Students Blog

The games I played were bejeweled two on www.worldwinner.com and Poppit! on pogo.com.

Unlike Kingdom of Loathing and Toon Town, Bejeweled two did not deal with the community of the players, if anything it did more to discourage social interation among them if anything. The reason I say this is because the entire game play is meant to be solo, considering the game play it is just one player focusing on how to solve the puzzle than to interact with other players playing the same game. In fact, it would be both a distraction and a hindrance if it allowed players to communicate with one another. The reason why is because there is a time factor that limits you the amount of time allowed to play the game and if you are talking to someone else you will lose track of the game. This game is defiantly NOT for the socializers, those who play a game to interact with other players. Not for killers since those no one to kill unless you consider eliminating the three jewels as "killing three at a time" which I highly doubt is the case. Not an Explorer game since there is not much to explore, unless you consider the new screen cap at the next level as a way of exploring, there is no environment available to explore. This is THE ACHIEVER game because that is basically all you can do; to advance to one level to the next.

Poppit! On the other hand did share more of a resemblance to the MMO’s like Toon Town and Kingdom of Loathing concerning social interactions. If reflects more like Kingdom of Loathing when dealing with how the players interact with one another; meaning that there is a side chat bar that players can use to talk with one another while playing the game. Community is divided into “social rooms” meaning that there are a X amount of players in a room playing a specific games, players playing the same game enter one of these rooms and can talk to the players playing the same game. This type of feature enables social interactions among players. Like bejeweled, the Explorers and Killers are limited on what they can do to satisfy their own need to kill and/or explore the many dimensions of what the game has to offer. On the other hand, Socializers now have this new realm that enables them to talk with each other while playing their own game. Poppit! doesn’t have a time frame to rush the player to finish a particular level as well. Like Bejeweled, Achievers can still flourish by advancing to one level to the next. I guess in every game there is always an achiever, even in Solitaire, since there is this goal to finish the game.

The pattern trends of the MMOG population have increased DRAMATICLY over time, special thanks to World of Warcraft with over six and a half million players! Congratulations Blizzard that’s about 15$ a pop per month. The MMOG started with player populations around 10,000 in 1997 to 6,500,000 in the summer of 2006. Concerning the chart player populations are still growing.