Week 11 Gaming

Week 11, two more weeks inculding this week to go and we are finished the 23 things! nearly there!
This week is all about Online gaming, which has become very popular in recent years, have a look at Wikipedia's explanation in regards to online gaming

(Note)
There are lots of links on this page, it is up to you to pick and choose, you do not have to look at each link.

About Games, Gamers and Virtual Environments

Definitions:

ARCADE GAMES
These are typically games which demand a certain level of speed and hand-eye coordination, such as Mario Bros., Frogger and Pac-Man to name but a few. These types of games typically need you to pay close attention in each level or you may lose ‘lives’ and eventually lose the game. Some puzzle games, such as Zuma (see Pop Cap Games below), can also fall under the arcade category because they also require hand-eye coordination combined with speed and strategy / problem-solving skills.

BOARD GAMES
Many of our favourite board games have been put into digital format of one kind or another such as Monopoly, chess, checkers, backgammon and many others can usually be found and available to play with others around the world.

CARD & DICE GAMES
Ever played Solitaire, Crazy 8s or Go Fish? How about Poker, Rummy or Yahtzee? These are card or dice games, so card & dice games online are just representations of these favourites.

PUZZLES, BRAIN-TEASERS & LOGIC GAMES
Crosswords, sudoku, word find, jig-saw puzzles, trivia games, memory games, etc. all fall under this category. It also includes some arcade games (again, such as Zuma from Pop Cap or Tetris). Essentially, any game which makes you stop and truly think about your next move (even board games such as chess) falls into this category. Anything which tests your brain and really gets you thinking is a puzzle, brain-teaser or logic-game. You can test and compare your time/high-score with other players (if the web version still exists).

MMORPGs
This stands for Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game. These are typically graphical adventure games in which many players can logon at once and either play at the same time or even play with each other or against each other. They integrate arcade style gaming with table-top role-playing puzzles and games of logic and much more. Most revolve around a series of ‘quests’ which your character must accomplish to continue onto the next level, whether the ‘next level’ represents a new area on the game or simply new abilities and statistics for your character.
Some of them are set up like the older arcade style games, such as the Legend of Zelda and Mario Bros. with a miniaturized ‘imp’ or ‘avatar’ running around a relatively 2-D, cartoon-ish realm, slaying monsters, finishing quests, etc (e.g. Maple Story). And others are more 3-D and very realistic in their graphics, running in a third-person or first-person perspective and even closely resemble cinematic productions (in truth, some of their ‘teasers’ look like movie trailers).
An example of this would be World of Warcraft.

MUSH (text-based environments)
A short-form for “Multi-User Shared Hallucination”. Simply put, a MUSH is an online, multi-user, text-based environment. Some are games, some are social and technical support environments and still others are research areas.
Imagine a series of chat rooms strung together which you can ‘move’ through and each ‘room’ has a description on it, telling you what kind of environment it represents (e.g. a cave, a living room, a forest, etc.). Now, for the gaming environments, toss in a game theme like Dungeons & Dragons or Vampire: the Masquerade, or even tv themes such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly and movies such as the X-Men and you have a text-based roleplaying environment based on those themes.
The non-gaming environments are slightly different and some do have ‘themes’ that are more for background colour than anything else. Some are used for research purposes (MIT’s MOO, LambdaMOO, etc.) and some are purely social. Some MU* game hosting services have MUSHes set up to provide on-hand, real-time support to game owners who are experiencing technical difficulties as well as to provide a social environment for the game owners to meet in and ‘network’.

Social Environments
These are graphical or text-based environments online where the primary function of visitors is to socialize. These are kind of akin to sites such as Facebook or MySpace, but are even more interactive because they are set in “real time”, like MUSHes or instant messengers. Instead of leaving messages for people (although this is often an option as well), you can stand around and chat with people while they are logged in.
The most popular of these types of environments is Second Life.


Discovery Exercise:

1.Try out a few games/virtual worlds & blog about your experience. (Several game sites are listed below.)
2Think about why gaming and virtual worlds are of interest to libraries, can you see what benefit they would bring to your library?
3.And as usual post your thoughts to your blog!


Discovery Resources:
Gaming in the Library
(a Sconul publication)

Some online games:

http://zone.msn.com/en/root/default.htm
Recommendations: Diner Dash, Mahjong Tiles

Pop Cap Games: http://www.popcap.com/
Recommendations: Bejeweled, Zuma

Yahoo! Games: http://games.yahoo.com/games/front
Features: old-style arcade games such as Pac-Man and Frogger

Web Sudoku (new link!): http://www.websudoku.com/
Play this new favourite online!

MUSH, MUX, MUD (text-based) Game Sites:

List of Clients
MUSH Game List Sites:
(MMORPG) MMORPG.com: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?gameId=0&bhcp=1
(MUSH / MUX / MUD) Online Gaming Resource: http://www.ogrmux.com/
(MUSH / MUX / MUD) The Mud Connector: http://www.mudconnect.com/
(MUSH / MUX / MUD) Top MUD Sites: http://www.topmudsites.com/

Free MMORPG Sites:
FLYFF (Fly For Fun): http://flyff.gpotato.com/
Maple Story: http://www.nexon.net/(Attention: Only works with Internet Explorer!)
Runescape: http://www.runescape.com/

Pay-for-Play MMORPG Sites:
Note (all of these sites require you to pay a montly subsription)
They are great fun, but just be aware of the monetary investment that these games require.
Anarchy Online: http://www.anarchy-online.com/
Theme: Science Fiction
Battleground Europe - WWII Online: http://www.wwiionline.com/scripts/wwiionline/be_info.jsp
Theme: Historical
City of Heroes: http://www.cityofheroes.com/
Theme: Superheroes
Dungeons & Dragons Online: http://www.ddo.com/
Theme: Fantasy
World of Warcraft: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml
Theme: Fantasy

Virtual Environments (non-game):
Second Life: http://secondlife.com/
IMVU: http://www.imvu.com/