If I think about it, I think the real intent behind Foursquare is for people to have more "flesh meets" with people they already know. Or at least to contact them more often. The site allows users to get updates on where their friends are whenever the friends check in. For me, this meant that a couple of my friends came into Chipotle and started talking to me one day. This freaked me out a bit until I realized that just a few minutes before they walked in, I had checked in at Chipotle.
Really, what's the point of telling your friends where you are if you don't want to see them? Some people use check-ins as an opportunity to brag about where they are or to create a sort of persona (always at the gym, always at the airport, etc.) and I have to admit that if I were on vacation, I'd probably check in everywhere, just to say I had. "Just to say I did" is also a big motivation for people on Foursquare, I think. I'm currently the mayor of five places, and none of these are places where I receive any kind of recognition or coupons or any of that. I've simply checked in there more than anyone else in the past two months, and Foursquare calls me the mayor.
I think Foursquare really wants to encourage "flesh meets", though, based on what Foursquare itself has done. With a few of my friends that I see a lot, I get "BFF bonus" points for checking in with them a few times a week. The point, Foursquare seems to be suggesting, is that you're supposed to be together in using the app. After my initial embarrassment, I've decided that you're supposed to run around Six Flags checking in at every roller coaster. And you know what? It's a lot of fun to become mayor of the only roller coaster that ever makes you feel sick and to spend the day acting like a fool with your other Foursquare using friends - in person.
Do any of your sites encourage flesh meets in a sort of backhanded way? What about those that have them set up intentionally - do they encourage having more non-organized flesh meets after your first site-organized one?
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Foursquare's competitive edge
One of the biggest things I noticed when I joined Foursquare has become even more pronounced: Foursquare is competitive.
When I joined Foursquare, the "Mayor" system, where a member is rewarded with the status of Mayor for being the person to check in the most at a particular venue, was the most obvious way the site encouraged competition, but since I've been there, the site has taken it up a notch.
The point system, implemented about a month ago, gives users points for their check-ins. As far as I can tell, one only gets points for the sake of getting points. The site also awards "badges" for checking in at certain types of venues, for example, but there has not yet been any indication that members will be receiving badges based on their points. So why do we get points?
Well...members are now encouraged to keep going -- check in everywhere you can! Check in at places you've never been and get more points! Check in somewhere your friends have never been and get extra points! Check in somewhere at least three times a week and get extra points!
Every time you get points for a check in, Foursquare reminds you how many points you got, tells you if you passed any friends in total points for the week, and encourages you to pass the friend you're closest to catching. All of this seems to really just be competition for the sake of competition.
My guess is that this must be Foursquare's way of trying to get its members to check in at every venue they visit. Some people, as I've mentioned in class, only check in to certain places that will create a "cool" Foursquare persona. Perhaps the site is using its new point system as a way to boost its stats, so to speak. If people are checking in more often, as my friends have been since the change, Foursquare will be able to boast about the amounts of check-ins that are taking place on the site.
Have any of you seen your sites using competition in this way?
When I joined Foursquare, the "Mayor" system, where a member is rewarded with the status of Mayor for being the person to check in the most at a particular venue, was the most obvious way the site encouraged competition, but since I've been there, the site has taken it up a notch.
The point system, implemented about a month ago, gives users points for their check-ins. As far as I can tell, one only gets points for the sake of getting points. The site also awards "badges" for checking in at certain types of venues, for example, but there has not yet been any indication that members will be receiving badges based on their points. So why do we get points?
Well...members are now encouraged to keep going -- check in everywhere you can! Check in at places you've never been and get more points! Check in somewhere your friends have never been and get extra points! Check in somewhere at least three times a week and get extra points!
Every time you get points for a check in, Foursquare reminds you how many points you got, tells you if you passed any friends in total points for the week, and encourages you to pass the friend you're closest to catching. All of this seems to really just be competition for the sake of competition.
My guess is that this must be Foursquare's way of trying to get its members to check in at every venue they visit. Some people, as I've mentioned in class, only check in to certain places that will create a "cool" Foursquare persona. Perhaps the site is using its new point system as a way to boost its stats, so to speak. If people are checking in more often, as my friends have been since the change, Foursquare will be able to boast about the amounts of check-ins that are taking place on the site.
Have any of you seen your sites using competition in this way?
Thursday, April 14, 2011
I'm the kind of person who's always hated group projects...
As I tend to be pretty conscious of my grades, "aw, heck naw" was my knee-jerk reaction to the idea of crowdsourcing grades. I did my best, especially after reading Davidson's reply to her critics, to take her word at face value and not to scowl.
I must say, I think Davidson's argument has value. She has students be more responsible through the whole process of taking the course and makes them responsible to one another for the quality of their work. From this angle, I think crowdsourcing grading sounds like a relatively great way to do it.
As a student, though, I don't think I could help but object to crowdsourcing. I don't think I would choose a class if it said this would be going on in its description, and I think the idea of my peers grading my papers and other assignments would make me...angry.
If Dr. Davis gives me a really awful grade on a paper, I'm not going to be happy, but I wouldn't question that she's the authority on the subject. Like with group projects, though, if a peer seemed to have not done a satisfactory job and caused me to have a poor grade, I'd be angry. This class, with these specific people, after reading your blogs and interacting with you in class, I MIGHT be willing to participate in this with.
I think Davidson's argument presents a sort of utopian idea of what classes are like. All the students are suddenly motivated to work hard when they have the opportunity to run the show (at least a little). My fear is that this wouldn't be as much of a motivation for other students as it would be for me and that those students who work hard would be subjected to the group project nightmare - all semester.
I must say, I think Davidson's argument has value. She has students be more responsible through the whole process of taking the course and makes them responsible to one another for the quality of their work. From this angle, I think crowdsourcing grading sounds like a relatively great way to do it.
As a student, though, I don't think I could help but object to crowdsourcing. I don't think I would choose a class if it said this would be going on in its description, and I think the idea of my peers grading my papers and other assignments would make me...angry.
If Dr. Davis gives me a really awful grade on a paper, I'm not going to be happy, but I wouldn't question that she's the authority on the subject. Like with group projects, though, if a peer seemed to have not done a satisfactory job and caused me to have a poor grade, I'd be angry. This class, with these specific people, after reading your blogs and interacting with you in class, I MIGHT be willing to participate in this with.
I think Davidson's argument presents a sort of utopian idea of what classes are like. All the students are suddenly motivated to work hard when they have the opportunity to run the show (at least a little). My fear is that this wouldn't be as much of a motivation for other students as it would be for me and that those students who work hard would be subjected to the group project nightmare - all semester.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
S/R 3: eXistenZ
In the beginning, whether or not it’s really the beginning, of eXistenZ, a group of gamers is given the opportunity to test the newest creation of Allegra Geller, the gaming world’s best and most famous game designer. Before they get a chance, however, Allegra is attacked and shot by a realist, a person who wants to end the influence of gaming’s alternative reality. Ted Pikul, a marketing person for the gaming company, is sent away with Allegra and told that she is in great danger. When Allegra believes she is somewhat safe from the attacks of the realists, she brings up the trauma that her game pod, a fleshy object that we later learn is made with animal innards and synthetic DNA, must have gone through, and that she needs to check on the game by playing it. Allegra convinces Pikul to have a “port” inserted into his spinal cord (an enhancement she is shocked he didn’t have to begin with) so that they can play the game. After multiple complications with Pikul’s port, the two are finally able to play eXistenZ. Once in the game, Pikul is surprised to find that he feels he’s really there, like his body in the game is real. Allegra and Pikul work their way around, soon going into a game in the game. Pikul realizes that in the game he can’t tell what’s real and that he has no idea what’s going on with his real body. After pausing the game and finding that they seemed safe, Allegra convinces Pikul to return to the game. In the game, Allegra and Pikul find themselves realizing that they don’t know who their friends or enemies are, and both in the game and “out”, later on, they find themselves willing to kill people that they don’t truly know the motivations of. Finally, Pikul realizes that he is Allegra’s true assassin, but she is one step ahead of him, and she blows him up through a bomb she inserted in his game port. Suddenly, all the characters we recognize from the game are sitting in a semicircle, taking off headsets, and being told that the trial of a brand new game, tranCendenZ, is over. They’ve been in the game for twenty minutes, though it feels like days. In the final moments of the film, Ted Pikul and his somewhat timid girlfriend, Allegra Geller, shoot and kill the designer of tranCendenZ, using the wording of the original realist shooter, leaving the characters and the audience to wonder whether or not the game is still going.
Throughout the movie, the characters bring up the question of reality. Like in the Matrix, characters are given the choice between the game and reality, but in eXistenZ, the preferences and subconscious thoughts of the players create the world in which the game operates. As in the real world, those playing the game both bring their own thoughts to create the game and are changed and manipulated by the game itself. Pikul’s objection to the world of the game and its not giving him much free will leads Allegra to say “it’s like real life – just enough to make it interesting.” We have free will, Allegra the Designer would argue, but only so much as we’ve been given by our circumstances. This critique of life, by a woman who is intent on staying in a game that she created to mimic life, brings an audience to consider our own lives. It seems the game is both an imitation and a critique of the lives we lead. In a way, characters in the game are like people we deal with in our lives. We can at no point determine their true motives or know how their stories will cross with ours. We are at once a being that gets to make conscious choices and one that cannot decide for itself its next steps. We are constantly being shaped by the role we were given when entering the “game” and by the other players. When considering whether or not we have free will, many people determine that humans don’t have any. On the other hand, even people who believe that humans have free will would be remiss to ignore the fact that our position in society, the game character we’ve been given, has a huge impact on what we become, or even on what it is possible for us to become. The question of where our motivation comes from is a more complicated one, but it doesn’t take much a logical leap from here to see that the world we live in has a huge influence on what we desire. Reality, it seems, creates us and is in turn created by who we become.
Throughout the movie, the characters bring up the question of reality. Like in the Matrix, characters are given the choice between the game and reality, but in eXistenZ, the preferences and subconscious thoughts of the players create the world in which the game operates. As in the real world, those playing the game both bring their own thoughts to create the game and are changed and manipulated by the game itself. Pikul’s objection to the world of the game and its not giving him much free will leads Allegra to say “it’s like real life – just enough to make it interesting.” We have free will, Allegra the Designer would argue, but only so much as we’ve been given by our circumstances. This critique of life, by a woman who is intent on staying in a game that she created to mimic life, brings an audience to consider our own lives. It seems the game is both an imitation and a critique of the lives we lead. In a way, characters in the game are like people we deal with in our lives. We can at no point determine their true motives or know how their stories will cross with ours. We are at once a being that gets to make conscious choices and one that cannot decide for itself its next steps. We are constantly being shaped by the role we were given when entering the “game” and by the other players. When considering whether or not we have free will, many people determine that humans don’t have any. On the other hand, even people who believe that humans have free will would be remiss to ignore the fact that our position in society, the game character we’ve been given, has a huge impact on what we become, or even on what it is possible for us to become. The question of where our motivation comes from is a more complicated one, but it doesn’t take much a logical leap from here to see that the world we live in has a huge influence on what we desire. Reality, it seems, creates us and is in turn created by who we become.
eXistenZ: Too Real?
When, in a moment of uncertainty, Ted Pikul (Jude Law) tells Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that he feels like he's just stumbling around, unsure of the motivations of anyone else and not sure of even himself. After raising this as an objection to being in the game and saying that he can't believe anyone would really want to play a game like this, Allegra responds, "But it's a game everybody's already playing." This really hit me, because in a game like eXistenZ, or online where Case "jacked in", or when using AR technology or SNSs, we're "playing the game" the way we live our lives. In all these cases, the participants can't be completely sure of the motives of players we interact with. Our lives are so intertwined with the game and with the lives of the other players that our fate depends on them, even if we can never figure out whether they're trustworthy or how much they really know.
This comparison that Allegra makes is one that is well taken, whether or not our nervous systems are actually connected to the interface. In a way, me, the real me, the Jenna that people believe they know, is the one that can be found online on my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Online, on these sites and others, I am the character, and my life outside the "game" could be forever affected by my actions online. I never thought of myself as actually "in" Banjo-Kazooie or Sarge's Heroes (yes, my video game knowledge is small and not too up-to-date), and I was never too invested in the characters. I got multiple chances at life, and if I decided to, I could reset the world and start over. eXistenZ seems so real because it offers players a chance to feel that their actions truly have some consequence. In eXistenZ, the game has become so real that Pikul and Allegra end up having a hard time deciding whether or not they're actually in the game, and the audience, it turns out, has been tricked into its own dilemma about whether or not the game is still going. In a way, Pikul makes a great point, whether you're in eXistenZ, "jacked in", or posting on Twitter. You need to be worried about your body, your real body, because it might be in danger.
This comparison that Allegra makes is one that is well taken, whether or not our nervous systems are actually connected to the interface. In a way, me, the real me, the Jenna that people believe they know, is the one that can be found online on my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Online, on these sites and others, I am the character, and my life outside the "game" could be forever affected by my actions online. I never thought of myself as actually "in" Banjo-Kazooie or Sarge's Heroes (yes, my video game knowledge is small and not too up-to-date), and I was never too invested in the characters. I got multiple chances at life, and if I decided to, I could reset the world and start over. eXistenZ seems so real because it offers players a chance to feel that their actions truly have some consequence. In eXistenZ, the game has become so real that Pikul and Allegra end up having a hard time deciding whether or not they're actually in the game, and the audience, it turns out, has been tricked into its own dilemma about whether or not the game is still going. In a way, Pikul makes a great point, whether you're in eXistenZ, "jacked in", or posting on Twitter. You need to be worried about your body, your real body, because it might be in danger.
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