I really like Portal. I like the setting, the story, the characters, the gameplay. I find the entire thing a great time. The main problem with Portal is how short it is. When I got to Chamber #11, I was bearly over 20 mins in. And I feel like about 5-7 of them were figuring out how to […]

I really enjoyed playing portal. I’ve never played the game before or even heard of it before this class so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. All I knew was that it was going to involve portals and puzzles of some sort. The first test chambers were fun but extremely easy. At first I […]

The beginning of Portal was really enjoyable, but really easy. I was going through it really quickly and I stopped myself only when I realized I went past level ten and was now on level 14. Already knowing the basics from watching other people play made the tutorial feel unnecessary, but Portal does do a […]

I believe that McGonigal makes a lot of interesting points, but her examples and reasons seem a bit stale and not necessarily true. In chapter 13, she talks about how 10,000 hours will make a person a master of something. This seemed interesting to me at first, but I feel like you have to also have […]

McGonagall first opens chapter thirteen by talking about how trying to master something takes 10,000 hours. She emphasizes that most successful people in their fields were masters at the skill that made them successful by the age of twenty one, referencing Bill Gates. Then she digresses into talking about collaboration and how it entails three […]

I don’t believe I’m alone when I say this, but the more I read Reality is Broken the more I disagree with McGonigal. She continues to attempt to add legitimacy to her points by citing well known and academic ideas but makes large leaps in logic that completely ruin them. For example, in chapter thirteen […]

In Chapter 13, McGonigal discusses collaboration and shared intentionality — “the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions”. I really liked this definition that she gave, though they are technically the words of Tomasello, because it explains why we cooperate, to achieve similar goals. It is when she introduces […]

In Chapter 13 of Reality is Broken, McGonigal discusses how games help people become expert collaborators. She expresses the idea from Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers that a person becomes an expert in some field once he or she has practiced that field for 10,000 or more hours. Collaboration is made up of people’s cooperation, coordination, and […]

Ten thousand hours. 10,000. That is a ridiculous amount of hours spent gaming. I can’t comprehend playing that many hours total, but I can’t say I’d be surprised if I have either reached or surpassed that milestone. This number is only bound to increase as the years progress as technology continues to have a bigger […]

I found myself extremely interested in each of the readings for today! Lara explained the phenomenon of Tomb Raider and its protagonist Lara Croft (as well of the tragedy of the game’s creator, leaving before profiting), From Quake Grrls to Desperate Housewives discussed the factors of the Girl Games Movement and its impact or lack […]