Media affects us all in different ways and influences us in different ways and in this day and age it is impossible to avoid it, I want to talk about a few ways that media affects me.
The most important form of media to me is Games, I find that it is a large part of my life especially now that I am studying Games Development. But even so it has always been a large part of my life growing up, I would often play games with my brother/friends whenever we had the chance and our parents allowed us to. This made it an important social function for me as it allowed me to get along and build relationships with people through games. This still translates to this day where I find that my favourite games are often the competitive multiplayer games which I can play with friends (e.g. Overwatch, Counter Strike, HellDivers).
Additionally I find that games allow me to escape reality for a few hours into a world that someone else has created, I often played games when I am stressed just to help me relax a bit. For this situation I find that I often play immersive single player games such as The Last of Us or Dark Souls as they have incredibly created worlds to escape to. As a medium games often have different intentions and carry different messages, for example Overwatch is a competitive team based shooter and although individual skill is a large factor of the game it is nearly impossible to win without team work. I often find that the multiplayer games are often mostly trying to entertain and the immersive single players have a different more grand message. But overall these games also inspire me to want to create games that make people feel the way that I feel when playing games.
Another medium which is important to me are Movies and TV Shows, this is also a medium which I can often share with siblings and friends. I find that the big difference between movies and games is that often the movies follow the character’s story much better and explains their conflicts and feelings in a better way. Movies as a medium often have a bigger opportunity and more freedom to shape their message in the way that they want to. You have all sorts of messages that can be portrayed by movies, environmental, political, cruelty of war etc. etc. Movies are an important medium in the development and values of the next generation and shaping the views of people.
My final medium of media is music, most often MP3s but sometimes live music definitely has an effect on my daily life. I listen to at least 1-2 hours of music everyday when I catch the bus to work/uni and when I’m at home cooking or reading. For me a good song can often lift my mood or get me excited and pumped up for something. Music for me often stirs an emotional response a happy song can make me happy and a sad song can definitely make me sad. The kind of music that I listen to often reflects how I am feeling at that current moment and enhances that mood.
In the end there are hundreds of different kinds of media and they all affect us in different ways. Hopefully this post gives you an insight into how media affects me.
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