Stephen - Blog Post #6

    Minecraft is an indie sandbox game. It was originally created by Swedish programmer Markus Persson (AKA Notch) and was later published by Mojang. Minecraft is currently available on PC and Xbox 360, as well as having mobile versions for Android and iOS. Versions are being developed for the PS3 and the upcoming PS4 the Xbox One. All of the versions receive periodic updates to add features and fix bugs.

   Minecraft is a creative building game, which allows players to build out of cube shaped blocks (it is often referred to as virtual Legos). The game has three modes. The first, survival, allows the player to build structures out of blocks that they must gather. The player explores the world and gathers the blocks, which they can then craft into different blocks and materials. There is also combat; players can create weapons and fight off enemies, called mobs. In creative mode, players already have access to all materials, and are able to build huge structures without exploration, gathering, or combat. The third, hardcore, is similar to survival. It is the hardest difficulty and players only have one life.

   Minecraft has become extremely popular, with millions of players worldwide, extensive merchandise, multiple awards, and even the yearly convention MineCon. Their PC stats can be seen on this site: https://minecraft.net/stats. As of October 23, 2013, the game has sold over 12.5 million copies on PC, and over 33 million copies across all platforms.

   This site is a digital curation of web-based Minecraft creations, explained through the theories of Lev Manovich, a professor in Computer Science at City University of New York and a new media theorist. In his book, The Language of New Media, he details five principles of new media, which will be used throughout this site. They are: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding.

The Polarization of Competition

 

As in any game or sport, there seems to be two areas of interest--competitive play (and how to improve) and hilarious bloopers. When you watch the replays of a football game on the news, they show both the most amazing, technically skilled videos that inspire others and they show the crazy, funny mistakes. This is applicable to the game of League of Legends as well when you're surfing YouTube.

The videos vacillate between videos on how to improve your play and the best way to make the epic plays featured there. These comprise more than half of all of the amateur videos out there while the other portion is comprised of videos that are deliberately made to incite laughter either through mistakes, memes, or joke-filled commentary about other games.


For the most part, the videos are unedited except for potentially music or commentary or title pages and the like. Usually the content speaks for itself and does not need to be altered. Definitely a lot of montages both in the instructional and parody videos with cuts from professional and amateur streams.

These different types of videos drive the types of personalities that you find within the LoL community. The drive to improve your play and win more and more games creates the need for instructional videos from other players that have figured out the tricks or skills needed already--people to learn and grow from. The pressure to perform, however, can take its tole and the need to blow off steam comes in the form of these gag videos, both to make fun of others' mistakes (which you have probably made a few times) and laugh at the inside jokes of the game.

Blog Post #5

            Most of the youtube videos I found were parodies of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. One example took The Lord of the Rings culture and embedded it with BYU/Mormon culture. It is called “The Lord of the Engagement Ring,” making fun of the high marriage rates at BYU. It keeps the basic plot and characters of The Lord of the Rings, but adds Provo’s culture to it.

            There were a few videos that paid homage to the music from The Lord of the Rings movies. Many of these were of amateur performers playing/singing the music. A few (groups such as The Piano Guys and Lindsey Sterling) performed their own adaption of the music.

I suppose the way The Lord of the Rings culture is being changed in these videos is that the people who make them are trying to put of piece of themselves in it. They loved the story (or music) of The Lord of the Rings and wanted to be part of it. Many did this though humor as you can see in the Studio C parody “Gandalf Intervention.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3n-s6rT_6c

Magic on Youtube.

There are several different kinds of videos on youtube that pertain to Magic: The Gathering. People do instructional videos that can teach prospective players how to play. There are reviews of certain decks and creature types. There are videos of players competing at both national tournaments and in their basements. There videos of people opening booster packs and discovering what cards they purchased. Pretty much every aspect of the game has some sort of representation on

youtube.http://youtu.be/OJ6zZS8FjEs

Musical Fan Videos are Hilarious! (Blog #5)

I thought it was kind of hard to find videos about musical theater that weren't strictly performance videos.  There were a lot of videos that were made using the soundtrack with cast album pictures, or people who taped themselves or friends onstage.  One of my favorite channels for musical theater is AngelsBWay Karaoke. I love karaoke and this girl posts only musical theater karaoke, which is my absolute favorite.

Other than those types of videos, I found that a trend is doing humorous videos about what its like to be a musical theater fan. I think they are absolutely hilarious, but I wonder if people who don't know much or anything about musical theater would even get them or understand why its so funny. There are some parodies out there (again it was hard to find fan parodies and not professionals). But there were a few hilarious homages, I guess you would call them. They just kind of make fun what people who love musical theater are like, but they are directed so that musical theater nerds would look at them and say, "that's totally me!"  As an example of this, I am posting a video below of a boy who says all these things about musical theater (and I found myself laughing hysterically and saying "That's totally me!"  . The video is also funny because there's a stereotype of guys who like musical theater being gay, and while some people might find this video offensive, theater people just think its hilarious because they know people like this.

I don't know if these videos are changing any cultural meanings per se. But I think what they are doing is connecting musical theater lovers to each other around the country and the world.  Unless you are in theater yourself as a major or in community musicals, you don't usually run in to too many people who are musical theater fanatics. But it is nice to know that there are other people out there just like you! (I just made us sound like some secret minority or something--and maybe we are!)

Stephen - Blog Post #5

Minecraft is an ideal topic for finding videos on YouTube. It has become very common for gaming channels and just average gamers to post gameplay videos, walkthroughs, instructions, and ideas from Minecraft. Many of these videos are humorous, but it really depends on the players. My favorites of these videos are created by two linked channels: Rooster Teeth and Let’s Play. 

These feature a wide variety of Minecraft gameplay videos in which they come up with, build, and play different games and contests. One series that they have is called Things to Do. In these videos, they give suggestions for players to do in their own game. They are generally fairly short, I have posted one below. These videos are culturally significant because both Rooster Teeth and Let’s Play have an enormous number of subscribers (6,374,506 and 1,085,016 respectively.) Their videos get huge amounts of viewing and very large amounts of response and recreation. They are far from the only channel doing this as well. Minecraft is a very popular source for online videos. 

To tweet, or not to tweet

            The twitter persona I have been trying to create is mainly geared towards technology. I was not on twitter previously; so my tweets have only been the 5 weekly tweets about technology for this class. I have had a few followers from friends and those taking this class, and a couple of my tweets were favorited if they were amusing.

Most of the topics on my feed are concerning technology since Dr. Pepper recommended we follow groups of that interest to see who is saying what about new media. I suppose being on twitter is a part of our class assignments because social media has become a huge factor and influence in the world of new media. Though for the most part, I dislike tweeting. I suppose this is mainly because I do not like to be social in general and it is difficult to say something in 140 characters or less, let alone about technology which is not generally a topic I talk about regularly.