Juli Griffo

Written in class:

The Walden game made me think about the beginning of an idea I had about making something interactive, maybe like Sims or Civ, where you can play around with how a society works and how to change from current society to a better society. The thought I had was that you could control the changes and see how society was shaped, how people reacted, what was hard about the change (too hard maybe?) and what worked. The idea is to make people think that it is possible to change the way the world works and really think about how to do that. I had the idea based on some of the ideas and beliefs that Jacque Fresco has. The man has done so many things in his lifetime, it is hard to point to just one thing he's good at, so I'm giving his website. He is also featured in a large portion of Zeitgeist Addendum. There are lots of books written by him and there is a documentary about him out. If interested, I could provide a title, link, etc.

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

I'm fascinated by the results of the research about games and players from different generations. My dad played a lot of games with me growing up. He really was always pretty bad at them and I won most every game ever. My dad really wanted to play, though, and often insisted on playing even when I wasn't up for it. We often did interact over the game and I was interested in what he had to say. We often taunted each other to force a face-to-face in 1 on 1 games (like N64's Goldeneye or SNES' Super Mario Kart). I did take over a little bit on setting up the actual game play, but it always fell to my father to set up the consoles. Let's face it, my dad recently played Call of Duty: World at War with me and spent the entire cooperative level running into things, staring at the sky or sticking his face in the river then complaining that he didn't know where he was and that I wasn't helping enough. So I would stop playing and help him out. He really never got the hang of it, but we played a few more levels until my dad was too disoriented to continue. My dad must have felt engaged or he wouldn't have bothered to play more. I think playing games with my dad encompasses the vast majority of good memories and "bonding" sessions with my dad. Outside of gaming perhaps we don't share the same interests, I'm not sure, but we can play a game together just fine.

It's my MOTHER who can't handle any video games at all! She has definitely still told me I should stop playing those baby games right up until I moved here to attend grad school for Interactive Media. Hmm. Guess she doesn't get it at all!