Geek Week
Geek Week Checklist Lifestyle 5
Craziest Superhero Facts Lifestyle 6
Are eSports Actually Sports? Sports 11
CIRCUIT BOARD PATTERN BY CREATIVITY103.COM KSU STUDENT LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE // MARCH 2016 // KSUSTING.COM
EDITORAL BOARD
Editor-in-Chief Carson Long
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L i f e s t y l e
M a g a z i n e
thestingksu@gmail.com
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Copy Edit Eliza Jones
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Photo Alain Santos
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Web Griffith Knoop
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STUDENTS. BY THE
STUDENTS. The Sting is Kennesaw State University’s monthly student lifestyle magazine, and a part of KSU Student Media (KSUSM). As a student lifestyle publication we take the responsibility in engaging in conversations that build student engagement as part a community, and not just a university.
Contact Us Lifestyle
Features
Brittany Rosario
Gerron Green
lifestyle.sting@gmail.com
features.sting@gmail.com
The Sting 1100 South Marietta Parkway Joe Mack Wilson Student Center Room A-246 Marietta, GA 30060 (678) 915-7310
Games & Tech Matthew Dinoff
gamesed@gmail.com
Sports
@TheStingKSU Jeff Greene
Ed Bonza
ebonza@kennesaw.edu 2jgreene3@kennesaw.edu KSUSTING.COM / AUGUST 25, 2015
Features 4
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KSU Question
Geek Week Checklist Lifestyle 5
Craziest Superhero Facts Lifestyle 6
Are eSports Actually Sports? Sports 11
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Administrative Advisor
What Makes a Geek?
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Inside the Issue
Want something to put on your resume? What about a chance to have fun? Then come work with us! Email thestingksu@gmail.com for more information! KSUSTING.COM / MARCH 2016
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FEATURES
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What makes a geek?
?
KSU Question
by Gerron Green
G
eek Week is coming to KSU on March 14th. This exciting event has been a long-standing tradition at Southern Polytechnic State University. Though traditionally more of a niche thing, geek culture has started bleeding into popular culture; superhero movies make billions and video games are played in dorms across campus and across the country. With these rapid changes, we asked a few KSU students what it means to be a geek and other questions related to being a geek.
Geek Week Checklist The Best Pi Week Ever! by Brittany Rosario What is Geek Week? It is a fun-filled week of events that are relative to the interest of “geeks” during the week of Pi Day. This year, March 14th falls perfectly on a Monday to kick off the first official Kennesaw State Geek Week. Events are sponsored by several student and local organizations on both campuses, including the Society of Women Engineers, Women in Technology, the Mathematical Association of America, Giga-Bites Cafe, and the Department of Mechatronics Engineering.
Here’s a checklist of the best events to attend during the week. Locations for events can be found at ksusting.com Pie a Professor/President: Monday, 3/14 from 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. in the Marietta Student Center Globe
Stephanie Griffith Architecture
I’m a geek, there are a lot of very technical things in the game world and the anime world and manga and outside of American culture that makes me a geek.
Patrick Gruber
Sick of professors getting on your nerves? Pie a Professor/ President is a fun event hosted by the Society of Women Engineers where students are allowed to throw pies at professors. This year they will be having a guest, Dr. Daniel Papp. Pie Walk: Monday, 3/14 from 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. in the Marietta Student Center Lobby & Kennesaw Student Center Rotunda
Political Science I’m more like a nerd. I’m really into “booky” topics like philosophy, political, science, comparative religion, etc. Geeks are really into technology, and they read comic books, watch anime, etc.
*Free pizza, pi cookies, and t-shirts. This pie walk is a free lunch where students get to socialize and participate in pi history.
Kamila Daza
Game Night:
Communications I’m not a geek. I always interpret it as the people who role play, play video games, read comic books, etc.
Monday, 3/14 from 4:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. in the Sturgis Library and the Johnson Library This event is a video and board game night sponsored by Giga-Bites Cafe.
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Photos by: Gerron Green and Millena Silva
History of MMOs: Tuesday, 3/15 from 12:00 p.m. 1:00 p.m. in the Sturgis Library 101 at Kennesaw Aaron Wimer, Librarian Associate Professor and Head of Research and Instructional Services, will be presenting a history of Mass Multiplayer Online games.
Robot Demonstration & Bacon Reception: Thursday, 3/17 from 2:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m. in the Social Science Atrium at Kennesaw *Free bacon!! Sponsored by Mechatronics Engineering. Drag Show:
Robot Demonstration & Bacon Reception:
Thursday, 3/17 from 6:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. in the Marietta Student Center Theater
Tuesday, 3/15 from 2:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m. in the Q Lobby on the Marietta campus
Sponsored by Kennesaw Pride Alliance
*Free bacon! Sponsored by Mechatronics Engineering. Marvel Movie Night: Tuesday, 3/15 at 7:00 p.m. in the Q building, Room 202 on the Marietta campus This will be a pajama movie night with popcorn and candy provided by the Society of Women Engineers. Star Wars Trivia Night:
Women in STEM Panel: Friday, 3/18 from 12:00 p.m. 1:00 p.m. in the Sturgis Library 101 at Kennesaw *Science Technology Engineering and Math. Men can do it, but women do it better. Attend this panel event to learn more. Poker Tournament: Friday, 3/18 from 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. in the Marietta Student Center Ballroom
Wednesday, 3/16 from 6:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m. in the Marietta Student Center Ballroom B Role-Play & Team Building: Thursday, 3/17 from 12:00 p.m. 1:00 p.m. in the Marietta Student Center, Room A215 Aaron Wimer will be presenting team building techniques and role-playing ideas.
Feel free to use this as a checklist for all your Geek Week activities.
LIFESTYLE
LS
The strange effects of Kryptonite.
Craziest Superhero Facts by Gerron Green
S
uperheroes are big right now: The Avengers are a household name, Batman and Superman will be duking it out on the big screen soon, and a critically acclaimed and commercially successful movie was made about a hero team with a walking tree and a talking raccoon. It is undeniable that superhero movies are on top of the sci-fi world right now, but that success
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hasn’t really transferred to their source material. Why is that? Personally, I accredit it to the crazy things that happen in the comics that never make it onto the big screen. In order to not deprive you of the true comic fan experience, here are just a few of the craziest things that have happened in comic books.
Everyone knows about kryptonite, the green rock that brings Superman to his knees. This plot device has been exploited multiple times in the Big Blue Boy Scout’s silver screen outings, but what about the other colors of kryptonite? Red kryptonite does whatever the writer wants it to that day, from giving Clark Kent telepathy, to turning him evil, to just making his hair grow endlessly. Gold kryptonite takes away Superman’s powers for good, blue kryptonite does absolutely nothing to him, and pink kryptonite makes him gay. No, you didn’t read that incorrectly pink takes a straight Kryptonian and makes them play for the other team. While only a minor inconvenience for Superman, and the effects are temporary, pink kryptonite can be pretty embarrassing for the world’s first superhero. The one thing no one knows, however, is what does pink kryptonite do to an already gay Kryptonian? Something tells me that won’t be a plotline discussed in Batman v Superman or Man of Steel 2.
What happens when you cut Deadpool to pieces? Deadpool, everyone’s favorite antihero as of last month, has a pretty interesting ability. He can heal any wound, no matter how bad, almost instantly. This can be seen in the recent film when he cuts his own hand off to escape capture, but you have to wonder - what happens if he puts that hand on another cut-off arm, and that arm on a cut-off shoulder,
Source: DC Comics
and that on a cut-off torso, and… you get the idea. This was actually answered in 2011’s Deadpool #45 when a mad scientist did just that. What we got was an even crazier, evil Deadpool, appropriately named “Evil Deadpool.” He was made up of spare parts and terrorized the Merc with a Mouth for a few years. In the realm of plausibility, I wouldn’t say this is too far-off from something you’d see in Deadpool 2, but hey, it may be too gruesome and too silly to make the sequel.
The Brown Bomber, the world’s worst superhero.
mid-2000s storyline it was revealed that she ran around on the wall crawler with his middle-aged archenemy. Gwen and the Green Goblin had twin children together, a boy and a girl, who the Goblin raised to hate Spider-Man after their mother’s death. Needless to say, the web head was pretty devastated by the news. This affair, coupled with the fact that Gwen would have been a teenager at the time, produced a story that enraged fans at worst and creeped them out at best. This is one spider tale that’s better left forgotten.
Have you ever wondered, with the seemingly random powers people get, that maybe someone has something too strange to become mainstream? That’s exactly what exists with the short-lived joke character the Brown Bomber. This would-be hero is a member of DC’s superhero universe. He dresses in normal street clothes and appears as a portly Caucasian man, but when he says his catch phrase, “BLACK POWER,” he transforms into a super-powerful, athletic black man. The transformation is temporary though, a time he refers to as C.P.T. He was created as a joke by late comic writer Dwayne McDuffie, so don’t expect to see this hero gracing the silver screen any time soon.
Gwen Stacy, Green Goblin’s baby momma. Remember Gwen Stacy? SpiderMan’s first girlfriend, played by Emma Stone in the films? Well, in a
KSUSTING.COM / MARCH 2016
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GT
GAMES & TECH
Close But No Chocobo:
Why Final Fantasy Explorers ≠ Monster Hunter by Zachary North
I
’ve been playing Final Fantasy Explorers, the recently released action RPG from Square Enix, almost non-stop for a few weeks now. I purchased the game expecting it to be a Final Fantasy-flavored clone of Capcom’s popular Monster Hunter series, but after extensive play I can definitely say that it was not quite what I was expecting. Here’s why.
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FFE & MH have the same, but slightly different, genresWhile both games may be considered action RPGs, Final Fantasy Explorers takes many cues from the Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles series and is more like a “MMORPG lite” experience, whereas the Monster Hunter games tend to focus more towards being an action game than an action RPG.
FFE & MH worlds are setup completely differentIn any Monster Hunter game, the areas you travel to are normally separate from each other and have distinct themes to them. In Final Fantasy Explorers, you traverse one very large map and can travel from the beach to a desert or from a volcano to an ice cave all in one quest.
Source: Square Enix
FFE allows you to customize your mission- After a certain point in the game, all missions gain the ability to be made easier or more difficult by adding new elements to the quests, such as making the enemies tougher, reducing the time limit you have to do the quest, or preventing you from using items. In Monster Hunter, every mission you go to is straightforward: either collect an item, kill or capture a monster, or deliver an item without any way to customize the experience.
FFE is more than just a hack & slash experience- You can become any number of jobs in Final Fantasy Explorers, ranging from knight to black mage to alchemist, and each of the jobs have unique ways of fighting and strategic set-up for each of their attacks (such as
Crystal Illustrations by: Joseph Lorren
having to know the area of effect on certain abilities, otherwise you will miss the attack completely). In Monster Hunter, you may switch between weapons of varying styles, but generally you won’t have much issue bashing or slicing monsters unless your weapon runs out of sharpness or ammo.
FFE allows for customizable companions- Even though Monster Hunter gives you a partner or two depending on which game you’re playing, the most you can usually do is to change their equipment; they still fight in the same general patterns. Final Fantasy Explorers gives you the ability to capture some of the various monsters you encounter throughout the world and fight side-by-side with them. These monsters tend to vary a lot in both appearance
and their skillsets, so you can always have a different team on every quest.
Even though I love the Monster Hunter series, I am entirely grateful that Square Enix didn’t try to play it safe and make a carbon copy of an already existing IP. The above are just a few of the differences between the games; Final Fantasy Explorers has many more neat and interesting features that it brings to the monster fighting subgenre of action RPGs. Final Fantasy Explorers is a really enjoyable game and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of Monster Hunter-esque games or the Final Fantasy series in general.
KSUSTING.COM / MARCH 2016
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SPORTS
GAMES & TECH
GT
SP
Essential Card and Board Games Every College Student Should Own by Matthew Dinoff
D
on’t have your computer? Tired of looking at monitors all day and night? Want to find an alternative to video games? Grab you friends, steal them away from their computers or their homework, and try something new! Here are the essential card and board games everyone needs.
1. Cards Against Humanity The mature version of Apples to Apples funded through Kickstarter. Cards Against Humanity is the ultimate politically incorrect fill-in-the-blank card game, where you can find out how twisted your friend’s minds are. You can play with just the starter pack, which is $25 on Amazon, but the creators have made multiple expansions to create different card combinations. Games can last from an hour to a few hours.
Are eSports Actually Sports?
Source: Snopes.com
2. Settlers of Catan Do you enjoy Sid Meier’s Civilization games? Do you like competing over land and resources? Then you will love Settlers of Catan! Compete with your friends over resources, and grow your settlements on the land of Catan. The base set is 2 to 4 players and games usually last about 30 minutes. You can purchase expansions for up to 5-6 players along with different versions of the game.
3. The Resistance Join the Resistance or try to foil their plans, but all of you are in the dark. The Empire must fall, find out who is on your side and who isn’t and bring the Empire or the Resistance. Grab all of your friends for this mystery cooperative game which supports 5 to 10 players and usually lasts up to 30 minutes. Vote on who goes on the mission and see if it passes or fails. The future is all in your hands.
4. One Night Ultimate Werewolf Gather round a table, pick your cards, and hope that you don’t get killed the next day. One Night Ultimate Werewolf by Bézier Games takes place over one in-game night as players take their actions, which can either be dictated by a narrator or the free mobile app. When day comes, players deliberate on who to shoot and kill. You may have up to 75 players with many, many different roles. The base set is only $25 on Amazon.
5. A Deck of Cards It’s incredible how many games you can play with just a deck of 52 playing cards: Egyptian Rat Screw, Bullshit, Spit, Speed, War - the list goes on.
by Jordan Alexander
A
re eSports actual sports? This question has lingered for years within both the sports world and the video gaming community. Honestly, for the majority of sports fans, gamers are not seen as either athletes or competitors. It’s hard for pure sports fans to believe that someone can sit at a computer screen or TV and win thousands of dollars, or to imagine gamers obtaining sponsorships and winning earnings in the five- and six-figures (sometimes seven-figures if the tournament is right). Although it may not seem to be the case, athletes in eSports are just as athletic as athletes in sports, but both categories of athletes use their attributes differently. For example, eSports athletes are constantly making split-second deci-
sions, reaction plays, and difficult dexterous moves. Because of the stress of what the eSports athletes go through, they have a shelf life of only a few years as reaction times and a person’s overall dexterity begins to decline with age. Yet, as in all sports, there are special cases where eSports athletes can transcend what seems like generations of players to stay at the top for a decade. Cloud9’s Mango has been playing Super Smash Brothers Melee at the highest level since 2007, which is actually a very long time to be on top of any game. This is just one name out of the many who have dedicated the better part of the last decade to building the culture that is eSports.
the overall premise for these video games is competition. It is hard for pure sports fans to categorize eSports as an actual sport, because that would acknowledge that eSports professionals are indeed athletes. Personally, I believe that eSports are sports; the only difference is that an eSports athlete is controlling a character on a screen while a sports athlete controls their own body on a field.
It would be disrespectful to eSports and gamers alike to denounce their status as a genre of sports when
Source: Amazon.com
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Photo by: Alain Santos
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