Presentations and Communities...

Phew. 

So I somehow managed to get through 2 presentations this week! The first was a presentation on the "State Of The Art" of the board game Hex for our AI and Machine learning module and the second was the dreaded FYP presentation. Dun Dun Duuuuunnn. 

Now anyone who was talking to me before both of them will know that I was a little bit of a nervous wreck. (And even if you weren't and only saw me I'm sure you would have seen my white as a ghost face!)

Both presentations, however, went just fine, and were all over before I even realised. :)

So now that they are done I feel I can focus on other things. Which is nice.

Communities: 

Sooooo.....we had an interesting lecture on Thursday which explored how MMO games encouraged the formation of communities of players online.

In particular we looked at the game "Everquest", which I must admit I have never played. But it sounds quite similar to WOW, in the way it works. 

It was quite interesting to look at how communities of players are formed, how they become part of your own little family. Instead of just being a part of some random group just for this one time you are playing online, you become part of a group with whom you can work together within the game - or "a friend of ours" rather than "a friend of mine" 

(I was planning on doing this whole blog with mafia-esque speak but that could have become very annoying very quickly...or would it?) 

How about I just write it as if I had an Italian accent? 

Well-a, I-a think-a that this could-a be-a fairly annoying-a too-a....

Sorry, I went off the point there...

Being part of a community in a game definitely adds an extra something to a game, you can make friends, try and compete against them to get a stronger character as well as working together, and it's always fun to play with others rather that just playing by yourself. 

After looking at Unit Operations last week, perhaps community could be a possible unit operation of games like Everquest?

Just a thought.