Join us in welcoming Henry Jenkins (Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts and Author of Convergence Culture) for an online discussion of his work in Media.
When: April 25th at 1PM
Where: Texar Room
This will be a PLACE event held in association with the Red River Innovation Lab for the Humanities.
Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is a team-based first-person-shooter game released by Valve in 2007. On Steam, a popular digital distribution platform, TF2 is still one of the most played games, despite lower player numbers. To what does it owe its longevity? As someone with over 2,200 hours clocked in the game, I hope to articulate what makes TF2 so enduring.
The first of two main factors is charm — TF2 is rich in personality. From the production design to the voice acting, the characters (or classes) are easy to become invested in. Take, for example, the Scout: a loud, obnoxious narcissist with a heavy Bostonian accent, or the soft-spoken, amiable Engineer from Texas. These personalities are augmented by not only the cartoonish style of the game, but by in-game taunts and customizable cosmetic loadouts, as well as miscellaneous lines of dialogue spoken throughout rounds.
Of course, personality couldn’t carry TF2 for ten years if the gameplay itself wasn’t solid. Each class has its own arsenal, but there is a common element throughout most of their primary weapons: they are powerful and single-fire, rather than automatic with each bullet doing little damage. This means that every shot fired is hit-or-miss, and consistently landing these shots rewards the player with high damage per shot. Coupled with the sound design, these weapons are extremely satisfying to use, and make players want to improve their aim so they can feel more of that satisfaction.
Since being hit by anything will most likely reduce a big chunk of your health, an important technique to abuse utilize is movement. The ability to dodge effectively is overpowered in TF2, despite the simplicity of the mechanics, using only the letter keys and Space Bar. If you stand still in TF2, you will be backstabbed, headshotted, or suffer any other number of quick deaths. Movement is key to survival in this game; strafing combined with careful mouse movement can result in unpredictable movements, making one a harder target to hit.
One class that benefits significantly from movement is the Spy. The Spy has low health and a decent primary weapon, but his distinguishing factor is a knife which, when attacking an enemy’s back, instantly kills him. As a Spy main myself, I cannot stress how crucial it is to properly move when playing the class. In a technique called the Matador, the player strafes in one direction when an enemy is approaching, then quickly switch directions and stab, fooling him into looking away and exposing his back to the knife.
I hope this article helps you understand why a game so old is still enjoyed to this day.
From a internal email by Teri Stover:
The Red River Innovation Lab for the Humanities is proud to announce our first annual Festival of Creative Work on April 23rd at Noon in SCIT 210.
We are seeking creative submissions from students, faculty and staff that showcase the abundance of talent and vision we have on our campus. Submissions might include: short films, graphic design work, documentary projects, photography, data visualizations, applications, podcasts, online lectures and learning supplements.
Drafts and works in progress are completely acceptable!
Please note that submissions do not need to have been made in the lab with lab resources.
We’ve only had our doors open for about a month now and we want to celebrate the creative spirit in an effort to inspire our community.
Submissions can be sent via Vimeo, YouTube, Dropbox or Google Drive sharing, or email attachment (depending on size) and should be submitted to Dr. Drew Morton by 5 p.m. on March 30th via email (dmorton@tamut.edu). Decisions will be made by April 9th.
On February 16th, Main Street Texarkana Hosted a Grand Opening for the 1894 City Gallery. The event was a success as over 200 people came to celebrate and support another downtown business. People from all around the area got to enjoy the live music. The style of the music fit in perfectly with the mood of the event while everyone browsed around the art gallery. Only main section was open, but the guests would wander up the stairs to see the future apartments. People enjoyed seeing the floor plans and getting that “before” look, and the construction was a major topic of discussion and excitement.
The event allowed for Main Street to do their membership kick off where the community could buy a membership that helps Main Street Texarkana revitalize downtown. The organization works closely with downtown, which has eight different restaurants, many museums and several shops that have a steady following. Downtown is home to Photographers Island (state line sign), The Arrow Bar (oldest bar in Texarkana), and the Texarkana Gazette. Of course there are many other downtown attractions, and the Main Street website has them all listed.
Main Street Texarkana is a non-profit organization that focuses on rejuvenating downtown by encouraging traffic as well as offering grants and loans to potential business owners. The organization also offers free design assistance to those who help build up that area of town. Some common events associated with Main Street Texarkana include the Christmas parade as well as the more well-known Dine on the Line. The Texarkana City Guide is also published by Main Street. This non-profit organization relies on the support and donation of the community. A base membership is $25, with a student membership coming soon to encourage students to take part in downtown. Members get early access to event information as well as a variety of other things depending on the type of membership purchased.
If you missed this event, another downtown event, hosted by Texarkana Twin City Sports will happen in early March. They are throwing a downtown festival that will take place with the Big Bass Clash Fishing Tournament on March 9th-11th. Main Street Texarkana as well as the Texarkana Twin City Sports website have more information about this event. To keep up to date with upcoming events, subscribe to the Main Street Newsletter.
As the month of February comes to a close, Dr. Drew Morton will be hosting the second campus event held in association with the Red River Innovation Lab for the Humanities – a Book Lecture on Lev Manovich’s “Language of New Media”.
Where: UC217
When: February 27th, 12:15PM – 1PM
No reading necessary prior to this lecture – just come eager to learn and ask questions about the new opened RRILH!
Dr. Drew Morton will be kicking off the first of many events held in association with the campus’ newly opened Red River Innovation Lab for the Humanities – starting from humble beginnings with a tutorial on importing DVD/YouTube clips into Adobe Premiere!
Where: The Computer Lab in UC323
When: February 1st, from 12:15PM to 1PM.
This will be the first campus event of the semester closely associated with the RRILH. Feel free to come to the tutorial with questions about what the Lab is and what it can do for you!
During the semester, I did not have as much time to read as I would have liked. I reread one of my favorite stories, Memoirs of a Geisha, recently and was reminded of why I enjoy this book.
The story is told from first person point-of-view from an older geisha. She begins the story when is a just a young girl in Japan during the Depression. Chiyo Sakamoto is a poor girl from a fishing village, but captures the attention of a man for her unusual eyes, which are a blue-gray color. She and her sister are taken from their home and Chiyo is sold to an okiya (house where geisha live) in a prominent area of Kyoto. The story is based on background information provided by retired geisha, Mineko Iwasaki, but Chiyo’s character is fictional. Without giving too much away, she becomes a maid before she begins her journey to being a geisha. Chiyo is in awe of the beauty of the geishas and the respect they are given, but the path is very difficult.
I enjoyed the novel because it read at a leisurely pace without being slow. In the beginning of the story, Chiyo is just a child. The narrative highlights her curiosities at that age and her emotions as she is taken from her home. It also reflects her maturity as she gets older and encounters different experiences. Reading the story made me feel like I was following Chiyo through her life. A good book will pull in its readers until they feel every emotion and that was my experience with this one. When there were moments of heartbreak, it hurt me to read of her tears and devastation. The story was very detailed, but well-balanced with dialogue. Many different characters are introduced throughout the story, but it was not confusing because there was a clear distinction between them. Each character had a strong impact on Chiyo and I could feel that through their descriptions.
Prior to reading this book, I had heard of geishas and only knew what they looked like. I did not know what they did, but there was a negative association between geishas and prostitutes. Geishas are traditional Japanese entertainers. They entertain men through song, dance, conversation and serve tea as hostesses. Young girls spent years training and perfecting their skills that would make them successful geishas. They went to schools that taught dance, musical instruments, and other skills. It was important for them to be successful because they were expected to repay their okiyas back for the money spent on their food, lodging, kimono, and other tools needed.
There is a great deal of effort and time that is required for being a geisha and not every woman can do this successfully. It is also important to note that some people would confuse geishas with prostitutes. The difference is that geisha’s wear their sash tied in the back, but the prostitutes tied theirs in the front. There are still some geishas practicing in Japan, but they are mostly in the company of the higher social class.
This book is controversial because Iwasaki sued Arthur Golden after the book’s release. According to her, he was supposed to keep her identity a secret and revealed parts of her life that were supposed to remain personal. She felt that he did not accurately portray her life and shamed the geisha profession. Iwasaki published her own book in 2002 titled, Geisha: A Life, to tell her story in her own words.
Whether the story is completely true or not, it is still a very good story that I can always come back to when I want something to read. This is also an award-winning movie.
The recently released trailer for Ready Player One packs some nice pop culture references! Here’s the trailer:
Ready Player One takes place in a world where the depletion of fossil fuels and global warming have led to a worldwide energy crisis. People now seek refuge from this harsh reality inside a virtual reality world called the OASIS, where anyone can be anybody and do so much more than the real world now allows. It’s founder announced in a postmortem message that he left a treasure within OASIS that when found would award wealth and control of OASIS itself to the person who discovered it.
Much like Wreck-It Ralph, Ready Player One is jam-packed with references to other people in pop-culture, namely games and movies. Here’s a couple I could spot myself:
There are surely more I couldn’t spot without rewatching the trailer a dozen times over. Ready Player One releases March 30th, 2018.
LA Noire is a remastered version of the original 2011 title released by developer Rockstar Games. This action-adventure detective game portrays all the glorious conventions of its namesake, even if it’s still very rough around the edges. You play as Cole Phelps, a veteran of the Okinawa campaign turned police officer turned LAPD detective. You play through many, many cases in Cole’s career through various departments – Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Arson – including all cases from the original release that originally existed separately as pre-order DLC.
Each case feels distinct from the other – although depending on your sleuthing skills, each case isn’t necessarily as satisfying to solve as the last. LA Noire’s cases play out through two primary ‘phases’ – gathering evidence and interrogating witnesses. Gathering evidence is contextual as Cole navigates crime scenes or locations of interest – your controller vibrates to show you’ve found something. While it isn’t all of value – you can interact with stray liquor bottles irrelevant to the scene itself – Cole’s dialogue about the items that actually are of import to the case conveys a sense of discovery the player is feeling in equal measure.
This evidence is catalogued in Cole’s notebook and used in the other distinct ‘phase’ of LA Noire – the interrogations. This part of LA Noire is what stands out from the rest – the game uses advanced facial mapping to represent real, emoting faces. This means that people look like and act like people, which the game means for you to interpret to properly progress in dialogue. This all works but only to a point – the technology was a little odd even back in 2011 and there are definitely signs of age in the remaster because of how almost experimental this technology was. It makes the other facet of interrogations – choosing how to interpret witness statements – a bit of a chore, and that’s before you factor in the game’s ever-changing logic. In the original release, you had three ways to react to testimony – you could Believe it, Doubt it (if you thought the person was lying but lacked evidence) or call them out on their Lie with gathered evidence. These options exist in the remaster under new names – Good Cop, Bad Cop and Accuse. It’s less a criticism of the remaster as it is the original but it’s very misleading as to which choice is the correct one. You may think because of analyzing the testimony and reading the dialogue that you can only play Bad Cop to a statement but in reality you were supposed to Accuse them and the game wasn’t giving you a clear picture of the situation.
A remaster is ultimately a rerelease of the original game – LA Noire is served well by a fresh coat of paint in the modern gaming era, even if it’s still bogged down by its original issues.
Xbox and PlayStation have been competitors since 2002. The evolution of the systems has come to modern-day online services so you can play against your friends. You not only pay a monthly fee to play online but you also receive a couple of monthly games for free. The question is: which one is better?
This month on PlayStation:
PS4
PS3
This month on Xbox:
Xbox One
Xbox 360
Both consoles offer great game but PlayStation only offers two. Another downfall is that once your PlayStation Plus subscription expires, you are no longer able to play the games you got free. Xbox allows you to keep and those games for as long as you want, even when your subscription expires. Xbox also has backward compatibility where you can play Xbox 360 games on your Xbox One.
When I first got my Xbox One, I was able to download Xbox 360 games I got for free with Gold years ago. As an owner of both consoles, Xbox Live Gold is overall the better buy. If you buy a console this holiday season, you might want to keep these things in mind.