Below are the 8 most recent journal entries recorded in seabass2284's LiveJournal:

Monday, May 9th, 2005
7:06 pm	Cheating As a kid i always found myself frustrated with not being able to complete video games. My short attention span towards video games meant that i would never complete goals nor reach the end of certain games. The way i dealt with this was to tfind out cheat codes that oculd be used to my advantage to complete the games with attributes that i would normally not have playing the game regularly. I dont think that cheating in single player games poses any ethical problems since the only party beign affected by the cheating is myself as a player. If i dont mind cheating then there shouldnt be a problem with it. however, this only holds true for games that dont incorporate other players. Cheating in a multiplayer game means that the spirit of competition has been destroyed since skills attained through normal game play are rendered meaningless in the face of cheating. In these cases i would not engage in rule braking since i would be affecting the game play experience of other players. I bleieve that the defining characteristics of when it is okay to cheat and when it is not depends on who is affected by cheating. If no one is affected but myself then cheating can and should be carried out at my deiscretion. however when cheating affects how other players enjoy the game then it would be unfair to engage in such acts. (Comment on this)
6:48 pm	Gender Turing Excercise I beieve that the inehrent difference between gender and sex is that gender alludes to the social roles that members of a certain sex exhibit. Sex being the anatomical deistinction between male and female. WoW offers an interface where the amibguity of the sex of the player is mantained. The only real way to tell whether a player is male or not is to analyze their speech throught the caht log. Even then the dsiticntion is incredibly hard to determine. During our gender roles excercise we were required to determine whether or not an avatar's player was male or female based solely on the responese that he or she gave to questions asked by me and other investigators. The result of this excersise was that i am not at all able to differentiate between sex based solely on a text based answer. This was made especially hard since the players being questioned tried their hardest to answer their questions in manners that wouldnt include sterotypes of the gender. It was definetely an intersting exercise since i had never encountered a situation where the i was asked to guess or define the sex of a participant based on wrotten answers. A conlcusion that i reached as a result of this excersise is that the personality that is attributed to gender roles is a combination of verbal use an inflexions, mannerisms and physical appearance all of which are devoid in the chat channel in WOW. (Comment on this)
6:39 pm	project update Slight Changes. Well my fellow video gamers, it seems that your high priest has developed flaw in his research topic. The flaw? The research topic sucks. Its okay though, im not discouraged. just a few changes here and there and i do believe that im ready to go. In my previous topic proposal i proposed to find out how racism affected gaming hours of non-racist gamers. Well... we can't really do that can we? or i could just completely BS the rest of the paper and come up with false research and hope to god that Dr delwiche doesnt catch on. But we can't really do that can we? No. Ive changed the direction of my paper from what was a previuosly quantitatve research eneavour to a more reasonalbe qualitative area. I am now striving to understand if this racist issue is in fact an issue at all. As ive been mulling over my problem i have come up with these questions: 1) Are there gamers out there that spread racist messages through the chat prompt? 2) If so who are they targeting? Elves, Hunters, latinos? 3) Given the non human race directed nature of the avatars, in the case of a racist remark, do gamers really derive insult from these remarks? 4)If so above, what makes the non racist gamer think that they are being targeted individually? 5) Are racist remarks a shot in the dark, When will a racist reveal him/herself with a remark? 6) Is there actually a noticeable racist element within the game? (for the sake of morality i hope not, but for the sake of my project there better be!) What am I going to do to answer these questions? Sit back and hope for a miracle. or... 1) Posting a survey on web monkey. (Dr Delwiche...Ill need your help on that one) a) The questions will range from simpe yes/no to multiple choice to free answer. 2)Making sure people know about my survey a) must go to game forums and post 3) Interview current gamers who i know personally (is this a sample bias?) 4) I will be doing alot of passive observation on the chat logs, 5) Hands on research with online players a) dummy Im account if needed b) dummy e-mail account seriously needed 6)Literary research on racism a) more specifically on the reason for its vocalization There are several concerns that plague my project. I hope not to offend anyone by questioning the existence of racism in the game, the only way to avoid this is to make sure that whomever hears about my research is aware that i do not plan to deny its existence. Another concern spruns from the recent chain of messages in response to the sexism project. It seems that both our projects could fall under the same fire. My main concern is to get people to participate, i have doubts that no one will cooperate, but then again Beth got alot of response. There it is folks. see ya thursday and remember this famous quote, so famous i put in my year book. Midges* and Jellyfish are good for bugger all -Fishing boat captain *a midge is a sea creature i did not misspell midgets. (Comment on this)
6:29 pm	Web log update Okay so over the last few months ive obviously doing something wrong when i updated my web log. It seems that alot of my entries never made it to my entry page. So i have decided to rewrite all my missing entries. the following updates were supposed to have been entered many a week a go. (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 24th, 2005
12:29 pm	Games Id have to say that the video game that i played most as a child was Duke Nukemn 3D for the PC. Following in the footsteps of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, this game was a first person shooter in what was the newest development in three dimensional gaming. The object of the game was to rid the earth of an horde of alien creatures that had landed on earth and taken over. The main character (Duke Nukem) was a tough, dont take no shit from no alien, ex military armed with a vast array of weapons. What made the game so appealing is that apart from the simple point and shoot objectives, Duke could engage in other lude acts such as paying strippers to take their tops off. With certain key strokes you could make Duke Nukem say some of his catch phrases, which upon refelction are all taken from the main character in Army of Darkness. This game was made by ID software. All my friends and myself knew the cheat codes so getting past levels wasnt a big challenge like that, but it still made blasting enemies away easy and entertaining. What can I say, I like easy games. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 14th, 2005
7:14 pm	Role playing…Allright…what can I say, up until now this entire class has been chock full of new experiences for me. Everytime that I log off of the WOW server I am constantly reminded that I am not a “video game person”. Why am I less interested in videogames than other people? I think that the answer to that question is simple: Once its time to stop playing, I feel like I have succumbed to hours of goalless clicking and typing having drawn from it no real applications for real life. This past weekend I found an area of “game play” that transcends my typical outlook on videogames and has surely changed the way that I regard the Virtual World of Warcraft. This area? Role playing. I was excited to hear that as an assignment we were required to embark on a role playing gaming session where we would assume identities different to our own real life ones. As a character I chose a female hunter dwarf under the name “Dulcinea”. This was my first character to be of the opposite gender. From past discussions in class I was indeed intrigued as to whether other player’s attitudes towards a novice player changed along with gender. While using male characters in previous sessions I have encountered little or no spontaneous generosity from players and now using a female character I was noting carefully how other players responded to me. The first instance worthy of noting occurred during the first 5 minutes of game play. Before I had decided to make the first “move” towards interacting with another player I was approached by a level 24 human male warrior. He engaged me in conversation and it was obvious to me that he was acting out his role as a warrior. I was pleased to see that players adhered to the server’s nature as being a role playing server. What entailed was what I perceived as an online bout of courtship. As a warrior he vowed to protect me and make sure that my voyage throughout the land went as safely as possible. After indulging him with courteous responses and small “in character” chit chat I took my leave of him and carried on about exploring other situations. What struck me most about this encounter with the level 24 is that he recognized my name “Dulcinea” as a character from Cervantes’ Don Quijote De La Mancha. At one point he told me that he would be my Quijote. Obvious allusions to the book on his part let me know that this was no young player but an older “well-read” one. Being a little freaked out by this character’s desire to “court” me, I politely bid him farewell and went one my way. My initial idea for a role playing identity was that of a melancholic dwarf searching for her lover’s killer. It was clear to me that my demeanor would have to be radical and a little ridiculous. I decided to trek up to ironforge from my original starting point and talk to anyone I encountered. More often than not people would ignore me and continue on their way. There were however some instances where I got reactions from players that soon evolved into scenarios. Walking through Kharanos I went up to someone and gave them my spiel about how I had lost my lover in battle and was looking for their killer in ironforge. This person sympathized with me and actually began asking me questions about my deceased companion. Another fe-male, she seemed to sympathize with me and began to offer her moral support. This raised a question in my head; Will the role each character plays change according to their interactions with others? Am I supposed to stick to my original character/conflict story?. My role playing character had successfully reached out and unfurled its story unto other players. Am I just a good roleplayer? The last and most notable if incidents occurred when I joined a party at ironforge. Why I was asked to join is still not clear to me. It was here that I clearly understood Bartle’s Role playing Paradox. As I delivered my initial introductory statement to the party the members began to ask me questions about my past and about my journey. Things started to feel a little awkward since I was making up an entire story to tell a group of people. The more I said the harder I had to think about my character, and the harder I thought, the more difficult it was for me to not get frustrated and bored. Bartle says, whenever you have to think hard about playing you role you stop assuming the identity since it is one that “should” come naturally depending on your identity. This exercise was fun, mostly because I got a bunch of people to believe and get interested in my story. Current Mood: busy Current Music: Soda Stereo (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 3rd, 2005
12:48 am	Bartle Test Allright. I was test taker number 296053. The results are as follows. My type of game playing personality is a KAE. By this we mean Killer, Achiever, Explorer. Of all people that take this test, only six percent are in this category. By saying that i am KAE, each segment has a percentage that fits my gaming personality. Killer: 80% Achiever: 60% Explorer: 53% Socializer: 6% (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 18th, 2005
3:19 pm	Introduction My name is Sebastian Cure. I am currently a full time student at Trinity University In San Antonio Texas. I am presently in my second semester of my junior year. I am a double major, in Spanish and Communications. Although i reside in San Antonio, this has been the third consecutive year that i have ever lived in the United States. Before i moved here, I called London England my Home, In a way i still do. However, i am not a native of England either. I was born in 1984 in Bogota Clombia. When asked "what i am" that is to say my nationality, i considewr myself to be a Colombian from England. My parents moved to Miami last year with my brother and siste, so now whenever i go home i go home to miami. My free time is mostly consumed with playing guitar and creating music. This is the first time i have ever played an online multiplayer role playing game. I have often veered away from videogames but i am excited to learn about this particular one. In world of Warcraft i will be starting out as a gnome. (Comment on this)