How Leaders Can Improve Their Work Environment

 When we think of projects, most of us young folks think of group assignments in school. What pushes us to get the work done are the deadlines that threaten our grades. They are often from the classes we care the least about, but sometimes they allow for more creative freedom. I often found myself leading teams but I wouldn’t get the results I wanted. My passion for the projects didn’t match my teammates’ and I practically had to beg for some of them to collaborate. I was able to learn more effective leadership methods from the book, Leadership is Language, written by L. David Marquet. 

Creating a Safe Atmosphere

This was something I tried by giving compliments and showing concern during their emergencies, but I found that there’s more involved in that. Our use of language is important in how followers feel about their roles. 

• If they express concerns and we reply with invulnerable comments like “we’re going to be fine”, it gives them the impression that they shouldn’t question our decisions because they are set in stone.

• When we ask leading questions during a dilemma, we are giving false comfort that only tells them to keep conforming to their roles. 

Making Their Voices Heard

When we think of work, we associate it with the act of doing something. We often forget how much of a role thinking plays in both innovation and employee satisfaction.

• Asking open ended questions that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no encourages employees to explore a problem from different angles. 

• For meetings, it is better to get everyone’s opinions before discussing them so people aren’t swayed towards a popular idea.

• There is a balance in how much doing and thinking needs to be done though. Too much doing and employees will become too stressed to think; too much thinking and there will be too much time wasted with no work being done. 

In my experiences working in Game Design, I had a mindset of getting other people to DO work for me to bring my vision to life. In moments where they wanted to give input or express concern, I would dismiss a lot of it which would kill their motivation. What they wanted was to create something they could be proud of. Instead of threats like a poor grade or firing them as a motivator, I should’ve created opportunities for them to explore new possibilities. Marquet’s book gave me pointers that I plan to use with all future projects I lead. It taught me how the leader creates the environment for their followers to thrive in.

Struggling to Lead Others? Try this out!

 As we grow up hearing about the success stories of leaders on TV and social media, it gives us the impression that leadership is all about having Control. We see charismatic personalities that have amassed billions with their contributions to their industries. That is what gives us the idea that those who lead are aggressive and intelligent go-getters that can come up with the best ideas. However, I learned that this wasn’t the case in the book, Emotional Intelligence for the Modern Leader written by Christopher D. Connors. The book has an emphasis on the followers that make up the leader’s team. A term that really stood out to me in its first 2 chapters was called Servant Leadership. 

It is a concept where the leader focuses on the growth of their followers and meeting their basic needs within their organization. It requires an unconditional desire for them to be successful. To be a servant leader, one must have Empathy. The book defines that as “the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing” as if you’re in their position. It helps you build relationships and understand the concerns that your followers may have. Showing them that you care is what will make you a successful leader. 

From my own experiences, I used to be a ‘my way or the highway’ type of leader. I liked to create ideas for projects, yet I knew I could not fully realize them on my own. I needed help from others. When I would have a team, I would run into the same problem with every team. I would have team members procrastinate on work and it felt like I was the only one passionate about the project. This was because I never checked in with how they were feeling and what ideas they had. As much as I hate to admit it, but in my head they were just extra pairs of hands for building my project. I never thought of them as brilliant minds waiting for an opportunity to shine. If I did not put my idea first, I could have had more passion from my teammates. 

If you find yourself leading in college or in the workforce, make sure you are thinking about how they are perceiving their work. If you take just a little time to check in on them, it can go a long way in motivating them for the long-term.

Final Post

 Technology has always been advancing since time began. It is like a parabola if you chart the innovations and how fast they have come. The 1st computer was proposed in 1837 by Charles Babbage as a multipurpose machine called the Analytical Engine. It wouldn't be realized until 1910 by his youngest son Henry Babbage who was able to form basic calculations on it. This would evolve into becoming programmable with the Z1 in 1936, a proposition for the Turing machine operating off of logical instructions that same year, the Colossus being the first electrical and programmable computer in 1943 used for decoding cryptic German messages in WWII, and many more. These were the stepping stones for computing as a whole, and we have gone in many unexpected places within 100 years. 

What I grew up with in the early 2000s hardly resembles what the next generations have gotten in the late 2010s. Games to play on the go were only on cartridges you would buy from a store. Now most games are downloadable on mobile and other game store fronts. Most of the content I would watch would be on television through channels like Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. I would have to wait for my favorite show to be on. Now most kids are watching any videos they want on YouTube. Instead of favorite shows, they would have favorite content creators, loving their personalities and skills. All of their content is on demand as long as they have the internet. 

A huge one that leaves me with more concerns as a future parent are the innovations in communication. The only way to communicate with people long-distance back in my day was if you knew their phone number and had a phone on you. Nowadays, there are voice chat in video games, video calls on a lot of platforms, social media outlets everywhere, etc. I didn’t grow up indulging too much in that stuff so I wouldn’t know about all of the dangers. I can only make assumptions from my point of view. I’ve seen cases of cyberbullying, obsessions, and harassments that I would want to keep my children from. I understand that a lot of what defines our behaviors as adults are based on childhood experiences and trauma. I would want to keep my children safe, but at some point, I may be holding them back from forming their own identities. I would hate to undermine their intelligence as well. I remember my parents holding me back from playing Pokemon when I was a kid. I felt left out when most of my peers were trading the cards and battling through the games. I came to learn that my parents got a lot of their views of the franchise from superstitious priests convinced the game was about raising and playing with cyber demons. After doing research when I was older, I found that the game was nothing like that and my parents made those decisions based on misinformation. 

I bring this up because I have some assumptions about technology and how it has affected my generation. We are very tech savvy with various programs and operating systems, making us capable of helping older people resolve issues. But their generation seems to have more real-world knowledge than us. I can list off things like agricultural knowledge, the importance of cooking utensils, how to write in cursive, knowledge of how car engines work, etc. Our generation may have ease of access to information pertaining to these topics on the internet, but are our brains dependent on that? I have my concerns for the future generations because I had a point in time where the world didn’t revolve around it. I won’t fully understand what it’s like to have the internet be so present in my life and that will blur the line for me as a parent. I don’t think that any generation is dumber than the other; we just put more of our brain power into different things. The question I have is; is technology the right thing to focus on? It’s difficult not to focus on what’s new and impressive, but are we losing a bit of our humanity because of it?

The rate of technological innovation is at breakneck speeds, but is it moving too fast for us to fully understand it? What was once sci-fi became reality. It’s growing more difficult to predict what will be created next. With that, is it going to be more difficult for people 10 years apart to understand one another?

Post 11: Privacy Issues Today

 There are a lot of sci-fi media about the great advancements that our technology will take in the distant future. Though there are a lot of fantasies about how much more convenient our lives will be, there are a number of dystopian stories about when technology goes too far. We are currently in an era where our devices all intermingle on the internet. They share web browsers, emails, contacts, credit card information, etc. At surface level, this seems like something convenient to have. However, we are unknowingly giving all of our information out to advertisement companies. All of our searches on Google, our activity on social media like Facebook, our recent purchase history on sites like Amazon, what we would say around Smart Speakers like Alexa, etc. What I just listed are companies built off services that are free to use. We often see these companies making great profits and their creators making billions. It's because these services sell our information to advertisers. These companies will try to figure out our interests and align them with our identities. They will send us links to products we might want and add more data according to our behavior around that. Our smartphones keep track of our location and speech, so these companies are given a lot of information about us to make assumptions. This information about data collection is kept hidden either in lengthy Terms of Conditions we will never read, or with changes to those policies we just don't get to read. Even though these companies use them with our convenience in mind, it is still an invasion of privacy. 

A story I believe is closer to reality is 1984 by George Orwell. In it, people were punished for showing too much emotion, a lot of their decisions were decided by the government, and any resemblance of independence was shut down with manipulation and brainwash. I drew this correlation with what is currently happening in China. Unlike with us, they don't get the choice to remove AI from their lives. Their streets are full of cameras with face recognition and they keep track of how each of their citizens follow traffic rules, what they buy, etc. This isn't used just for evidence, their behavior plays an active role in their credit score. Doing anything frowned upon will decrease it, and people with a high score will get access to more discounts in stores. It's like playing God with just cameras and AI. 2D recordings only show our 3D world from an angle. They can miss important details and hop on assumptions. Turkish Muslims in China would face great scrutiny because of the way they looked on the surface, like terrorists. That people could not live a normal life there with the discrimination. The scary thing about all of this is that China is one of top manufacturers of this AI technology and they have sold them to at least 58 countries already. A world full of this evil use of technology is a scary reality and with how technology improves quickly with time, our privacy is greatly threatened. 

Post 10: EOTO 2 Learning

 What has fascinated me the most about Media Law and Literacy is how much is kept from the American people. A lot of information is kept secret from us, and we can only gain access through obscure means. Our own government has a history of exploiting the rules of the Constitution to make things convenient for themselves rather the citizens. However in the second EOTO, I was able to learn a lot more that they do against their people. Group 1's presentation was about Awareness and how that is exploited. Disinformation is the act of purposefully giving the people false information about an event, not to misunderstood with misinformation which is accidental. It was a shock to hear that this happens within our country. People will get into large disputes about what's happening in the world and that can sometimes lead to violence. False flags are about the government doing something awful and pinning it on another party. This bleeds into Disinformation. From the beginning, America was supposed to be the country for their citizens to place all of their trust in. Nowadays, it feels like they are abusing their power of influence to get they want out of the people. 

Post 9: The Bell Curve of TIme

Rogers; Diffusion of Innovations (or Ideas) has a bell curve about how new inventions and concepts become part of society. Time uses the X-axis and Penetration uses the Y-axis. During the experimental phase, presence stays a bit static. Early adopters sends it into a steep rise with it peaking at the Early majority. The peak is the Critical Mass. Late adopter start the slow decline until it steeply drops with Laggards coming after it was popular indefinitely. 

In the Video Game Industry, we see this pattern with every Generation. For context, console Generations change when more powerful and upgraded systems hit the market. We are currently transitioning from the 8th Generation to the 9th with the PlayStation 4 to the PlayStation 5. At the beginning of these, we will see prototypes of new hardware at conferences like E3. Some game demos will be shown off and some will be playable. There will be die hard fans who will preorder these systems to get Day 1. I would say our Early Adopters to Early Majority depends on the system. It takes about 1 to 3 years for most systems to peak and sales rise around Christmas. Late adopters come near or during the announcement of the next upgrade. Laggards are usually people who don't care too much about video games, can't afford the latest system, or are collectors. The indefinite period of Laggards fits the collection hobby really well because game companies will stop manufacturing these systems after a while and small communities will keep supporting their favorite systems. What keeps game companies afloat are how they announce the upgrade around the Critical Mass. Players will eventually get tired of the same system after a while so making the graphics better and adding a few innovations will give them a new start with the bell curve. 

For me, I have grown tired of this cycle, so I have moved to playing video games on PC. This platform leaves upgrades up to the customer allowing for more freedom with the system. If your computer can handle the game, you can play it. Learning of the Diffusion of Innovations theory is making me wonder if home consoles like the PlayStation will die out. I am getting tired of my games becoming obsolete in less than 5 years and being locked out of playing older Generation games on the newer systems. Everything dies out eventually. 

Post 8: EOTO 2

Media Consolidation is the process of fewer and fewer corporations gaining ownership of news sources. It has a lot to do with the quality and accountability of American journalism. There are only six companies that have a hold of all of the TV networks. They are Comcast, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. According to the chart below, they make up 90% of the media we watch and read today. Back in 1983, there used to be about 50 networks controlling all the media, but since the Telecommunications Act from 1996, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loosened their regulations on cross-ownership. It is a monopolization on news outlets, specifically an anticompetitive monopolization for it absorbing all of them. It is in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act from 1890 (federal antitrust law) yet it seems that networks are able to get away with it Scott free. As a result, this has created a disconnect with people's opinions and the news broadcasted. This is because the business leaders are choosing what stories to broadcast rather than the journalists. There are only six angles to current events that will be televised. Like what I covered in my fifth post, certain stories just get overlooked entirely and pushed away into obscure locations. With sites like Anti-War and The American Conservative, it seems like even Google is working with them to keep this information away from the people. It is almost like they are trying to brainwash people and they are able to get away with it. 

When it comes to learning new information, I am very easy to persuade. I am probably the easiest man to mislead and I will get passionate about opinions I form, whether they are right or wrong. I would say this generation tends to flock towards popular opinions these days. In video games, it seems like one video making of a game will deter thousands from even giving it a try with "Videogamedunkey" being a popular example of a content creator. I have taken steps to look at both sides of an argument so I can my own opinions. I have been learning a lot about the world in my Philosophy class like the processes needed to create our smartphones. Kids in third world countries are essential enslaved and forced to mine for materials like titanium. That is something I just happened to learn in school. I will find so many interesting stories on YouTube, but something like that never shows up. We are consumers in the smartphone market where there are new phones released every year. A story like that would likely hurt that market, so taking measures to block that content makes sense. It just is not right to keep so many people out of the loop on topics like that though. It is like they know how people will react, so they hold out on the truth. With Media Consolidation, we are kept from the most important information of all, what is currently happening in our governments. From the start of America, citizens were encouraged to have the government working with us. However, throughout our history, it has felt like they have been trying to find exploits anywhere that it is convenient. Protest is a way we get our voices to them. To maintain their power, they have to keep valuable information from us so they don't have to make any changes they don't want to. 

Links Used:

Media Consolidation Meaning and Affect: https://billmoyers.com/story/media-consolidation-should-anyone-care/

Monopoly Law: https://www.classlawgroup.com/antitrust/unlawful-practices/monopoly/ 

Telecommunication Law: https://tacomacc.libguides.com/c.php?g=599051&p=4586162

Post 7: Privacy Online

 The internet plays a large role in our lives today. We're in an era where Google is where many of us go to find reliable information. We communicate online with other people on social media sites like Twitter, Snapchat, and Discord. As of late with the pandemic, a lot of people are doing most of their shopping online with Amazon and other sites. With everything we do online, companies find and keep our information and sell them to advertisers.  They make assumptions about who we are and this leads to us getting certain ads. For every app you download or social media you join, they have lengthy contracts talking about how they will use your information. Most people do not read them and the terms of conditions change often. Amazon's Alexia records you even when you aren't talking to it. The videos we talked about this described it as an electronic tattoo. Once we do something online, it is up there forever. 

I remember when I turned 18, I got a lot of provocative ads on YouTube. It felt like they were waiting for the right time to get me involved in sex. I remember back in high school I would make a lot of sex jokes with my friends and these ads crossed the line for me. I didn't mean much of the stuff I would say, but whoever was listening assumed I was serious. That doesn't make me comfortable, having everything I say being recorded and planted on me forever. After hearing about Google Chrome and how it gets ahold of my info with cookies, I downloaded Opera. It's a bit early to say it has yielded great results in protecting me, but I feel safer. 

Post 6: EOTO

 The EOTO (Each One Teach One) assignment was an opportunity to learn about a lot of technology and their origins. I am a Game and Interactive Media Design major so I have a lot of experience with video games. I have been fascinated with its history for years and the EOTO taught me something I didn't know. The general consensus for the 1st video game ever made has fluctuated over the years. First, it was Pong, an two-player table tennis type game released in arcades in 1972. This was believed because of its commercial success. Until the presentation, I believed it was a game called Space War that was created on computers by MIT students in 1962. It didn't make it to the market. It turns out that the first game was Table Tennis for Two, a home computer game from 1958. It was surprising to hear about this hardware that predates those other two games but was the most accessible being released as a system playable at home. Yet another game from the 1st Generation. There is a lot of history in the Video Game Industry to learn about. It seems like we are constantly uncovering new information about game development, obscure hardware, and the people involved. I remember in my freshmen year, I was doing a research assignment on Nintendo history. Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was a very influential game that released alongside the system. The game has its copyright year in the game marked as 1985. I always had the assumption that this is when our region got the game. After further research, I would learn that it would take until 1987 before it would hit the mainstream market. This was because it was a game made in Japan and the localization process was slow to get systems out in most areas. It's difficult to gauge what an era in time was like from before you were born, so it's always better to do more research rather than make assumptions.

Post 5: Anti-War Websites

Our world is no stranger to warfare, but they seem to like strangers of combat to fight their wars for them. From what I can understand, this is one of the points that Anti-War agendas in America have. It seems like governments responsible for these conflicts resort to violence involving millions of their innocent people. Loved ones die, families are broken apart, and survivors can come back with permanent injuries and/or mental disorders. For those who refuse to go out to war, they can be sent to prison with a dishonorable discharge unless they have a good reason to be exempt. American law traps citizens into being pawns so if we are fighting battles for flawed reasons, people will be quick to critique. There are sites like Anti-War (https://www.antiwar.com) and The American Conservative (https://www.theamericanconservative.com/web-categories/realism-restraint/) that are full of articles about these topics, but how often do they get mainstream attention? These sites have likely been shadow banned by Google because the government doesn't want this information out there. 

I have some theories for why they do this. They don't wish to divide the United States again. I'd assume that a civil dispute would greatly divide our country. If it got to the point where there are frequent riots, America would be easier for other countries to take over as it would cave in on itself. Keeping these articles away from the mainstream will help maintain their image of the American hero; someone patriotic and willing to die for their country. As we have seen in class, the government has always tried to play around the Constitution.  It is very scummy for them to hide this stuff from us and telling us what to believe, but the argument can be made that this is a necessary evil for the country to maintain its strength. America is at a fork in the road similar to citizens to be sent into war; don't fight it and have your reputation ruined, or do what you have to do in the hope of keeping your country alive. Both sides have flaws, but what can you do? We live in a flawed world?

Post 4: Research on Worldwide Web

The World Wide Web was created on top of the Internet to allow for easier access to the information there. That information was available on documents accessible through Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). With the Web, all of these resources are connected with hypermedia (hyperlinks, hypermedia, etc.) that send users to other pages with related information. This design created an easy-to-understand user experience without people needing to learn a lot. With about 2 billion websites out there on the internet today, the World Wide Web is something that has been ingrained in our culture for decades. 

The 1980s were a time when information sharing primarily came from fax machines. The World Wide Web's inventor of the Web was a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee. He was working at CERN in 1989 when he had the idea of it originally being a way for scientists in institutions and universities to share information on the internet. All of these ideas started with all of the computers at that institute not being able to communicate with each other. Lee would write all of the programs to help CERN become a center of data networks. Come 1989, he found a way to share information with the internet with hypertext. The World Wide Web used the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that helped its servers connect with clients and it is still used today. What started as a predominantly European system would soon find its way to the United States.  It was put on public domain in 1993 and CERN released it with an open license. That decision helped it grow exponentially. Along with that, CERN would create a web browser called Mosaic. Most personal computers at the time were transitioning from their text-based roots and going into a more visual-based point-and-click control scheme. Mosaic would follow suit and even though more web browsers like Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome would become the go-tos; it set the standard. As the years went on, large companies would all have websites prepared to display information to represent them. The web would have millions of users by the end of the 1990s, marking its place in our technological culture all around the world. Even today, it is the way many of us communicate with others on the internet. 

Without the invention of the World Wide Web, this era we're in where information on everything is so easily accessible would not have started. Innovations like BookLinks' Internet Works implementing multiple tabs, Microsoft's Internet Explorer being built into their operating system, and Apple's Safari working on their mobile devices and having a private browser would bring us to where we are today. With every device on the market, there is an internet browser built off of the World Wide Web. With this much information available almost everywhere, our generation has become very dependent on it. It is arguable that it contributes to a possible addiction to technology. However, the good outweighs the bad. Having this much information is leading them to learn

a lot more out of school than previous generations. 

Links Used:

A Short History Video written by CERN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSqZ_hJu9zA

An Overview of its Origins: https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web

Another Overview with more Technical Details: https://www.britannica.com/topic/World-Wide-Web

Post 3: The Values of Self-Fulfillment in my Experience

 The First Amendment is one of America's defining attributes, helping give it the reputation of "The Land

of the Free". It allows for the freedom of speech to keep the government from deciding how the citizens

are supposed to feel and behave. It inherently allows for more individualism with its people which gives

a lot of room for numbers of communities to form. I grew up playing video games and I have been

committed to that hobby for over 15 years. Most of my friends indulge in it too. I have sought to develop

my own projects and have been able to pursue academically with the Game and Interactive Media

Design program at High Point University. In some of the classes, we have explored video games as an

art form that is capable of immersing people more than movies and TV shows. However, the medium

has faced a lot of controversy and censorship throughout its history. 

In 1992, the fighting game, Mortal Kombat received a lot of controversy for its depictions of gore and

violence. Parents were concerned with their children growing up with material like that and becoming

more aggressive. There was enough outrage that this issue was taken to a Senate hearing in 1994.

The verdict was that all video games needed to be age-rated by the ESRB (Entertainment Software

Rating Board). Video games would go under the radar 5 years later with the Columbine school shooting

in 1999. The two attackers were students named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. They had maps they

created in the first-person shooter game, DOOM (1993) that were modeled after their school.

This quickly led to the correlation between violent video games and the actions of those boys.

There have been many psychological studies over the years that have tried to determine whether they

do increase aggressive behavior or not. There has not been enough of a correlation in their results to

give a definitive answer to the question, but what has been evident is that people have been trying to

get video games banned for almost three decades. It's mostly been misinformed people without much

knowledge of video games that are trying to decide what should or should not be available on the

market. Some gamers will see many of those games as influential titles that pioneered many aspects of

the game industry. Others grow attached to those games, connecting them with their past or the friends

they have made. In communities, these players make names for themselves and are seen as celebrities

within them like Mortal Kombat player, Sonic Fox. Video games are protected under the First Amendment

as a form of expression, so other people do not have the right to remove them. 

I connect the most with Individual Self-Fulfillment (Self-Actualization) because I found myself with the

video game medium. I have faced a lot of scrutinies from parents and classmates about how much I

played and what I dabbled in. I have albinism that made me extremely nearsighted and sensitive to the

sun as well as being susceptible to severe sunburns in minutes. It was difficult for me to play catch and

be outside for as long as the other kids so video games were what I turned to for fun. I don’t mean to

make this a sob story, but whenever misinformed people try to attack the only medium I really enjoy, it

makes me frustrated. It carved me into the man I am today and now, my education depends on it being

present in the market.

Links Used:

Creation of the ESRB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv3HDVd22P8 

Columbine History and People blaming Video Games for Mass-shootings:

https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/10/17101232/a-brief-history-of-video-game-violence-blame 

Columbine Shooters’ DOOM Map: https://gaming-urban-legends.fandom.com/wiki/Columbine_Map 

Psychological Test Example: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550610379506 

Video Games protected Under First Amendment:

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1152/video-games 

Post 2: Learning about the Supreme Court

 I didn't know much about the Supreme Court other than a lot of historical cases to build our America came from there. We watched a 20-minute video about it in class and I learned a lot. I didn't know how much the cases were influenced by people's opinions rather than following a list of rules. The court doesn't just pick what issues to fix, they tackle problems issued from various sources. There are 9 justices who each work with various people to make sure their ideas are legal. Then they all come together to discuss. They make sure everyone can speak once before they can speak twice to plead their arguments. There is the oral argument where the justices spend 30 minutes sharing all their angles and opinions. Then they each decide a side to take. They turn it into a document with a process called opinion writing. These are meant to persuade the other justices and all of the writings are combined into 80+ page documents. Opinions will change over time and the final decision will be made off the general consensus. I was surprised by how much went into these cases. Those writings exceed the horrors of those lengthy academic papers. I have a lot more respect for the justices now.

When I look back at some of the Supreme Court cases in American history, I see a lot of them being about Civil Rights way before and after 1963. History classes treated Martin Luther King’s speech as the moment that resolved all the issues with the rights of African Americans. However, the two cases of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954-1955 worked towards eliminating segregation at public schools, and Loving v. Virginia got rid of laws prohibiting interracial marriage. I learned that a lot of American law forms here.

Links to the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWRoXYRsaeo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca8qSuWxcG8

Post 1: My Top 5 Sources of Gaming News

With my interests in video games, I'm constantly looking for information on new games, wondering what the largest companies are doing in the industry, and what game development stories I could learn from. I don't use many social media platforms so I often rely on YouTube to get information. I frequently use Discord to socialize and I often talk with the people within my Game Design major.

1. Spawn Wave: This is a channel run by Jonathan Downey who does news videos on companies like Nintendo and Sony, checks out software and hardware, and keeps viewers posted on the opinions of the consumers. https://www.youtube.com/c/SpawnWave

2: IGN: IGN is a news website that reviews games and posts any new trailers for games that they can find. If you aren't already subscribed to a game company's channel, they will upload any of their trailers shortly after they have been uploaded. Their game reviews do get a lot of flack online, but they inform me on what games are about so I can make the decision if I want to get them. https://www.youtube.com/c/IGN

3: GDC (Game Developers Conference): This conference is held a few times a year and many companies have game developers create presentations about certain aspects of game design. These can be about audio systems that were programmed, studying player behavior, where to go for publishing, etc. As an aspiring game developer myself, there is a lot that I've learned from these that I plan to use in my projects. https://www.youtube.com/c/Gdconf 

4: Friends on Discord: My friends will often link videos to new game trailers or just discuss some of the happenings in the industry. It's more communal, and they know how to get my attention when it is something I'm interested in. 

5. My peers in Game Design: Oftentimes, new information gets to my classmates and professors first. Just like with Discord, these are conversation points that lead to interesting discussions.