Contemporary Media Issues 'Collective Intelligence' Assignment

Our first assignment for this module was to investigate in groups a specific text and the concepts behind the idea, exploring them in detail and creating a wiki to show our findings and understandings of the text. By each group creating a wiki on their findings it allows a shared platform for us all to access the information in a simple way My group was given the text 'A Theory of Fun' by Raph Koster (2004). In the book, Koster explores 'Why we find games fun?'

The book was available as an online PDF file and so instead of borrowing it from the University Library, I simply downloaded the file and was able to read the book from the comfort of my own home. I found the book quite engaging, it explored literally the 'theory of fun' and why people enjoy playing games, but was told in an almost child like manner, very visual, which made it more interesting to read, rather than staring at page after page of text. And I actually enjoyed learning why we are so competitive and driven by games, which made it a fun thing to talk about in our wiki.

On the wiki, we had a collective source of information as the main body of the text, about the book and the author and this finding. But we also linked off with threads. We had a number of threads, one looking at a review of the book, while another an interview with Koster and a brief history of his work. 

Overall I was quite pleased with our wiki, we found a lot of detailed information, however I wish we had developed it more and analysed his theory more, rather than just summarise it.

Here is a link to our wiki..

http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Theory+of+Fun