Blog Assignment # 2

I decided to do my critical reading of a digital game on “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07.” I decided to look at this game in particular because this is one game that I have attempted to play within the past year and a game that I have watched my brother play. Through playing and observing this game there are some things that I have noticed that I believe relates to some of our readings especially from the book, The Medium of the Video Game by Mark J. P. Wolf. I believe that this game challenges the definition of the medium and it also incorporates things that we have talked about in class such as the time and space usage in video games.
Whenever I see a game being played one thing that I always tend to notice are the object on screen that are not moving when they should be. For example, if one was at a real Golf Tournament, the crowd would be moving, not just standing there with the same expression on their faces looking like a statue. I guess I am looking for too much realism in video games but then I don’t understand how people can get so “lost” in a game where things that happen or move in real life, don’t in their video game. And in addition to that how moving knowing what the next thing you are going to see in the screen is exciting. Wolf talk’s about how things have the potential to move and how any little change of color can make for a slight movement in the game, I guess I don’t have that good of an eye for seeing such slight changes. Wolf says that in some games “their emphasis on the importance of off-screen screen objects vary. In some games, the configurations of objects found in this space are always the same, allowing a player to anticipate what lies ahead in the game.” (Wolf, 57). How some people don’t pick up on these things through playing I don’t understand but I might be looking at this through too critically. However, I will agree with Wolf and say that I do think that they try and make such real live things happen in the video game such as “when a player does not do anything in a game, the computer continues to check for input and event in the world if the game continue, often with something happening to the player-character if it stays in one place for too long” (Wolf, 79). I have seen this happen but the wait time for the computer to realize that nothing is happening to me just looks so unrealistic.
Another thing that I noticed while watching “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007” was that the time frame was not realistic. When going to play a round of golf, which is usually 18 holes, it takes an average of 3 hours. In “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007,” you can bust out a round of golf in about 30 minutes, making the “game time vs. real time,” quite different. Through reading Wolf’s thoughts on “game time vs. real time,” I understand that the speed in which it takes to play a game or to do something in the game is determined by “ the preset pacing of the computer-controlled events and characters in the game, along with the pacing determined by the player, where the player is given that option” (Wolf, 86). But, this still leaves me with my point that the game is not realistic in that the time it takes to play a real game of golf opposed to one on a video game are not equal. Now, this is great for the way our culture is today, we like things to be fast and always moving at a faster rate. And I really could not imagine spending 3 hours to play a game of golf on the computer when it would take you the same the amount of time to play a real round. So, for people who need that quick fix of golf in less than 3 hours then I understand them playing this game.