Extra Credits is a web-series started by Daniel Floyd. The episodes are generally written by video game developer James Portnow, and narrated by Daniel’s high-pitched voice. The topics have always been about video games, ranging from advice for aspiring video game developers, critics about the state of the industry, addressing issues within the community, and looking into the psychology of video games.

I began watching the series in 2010 just after starting university. As someone who played a lot video games at the time and wanted to become a video game developer eventually I was ecstatic to find a smart show about video games from people involved in the industry.

Extra Credits have discussed a lot of topics that will be useful to refer to in a video game developer’s career. They’ve looked at poor game designs like using Skinner Box reward systems to keep its players to keep playing instead of using a genuinely rewarding system. Issues with how gender, race, and sexuality have been portrayed in games have been addressed. Extra Credits have covered other concepts useful for developers to learn, such as the concept of failing faster and proper software testing.

As I go forth with my career I’ll be sure to keep what I’ve learnt from Extra Credits in mind, and hopefully these lessons will take me far!

Sword Art Online is an anime set in the near future about an MMORPG called SAO. In this future video games are played using the Nerve Gear, a helmet that sends the environment straight into the player’s brain and then intercepts their nerve impulses and uses them as the controller for the players character. This causes their real world body to be unable to move until they log out in game. With this technology playing a video game is just like going to another world.

On the first day of SAO ten thousand player log in to play for the first time. The game’s creator greets them in the game and announces that they will be unable to log out until they beat the final boss, and if they die in the video game their helmets will use radiation to fry their brains in real life. This forces the players to live in a virtual world as they try to clear the game and escape back to reality.

My favourite part of this series is that it matches what I would expect to happen if the technology was made in real life. We already have the Oculus Rift, so all thats left is to hook it up to our nervous system and we will truly be able to escape in a video game. This technology would present some serious health risks, as when you can be fully immersed in a game it would be easy to forget things like eating and sleeping (people already do this will just a controller and a screen.) Theres also the general problem that virtual reality would be more desirable then reality and many would try remain in it forever. People play World of Warcraft for obscene amounts of time already, imagine what would happen if you could actually go to that world? The final problem is that you are completely shut out from the real world while playing. If you were in the virtual world and your house catches on fire the helmet better have a smoke detector built in. There’s also the problem of the people around you trying to remove your helmet. When you try to remove a helmet hooked up to someone’s brain while its in use there are going to be problems.

There are some possible benefits to this system, since the characters are controlled by the players nerve impulses they develop muscle memory that is carried back to the real world. When the main character returns to the real world he is good at wielding blades in real life, but held back by the fact that his body isn’t as strong as it was in the video game. This system would  be excellent for training, such as training doctors to perform delicate operations without needing a guinea pig to practice on. This technology would also allow for many experiences that we normally couldn’t have. Two people across the planet could meet “face to face” Amusement parks could be replaced entirely with virtual roller coasters.

So while the technology in Sword Art Online seems doable within a decade or two, there are plenty of pitfalls for the tech to overcome before it becomes available for the general public.

In the near future (say next week or so) America is facing an economic crisis, and yet everyone is more interested in their personal devices and getting laid. Super Sad True Love Story is about the relationship between two people, and yet the most important parts seem to be more subtle, waiting for the reader to see that there is something wrong with the book’s setting.

This book is about Lenny Abramov, 39 year old son of Russian immigrants to America. Lenny works for an agency dedicated to extending the lives of its rich clientele, yet his time is never thought to be unlimited. He meets Eunice Park, a pretty young Korean girl whom is inexplicably attracted to Lenny and his nerdy ways. They live together in America during a time of economic collapse as its Chinese creditors are at the end of their patience for the nation.

When I started reading this book last after realizing that doing a book report meant reading the book, I was determined to finish it quickly so that I could write the review. Initially I skipped over smaller details and focused only on the key details of story of Lenny. While reading this way I noticed the word apparat appearing frequently. An apparat is a personal media device similar to out smart phones. During the story it is made apparent that while this world is set in present day technology has taken an even stronger hold over humanity then it has in reality.

Technology drives this world, replacing literary artifacts known as books and the chore known as a proper conversations can easily be avoided by burying oneself into their apparat. Yet technology hasn’t helped mankind, and relying on it more and more will only make us crash harder when we find out it doesn’t work.

The agency Lenny works for has been researching nanotechnology that would repair the bodies cells and restore it to an younger state. In the end of the book enough time has passed that Lenny’s boss Josh (whom had this technology used on himself ) has discovered that the technology isn’t successful in the long term and nature will take its course on the human body. This isn’t the only time technology fails humanity. Late in the story during the rupture, when America begins to collapse, everyone’s apparat all fail at the same time and remain offline for awhile before the network is restored. Despite these obvious failures, I considered the true failure of technology to be what it did to society while their apparats were online. Throughout the book Lenny is constantly reminded of how weird he is for owning a large collection of books, which are now referred to as printed bound media artifacts. There was a really weird line were the book breaks the fourth wall and refers to you as reading the book on a screen, as to say that books have disappeared from our world as well. That’s not technically true, at the spot I was thinking of its really referring to a character in the story but it felt like it was being directed at me when I read it. Not only is reading from paper non-existent, proper social interactions have fallen by the wayside. There was a point where Lenny and Eunice were in spending time alone together and Eunice would pay more attention to her apparat then Lenny. These apparats also calculate stats on people constantly and rank them in categories like personality, fuckability, and attractiveness against other nearby people. Whenever Lenny was in a crowded social area he would check his apparat to see that he was generally ranked as one of the least attractive males in the area, unless he had his arm around his sexy young Korean girlfriend.

The usage of these apparat are an exaggerated version of how my use our phones nowadays. In addition to saving us from the harsh world of social interaction they also do pretty much everything else we’d ask of them, such as streaming the news keeping track of the collapsing economy. During the section where the apparat all go offline people are stated to be a mess without them, some not being able to live in a world without their device.

Initially I ignored all the rampant over-usage of the apparat to focus on the love story between Lenny and Eunice, though eventually the world around them became weird enough that it seemed more important then their relationship, which was doomed to failure from the beginning (that isn’t even a spoiler, its pretty much given away in the title.) Whether Gary Shteyngart meant for the world to be more important then the story is up for debate, it is the most memorable part of the book left when all is said and done.

P.S. The author for this book looks like the biggest hipster I’ve ever seen. 

I’ve had some experience with augmented reality from the 3DS. I see another student has discussed the AR cards that come with the system, so instead I’ll talk about Face Raiders.

Face Raiders is a game that comes pre-installed on the 3DS. This game uses the camera to use as the background for the game and imposes floating enemies into your surroundings. While playing this game I find myself moving around trying to shoot enemies scattered around the room and to avoid getting hit. Playing this game makes the player look pretty silly as onlookers don’t see what they see as they spastically move their console around as a part of gameplay. There is a similar game called the Dream Radar. This game has the player searching their surroundings to find Pokemon hiding around them so that they can catch them and send them to their Pokemon games. This game plays like Face Raiders.

These game reveal a potential danger of augmented reality. The augmentation to reality can distract us from actual reality. Images being placed in our line of site inevitably block out something that was actually in front of us. Both of these games are meant to be played while sitting down and they provide several warnings to the use not to stand up while playing the game so that Nintendo doesn’t get sued when little Timmy falls down the stairs trying to catch a Thundurus roaming the clouds.

Hello, my name is Max Douglas. I am a fourth year computer science student. I found out about this course from the Oculus Rift demo last December. I’ve finished all my required courses and this seemed like an interesting and relevant course.

I evaded social media until I went to University and had to move away from my home town and the friends that lived there.