Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Journey


Ok I guess for this blog post I’m just going to say how excited/intimidated I am for this portion of the class. I’m really excited because McGonical’s book is just making so much sense to me which ill get more into in my next blog post. But one of her theories that has been most interesting to me in these early days of game play is enjoying failure. The reason this class intimidates me is probably because I’m really terrible at modern video games. If there’s more than one joystick on the controller chances are my brain and hands will be in a knot in less than a half hour. But yesterday I had the opportunity to play Journey with Zach and Kevin, and I understood enjoying failure. This game was amazing and beautiful on so many levels, but with my lack of experience playing video games I was so lost. I spent a lot of time running around in circles and unintentionally annoying anyone trying to help me with my terrible motor skills. It should have been frustrating to me, but when I finally got the hand of something it was that much more rewarding. Even Zack and Kevin would get extra stoked watching me finally succeed or figure something out that they knew all along. I also had some pretty epic fails that they hadn’t seen anyone do before which also made me feel triumphant. I now understand that this class isn’t about being the best, but rather enjoying the journey.