Mark Danger Chen

My previous post announcing that the server was about to be changed no longer exists!
It’s like the Twilight Zone! omg!! rofl!!1!!

ahem… anyway, it seems like my permalinks are broken so things like my CV and About page and any page, really, including single-post pages, are broken…

Fixing it ASAP, especially since I’ve started sending out job applications and include my url in my contact details…

Fixed! <undelete> though I had to change my permalinks from markdangerchen.net/year/mo/dy/post to markdangerchen.net/?p=nnnn which, personally, I don’t prefer since I think seeing the date in the address bar is more meaningful than the post ID…</undelete>

For reals now… thanks Erik!

Uh… I had to switch it back to default permalinks again since for some reason my CV page wasn’t working…

Changed the name of my CV page which fixed the permalink.

Sat morning 8:30-10:00

Raced 3D Digital Identities: Critical Interrogations of Race, Embodiment, and Identity
Cassandra Jones, Samara Anarbaeva, Anca Birzescu, Radhika Gajjala, Franklin Yartey
Bowling Green State University

ethnographers of Second Life from a class
the moderator seems to be tweeting this panel like mad. @cyberdivalive
and actually, this makes twitter a horrible choice for a backchannel

Journey from First Life to Second
Samara Anarbaeva

How do ppl’s offline IDs affect SL IDs?
“SL lets one make their true self.”
creation of ID is an ongoing process

interview data
racial passing, gender passing, desire to authenticate race

(I wonder how intimidating it is to have Pathfinder in the audience…)
lots of citing of Nakamura and Boellstorff. http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Age-Second-Life-Anthropologist/dp/0691135282 nice.

appearances seem equally important in SL as in offscreen life

So…
Racing the Vampire: Exploring race and identity in second life
Frankey Yartey

“So, I almost became a vampire.”

the boundaries between onscreen and offscreen life are blurry

autoethnography

“As you can see now, I’m scrawny… but my avatar was muscular.”

Nakamura. Wright: double-consciousness for the african-american diaspora  conflation of IDs since an ID was imposed on them

I think this was Frankey’s first presentation… stilted presentation though interesting look at vampire life in SL.

Amateur Machinima
Cassandra Jones

started killing Sims… being a deathdealer

started killing out of boredom. but then started making short films… machinima

machinima-ists used powerful cheat codes.. was a doorway into the technical constraints of game… becoming more hardcore (to borrow from Konrad from my session on Friday)
cheat codes

Audre Lorde and Nakamura

When reigns are wrested away from master, do we create something new or do we just create what existed before?

Teapot Tempest Productions short film Utopia
basically, a school’s students are replaced with blonde, white clones
it reminds me of commie critiques in shows like the Outer Limits but exposes those as hypocritically not applicable to non-dominant groups in the US.
the American rhetoric of individualism is a lie for people of color.
in the end, the resistant recreates dominance

I presented at 8 this morning (it went well, thanks!). Didn’t take notes in the next panel after mine. Skipped the first afternoon one. Here’s the only one I took notes for. :)

Friday 5:00-6:30

Gran Turismo B.C. and A.D.: The pre-history of racing games
Charlie Breindahl

first driving games 1974! Gran Trak 10
but actually.. 1924! Motor Racing Game (with electric shock)

so, what is a game?
just looking at form, Motor Racing Game is first one, but hardware matters…

Are we in the post-ludology era of game studies?

computerized games move towards simulations such that they can be games for pleasure as well as games for training.

“The voices in my head are idiots” Rethinking Barriers for Female Gamers & the Importance of Online Communities
Tracy Kennedy

a look at GamerChix online forums and personal emails about women console gamers and their experiences, mostly sexual harassment but also some really good community building with other women.
GamerChix supports women to know how to deal with negative experiences.

Alone Together: Mixed-Mode Communication at Computer Gaming Events
Bryan-Mitchell Young

not presenting what he proposed… how ethical is that?
actually presenting on Quake 2 – Quake 4 and cyborgs and LAN parties and players as cyborgs
white male LAN goers resist or push at the idea of cyborgs (from Harraway)

With Friends Like These: Participation and Protest in Six Facebook Games
Elizabeth Losh

politeness is inherently political

fb games are political, need some socialness, and push at politeness norms
they push at politeness norms because of the way fb itself focuses on networks
network proliferation > politeness norms
and like with scrabulous, network proliferation can include using available online resources (nonhuman actors) in addition to proliferation of human actors… its the new norm. it isnt cheating

I suppose these notes are more for myself to remember what happened. I may fill in thoughts about each session later once I get back to Seattle…

*A lot* of stuff is happening in the irc backchannel which has sort of supplanted the todaysmeet one. If you want to join and don’t have an irc client, you can go to http://java.freenode.net and join the #aoir-general channel.

Thursday, 3:30-5:30

Wii are Familii
Shira Chess

a look at Mii creation and how it builds family togetherness
no hands really puts control in hands of players

the way that the Wii is targeted and advertised reifies feminine stereotypes about food is love -> play is love -> play as emotional labor

Wii and Empathii
Amanda Rotondo

Miis are persistent and created by player – these build empathy… also other Miis are in the background and that keeps them in players’ minds.

Covered some theoretical thoughts on empathy and then how the Wii/Mii embodies that.

Could Miis be used to teach empathy? How does self-resembling Miis matter to empathy?

Closing the Door and Opening the Hood on the PS3
Roger Altizer

Sony is marketing the PS3 as the everything box, but because they need control over pirates and other stuff, they’ve actually constrained what the box can do.
They are actually marketing obedient consumption. and it’s actually a corporate computer, not a personal computer.

Opening the XBox
David Bello

Using Racing the Beam chart of Levels of Abstraction and applying it to the Xbox and XBMC Media Center.

Open and Closed Platforms and Emotional Labor
Casey O’Donnell

Why did Bob really want to develop on the GBA and DS?
Homebrew is not the same as modding. Not sanctioned necessarily.

platform irreverent play/work

Homebrewers embody the whole idea of market driving development and the whole idea of generating / embracing game culture. Yet, console manufacturers continue to oppress / suppress / control them.

All papers can be found online (though I think some of them aren’t the final versions like the one Sarah and I wrote): http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddzgskkg_33gfjbg39z

I created a backchannel for the conf at http://todaysmeet.com/ir10

twitter tag is #ir10

Thursday, October 8, 2009
10:30-12:30
Games, Industry, and Design

The Online Gaming Industry of South Korea
Peichi Chung

financial crisis examined thru globalization
lit from global media industry, existing theories:
-media imperialism
-national media vs. transnational media

New discussion: creative industry and cultural industry

Existing models that she looked at didn’t account for the Asian context well…
Tried to create a new model that borrows from a state market dynamics model

some background on South Korea
cool map of reach into other Asian countries by SK game companies

see photo for conclusions

Game Design Communities As Critical Spaces for Learning and Literacy
Sean Duncan

How are tools provided and how do communities form?
Move beyond “production” to negotiation, iteration, etc.

coding posts in game forums. Discursive codes, design codes, and content codes.
trying to get at “affinithy space” from Gee

looking specifically at Kongregate today
moving people from players to designers with Kongregate Labs (production tools)

Kongregate Labs forums focused mostly on programming issues, not design problems
novice programmers engaged in contest

affinity spaces need more consideration as commercial spaces. learning shaped by design constraints

Digital Distribution
Ryan Thames

overview of digital distribution and how it is diff than trad distribution

Are Wikipedians Really Gamers?
Brian Keegan – Northwestern

why did Nupedia fail but Wikipedia succeed?
how do existing motivational theories fall short?
can games inform design?

Nupedia was tightly controled: 9 articles after 9 months
Wikipedia: 600 articles in 2 weeks

interesting slide on motivational theories
[how does enlightened self interest fit?]

elaboration on ludic theory and how Nupedia and Wikipedia compare there
and then look at Ludemes and how Nupedia and Wikipedia compare there too.

Design principles:
promote curiosity, support intrinsic motivations, maintain openness, provide feedback, allow safe failure