e) build something

At first I really had no clue as to what I should "create." I thought about a couple of different things, and after typing in vague creation related phrases into google, I came across some online game creation sites. That initial stage took probably about 5 minutes or so. Once I had decided on creating a game, it took about 10 minutes to find a site that I wanted to use (I tried a couple, my computer couldn't handle some of them, some were too complicated for me, bla bla bla). Eventually I found sploder.com, which is a very simple gaming creator.

I quickly made an account (all it required was a username - mine is kaili - a password, and an email account). Then I created an avatar for my account which is mostly just used to put a "face" to the user - the lego type head you can see above in the first paragraph. That took another 5 minutes or so, but you could have completed it in 10 seconds, I just like mucking with avatars.

I then set about creating my game :) You have the choice between platform games (hand-to-hand combat and such) and shooter games. I chose shooter. From there you can choose between using an alien spaceship or a futuristic robot to battle. I went with the spaceship. Once you have chosen your game parameters, you get an empty multi-angular shape with your shooter, and then you can select objects from a list to include in your game (there are mines, enemy combatants, walls, missiles, lots of fun stuff). The "game creating" stage is depicted in the lovely image below.


FINALLY you can test drive your game :) :) :) that was highly entertaining. Granted I created the entire game in about 15 minutes, just to see what I could come up with (and I knew that I would spend hours on it if I didn't keep it simple), so it's not particularly amazing. However the obnoxious enemy spaceships I had to include killed me in 2 or 3 minutes. But it was highly amusing nonetheless. I titled it "first attempt" - I thought it was fitting.

So in total I spent about half an hour on the whole project - I wanted to see how fast I could do it. It's really kind of impressive. However you can spend hours and hours on these things, perfecting them, putting in lots of little tricks and challenges and so on. There are even contests on this site - who can make the best game and whatnot.

Overall, I think what I made is amusing and a good waste of time. I like it, and I like that it was so easy to do. Now I can go back and edit it, create new games, play other people's games.... ok I'm starting to see why I had reservations about starting this whole process. It can be a little addicting.

And here is the link to my game if you are really really bored -
http://www.sploder.com/publish.php?s=d000tbsu&browse=1&ref=0

d) playing well with others

None of the posts I commented on had only my comment - I think the class as a whole chose the posts that they found the most interesting. At least with the blogs I saw, the vast majority of comments were linked to the "extra" posts that students did (not specifically assigned posts). It was the same for my own blog - if you're reading this you can check it out right now - I had a number of comments on the post I wrote about a news article I noticed online and its relation to computer mediated communication. I think the reason for this might just be that these extra things we blog about are the things we find most interesting, and thus others can assume that we are more passionate about the subject (and therefore more entertaining to read).

I commented on three different blogs, in addition to responding to comments on my own. I pretty much randomly chose names from the class to comment on - I didn't just want to comment on people I knew, so I just picked random sites from the CICADA page. I would say that overall it isn't the best method of communicating within a class setting, mostly just because of the fact that you have to navigate between pages, there isn't one site that everyone communicates on. It would be more efficient to have a home base (like CICADA) and then everyone gets a page that has a link from that original source. That way it's just simpler to get from page to page.

Just from personal experience I'm not a huge fan of blogs, simply because I don't have the stamina to keep up with any (including my own). I think it's not a bad tool to use for the purpose of writing about a class or something like that - it's kind of a nice, slightly more personal way of online work submission. It's a good way for a professor to keep up with his or her students, and to see all of their work in one chronological location. Otherwise... ha... as you can tell I'm not the biggest fan.


5. What are the advantages/disadvantages of this method of communication?