League of Legends

League of Legends is one of the most played games in the United States today.  And luckily for us, we got to binge it for three days straight!  Over this three day period, we experienced a wide range of emotions and opinions about the game.  Even though we all played the same game, we had different experiences and reactions to it.  Ultimately, we concluded that it really isn’t worth all the hype.  Here is why.

Reva…

The main problem I had with the game was the sheer repetitiveness of it.  I wasn’t big into video games as a kid, but going into this binge I had the idea that I would be entering this fantasy world with a serious mission -- but I was very mistaken.  I am sure there are games like that out there, but League of Legends is not one of them.  After I played a couple of games, I realized that there wasn’t much else to the game.  It consisted of fighting the same enemies in the same landscape for basically eternity.  I guess the goal was to get better and better, but I became extremely unmotivated when I found out that there was no greater purpose.  I mean, at least in Super Mario Bros you work towards saving Princess Peach.  All I can say about this experience is that I immediately deleted League of Legends off my computer when the binge was over.  I don’t think I will be returning…  

Margaret…

Before this binge, the only real video game experience I had was with Nintendogs, a game where to you take care of puppies and play with them. League of Legends is very different from my favorite fourth grade game, so it was difficult to get used to such an interactive and complicated game. I struggled to learn how to control each character, work with my online teammates, and figure out how to kill the other opponents in each match. After three days, I had become fairly good at the game, but nowhere close to a pro. Even though I kept playing the same game and participating in identical matches, I was only a level 5 and I still died a lot. Looking back on this binge, I don’t think I will play League of Legends again anytime soon. Although I liked winning the battles and learning the game with my friends, I never made any real progress; LoL is only so much fun for a short period of time.

Hadis...

League of Legend is a strategic video game.  In this game you are about 40% dependent on your teammates in terms of whether they get to help you win or leave you to die on your own. The computer graphic design is ridiculously appealing. Because it is very detailed, the whole game experience is very exciting and mysterious; in every corner or on every wall there is always something more than what our eyes can see at first glance.  One of the main reasons this game is so attractive is its incredible graphics.  

Addie…

Upon entering this binge, I was actually excited to play League of Legends since I figured the eighteen hours would move faster if I was controlling and interacting with something. However, my three days got off to a pretty rough start with lots of technical difficulties and sheer lack of video game knowledge (read: The only video game I play is Just Dance). Even after I sort of understood the basics of League of Legends, my character was still dying approximately twenty times each game. This went on consistently for the first two days of the binge. I would kill two, maybe three people in a game if I was lucky, and I would be killed every other minute. On day three though, something wild happened. I was killing six or eight people in a game and only dying three or four times. As I type these words, I realize that any average League of Legends player would laugh in my face for how awful those stats are, but I felt like a goddamn Legend. I’m not sure if I’ll end up returning to the game since it is pretty episodic and repetitive, but who knows? Plus, I do have beef with a character named Trundle who killed me sixteen times in one game, so I am still on the prowl for Trundle vengeance.

The seemingly harsh, but equilly nastaglic review of our games, and the final goodbye to the 2017 Binge

By:Nolan, Emma, Ronald and Wesley

I think it is easy to say that this third and final binge was this group's most enjoyable of the three different binges. I think I can speak for most of us when I say that our group simply plays more video games than most people, so this one felt the most natural and much less like work. I myself can easily say that when I got up every morning to binge, I actually was really looking forward to spending the next several hours playing the same game.

All four of us agreed that we loved bingeing in a group more than by ourselves. We felt that by playing around other people playing the same game, there was a sense of comradery and similar interest of goals within the game and within the atmosphere of the room. We had fun, we laughed and even here and there we had some slight competition between us to see who could get through the game faster. Or when one of us would be behind, we found ourselves peeping at the other person's screen to see what happens further in the game. It just felt low key, relaxing and overall like fun.

However, no game can go without its criticisms. As fun as both games that we played were, there were some aspects that made us enjoy it just that much less. For example, we all agreed that the story for Murdered:Soul Suspect the story could have been added too a little. For the most part we agreed that the story felt perhaps a little lacking, or there were things that could have been easily implemented to game the play time longer, the story less predictable or to add more variety. One thing we all agreed on heavily was that the camera angles in Thief  were very nauseating and uncomfortable to play with. Emma and Ronald both had a difficult time dealing with the fast motions of the first person camera (when you see from the eyes of the player character). Some gameplay segments felt pushed in and unnecessary, or there would be a mission segment where the difficulty seemed to be raised for unnecessary reason, making progressing more of a chore than fun.

There might have been a handful of critics, but overall we all enjoyed playing these games. This class and the binge experiment itself has been quite the experience to say the least. We all had an enjoyable time going through it and testing our will against hours and hours of non stop consumption of media. But, we prevailed nonetheless, which looking at my group mates, that was to be expected!

Playing God, or More Commonly Known as Sims 3

Kicking off our last binge, our group (Jenny, Kinye, Mallary, Christina, and Nate) played roughly 18 hours of The Sims 3. The Sims series puts the player in charge of the game-making, so the ludology is entirely up to them. These are our testimonies (dun dun).

One day after work, Honey B decides to visit her significant other. Honey B’s feelings have been growing more for this kind and thoughtful gentleman. Upon arrival, Honey B is unaware that Marcell (her significant other) lives with a roommate. She warmly greets Marcell’s roommate, Elizabeth. After some chatter, Honey B becomes aware of her hunger levels, which had decreased during work. She shares a dinner with Marcell. Meanwhile, Elizabeth occupies the kitchen space along side of the happy couple. After dinner, Marcell and Honey B decide to become intimately and romantically engaged, only leading up to Elizabeth (Marcell’s wife) to kicking ignorant Honey B out. Who here is to blame?

The main objective and goals derived from your sim’s personality traits are the only aspects contributing to your stories narratology. In The Sims 3, the player creates the space and characters they want to be in control of, like a god. Certain events can occur, causing a challenge for the player. One of our group members decided to let all hell break loose the last day of the binge to see who would survive. Similar to the popular book series The Hunger Games, the goal is to stay alive and play your part. Obstacles will be thrown in your way such as death or losing your job, but for the most part it’s randomly generated to keep the player engaged and feeling like they are in control of the plot and narratology.

Sitting for 6 hours a day was most definitely much more enthusiastic when we had the group dynamic at play. We each shared insight on what was happenin’ in our fantasy worlds. We laughed at outrageous aspects of the game, and sympathized when a baby was born or a couple broke up, much like Honey B and Marcell.

Unless you know the cheats for money, and happiness, you will constantly stress about the finances and other levels needing attention. It tends to become very tedious. There were times when one character needs to shower, one is late for work, the other school, and the other is super sick. Juggling all these aspects into a fantasy world added to the entertainment and pleasure of this game, helping point it to the fun side of the spectrum. Many of our group members happened to play over the time needed for the binge, but who can really stop when you’re playing god?

Lord of the Binge

A Darkness grows in the east, as Sauron, chief lieutenant of the dark lord Morgoth, grows in power. It is up to you, stalwart traveler, to join the fray, form a fellowship and save middle earth! For the last binge, we chose to binge Lord of the Rings Online (or LOTRO). We had a fairly large group consisting of Will, John, Rebecca, Collin, Katie, and Jonah. As a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (or MMORPG,) LOTRO allows it’s players to choose from a variety of races (Human, Hobbit, Dwarf, Elf, and Beorning) and classes (Burglar, Captain, Champion, Guardian, Hunter, lore-Master, minstrel, rune-keeper, and warden). The different mixtures of these end up changing the stats and abilities of your character, allowing for a number of different playing styles. The character creation alone can take quite some time, which is why we decided before going into the game that we wanted to choose our classes and races. This also served to optimize our team. We found that we enjoyed playing the game together, when we could ask each other questions, play together in game, or just point out funny/ interesting things that we would notice in the game.

To a more experienced MMORPG player this game will feel slightly cookie cutter, and a lot like World of Warcraft. Some of us noticed that, though Tolkien had inspired a lot of what is now standard for the fantasy genre, at times it felt just like playing any other fantasy MMORPG. This was not helped by the execution of the game’s narrative. One thing that is fairly unique to LOTRO is the amount of customization of player avatar.

The narrative in the game relies heavily on the preexisting narrative of the books and movies. When doing a main quest there would occasionally be a cut-scene to give context, but other than that the only way to get the most out of the narrative is to read the text in the quest’s description. The majority of the quests were not for the main plotline.  This meant that we had some trouble getting attached to the main plotline, as it was difficult to know which quests were side quests.

One of the most enticing components of the game is the freedom of the open world. The player is given a map of the world, which can zoom in as close as cities and zoom out far enough to see all of middle earth. The amazing thing is that no areas are technically off limits; if a player wanted to jump in and go straight to Rivendell (a famous location from the Lord of the Rings books and movies), they would be free to try, but their journey there would be treacherous and most likely impossible. This restricted us to a select few locations in the game, which we were the proper level to play. This, though slightly frustrating, was ultimately not terrible, because these areas themselves were fairly large and ranged widely from dwarven strongholds to elven cities. One beginning level area is the shire. This is where the protagonists Frodo and Bilbo Baggins are from. A quaint location, inspired by the villages of the English countrysides, we would get to know the intricacies of the simple lifestyle of the hobbits. A lot of us found that these quests, though at times comedic, felt trivial in their context of a combat heavy game.

The sheer number of things that the player can do in the game can be slightly intimidating. There are skill trees for each character, in addition there are abilities unique to certain classes and races, as well as a complex crafting system, hobbies, player vs. player, and that is only naming a few. This results in a user design of the game that can be difficult to understand or remember. One thing that a few of us noticed was the redundancies of certain game mechanics. For example, if you and your friends wanted to play online together, you can add them as your friend’s list, or you could join a fellowship with them, or a kinship, very similar. In addition the store had some overly complicated aspects. There were LOTRO points, which you could get by both playing the game, or buy, and there was also mithril coins which were also bought outside of the game to purchase items in the game. Some quests would give you coins or points, but then some quests had to be bought with coins or points. Because this is such an old game (originally released about a decade ago) it has had many updates and re-releases. We think that this may be the cause for some of these redundancies.

Overall, we enjoyed playing; it was nice to escape into a fantasy world for a spell. MMORPG’s are notorious for binging, so it was not hard for us to play in terms of stickiness; the first group session we actually played for an extra hour without realizing! That in mind, by the end of the third day of binging it was not hard for us to find some of the mechanics in the game that could use improvement. But for a free game that’s almost ten years old it holds up remarkably well.

The D.U.N.E. Series: Depressing Unending Novel that Elicits interest

The first few pages (maybe 100-150) were a bit of a struggle as we (Katie, Will, and Collin) tried to get familiar with the world of Dune and the vocabulary that Herbert invented for the novel. It’s a bit of a coming-of-age story, but highly political and on a far-off desert planet called Arrakis, with hyper-cognitive abilities and spice… and sandworms… and other cool things like birds that drink blood as a source of water. It’s a very thoroughly thought-out world that just takes a little bit of time to get into. Finding the glossary in the back before reading for six hours would help....

In Dune, a young boy named Paul has been trained by his mother, a Bene Gesserit, to have heightened senses which come in handy for telling if people are lying or nervous, among other things. He is thought to be the Kwisatz Haderach (a male Bene Gesserit who can bridge space and time with his mental powers). Their family arrives on Arrakis as royalty, taking control of spice mines (the most valuable resource in the universe, apparently), and deal with the politics and threats that follow. There is an invented religion and a whole manner of thinking that the natives of the planet hold which is based around water, a highly limited resource to the point that they wear stillsuits which recycle their body’s moisture, losing only a thimble’s worth per day. (Dew Gatherer is a profession on Arrakis. They gather dew.) There are assassination plots, cultural clashes, class issues, mindgames, action scenes, GIANT SANDWORMS, and basically no hope at all ever.

One of the things that we found interesting about our text is how the author was able to include the thoughts of characters within the text. These thoughts helped give the reader another perspective from a certain character's point of view and also sometimes served as foreshadowing in the story. One of the times that these thoughts are used as foreshadowing reference to ancient text that would point to the main character (Paul) being the chosen one! The thoughts were also not limited to a couple characters but showed most characters perspectives and helped the reader get to know that character better.

The most enjoyable aspect of this binge for our group was when the three of us were binge reading together.  We found ourselves more easily focused and able to stay on task with the book while also discussing new and exciting plot points as we progressed.  When we binged on our own the time seemed to still go by more quickly than it did during the television binge however it did tend to drag on just a bit more.  Having your group members around you forced us to keep our minds on task while suppressing the desire to busy our minds with something other than the daunting task of an 800-page novel.  Another perk of being in the group setting was being able to talk out confusing parts of the book where the author took his liberty with language and created words of his own.  If it weren’t for the group as a whole some of us may not have even found the very handy glossary in the appendix.  It was clear that we enjoyed the group binge of this book far and beyond the solo binge.

Foundation: Predicting The Future With Math, History, and Psychology

    For the 2017 Jan-term our group (Mallary, Nolan, Hadis, and John) binge read the books Foundation and Foundation and Empire, the first and second novels of the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov. Asimov divided his books into parts that were separated by several decades, sometimes even a century. For instance, Foundation, Part III, is about a war between the societies of Terminus and Anacreon, two different planets with light-years in between them. But in part IV of the book this war had become simply a fragment of history, with the new part taking place five decades later. Our group found the series to be slower when compared to the television binge, what with how much space Asimov devotes to setting up back-story and to build both tension and plot. He takes time to set up the main premise of his novels’ various plots: that through the usage of highly developed probability math, a deep understanding of human history, and a good lot of psychological knowledge, humanity might be able to one day successfully predict how our future will turn out (given the right variables are accounted for).

    By the time we reached the second novel, the course of the story had spanned over TWO. HUNDRED. YEARS. (Let that sink in).

    Asimov, showing us that he is aware of how humanity has changed over time in real-life, has the dialects and dialogues of his titular society, the Foundation, morph. They are different at the beginning of his trilogy than they are by the middle of the trilogy’s second book. For instance, during the first part, words of formality, such as lord, sire, and majesty, are frequently used when addressing authority. However, during the second book, a subsect of the Foundation society has begun using dialogue that is less formal, with words such as ‘boss’ and ‘doc’ addressing authority. The language becomes anachronistic, as it closely resembles common speech of the 1950s (think Bugs Bunny’s “What’s up, doc?”), despite taking place centuries in the future.

    On the whole we enjoyed what of the Foundation Trilogy that we read, with it’s politics, action, and sharp-witted characters. For lovers of sci-fi or House of Cards alike, we suggest this story to you.

Phase two of the binge, and our own hitchhike through this one of a kind sci-fi story

By: Addie, Ronald, Wesley, Jonah

Three days. Four Earth-men. One journey to read as much of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series as possible. While on this quest of binge-reading, we discovered that some things just aren’t meant to be consumed at this rate. A human can only take so much of Douglas Adams’ humor in one sitting. His dry, omniscient, and ironic comedy makes it simple to dive right into his nonsensical intergalactic journey. Especially for people who may not be super into sci-fi novels, the little giggles help ease your way into that world. That being said, around page two-hundred-and-something-something of the same thing, you just want Adams to be quiet and develop the plot a little more.
There were decent chunks of the series where I glossed over every word, because I knew exactly what was coming next. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy started with a bang, and ended with many whimpers. After the first major plot point of Earth exploding, Adams created a pattern that went as follows: One insignificant, but kind of dangerous thing would happen. All the characters would talk about how they were going to die. Adams would make some remark, insinuating that they were all dumb for thinking they would actually die. The insignificant, dangerous thing would resolve itself, and they all live happily ever after. Yes, the shenanigans were silly and funny and gave us some solid chuckles, but we started to crave some actual narrative arc.
We completed this binge after our three-day TV binge, and this was a whole new world of media consumption. Binge-watching TV is mindless and moves quickly and allows you to get a more holistic view of the story because of its visuals. But binge-reading makes you work harder to understand the plot and characters. You have to paint an image of the characters in your head, and play out scenes without being able to see them happen. As a result, binge-reading can make you feel more creative and inspired because it forces you to envision the plot as it moves quickly by you. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, the author doesn’t spend much time describing the scenery or the appearance of the characters, so it can be tough, but it makes the binge-reader have to work that much more.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a fun and easy series, but binge-reading it may not be the way to go. The short blips of excitement, supplemented with Adams’ humor is fun for a while. However, I would at least take some time to breathe in between books, if you’re going to tackle this strange series.