Playing online games is very common in this era and I support the idea that it can teach us: to take in information from many sources and make decision quickly; to deduce a game’s rules from playing rather than being told; to create strategies for overcoming obstacles; to understand complex through system through experimentation; to collaborate with others.(Prensky, 2003)

Today, I want to share one of my favorite games—Tales Weaver. Tales Weaver which is a Korean online game (MMORPG) is popular in Korean, Japanese and Korean. It is an amazing game that it has been take down two times in Hong Kong but it will be set up again in this December. What factors make it “reborn” again and again? It is not only the “fun” factor, but also the “interactivity” factor and “multimodal” factor.

Interactivity

In Tales Weaver, there is less “rules” or constraints more like real life. Although it is fixed to choose twelve characters, you can choose your own hairstyle, items and clothes you wear. You can also choose different gestures that you like too, like sitting down, clapping the hands, nodding, etc. Some people, due to their occupation like being a professional, can’t do something silly that may destroy their image in the real world. So, in the virtue world, they have more freedom to express their “real me”. Take me as an example. Without social cues, I pretend to be a boy and flirt with the female characters in the game. It is quite funny to know that the others completely believe you are a boy, isn’t it? We can also express our thoughts through putting some words above our characters’ head. Some sellers in the game make full use of this function to put the advertisement words above the head to attract customers.(see below)

In this game, we can team with different people and form a party up to 30 peoples. People who desire for friendship may gain satisfaction from this system. We can learn how to communicate and collaborate with the strangers by interacting with the teammates. Like the real world, apart from friendship, we can also develop “love relationship” and get married through “marriage system”.

Multimodal

There are more ways to make meanings like real life. In this game, there are different missions for you to accept. You can choose to accept or not. And when you talk with the NPC, you can make different choices (usually three to four choices in a conversation). Different choices may lead to different story plot of your character. In the process of carrying out the mission, you will learn the problem-solving skills. Even though you can’t solve the problem, don’t worry. You can ask your friends in the game world or read the articles which are post on the forum are other players’ discovery information in the game. Actively search and take useful information to use is what we should learn in this era. You can walk your own way in the game. Actually, the game has its storyline. The game plot is based on the Korean novel—Children of the Rune. The novel is very famous and attracts many readers to play this game. And on the other hand, many players love this game very much and start to read the novel because of the game. Some creative players draw the pictures of the game characters and make the machinima. Below is a video clip that shows the pictures drawn by the Tales Weaver’s fans.

The colour of the game is mainly warm colour that makes us feel comfortable when we play it. And the visual of the game is so cute. Even the monsters that we must kill in the game do not own a terrible face. That makes the females willing to try it owing to the cute style of the game world.

The sound effects and background music is so excellent that they give people a feeling of calmness. Although this game is taken down in Hong Kong again and again, it recalls players’ memory when they listen to the music. A lot of Tales Weaver players in the world play the piano piece of it and also share the music notation unofficially. Below is a video clip that shows a fan playing one of the piano music in Tales Weaver.

If you want to take advantages of playing games, Tales Weaver is what I highly recommend! Let’s play together in this Christmas!^^