P.S.: Me second favorite movie-site for Frankfurt is Mal Sehn Kino.
12:15 PM

Wednesday, May 22, 2002  
Not exactly ...
IBM are going together with (SuSE) Linux for their now series of servers, e-server.
The new IBM TVads choose basketball as a metaphor for how the different components of a computer play together: like a well-oiled all-stars team.
In the first ad, a man-sized stuffed penguin (the Linux penguin) can be seen at the fringes whenever the actions gets rough.
The second ad that started playing this week introduces a new player to the team, a tall guy called "Linux" who slam-dunks like a young god. Cut. Team executives talk about the new guy's performance: excellent. And the money? Peanuts! Why would a world class athlete like him play for so little money? the managers asks. Because, says the coach, he loves the game.
Now, that's not exactly it ...
1:18 PM

Wednesday, May 01, 2002  
Games don't kill people ...

Torill comments on my post from Sunday. I had to read back in her blog a bit to make sure "death by computer game: when the games make people kill" is a vague paraphrase, not a statement.

Games don't kill people. Maybe certain kinds of (online-)shooters attract people with certain disorders or dispositions. But there's also the "valve"-theory. The reason why Torill is here, about to finish her phd, managing a family with kids, and ready to tell us about the fantasies of her youth, not dead from a gun to her head or her imaginary poisenous delicacies stuffed down her throat - is because they were (are?) fantasies.

Ever thought about doing unspeakable things to the guy who just almost flattened you with his big car while you were happily cycling along the bike-path? See ... Fantasies, like books, are an outlet for head-heavy, disciplined people. Computer games might be even better for most people, because they involve the body more (do I get sick snowboading on Playstation). Sports may be even better ... But I simply doubt FPSs teach people how to kill. After playing adventure games for a weekend, I still don't climb into air-vents (even though I fantasize about what I might find there). And after reading Albert Camus' The Stranger, I don't go kill an Arab (nor after listening to The Cure, either).

Another angle: At the Manchester games-conference Playing with the Future, Dorina Miron, Brian Brantley, Lucian Dinu, Barry Smith and John Chisholm from the College of Communication Sciences at the University of Alabama reported from their study on "Effects of Individual/Team Playing and Constructive/Destructive Goal on Players' Scores on the Game and on Social Desirability, Individualism, and Coping Style Scales". Meaning, they let the kids play aggression-based and non-aggression-based games and tested how well they learnt non-aggressive problem-solving from didactic TV afterwards. Although I think it might have been "cleaner" to test learning maths or Latin words, the results are interesting: obviously, what influences the learning-curve is not whether or not the game was aggressive (as aggressive as you can get in an official study with seven-year-olds) but on how well the players did in the game.

It seems that competent, successful players do better than frustrated players in a learning-situation that follows a session of playing. Maybe competent, successful players, even of shooters, are well-balanced after the game, while players who suck at Quake log off from their computers feeling particularly aggressive.

In that case, they better keep an eye on me during the next games-conference-with-LAN-party, cause my experience with Quake is certainly: log on, wonder what my screen-name is, get shot, log on again, wonder who I am, get shot, log on ...
1:32 PM