Mark Danger Chen

YouTube - Look Around You - Computer Games

Funny parody video about the rise of computer and video games…  retro!

1. I hit level 70 last week and got a flying mount. I used to play flight sims once in a while because I like the feeling of flying… now I can do it in WoW! I’ve also been making huge amounts of gold… well, huge amounts for me who never could afford an epic mount… This week, I’ve completed all the quests I could without grouping with others. Now I wait around for more guildies to catch up so I can party with them and get those quests done. :P

2. Apparently, there are a bunch of irate students in the class I teach (a technology class for the masters in teaching program). Problem is that no one has told the instructors (me and another) about it directly. Now that we’ve heard about it, we really want to accomodate and address some of the issues. I mean, we’re probably the most flexible instructors these guys will ever have, willing to meet their demands and try to work with other instructors to make sure tech is integrated into the rest of the program. Each quarter, this varies a bit since some profs are more open to collaboration than others… So anyway, yeah, we can change. Too bad there’s only two more weeks in the quarter. Sheesh. One of the issues we’ve heard is that what we’re teaching them has no relation to the classroom. This is true, except that we’re just introducing them to some tools this quarter with the idea that in the rest of the program they’ll start using these tools for practical applications. We have to start somewhere… Last year it was pretty clear that students needed more time familiarizing themselves with the tools before jumping into a project. So we changed the course this year. Every year the new cohort complains but they have no reference to how it used to be… Still, the class is improving every year from their feedback. But a huge problem is that the course is taught by PhD students, so every 2 or 3 years, whoever is teaching it has to start over relearning the same stuff about what and how to teach. Ah well.

3. I’ll be going down to Portland this weekend with a couple of guildies to visit some more down there. Fun!

4. I played three games that I hadn’t before: Hey, that’s my fish!, Savannah Cafe, and Taj Mahal. The first two are really quick games and pretty fun in a light sort of way. Not much table talk in the first one but more in the second. They are both zany games with animal themes. :) Taj Mahal was quite good, but I want to play it more before considering buying it. The level of complexity I think is about the same as Puerto Rico… nice and meaty.

1. I joined Terra Nova’s World of Warcraft guild and within a week of joining, we had a really engaging conversation on the guild forums about real-world buying of virtual goods.

2. I will not be going to the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) (March, San Francisco) this year… :( but that’s because I’m saving money for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) meeting in Tokyo late September! Furthermore, I’ll be meeting Lisa Galarneau in a few days to see about jointly submitting something.

3. I’m also submitting something to Games Learning Society (GLS) held in mid-July by the folks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That should be totally cool, and I’ll get a chance to put faces to all the nice folks I’ve been meeting online thru Terra Nova.

4. My guild is having a convention in Las Vegas late April… hoo boy!

5. I met with my committee yesterday and will be taking general exams early next quarter (and reading stuff this quarter). It sounds like my idea of doing ethnographic work with a bunch of guild members who all work for the same company to compare their work life with their game life is a great one. Sweeeeet.

Below is a note I received from David Silver today. Look at the reviewer for number two. Woot!  Even better, TL emailed me this morning thanking me!  Maybe that is standard protocol, but I’d like to believe she’s just a really nice person.  :)

folks,

a new set of book reviews [ http://rccs.usfca.edu/booklist.asp ] from
the resource center for cyberculture studies [ http://rccs.usfca.edu/ ]
for february 2007:

1. Information Politics on the Web
Author: Richard Rogers
Publisher: MIT Press, 2004
Review 1: Adrienne Massanari

2. Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture
Author: T. L. Taylor
Publisher: MIT Press, 2006
Review 1: Mark Chen
Author response: T.L. Taylor

3. Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database
Authors: Lev Manovich & Andreas Kratky
Publisher: MIT Press, 2005
Review 1: Tico Romao
Author response: Lev Manovich

4. The Cinema Effect
Author: Sean Cubitt
Publisher: MIT Press, 2005
Review 1: Anxo Cereijo Roibas
Author response: Sean Cubitt

there’s lots more where that came from. enjoy,

david silver
http://silverinsf.blogspot.com/