Saturday, May 19, 2007

The Gaming World

I more or less wandered through the list of games, randomly clicking on whichever ones peaked my interest. The first game that I played was called “The ESP Game.” I’m actually not all that sure what the point of this game was. You’re basically paired up with another person online, and the both of you are given the same images. You try to describe the image while also guessing how your partner is going to describe the same photo as well. You keep entering words until at least one of your words are the same, all while avoiding “taboo words”. It’s like a mad rush to type as many descriptive words as possible, hoping that your partner thinks of the same words as you. This game is actually really addicting. I had to force myself to stop playing and remember that there was an assignment to do. Still, I can’t figure out the purpose of it, or why this is considered a “social impact game” at all.

The Anti-Bush Video Game
The Anti-Bush Video Game was actually surprisingly interesting. It held a lot of information about the Bush reign. As you go through the game, it tells you about the taxes and economic decline that occurred. You end up learning quite a bit, including the fact that Bush had declared he wouldn’t touch the social security fund, and yet a year or so later, broke into it, and then took our country into an economic decline. You have to shoot the “pig” politicians, and get past the different bosses as The Hulk, Mr. T, Christopher Reeves, and various other characters. It even has Bush and his wife talking about having more children for the sake of continuing their family line, in which you have to shoot them as they’re pretty much pumping out children.

Self-Esteem Games
These games I actually found really funny, but not quite fun. I wonder if they actually help you with your self-esteem. There are three separate games, and in the first one, Grow Your Chi, there are clouds with photos of happy, sad, or angry faced people, or names. You have to click on all the happy faces and on your name only, getting minus points if you click on any others. In the second game, EyeSpy, there is a square full of different people who all have angry, sad, or neutral faces. You have to find and click on the one happy face as fast as you can. There are rounds, and you can see if you improve between each of the three rounds. I guess I could see how these could improve your self-esteem, but I’m not sure if they had worked on me.

McDonald’s Videogame
In this McDonald’s videogame, you have to run a working McDonald’s chain from the crops and cows, to the slaughterhouse, to the marketing of the product, and workers. It’s funny because in order to fatten up the cows faster, you can add industrial waste or hormones to the cow’s food. You also have to control the office side of the company, including the public relations aspect, where you choose who to bribe: politicians, climatologist, health officer, or nutritionist costing from $200 to $300 a month. You find that doing this is important, because the cows need to eat soy, and you only have so much land, and sooner or later need to cut down the forests and/or villages to fill their needs. Either that, or you need to increase the hormones in the food to have a faster turnover rate of the beef, involving the health officer, and so forth. It’s a fun way to make fun of McDonalds. At first I didn’t realize (despite the mean looking Ronald McDonald) that this game was to show the wrongdoings of McDonalds, but got the picture quickly enough.

Queer Power, Welcome to Queerland
The point of this game is the continue to change orientations and roles in order to reach an orgasm. No one has a fixed sexual orientation, and you have to change it according to your partner’s current (and changing) role in order to get the sexual satisfaction that you want. It says that the initial choice between “dick-lover,” “pussy-lover” and “other or confused” affects your desire for/towards your partner, but I have yet to figure out how it does. The game is very derogatory, but it somewhat gets the point across, the point being that sexual orientation doesn’t matter (and yet it does because you have to change from male to female in order to have a sexual experience with your partner).

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