Mark Danger Chen

Major spoilers follow:

Last month I played the original Mass Effect again and completed every side-mission so that I could export the save game for Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 2 features a ton of little nods to your decisions in the original, but, in the end, I’m not sure if it’s really all that well implemented. The problem is that I bonded or bought into the role-play of my projected identity (Gee, 2003) of my version of Shepard in how the commander became emotionally attached with various party members that when I met up with those party members in the sequel, I was disappointed with how interactions with them were treated.

For example, in my version of Mass Effect, Ashley Williams started out relatively xenophobic but loosened up towards the end as I explored her feelings with her through dialog. When I met her in ME2, though, it just seemed like she reverted to her old self, as if we didn’t become close friends at all. Most glaringly, though, was the way my Shepard interacted with her lover from the first game, Liara T’Soni. In ME2, they exchanged maybe two lines that referred to their past relationship, kissed once, and then that’s it. The rest, I assume was just scripted for any Shepard incarnation, based off of Liara’s dealings with the Shadow Broker. I know there’s a comic book prequel to ME2 that details what Liara was doing between the events in the two games, so maybe her experiences while Shepard was away were traumatic enough to warrant her distanced emotion, but *Shepard* doesn’t know anything about those details (even if I did via reading the comics), so it would make sense for them to at least spend a couple of more sentences on how the events affect their relationship.

Disappointment in how ME ties into ME2 aside, there’s a bigger problem I had with Mass Effect 2. (I should say, right off, though, that I did like ME2; I just thought it could’ve been better.) The bigger problem is that there’s not really much of an epic plot going on. Things don’t lead to other things. Piecing together a mystery was a great plot in the first game; it’s barely there in the second game. Instead, the majority of the game is spent recruiting more and more party members and then going on unique missions for each one to unlock their special ability, presumably a reflection of their augmented loyalty to Shepard. There’s no sense of urgency, really. You don’t meet party members along your desperate journey to fight the bad guys (which worked really well for almost all the previous BioWare games such as Baldur’s Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and the first Mass Effect). Instead the game is about recruiting them and getting them set-up the way you want before eventually going through a mass relay to fight the bad guys. It just didn’t feel like there was a point to it, especially since you can only take two party members with you on a mission. Getting more than half a dozen seemed superfluous.

A funny thing I noticed: it’s actually very similar to Dragon Age: Origin’s plot, though DA:O seemed less linear than ME2. You have to get the Dwarves to join you, for example, but before that you have to resolve an internal conflict they’re having, and you have many options for how that conflict is resolved. In ME2, you recruit NPCs by helping them with whatever they’re currently working on, but you don’t get much of a say in how it’s done. What tied Dragon Age together really, really well, was the betrayal theme underlying the whole game. ME2 doesn’t have a one-word theme that resonates as strongly, I don’t think…

Other things about the game:

Still, this was the second in a planned trilogy of games. Arguably, it’s the lull before the climactic finale, building up anticipation for something big. I suppose I’ll hold onto my save game until then.

Gee, J. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy.

Getting ready for Mass Effect 2, coming out on the 26th or thereabouts, I replayed Mass Effect this past weekend. Apparently, choices made in the original game affect conditions in the sequel, and I wanted to make sure I had all my projected identity* ducks in a row. It’s a good game. Combat is more visceral than the other Bioware games since its in real-time and works like a FPS (with RPG stats affecting aim and damage, etc, a la Deus Ex).

Driving around in the Mako, exploring various planets, is slightly tedious, but it’s good fodder for the compulsion to complete achievements and collect shit. I’m well-trained for that kind of gameplay from WoW, which I both find interesting in a “hmmm…” sort of way and despise in a “goddammit, why do I do it?” sort of way. (Something about the game playing me just as much as me playing the game can go here. :p )

It’s unfortunate that there’s no agency involved with finding a cure for the krogan genophage, but others have surmised that it needed to be saved for a later game in the trilogy. Can’t have the hero resolve *all* the galaxy’s problem in one go, after all.

One question (and major spoilage): at Noveria, in the research facility, the asari kills the security guard blocking the way to Shepard and then tries to kill Shepard, on orders from Matriarch Benezia. Ok, that’s fine. Shepard reports this treachery to the security chief and then proceeds to deal with the rachni situation in the Hot Labs. Upon returning from the Hot Labs, the whole security force goes ballistic and ambushes Shepard, again, on orders from Benezia. WTF? If they were working for Benezia all along, why’d the asari have to kill one of the guards?

*See Jim Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, specifically the chapter on Arcanum, for a primer on projected identity. :)

I figure I’d start off this year with a massive list of games I’ve played recently and then post individual game reviews as I play them. Also, for the new year, I’m going to try to endeavor to think more critically and reflectively about the games I play. But here’s a non-critical list of the games I remember playing in the last two months of 2009:

PC

• Torchlight - level 35 or so, finished main quest. Fun Diablo clone with great art. Not sure it has legs, but it’s good for when you need a 30 min wind-down diversion.
• Dragon Age: Origins – twice, on third iteration now. Google for reviews. I can’t really add anything more other than to say that it has very strong introductory chapters for the different origin stories you can choose for your character, drags a little in the middle (massing an army can be tedious), and has a relatively short end-game (what we’d get that army for again?), but all in all, classic Bioware and a triumphant return of deep(ish) party dialog. Looking forward to community mods.
• Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon – I bought this game years ago but it never installed on my various computers I’ve owned over the last few years. Buggy install is a bitch. I saw it on Steam 2 weeks ago and figured I’d give it another shot. It worked! and it’s a pretty good game. Odd Tomb Raider-esque ledge climbing given its pedigree (the first two were point-n-click 2D adventure games), but they didn’t really bother me. The art did take a turn backwards though when they moved to blocky 3D. I played Broken Sword 4 a couple of years ago and remember it being much prettier.
• Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy - Yes, I’m a sucker for Nancy Drew games. They’re all generally the same with not much innovation between iterations, but that lets them pound out… what two dozen games? in the last few years. Kinda like trashy romance novels.
• Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships - Sailing and driving around was pretty fun, I have to admit. That was new.
• Mirror’s Edge - the first-person pakour game that came out a year or so ago. Most games I play are at least a year old so I can afford them… But anyway, yes, this game was fun. Shortish. Captivating music. The cutscenes were done in cool Samurai Jack-esque cutout-esque artwork. It was frustrating a few times, but overall good. Racing game combined with platformer combined with FPS. Neat.

DS

• Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes – Best DS game of 2009 for me. Though, admittedly, I haven’t played GTA or the new Zelda. Essentially, a puzzle game with RPG elements. Engaged me more than Puzzle Quest did.
• Broken Sword 1: Shadow of the Templars – haven’t quite finished it yet. Just as good as I remember from playing it years ago when it first came out and then replaying it a couple of years ago on the PC. For some reason, Nico’s apartment as a sort of home base works really well and is missing from the later games in the series. Also, being able to talk about everything to everyone and get (mostly) unique dialog is pretty cool. The DS version adds some nice 2nd-screen portrait close-ups when talking with NPCs but the small main screen makes seeing the various environment elements a little harder, though they tried to make up for it by making things highlight when you touch the screen with your stylus. I bet the Wii version is great, so go buy it if you have a Wii!

Xbox 360

• Fable II – Got this pretty much right after I (finally) bought an Xbox 360 in November. I think I liked the original Fable more. The morality system was pretty meaningless since it didn’t affect the story at all, just your character’s visuals.
• Lego Batman - Playing with Robin. We aren’t done, yet. It’s fun. :)
• various incarnations of Rock Band – Fun as always. The main reason we got an Xbox 360, actually. Well, that and the fact that it hooks up nicely to my home network and Windows Media Center.
• Forza Motorsport 3 – When we get a house and a dedicated home theater room some day (I want to take you to a monster-free city), I’ll be getting a racing chair and a wheel to go with whatever version of Forza exists then… It is sooo beautiful. Damage modeling, too!

Wii

• New Super Mario Bros. - Haven’t actually gotten to play it much, but I like it. The kids we sometimes hang out with like it.
• Wii Sports Resort – borrowed from Steve. I spent a few hours just flying around. :) Sword fighting is fun.
• Wii Fit Plus – We had to rearrange our office to make enough room between the couch and TV for the Wii balance board. Now that we’ve set it up, we’ve used it maybe once a week, which is better than sitting on our asses all the time. Pretty fun so far, actually.

I’ve decided to post really quick reviews of each game I play.

The thing is, I’ve been replaying some older games and realizing how much of them I’ve forgotten, and then I have a tiny moment of panic about how ephemeral my experiences with these games are–a tiny existential crisis ensues. Do I play the games because life is nihilistic and I should just fill it with personally engaging experiences, or do I try to contribute something to the societal world–games culture and academic progress? And then I figure, well, it won’t take much time to write at least a one-line review of the things I’m playing.

Part of the hesitation, though, is also the fact that I play *a lot* of games. A LOT. It’s kind of frightening, actually, given that I’m trying to finish the dissertation and apply for jobs and do academic stuff at the same time. So, there’s a bit of shame or guilt involved, too.

But talking with Theresa, another student at the college of ed who also studies games and learning, has convinced me that knowledge about games is part of my academic identity. I’ve come to be known as “the games guy” in my department, and that label or position has definitely given me some cultural capital that I’ve been able to ply into various opportunities within academia, if only by giving me confidence in myself by seeing that others value my knowledge.

The positioning, though, is kind of strange since I don’t think I’ve done all that much to cultivate it. It seems like I can contribute to it and make it productive while also justifying all the game playing if only I shared my thoughts about these games, and thus, my new year’s resolution is to write about each game I play.

Or maybe I’m just trying to make an obsession have some sort of extrinsic value…

There’s a bunch of game review websites doing their top 10 best games of either the year or the decade right now. I’m continually moved towards thinking that games that are inherently good can only be great through a combination of intrinsic qualities and external player dispositions, situations, settings, and communities. In other words, I’m inclined towards thinking about gaming moments rather than the game artifacts themselves. To take that thought further, I think what’s even more compelling are moments that stem from the culture around games. And so, here are some great moments that speak of our growing, diversifying (yet also moving towards homogeneity), deeply intricate games culture of the past decade.

I had meant to do a top 10 list, but there’s no way I can think of the best candidates in one sitting, so I’ll start with these and add as people comment (here, via Twitter, via Facebook, or via Google Reader). No particular order:

[Note Dec 18:] It seems like two categories can be made out of the list, those that are trends and those that are specific moments. I’ve tried to keep it to specific moments, but it’s blurry. Also, it’s of course subjective, and, apparently, I have short-term memory since most of these are from the past 5 years.

1. 2007: Very touching story about a mom who sent letters to her son through Animal Crossing. The story is touching. The fact that the letters might have been auto-generated, well… it’s still a touching story. Read about it (joystiq) or watch the story (YTMND).
2. 2004: “Bow, nigger” and New Games Journalism.
3. 2008: Project Chanology and Anonymous. Ok, technically not exactly games specific, but its basically griefing writ large. Good summary of griefing: Julian Dibbell’s article in Wired on Patriotic Nigras and Second Life (yay, guildmate!).
4. Terra Nova blog (speaking of guildmates). Games (virtual worlds) culture needs people to write about it. Read all about trading real-world currency for in-game gold and items, for example.
5. 2006: Million Gnome March in World of Warcraft.
6. 2006 and 2007: South Park episodes on WoW (info) (video) and Guitar Hero (info) (video). Good example of gaming hopping into other media. (via Jen Stone)
7. Settlers of Catan more popular than Monopoly and taking top selling toys and games spot on Amazon. (via Chris Ferejohn)
8. 2005: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee controversy. (via Sean Duncan)
9. Pro gaming actually exists. Eg, Fatal1ty featured on MTV and owns h1s own product l1ne.
10. MC Chris’s, Fett’s Vette in Star Wars Galaxy machinima. First, it’s an example of nerdcore hip hop (also see MC Frontalot and MC Lars). Second, it’s an example of machinima. Third, it’s an example of how all these different media are bleeding into each other.

So, I played Dragon Age for a couple of weeks. It’s engrossing. Very engrossing. But I *was* disappointed with how little change there is to the plot or storyline with each of the six different starting conditions. Each start story was really well done, so to have the narratives from a particular one be mostly forgotten once you get to the main game… Well, on the official forums, SLPr0 wrote up a nice overview of some of the ways in which the plot could have been so much more (included after the break). Head on over to the forum thread (Literary Criticism in Regards to Flopped Plot Opportunities and the Human Noble Origin) to read the ongoing discussion.

And, of course, there’s Yahtzee’s take on Dragon Age, which is, as with all his Zero Punctuation videos, hilarious and spot on in that scathing-yet-there’s-a-bit-of-truth-there kind of way.

Continue reading “Dragon Age plot flops and Zero Punctuation”

A lot has happened in the last few weeks:

• Yay! Sarah Walter and my abstract was accepted to the Association of Internet Researchers conference (IR10, Milwaukie, October 7-11). Here’s what we submitted:

A Comparison of Collaboration across Two Game Contexts: Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft

To better understand the nature of virtual collaboration, we present analyses of high-stakes team activities, known as “raids,” in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). These situations are hotbeds of collaboration, which is increasingly recognized as a valuable twenty-first century skill (Karoly & Panis, 2004). Raids usually involve a great amount of communication and coordination of actions, interdependence of teammates, leadership, and execution of strategy, similar to elements of collaboration in other settings, such as business (Reeves, Malone & O’Driscoll, 2008), surgical teams (Edmondson, 2003), the military (Salas, Bower & Cannon-Bowers, 1995), control room teams (Patrick, et. al., 2006), sports teams (Eccles & Tenenbaum, 2004), and educational settings (Mercier, Goldman & Booker, 2006). These raid events often span hours at a time and are often repeated over several months before the raid zone is cleared, i.e. when the team is able to successfully defeat all of the enemies. Existing studies of learning in MMOGs include gaming as a constellation of literacy practices (Steinkuehler, 2007, 2008), scientific argumentation in web forums around game strategies (Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008), and learning game ethos, strategy, and fact-finding with peers via chat (Nardi, 2007). Yet other research has looked at the development of social skills (Ducheneaut & Moore, 2005) and the build-up and leveraging of social and cultural capital to succeed in game activities (Jakobsson & Taylor, 2003, Malaby, 2006). Previous work on raiding has included a focus on providing an ethnographic account of in-game activity and the realignment work needed after moments of failure (Chen, 2009). Without cross-setting comparisons, however, it is difficult to uncover which aspects of gaming are specific to the game world and which can be thought of as enduring qualities of expert collaborative group practice.

To make cross-setting comparisons, we analyze gameplay video, audio conversations, and text chat data from two popular MMOGs, The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and World of Warcraft (WoW). Using a participant-observation approach, we examine two semi-stable teams of players who spent several weeks learning to be successful in a raid. In particular, we examine collaborative behavior and communication for two raid battles in each game: one successful battle, and one unsuccessful. The four cases were coded based on adaptations to work team behavior frameworks (Rousseau, et al., 2006), situation awareness measures (Patrick, et al., 2006), and a coding system used in examining differences between problem-solving youth groups (Baron, 2003). Informed by theories on the relational networks of human and nonhuman actors (Latour, 1988, 2005), which includes considering the distribution of cognitive work within ecological settings (Hutchins, 1995a, 1995b), and the assemblage of such systems as applied to games (Taylor, forthcoming), our analyses focus on one aspect of practice, the communication of expert players. This communication includes voice and text chat, and the patterns that emerge when looking across game sessions. By comparing two games with different designs (e.g. team size, player abilities, and scripting of battles) and cultures (e.g. roles, expectations, preferred mode of communication, and use of external tools), we can discover what is common about these collaborative activities, giving us an insight into what is common about teamwork and collaboration in virtual tasks that require a high degree of technical skill and coordinated effort. Themes emerge concerning situational awareness, psychological safety (Edmonson, 1999, 2003), problem solving (Barron, 2003; Roschelle, 1992), and critical communicative practices necessary for success. Results are discussed in relation to collaboration research in other non-virtual settings.

• Yay! Submitted something to the Digital Games Research Association conference (DiGRA, London, September 1-4). I’ll hear on June 1 whether it is accepted. I can’t post what I submitted yet… Blind review and all…
• Yay! I’m in a reading group this quarter that focuses on actor-network theory and activity theory. Right now we’re reading Latour’s Reassembling the Social. Read the above abstract to get a really, really brief summary, though I realize it isn’t written for non-academics…
• Yay! I’m taking Isaac Gottesman’s Educators as Intellectuals class (again, but this one is different than the one two years ago). We are reading biographical, philosophical, and ethnographic accounts of what it means to be an intellectual/activist/educator and writing our own historical, situated accounts… There’s some crazy connections being made between this and the sociotechnical stuff I’ve been reading… Gross, for example, argues that Rorty was shaped by his relationships with others and that social and cultural capital played a huge part in his development, more so than any inherent agentive trait. Here’s the full list of what we’re reading:
  • Said. Representations of the Intellectuals
  • Gross. Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher
  • Ransby. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement
  • Ayers. To Teach
  • Pascoe. Dude, You’re a Fag
• Yay! I’m going on the Microsoft, EA, and GarageGames sponsored Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) conference next week, which takes place on the Disney cruise ship, sailing the Bahamas. :) Cabining with Roger Altizer! We’re going to hit up Disney World first. Hopefully, while he screams like a little school girl, I’ll just be giggling (like a little school girl).
• Boo! Robin is sick this week. I was sick for like a day, but her’s is lasting a week so far…
• Boo! Ushki also got sick this week. She was constipated something fierce.
• Boo! Our water heater exploded on Thursday. Apparently, it’s a power vent heater, costing about $1000 more than a regular water heater ($1500). But, on top of that, the contractors who built our townhouse cut some corners and did some really strange things with their install of the water heater, snuggling it in a really tight space in the garage that is too small for modern water heaters. Furthermore, our heating system uses the hot water system, complicating matters a little, as the dudes from Fast Water Heater Co. install a new water heater in a new space. We originally got a quote from O’Neill Plumbing that seemed high, but I was at the office and Robin was stuffy headed so we didn’t quite understand the complexity of the situation. When we got a second quote from the Home Depot referred Fast Water Heater Co., the prices were actually about the same: $2700!! Boo, indeed. We went with Fast since Jason took the time to explain the situation very carefully (three times! me, Robin, my mom).
• Yay (and Boo)! I’m going to go to State of Play (SoP, NYC, June 18-20), and Dan Hunter, the guy organizing it (and fellow guildie) is offering graduate students free conference registration and either free room and board or some money for airfare! There was talk about folks who were going to be at Games Learning Society (GLS, Madison, June 12-14) carpooling over to NYC. That sounded like fun but I’m having problems getting a confirmation that that is actually happening. Given that I now need to pay for this new water heater somehow, I fear I might be skipping GLS this year… :( If I get into DiGRA, I hope Phil remembers his conversation with me about getting LIFE to pay for it…

Also:

• I’m ramping up video analysis of a specific kid and his video game practices for ESTG’s ethnographic study.
• I’m an officer for Educators for Social Justice (ESJ) this year, and this quarter we’re organizing a panel on teacher education and social justice issues.
• I’m helping the Associated Students of the College of Ed (ASCE) set up a website next week.
• The IT Crowd is pretty good.
• The Red Dwarf final episodes finally were aired. Odd Blade Runner references. I think the third part (of three) fell flat.
• I just finished playing Drakensang. Very linear. No narrative decision points to speak of. Very detailed combat system. German. Felt kind of like Drakensang : The Witcher = Icewind Dale : Baldur’s Gate (or maybe even Planescape).

Last week and this week I’m in the SF Bay Area, visiting family and working with some Stanford folks.

The LIFE (Learning in Informal and Formal Environments) Center is a collaboraiton between some profs at UW and Stanford and some researchers at SRI. As a student of the Center, I applied for a one week exchange thing they have for students at one uni to visit a student at the other uni.

Anyway, I’ve been working with Sarah Walter who is looking at collaboration in Lord of the Rings Online while raiding, which is basically the same thing I’m doing except that I frame mine more as activity system description and I look at World of Warcraft.

We’re pretty much dealing with the same data, though, from two different games, so it made sense to collaborate on a paper and some conference presentations. Yay!

It’s slow going, and technically, LIFE is paying for like 5 days of working but we’ve been at it off and on for a week and half now. Got a todo list now, and looking forward to get back to Seattle with new direction.

Today, my bro and I are meeting another Stanford student, Sarah Lewis, to go visit the California Academy of Science. Fun!

Later tonight, we’re going to Chris’s to play Battlestar Galactica the boardgame that Grey got. Last weekend, we met and played some boardgames, too. Ghost Stories and Cuba.

Yesterday, I met up with TL Taylor and Casey O’Donnel for lunch. That was cool. This week, GDC is happening in SF. Tomorrow, I’ll probably be meeting some guildies for dinner.

Robin was here with me last week, and our first two meals were at In-n-Out and Pizza Chicago. :)

This quarter I’m taking a class on hope in apocalyptic futures as portrayed in three media: film (Children of Men), text (The Road), and digital game (Fallout 2).

For my final project (it’s a light class), I decided to create a YouTube video showing off the humorous dialog a character with low intelligence has with various NPCs in Fallout 2. :)

Mirror’s Edge 2D

Follows the tradition of making Flash games out of cool FPS games, like Portal: The Flash Version.