Just playing? - the Ethics (essay)

Not Just Playing!!

Game always regards as a bad thing as it always related to violence and sex. In addition, it is essay for us to addicted to it. Thus,many parents ban their childrens to play video games.This essay is aim to correct people’s mistaken believe toward game and point out the advantages of playing game.

Video game has its own value that benefits us. According to Susan, game draw the core academic disciplines of reading, math, and social studies. (1) (David M, Susan.P.66) take Restaurant City as a examples that it includes some math and business skills for the player to think deeply about. In the game,the players need to place their tables cleverly. It is because the way of which they place their tables directly affect their “restaurant’s profits”. They need to use the knowledge of math to think out the efficient way for their “staff” to move and the fewer places for staff to move, the more efficient is and the profits can be more! Also, the business skills are also seen in this game. The players need to make good use of their “staff” as the number of staff is limited. It is better for them to turn their staff in different dutries between janitor, waiter and chef according to the condition of restaurant. No wonder why Lee say that this (Restaurant City) wasn't a game; it was a business (2)(Lee,05.2009) .The game actually is a way to train a good manager and encourage players to think more deeply.

In addition, video game enhance people’s creativity. For example, "iCarly encourages creativity with its great characters and storylines," said David Oxford, Activision Publishing.(3) (Nov 14, 2009). Restaurant City provides over 800 items and let their players’ restaurants being visited and rated to encourage players to create their characteristic restaurant and avatars.

Apart from creativity, games encourage initiative.(1) (Susan.P.66)Since games also include some competitions amoug players. Thus, players need to have initiative to fight what they want if they would like to win in the game. They can’t be in a passive way. Therefore, game encourages people to fight for what they want and have initiative.

Finally, game maintain friendship. A lot of online game and social game allow players to interact with their friends (5) ( Gelles, May 26, 2009). The Awards system in Restaurant City encourage people to give gift to friends, help Friend in need, visit friends as well as appreciate others. Such game can enhance the social skill of players and it is what people need in the real life too.

To sum up, game has a lot of advantages and not just for fun! It gives us a chance to experience or practise something that we don’t have in the real world.Some skills we learn from the game also can be adopted in the real life such as social skill. Game actually is not only related to violence and sex. It depends on the choice of player choose as well as what and how much players can learn from it.

Reference:
1. "Media Violence". David M, Susan Musser and Book Editors.Greenhaven Press.
2. "Facebook 'brain drain'? It depends". Joanne Lee, Straitstimes.com Editor 2009-05-09 (accessed 15Nov2009)
3. Activision Publishing, Inc.; Activision Publishing Releases Nickelodeon's iCarly for Wii and Nintendo DS/ Nintendo DSiAnonymous. Leisure & Travel Week. Atlanta: Nov 14, 2009. pg. 19 (accessed 13Nov2009)
4. “Levelling up is the name of the game”. Joanne Lee, Straitstimes.com Editor (accessed 15Nov2009)
5. “Facebook finds treasure in games”. David Gelles. Financial Times. pg. 18 (accessed 25Nov2009)

Just playing? -the ethics...Article 6

"Facebook finds treasure in games"
David Gelles. Financial Times. London (UK): May 26, 2009. pg. 18



News analysis ; Software developers look for new ways of benefiting from social networking, writes David Gelles
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has a second job. On top of managing growth of the popular social networking site, she is also a chef in Restaurant City , one of the thousands of games that run on Facebook.
Facebook's platform, which allows third-party developers to build services and games that run inside the social network, celebrated its second birthday over the weekend. In that time, it has spawned a new industry of profitable application developers, and a host of imitators. It has also allowed Facebook users, such as Ms Sandberg, to interact with friends through the new category of social gaming.
"The world is moving more and more towards applications that are layered over social networks, whether it's Facebook, FriendFeed or Twitter," said Michael Wolf, the former president of MTV Networks who is now on the board of advisers at Slide, one of the leading application developers.
"The Facebook platform set the standard for creating these ecosystems."
The growth of Facebook's platform has mirrored expansion of the site itself. Facebook now has more than 200m active users, and the company says most users have at least one application.
There are now more than 52,000 applications in the App Directory, and more than 100 of these boast at least 1m active users.
Interacting with applications keeps users on the site, and in some cases, drives them to it.
"Users that are using the platform are more engaged and spend more time on the site," said Ethan Beard, Facebook's director of platform marketing. "And people are coming to play some specific applications. Some of them are borderline addictive."
Most likely, the addictive ones are also moneymakers. All the major developers are private, and do not release revenue figures. However, the major social game developers all claim to be profitable.
Zynga, the largest developer with 42m users for its games, which include Texas Hold'Em Poker and Mafia Wars , is reported to be nearing annual sales of $100m. Playfish, the maker of Restaurant City, is said to be approaching $30m in sales. Together, developers working on Facebook's platform are expected to make more than $500m this year - perhaps more than Facebook itself.
"That's the beauty of having game DNA instead of web DNA," said Sebastien de Halleux, chief operating officer of Playfish. "Games have no problem making money."
Since the Facebook platform launched, several other media companies have introduced similar offerings. MySpace announced its own platform in October 2007. Apple has found enormous success with its iPhone application platform.
But while Apple takes a cut of all applications sold through its App store, Facebook applications are free to use, and the company receives no share of the revenues developers generate through the sale of virtual goods or credits for advanced game play.
Instead, Facebook says it sees value in building an audience and selling advertisements around the applications.
The networking site is also working on a payments system that would let it get a slice of the transactions being made within the applications.
Working with the Facebook platform is not without its challenges. Frequent changes to Facebook's design mean developers have to adapt quickly.
"It feels like the rules of engagement seem to change every three months," said Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga. "You don't sleep much."
And the success enjoyed by leading developers is inspiring imitators, which means more competition.
In an effort to help users identify the best applications, Facebook last week launched its Verified Apps programme, through which the company gives an application its stamp of approval.
Now Facebook is using the popularity of its platform to expand into other parts of the web.
With Facebook Connect, users can access more than 8,000 other sites, including Netflix and Citysearch, with their Facebook logins.
"With the platform, Facebook is becoming the social plumbing wherever people go and wherever games go," Mr Pincus said.
Credit: By David Gelles in San Francisco

CASE STUDY

CASE STUDY

GAME: RESTAURANT CITY

Just playing? -the ethics...Book

"Media Violence". David M, Susan Musser and Book Editors.Greenhaven Press.

(1)"Video game and computer networks have assumed central roles in our daily lives. For better or for worse, the mass medis are having an enormous impact on our values, belief, and behaviours." P.24

(2)"we define media violence as visual portrayals of acts of physical aggression by one human against another." P.26

(3)"In recent years, evidence has accumulated that human and primate young have an innate tendency to imitate whomever they observe....As children observe violent behaviour, they are prone to imitate it."P.28-29

(4)"video game affect emotions. Through classical conditioning, fear, anger, or genernal arousal can become linked with specifid stimuli after only a few expoures. These emotions influence behavior in social setting away from the media source through stimulus generalization. A child may then react with inappropriate anger or fear in a novel situation ..." P.29

(5)"Violent video games typically reward aggression and teach players that violence is an acceptable form of problem solving. After long-term exposure to violence game, this message is ingrained in players and can lead to lasting negativeeffects." P.49

(6)" With each exposure, the child's perception of the world is shifted to include violence as a common and acceptable occurence. The child's behaviors evolve to correspond with this perception and can follow "behavioral scripts" established through experiencing violent media." P.53

(7)" the bystander effect describes how violent media desensitizes its users to the real-life violence making them generally less caring and sympathetic to victim of violence and less likely to intervene when they witness violence. finally, the appetite effect demonstrates that using violent media often increases children's desire to see more violence."P.54

(8)"When children play violent games,... their heart rates increase and their blood pressurerises. they begin to think agressively and to solve problems with violence. In this heightened and primed state, children are more likely to perceive other people's behavior as aggressive and they are more likely to respond agressively."P.54

(9)" Game are also complex problem-solveing systems that develop logical thinking, decision making, and encourage a scientific approach to the unknow."P.65

(10)"Video game have a powerful potential for learning and training . As well, there is a growing body of practise, products andresearch to support the notion that games are a valuable addition to the set of tools teachers are using in formal education."P.65

(11)"game draw the core academic disciplines of reading, math, and social studies while also encouraging teamwork, initiative, creativity, problem solving and leadership."P.66

e.g. Railroad Tycoon (Firaxis Game)
Muzzy Lane's Making History

(12)"the game encourage students to use core academic skills in the pursuit of solving complex problem. Thinking deeply, not flicking buttions."P.68

(13) "in Quest Atlantis, player focus on environmental issues ..." P.69

Just playing? -the ethics...Article 5

"Facebook 'brain drain'? It depends". Joanne Lee, Straitstimes.com Editor
2009-05-09 (accessed 15Nov2009)

LAST month, a study found that college students who use Facebook tend to have poorer school results than non-users - apparently a half grade point lower.
The study was done in Ohio Dominican University, by researchers Aryn Karpinski and Adam Duberstein. It concluded: 'It may be that if it wasn't for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socialising online.'
What balderdash.
And yet another study, touted by the Freakonomics blog, by Baroness Susan Greenfield, a University of Oxford neuroscientist, warned that the instant feedback and impersonal communication offered by social networking sites could drive behaviour in negative directions.
'As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity,' she said.
Is this 'Facebook Brain Drain' for real? Does reconnecting with your friends, trawling through their pictures and interacting through games and quizzes really lower your IQ?
Then again, the Freakonomics authors - University of Chicago economist Steve Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner - did juxtapose those Facebook studies with other studies that claimed that surfing the Web increases workplace productivity.
So does social networking really mean users develop more slowly intellectually? Or do mentally challenged people just naturally self-select into seemingly pointless Internet habits?
I'm going to sit on the fence and say the answers should be decided on a case-by-case basis.
The 'Facebook Brain Drain' really bothered me when people started talking about it. Those who never really got the whole online social networking thing were saying 'I told you so'. My parents even encouraged me to return to more 'serious journalism' and turn my back on this 'digerati stuff'.
Then I started playing Playfish's latest online game on Facebook - Restaurant City.
It is much like SimCity - a city-building simulation game, first released in 1989, which morphed into various versions of best-selling games by gaming company Maxis. In SimCity, you build cities, playground parks, condominiums, safari parks to keep the people happy.
In Restaurant City, you are a restaurateur, trying to collect ingredients for high-end dishes, decorate your eatery, hire your friends and keep your customers happy. The aim of the game is to make money to build bigger and more popular restaurants as you level up.
Initially, I thought it was just another silly Facebook game. You have a few tables, one or two hired staff, and just let the game run in one of your background screens while you do something else - like, er, work, for example.
But as you start levelling up and your restaurant gets bigger, you have new responsibilities. You must provide toilet facilities for your guests, hire cleaners for those toilets, hire more wait staff and cooks. It reminded me of my 'Operations' module in business school.
I had a couple of cooks who'd be busy flipping their pans, but not enough wait staff to serve the dishes and clear the tables. Then when the wait staff got their act together, the customers would mess up the toilets.
This was turning out to be a game not just about collecting ingredients for exotic dishes any more. It was turning out to be a production line - a production line with bottlenecks, excess capacity and human resource problems.
In B-school, I remember very clearly a video we watched showing a clothing manufacturer's production line which appointed members to do specific tasks - like sew the leg seams of a pair of trousers or attach zips. The bottleneck problems occurred when the thread broke on a sewing machine, needed to be replaced and caused a pile to build up.
The lesson: Train your staff to double or triple up on duties. If there was a pile with zips to be attached, the person doing the sewing would have to stop what she's doing, help attach zips until the bottleneck eases up, then return to her designated duty. Common sense, you would think, but apparently not to production line managers in the real world.
Well, not this online restaurateur. My waitresses double up as toilet cleaners when the need arises, and my chefs help out with clearing the tables when business gets too brisk.
Spend money to decorate the walls and separate tables for customer privacy? Forget about it. My tables surround the kitchen area so the waiters walk a minimal amount.
After a week, I've realised it's not a game you can just leave on. I have to keep my eyes on the business every five minutes to make sure idle chefs help clear tables and/or clean toilets. This wasn't a game; it was a business.
Are Facebook games a waste of time and brain cells? It depends. On what? On whether the lessons - social or mental - are identified and absorbed by the Facebooker.
But why do I do it? Ask me another time, when I'm not reassigning my staff to cover for one another in my restaurant!
joannel@sph.com.sg
EDITOR Are Facebook games a waste of time and brain cells? It depends. On what? On whether the lessons - social or mental - are identified and absorbed by the Facebooker.

Comment: I agree that restaurant city can train my brain!!!

Just playing? -the ethics...Article 4

"Levelling up is the name of the game "By Joanne Lee, Straitstimes.com Editor




HOW big is your farm?
That's a question I was asked the other day in reference to a game on Facebook.
Sheepishly, I replied: 'Which one?'
There has been a rash of farming games on Facebook: Farmville, Farm Town and Country Story are among the more popular ones. I've played them all.
These 'applications', which social networking site users add to their profile accounts, have grown hugely in popularity.
Farmville alone had 55.7 million monthly users as of yesterday. All of these players buy seeds, plough plots of land, plant the seeds and reap the crops when they are ready - all done with a few clicks of the mouse.
And it is not only the young who engage in this, though a National Institute of Education study has discovered that Singapore students spend 27 hours a week on massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
Adults well into their 30s are also participating.
When people began signing up for the social networking site a few years ago, things weren't quite so advanced.
Applications were mere boxes that were added to your profile page. People sent things to one another - from birthday cakes to flowers and happy pills - via different applications.
These first-generation applications did not offer an opportunity for application developers to monetise the trend. Then the game developers got smart: They made people start sending stuff through games.
The second-generation social games are now banking on players spending real cash to buy online money, with which to buy in-game products.
Some games such as Pet Society and Restaurant City, both developed by Playfish, get users to set up customisable characters that interact with one's Facebook friends who are also playing the cartoon-like game.
A pet in Pet Society visits other pets' homes, motivating players to decorate their homes by spending gold coins in shops. Players in Restaurant City offer different dishes, swop ingredients and earn coins as game-generated characters visit and show off their eateries.
Zynga operates Mafia Wars which lets players gang up, buy weapons and fight one another. Playdom's Sorority Life gets them to dress up, climb the social ladder and flame other people.
These games are not targeted at hard-core gamers. They aim to earn revenue from the way social networkers live on the Internet.
So why do people play these games?
It's all about 'levelling up'. In all these games, you start at Level One and gain experience before moving on to the next step. Higher levels let you do more advanced things.
I asked a friend who had stuck with Playfish's Country Story, growing and harvesting crops to achieve its current maximum level 54, why he had done so.
He said: 'I wanted to grow the ginseng!' Ginseng is available only at Level 54, you see.
Higher levels also allow you to dress up, buy the latest rock star outfit for your pet or kit out your farm with decorative items like picnic tables.
And just as your social networking profile provides a sketch of you, the way you customise your character says a lot about who you are. For example, local blogger Wendy Cheng's farm on Farmville features pink gates and pink cherry trees planted in a big heart shape - choices consistent with her pink-loving girly character as manifested on her blog Xiaxue.com.
Something else that might drive you to attain higher levels is that you can show off your standing. The games usually feature a bar indicating your position relative to your friends'. Levelling up therefore affords you bragging rights.
All this has made the social gaming trend big money for developers. They tempt players to level up; you can buy game money to purchase items that help you level up faster. I know people who have spent more than US$50 (S$70) a month on this pursuit.
But before I got that far, I deleted my farm. It was painful as I'd built up a sizeable holding of artichokes, watermelons and glossy brown horses. It is now even more painful to see my friends posting photos online of their massive farms boasting exotic produce like pepper flowers. But the game took up too much time and I didn't want to leave my crops to wither and die during the lengthy periods I was away from my farm.
But the thing is, Farmville might actually have saved my information, meaning I could resurrect my farm just by hitting a button.
Now, how big was my farm again?
joannel@sph.com.sg

Comment: ENHANCE OUR CREATIVITY // MAINTAIN THE FRIENDSHIP

Website:

(1) the Video Game Critic's Atari 2600 Reviews
http://www.videogamecritic.net/2600.htm


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