Globalization and Global Media, Final Paper

Grant Tabler
Natalie Evans
MDST 4080*01
29 November 2012

Games Without Frontiers

War Without Tears

First person shooters are a genre of video game, which revolve around the player seeing through the eyes of a character with a weapon, and killing enemies you come across while accomplishing objectives. Many of these games are based around war, be they imaginary and science fiction, or modern and realistic. The critique of war video games is that they trivialize the experiences, and desensitize those who play the games to the violence and horrors of war. What if there was an altogether different kind of first person shooter game? A game where you stayed in first person, but you shot people with something other than a gun. 

The game I propose is one in which the player moves through a warzone as a war reporter armed with nothing more than a camera and editing software as she attempts to capture as much ‘truth’ and experience as she have time to cover. The player would then take this footage, and attempt to edit it together to make a legitimate narrative from the random violence. All the while the war would continue and the player would see that their camera isn’t affecting the broader arc of the war, just the opinions of the viewers back home. This game is currently in development and it is called Warco.

Massively Multiplayer Friendships: An Exploration of Online Raiding and the Implications on Real World Friendships

Massively Multiplayer Friendships:
An Exploration of Online Raiding and the Implications on Real World Friendships

Grant Tabler

MDST*4500 (Applied Research Project)
Section 03, Thursday 11:45

Professor Greg Kelley

November 22, 2012

We lost six of our soldiers in that last battle; we barely made it through alive. We heard this place was hell, but we didn’t expect this. The squads that came back last week were broken and battered, not a hint of optimism among them. I sit here, weapon at the ready, listening to the strategizing going on for the fight to come. We know our enemy and we’re doing our best to get a plan of action.  Beside me is Paul, he’s ex-navy and the oldest of our group at forty-three. Beside him is Jason, a police officer from South Carolina.

Our team is comprised of a pharmacist, a nurse, two students, an accountant, an office worker, a webcomic artist, a police officer, and two guys who haven’t got jobs outside of this. But right now, our jobs and our lives back home don’t matter. What matters is we are here to take down tyranny, and we are damn good at our job. Finally the time comes, we know our roles and we start our assault.  

We’re met immediately with fearsome carnage as enemies swarm us from all sides. The fighting is utter chaos as bullets fly in all directions and our training takes over. “Watch out!” we hear Tim cry as Paul gets blindsided and goes down without a fight. Richard soon follows as we’re picked off one by one. 

A collective sigh echoes through our headsets as we hear Tim say, “It’s a wipe.” In moments we’re all standing outside the area as ghosts in a nearby graveyard. Tim starts going over what needs to happen for next time and we all start the long trek back to make another attempt on the dragon we’re fighting. This is raiding in World of Warcraft.