Essay Topics

For the essay, I am planning on combining topics #3 & #6 because they both have to deal with the interpretation of visual content. I am going to interpret what the visual content is trying to say about each situation and what it means. I am also going to compare how the signs relate to real life.

Responses to "Gamer"

The movie "Gamer" is about video games that are played by people who "buy" or "rent" another person who volunteer themselves to be played with. "Society" is a video game that consists of making your own avatar. The player chooses a person who they would like to be and how they want them to act, dress, talk, etc. The comparisons I can make between this medium and real life is that the player wishes to do the things he/she makes the avatar do. Every single human has desires to do things they are afraid to try themselves, therefore the player makes the avatar do it because they are technically "not doing" themselves. "Gamer" is similar to reality shows because people in reality shows are "being" themselves and in "Society" the player is "being" him/herself. In my opinion "Society" was created in order for people to be themselves but use other people to do things they are afraid to do.

2) Write a blog arguing for or against the proposition that the heavy use of RPGs can blur one's ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

After reading "Video Games, Avatars, and Identity", in my opinion, the heavy use of RPG's can blur one's ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Personally, I've never really played any video games. Occasionally I play with friends, or cousins but rarely. But I have a little brother who can spend our playing video games. He is addicted to COD. He communicates to his friends and they start killing people (or whatever they have to do in the game). Although my brother plays video games, I'm glad to say he is not addicted. He also spends a lot of time outside of the house which is good. Personally, I haven't met anyone who is very addicted to games, but I've heard about some cases where kids cannot wait until they get home to play games. I actually believe that video games play a big role in children's (and some cases, adults) lives, specially boys. Since they are very young and their minds haven't developed completely, they can easily loose sight of what's real and what isn't and think that their lives are based on video games. In order to prevent this from happening, we have to be more social that way we can spend more time outside instead of playing video games all day.