Just kidding. While it is true that a majority of the elder folk in China often participate in a casual game of mahjong, this game is very well known and played by all age ranges. I will admit that I had a very difficult time choosing a topic that was considered “popular” in China. My suitemate found it very humorous that I considered Shaolin martial arts and kung fu as popular culture when it is in fact not at all. However, I decided that a topic focusing on the game mahjong, its history, and its affect on current society as very applicable for this Games for the Web class.

Mahjong dates back two thousand years ago and is believed to have originated in the Wu Dynasty. There is no exact answer to who may have created this game. Some have believed that it was Confucius who created game. However, most legends say that within the court of the Wu, there existed a woman who suffered from boredom, and invented the game to have something to do for leisure.  She carved 34 rectangular tiles out of ivory and bamboo and then invited her 3 maids to play with her.

Regardless of the creation of the game, for centuries mahjong remained a game that was played exclusively the royal class. The penalty for commoners who played the game was decapitation. However, around 500 A.D., the penalty was lifted and with the flux of commoners who were now allowed to play the game came the spread of mahjong all over the world, including England, Australia, and the United States. While it has lost some popularity in other countries, it remains a very popular game in Japan and is still deeply ingrained in the Chinese community, such as Mahjong being the focus of Cantonese songs and movies focusing around mahjong gambling.

4 players playing Mahjong

The game consists of a total of four players. Each player is dealt 13 or 16 tiles. There are actually many versions of mahjong where the number of tiles varies. A “turn” involves a player drawing a tile from the wall of tiles and then deciding whether he or she wants to keep it in their hand or to discard it. This signals the end of the player’s turn, and the next player repeats. If the player decides to discard the new card, then the card is placed in the middle. If the player decides that they want to keep the card, then they must throw out a card that was previously in their hand. There are other rules that allow players to retrieve a thrown card by another player by utilizing particular strategies. The game is over when one of the players has a particular hand (3, 3, 3, 3, 2). However, there are many different hands that one can have, some counting for more than the others. Furthermore, the amount of money received at the end of each game is dependent on the difficulty of the card strategy that you decide to utilize. Therefore, just because you might have won the “battle” in the game, doesn’t mean you have won the “war” in getting the most money. The types of hands include:

• 10 Honor tile based scoring hands
• 16 Chow based scoring hands
• 19 Pung based scoring hands (including 5 concealed hands)
• 2 seven Pairs scoring hands
• 7 Suit based scoring hands
• 8 Terminal based scoring hands
• 2 Knitted tiles scoring hands
• 12 Types of Wait scoring hands (including 2 concealed hands)
• 5 Special hands

While this game is often played in the leisure of one’s home in china, one can also participate in various tournaments across the world.

Milgram was actually a student of Asch and originally attempted to replicate Asch’s experiment. However, along the way, he discovered that “conformity” could be easily controlled in the presence of a high order or authority. Inspired by the acts and deeds that the Nazi’s did under Hitler’s reign, he created an experiment to see whether he had the power to cause humans to do things that they naturally wouldn’t do.

The experiment involved having a participant come into the office. He would meet with another participant and they would undergo the experiment together. Unbeknownst to the participant, however, his other partner was really a confederate who was a part of the experiment.  The participant would be manipulated into a “teacher” role while the confederate was always placed into a “learner” role. Originally, the “teacher” is informed that the experiment is testing learning ability and teaching methods. The learner is strapped to a chair and is required to memorize a series of word-pairs. The teacher, who is situated in another room, is to apply shocks to the learner every time the learner gives off the wrong memorized word pair. Each time the learner is wrong, the teacher increases the amount of shock. However, at a set amount of time, the “teacher” is led to believe that something is wrong with the “learner”. The “learner” begins to complain about having a heart problem and is giving off groans and shouts of wanting to quit.

When the “teacher” begins to complain about stopping the experiment and stop administering shocks, they are pressured by the experimenter to proceed. For example, if the “teacher” begins to have doubts and desires to quite, the experimenter will say “you must continue; once the experiment has started it cannot stop. It is essential that you continue the experiment”. While the “learner” is not actually receiving any shocks (as he is actually a confederate and a part of the experiment), the “teacher” is unaware and is led to believe that he/she is actually causing great physical harm to the other. The results show that, when pressured, the participants would continue to “harm” and apply shocks to the learner even if they wanted to stop.

The moral and ethical principles of this study are fairly easy to see. Due to the establishment of a stricter IRB (an internal review board that looks over all experimental procedures), this type of experiment can never truly be replicated. The moral and ethical problems of this experiment are that it literally due to the forces and pressures individuals to cause physical harm, which may cause extreme emotional and psychological distress. In this particular scenario, it is difficult to try to revise the procedure to make it less ethically wrong. The whole point of the experiment was to test how far humans would go under the directions of an authority. There could be smaller, minor experiments involving the pressure of an authority figure on an individual with a less harmful action, but the implications of it would not be as strong.

The implications of this study show us that we will commit to some particular action if we believe that it is enforced on us by a higher level of authority. If a police officer asked us to do something that we might not necessarily agree with, the chances are that we would do them without questions. I’m not sure whether this absolute power of persuasion can be used in our WRI. The purpose and gameplay of MMO’s allow for a level of independence in gameplay that is quite different to other games. However, it may be possible to help us in our research if the leader of a guild persuades his guild members to help us in our research survey.

Visual Kei, which translates into visual style, refers to a movement of Japanese musicians that occurred in the beginning of the 80’s and has been very popular amongst Japanese rock bands since the 90’s. It is usually made up of all men who dress up in a wild style of clothes and “fashionable” looks (Fashionable at least to Japanese people). It is characterized by the use of make-up, elaborate hair styles that almost seem to be taken from anime and seems to defy gravity, and at times coupled with what Americans would call an androgynous aesthetics. While Americans may think that the “look” of visual kei shows men dressed as women, Japanese people think different. According to my roommate, it is this “cool” look that has made bands embracing visual kei very popular and widely known.

Within the visual kei movement genre is a variety of style and imagery. There isn’t just “one way” to dress with visual kei. On one side of the spectrum, we have groups who dress up in a variety of flamboyant and sometimes provocative clothing styles while on the other we have the tamer visual kei groups who adorn strange jewelry, have hours spent on hair, and look slightly effeminate. Some of the bands who have incorporated this look into their music are: L’ar en Ciel, Dir en Grey, XJapan, and etc.

Visual Kei bands are considered to combine a variety of genres together: such as heavy metal, punk rock, pop and etc. Their music has an emphasis on minor-keys, theatrics and dramatics of gothic music, dark undertones, and a heavy emphasis on the lead guitar and drumming. Structurally, the music seems very similar to the basic conventions of pop and rock with the same verse-chorus-verse-chorus bridge structure. So what makes bands with visual kei different from bands without visual kei?

Visual Kei has become an important part of Japanese music and culture. Initially with the advent of this particular look, the majority of Japanese people were shocked. This seems especially against Ibister’s discussion about Japanese culture where collectivism and tradition seemed to be the predominant attitude. Instead, visual kei seemed to be more of a rise in individualism and steered away from the traditional. However, what makes these bands so popular is that they have combined sight and sound to create a rich and enjoyable experience. Almost like an opera, their look may emphasize the style and lyrics of what they sing.

If I had to compare this visual kei look to American culture, it would seem very Goth-like. However, if I had to compare the advent of this look in the music scene, then they would most remind me the American Band Kiss or American heavy metal. Sure they look shocking at first, but have produced music that has appealed to a particular crowd and has risen in popularity across Japan.

Hi. I'm a gopher. Here's your coffee. Anywhere else i can "go-for" you?

Go for this item, go for this item, return and receive your reward.Then this repeats with the next quest. To me, this repetition seriously takes away from the game-play. Sadly, I feel that this type of quest repetition is very common amongst MMORPGs and that many people enjoy this type of play. I, however, prefer games or quests which have a clear cut background beginning and set ending.

The biggest connection with my experience in the game and the ideas in the Harvard Business article was around the roles of each character. For example, the article mentions that, similarly to the business world, each character must perform his or her function in the group. While I stuck behind the group casting spells, the guardians and swashbucklers would charge in head first and attack. Of course, there were some funny moments where we all ended being wiped out, but it was all in good fun. The role of the leader changed fairly often to my surprise. It states in the article that, in the game world, the role of the leader often changes during the game. I found this to be very, especially in the group I played with. While at times we’d follow Matt in the quest, sometimes Eric would be causing some trouble with some random Orcs and we’d have to follow his lead and etc.

The best part of the game was definitely the interactions with the other players. While the group encountered many familiar characters throughout the night, the most memorable moment was when we met a random player who wanted to join our group. Instead, there was an impromptu dueling session between him and Cole, which Cole ended up victorious. Suffice it to say, it was fairly entertaining. This started up a chain of duels amongst the members. Evan would comically duel with everyone despite his lower level and would die each time. Overall, I was very surprised with the willingness of random strangers to interact with others on the gamer server.

While, I have not played many eastern MMORPGs, I have played all of the Final Fantasy games. I’m a little skeptical about how they are going to incorporate Final Fantasy elements into this type of gameplay. Also, usually the Final Fantasy battle system is turn-based. If grouping or raiding together with players online, I do not think that this turn based battle system will be efficient. Furthermore, Final Fantasy plot and game world is usually based on an overall enemy that is threatening a fictitious world. I’m not sure how this could remain the same if the creators try to incorporate the multiple quest schematic that is prevalent in common MMORPGs. Overall, I’m looking forward to how well the creators are going to incorporate all these elements into a cohesive online game.

Friedman talks a lot about the outsourcing of jobs in American to other countries such as India. While this is a major and important fact (especially in the present time with the current state of the economy), it doesn’t really focus as much on the individual’s role or increase power as much as how the current system is favors a groups of individuals and allows them to compete globally. What must be remembered is that globalization is not just the integration of economic matters, but also political and social.

Friedman (to me at least) only really briefly mentions this new sort of individualism in the sentence: “Globalization 3.0 differs…in its empowering of the individuals.” This is done through incorporation of personal laptops in the majority of households in the United States. While Friedman talks about this type of globalization in terms of other foreign nations, he doesn’t really mention its effect on the American home front.

It is my belief that globalization not only creates competition amongst individuals in foreign nations, but also within the states. Individuals now stand on even footing with each other and are basically able to create new businesses from nothing. The multinational organizations for globalization 2.0 are now single individual businesses in globalization 3.0. In general, I believe there will be a large rise in entrepreneurship that has never been seen before. Furthermore, since children of young ages are able to utilize laptops and and the internet effectively (even to a greater extent than some adults), the age at which individuals can enter the business world is younger than ever. Therefore, I propose this new globalization 3.0 as also the Age of the Young Entrepreneur.

Due to the ability of increased social network, i.e. facebook, twitter, youtube, the ability to showcase your skills, talents, and goods has increased exponentially. Facebook market place and facebook ads have provided ways which to sell used items and has provided a new marketing tool that can be even used in some companies. Youtubing, a verb that while not necessarily part of the English dictionary is easily understood and accepted, showcases the voices of individuals all over the world. Justin Bieber (who I do not support/encourage/go fancrazy in any way) reached celebrity status from an innocent youtube clip that got through to the right people. Twitter provides a method for companies to quickly and efficiently answer media questions and inquiries from the public. Furthermore, I believe that there will be increases in technology that supports social-exchange and connecting. In fact, friends of mine over at UT Austin just created a beta program (http://www.flok2us.com) that locates possible study groups on their campus.  Overall, Friedman acknowledges that globalization has provided an exchange of goods and resources fro multiple sources abroad which has greatly changed our economic role, but fails to also point out its large effect on our own social media and how individuals can utilize it to their own advantage.