I really enjoyed how this week’s group introduced to us popular examples of video games from China 20 years ago and today. I think it was a fascinating share covering video game simulations and made me think about my own love of video games as a child and how much I adored and still do love Nintendo and Super Nintendo games. I don’t believe I dislike older digital worlds, they bring about a sense of nostalgia that no amount of CGI could achieve. The music, character and world design and narratives of Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Combat, and Zelda bring about that warm and cozy feel of nostalgia that I could never have imagined back then as these amazing games were so technologically innovative for their time that I feel like one should really appreciate where we have come from in that respects even if one did prefer today’s gaming world because it’s visually and technologically advanced therefore viewed as much more superior.

Exploring the subject, thinking now about Pre-Digital simulations, I am compelled to consider puppetry and considering the evolution of the moving image and imagined and replicated worlds.  A narrative is connected to the simulation, and if you wanted to you could possibly build your own little world with props, becoming an emergent narrative in the form of child’s play. Fast forward to today and we have simulations as story making machines

As quoted in the lecture, “Frasca claims that a video game is bigger than a single story = it’s a dynamic system which can produce many different stories”.  Indeed, referring back now to that example of puppetry as a form of child’s play and entertainment- ‘game designers can learn a lot from studying storytelling media’ (Hentry Jenkins).

Reflecting now on the questions posed, I do think VR will be a very popular format for gaming in the future. It’s already showing signs of interest and with refinement accessibility in pricing and design, it’s bound to gain some momentum and become even more advanced.

Transmedia is so fascinating to me as mentioned in class. It was so exciting as a child when The Simpson’s became a Nintendo game and also became an animation program alongside other kinds of transmedia like figurines etc.  I believe it’s important to CONNECTING and ENGAGING with storytelling as it’s good marketing as it creates this extra sense of ownership between the audience and the story.