Mattel’s Toy Recall And Supply Chain Management Essay

Why do firms contract overseas for production of products they sell? Answer: The firms contract overseas for production of the products they sell to gain certain advantages from the different countries. One of the biggest advantages is cheap labor that cut down the cost of the products. To get the advantage of the cheap fuel prices and raw materials to make the products at effective cost. The companies can get the tax benefits and other government policy advantages by producing their products at overseas. The companies can also get the lower cost suppliers from different countries. The company can get the advantage of currency fluctuation to produce the products at lower currency rate. What were the primary causes of Mattel’s recall problems? Answer: There were several causes for Mattel’s toy recall. But the primary causes are problems in manufacturing, design and usage. Manufacturing Problems: One primary problem is the use of excessive lead paint in toys. Lead was commonly used in paint. However, it is a neurotoxin and is harmful to developing brains in children. Repeated exposure can cause serious brain damage. Design problems: A second cause for recall was defect in product design. That was the result of increasing use of small powerful magnets in children’s toys. If the designs of these toys were deficient and did not adequately encase the magnets, they could become dislodged and swallowed by the children. When a child ingested more than one magnet, the ingested magnet could be bind together across intestinal folds, eventually perforating the intestine and causing serious injury or death. Product misuse: Some recalls were due to the potential for misuse. Some features of the toys generally were not a ca use for concern if children used the toy in intended way, but children often found creative ways to play that were not anticipated by designers. So, if potential danger was brought to the  company’s attention, the toy might be subject to recall. What actions taken by whom to deal with the recall problems? Do you think these actions were the right one? Why or why not? Answer: In early July 2007, one of the Mattel’s European retailer discovered excessive lead on some of the company’s toys. Mattel stopped production and launched investigation of the problem. The company received data that convinced that recall is necessary. In August Mattel announced voluntary recall of 83 Fisher-Price products sold from May 1 to August 1, 2007. The recall involved about 1.5 million toys worldwide. Two-third of the toys were pulled from inventory before they reached retail customers. After first recall Mattel announced second voluntary recall for toys with excessive lead content. The recall involved 436,000 toys worldwide. After the second recall Mattel announced to recall the Sarge toy cars, an expansion of earlier recall due to small magnets. It recalled 18.2 million toys worldwide. All of the toys recalled had been manufactured in China. Two weeks after the August 2nd recall, the owner of the Chinese factory that used the lead paint committed suicide. According to my opinion, the actions taken by Mattel were absolutely right. Mattel has been criticized heavily for having to recall not once but twice in as many weeks 20 million toys manufactured in China with lead paint and/or loose, potentially dangerous magnets. Clearly Mattel did not have sufficiently tight quality control procedures in its supply chain to compensate for the extra risks of outsourcing to relatively new Chinese subcontractors. Clearly there were design flaws in the toys with the magnets that could come loose. Though the recall of the products had created serious problems for Mattel and for manufacturers of China, the products were highly dangerous for the children which needed serious concern. But the positive point was both the Governments of China and U.S. tightened the rules regarding product safety. They also raised the product quality standards and product testing. The CEO of the Mattel had taken personal charge of the situation. He has apologized publicly and taken immediate steps to tighten quality assurance requirements on Mattel’s suppliers. What should Mattel do now? What should China do now? Answer: Mattel has faced a series of difficult and potentially crippling challenges, including the lawsuits. Mattel should attempt to rectify its mistakes and to prevent future mistakes as well. Mattel should work hard for  restoring goodwill and faith in its brands, even as it continues to be plagued with residual distrust over the lead paint scandal. Mattel should upgrade its safety standards and quality control. Mattel should be careful for approaching international supply chain management strategies. Mattel should make sure its Chinese suppliers operate ethically, including treating their workers fairly. Whereas Mattel can do randomly test finished toys, as it should now test every single batch of toys produced. Safety checks should also get beefed up at the supplier and subcontractor level prior to the finishing of the product. Reputations are hard won and easily lost, but Mattel should appear to be steadfast in its commitment to restoring its reputation. After the recall by M attel, China’s export manufacturing sector, an important factor driving country’s economic growth, had been stung by suffering highly visible problems. The â€Å"made in china† brand was in real danger. At that point China needed to prove that they could produce products to the quality and safety standards expected by the rest of the world. China should ask companies to hire full time inspection staff and allow their customers to inspect their plants. China should enforce quality licensing system for product exports. Chinese agency should increase efforts to certify exporters and should severely punish and blacklist the companies that fail to meet performance requirements. Though Mattel had taken full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to the Chinese people and all of their customers who received the toys, China was fighting with the brand image in the international market. How can accountability be increased and better managed when production is moved overseas to other firms in the supply chain? Answer: There are many criticisms levelled at multinational organizations for choosing to relocate their manufacturing operations from domestic markets in developed countries to developing countries many thousands of miles away. Suspicion is often focused on cheap labor and possibly lower or less enforced health, safety and environmental legislation all contributing to lower production costs. But to increase accountability and better production management at overseas the company needs to have law inventories, flexible manufacturing and close relationship with suppliers and customers. Better managed supply chain requires close coordination with suppliers to achieve the desire level of quality and delivery. It also needs to have frequent communications with the suppliers  and customers. It entails to have close coordination among product design, engineering, the manufacturing plant, and suppliers. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to ensure that its products are produced to the highest safety standards that its workers are not exploited and that health and safety and environmental standards not compromised in the search for lower prices. In this case the stakes are very high since the safety of all our children is at stake as well as the acceptance of the ‘Made in China’ designation in world markets.

Organisational Behaviour essays

Organisational Behaviour essays Organisational behaviour is the study of individuals or employees within an organisational environment, aimed at providing the ability to understand subordinate behaviour. A firm understanding of employee behaviour and the factors and attributes that influence this behaviour will enable managers to identify what measures will encourage high performance and satisfy employees. There are many measures and techniques available to encourage optimal performance and ensure job satisfaction. We shall examine motivation and empowerment approaches managers should use to create a satisfying working environment characterised by high performing employees. The Macquarie Concise Dictionary defines motivation as 1. A motivating; providing of a motive; 2. giving purpose There has been many theories established over time that assist managers to understand how motivation works, and what employees value in order to understand what measures can be used to motivate them, below is an explanation on a handful of these theories. Maslows Hierarchy of Needs presents the concept that individuals have varying and different needs and puts these needs in order of importance. Maslows formulation suggests that some needs have higher priority than others and therefore must be satisfied before the other needs may serve as motivators. (Wood, J.M., Wallace, J.P. and Zeffane, R. 2001 ). As shown in the diagram following, Maslow argues that the most pressing need has to be satisfied before another, higher in the hierarchy becomes active. At the most basic level, people have physiological needs - needs stem...

3 Things You Need to Do Before You Apply For a New Job

3 Things You Need to Do Before You Apply For a New Job If your current job isn’t keeping you challenged and on your toes, stepping out into the field might be a great idea. So take a deep breath, make sure you’re sure you want to quit  your job, and do the following three things. 1. Re-evaluate your current gigWhat did you love about this job? Can you remember why you were excited about it in the first place? What did you learn? These questions will help you to make the best choice about your next gig. By being honest about the good and bad aspects of your current job, you’ll know better what you’re really looking for with your next.2. Don’t burn any bridgesYou need to look for new connections and new mentors, but you also need to keep up the relationships you already have. Be as active as possible in recruiting new talent into your network, and getting yourself out there in your new industry or work group, but don’t let your existing network fizzle. You’ll never know when you might need those contacts.3. Come out in the openThe hardest part will be telling your current boss that you are leaving- or thinking about leaving. But it is much better to be up front about this. It’s the classy and professional move. Your boss will thank you for the lead time to fill your position- and a month to six weeks notice is much better than the standard two.As long as you’re honest with yourself and your current boss, you can walk clear-eyed and contented into your next opportunity.

Amusement Park Promotion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Amusement Park Promotion - Essay Example You know what you are doing, but nobody else does† (as cited in Huddle, 2011, p.2). In this respect, the work of marketing department plays one of the most important roles in the future performance of any company, influencing on its profitability and prosperity. To satisfy the requirements of leadership, concerning season ticket holders of amusement park, it is imperative to implement the most effective instruments of promotion policy that is directed to give customers full information about services and persuade potential consumers to purchase them. Therefore the main goal of promotion is to raise demand for park’s services and convert occasional visitors to constant clients. Analyzing effectiveness and costs of all types of promotion, it is recommended to use advertising and sales promotion methods. First of all, it is important to influence on customers’ decision to choose amusement park with a help of flexible policy of discounts. It may be useful to reduce th e price of season ticket such way that buying occasional ticket will be less economic for visitors.

Find a web site about a vernacular dance forms. It could be anything Essay

Find a web site about a vernacular dance forms. It could be anything to do with ethnic, folk, ballroom, jazz, or tap dancing - Essay Example Shopping is divided into videos, music, books, gift cards, and customer service. The classifieds section offers a partner search and a dancewear section, while the directory offers teachers, studios, dance locations, vendors, services, clubs and teams, organizations, and other dance sites. The forum, or message board, is comprised of just about any topic that the reader may think of, as well as some others that may not be imagined. People can ask anything about anything related to dance. The site itself is full of a wide variety of information, and the information is arranged in a useful and easy to navigate manner. While the content provided is clear and concise, the site itself leaves much to be desired in terms of design. The site itself tried to appear fancy, though the colors, the fonts, and the attempts at adding sparkles to the fonts just end up making it look tacky. The videos themselves attempt to show the dances in a professional manner, however, the people look cheesy and fake, instead of like people who are genuinely interested in dancing; the overlaid text at the beginning of the videos is the same tacky fonts that are in use on the homepage of the site itself. If the site used something other than XHTML and javascript, the site could be done in a far more professional manner. Likewise, if the forum was to use phpBB instead of javascript, it would offer a far more professional look and feel. Overall, the site itself has a host of valuable information, and it is presented in an easy to use and easy to navigate manner, however, the style of the site leaves much to be desired. Ballroom dancing is supposed to be elegant and beautiful, and a poorly designed site tends to not only detract from that, but also shows disrespect to the art

Ethics and Corruption at News International Essay - 3

Ethics and Corruption at News International - Essay Example d in 2005 when Clive Goodman wrote an article at News of the World stating that a member of the Royal Family, Prince William borrowed a portable editing suite from Tom Bradby, a correspondent from ITV. There were no other people who were aware of it except for Prince William and Tom Bradby and figured it was likely that their voicemails must have been illegally tapped. An investigation followed headed by Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police that led to search of News of the World London office where they found voice mail accounts belonging to Prince William’s aides that included Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton. Clive Goodman and his associate Glenn Mulcaire were later arrested by the Metropolitan Police and were charged with tapping the telephones of the royal family which is a criminal offence under section 79 of the  Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (The National Archives). Both plead guilty of the charge and were sentenced to four and six months in jail. During a July 2011 investigation, it was revealed that the phone tapping were not only limited to the Royal Family and other public figures but also included the relatives of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the victims of the July 7 London bombings. The Metropolitan Police also estimated that there may be 4,000 possible targets from the documents they seized from News of the World Today (BBC News 2011a) Further investigation revealed that moneys were paid to police between  £20,000 to  £30,000 in exchange for information that News International would published as confirmed by a former Scotland Yard chief (Chapman 2011). These incidents of phone tapping and police bribery revealed the extent of unethical practice in the journalism industry in the UK that resulted in a public outcry against New International’s insensitivity for the already aggrieved victims of crimes and its total disregard of ethical propriety in obtaining information. The News International case also

The Relation of Narratives and Video Games Essay Example for Free

The Relation of Narratives and Video Games Essay Video games are a relatively new form of entertainment; the first video game is considered to be Tennis for Two (1958), around fifty years ago, while film has been around for over one-hundred years, the printing press for over five-hundred, and storytelling for thousands of years before that. Because of its newness, video games are a developing medium, their conventions and potential have not been explored as fully in comparison with film and literature. Computers as a technology allow us to overcome more complex tasks and obtain and utilize information more quickly than previous technologies. Often there can be the tendency to describe the new medium as radically different from the old, solely based on its technology. However, it is not necessarily the case. Video games do have new capabilities that separate them from previous storytelling media and it is these new characteristics of video games that separate them from film and literature, creating an environment of storytelling where the traditional narrative structure does not directly apply. Using narrative media as examples a lot can be discovered about video games, however, one must remember what makes them games. See more: how to start a narrative essay Looking at video games as a continuation of games in general rather than an extension of film, they hold a history dating as far back as the ancient Egyptian game of Senet (discovered in the 2686 BC tomb of Hesy-re) (Juul, Half-Real 3-4). It is these game components that must be understood before looking at games from different perspectives. Jesper Juul drew from theorists before him to present what he denotes the classic game model. Juul defines that a game is: 1. a rule-based formal system; 2. with variable and quantifiable outcomes; 3. where different outcomes are assigned different values; 4. where the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome; 5. the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome; 6. and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable (Half-Real 6-7). This model is only a barebones description of what games are and does not outline the variety of games, or what makes games enjoyable. This model is also transmedial, meaning that games are not tied to any medium, just as storytelling is not tied to any medium—there is no ideal game medium and there is no physical component common to all games, but there exists the â€Å"immaterial† component of rules that is common to all games. Rules are the base component of games. They govern how the game is played and they should be designed in a way to make it clear what is and is not allowed in playing the game. Games therefore resemble a state machine, a term used in computer science to describe a machine that consists of an initial state, accepts a number of input events, that changes the state responding to the inputs using a state transition function (in the case of this example, the game rules) and then produces outputs using an output function. Visualizing a game as such, the activity of playing a game produces a game tree that can be seen as branching off at each decision and input. Playing a game is interacting with this state machine and exploring this game tree (Juul, Half-Real 55-56). Rules, however, are seen everywhere in the world, and it is not solely the existence of rules that makes a game. The second item of the classic game model—that games must have variable and quantifiable outcomes—is a salient feature of the game. If a game exists in such a way that no matter how the player interacts with it, it always produces the exact same result, it is not a game. The variable outcomes must also have different values, with some being more desirable to attain than others. In the video game Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 1985) the outcome of losing all of the game lives is less desirable than defeating the last stage. A player must also exert effort to influence the outcome, generally in a manner that requires more effort to realize a more desirable outcome. It is not merely enough that the player interacts with the game, they must also have a sense of agency. Agency is not simply interaction, but interaction where the player has influence (Murray 126). This separates games of pure chance and gambling as borderline cases. In a game where the player rolls a die and the result of rolling a six is considered victory, the player only exerts trivial effort to roll the die, and exhibits no agency. The player of a game must also feel emotionally attached to the outcome—if the player loses all of their lives in Super Mario Bros. , the player has achieved a negative outcome, and agrees to feel sad, while if they defeat the last stage, they have achieved a positive outcome and agree to feel happy. If the player is not emotionally attached to the outcome, they would not exert the effort to play. The sixth item of the classic game model separates games from the real world—game theorists Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman call this subset of the real world a magic circle (95). Games are a part of the world that they exist in, but the rules carve out a world separated from the real world. It is here where the consequences of outcomes are optional and negotiable—games are a voluntary activity where players can decide the consequences of the game. Soccer, as an example, is a game where in some cases players decide the consequences are simply the glory of victory, but other players, decide that the consequences are career-changing (in the case of professional soccer players). On the other hand, the rules for a political election are game-like and could be played as a game, but an actual election has decided, non-negotiable consequences and therefore is not a game. In the same manner, it could be argued that professional soccer is not a game, but soccer itself is still considered a game as it is known that soccer is played recreationally and its consequences are negotiable. The classic game model outlines games as a voluntary activity that evaluates a players performance—based on a players effort and skill in interacting with the game rules, a variable outcome with an attached value is reached, to which the player is emotionally attached. However, with the advent of the video game (as well as the pen-and-paper role-playing game), the classic game model is not all there is to games anymore. It is still a valuable definition, but the addition of the computer to games modifies the standard game definition. When it comes to rules, the computer is able to handle far more complex processes than a human, allowing for games where the player is free from enforcing the rules of the game, instead having the computer run as a referee of sort. This referee capability can operate anywhere from playing tic-tac-toe to simulating entire fictional worlds. The ability of the computer to run as a referee also allows for rules and calculations to be kept secret from the player. This ability to manage a large amount of information, as well as the ability to run it in secret allows for the computer to manage whole fictional worlds spawning a new type of game, the progression game. This now means there exists two types of games (elements of which can be combined): emergence games and progression games. Most games that have existed before video games are emergence games—games where a large variety of game variations and outcomes come from a small set of rules. Chess, soccer and Pong (Atari 1972) are examples of the emergence game. Progression games require the player to actualize a predefined sequence of events in order to beat the game. The progression game came about with the adventure game and early examples include The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo 1986) and Final Fantasy (Square 1987). Now that video games can have this progression capability and the ability to easily run fictional environments, they have expanded to include storytelling components. The study of video games, therefore, delves into not just the study of rules and interaction, but also the study of narrative as well. Narratives operate fundamentally differently than games and one cannot use the same methods of study for both. Therefore, when comparing games and narratives, just as one must understand games, the basics of narrative in comparison to games must be understood as well. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a narrative as a spoken or written account of connected events; a story. There are three traditional components of the narrative: setting, character and events (plot)—a narrative consists of a world situated in time, populated by characters that participate in action. The world is independent of the question of fictionality, as narratives can be of real as well as fictional events. They can also be split into two levels, the discourse (the telling of the story) and the story itself. Each of these levels has its own time, discourse time and story time, respectively. The story time is the time it took for the actual events to occur, and the discourse time is the time it takes for the retelling (Juul, â€Å"Games Telling Stories†). A week may pass in a story with no event, and thus the narrative could write it off in one sentence, while an action scene that lasted merely a few seconds could take much longer to explain. This means that even though the narrative may be observing events at a time, there exists an understanding that the events are not actually occurring at the moment of reading (Juul, â€Å"Games Telling Stories†). Narratives are not limited to the novel or storytelling, and can recognizably be translated between different narrative media—The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R Tolkien is recognizable as the movie of the same name. However, not everything can be transferred equally as well. For example, film is better at conveying action and movement, while the novel is better suited to producing inner thoughts. With games and narratives understood, examining the two side-by-side displays several differences. The most apparent of these is the difference in timing. The narrative has two levels, discourse and story, but when examining games in the same manner it is near impossible to distinguish between the two. In playing Super Mario Bros., when the player presses the A button on their controller, the in-game character jumps, thus synchronizing story and discourse time. It is imperative of the narrative that this separation in time exists. Not only does jumping in Super Mario Bros. place discourse and story time together, it also influences the game world. The understanding, in experiencing a narrative, that the time of the discourse is separate from the time of the events means that in some manner the events have already occurred (even if the setting is in some supposed future)—the events are unable to be influenced. The very agency that the player exercises in playing a game contradicts the idea of narrativity; it is impossible to influence an event that has already occurred (Juul, â€Å"Games Telling Stories†). Because of this contradiction, games themselves cannot be narratives, but this does not limit them from employing and producing them. The very activity of playing a game can produce a narrative, the player can tell a story of their experience in the game. Just as well, games can have stories told through them (especially progression games) as many games contain back-stories and quests that offer the player narratives alongside their play. Video games have two parts: rules (discussed earlier) and fiction. For a number of years, the arcade game was all that existed and they contained both rules and fiction, but the two were loosely connected. This led some to conclude that a games fiction is easily removable and replaceable, thus making it unimportant in relation to the rules. Juul had previously taken the stance that rules are what make a game a game, fiction is unnecessary for a game, a game with an excellent fiction can still be a terrible game, therefore fiction is unimportant in games (Half-Real 13). When looking at simple games such as Space Invaders (Taito 1978), one could remove the theme of an alien invasion and portray an advancing German front; the players spaceship could become a Russian tank. If the rules were kept the same, the player would experience no real difference between playing either, but the same sort of procedure would not perform the same if it were attempted on a progression game such as Myst (Broderbund 1993) because the game experience relies more heavily on the fiction. Juul stated that, There are, of course, many relationships between theme and structure in a game. Whether or not any of those relationships are essential, they are complex and vital enough to resist my attempt to lightly shuffle them around (Half-Real 15). If the fiction of a game is tied to its experience, what role does it play in the game and its rules? In some cases the fiction may point to the rules, as well as the other way around; in other cases the fiction serves the rules in an incoherent manner, subservient to gameplay. When it comes to the fiction component of games, one main difference from narrative media is that they do not require anthropomorphic actors/characters in order to be entertaining (Juul, Half-Real 160-161). While films and other stories are largely about humans or anthropomorphic characters that a viewer/reader identifies with on a cognitive level, games such as Tetris (Pazhitnov 1985), Pong and Missile Command (Atari 1980) exist without such. This lack of a visible actor does not make Tetris any less of a game, and makes the idea of a movie based on Tetris an unlikelihood, but it shows how games can accomplish something different, and almost completely separate, than traditional narrative media. Another main difference is the progression of time in games. Previously the difference with discourse and story time was explored, but the chronological appearance of time also varies between games and narratives. Due to the fixed, predetermined nature of a narrative the telling can jump around to various points in the story time either in flash-forwards or flash-backs. To do the same in a game becomes problematic, for predetermination precludes agency. If the player is put back in time (in the past), they are put in a situation where they must actualize a series of events that allows the game in the present to exist, thus limiting the player. The same goes for flash-forwards where the player is put in a position of what is to happen, limiting their play upon return to the present. However, even though games are not narratives, games are no longer strictly abstract. They often contain fictional components as well, leading to new types of games. Besides just viewing games as emergent and progressive, there exists five categories of games: abstract, iconic, incoherent world, coherent world and staged. Abstract games are games that does not, nor do its pieces, represent something else. The game of Go is a game that is merely rules and although there exist conventions for the size and appearance of the various game pieces, they do not mean anything. Tetris is a well known abstract video game. Iconic games are quite similar abstract games, but their individual pieces simply have iconic meaning. In a standard deck of cards there is a king, queen and jack of each of the four suits, but there is no clear explanation of their relation to the other kings, queens and jacks of the other suits. Incoherent world games are games that have a fictional world, but it either contains contradictions or events in the gameplay that cannot be explained by the fictional world. In Super Mario Bros. , Mario has multiple lives, but there exists nothing in the fiction that explains it, it only serves the rules. Chess represents two parties at war, but to explain the movement of the units one must refer to the rules as it is not apparent in the fiction. Coherent world games are games that have a fictional world that contain nothing that prevents the player from imagining them in full. Most adventure games such as the recent The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks 2012) are coherent world games. Staged games are a special type of abstract or representational game that are played inside of a larger, more elaborate world. Mario Party (Nintendo 1998) contains an overarching fictional world and game, but is largely made up of individual staged games. Another instance of the staged game is in Shenmue (Sega 1999) where the protagonist can play on in-game arcade machines. Each of these categories of games has its own place in the world of video games and it is important to be aware of the varieties that exist. Of these varieties though, there is the coherent world—the progression game. In this type of game the player must perform a predefined set of actions in a coherent world setting. This kind of game sounds very similar to the narrative, but still has variable outcomes, player effort and other game components. One example of this kind of game is The Walking Dead (Telltale Games 2012). The Walking Dead is set in Georgia during a fictional zombie apocalypse. The player plays as Lee Everett, a professor convicted of killing a man he found sleeping with his wife. Due to the zombie uprising he does not end up in prison, instead ends up caring for a little girl by the name of Clementine. The gameplay mainly revolves around conversations that the player has with other characters and occasionally the player is put in a position where they must make a critical decision. At the end of each â€Å"chapter,† the game reports out on the player’s decisions as well as the percentage of other players that either disagreed or agreed with them. It is through this method that the player is able to reflect on the cause and effect of their decisions. This sort of environment demonstrates that games are a playground where the player may experiment with things they would or could not do in a real-life setting (Juul, Half-Real 193). It is this phenomenon of player-made decisions and the reflection of them that traditional narratives cannot accomplish. In conclusion, games are made up of six components that make up the classic game model: they are rule-based systems with variable outcomes that have different assigned values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the game are optional and negotiable. With the advent of the computer, there are new capabilities available to games. There are now two main types of games, emergent and progression games, with a spectrum of combinations between them. Emergent games are made up of a set of rules that combine to produce a large set of outcomes. Progression games require the player to perform a specific set of actions in order to complete the game. With this progression capability, it is important to compare video games and narratives. A narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events. Narratives have two levels, story and discourse, each of these with their own time. Games often do not have distinction between their story and discourse time (as the events are occurring in real time), and thus are not narratives. Games, although not narratives themselves, allow for players to produce narratives through playing them; players may recount their experiences in a game. Games may not themselves be stories, but that does not mean that they do not employ them or that player’s cannot tell stories about their experiences in a game. Games offer a different experience than the narrative media before it; the player gets to experience something rather than view it and has an influence in the environment. The player of a game also gets to experiment with ideas in a sort of playground and reflect on their decisions and the effects they have. That does not, however, imply that the medium is necessarily a superior or inferior one. Films, novels and other narrative media can provide experience that games cannot, just as games provide experiences that traditional narrative media cannot. Looking forward, one can only imagine what games can accomplish in the field of entertainment that was not possible before. Works Cited Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1997. Print. Ebert, Roger. Video Games Can Never Be Art. RogerEbert. com. Ebert Digital LLC, 16 Apr. 2010. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. â€Å"Game Studies. † Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Sept. 2012. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. Game The News: The Project That Birthed a Syrian Civil War Game That’s Been Pulled from the App Store. Edge Online. Future Publishing Limited, 8 Jan. 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. Juul, Jesper. â€Å"A Clash between Game and Narrative. † Thesis. University of Copenhagen, 1999. Web. 19 Sept. 2012. . â€Å"Games Telling Stories? A Brief Note on Games and Narratives. † Game Studies1. 1 (2001): n. pag. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. . Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: MIT, 2011. Print. Jenkins, Henry. Game Design as Narrative Architecture. Henry Jenkins. MIT, n. d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT, 1997. Print. Narrative. Def. 1. Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University, n. d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. Ryan, Marie-Laure. â€Å"Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media. † Game Studies 1. 1 (2001): n. pag. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. Print.