First Post

Hi my name is Eric Canals. I'm a sophomore in cals. I was originally going to major in bio pre-med but after last year i realized that was a really bad idea. My major is currently an interdisciplinary major in cals so i can take whatever classes i feel like. Im from Long Island so when im home i normally just sit around with my friends and chill out; its pretty boring at home so im glad to be back at school. I like working on cars and computers. I play most sports and i've wrestled since 4th grade. As far as the internet goes i play a lot computer games so i think this class will have a lot of relevance to my daily life.

The internet phenomenon that most interests me is MMO games and how people are able to simulate the real world in an online space. MMO stands for massively multiplayer online for example, a game like World of Warcraft has close to 10 million subscribers. Some of these games can lean towards the simple side while others have a lot of depth to them. Most offer a wide range of options in creating an online persona, and many games have their own thriving economies. That means real people trading fake stuff within a game. I'm fascinated by how people can get so caught up in a game to the point where they start valuing their online time and possessions more than their real life counterparts. Its surprisingly not very hard for a person to become addicted to online gaming to the extent where they start neglecting real life responsibilities.

The online spaces classified by Wallace are somewhat outdated when considering todays online multiplyer games. The tag MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) is commonly used by the gaming industry. MMOG's encompass the online spaces of Wallace's asynchronous chat, synchronous chat, video and voice, and the text based MUD games. Current games have come so far as to combine text chat, voice chat, and a persistent 3D world in which players can interact, thus creating a unique new online space.