Thursday, April 8, 2010

Friday 11am

Playing Diner dash while keeping in mind the concepts surrounding video games was an interesting experience. I played “endless shift” mode and once I started it was like I was trapped on the job. I kept thinking to myself, “why do I care whether or not “people” on my screen got “mad” and left my “restaurant.” Of course there were no people getting mad or a restaurant for them to get mad at, there was only a program being operated by me clicking my mouse. Games seem very boring when you take this perspective so what is the appeal? While playing I kept paid attention to how involved I was becoming mentally in the game and realized that as the shift progressed (endlessly) I became tired mentally, as if I was actually serving the people I was “serving” in the program. The correspondence to how I felt in the real world compared with how my avatar, Flo, would have felt in the game world is what makes video games appealing. While most of the time the connection between the real and the game is something that does not involve a simulation of work, even work can seem fun when its dressed up as it was in Diner Dash. Diner Dash is enjoyable because it allows the user to organize an otherwise chaotic scenario, a feeling similar to the pleasure that comes from organizing shapes in Tetris.

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