All posts by cmgp

Boston Pops

So two days ago Yeung and I had tickets to see the Boston Pops. For those who don’t know, it’s the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing more modern music (like jazz, etc., not like 50 Cent…). She got the tickets as an anniversary present and the show we got had John Williams (see: Star Wars, ET, Jaws, Indiana Jones, etc.) as a guest conductor. The first thing that happened as we walked from the lot where we parked to the Symphony Hall was that John Williams is getting out of his car like ten feet from us. So I persuade Yeung to get an autograph (a few people were asking already, so I didn’t feel too much like a slut)… I don’t have an online version of the photo, only one on my PC. I can’t recall right now how best to put it on here, but I will later. Anyway, the show was super fun. The whole theme was music from movies. He started with some older movies (like Citizen Kane) and also played some stuff he recently did for the Harry Potter movies. The second segment featured various stuff, mostly composed by him, including Schindler’s List and Scent of a Woman. The last segment was probably the best. He played a tribute to Henry Mancini, and played a lot of his most famous stuff, including “the Pink Panther”, “Peter Gunn” (forever known to me as the theme from the video game Spy Hunter), “The Days of Wine and Roses”. He also played “Moon River”, which was amazing (I’m sure Chris would have appreciated it).

One funny thing was that we were sitting right in the very front row of tables, so we were chatting with one of the bass players, and he gave us a copy of his schedule, which also had the encores they had decided to play: the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” march and “E.T.”. So we were totally pulling hard to get them to play those, which of course they did (how could he not play “Raiders”?). The bass player we were talking to had a fedora hidden behind his gear and he whipped it out when they eventually played it, and JW was laughing when he saw it (the whole time, still conducting the song).

Anyhow, the thing I can’t really describe was the quality of the orchestra. I mean, all of them are total pros. They are casual, but you can tell they are all superstars in whatever they play. My ears haven’t had a lot of training to pick up the finer points in this type of situation, but the entire group is basically perfectly in step with each other and with the conductor. Definitely something I plan on seeing again when I get a chance.

a call for a REAL RTS

quite humorous in that sort of black humor kind of way…
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wargames.html

update

Hey all, so I just got word a week ago that I was going to be invited to give a talk at the IPFA conference in Taiwan in July! Our paper was awarded “Most Outstanding Paper” (which is actually the SECOND best paper of the conference, not the “best paper”) at the ISTFA meeting we went to last November. Apparently the two conferences have an exchange where the best paper from one goes to the other and gives the same talk. Luckily for us, the “best paper” couldn’t go, so they invited me. Best thing is, I just heard yesterday that the travel and hotel is all totally taken care of. Yee-haw! So I am pretty stoked. The conference is from July 5-8th. Does anyone know anything about what to see in Taiwan? I thought I would ask, though I am pretty sure Mark and George don’t have any connections there. And Chris, well, yeah.

Now I have to convince the state of California to please please please give me my damn birth certificate so I can get my passport! I submitted the forms in December and no response yet! WTF?

The Education Arcade and E3

Note: if you want, you can skip all this personal stuff that I wrote for my friends, and go directly to the summary of The Education Arcade.

May 9, 2004

Randy's Donuts
I’m always amazed at how miniscule I feel when I fly on a plane and get a window seat. My eyes are glued to the porthole unless there is cloud cover, and this flight was no exception. It’s amazing all the detail I can see and I realize how little fidelity even high end flight simulators have. For example, we pass over a suburb at some point and each house has a little swimming pool or something. The way the sun is situated, at a specific angle all the pools of water reflect right into my eyes, shimmering like a disco ball or a sequined dress, but instead of some undulating motion, they march in a specific order and only appear once and are gone forever. A huge lake came into view. I looked away.

We had a lot of headwind and so were late touching down. It’s funny how people can reason certain things and then believe them to be true. We left on time, and yet I overheard a woman calling the person picking her up when we landed that we had left late. That isn’t true. It was the headwind. In her mind, maybe it was easier to blame the airline rather than nature. I don’t know. What I do know is that she stated it with so much conviction that whoever was listening had to take it for truth. How much of what I say is not true but I just think it is?

So the flight arrived at 6:20 or so and Ted is there to greet me as I enter the baggage claim area. I did not have any check-in luggage, however. I pack light and pick clothes that compact easily: besides what I was wearing, one backpack, 5 underwears (boxer briefs), 3 t-shirts, 5 pairs of socks, a pair of shorts and a pair of pants (both which are made of really light fabric), the new Acer Travelmate 8003LMi notebook, my PDA, my camera, all the AC adaptors and whatnot for them, CDs, cat-5 cable, toiletries, and various small things. I dunno; I guess I know how to stuff a backpack really well. In fact, on the way to the airport, Robin and I stopped at Fry’s and picked up a new backpack with a notebook slot and a wireless mouse, but it isn’t a huge backpack or anything. Later I did discover that I had forgotten my sleepwear. Ah well…

Pink's

Muhulland Drive dog

Lord of the Rings dog

Ted and I first stop at Randy’s Donuts. Nice. Then we went to Pink’s, a hot dog place, a very good hot dog place. Then we met up with Lesley and Greg and company at Canter’s which is a Jewish deli/cafe/restaurant/bar. Then we went back to Ted’s place and crashed. So far so good. Food all the way, baby. The next morning we had some toast and nasty but compelling krab shue mai. We then went to check out Ted’s cultish school where he teaches Spanish and culture and such.

Soka Gokai Institute

After visiting the enormous but empty school, we picked up Ted’s new girlfriend Denine and then had lunch at a Oaxacan restaurant. It was great. Something that I always notice when I visit friends in California is how much driving we do. Each of these places we go to is easily interspersed with 30 minutes of driving. I love how Portland has you drive at most 20 min to get wherever you need to get. I guess it’s an unfair comparison since everything in Portland that we want to get to is in the city proper. I guess a fairer comparison would be if you had to drive from Beaverton to Portland which I suppose you would have to do if you are visiting friends who work at Intel. Come visit Robin and me, however, and you won’t be driven around as much. Well, except we live in Seattle now.

Oaxacan restaurant, Guelaguetza

Anyway, the Oaxacan restaurant was amazing! It makes sense. I mean, if you think of American food, there are a whole lot of choices: sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, pizza, steak and potatoes, pancakes, breads, etc. It only makes sense that other cultures have a HUGE selection of foods and that only a little portion is represented in restaurants in America, in this case in bastard form as burritos and tacos. The Oaxacan “high” Mexican food is very, very good, and if you ever get the chance, eat some. Then eat some more. That’s what we did. We ordered a mole negro dish, a tamale dish, and a something I don’t remember the name of dish, and when we were done we decided to get a goat taco. It was more like a burrito that we Americans are familiar with. Huge corn tortilla filled with very tender meat, rolled up and smothered with mole. They have all kinds of mole.

Disney Music Hall

Ted and his new girlfriend, Denine, at the Disney Music Hall

Ted in a Mexican wrestling mask
After lunch we picked up Lesley and went to the new Disney Music Hall designed by Frank Gehry. He did a much better job of this one than the EMP I think… Then we went to Alvarado St where there’s a Mexican street market and then Union Station. I gotta say, Union Station down there is a lot better than what we have in Seattle. There was even a fancy restaurant in it! Seattle’s sucks. Even Portland has a pretty nice one…

inside Union Station--huge photo, sorry; I felt it was important

Union Station

After that we did a drive-by of the La Brea tarpits and took some photos of german tourists in a rental Mustang in front of us. Ted dropped me and Lesley off at her place where Greg was watching a pirate show on the History Channel. Lesley made some lovely fish with rice dinner and then we checked out a comedy show. It was pretty funny and sort of reminds me of Reed’s Midnight Theater (sketch comedy) mixed with my friend Chris’ MCing at open mics (improv).

tourists...  German?

Greg dropped me off at my motel and I went to sleep at 1:30 or so. Got up at 7:30 for 9 am registration at the convention center for the Education Arcade. Now I’m sitting in the convention center near a Starbucks booth trying to get wireless connection (not happening) so that I can see what the hell is going on since everyone I’ve talked to here either doesn’t know what I’m talking about or thinks the Education Arcade doesn’t start until 3! So, I’m here like 6 hours early I guess. Need to find some place to get lunch. Maybe I’ll walk around. It’s interesting seeing people set-up for E3. Security is pretty lax here…

empty convention center... it's like an adventure game.

May 15, 2004

It turns out I WAS 6 hours early. By the time I could confirm this, it was around noon, so I decided to walk around downtown LA. Some nice convention guy told me to walk down 7th. I happened upon Macy’s mall which is below the Hyatt on 7th and Flower. The Hyatt Hotel had a wireless hotspot! It was a lucky find since the E3 hotspots were not going to be live until Wednesday. In other words, every day before and after The Education Arcade I made a stop at the hotel. It was on my way anyway–I took the train from my motel to the hotel and then walked to LACC which was only like 4 blocks. The public transportation system worked out quite well since the train station happened to be on the same block as my motel! It cost $1.25 as opposed to like $10 you’d have to pay a cab driver each way.

Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire talking to students before registration officially opened at 3

On the way back to the conference at 2 or so, I stopped by a little underground mall on Figuera that is easy to miss if you’re in a car. There was a toy store and I saw that WizKids has a new line of Mechs that you can put together with a screwdriver and some glue. These things were huge and are articulated, not to be confused with their line of collectible minis. Unfotunately, I grabbed a damaged box which had no screwdriver so I had to wait until I got home to put it together. Because of the damage, however, it was only $15 instead of $25. Good trade-off…

The conference went pretty well. It was very laid back and small. I met a ton of people and also got a feel for the current trends in thinking about games as related to education at the conference.

I got to meet a lot of people in academia including Jim Gee, Kurt Squire, Henry Jenkins, Constance Steinkuhler, Eric, Judy, and Philip from MIT, etc., etc. But they all seemed a little busy and I never quite knew what to say to them since I’ve read some of their stuff but not all and I didn’t know if any of them had read anything I wrote and if so what they thought about it. You see, when I met Constance she told me that someone forwarded her my website and that sort of put me at a disadvantage in that I had no idea if they thought what I’m interested in studying was clear and if it’s interesting to anyone but me. In hindsight, I suppose I was intimidated and that I shouldn’t have been too worried about it since I can’t believe they’d pass around my URL for cruelty’s sake. In fact, I’m pretty sure I know who sent the URL to Constance and the both of us seem to hold some amount of respect for each other… 🙂

I also met a lot of people who aren’t in academia: a few k-12 teachers, some educational software developers (I kept asking them if they had any gamers on their team and it seems that my theory about a lack of gaming experience within the ed software industry is largely true–it might be important to note that the corollary to this theory is that there’s also a lack of educators who are versed in psychological models of learning in the field), some game developers, other students, people completely outside the industry like Andy Court from Dateline NBC, and a bunch of other researchers like Steven Drucker from Microsoft (who scored me a free pass to E3!). For the most part, it was fun talking about our interests with these people. It’s always fun to talk about people’s passions and since they aren’t as famous as some of the folks in academia, I always feel a little more comfortable… feel like they are being more sincere. Of course, none of this is actually based on anything other than my own feelings of vibes and such, and again I’m pretty sure all the academics are all nice folks. They sure seemed nice. Maybe I’m intimidated by proven intelligence…


Education Arcade Summary

An awesome summary of what went on during The Education Arcade can be seen at Water Cooler Games.

A final note about the photos. They appear chronologically, but the accompanying text isn’t, so don’t relate what you see in the photos directly with its surrounding paragraphs. 😛

I saw two camps of thought on the usefulness of games in education. On the one hand, the old school thought holds the belief that modeling educational software after computer and video games can be a way of getting kids interested, almost fooled, into interacting with the software. I saw this idea mostly among the attendees of the conference, and they held these ideas even after some of the sessions were over which is too bad since the other thought, and the one that I think was being stressed by the academics like Jim Gee, is that current commercial games are frought with learning opportunities. We just need to find out what they are and use them to best effect. Obviously, there were some ideas in between like all the projects coming from MIT which can been seen as a new breed of educational games based on constuctivist models rather than behaviorist models.

Session 1: Are Games Educational? Brenda Laurel, Henry Jenkins, Warren Spector, James Au, and Jim Gee
Session 1: Are Games Educational? Brenda Laurel, Henry Jenkins, Warren Spector, James Au, and Jim Gee

In other words, there seem to be a good deal of industry folks and educators making educational software who still believe that content is the most important quality of an educational game. It might be interesting to note that the majority of people who believed this were older, say in their 40s to 60s. I believe that games of this nature can only be suited for the classroom and only because schools can limit what kids have access to. As soon as you take away that limit, in other words look at kids at home or outside of the classroom, educational software fails miserably. There’s just no possible way for something made primarily for education to compete for the attention of kids against something made for entertainment. In particular I keep thinking of the “attention economy” that Lankshear and Knobel talk about (“Do We Have Your Attention?”). I would say that the games MIT is making are still being targeted towards schools. Revolution looks awesome and it might be fun for outside of the classroom, but it sounded like they were definitely making it for a classroom setting and will be creating external documents, lesson plans, and curriculum to supplement and surround the game itself.

Session 2: From Simulation to Interaction. Kurt Squire, Andrew Court, Scott Fisher, Ben Sawyer, and Amy Bruckman
Session 2: From Simulation to Interaction. Kurt Squire, Andrew Court, Scott Fisher, Ben Sawyer, and Amy Bruckman

Another trend at the conference was that games can be used to address social issues and might be a way of redefining the school system in America. Brenda Laurel gave a relatively zealous rant (to an “Amen, sister!”) on the problem with educational games and how they (don’t) fit into the classroom setting. She made some good points and I almost agree with her. I do think, however, that games whether overtly educational, like The Oregon Trail, or not, like Civilization, can be used very successfully in the classroom so long as the teacher plays the role of guide and provides a framework for the games (see Kurt Squire’s dissertation on Civ). This moves teachers away from being the source of knowledge to people who direct the flow of attention and who get kids to think critically about what they are engaging with. (Again, see Lankshear and Knobel.) That’s the problem at the root, isn’t it?–that people are not being taught how to think critically.

Session 3: Case Study, Zoo Tycoon.
Session 3: Case Study, Zoo Tycoon. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten all their names… and it isn’t listed on the Education Arcade website

It was suggested at the conference that a major reformation of the American school system is in order. As far as I can tell, educators in academia have been saying this since the end of WW2. Actually, if you want to go farther back, need I mention Dewey? So why is it that nothing has changed? A lot of people at the conference seemed to think that people of the video game generation were bringing with them a new way of thinking (see new capitalism) and that this would eventually replace the old-schoolers’ methodology and the schools would naturally reform. Some people felt that it was high time to embrace the new line of thought and it manifests itself by embracing games of all sorts in the classroom. I would argue, however (see above), that, now more than ever, teachers are needed to guide students as they participate in these new classrooms. (Participation is the key to everything, for it is through participation that people become literate in whatever it is they are participating in. It is through participation that they become citizens.) With that said, I do tend to agree that the greatest opportunity for learning through games is outside of the classroom.

Session 4: Building Partnerships: New Collaborations Among Universities, Industry, and Public Institutions. Alex Chisolm, Bonnie Bracey, Todd Logan, Tom Piper, Celia Pearce, and Johnny Wilson
Session 4: Building Partnerships: New Collaborations Among Universities, Industry, and Public Institutions. Alex Chisolm, Bonnie Bracey, Todd Logan, Tom Piper, Celia Pearce, and Johnny Wilson

This, of course, is the main reason why I am researching what I am. I see Social Dilemmas as ways to model the apathetic structures in our society, and I hope that getting people to play games based on Social Dilemmas is a way to get them to think more critically about the situations they are presented with in their real-world lives. To succeed, however, any game has to be engaging.

Keynote. Tom Kalinske
Keynote. Tom Kalinske, CEO LeapFrog Enterprises

Ben Sawyer presented the notion that engagement and fun in a computer game cannot be defined in any standard way, that it would be different for each game. He argued that it was pointless to try to define the terms and instead that game developers intuitively know what works and what doesn’t in game design. He was basically suggesting (and I agree with this part) that all educational software development should have at least one actual game designer who is a total gamer. I do not agree, however, that engagement can’t be identified. There are certain things which we can say for certain that are necessary conditions to making a good game, an engaging game. Now, whether those elements are sufficient is another matter and for that I can guess that there *is* a bit of magic or chemistry that just happens sometimes and doesn’t happen other times. No good game, however, lacks a basic set of principles in making the game engaging.

Session 5: Making Tools for Making Games.  Eric Klopfer, Mark Mine, Steven Drucker, Tom McCormack, Philip Tan
Session 5: Making Tools for Making Games. Eric Klopfer, Mark Mine, Steven Drucker, Tom McCormack, Philip Tan

One of the more interesting presentations was by Andrew Court from Dateline NBC. He described how immediately engaging it was to fly over a war-torn country and not know if the demolished shell of a building down below is a chemical weapons plant or a factory for medicine meant for the needy. As soon as information becomes relevent, it becomes engaging and you want to learn about the story behind what happened. He then suggested that games can have the same effect in that they can put the player in a position to experience first-hand what it is like to be in a prison, etc. I would like to take that thought one step further and suggest that games not only can put people in these situations, simulating events in real-life, but they can also simulate the kinds of moral and ethical questions that arise out of these situations. Andy seemed to be advocating making games where players have to uncover the clues for themselves on whether a convicted person is guilty of a crime. The evidence would be used to free the innocent person. This is assumed. What would happen, however, if the player were then to decide what to do with the evidence. Would everyone do the morally right thing? I think that if the consequences are modeled realistically, allowing players to make the immoral decision lets them try out that strategy and learn why they shouldn’t follow it in real-life.

Session 6: Fostering Games Literacy. Henry Jenkins, Jessica Irish, Eric Zimmerman, Gerard Jones, and David Buckingham
Session 6: Fostering Games Literacy. Henry Jenkins, Jessica Irish, Eric Zimmerman, Gerard Jones, and David Buckingham

Each session seemed to be a mix of theory with practice. I think each one had at least one academic talking about how games can be used and what it is about games that makes them useful (Squire on types of game players and four kinds of research that need to happen with games in education, Gee on the role of identities in game playing, etc.) and a few case studies or examples of specific projects (Tom Piper from the Royal Shakespear Company on a game based on The Tempest, a look at Leapster, a case study on Zoo Tycoon, etc.). One of the most valuable lessons that can’t be stressed enough, in my opinion, is what David Buckingham said about gaming literacy. If you want to get teachers and administrators to buy into games that teach, first you have to teach them how to understand games. This, of course, ties nicely into New Literacy Studies and the idea that “literacy” means being able to both read and write a particular medium or media in a particular domain. One might even go so far as to say a total gamer is not an exert gamer until he or she has had a hand in creating or modding a game. But this type of expertise is not needed to buy into the domain. Teachers and administrators just need to understand that it *is* a legitimate domain which can tie in very powerfully into other areas of discourse and which can be used to help people learn how to think critically about complex systems.

outside LACC before E3 started

A final note about The Education Arcade… is it just me or are the only people who care about using games for educational purposes middle-class, well-educated, white folk?

< begin personal stuff again…>
On Sunday, after the opening reception for the conference, I walked to my train stop and met Jim Gee and Betty Hayes on the way. It’s scary how much time he spends playing games. Sounds like about how much time I *used* to play before I started school. Some day, I hope to have less school work and more game playing time again… 🙂 Since Jim hasn’t been into gaming for very long he hasn’t played many classic games like Planescape: Torment. What a shame… I’ll see if I can find his mailing address…

the Bomb

I ate at the Circle K that night. I was going to find a good restaurant near the motel and stopped by the Circle K to grab a soda real quick. Alas, I was waylaid by a sight that I had not seen since my brother and I were in Wyoming on our way to DC by bicycle. I happened to see The Bomb, a huge frozen burrito. This time, it had green chiles and was quite an awesome taste sensation. Not as good as that Oaxacan place but it only cost $2.50.

Getty Center

I saw Lesley and Greg again on Monday night after the day’s sessions. I fixed Greg’s sound card issues and showed him a bit of the projects I’m working on using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset. This is the same toolset being used by MIT for Revolution, but after seeing what they had done, I didn’t feel like demoing what I had done at the conference even though I had my laptop with me. It’s just not as ready to be demoed as Revolution was. I should note, however, that the projects I did were done in a month with one guy rather than MIT’s 5 or 6 guys for a year scope. What a difference funding and legitimacy makes.

rebar thingies at the Getty Center

cacti garden at the Getty Center

On Tuesday, I skipped out of the afternoon sessions to go with another student I met from NYU to check out the Getty Center. The Getty Center was every bit as cool as I had been led to believe while I was helping Charles Rhyne with his architecture of the Getty Center website. The photos I took aren’t nearly as stunning as the ones he took, but I like the general flavor of my photos (I try to get shots of people taking photos and whatnot). The woman I was with was really nice but relatively scatter brained, and she was pretty talkative and drove rather crazily. We had good fun. I had dinner with her and offered to pay since I underestimated the amount of time we would be spending at the Getty Center. She refused but her credit card was denied so I ended up paying anyway, and she proceeded to freak out in a one-track mind sort of way, worrying that her credit card company might have closed the account due to all the expenses on it in CA instead of NY. I think maybe it got maxed out since she was paying like $300 a night for her hotel room (which she complained about but didn’t change to a cheaper, nicer place) and $30 a day for parking and $30 a day for the convertable Mustang rental. (From my calculations, I spent about $700 on my trip. I think she spent about $3500, not counting how much the super-pass to the conference was…) Anyway, we said goodbye after our nice dinner, and I met up with Greg again who was kind enough to drive me back to my motel after we checked out UT2004 which he had just bought the day before.

welcome to E3

group shot at E3

guys playing Magic

The next day, Wednesday the 12th, was my E3 day. As I said before, Steven Drucker from Microsoft was generous enough to give me a guest pass. There was a huge difference in the atmosphere to the LA Convention Center on the opening day of E3. It was extremely crowded whereas previously I would only see a handful of people in the halls. I have not seen a game that modeled crowds very well yet. I’d like to see a FPS that took place in a crowded subway or something… Anyway, the convention is full of glitz and thunder and I’m not entirely sure why. I mean, it is only open to those in the industry, so the people at each booth are technically not really selling their wares to the convention goers. There was a bit of press coverage though, and I can only surmise that the show and dance is for their edification. Each company tried to outshine the other with huge video walls and tons of stations set up for gaming. There were also booth babes galore which is both nice eye-candy and a little disappointing at the same time. It’s funny how this conference is more sexist than the adult movie one in that in the porn conference at least the men are equally objectified. I feel like they could keep the same amount of skin so long as it’s more personable, less objectification.

Dukes of Hazard women.  I don't remember there being more women than Daisy...

I'm posing with some scary women since a stranger offered to take my photo with them (I took one for him, too).

Destroy All Humans looks to be a fun game, if one can judge without seeing any gameplay...

The new Vampire game coming out using the Half-life 2 engine should be great fun.  Made by Troika.  Had to take a shot of the woman selling their wares.

Matrix Online looked pretty fun, too.  Here's Agent Smith instead of actual shots of gameplay...  :)

Well, what did I get out of E3? It was an experience, definitely not worth $350 (you’re paying for the privilege of being sold to even if you aren’t technically a consumer). If I go again, I must remember to use a flash or a tripod on my camera. All my shots are blurry which is too bad because, as I said, there was a ton of eye-candy.

Stan Lee... excelsior!

Pretty much the only minority women in the whole building...

I actually saw some women who weren't booth babes!

some drumming game... props to Sam and Scott...

a little display called the History of Video Gaming

Until next time, Dukes of Hazard.

The Roots

The Saline Project, which is co-operated by a friend of mine from HS, just put together a video for the Roots! Damn…. You should also check out some of their other video clips- especially my favorite “Dinosaur Test.”
Roots Still

rail on Intel, get $100

So last night a fellow student, Alex, and I were participants in a focus group held by Delve, a marketing research company which basically works for a ton of different clients. They called me up like a week and a half ago and asked a bunch of questions:

  • how many hours do you game per week? 10+ depends on schedule
  • have you ever opened a computer to upgrade it specifically for games? yes
  • how do you feel about these four companies (positive, neutral, negative)? Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Dell neutral for all (I like some of their products, I dislike their business practices)
  • are you 27-36 years old? yes
  • are you an expert gamer? yes
  • are you an expert PC user? yes
  • are you male? yes (apparently they had too many women already)
  • do you work in marketing research or usability? no

That last one is quite amusing. I studied usability testing last quarter. I am in school studying computer games. I used to work for a marketing office. If I had mentioned these things, I probably would have been disqualified. But they made the mistake of mentioning that if I qualify and participate I get $100 before I had a chance to tell them…

Anyway, what was weird is that they said I needed to bring a friend who also met these criteria, so I scrambled around and found Alex who is in the games research group I’m in. I’m lucky he’s 27. Sooo… we went to their offices last night with much speculation as to what they would have us do.

Would they have us play games? take apart computers? what what? Was it for MS? kinda weird since MS has their own playtest group… Apple and Dell were kinda out of the picture… We figured it must have been for Intel, but weren’t positive on that. Made the most sense since they’re nearby and they do make graphic chips for their motherboards.

So, we get there and we have to fill out a questionnaire about each other. Questions like how many hours does he play a week? How many games does he own? What gaming websites does he go to? etc.

Then we basically ended up sitting around a table and introducing each other to the group (4 pairs total and one moderator) and answering questions like:

  • If NVidia were a person, would you want him as a friend? would he be cool? what kind of car would he drive? he’s cool, drives a Ferrari or Mauserati, is young and hip
  • how about Intel? Intel is the middle-aged guy who wears a suit and drives a Mercedes. He likes to throw parties and hit on the young women in a sleazy way.
  • how about AMD? AMD is the guy who shows up at the party and everyone hangs out with. He doesn’t have a big head even though he is also successful in his own right. Drives an RX-7 (Mazdarati)
  • what’s the most important component for games? video card

What’s interesting is that when we were making introductions, all the other guys kept saying how ashamed they were about how much time they spend playing games and how because of it they didn’t have lives. This was in contrast to how I feel about my game playing, that any activity can be productive so long as you critically think and reflect about your activity. Would these people have felt as bad if they watched TV for 40 hours a week? I suppose so, and I’d argue that if you watch the stuff that makes you think, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing (but I also know most TV sucks). But what are the alternatives? If they played sports 40 hours a week, how is that better? It would make them healthier, but would it make them better as people? more acceptable maybe… but that’s just societal norms speaking… would it make them as smart? It all depends on how they play computer games or how they play sports, right? To me, speaking from a New Literacy Studies point of view, all these different types of activities lend themselves to different ways of being or defining who you are, and to become an expert in any of these domains is to spend time in them. And each one has its own social network or community in which you participate. In fact, your participation is valuable to the community whether active or passive because it defines the community. The worth of any given activity over another is a personal decision about who you want to be, and, in most people’s cases, ultimately lies in what makes you happy.

But I digress… after introductions and these silly marketing questions, we tackled the meat of the focus group mission. We looked at mock-ups for 3 different ad campaigns which Intel was considering. Aha, we’re talking about Intel! The first one looked like newspaper headlines with a black and white image and a column of text. In fact the background was a little off-white like a newspaper. The text was pretty much propaganda filled with meaningless jargon and everyone agreed on that. The railing of Intel began.

The other two campaigns were better, but there was a fundamental difference between the way the marketing folks at Intel think and the way hardcore gamers think. It was also obvious that the researcher was not a gamer nor an Intel techie since she kept referring to various technical specs incorrectly and could not talk about games at our level. I think we all picked up on it, some with greater savvy than others. This goes back to the idea of participating in a community of discourse. We were all gamers and we were all in that domain, experts in that domain. We’ve chosen to lead our lives that way. The only way to sell something to us on that level is to also be from the gaming world.

Intel is trying to convince us through these campaigns that using their processors with hyperthreading technology would give us an edge in our game playing experiences. The campaigns got this idea across with various success. One of them focused on how your computer would be faster which is good, but the problem was that we didn’t believe the hype. Of the other two, one of the campaigns suggested that our actual game playing performance rather than our computers’ performance would be higher which is complete hogwash, and I was sure to point that out.

The problem is that Intel is trying to convince hardcore gamers who know a shitload about PCs that hyperthreading technology automatically makes their processors the ideal ones for gaming. Maaaybe some games work better with hyperthreading than without, but the only legitimate way of making that statement is by comparing Intel chips with Intel chips. Once you get AMD into the picture, hyperthreading means jack shit if AMD can make up for it by just putting out faster processors for the same amount of money, which is precisely what they do very well. Additionally, all of us said that if we were in the market to upgrade our computers, the processor is not what we would upgrade. Video card, video card, video card.

Each ad campaign had a little blurb about a URL for gaming and to optimize hardware. She had us look at mock-ups of what this website would be. It looked alright… but we were all skeptical if it was an Intel site bandying about Intel products. It would only be visited if it was objective and showed AMDs story as well, etc.

So my friend and I left the focus group study $100 richer and feeling even more so that Intel has no clue what is going on in the gaming hardware world. I still have no idea why we had to show up in pairs. Also, the only woman in the group freaked out (I guess she doesn’t perform well if people are watching her or asking her questions or is otherwise socially dysfunctional) and left five minutes into it. I’m guessing they wanted mostly male gamers anyway and fed us a line about them having too many women participants.

well damn

I was flipping through some gaming mags yesterday and I came across a couple of ads that made me rethink my decision with the Acer notebook. In particular, check out this model from ibuypower.com.

Same processor, same video card, same RAM. Not as many frills and no installed software, not even an OS. Also it is unclear whether the wireless is built-in or in the form of a PCMCIA card. But the price is $1550 including shipping.

I can get XP Pro for $30 from microsoft employee friends… Plus equivalent software, etc. and I’d say the total cost would be like $1650. $750 difference!

Looks like I’ll definitely be returning the Acer notebook.

What’s even sweeter is that by the time I return it, it will probably be mid-May and the new mobile processors from Intel will be out. It’s basically the same speed as their current ones but uses less power. It might even cost the same, so I could just get one of the new guys. But even if it costs more, it’s sure to make the existing guys drop in price.

now the waiting…

First, I’m sorry about your grandfather Chris. Hope the trip goes okay.

I am going to The Education Arcade which is holding a conference May 9-11 down in LA, happening right before E3. I *might* be able to fenagle a pass to E3 out of it… dunno.

Acer Travelmate 8000

Anyway, I have a ton of work to do and most of it has to be done on a computer (designing modules for Neverwinter Nights), so I just ordered a laptop yesterday. It’s the Acer Travelmate 8003LMi. My first laptop… and, unfortunately, my requirements are such that I needed a relatively high end one, being a gamer and all and needing the laptop to demo games and test game playing and making games and all… So it was quite pricey.

I told the company I ordered it from (buy.com) to send it overnight, thinking I’d get it today, and then I went to school for the day. Later I got an email from them saying that they wanted me to fax them a copy of my driver’s license and credit card. It sounded fishy so I did some snooping on the fax number they provided and I emailed customer support asking if this was standard procedure… Meanwhile, I could see on the order tracking page that its status was listed as “processing.” Their (un)helpful guide showed “processing” to mean they are verifying my credentials.

I figured since it was still in “processing” after hours since my order, they were likely waiting for the fax. Also, the number seemed legit (same area code as their corporate headquarters) and I didn’t want to wait for their email, so I went ahead and faxed them the stuff from Kinko’s last night around 10pm. This morning, its status is now “sent to warehouse” meaning it finished the “processing” and is waiting to be completed by the warehouse workers.

Whew. It still seems strange to me that they would need a photocopy of that stuff, but I dunno… I’ve never spent that much in one go on the web before… about $2400.

Get this, though… I am slightly thinking that after the conference I’ll just return it… 🙂

But maybe I’ll like it so much to keep it…

G News

That sounds like the perfect job for you Mark! Good luck with that. If there aren’t enough x-boxs to pass around, realize who has the least responsiblities, the most time on his hands and therefor the greatest capacity to appreciate the gift.

A 3700pd package?…I’ve seen bigger. Check out Ben’s mom sometime. 🙂 That 1.2mg sounds gnarly Hus. Don’t play with it without gloves and at least a nice pair of googles.

Condolences about your gramps Chris. I hope the Hus clan celebrates him well.

So this is RF weekend. Supposed to be 75 degrees and sunny all three days…its a miracle. Hopefully I can convince Colin and Diana to cut loose a bit and have some fun. I’m planning on having a costume for the first time. It was leaked to me that the Physics majors have converted a bread truck into a TMNT Van. I’m going to go as Shredder.

So I’m seriously considering an offer from a friend of mine named Romi. His friend has a Newport 40 sailing ship that they plan on sailing down the west coast with. They are planning on taking off about exactly when my ski cabin contract runs out. Here are the things Romi used to try and convince me to go. I would be learning how to kayak, scuba dive, sail, navigate, rock climb, and fish. We will eat mostly what we catch in the ocean. I can take off at any port along the way if sailing isn’t the thing for me. I will not be earning a penny when I’m doing this but the cost will be virtually nil. I’m really leaning towards turning pirate. And check this, if I feel up to it, they are going to sail from San Diego to Hus’ favorite vacation spot…Hawaii. This could be my entire summer.

So I just interviewed yesterday to coach the Reed College Men’s Basketball Team. I don’t know if I’m hired but Ann Casey came to me about the position and she seemed really happy after the Interview. The team has chewed through four coaches in the last four years. Two in the last year alone.

Well, thats all from the Mt. and Thanks Mark for keeping the Blog running.

possible new job!

Guess what? One of the people in my games research group (see my gaming page for more info) gave my name to someone at The Write Stuff, a company which does technical and other sorts of writing for other companies. Anyway, this person contacted me and wants to offer MS my services, writing short reviews and articles for www.xbox.com!

I had to write a sample 750-word article on Mafia last night, which I’ll post later on after I find out if she’ll use it to represent me. Here’s hoping I get the job!