For these past couple of weeks, music has been a large part of my daily life. I’ve always spent a majority of my time listening to music, but now more than ever I feel that I am listening to it more constantly. While it is more songs created by bands I wanted to look at video game music specifically.

Music within video games can be the thing that transports you to the game world itself. It creates a more immersive world and allows the player to dive into the world. On the other hand, music can also create a sense of nostalgia for people. Listening to the soundtrack of games that one use to play will bring back a pool of memories about the game and different experiences one might have had. For me, most of this comes from the Pokémon series. Gym battle/elite four and champion themes are a classic to me that I can listen to. I can reimagine myself with my team from way back fighting against my opponents. Thinking back on battles that we tough to the point where I reset my game to the save point. I get hyped from the energy and fast tempo of the soundtrack.

While nostalgia for old soundtracks are it’s also important to look at the impact of the music within video games themselves. Within How To Play Video Games, Golding states “Video games often seem to work in similar ways to other media forms: like film, they have main themes and melodies associated with characters and places. But they’re also dramatically different, with music that changes and responds to player action and input: music that, in some ways, is alive in our living rooms.” (82-83) Video games are able to respond to the players choices through sound. If an enemy is coming, scary music to represent that enemy. Once the player enters the boss room, the boss music will start to play. By the very nature of video games being interactive, the sound and music itself is able to interact and respond to the player itself.

These themes that are created for a character is known as a leitmotif. There are many music theory channels on YouTube that go more in depth into what it is. In simple terms it is a piece of music used to represent and idea. Video games can use leitmotif to represent their characters, such as Mario or Link with their iconic themes. Like in film it can help give the player subtle audio cues as to what is going on. This can add more depth to a game, as not only enemies but ideas within the game will have its own audio.

Lastly, I want to talk about remixes and mashups. I’m huge fan of these kinds of work on YouTube, as it gives a new light to an established piece of music. There have been things from transforming older music from 8 bit to a newer style of music. The reverse is true, in taking a song from a current game and turning it into an 8 bit style. Remixes allow users to recreate songs in a new light on the song from a soundtrack. I’ve linked a remix that inspired me to write this piece. This falls under user generated content from what we were talking about in class this week. Others within the community might enjoy a remix over the original as the tempo is more to their liking. Mashups are similar to remixes, though it usually contains a combination of two or more songs combined together to form one song. This can be found more with pop songs though there are some mashups with video game music.

Overall, music is in video games in my opinion. It has so many transformative properties, and one can do so much with it related to video games. Users have created remixes and mashups to express their own creativity. I’ve linked some remixes that I enjoy myself and I would love to hear any music from video games that you guys enjoy.

Thinking back to my middle school days I use to play a lot of mobile games. It was the prime time for me as I was on the bus a lot and wanted a way to spend time other than socializing with others. I did have a DS at the time but the only games that I had for it were either girl games that I had grown out of, or Pokémon. During this time in middle school you were uncool if you played Pokémon and me trying to keep up my “street cred” didn’t want others to think I was uncool. So I kept my Pokémon obsession at home. That meant leaving the DS at home while I was on the bus. Growing up with an iPod touch and later getting an iPhone, I had access to the wondrous thing known as the Apple store. I have spent a lot of time with apps and I’ll share my experiences with a few apps that I enjoyed the most.

One of the most memorable games that I played was Jetpack Joyride. It was part of the endless scrollers but it had its place. You were a dude named Barry who broke into a lab to steal a jetpack. Your goal was to avoid the laser beams placed throughout the map and collect coins to buy cosmetics. Along the way you can get vehicles such as Mr. Cuddles, The Hog and many others. As for controls, it’s just a simple tap and hold to make the player move up the screen. Releasing will make the player move down again. The purchasable items in the shop that you can get with the coins were all cosmetic. They were new jetpacks that you could buy or new outfits for Barry himself. The most elusive I would say are the golden upgrades for the vehicles. I remember on my old iPhone having almost all of the jetpacks and getting and a decent amount of the clothes as well. While all of this was lost as I switch to Android I still enjoyed the game. It’s a game meant to play for several minutes at a time then come back later. Many will consider it casual as there is no story to it. While it does have challenges to level you up there isn’t much more to the game than buying cosmetic upgrades and collecting coins.

The last set of games that I will talk about are the Doughnut Games collection. The few that I will talk about are Rat on a Scooter, Sunday Lawn and Traffic Rush. Each of these games were different from each other but all had similar art styles to each other. Rat on a Scooter and its other games Rat on a Skateboard, etc. were for the most part keeping a rat on the specified vehicle on a ramp. You would try an earn the most amount of points by surviving the longest amount of time. The controls themselves were simple as you only had to tamp the screen once or twice to make the scooter jump. Since the platforms are only so long you will need to jump from platform to platform. As for both Sunday Lawn and Traffic Rush, both of them use a swipe gesture for controls. Sunday Lawn has you navigate a maze to cute a person’s lawn with some obstacles in the way. Traffic Rush on the other hand, has you direct traffic in a four-way intersection and you must not let the cars crash into each other. While all games are simple enough to pick up, each has their own level of difficulty as you continue to play. Like Jetpack Joyride, they are games were you don’t need to be committed for over 10 minutes but can play for a minute or two then go back to what you were doing.

To me what made this the most fun was the fact that I could play these games when ever. As stated in the How To Play Video Games book “Mobile games achieve such ubiquity in part thanks to their gameplay and software accessibility: the barriers to playing Angry Birds are so minimal that interaction with the game can occur throughout the day whether the player be at work, school, home, or on a commute.11 One could even play the game while engaged in social interactions with non-players, who—thanks to the game’s design—could at any moment be made into players. One might, for example, pass the phone to a friend at lunch, letting her take a shot at a particularly difficult level. Some mobile games—though not Angry Birds—attempt to mandate everyday ubiquity by utilizing gradually refilling energy gauges that limit how long a play session can last. Others employ sporadic push notifications to act as triggers, encouraging players to repeatedly reopen the gaming app.” (pg 219) Because I was able to play these games on long trips to cross country meets or to go skiing. It was what helped me pass time.

From the notice of a friend, I was notified of a humble bundle for COVID-19. In the bundle had Hollow Knight, Undertale, Jackbox 2, Superhot and many other games. I decided to buy the bundle as I had never gotten a humble bundle before, and figured it was supporting a good cause. The second reason is that I had never played Hollow Knight nor Undertale and figured it would be a good opportunity to pick them up and add them into my collection. Now the senseable person might think that I would have started with one of the games I wanted right of the bat, but instead I was drawn to a game called A Mortcian’s Tale. Now out of the 30 games you might be wondering why such a small little indie game? Well I thought I was getting into a game that was completely different from what I ended up playing.

Before I move forward the game itself covers death, and more specifically the preparation of dead bodies. If this isn’t your cup of tea then I suggest moving onward to a different post.  Also I will be spoiling the game so if you want to play the game, also move onward.

Anyway, when you load the game you get an initial message from the funeral home director. She welcomes you to the family. From there you can read other messages, or go to the message from the director. In the message she asks you to start preparation for a body. You are only given an automated response as the player, and must proceed onward with the preparations. For each type of ceremony (open casket, closed casket, or crematory) you will have different steps to take to prepare each body. Open casket I found overall being the most tedious as you have to preserve the body from rotting and show it off to the family members. The only time you are given a choice for an option is when the body you would have prepared died due to suicide. You can choose to either handle the body or prepare a different body. Other than that, you are given automated responses for everything else.

Once preparations are completed you then go out to visit family members and friends of the deceased. There you can either choose to ignore all of them, and only pay respects to the deceased, or choose to talk to the people. In my play through I choose to talk to everyone, as I wanted to see what people would say about the ceremony. Many comments were about how they missed the deceased. Other comments talked about how they didn’t like x or y in the venue.

As the game progresses, the funeral home is bought out by a large company. Your coworkers start to notice this shift and soon decide to leave the company. The comments of the funeral goers also change once the policies change over to the larger company. They try to upsell and include food during the ceremony so that “you won’t have to worry about a thing”. Eventually you leave the funeral home to start you home and do green burials.

For me, the thing I thought the most about while playing this game was mostly the death of my family members. More particularly I remember going to the funeral home to see my grandmother in the open casket. It brought back a nostalgia of wanting to go back to a past. A past where my family was alive. This game made me wonder how my family members went through this process themselves. I have experience being the mourning person but never experienced handling a dead body.

As we discussed in class, having nostalgia for a past you never experienced. For me, the past would be growing up with a grandmother and getting to see her during holidays. I lost her at a young age and never got to meet any of my other grandparents. As I grew up, I had and still do loan for a childhood experience of being able to visit my grandparents. But it is and experience I was only able to get for a short amount of time.

I have linked both the game on steam itself and the humble bundle. Note that the humble bundle only has a few days left before it goes away.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/578720/A_Morticians_Tale/

https://www.humblebundle.com/conquer-covid19-bundle?hmb_source=humble_home&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_1_layout_type_twos_tile_index_1_c_conquercovid_bundle

During my spring break I ended up playing a lot of video games. With the my newly founded free time I spent it relaxing and chatting with friends. While playing these games the one thing I always remember is how much time I have during break and how much time I don’t have after break. As Chess states in Ready Player Two “Video games, one would think, fall under this purview—while one might schedule free time for playing video games, the game itself is rarely full of the everyday obligations implied by the monotony of time management. Thus there is a push-and-pull when video games are specifically designed with women in mind. They are often designed with an understanding of the complex relationships between women and time, but also with an understanding that time is what is necessary to draw in more players and create a depth of play.” (Ready Player Two 61)  During the semester me and my friends will always have to coordinate around when is the best day, usually the weekend, to play video games/board games together. I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, it’s become more difficult to find time to play video games, as I am stuck with either work or school work.

Some of the games I got into were Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. Both are similar in that you have villagers but your end goal is different for each of them. For Stardew you can choose to remove Jojamart from the town or just focus on your farm. As for Animal Crossing, other than paying off you house debt there is no other main goal. The player can set their own goal for themselves and set out to do it. For me currently in my New Leaf file, I’m working on collecting all bugs and fish to get the golden fishing rod and bug net. I’ve already expanded my house to the max and paid off the debt so I’ve set that as my goal for the game. Within both games the player can choose to express themselves through the clothing they wear. As Chess states in the first chapter “Unsurprisingly, many of the gameplay assumptions made by game designers reflect suggestions based on Ray’s Gender Inclusive Game Design. Some of the game-play elements discussed by game designers include: • increased use of social elements; • fewer constraints on time; • less in-game risk; • simple mechanics; and • emphasis on creative expression.” (Ready Player Two 44-45) Both of these games include some portions of these attributes within their games. Animal Crossing is more elaborate in allowing the player to customize their character. Stardew on the other hand allows for more social options as it allows you to romance a selection of the villagers in the game.

Within both, time is an aspect that controls the game. For Stardew the time is an in-game clock, and Animal Crossing uses a real world clock. Due to having the concept of time, but seasons certain animals are only available which adds to the gameplay. As the season passes that animal will be gone, incentivizing the player to continuously play each day in order to find that animal or plant.

In the past several years, politics has been on the rise of daily conversation. Almost every topic has been turned into a political issue. With topics being more political, this has transferred into code that developers have created. For many developers however, they can choose to bring their own personal ideas into their work. This is most prevalent with the game Dead Island. Within the game the character Purna gets a boost from killing male characters. This trait for Purna “… has no developed conversation simulation like Fallout or other open-world RPG simulation games, so “unique dialogue options” for a gendered power-up are not relevant. Instead, the Feminist Whore or “Gender Wars” power-up for Purna players confers solely a damage bonus against hostile NPCs gendered as men. The power-up is unique to the Purna character and not available for the other female character, Xian Mei, and “misogynist” power-up equivalents do not exist for male player characters.” (100, Yang On “FeministWhorePurna”) Compared to games like Red Dead Redemption, where these sexists acts are coded into the games, you are still given the choice within those games. Yang arguers that for Dead Island, Purna isn’t given that choice and is simply given the ability which is hard coded into her character.

As coders, we are taught to code ethically and take into account the customer. For example, if we are designing a website, are there any accessibility issues with it? Say the colors of the site, could a color blind person view the site fine? These are things that codes should be taking into account when programming any application. This also goes for checking code to make sure any bugs don’t exist and no errors will occur when the user runs. Again Yang states that “The credits of Dead Island for the Windows platform list thirty-two programmers, not including any engine or tools engineers, and zero game-design roles (which is unusual practice within the industry), but eight level designers and seven writers and thirty-four quality assurance staff. All development staff would have had to validate their changes against the rest of the file; if there was even a single errant line anywhere, it might have caused a parsing error in the game and the script file could be rendered inoperable. Testing staff might have even encountered the “Feminist Whore” text string within the game interface itself, before it was replaced for the public retail version.” (106, Yang On “FeministWhorePurna”) Even with a full staff of developers looking over the code, no one cared to point out this flaw in the code. In many professional companies, code that is developed is reviewed by other developers which is known as a code review. By doing a code review, it not only checks for minor errors in code but any style choices that not in line with the company guidelines. While code reviews can be long and lengthy they are an integral part of keeping each programmer in check with the code they right and to not allow bugs to go through.

Tech companies in the past several years have been making strives to include and hire more women. But what deters many is the fact that it is such a male dominated field. While for some it doesn’t stop them, there is still a “boys club” mentality that lurks within tech companies. This mentality can be harmful in trying to get more women to join the tech work field.

For many people, watching livestreams is an escape from their modern day routine and allows them to distress. Others use livestreams to interact with others within a certain gaming community and discuss topics related to that community. Personally I’ve watched twitch streams to just have as a distraction on in the background. Other times I’ve engaged directly with the streamer and other viewers in chat. Each chat has will have its own topic that it discusses. From my experience many viewers talk about the game the streamer is playing, talk about their own lives or ask about the streamers life. I tend to be more of a lurker then an active participant of the stream, especially for larger streams. My reasoning is that for larger streams the streamer won’t usually see my comment and create the connection that a smaller streamer would. Over the past couple of months who I have watched on Twitch has changed.

When I was in high school, I would watch a lot of Pokémon shiny hunters. I would keep these streams up as I myself would shiny hunt alongside with the streamer. I wouldn’t go for the same Pokémon as the streamer but I would have my own hunts that I had. It was through watching these live streams and some YouTube videos that got me into shiny hunting in the first place. More recently I’ve been watching my friends content on Twitch and what they stream. While I play games with them when they stream, I’ll keep a tab open with their stream. I moderate for them. For one of them, they fit more into the mythical norm by being a white male. The other on the other hand falls outside of the mythical norm as she is a female streamer.

During the time that I’ve moderated for her I’ve seen a handful of sexists comments that have come her way while she has streamed. Random people will also come in and troll by saying anything to provoke her while she is playing. As Guarriello sates, “When women are game live streamers or in professional gaming tournaments, they are often relegated to sexist comments or reduced to their looks, which exacts an emotional and psychological (and sometimes physical threats) toll that ultimately drives them away from streaming sites like YouTube Gaming or Twitch.” (1760) Due to it being a smaller channel, moderation is left to either her or one of the few mods that may be online during the stream. While she faces these comments here and there, it doesn’t affect her and she will often ignore them and moderate the comments. The rest of the viewers will agree with her.

In addition to moderating comments, interacting with viewers and building a community as a streamer is important part. As I’ve watched and participated in my friends streams I’ve seen her community grow. She has incorporated viewers into the games we played. In Never give up, never surrender: Game live streaming, neoliberal work, and personalized media economies it states “Much like Federici’s provocation, friendship becomes integral to building relational bonds for game live streaming. These temporal fragments of friendship and conversation can serve as small moments of resistance to the neoliberal commodification of one’s emotions, time, and life.” (1758) It has been through these friendships that my friend has created with her viewers that we have grown our group of game friends. While this is a trust in strangers, it has given not only me but my friend new friends.

Going back to my first serious encounter with video games was when I was in the third grade. It was whatever night of Hanukkah and I opened up a brand new pink DS. This was something that I had wanted as most of the other girls that I knew on the bus also had a DS as well. It was the hip thing back then. Ecstatic I booted it up to play the only game that I could on there, Pictochat. Pictochat was a go to multiplayer game, as every DS was capable of connecting with local wireless. Through this game it allowed all of us to have our creativity sore free. While there was the standard chatting option, we were more focused on the drawing portion of it. One of the fondest memories I have is coloring the whole screen black and then drawing with the easer.

I eventually got games for my DS, many of which were more female oriented games. At the time it was what I was into and enjoyed playing. However, my current self now plays a different set of games then what I first used to play. To a typical gamer, the games that I played such as Cooking Mama, Petz, and more wouldn’t be considered “hardcore” games. Huntemann states “Technological changes made video games rapidly available to more diverse audiences. Around 2006, Nintendo was highly invested in marketing to women audiences via its portable Nintendo DS system and Wii gaming console. Equally important, the rise and popularity of smartphones made gaming more accessible and ubiquitous to a variety of people—many of them adult women. In this way, video games as a feminist topic have rapidly shifted from only conversations about “hard-core” games that are not necessarily intended for women to an equal amount of research on the steady influx of games that are intentionally made for feminine audiences. These games have a necessarily messy relationship to feminism: they are often essentializing yet liberating, condescending yet intoxicating.” (How to Play Video Games, 94) It was through these games that I was able to start my adventure into the video game world. While I did grow up with two brothers who play video games as well, there are plenty of females who are in a similar situation and don’t end up playing video games.

To say what really got me into video games, I’m unsure of. I would most link it back to getting my first handheld console, the DS and all the time I spent not just playing Pokémon, but the other games I had for it. It was from these games that I gained appreciation for gaming. Eventually our family got a Wii, which me and my younger brother would spend hours on. I played my fair share of Wii sports and making my Mii character. By getting a Wii, it transferred me to the more “hard-core” games such as Mario and Smash Bros. Being curious and wanting to learn more, I watch hours of YouTube videos on Nintendo, learning about series such as Fire Emblem and the Mother series. I stayed in my Nintendo bubble for a while, playing mostly Mario and Pokémon till I entered high school. Due to exposure from my brothers, I was mostly aware of some other games, but mostly the Call of Duty series or COD. YouTube was what gave me the information on other games and through that I explored new worlds.

Today games are even more accessible thanks to the mobile phone market. As such “Video game companies began to market to girls, some as a feminist response to the industry and others commodifying a demographic. Eventually, by the mid-2000s, game marketing and design also began to target adult females. These games were often shorthanded as the “casual games market.” Casual games (such as Diner Dash [Gamelab, 2004]), hidden object games, and cell phone puzzle games) are cheap or free, easy to learn, and minimalist in narrative. They also easily fit into busy schedules by being playable for either shorter or longer periods, depending on the needs of the player.” (How to Play Video Games, 93-94) It has been debated by many if casual players are considered gamers. With the plethora of mobile games, one can find themselves occupied with some game. I’d argue that casual players are gamers, as a mobile phone is a different medium that is used to play video games. Many of the current mobile games have story and art better than many of the early video games. Like the DS was for me, I hope that mobile games will allow for many to explore the larger world of video games. Many see the big mainstream games but if you dig deep enough you can find hidden gems. However, it takes one’s own interest in learning about games to take this first step outside this realm.

Today, representation in media is a large point of contention with many people. Nowhere is it more clear than in video games where representation is not only shown, but also needed. For me I’ve gotten used to being able to identify with the character of the game no matter. The earliest memory I have is playing the Pokémon Trading Card Game for the Gameboy Color. You play as a male protagonist going around the world collecting medals from eight Club Masters and go on to defeat the four Grand Masters. It played out similar to the main series games but now uses the trading cards. Me being the naïve self that I was misgendered the character and thought that they were a female from the start. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned about the Japan only sequel that you had the choice between a male and female character.

Pokémon early on is known for not including a female character in the main series games. It wasn’t until the release of Pokémon Crystal for the Gameboy Color that a female was established as a choice for players in the series. While this is before my entrance into the series, it is still something to wonder about. The game developers wanted to include a female character from the beginning. Plans for Green, the female character were in development alongside the characters of Red and Blue. Concept art even exists for of all three facing off against each other. Yet it took them four years to include a female character into their games. Furthermore, it took until 2013 with the release of Pokémon X and Y for players to finally customize their character. While options were limited in terms of skin tones, and clothing, expression aside from the cookie cutter character was available for the player.

Pokémon is just an example of a game series that lacks representation. Many mainstream games are lacking representation of any sort. Communities such as the LGBTQ and religious communities are some examples of groups that don’t get much representation within games. For games that do have LGBTQ representation, at times they can rely on stereotypes for their character. While it may be harmful to use stereotypes Shaw states “LGBTQ characters’ gender and sexuality in the series are often conveyed via stereotypical signifiers (e.g., men acting effeminately or women acting masculine). This should not be read as bad in and of itself because as film scholar Richard Dyer discusses, sexuality is difficult to represent outside of those performative codes.⁹ What are often critiqued as negative stereotypes are performances of identity that are a part of some LGBTQ peoples’ lives (i.e., there are gay men who perform effeminately; there are women who identify as butch). Dismissing them as unrealistic or bad dismisses people who are often marginalized within LGBTQ communities.” (How to Play Video Games 111 – 112) As we discussed in class, with the use of stereotypes but the purpose of the stereotype and why it is used. When developers represent a group they have to be careful about the implications of using harmful stereotypes. A way around this is to not rely on stereotypes and base the character off of someone in real life.

Aside from representation, we talked about identity. I think representation and identity go a bit hand and hand. If you are represented in a game, then you can more identify with a character. That isn’t to say that you can’t identify with a character. I’ve identified with male characters in video games and place myself in their shoes for the sake of the story. Hopefully by having more representation in video games, players are able to better have parts of their identity show up in games.

When I look back at narrative at games I think about two games that I got with my PS4. This would be the Uncharted series and Until Dawn. In both of these games there is an underlying narrative to the game along with some gameplay mechanics. I’ll start with Until Dawn as the first example. The premise of Until Dawn is that you jump between six main characters throughout the whole story as you stay at a cabin for the night. As you find out, there is a larger threat that awaits the characters at the cabin once they have all settled in. You must work to stop this threat and stay alive until dawn. From the very beginning the main gameplay mechanic is walking and interacting with your environment. You piece together what had happened a year ago with the murder of Josh’s two sisters. There are various totems, photos, etc. that help paint a larger picture of what happened before the events of when you arrived. These items are hidden throughout the map and are there for you to collect.

In addition to collecting items, the player can also have an impact on the story. Until Dawn introduces an element known as the butterfly effect, based on an action that the player takes at one point in the story. While the game relies heavily on scripted scenes, the player has impact on what happens during those scenes, usually they are presented with two options. Many choices have no effect, however some a lasting effect, causing the butterfly effect to start. Because of this butterfly effect it causes a branching effect, and will create multiple endings for the player. While the underlying story of what happens is the same, how events turn out are in control of the player based on the decisions that they make.

The Uncharted series on the other hand has a different approach to narrative. It tells an overarching story through the four games. While each game has its own separate story, they all tie together into the who universe that is the Uncharted universe. Similar to Until Dawn it uses cut-scenes to tell most of the narrative.  However Uncharted differs from its gameplay mechanics as it involves the typical shooting that one would see in a mainstream triple-A game. While it incorporates shooting as a feature of the game, it is not the main focus. Mostly with Uncharted it is about the exploration of the location that you are in and doing platforming or solving a puzzle. From there it will unlock a greater unknown room which will advance to another cut-scene and thus the narrative.

Many of the actions take don’t have a lasting impact on the story as stated by Huntemann “Adventure games center on narrative, or a sequence of events that may be experienced in a combination of orders but generally proceed through a dominant story arc. Because of this focus on narrative, adventure games limit player agency, which can be defined as the ability for the player to act in ways that change the game world or the direction of the narrative.” While the user can interact and test with the world of Uncharted, the story itself is set. Unlike Until Dawn where the player’s actions have direct impact on the story, Uncharted’s narrative is a linear one in which the user plays through a “movie” in a sense. While there is more gameplay added to make up for this lack of choice within the narrative. Uncharted does tell a story, however it is more limiting in what choice the player has in the story and how the effect it.

With both of these games is that they could have been a film or TV series. However, both were created as video games. As stated by Batti and Karabinus ““The problem is that it doesn’t matter: games have no choice but to tell stories,” but abruptly veered away from the most obvious follow-up to that statement: games have no choice but to tell stories because they are made by humans, and humans think in stories.” To me I don’t like horror films and would not have watch the Until Dawn version of that, but since it was a game I was able to experience the horror genre. By including narrative, it can expose the player to genres that they have never experienced before as narrative brings them into the games world.

I think back to the first video game that I played. It’s hard to remember but I have fond memories of playing Sonic 2 on the Sega Genesis. I would either play solo or co-op with my brothers. With the in class activity it brought back memories of all the games I have learned over my lifetime. There are countless games that I have played, but the best part of learning games is the experience you share with others. As we discussed in class, most games are inherently social even if they are intended to be a solo player experience. For me I find great comfort in playing video games with my friends and enjoy the shared time with them. It is through this time that I not only distress but also get to laugh and be more of myself. I don’t consider myself the most competitive per say, but at times I can be.

One of my fondest memories of a social game is playing Smash Bros Brawl with my younger brother and a school friend. In Brawl you can only do a four player fight. However, in later instalments you are able to play with eight people. Within Brawl there is a mode known as special smash, which allows you to modify the rules of smash and play however you wish. It is within this game mode, that me, my brother and my friend played smash. To a smash enthusiast, this would be an impure way of playing smash. A competitive player sees the pure way as 3 stock, a select amount of stages and using only the top characters. As stated by Payne and Huntemann, “Rules have a way of erasing that which lies beyond the field of play, just as it normalizes actions within the game space” (How to Play Video Games 48) For us, play smash meant, playing the most ridiculous way we could. To a bunch of 9-year-old kids we saw the game for what was given to us. A roster of characters and a list of stages that were meant to be played.

When you start the game, Smash bros doesn’t tell you the rules. Rather you are forced into the game and learn the controls as you go. Spending more time with the game you spend time learning combos. Eventually you learn one or two characters and advance with them, learning the ins and outs of their move set, kill percent and other jargon. With these basics rules we know the following that Payne and Huntemann state “The word rule possesses at least three definitional inflections: (1) a guideline, convention, standard, or regulation (“Whoever cheats, is out”), (2) a social regularity (“Don’t go to school naked”), and (3) a predictable phenomenon (“When you let go of this crate, it will fall to the ground”)” (How to Play Video Games 42) With these set of guidelines competitive players are able to play in tournaments and compete on a national level all across the globe for smash. The online community thrives and will continue to do so. Fan projects have been released such a project M as a way to improve the core mechanics of the game. To the game I feel in love as a child and I will continue to play, thank you for the memories you have given me.