Someone Else's Term Project - Gold Mining

Jennifer Wong's term project about gold mining has really gave me an insight about the business itself. Before this presentation, I know that people are letting someone else play their account to 'farm' for items or make their character stronger, for a fee of course. After hearing this presentation, it pretty much stereotypes Asians as hardcore gamers since the majority of these gold farmers are in Asian countries. These people earn next to nothing as they spend countless hours playing a certain MMORPG; this is like the new age of the Industrial Age. As a MMORPG player myself, I feel offended that people are getting stronger and getting rare items that they did not earn by themselves. Most of these sites are not trustworthy neither, the next thing they know, the people who paid for this junk could be scammed or obtain a virus inside their computer. I know one friend who accidentally clicked on one of those sites, and his computer was heavily infected by a certain virus, making him reformat his computer. Gold farming should be stopped, not only for the people working in them, but for the honesty built among players like me.

My Term Project Presentation

Surprisingly I presented my presentation late because I truly though that May 5th was a Thursday, which was supposed to be a Tuesday. That was a blunder on my part, but I'm glad Prof. Friedman let me present first thing on the next class. Overall, I think I didn't do as well for this presentation because I clearly read from the paper and not memorize it. I sounded real nervous (but then again I always do) up there and I thought I was going to fall apart. I rushed in some parts and fumbled around a little to find where I was. But in the end, I pulled through and even made the class chuckle. I should have taken it more slowly and prepared more time on it. Oh well, at least it is over.

MMORPG's are growing everyday; new ones are made while old ones are being improved and added upon. People are being drawn into it, making them play these games casually or nonstop. In fact, some people are hooked on it so bad, that one case was reported that someone has injured his niece by throwing her down the stairs. He said that it was not his fault but hers, which is surprising because he injured someone in real flesh and blood, yet he did not cared for her and only cared about his major party going on in some dungeon somewhere. People like him bring shame to gamers like me. As a gamer, we should play MMORPG's considerably and should be aware of the environment around them. I play MMORPG's excessively in terms of hours invested in it, but I am still aware of my family and friends and tend to them whenever I can.

Our Class Wiki - So far

Our class wiki has a lot of information about New Media, even more so with today's semester. Each link covers a separate part of New Media, like politics, news, entertainment, etc. My job in the class wiki is the editor, I clean up and change some things around to make sure the wiki looks good and consistent. There are some issues with the wiki at the moment, minor issues like Facebook not being in the Social Networking category, some rogue topics here and there, and some of them look like a rush job to just to get credit for contributing (like a topic about Twitter with only one word and a site). I'm more of a clean-up crew in the class wiki and there's lots of more work to be done. Hopefully I can do as much as I can before the semester ends.