Games: http://www.popcap.com/
  Recommendations: Bejeweled, Zuma
• Yahoo! Games: http://games.yahoo.com/games/front
  Features: old-style arcade games such as Pac-Man and Frogger
• Web Sudoku (new link!): http://www.websudoku.com/
  Play this new favourite online!

MUSH, MUX, MUD (text-based) Game Sites:

• X-Men: Retribution MUSH (game):
  (web) http://xmr.dune.net
  (wiki) http://xmr.dune.net/wiki/
  (game) telnet to xmr.dune.net port 4567
• List of Clients (as telnet is a bit unweildy): http://www.ogrmux.com/links/links-clients.htm
  
  MUSH Game List Sites:
• (MMORPG) MMORPG.com: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?gameId=0&bhcp=1
• (MUSH / MUX / MUD) Online Gaming Resource: http://www.ogrmux.com
• (MUSH / MUX / MUD) The Mud Connector: http://www.mudconnect.com
• (MUSH / MUX / MUD) Top MUD Sites: http://www.topmudsites.com

Free MMORPG Sites:

• FLYFF (Fly For Fun): http://flyff.gpotato.com/
• Maple Story: http://www.nexon.net/
  (Attention: Only works with Internet Explorer!)
• Runescape: http://www.runescape.com/

Pay-for-Play MMORPG Sites:

A note about pay-for-play MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) is that such games require that you buy the software (either online or from a store) and then pay a monthly fee (e.g. World of Warcraft is about $40 for the basic game and $15 USD per month after that for the online account). Some of these games have free trials, either by downloading the software and signing up for a temporary account or by buying a trial software CD for a couple of dollars. They are great fun, but just be aware of the monetary investment that these games require.

• Anarchy Online: http://www.anarchy-online.com/
  Theme: Science Fiction
• Battleground Europe – WWII Online: http://www.wwiionline.com/scripts/wwiionline/be_info.jsp
  Theme: Historical
• City of Heroes: http://www.cityofheroes.com/
  Theme: Superheroes
• Dungeons & Dragons Online: http://www.ddo.com/
  Theme: Fantasy
• World of Warcraft: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml
  (Attention: 10-day ‘free’ trial CDs can be bought at Future Shop for $1.99; barring that, I have a few free trial invitations that I can email out)
  Theme: Fantasy
  




Virtual Environments (non-game):

• Second Life: http://secondlife.com/
• IMVU: http://www.imvu.com




Further Readings and Resources:

• Mystic Station Designs “New To Gaming?“
• LambdaMOO: An Introduction
• Inside Mac Games News: Using World of Warcraft to Teach English
• Second Life: A Story Too Good To Check
• An Introduction to MUSH
• MUWiki (hosted by Brody @ Join The Saga)
• “What Is D&D?” (geared more to Dungeons & Dragons but gives brief explanations behind some basic facets of roleplaying games)
• Play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game (nostalgia-link and not really ’social’ in nature; just goes back to my ‘roots’)