Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Wed. Section: Conversation with Alexis

I forgot to post the conversation I had with Alexis a couple of classes ago about Diner Dash. Alexis recounted that the game had reminded her of a time in high school where several girls were playing a game entitled, “Cake Town.” She said that it was very similar to DD in terms of time management and embodied “causal gaming.” She went on to say that their guy friends were pretty flabbergasted as to why they were playing the game, saying that it was pointless.

I had said that I actually just paid a lot of attention to the narrative because I had already read the article. I really questioned the necessity of the narrative to the video game. I honestly just that it made the game sexist. I just couldn’t understand why she left the male-dominated business world where she was making a lot of money. I didn’t think that it did anything to enhance my gaming experience. Alexis added that she questioned why she couldn’t make it in the business world and asked if it was because she wasn’t smart enough.

I thought it was pretty annoying that we as videogamers could not decided that choice, and we were only offered that one option to become a “waitress.”

Then we discussed the game-play in general. We both thought it was really easy to “get into the zone” or as Csikszentmihalyi termed it: flow. And then we both thought that this was because it was very rudimentary and I thought this was because our abilities were fairly matched with the difficulty of the game so we were able to “lose time.”

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