In 2 weeks time I’ll be bringing 88milesperhour to you from Turkey and Greece—complete with pictures (I hope). It’s been a rough few weeks for me so I haven’t been able to post anything. Between finals, term papers, and the death of a family pet, the Boar hasn’t held much time from me. I hope to drop a post or two before I depart overseas but for now I apologize for a lack of posts and that you’ll be seeing more of them soon.

This Shepard does not necessarily reflect the choices of the author. (Nor does she look as cool as my character)

It’s not uncommon to hear stories in the news that like to scapegoat gaming culture as something dangerous or violence-inducing—but do you ever hear the opposite? Morality choices in video games have been prominent for a long time it seems. From “simple” choices like harvesting or saving little sisters in Bioshock through to more complex ones like what’s found in Fable or Mass Effect, game makers are more and more commonly immersing their playerbase in more than just storyline.  How do your morals in game affect those out of game?

I’ll admit, I’ve been doing my fair share of Mass Effect 2 playing recently. As always in these moral-choice games I tend to take the hyper good/moral highroad as I can’t seem to bring myself to play otherwise. Each time I try to roll out another save with a character that’s more on the “dangerous” side, I can’t bring myself to follow through, or I get bored and uninterested with the character—but what does that say about me? I find that, especially during my current bout of Mass Effect 2, that my real life choices are further influenced by my gaming ones.

While I might be in the minority here, I’ve found that by spending so much time with my paragon (good) Alarael Shepherd, I’ve come to see the world and my choices much more in the same vein that I make hers. For example, the other day I went through to get a coffee at Tim Hortons and the girl went to give me back way more change than I was due. I proceeded to return her the excess and take back my proper amount. While I would have likely done this anyway, I couldn’t help but think of my character after the fact. While it’s nothing so dramatic as saving someone’s life or protecting the universe from invasion, it still falls in that same realm of “goodness,” and would certainly net me some sort of paragon points were there a scale I could check after the fact. Just like within these games, no one can be perfect. Even when you think you have the best intentions at heart, you can still unintentionally be netted some renegade points for your actions. All you can hope for is that in the end, the side you best favour comes out the highest on the scale.

What does this all have to say about player/character though? Well, despite what we’d like to believe, I think there’s more to our moral decisions in game than we’d like to believe on the surface. I’m not saying, however, that those people who choose to play all facets of a game (aka both killing and saving the little sisters in different playthroughs), or choose the “dark side” from the outset, are any less moral in real life than those who don’t. However, I do believe it does say something interesting nonetheless.

Games where moral decisions need to be made (and made often), I think players on the whole become more attached to the characters they play. Whether they’re playing out some unexpressed rebellious renegade side, or following their strength of heart paragon aims, these moral choices serve different purposes for each of us. The choices we make within them also definitely have an effect on our real life choices as well, whether we see it or not.

After an extended period of time playing your favourite morality-based character, take some time and look at the choices you make in real life after the fact. Do you take the time to walk an old person across the street? Or perhaps buy a homeless person something to eat? Or instead, do you find yourself driving faster (just because you can), or maybe shirking off your normal duties in favour of more pleasurable ones. Maybe you see no difference at all, but it’s something that’s worth a second look. As games get more and trickier morality questions implemented, I think people will begin to see how closely their instinctual morality affects their character’s progression—whether it is with or against the grain. Next time you choose to save the Citadel council, or annihilate a town in Fable II, take a step back and see how you feel or what that decision means to you. You might be surprised when you really sit down and think about it. At least I was.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

“NEXTED” (neks-ted)

1. the act of being removed from a video chat with a random stranger on chat roulette. 2. the act of selecting next while on chat roulette

–UrbanDictonary.com

I recently watched a video that delved into the community of Chat Roulette and covered some of the basic things one encounters there. One of the most prominent topics in the video was the idea of being “nexted” and it was asked at the end, what the world would be like if we could “next” people in real life the way people do in the Chat Roulette platform. While part of me has been entirely curious about this Chat Roulette phenomenon (which is what lead me to watch this video in the first place), I found myself being more curious about the idea of “nexting” than the actual Chat Roulette environment. What would a world be like where we could “next” anyone we were bored with?

It certainly is a powerful question if you think about it enough. “Nexting” could apply to any number of things beyond people as well. Don’t want to wait for the red light to turn? Next. Suddenly it’s green. Don’t want to deal with a boring date? Next. You’re suddenly at home curled up with a good movie or book instead. Tired of sitting through the umpteenth class of the semester? Next. Winter term is over and you’re on your way to your summer holiday.

Sure, lots of these things seem like great personal triumphs. No longer be bored. Waiting? Never. Anxious? No worries! Instant gratification? Yes please! When you look at the great picture, however, you clearly come to see that it’s not such a great concept. If everyone was “nexting” everything, it would be sheer pandemonium. People and objects would be popping into and out of existence. The future now, or at least a bit sooner. You’d never be able to plan anything, you’d never have the built-up anticipation for something you were dying to get to, and you’d probably have a difficult time keeping anyone’s attention as they’d already be off onto the next big thing that’d grab their attention. It’d get as bad as channel surfing constantly through life—and what’s the point in that? Granted, all of this is, of course, a little extreme—and who wouldn’t want a few “get-out-of-jail nexted-style” cards to use every now and then for those sheer emergencies.

With all those second midterms, exams, assignments, and ultimately finals encroaching, who wouldn’t want to “next” their way into May? Instant gratification and pushing onto the next best thing may be great every once in a while—but without the agony of waiting, spent time and emotions tied therein, can we ever really appreciate what we gain?

That being said—watch the video and think about what a “nexted”-capable world would be like. I’d love to hear your theories!

So, the past two weeks have been pretty hectic with midterms and the like so I haven’t really formulated anything proper this past week for an entry. However, with reading week formally beginning today (read. Monday), I figured I’d start you off with a cute cat video that helped cheer me up amidst my studying and intense coffee sessions in case you needed a bit of a smile, too.

Tune back in later in the week for a (hopefully) more lengthy post.

Have a great reading week!

(Who doesn’t love some great multitasking purr-worthy attention?)

Source: Zazzle.com

I was reading through TheRecord’s online paper a few days ago looking for a particular story when I stumbled upon an entirely unrelated but equally interesting article. It’s about the collapse of English Language Proficiency in our tech-savvy (read: dependent) generation and what better place is there to discuss it than in a tech-centric blog.

Now, I’d like to preface this post by saying I consider myself to have a fairly decent writing-skill level. I’ve read a great deal of “academic” writing from peers throughout my university career as well as have done a fair bit of editing of peer work (both required and volunteer) since high school, and I have to say that I agree with a lot of what’s being brought up in this article. That’s not to say, however, that I believe the causes are the same, but rather that there certainly is a great degree of syntax neglect these days.

This article is coloured by a great number of quotations from all sorts of grammar, education, etc. experts who all have their piece to say about the decline of writing skills and grammar knowledge. Many attribute this great decline to the rising popularity of the Internet, word processing programs, Facebook, Twitter, cell phone texting, and possibly even the moon’s phases (well, maybe not that last part).

“Ontario’s University of Waterloo is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills.

Almost a third of those students are failing.

‘Thirty per cent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level,’ says Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at UW.

‘We would certainly like it to be a lot lower.’

Barrett says the failure rate has jumped five percentage points in the past few years, up to 30 per cent from 25 per cent.

‘What has happened in high school that they cannot pass our simple test of written English, at a minimum?’ she asks.

Even those with good marks out of Grade 12, so-called elite students, ’still can’t pass our simple test,’ she says.

Poor grammar is the major reason students fail, says Barrett.

‘If a student has problems with articles, prepositions, verb tenses, that’s a problem.’

Some students in public schools are no longer being taught grammar, she believes.

‘Are they (really) preparing students for university studies?’”

The article goes on to discuss similar occurrences happening on university campuses across Canada. These close-to-home statistics are worrisome considering that we’re supposed to be an educated society, especially in the wake of how easy the ELPE (English Language Proficiency Exam) is (or should be) to native English speakers. It’s also fairly scary to hear that a great deal of the people who fail still did well in their high school English courses. What were these students learning to excel at when the rest of us were being taught how to properly write essays, proposals, etc? I remember having grammar and spelling ground into me from a fairly early age only to be faced with heavily structured essay writing later on. If anything, coming to university was a chance to be more free and step beyond the rigidity of high school English structure – but it appears some people either never learned that structure to begin with or they simply are too lazy to put it into action.

Said later in the article, this shocked me most of all:

“Emoticons, happy faces, sad faces, cuz, are just some of the writing horrors being handed in, say professors and administrators at Simon Fraser.

‘Little happy faces … or a sad face … little abbreviations,’ show up even in letters of academic appeal, says Khan Hemani.

‘Instead of ‘because’, it’s ‘cuz’. That’s one I see fairly frequently,’ she says, and these are new in the past five years.

Khan Hemani sends appeal submissions with emoticons in them back to students to be re-written ‘because a committee will immediately get their backs up when they see that kind of written style.’”

Has our generation really been so sheltered or uneducated to know that that’s simply not appropriate in any kind of formal paper, assignment, or appeal? We all like to use shorthand, emoticons, and such things in our daily lives because they make quick communication and conveying of information easy. We’re addicted to fast-talking, QWERTY blasted texting, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter 150 character messages – but when did the line between casual communication fade enough to make people think that kind of method is OK for anything outside of casual communication?

While the article tends to make a scapegoat of ‘teh intarwebz’ for all of life’s problems I’m not about to jump on board for such an easy excuse. Instead, I choose to see it more as a band of pure laziness and ignorance. It doesn’t take much in your essay or online communication to type out ‘you’ instead of ‘u.’ ‘Cuz’ is just as easy to write as “because” and letting poor grammar and spelling build up on your Facebook posts, e-mail communication, or gaming-chat boxes simply makes you come across more ignorant than anything else. As I said, we all love our short-form, but there’s a time and a place for it. Too much can become annoying to read and generally makes whatever you’re trying to say sound less respectful or valid – especially on an academic level.

So next time you’re writing that little tidbit to your friend on Twitter or talking to your guild in World of Warcraft, take these extra few seconds and try to be as correct as possible. Nobody’s perfect but that doesn’t mean you have to be one of the unwashed masses either. I guarantee if you take the time to be more eloquent in your daily life, it’ll show in your academic writing, too. Technology can be a great tool to improve your writing rather than to degrade it. So prove society wrong and make them see that it’s the individual to blame for their writing laziness, not the tech.

Source: Geekologie

I was semi-recently directed to an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) via one of my favourite Web sites, geeksugar.com. This article was discussing our relationship with technology as a society and how rather than bringing us closer and connecting everyone, it’s actually turning us into mindless drones, defining our importance by our electronic tech resumes. Seems to be something that Sci Fi has been warning us against for years – first comes the technology obsession, then comes overkill, and finally disaster. Well, we’re not quite in Fallout’s ruins of Washington D.C. yet, nor have we been fully assimilated into the Borg collective, but we’re surely inching closer.

The article, entitled “Technology and the New ‘Me’ Generation”, focuses heavily on the majority of the populace and their seeming need to define themselves based on the “strength” of their connection to the world. This is defined in a number of ways, be it the number of friends you have on Facebook, followers on Twitter, or even how many emails or text messages you get in a day. Even those who claim to be out of the realm of tech find themselves obsessing over every little snippet of information that gets pushed through their Facebook newsfeeds. Exciting, boring; monumental, minimal; important, pointless–all of these attributes and more of every byte of information that gets pushed through the series of tubes are gobbled up eagerly by other people seeking the same social acceptance through mass over-information. In this kind of world it isn’t uncommon to find people retweeting, friending, commenting, etc. in the hopes of having someone repay the favour. In essence, the Internet is quickly becoming (if it hasn’t already) a giant circle jerk, in most social media capacities anyway. Of course this extends to our other social tech devices (I’m looking at you, precious BlackBerry) as we often find ourselves aimlessly checking emails, text messages, Facebook – all in hopes of having been contacted in some way. It doesn’t matter if it’s directly important or not. As Rachel Marsden notes,

To many people, it doesn’t matter much who calls or what they want. What matters is that the call reflects our existence back upon us. They wanted us, and that is an emergency. Because we won’t feel truly wanted again until the next email, text or call. Our wants. Our needs. Our relentless Twitter stream of banal ramblings. We use our Facebook “fan pages” for the same purpose. Yes, we may have “friends” on Facebook, but some don’t feel truly valued until they have successfully harassed those friends 10 times daily into becoming acknowledged admirers.

Someone set us up the bomb.

So where does this leave us? Have we become slaves to our technological overlords? Not quite. There’s still hope. Common courtesy and real life interactions are key to keeping any keen individual grounded in reality. The interwebs and social networks we’ve built ourselves may seem shiny and nice, but they really don’t amount to anything without the people around us that we really care about. So next time you’re sitting in class waiting for your iPhone to beep at you, maybe you should turn around to your classmate and actually have a real life sincere conversation. Go through your Facebook/etc profiles and delete people you don’t remember or never talk to. Why define yourself by how many people you barely know when you can define yourself by your actions and relationships with the people you really care about in reality?

Pay attention and hold the door open for someone coming in or out behind you. Let someone into traffic when you’re driving. Make eye contact and smile with at least one person you walk past during the day. It’s the little things that add up over the course of our lifetimes that make us who we are, not how many e-”friends” we have. By taking the time and noticing the people around you, you’re likely to make a grander and more lasting impact than you are updating your status to something inane on Facebook. Throughout human history we have strived to live together and support our tribes, clans, communities, and peoples. Even 50 years ago you knew who your neighbours were and who you could count on if anything went wrong. I challenge you to name even three of your nearest neighbours if you live outside of a dorm. I know I can’t. It’s time to step out of the Cave and live in the sunshine of reality. I know I’m planning on taking at least a few sequential vacations there. I’ll send you a postcard, or at least post about it on Facebook. XOXO

Copyright EA Sports Active.

A delayed welcome back to campus, post-holiday, and fall 2009 exam season. Hello to 2010 and hello to more readings and assignments. Joy.

If you’re like most students, you spent as much time as possible between terms lavishing in the goodness of home-cooked meals, relaxation, and precious sleep — not exercise. What this means, of course, is that you probably picked up a few extra pounds nomming down Grandma’s turkey dinner spread and are now facing campus with slightly tighter jeans in the morning.

We all know how much effort it can take to get out to the gym, especially on those particularly busy days: so, instead, I offer you some gaming alternatives for the days you just can’t bring yourself to leave the comfort of home.

Rhythm games are more than just a great way to bring friends and family together. They also generally offer a decent amount of light to medium cardio and stretching while making you think you’re just enjoying a game. The intensity of these games varies from simple things like Wii Sports up to more dedicated platforms such as Dance Dance Revolution. For the purposes of this entry I’ll be including targeted exercise “games” as rhythm games. While they’re more direct about getting you to exercise, they tend to offer merely advanced or directed versions of what’s already offered from simpler rhythm games.

So here’s my list of the top four games that you should check out if you’re looking to add a little more cardio, or just get your body moving after vacation to help get yourself ready and raring to hit the gym on days when your schedule is less arduous.

Copyright Harmonix.

4 – Rock Band 2 / Guitar Hero: World Tour

While your fingers can get tired via guitar solos and your voice stretched from too many high notes, the shining beacon of cardio here lies in the drums. You can work up a decent amount of sweat from serious drum playing in both of these titles (and their associated offshoots). Sometimes nothing can be more fun than wildly bashing the little red, green, yellow, and blue drum discs after getting your grades back. Indulging in the moment and becoming one with your inner drummer will certainly net you a decent amount of calories burned, especially compared to sitting still, staring at your computer screen, and it’ll let you get out a little stress to boot! You can even couple the activity with bringing a few friends over to play along as singer/guitarist/bassist if you so fancy. Combining fun, friends, and frantic arm flailing is a sure-fire way to kick-start your energy level.

Copyright Nintendo.

3 – Wii Sports / Wii Sports Resort

The concept of both of these titles is very simple: participate in a variety of real-world activities simulated with your Mii characters and Wii remote. Many will argue that these titles are far from heart racing, but those are likely the people who simply flick their wrists instead of going full tilt into the activities at hand. Why not take indoor tennis in the dire depths of winter to its full potential? As long as you’re careful not to let go and chuck your Wii remote into the TV, all of the activities offered in these games will not only offer you some indoor sports options but also allow you to play them in a small space, and without leaving the confines of the Wii’s home. Once again, both Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort improve when you have friends along for the arm-flailing adventure so be sure to pick up a few before your next victory serve.

Copyright Konami.

2 – Dance Dance Revolution (All)

Ahh DDR. It’s hard to wander around the video areas of the Internet without stumbling upon some video of a kid going crazy on a DDR pad. You don’t even have to go online to see what this game makes people do — just go to Galaxy Cinemas at Conestoga Mall on a busy night and look into the arcade. Despite how silly it can make us look, this game has captured the hearts of many and will definitely help you get your butt into gear after the holidays. Even on a basic level, you can find yourself spinning around hopping, skipping, jumping, and trying to get over your two left feet with as much style as possible. Most of the DDR games nowadays even come with built-in “workout” modes that help you track how many calories you should be burning per session. Marathon mode is great, too, offering extended versions of your favourite techno beats to stomp to, or, in some editions, allowing you to constantly stream songs until you just can’t take it anymore. Reminiscent of 5-song set lists in Rock Band, you can’t go wrong with a good DDR marathon session to get the blood moving.

Copyright Nintendo.

1 – Wii Fit Plus/EA Sports Active

Both of these “games” offer a great variety of directed exercise routines and choose-your-own adventure style, build-it-yourself methods. Being titled as exercise games in the first, you’re more likely to get proper exercise with either of these titles than the ones I’ve already mentioned. And while that is true, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be bored out of your brains, either. These games hold their success in their ability to keep you entertained while exercising. If they didn’t, wouldn’t you just go to the gym? I’m most partial to Wii Fit Plus, whose hula-hooping often gives me a run for my money, but both games hold their own and either one is a really good choice for the gamer who wants a little more efficiency and usefulness out of their gaming console.

Crayon Physics Screenshot

So, a very brief post this week. I had some pretty thought probing bookmarks saved to discuss at length but soon discovered the amount of homework chasing me Indiana Jones style, seemingly through a similar obstacle course of deadly temple traps. If I stop for too long I’m sure the boulder will catch up with me, so here’s what I have to say.

If you liked Scribblenauts, or puzzle games in general (a.ka. Braid, The Incredible Machine, World of Goo), then I think you should check out Crayon Physics next to wasteaway some of your study time. Involving similar structure as the aforementioned games, each level (from what I can tell) you’re given a problem and a means to solve it, but you need to discover it on your own. Unlike Scribblenauts, which uses words to solve the puzzle, you need to draw your way out of things. This may prove more fun for the artistically tuned or those lucky enough to own a tablet. I think due to the whimsical nature of drawing with crayons and the simple nature presented as the basis for this game it should win over even the coldest of hearts, if only for a little while.

Crayon Physics Screenshot

The demo is free to download  with the full game costing you $19.95 (exchange rates apply). I know I plan on diving into this nugget as soon as a bit more free time passes my way (or I seek it out) and I suggest you do too. Even if puzzle games aren’t really your thing, if you’re having trouble trying to figure out how to tackle your final project or paper, puzzle games can do wonders to help you think about situations and ideas in new ways. Who knows, maybe playing around with this game (or others like it) might help you get past your mental road block and finish things together before you stress your brains out!

To view their demo video check out their website or on YouTube.

(C) Blizzard Entertainment

Ok, so shiny Firefly/Serenity quotes aside, I was looking through the interwebs this past week and stumbled upon an article that I found of particular interest (It can be found here). This article entitled “How your brain sees virtual you,” takes a quick look into some research being done about gamers (more specifically MMO gamers it seems) and their relationships with their online personae on a psychological level.

There are countless ways we find to immerse ourselves into the lives of another–be it through following Harry Potter finding the Sorcerer’s Stone, identifying with the characters and witty dialogue of Joss Whedon or helping a Vault-born girl (/boy) find her father in the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Washington, D.C..

"Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go and beat you with to show you who's in rutten command" ~Jayne

But, what makes MMO’s generally special is their level of customization, control and social interaction that comes with the packaged characters. More like a ‘choose your own adventure’ book crossed with MSN and a splash of wholehearted gaming fun, it’s no wonder people get so hooked. But why?

Part of what this article looks into is the relationship between our perception of oneself and the separate perception of one’s online avatar. In the cited studies, there is apparently little difference in how your brain recognizes you thinking about yourself and of your avatar. This is not to say that people can’t differentiate the real from the unreal (it’s stated clearly that the brain understands these to be different), but rather that the same area of your brain used to think about yourself is also used to think about extensions of yourself like an online persona. This brings up a deeper question about what makes so many people get hooked on these types of games.

(C) Blizzard Entertainment

The article goes on to suggest the reason why we think so much of our online doppelgangers is because, in one way, we believe them to be “better” versions of ourselves. Extensions, but improved on: “You have this control over your avatar such that you’ve created this better version of yourself. I wonder whether these neural processes support reasoning about our better selves in some kind of wishful thinking sense.” Life is simpler in a MMO. The rules are set and you know what it takes to succeed. There is true (generally speaking) equal opportunity. Skill and commitment is prized over pocketbook and lineage. You become a hero, and despite long battles against innumerable foes, things are easier in the end. It’s no wonder people find this kind of setting enthralling. While they themselves might be caught in tough times, seemingly unending troubles or a world of confusion, people can turn to an online fantasy world and “become” who they truly wish they could be in real life (from a success point of view, not as much throwing fireballs, though I’m sure some of them want that too).

I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in a world where hard work actually pays off, magic is real, everyone is strong (or beautiful, or powerful or *insert MMO stereotype here*) and there’s no such thing as lasting unnatural death. In such a world, would it be so terrible to wake up as your character one day? For some, maybe. For others, they can only hope. For the rest of us, I suppose what we can learn best from all of this is simply to take the good lessons that MMOs and gaming in general teach us and apply them to our daily lives. Become more outspoken, take a chance and work hard. You never know who might be around to notice.

"Close Call" Women's T-Shirt from Jinx, logo

No, I’m not going to start out with some fantastic Back to the Future reference (despite my strong desire to). Instead, I’m simply going to say “Hello.” Welcome to the first of many entries in this blog named after a notable aspect of the aforementioned movie. Before we jump in headfirst without a life preserver, let’s go over the FAQ (yes even newly created blogs can have FAQ’s, duh) so you know what you’re getting into.

Why “88milesperhour”?

Well, I felt it was a great title-point to draw in everything and anything this blog will cover.

Ok so, what will this blog cover?

The good, the bad, and the ugly. No wait, I mean, the past, present and future—quite literally—of everything we know (and everything we will come to know) and love in pop culture: namely, video games, television, movies and some online sensations thrown in for good measure.

Why do you care about all this stuff?

To put it simply I’m a geek, and not just any geek, I’m a culture fanatic. I love learning about, looking at, and finding out about all kinds of cultures and what makes them tick. I also adore video games, movies, and T.V. and can sit with some of the best spewing quotes, reminiscing about, and arguing about the best and the worst of all forms of media.

Why write about it?

On top of my geeky nature, I also love to write! As they say, do what you love, and since I love to write and to delve into pop culture, why not combine the two?

Ok so really, why “88milesperhour”?

Well if you haven’t seen already, the reference of Back to the Future is so great when it comes to what this blog proposes to cover. The trilogy is not only a pop culture icon but also tackles things all along its PPF (past, present, future) timeline. It’s the perfect motion picture representation of my blog aims. In the fashion of Mr. Great Scott, I’ll look into everything that has been, is happening, or coming up to deliver not only highlights of goings-on in the world, but also have some fun with it. It’s an adventure in the making.

Ok, so I’m a little interested. When can I expect to hear your words of wisdom?

I’ll be updating every week on Wednesday mornings. Expect anything from an attempted dissertation on why Han Solo really did shoot first through what Halloween games are best for the horror-wimp and up to simple “Top-10″ style lists of upcoming games, movies, and T.V. shows for your pleasure. I want to give you everything.

So that’s it. If you’re still reading, great! If not, well I’m not sure why I’m still talking to you. Regardless, this is the premiere post of what I hope will be not only an intriguing but also entertaining blog.  As posts go on, I’ll be interested to hear your feedback as well as any ideas you have for themes, discussions, and favourite picks (movies/tv/games)!