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

Whew! almost lost my cell phone.. just in time!

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Last night I was surfing the web (mostly Letstalk.com) for a new cell phone plan since ours is due to expire in Dec. I’ve been thinking of getting a plan that features more web browsing or Java apps than our current one (and of course new phones to go with). This is mostly due to the fact that I’ve switched everything over to gmail, google calendar, google everything… and I saw a week or so ago that gmail now has a mobile phone app one could download so long as they have a supported phone and carrier…

Anyway…. been looking at Verizon and the Motorola Q and the Motorola Krzr. Only problem is that Verizon isn’t supported by google’s gmail app! But I would still be able to just browse to the simplified version thru the web… So, if I wanted the app to work, I think I would stick with our current Cingular plan but add data features and get a new phone… not sure which phone to get though. And, of course, not even sure I would use the features THAT much since I’ll be getting Opera for my DS Lite in Jan and will be able to get my google stuff anywhere there’s wifi.

But back to why I posted… ironically, maybe subconsciously, I lost my phone on the bus this morning. Realized it while I was walking through Red Square and then ran across campus to a later bus stop for the 44 and caught up with it, and, lo an behold, the driver gave me my phone after playing 20 questions. Whew! I still have 2 months on this sucker!

Games Research

WOW guild banned – PC News at GameSpot

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WOW guild banned – PC News at GameSpot

TL Taylor talks about how high-end guilds tend to encourage pushing the boundaries of game mechanics to learn to play the game most efficiently in EQ.  This story about how a WoW guild was banned for implementing a cheat to get to AQ40’s end boss by skipping the rest of the instance’s content reminds me that for a lot of players the end-game really is about the loot.  But the players’ practice emerged out of a response to what could be argued as excessively overbearing, time-consuming trash mobs.  The particular guild had the instance on farm status already, but just wanted to skip to the only boss that actually dropped anything useful for them.  Not sure how I feel about this but I completely understand the desire to fight the MMOG grind/time-sink.  Maybe if WoW went away from the subscription model?  Maybe if the trash’s loot table had a bit of randomness to it?  I dunno…

Academia, Games Research

Revised World of Warcraft paper

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The revised version of my paper Communication, Coordination, and Camaraderie in World of Warcraft was what I used for my Research and Inquiry paper and presentation.   Woot!  I left up my old draft on this blog so people can compare the two if they feel so inclined…  make the process transparent and all… yeah.

Academia, Games Research

how to get a PhD at UW CoE step-by-step

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So, the process to get a PhD here in the College of Ed at UW follows a bunch of steps. They say these steps are in the student manual, but the manual was vague as to a timeline… It was rewritten over the summer but I haven’t looked at it yet…
But anyway, here’s the deal for all you newbies! (may want to see the various forms you can download and the student manual…)

Continue reading how to get a PhD at UW CoE step-by-step →

Humorous

OMG kitties!

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http://shadowdane.shackspace.com/cats.htm

Games

Holy crap…

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Check out this game!

Flow in Games

See, this is why I haven’t looked too closely at web games.  Who has time??

Games Research

Over the summer my raid imploded

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I’m not going to write much about it here, as I’m still trying to digest what happened, but let’s just say that over the summer the raid group I was a part of imploded in a huge drama fest.  Additionally, on several occassions, talk between Harsh Winter officers and elders became heated.  These two cases make an interesting comparison, where how the drama from one was handled eventually led to its demise while the other is still alive… though hardly satisfactory to some of the affected parties.  Okay, this post is vague…. sorry.  I’ll post more about it after all the crap for school is over.  For now, there is a good read on guild trust and goals over at Terra Nova.

Academia

Beginning of quarter hectic as all get out

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So, I haven’t been posting much lately.  I’ve been really busy with the start of the school year because I procrastinated all summer on writing a book review (for T. L. Taylor’s Play Between Worlds which is a very good read, btw) and revising my paper on my World of Warcraft raid’s practices in Molten Core in time for a presentation I am doing as one of the sessions in a mini-conference of presentations that a ton of other College of Ed PhD students are also a part of on Oct 27.  We have to do this to progress to PhD candidacy which lets us take our general exams and work on our dissertations.

The more I think about it, the more I think I should write more about navigating academia.  But damn, it is just so tiring…

Life

Google buys YouTube

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Here I was trying to figure out whether to publish videos to Google or to YouTube and then recommend something to the TEP class… Well, now it looks like I won’t have to decide. 🙂

Life

My sis Frances got married!

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Just got back from a trip down to CA. My sister Frances got married on Sat! Grats Frances!

Anyway, I’ll post some photos later. 😛