(Begins May 13th - Ends May 20)
Read Ender's Game, Chapters 7 and 8, and respond to these questions:
Chapter 7
1) Ender has finally made a friend or two among the Launchies, when suddenly he's singled out again and promoted to an “army”, where he'll train and “play” with the big kids. Before he accepts the transition, he goes off in “Free Play”, and encounters a dreamlike string of locations and events. The adults refer to “Free Play” as a mind game. What does it reveal about Ender's psychological and/or emotional state? What does it reveal about the adults who designed the game? What do games reveal about the player, versus the designer?
2) Ender is transferred to Salamander Army. What does Ender learn from the leader of Salamander Army, Bonzo, throughout the chapter?
Chapter 8
1) Compared to Salamander Army, what is different about Rat Army? What is different about how it is organized and run?
3) At the beginning of the chapter, the adults discuss the consequences of making the battle game progressively more “unfair”. As game designers, is this ever an option we should pursue? At what point does strategy break down, and become anarchy?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
chapter 7
ReplyDelete1) once the giant is dead and becomes part of the landscape ender sees a playground where no matter what he trys to use he keeps getting hurled off. the children around him laugh and evetually turn to wolves that devour him. when ender is in this playground his character becomes a child, smaller then the other kids. i would say that ender feels like everyone is out to eat him alive.he feels like everyone in the world is bigger than he and he has no control over his own life. he cant do the things he wants to do.
2)ender learns that he can be a better leader than bonzo. he learns how to take advantage of surpsrise situations to reinforce team moral as well as rank. he also learns to bring a group together instead of seperating them like bonzo did with petra.
chapter 8
1)rat army was noisy and disorganized while slamander was neater. rose the nose, leader of rat army doesnt command attention and organization like bonso does. hes very relaxed.
2)yes i think as game desginers which should be pursueing more difficult puzzles and intricate stories. however for a game to be unfair implys that i wouldnt be able to be it. period. i good game doesnt leave the player completly blinded but at the same time doesnt give the player the answer either. if a game is either too easy or too complicated then it becomes boring.
the freeplay game reaveals ender as very sensitive, and it's designers as either madmen or geniuses, perhaps both. either way, they were very good at programing empathic subroutines.
ReplyDeleteits not so much a game itself that defines a player or designer, but more the style of play, usually. for instance, a wide range of people like FPS games, but for different reasons. some for the violence, some for the multiplayer, and some for the strategy. the same can be said of designers, as some would work on it for the story, others for the realistic/fantasy elements, and still more because of the community involved or the workplace presented, and some just for the pay. while some things can be revealed through te games people make or play, it's best not to read into those things, and judge instead by their actions in real life.
ender learns from Bonzo what NOT to do as a commander. like be a monster douche-bag to everyone.
rat army has no discipline, the squad leaders do the majority of the leading, and the commander was lazy and not very commanding.
making the game progressively harder rewards players for becoming more skilled. however, blatant abuse, like "rocks fall, everyone dies" scenarios, are usually more frustrating than entertaining. after all, nobody likes to fail, even if it's just a game.
Chapter 7
ReplyDelete1) Ender has finally made a friend or two among the Launchies, when suddenly he's singled out again and promoted to an “army”, where he'll train and “play” with the big kids. Before he accepts the transition, he goes off in “Free Play”, and encounters a dreamlike string of locations and events. The adults refer to “Free Play” as a mind game. What does it reveal about Ender's psychological and/or emotional state? What does it reveal about the adults who designed the game? What do games reveal about the player, versus the designer?Ender’s experiences in Free Play in this chapter are dreamlike and very daunting. Specifically, the part of Free Play where Ender discovers the playground and is transformed into a child. This reflects Ender’s feelings of weakness and insecurity, as well as his sensation of being ganged-up on (which is all too accurate) and his ability to overcome even the challenge of being severely outnumbered. Even though he feels threatened and vulnerable, Ender is sure enough of himself to accomplish very impressive tasks and overcome serious challenges. The adults who designed the game are revealed through this development to have a deep understanding of the psychological involvement of a player in the game and the necessity of keeping the mind as well as the body trained. In my opinion, the more about a player that a game brings out, the more in-depth and detailed the designers were when they created the game.
2) Ender is transferred to Salamander Army. What does Ender learn from the leader of Salamander Army, Bonzo, throughout the chapter?Bonzo teaches Ender nothing positive, but sets a great negative example for him. Throughout his stay in Salamander, Ender learns a great deal of what NOT to do from Bonzo, as well as the importance of using your own head to keep yourself afloat while simultaneously keeping your team (or army) afloat. He also gets some big networking done, by bridging back to his Launchy group and working with Petra despite Bonzo’s warnings not to.
Chapter 8
1) Compared to Salamander Army, what is different about Rat Army? What is different about how it is organized and run?Salamander Army was painfully disciplined and organized. Rat Army, on the other hand, lacked virtually any organization. The atmosphere was hugely different, too. Salamander was a fearful sort of orderly, and Rat is a relaxed, almost ramshackle situation. Bonzo relied heavily on regular patterns and predictability and control, while Rosen worked in a two-part sort of function, where his one Toon, run by Meeker, was similar to a Special Ops force. Rosen is also a lot more open minded and significantly better at strategy and learning than Bonzo.
3) At the beginning of the chapter, the adults discuss the consequences of making the battle game progressively more “unfair”. As game designers, is this ever an option we should pursue? At what point does strategy break down, and become anarchy?Personally, when I read that Graff and Anderson were arguing over making the games progressively more “unfair” I wondered why the games weren’t already on this sort of arrangement. I think in all games that have levels there should be an increase in difficulty. Even if this increased challenge is accomplished through added unfair elements, it presents a greater challenge for the player to overcome, to grow in skill. I strongly believe that such incremental increases in difficulty are completely necessary to a functional level-based game. There should, however, always be a limit at which the “unfair” becomes impossible to overcome, and that should conclude the levels. There is no point in having a completely anarchistic level, since there is no obtainable goal in chaos.
Ch. 7
ReplyDelete1) Ender feels helpless, he tries to take on the “fun” things that are in his way, but now they don’t seem so fun anymore-its gotten a lot harder for him since he is so small. It seems that he wants to be a part of the childlike experience again and have fun like everyone else, but instead he cant because there is something much more waiting for him. Possibly that the adults like to try and tap into the children’s minds---and see how they tick. I guess the games can reveal what player is into what kind of game and maybe it helps the designer to pin point what they should focus more on or fix.
2) He learns all of his bad moves and practices with his launchie friends to come up with better ones to defeat the army. Watching Bonzo, Ender sees that Bonzo can be a leader, but not a good one, his neglect for strategy causes him to lose the battle.
Ch. 8
1) The Salamander army was neat and organized, unlike the Rat army which was poorly organized and the commander didn’t really care much. The style of it was more, like a not caring kind of style.
2)I think its an option that game designers like to keep pursuing. They are always coming up with new ways to make the game “harder” or more “challenging” for the player. If the level of difficulty stays the same in games, of course players will get bored of it because they will be able to win every single time. Game designers are constantly coming up with new ways to make it seem “unfair” to the player, making the player think outside the box more and more. Think of new ways to defeat the “challenge.” Unfortunately if the game is too one sided, then this becomes a bit ridiculous. If there is no possible way to defeat, lets say, a boss or a certain level and if the player has to play more then 20 times to defeat the level/boss then that’s when it makes it not fair.
ch7
ReplyDelete1- I think his free play experience shows how he needs to solve puzzles or figure out complicated strategies. Maybe the designers are trying wat state of mind the child is in. Games usually tend to show what entertains a person or what their specific tastes are versus the designer who might make a game as a creatuve outlet.
2- He realizes everything Bonzo is doing wrong and how he would be a better leader than him.
ch8
1 The saalamander group was much more tightly oranized where as the rat group seemed undisicplined.
I think games are supposed to become more challenging as it goes by. It may become anarchy when its litterally imposssible to keep going.
1-1. Ender tries to be peaceful when dealing with a problem, but becomes aggressive when he is left no other option. He also visualizes the people close to him as his enemies because he may think that all he will do is hurt them. The adults are using it to try to understand how Ender will handle aggressive attack, and that's all they want. Games reveal a player's response to a designer's proposal. The designers choose the characters' skills, story, and backdrop, while the player chooses how to bring them together.
ReplyDelete1-2. Ender learns that Bonzo is too proud for his own good and lacks the ability to properly run his army. He doesn't know how to discipline them, get them to feel like equals, or train them to play not only as a large, group.
2-1. Rat Army is split up into different groups that are run by their own leaders. Each leader trains his own group how he wants to in addition to the overall army training.
2-2. Progressively making a game more unfair makes the game more challenging. As long as there is a way to win and it's not unfair from player to player, it's not such a bad idea, as long as the player has the chance of attaining the goal. When a game's rules do not allow the player to have a chance at reaching the goal or do not fit the game at all, then it is too unfair.
Chapter 7
ReplyDelete1. Ender goes tot he free play rather than following his order to meet up with the salamander group because he wanted to let out aggression, as he had previously done when fighting the giant in the game. Ender's ability to solve each of the games puzzles, usually after some trial and error, is a compliment to his intelligence and problem-solving capabilities. The game shows that Ender usually takes a cool and calculated, emotionally-neutral tactic, until frustrated, when he will try something he hadn't before as a means of letting out frustration.
2. Ender learns a number of things from Bonzo throughout the chapter. Mostly through negative example, but not entirely. Ender sees Bonzo make mistakes as a commander by making special rules for behavior based on gender as well as treating many of his team-mates poorly(more poorly than a commander should, anyway). Ender also learns that staying too close to formations in battles will lead to the enemy being able to study your formation and find it's flaws more easily. Ender does see some good leadership skills though, however, such as certain tactics that were used on the battlefield as well as dividing up the teams so they are more evenly-matched.
Chapter 8
1. The salamander and rat teams represent opposite-sides of the spectrum when it comes to command. The commander of the Rat was far more relaxed and less controlling than the commander of salamander was, and as a result the team lacked cohesion and discipline. Due to this more free atmosphere, the battles were less rigidly-formed and played in more free patterns as well.
2. Making a game become increasingly unfair is potentially an effective strategy. If you don't gradually stack the odds against the player throughout a game, there won't be any difficulty progression and therefore the game may become monotonous, boring, and/or anticlimactic. Making certain parts of the game 'unfair' as the game progresses may help stack up the difficulty and challenge of the game. Then again, things can become more difficult without becoming unfair. Used in moderation, though, unfairness can add an extra challenge to the game or break up the gameplay with something a bit more out of the ordinary. Even against unfair odds, the game should still be beatable, so if a game progresses to a level of unfairness where it cannot be beaten, or leads the player to frustration or anger for extended periods, it has failed as a means of entertainment.
1.] Ender's state of mind is shown as troubled and alienated by the children by the concepts in the game such as encountering faces he recognizes on the playground. It reveals that he has not let go any of his past 'mistakes' or conflicts. The adults who designed this game aren't even able to fully predict what the game will do in the hands of someone who presses it as far as Ender has and does, but it also shows that they designed this game to be stressful and drk and to test the mental limits of those who would dare to or are smart enough to advance further into the game. The game receals more about the player than it does the perhaps slightly clueless designers, because of the magnitude in which the game can change and modify itself and it's complete unpredictability when it comes to the player and how they maneuver the game.
ReplyDelete2.] Bonzo clearly shows ender how NOT to run an army, by being a completely terrible captain. Ender learns how he can keep a team together and make them stronger by unifying them instead of Bonzo's divisive and hot-headed domination 'techniques', if they can be called that. He realizes that independent thinking between the teammates is much more effective than just having the unit move as one, creating unnecessary fodder.
1.] As if in accordance with their names, Rat army was disheveled and unkempt and lacked discipline out of battle, compared to the strict and tense atmosphere in Salamander. The leader of Rat army was also smarter and more open-minded than Bonzo and ran his toon in two effective and separate parts, which in many ways is a much better idea.
2.] Unfairness, if tiered in a progressively more difficult manner, is a good idea, in my opinion. It keeps the player pressing themselves to become better and more skilled as challenges become harder. It keeps the players wanting to come back to improve themselves. however, if the player knows that there is a level or obstacle they cannot defeat or overcome, they are not going to desire to play it all. Nobody wants to play a game they know they can't win. If the game becomes unpredictable in any large manner and the player finds that with no amount of technique can he improve himself or further himself in the game, his strategy will likely become anarchic.