Brief 3 Peer Reviews

The first essay I'd like to review is Anna Patricia's Candy Crush Essay. Her essay was very in depth and eye-opening for someone who has quite a large game folder on their phone. She explains how Candy Crush manipulates its users to keep playing and spend real money in order to win because when we win it releases dopamine. She believes these games can cause addictive tendencies which is specifically dangerous to young children who has "pliable" minds. Personally I can see where she is coming from with this, but I played many an online game as a kid and as much as I love a board game, I think it’s important that we let children make their own mistakes. Online gaming is a totally new and different ball game to sitting around a table with your family and friends. You’re dealing with new challenges, people you don’t know and sometimes online bullying. However, I think it’s important we monitor the amount of time children spend attached to a screen but nonetheless I think kids are smarter than we think and can use online gaming in a positive way that doesn’t stunt their mental development. However I really enjoyed her essay, I don't disagree with her statement that Candy Crush and similar games are a manipulative money making scheme, I just feel that we can use online gaming as a tool to help development skills in children, not stunt them.

On that note, lets talk OG Disney! Holly Francis talks to us about the interactive musical components in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She really gets us thinking about the techniques that go into the musical production of the score behind the Disney classic. As she mentions, film scores are often used to influence the mood and tone of the scene the audience is seeing before them. It's adding to the experience by adding in another sense. Although I can see where she went with this topic, I don't feel the music is a film is interactive in the same way another digital artefact might be. I believe that while music may have an effect on the audience, they aren't directly interacting with it in the way one might with a website, smartphone app or video-game. So maybe she could've chosen a different artefact to discuss. However I did enjoy the essay, it was very informative and the pictures of the scenes she described were helpful to jog my memory.