Random musings

Last class, we talked about the implications of the games we’re playing. I read an article recently in the New York Times about the “iPhone gold rush” in the current rough economic times… basically, people who have lost their jobs and are struggling to support their family and mortgage payments are turning to the iPhone and hoping to make a steady income by making a successful iPhone application.

Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/fashion/05iphone.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=iphone%20gold%20rush&st=cse

On another note, I was remembering a video game I used to play a lot as a kid. I didn’t grow up with television or video games, except when I went to Chinese School every Saturday morning. It was always held at this one student’s house and during our “recess,” all the kids would rush into the TV room and play Super Nintendo. We used to play this game called Street Fighter… and now that I think about it, it was extremely racial. We would pick a character and if we played single-player, then the character would fly to different countries to fight other characters and each one represented a certain country and would appear very stereotypically ethnic. Even the backgrounds were very stereotypical. The USA guy was blonde with a crewcut in army fatigues and he fought on an army base. There was only one female character, Chun Li, from China. She looked exactly like an anime character and was dressed rather provocatively with her bare legs showing. If she won, she would jump up and down and giggle. Every single kid in my Chinese School class always chose her as their character. I’m not sure if it’s because she had an amazing kick that was unbeatable and she always kicked ass or whether it was because she was Chinese and we identified with the racial aspect… I don’t think we even realized that she was the only female character.