Saturday, July 18, 2009

Poster

Hello everybody, its been a busy day!

I first did some comments on the other U.Discover Scholar's blogs, then started working on my poster. While looking for pictures, I came across 2 new articles which I read and one new book (really new, as in published a month and a half ago) which I ordered off interlibrary loan. After that, I went back to my poster. Fairly productive day if I do say so myself.

On that note, I posted the link to my Poster in progress. I have only one more bubble block to finish which corresponds to the rest of what I want to work on for my paper. I'm planning on me, more or less, being done by Monday.

B. F. Pons

6 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed your presentation, and was impressed with ambitiousness of your topic. One question I thought of, and forgive me if I missed the answer when reading your blog, is the person playing the game outside of the magic circle but causing changes in it (like a god) or are they too in the magic circle therefore exempting them from typical rules? Thanks.

    Adam Bledsoe


    (He could not get this to post so I am doing it for him)

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  2. You raise an interesting topic about the magic circle. If you recall, I stated that a magic circle can be viewed two different ways, rules and physically. I argue that both will be important parts of the magic circle, though rules are more important when defining the ethics. But for your question, when a player plays a video game, they enter the physical part of the magic circle so they are now part of the magic circle in some sense. However, because they cannot physically enter the virtual world supported by the fantastical rules, they are not exempt from typical rules insofar as they can fly or use pyrokinesis. This will hopefully be clearer when i update my paper again and talk about the perfect magic circle of video games.

    Excellent Question

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  3. Hey Bo! Good work! You've got a solid chunk of paper and poster! Good luck with your final couple of weeks in the program!

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  4. Bo,
    I really enjoyed your presentation. It is definitely a topic to which I would not otherwise be exposed. I am curious where the "idea" or original definition of the magic circle first came from. Is it something that is present in other situations? (outside of video games) In the imagination of children's games? Do crazy people have a magic circle in which their reality is not "real." Just some musings..

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  5. The magic circle is a term coined by Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens (1950). He uses it to define play of all sorts, games, ritual, courting, etc. Video Game Scholars have taken this concept and applied to to video games to help define the metaphysics of a game and virtual play.

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  6. I forgot to ask this question when you gave your presentation to the U.Discover people. Do you think it is cheating when someone with excellent computer skills uses those skills to have his character play the game while the live player is, say, at work??

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