All posts by markdangerchen

Mark Chen is an independent researcher of gaming culture and spare-time game designer. He is the author of Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. Currently, he is looking into experimental and artistic games to promote exploration of moral dilemmas and human nature, researching DIY subcultures of Board Game Geek users, and generally investigating esoteric gaming practices. Mark also holds appointments at Pepperdine University, University of Washington, and University of Ontario Institute of Technology, teaching a variety of online and offline courses on game studies, game design, and games for learning. He earned a PhD in Learning Sciences/Educational Technology from the University of Washington and a BA in Studio Art from Reed College.
Life

Winter break!

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My last Fall quarter related meeting was this morning. Helped a couple of TEP student-teachers out with video stuff and WebQuests at Cupcake Royale/Cafe Verite… What’s funny is that since Denise, another TA/instructor, was there, too, and we were all working on laptops (I think this is the reason), a photographer for the local neighborhood paper (Ballard News Tribune) came by and asked if she could take photos of us working on our computers… Apparently for a story about blogging and Internet cafes. 🙂

Anyway! It’s officially winter break for me now, and I can finally catch up on some non-class/non-teaching stuff. First thing I did was work on my paper and submit it to a journal. We’ll see…

Now I just have to submit presentation proposals to a bunch of conferences…

And… get T-shirts for HW ordered. Look good?

Harsh Winter T-shirt idea

Anyone who knows where I can get shirts like that made, let me know, pls!

Games, Humorous

Windows Vista and edutainment

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I was browsing the latest issue of the new magazine Games for Windows and saw in an article on Windows Vista that parents now have complete control over which games are blocked for their kids (assuming parents are the ones setting up their computers and know how to get at the parental controls and then understand ESRB ratings, etc.). The screenshot showed that parents even have control over exactly what kind of content should disallow access to a game, be it drugs, sex, crude humor, or what have you… One of the checkboxes was “edutainment.”

Hahahahaha! What’s more sad? The fact that edutainment was included on the list or the fact that I completey understand why, given the sorry state of edutainment, a gamer would want it blocked?

Here’s a screenshot I grabbed from bleepingcomputer.com

blocking games according to content in Windows Vista

Games Research

Are virtual worlds doomed to replicate social problems of real life?

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Claude Steele came to UW a month or two ago and gave a presentation on stereotype threat and identity threat. Basically, people and society give off cues all the time about their attitudes and prejudices regarding people of certain groups. The people of the affected groups unconsciously internalize the stereotypes being applied to them and, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, tend toward the patterns expected of them. For example (to use one of Claude Steele’s examples), if you give a test to a white kid and tell him while giving it to him that Asians tend to do better on this test, but he should try hard, anyway, the white kid will score less well than if you didn’t give him that social cue. You can imagine the kinds of social cues we give to African-Americans, women, etc. and realize that from the get-go some social groups are at a total disadvantage due to our unconscious stereotypes. Identity threat is sort of like the same thing. Steele’s argument is that people identify with whatever identity is most threatened. So, a black woman might identify more as black or more as a woman depending on her situation (and I think implicit in this is that people’s self-identifications change with different settings).

Continue reading Are virtual worlds doomed to replicate social problems of real life? →

Games Research

Byron Reeves at UW

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Byron Reeves from Stanford’s Media X gave at talk at the LIFE center last week. Basically, he’s been doing research on people’s emotional responses to computer games, as measured in instants with electrodes or other biometric methods. His talk included a little bit of background on that research, but it also included general visions of how MMORPGs and games in general could change the way we work and learn.

Continue reading Byron Reeves at UW →

Games, Games Research

Neverwinter Nights 2 isn’t really multiplayer friendly…

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Well, at least, the main campaign sure isn’t.  It works but the game forces all players to sit through dialog events initiated by anyone.  This makes sense for plot-moving dialog, but doesn’t make any sense for dialog that is needed for shopkeepers, etc.  What’s worse is that during these forced pauses, no keyboard or mouse entry is allowed, so there is no way within the game to discuss dialog choices with your party members.  That kinda sucks.

Ideally, any plot-moving dialog (or dialog which is not repeatable) should have some way where all players could vote for which choice to make.  Simple checkboxes or something…  Something. Anything.

Academia, Games Research

No Child Left Behind (in a virtual environment) AND the end of Bartle’s taxonomy?

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When my WoW guild was first getting started, I invited a couple of kids to the guild because they really wanted to join. At the time I thought that our guild should be all inclusive (well… to a degree obviously) with the assumption that anyone who was not yet a good fit could learn to fit in. Ah the naive days of the opening weeks…

I was also playing around with action research ideas and using the guild as a testbed for enacting various ways of designing an online community, one which could live long after the founders had left. I was approaching it from a lot of what Kollock and Smith (and Ostrum) say make for effective online communities when they wrote about discussion listservs.

Sooo… I thought that even if the guild didn’t want to collectively try to teach these kids how to fit in, I could guide them myself. It didn’t work out so well. Actually, one of them was fine (the younger one). He seemed to get things and socialized easily. The other one just didn’t fit in and he didn’t improve no matter how many times I explained things to him. He kept begging other guild members for gold, kept rerolling characters and asking for them to be invited to the guild, kept being rather chaotic or something…. I felt really bad, but in the end, after talking it over with the other guild officers, we decided to let these kids go and find them a different guild to join.

Continue reading No Child Left Behind (in a virtual environment) AND the end of Bartle’s taxonomy? →

Academia, Games Research

Games 4 Change Salon at UW

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Last summer there was a Games for Change (G4C) summit in D.C. Fit in my schedule but, alas, no money. Anyway, Ruth Fruland who is spearheading the Games and Simulation Works (GaSWorks) at UW was able to go and was asked to start/lead a Seattle chapter of G4C. While there she met someone named Morgan and together they organized a Games for Change Salon at UW on November 16. Many thanks to them for organizing it all.

Continue reading Games 4 Change Salon at UW →

Games, Games Research

Found a quick bullet review I did for Dungeons and Dragons Online

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I posted this back in Feb on my guild’s forums… found it while I was looking for what I wrote about WoW and lack of moral choices a la single player RPGs… thought this DDO beta review might be interesting too. Yes, beta… but I did play the final release, too, and getting to the next district and level 6 didn’t really change my mind:

Continue reading Found a quick bullet review I did for Dungeons and Dragons Online →

Games, Games Research

The lameness of World of Warcraft—and what to do about it.

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The lameness of World of Warcraft—and what to do about it. – By Chris Dahlen – Slate Magazine

Nice article… here’s a quote:

Warcraft also limits your choices when it comes to gameplay. The citizens of Warcraft are like migrant workers—they get their marching orders, and they follow them to the letter. Players never face moral quandaries and never get to choose between an upstanding act and an evil one. Instead of just barging through every problem with a sword and a club, Warcraft should let players negotiate their way through conflicts. If someone pays you to run an errand, do you follow through honestly or steal their money? Should you betray one faction to win favor with another—and what happens if you pick the wrong side? Other commercial role-playing games, like the best-selling Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, are full of these types of decisions. It’s time Warcraft gets with the program. (Chris Dahlen, Nov 14, 2006)

Continue reading The lameness of World of Warcraft—and what to do about it. →

Academia

AERA proposal got rejected!

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Constance got the news earlier this week that the proposal for a panel discussion (with Lisa Galarneau, Thomas Malaby, and me and Kurt Squire facilitating) was turned down for the American Educational Research Association conference in 2007. Ah well… I should probably be shopping my paper/presentation to a bunch of different places, but having no money kinda sucks since I wouldn’t be able to go there to actually give the presentation… I can request a bit of money from my college but I am actually saving it for AERA, if only as an attendant. 😛