Nine Years Ago

Thank Christoph for bringing such an interesting topic to us this week. The lecture on games, learning and literacy conjured up memories of playing an online game in my childhood.

Nine years ago, I used to play an online game called Cross Gate. I loved this online game very much! To start the game, players had to choose an avatar, together with a name, to represent them in the game. Everyone had his or her own abilities (strength, speed, etc.) and according to them, he or she could choose the most suitable occupation (archer, wizard or witch, etc.). This taught me the first thing. Things have to be well planned before action. In the game, each occupation had its own skills. Players needed to 'practise' the skills and gain more experiences in order to make their skills more powerful but this was no easy task. This taught me the second thing. Patience is needed whenever you want to make yourself stronger or skilful. In the game, players could join other players to kill monsters and bosses in order to 'up level' (directly translated from Cantonese); in other words, we could mix with different people every time we were in the same group. This taught me the third thing. In order to talk with other players more effectively, I learnt how to type Chinese characters gradually. I learnt much jargon. I learnt to tackle some important missions by reading walk-throughs first. I learnt not to trust people who I'd never met before. And the list goes on.

Cross Gate gave me 3-year time of happiness. But thanks to it, my studies got worse when I started playing it. But I didn't regret. A saying tells us: Game is like life. We can unconsciously learn a lot of practical skills which cannot be learnt in books through playing games.

Also, games can give us countless new identities. A boy in reality can be a girl in games. A student in reality can be a wizard in games. S/he can cast spells to make fireballs or bolts of lightning. Surprisingly, a girl having a boyfriend can also have a boyfriend in the game. But this boyfriend and that can be 2 different people.

Games are actually educational if players are not addicted to them. Also, learning only happens when players play games 'healthily'. Otherwise, they may go astray.

 a photo by Ian D

Has She Done Something Really Unforgivable?

After being told by Christoph and reading a journalism review by Samantha Henig, I feel sympathy for the woman known as Dog Poop Girl. People thought that she was irresponsible and I think so. It was all her own fault. I wonder who she thought would help her clean up her dog's disgusting thing. But in this incident, she was absolutely not alone. The person who shot that video and people online who made she suffered a lot were also wrong. The person could tell staff to fine her for a lack of civic virtue but he didn't; instead, s/he posted the video clip online and the woman's nightmare started.

She was insulted. She was humiliated. She lost her privacy. She lost her job. She lost her dignity. Her parents and relatives were implicated in this incident. And above all, she lost everything that she didn't deserve to lose. Was she that unforgivable? Has she done some horrific crime? Was this just a patronising excuse for people to treat her like this?