What's up with gamers?

Thanks Deker for explaining all that stuff in language I can understand. When you start talking about MMO, FPS, TFC I start asking myself the question "what is this all about". Could someone explain this to me. I know there is different servers, obviously one server can't hold every game. I'll read the article that deker sent and try to have an understanding. It would be nice to here what there talking about in my class and be able to understand it.
Kristy

So I just read that article and boy I guess shouldn't be suprised at what the media just changes into what they want it to be. But that is just crap that they didn't hear the other side of the story. Sometimes I kind of just like to get into little tiffs with people just to see how far they really believe in something. He's right about the parents though I don't think I would allow my kids to play those games until they understood that it is not something that you can do on the street, which of course could come at any age depending on how mature they are. I think that people who watch that show don't watch for long because it's sounds like they tend to make things one sided and who wants to watch a show with a host like that. To be quiet honest I had never even heard of that show. But that is great they do have ratings and if it was that violent stores like Walmart and Target to have them on their shelves.
Kristy

MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. It refers to online worlds where thousands of people can be online at once. If you log off the game, the "world" is still there, it doesn't disappear when you leave. Games like this are World of Warcraft, Everquest, Ultima Online, and the ones Axiom mentioned. Other online games like Quake III and Halo are not "persistent worlds". Meaning if you log off, the world "disappears". When you enter a game with others, it's more like just a quick football match, rather than entering an online world.

FPS stands for First Person Shooter, which is a game where you are the characters "eyes". Meaning you don't see the character on the screen, you just see the gun/sword/stick that they are holding in front of you. Common examples of this are Half-Life, Doom, Quake, Halo, etc.

TFC stands for Team Fortress Classic which was a wildly popular "mod" for Half-Life. A mod is additional levels, guns, and characters for a game like Half-Life. Sometimes the entire game and all of the rules are modified as well, making it a completely different game.

Regarding the servers, yes there are lots and lots of servers. Each game is run on completely different servers, owned by completely different companies.

For instance, World of Warcraft alone has hundreds of servers worldwide. And each one of those servers is actually a cluster of individual computers linked together. Over 2 million people now play World of Warcraft worldwide. It takes some serious computing power to run all of that.

Then Everquest will have their own servers, and so on.

Games like Doom and Quake and Half-Life are actually run on player-owned servers. Anyone could setup a server. This means you don't always get the same quality and reliability that you would from a large company like Blizzard or Sony, though their servers have had trouble lately too just because they weren't ready for 2 million people to play the game.

Having some Psychology and Sociology in my background (and having a family full of clinical social workers and psychologists), but being an engineer who spends an enourmous amount of time on computers and online; it is a fascinating subject when you start talking about online interaction.

It used to be that people who spent lots of time online were seen as the 'outcasts' who had a hard time interacting with people in the 'real world'. But the internet has become such a megolomith of culture, and part of our culture--that people are building communities online. Online interaction has it's own set of social 'norms' just like any other culture. There are problems communicating because of the lack of non-verbal cues, but emoticons and other methods of communicating non-verbal have crept into forums and IRC communities to help clarify intent with verbage.

As in anything, you need balance to have stability. Too much online = poor adjustment and ability to communicate IRL; too much outside socialization = poor adjustment and probably avoidance of responsibilities. But I have shifted my prejudice, and I don't only think anti-social introverts are the only ones who spend limitless hours online. Granted, introverts gravitate towards online relationships because of their personal makeup and how they prefer to interact--the internet allows them to be more comfortable with people because of the separation of space. But... the internet is becoming it's own community with norms and values and language. Fascinating.

I have friends here that I won't hesitate to look up and spend time with next time I'm in Europe or Romania or New York. I consider them real friends.

Hey, I'm an anti-social introvert! Is that why you'll hesitate to look me up when you are in Nashville? Jerk! :P

so what ARE their hobbies?

chris

Wow! I just ran into this thread here. As I was reading it there seemed to be some hostility but I guess it's all good when one is passionate about something.

But whatever happened to the good ol' days of playing tag, or hide-n-go-seek until the sun went down. Or playing two hand touch football in the vacant lot or stick ball in the street. Has anyone ever just set up a can to throw rocks at until someone knocked the can over? Or how about launching water balloons from the backyard of the house to cars passing by while your friends whistled to signal the launch? Hahahahaha!!! Damn, we made alot of cars swerve and almost nail parked cars or end up on someone else's lawn.

Oh man, those were good times interacting and hanging out, then off to a friends house for dinner or hanging out in the garage going over some game tactics to play ball against the kids from the other street. Yeah, I remember those days, ending with a rock throwing contest across the lake to see how many skips your rock could get.

It might sound "old" but man, those were healthy, wholesome, good growin' up days. It's amazing how many people have let those things go...but it's fun watching kids who still play jump rope because they can't afford a computer or the latest games for the latest gaming consoles, and they're outside riding bikes and seeing who can make the longest skid marks after slamming on the breaks, then grabbing a ball for some kick ball. Anyone here familiar with baby bouncies?

Damn, I wish I were a kid again.

Now it seems like we're all noisy, screaming and hollerin' about all kinds of stuff:
"Hey you dirtbag over there, you think you're farts don't smell and that your greater than me cuz I don't do what you do and you don't do what I do and you think you're interpretation is the right one and cuz I don't do what I should, according to your opinion, you think I'm less than this or that, because you sit on the clouds all day pointing out everything you think is wrong according to what you perceive about that and this and this and that...."

Whew...okay, take a deep breath and count backwards starting at a hundred.

Cheers!

I think kids still play outside, Zerimar. They might even use their imaginations once in a while. But I guess everyone thinks their own childhood was the "right way" to grow up.

But I don't see how almost causing car wrecks with water balloons is any more wholesome than playing a video game in your own bedroom by yourself or with friends, minding your own business.

And it's not like kids haven't always been mean to each other, looked down on others, and cursed at each other. Sports guys have always made fun of non-sports guys, bullies have always existed, kids have always learned curse words when they were young, etc.

i think that both can be useful to one's life. Both playing outside and also learning online games or just learning plain out stratigies in role playing, both can teach you lessons like maybe I shouldn't have put a water balloon on the neighbor's car because now my parents are mad at me. Both have reprocussions that are for us to learn. How you spend your childhood is how you would like to spend your childhood unless you grew up in a abusive family or possibly a poor family and you didn't have the option. I think technology is a great thing to learn and kids these days do need to learn it to keep up with the real world , but as someone said earlier it's all in moderation. So I guess my point is that there is good and bad in everything, and we can't forget the gray areas.
Kristy

But I guess everyone thinks their own childhood was the "right way" to grow up.

I'm not saying my way was the "right" way to grow up man, I'm just reminiscing on what I would call the good ol' days for me.

But I don't see how almost causing car wrecks with water balloons is any more wholesome than playing a video game in your own bedroom by yourself or with friends, minding your own business.

First off I'm not comparing water balloon throwing to gaming and saying one is worse than the other or that's it's more wholesome. What I'm saying is what I did growing up at times and asking if anyone remembers. As I review my previous post I don't think I shot down gaming or playing on computers at all.

From reading my earlier post, all I'm basically saying is what it was like back in the day. Nothing more nothing less.

And it's not like kids haven't always been mean to each other, looked down on others, and cursed at each other. Sports guys have always made fun of non-sports guys, bullies have always existed, kids have always learned curse words when they were young, etc.

Hey partner, honestly, I don't know where that came from. Did I miss the posts on mean kids. That was somewhat of an irrelevant throw in don't ya think?

Ahhhh...the good ol' days...

Cheers!