What is this?

I shot this on my way home today around 19:30pm. The sky is completely dark, but this weird stroke on the sky is glowing as if there's light shooting through but yet it shows a smooth gradient from blue to red. I and people from my apartment gathered outside and observed it for about 30min till it fades out.

What is it?

CTIN 482 Assignment 4

This week’s reading for CTIN 482 designing online multiplayer game environments is an interesting one. It uses MUD as a test bed to analyze the player type and social dynamics in the online games. Although this article is done years ago, it still applies to today's online game, especially MMO game.

In the article, it divides players into four stereotypes on 2 dimension map:

The four types are pretty self-explanatory. However, it is really hard to say some one like myself to be one of the stereotypes. Most of us are some where on the graph. But more important, our location on the graph will change based on the game experience.

I’ll use World of Warcraft as an example:

The first time I played this game, I was very curious about this immense game world. How do I play this game? What will happen if I do this? What does it look like behind that little hill? During this period, I’m somewhere between the achiever and explorer.

After I hit level 10 I realized that I can’t get to see the entire picture in one day. So I went bed and planed to level up little by little. Between level 10 to level 30, I was a pure achiever, finished all the quests and leveled up my crafting skills.

At level 30 I began to feel bored with the repetitive grinding and questing. The nice thing about the design of World of Warcraft is every time you feel bored about questing alone there will be a group quest. The game forces people gather together to deal with the quest. And I started making friends list of the people that I trust. Very soon, the game play experience migrates to a socialiser.

Although there were some PVP happening, I was not very into killing until level 40. Plus all the battlegrounds Blizzard added in recently, players who are into killing can enjoy it at any level.

When I reached 60 as the current level cap, I started to manage my game flow, shuffle between the four modes to keep myself motivated. The game itself offers plenty of content for all these four stereotypes, and keeps adding new content, which is one of the reason that keeps me playing it after two years.

A good online game can satisfy players’ needs in all these roles.

CTIN 482 Assignment: FPS meets Flow

When I see this assignment I felt very exciting because my thesis is about implementing mechanics to help more player get into flow in the game. I've read Mihaly Czicksentmihayi's book last spring. And pretty familiar about flow theory and all that.

So I want to talk about Battle Field 2 again which I gave a game deconstruction presentation before. To make this short. I'll give out my version of most important three elements in flow experience instead of the eight in Dr. Czicksentmihayi's book:

1) The player must have the active attitude to enter the flow. If he is sensitive about him being in flow or not, it will not reach him. If he look at games with negative bias, it probably won't catch his flow either.
2) The player has to be totally involved in his action so that he loses track of time and even space.
3) The player should feel in the control, a feeling makes you believe you are on the right track towards the positive goal in your mind

So let's look at Battlefield 2 game play experience among us:

I believe most of us can reach flow in this game especially when we played it before we were assigned this assignments. Although some people may argue, I believe I didn't realize the same flow I had before due to the negative entropy of being conscious about whether am I in the flow or not, itself broke the fundamental rule of total involvement. Yet I reached flow here and there during the player, during those moments I totally forgot about the assignment but concentrated on the game play.

Battlefield 2 is a very mature and polished game. The "polished" here means the gaming experience is not too hard or too easy. It's fair and the player won't complain about the rules, settings or graphic qualities. They barely have any psychic entropy during the game play. This keeps a player in the flow zone.

In terms of lose track of time and space. Nearly all video game today can do that due to the fact when player start playing video game they concern themselves inside the game world. And most video games have fairly enough cognitive loads. In Battlefield 2, player has to pay fully attention to the environment, other players, vehicles, game interfaces, voice and sound effects. They don't have any other time spare to think about their rent or unfinished homework.

Most people will fall in flow when they are winning in the game, but rarely in a losing team. When a player fights his best but still losing, he will feel out of control, and anxious. The normal positive goal between players is to win the game. That's why most people feel frustrated when they are losing. However if the player set his goal to something else for example, team kill or doing stunt. They will not feel bad at all when their team is losing, and they can still fall in to flow in killing their own teammates or doing crazy stunt.

The fully simulated world in Battlefield 2 supports all kinds of possibilities and free spaces for player to define their own goal which helps a lot in terms of getting people in the flow.

CTIN 482 Assignment #2

Puzzle Pirates -> Theme Park of Puzzle Games

This is a very casual and welcoming world with all kinds of puzzle game you can play with others. Players travel through the world and take adventures by playing puzzle games. Players do social activity mostly while they are waiting and organizing players and also during the puzzle games. Different from other puzzle games, Puzzle Pirates has a large amount of puzzle games for player to choose. But it is not another Pogo, it imbue each puzzle game into the persistant game world very well, and has the great advantage as an MMO which track player's investments.

Sissy Fight -> Middle School Social Conspiracy

The game itself is a chatting game. It is very social intensive because in order to win the game, you have to get people to support you while you are trying to get rid off them eventually. Lair is the essential elements in playing game like this.

Whyville -> Science Faire

This game is a social space filled with content of middle school educational content. Player can walk around, talk with others and play different science related games. It's very casual, no assignment, no lecture. It's all about active learning which is the soul of it.