Cheers,

S

What do you love about it?
The community. It’s a diverse playing audience. It’s real time, there is no pause button, or undo action.
It’s balanced. New players have the chance to catch up to veteran players. Benefits of experience are playing options, rather than player strength.
There is no “win” button. Every strength has a weakness
It offers variety. Its another universe. I can fight and get stronger, trade and get richer, or rank and get prestige.
It’s a game – Wars and fights are rarely personal (though personality driven)
Teamwork
Organising military operations is fascinating. Plans are drawn up, times are arranged, numbers crunched

What do you hate about it?
It’s real time – there is no undo button. A stupid mistake can’t be undone.
Most players are in European and American time zones, meaning military operations start in the early hours of my morning
Internet connection problems. Internet speeds are pretty poor in China.
It became a routine, rather than a game

choose a single aspect of the game, and analyse
It’s a browser based game, so its graphics are minimal, as is the interface – one main window in the middle, and five on either side. Each of these side windows displays different information, and user options. These are clear and simple to understand. Status (top left hand, primary position) displays essential information (fuel, money, aps, location). Commands (attack, rest, collect resources), Ship Information (damage), Cargo (what are you carrying, and how much free space), and other ships.

This simple layout makes it easy to explain to new players and help them troubleshoot difficulties. The simple layout also makes customization easier. A trader may put a trading script in the commands window, or cargo management script in the cargo window. Options to interact in the “Other ships” window.

How do you feel when you use it? Do you feel utterly enthralled, and lose track of time when you play? Does it let you play in small bursts, and thus fit into your life well.
The main attraction I have for Pardus is it prevents me playing for long periods of time. Everyone has the same, limited amount of time to play each day, so its time management, instead of time investment.

Pardus has a system of “Action Points” (‘aps’You get 24 aps every six minutes, for a maximum of 5,000 aps. ). Without action points, you can’t do anything. Moving, costs 5 aps, trading, 10aps, fighthing 200 – 2000 aps. This means you have a restricted amount of game play a day (the same as every other player). I would ‘play’ maybe 20 minutes a day, but could be online and active at work and in the evenings.

Its not a time consuming game, but it can become routine. playing to use the aps generated in the day, rather than for enjoyment.

Please tell us a little more about the experience,
The most enjoyable experience is the community. It’s a simple game – “law of the jungle”. It has simple, static graphics, and you are restricted in the amount of time you can play each day. It doesn’t try to compete with “World of Warcraft” “Starcraft” or “Counter Strike”. It’s player base tend to be students and older professionals (25 – 60) who still enjoy playing computer games, but don’t have the time to immerse themselves into them

I think you’re the first to ever choose a game as their environment, nice.

You clearly have a good understanding of the medium, and your analysis shows this. You have pointed out a lot of the advantages/disadvanteges of the game from a technical standpoint, but I would like you to elaborate more on the experience of playing the game.

Why do you play it? What do you love about it? What do you hate about it? Perhaps you could choose a single aspect of the game, and analyse that? Perhaps it’s the in-game menu, or the HUD.

How do you leef when you use it? Do you feel utterly enthralled, and lose track of time when you play? Does it let you play in small bursts, and thus fit into your life well.

Please tell us a little more about the experience, I’m keen to know.

That’s a very interesting issue you raise about Universities running as businesses. The role of the institutions have definitely changed over time. In my undergrad tutorial times for students were cut shorter in order to pay lecturers less, resources and materials dwindle but subject prices were still rising. Profits were being made somewhere.

Not to say that it’s always a bad thing, the ‘new environment’ for Universities allows extra time for work or leisure (who wants to be stuck in traffic or waiting between classes?) and saves us time and energy from purchasing many books and materials. This modern way of communicating and learning is convinient on a number of levels, it only seems natural to translate into academic learning.

Justine