blog post 4

I asked 4 friends : How do you define a game?

Answers:

1)It is a fun activity where the participants act following predetermined rules.
2)Regulated recreational activity finalized to make people enjoy.
3)Interpretation of a role with the aim to have fun.
4)Interaction between one or more players controlled by a regulation. The principle aim of the game is recreational, but we can not exclude secondary aims like risking or something different from the canonic.

In class we discussed the following definitions:

- [...] a free activity standing quite consciously outside ”ordinary” life as being ”not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means (Huizinga, 1950).
- [...] an activity which is essentially: Free, separate, uncertain, unproductive, governed by rules, make-believe (Caillois, 1961).
- To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity (Suits, 1978).
- At its most elementary level then we can define game as an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition between forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome (Avedon & Sutton Smith, 1981).
- I perceive four common factors: representation, interaction, conflict, and safety (Crawford, 1981).
- A game is a form of recreation constituted by a set of rules that specify an object to be attained and the permissible means of attaining it (Kelley, 1988).
- A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003).

As we can see, the 1st,2nd and 4th definitions put in evidence the presence of rules. These match with all the definition we discussed in class, except that one of Crawford.

All 4 the definition put in evidence the funny aspect of this activity. These match with the Kelley’s definition.

The 3rd definition put in evidence the presence of the roles. This matches with the Crawford’s definition.

The 4th definition is the only one who speaks about the interaction between players. This matches with the Crawford’s definition.

I think no one of these definitions is exhaustive. However the majority of them matches with the definition of Crawford. For this reason I think Crawford’s definition is the closer one to the common idea of game.

I think the best definition it would be a mix between the above mentioned definitions.

My definition is the following:

A game is a recreational activity. Every players has a role and he interacts following some predetermined rules; these rules regulate the opposition of players’ or teams’ forces. As result these forces will create an outbalance in favor of some players or teams. This outbalance can sometimes coincide with the victory.

Blog post 1

Hilde Corneliussen studied a group of students taking a computer course, in order to dismantle the idea that women do not enjoy working with computers.
Previous studies just put in evidence that women use computers because they find it useful or necessary; however previous studies on men put in evidence their fascination and their close relationship with the machine. An idea that supported the stereotype of the hacker, typically a strong male relationship with computers.
Corneliussen believes that women’s feelings for the technology are not well discussed. On of the aims of her article is to look for women’s positive experiences with computers. She put in evidence that the special pleasure in technology found among men has also been identified as a barrier for women. Men’s pleasure it is a signal that computing is a special masculine field, then women reject the intimacy with the computers, in order to preserve their femininity.
Beginning with these premises and wanting to verify them, she studied a computer course class formed by 7 men and 21 women.
She threw out that:

-At the beginning women were surprised to find a majority of female students in Humanistic Informatic faculty;
-It seems that this majority had a positive effect on the women’s well-being as computer students;
-The women were surprised that they actually had acquired knowledge that they neither thought they would enjoy nor be able to master;
-Toward the end of the course, women expressed how joining a computer course meant a lot for them and how is enjoying to work with them;
-It seem that the women like to use their new knowledge and its status to both surprise and impress others;
-There is no reason to underestimate women’s fascination and pleasure in learning more about computers;
-Women use the computers for the same aims of the men (communication, working, etc…);
-They were very interested especially about activities most exclusively associated with man, like progamming;
-The women did not have acquired masculinity through their engagement with technology.

In the end she stated that women enjoy working with computers and they express it. This could mean that the “gendered code” of computers is going to change. However the perception about women’s relations to computer is harder to change. Then the final aim of her article is to encourage  the change in the hegemonic discourse so that it reflects the existence of joy and pleasure in computing also among women.

Source:

“I fell in love with the machine” – Women’s pleasure in computing. Hilde Corneliussen. Information, communication & ethics in society. Vol. 3 No 4 October 2005.

just begin…

Hi to all!
This is my first day at the course of Critical Approaches to technology and society and the first impressions are good,there is a nice group and there are people who live in Fantoft like me but i never saw them before. J´m the only italian person and this is good because i need to improve my english :p i think i´ll like it very much because it is so different from the courses in italy,where u can follow a lesson with other 300 people and sometime u have to stay on the ground

for the moment the only thing in common i think is the chocolate!

so let´s go..

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