Category Archives: Games Research

Games, Games Research, Humorous, Life

Dragon Age plot flops and Zero Punctuation

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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 →

Academia, Games Research, Life

Currently working on…

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  • Dissertation (simultaneously working on proposal and actual diss, to be finished this year as a collection of previous papers plus intro chapter and new chapter on the enrollment of a third-party mod to my raid group in terms of distributed cognition and actor-network theory).
  • Toying with the idea of a paper on exploring activity theory, actor-network theory, and positioning theory through two DS games, Valkyrie Profile and Devil Survivor.
  • Applying for academic jobs starting next school year right now. If nothing comes through, applying for other jobs. Looking for a research position in Learning Sciences or maybe Comm or Media Studies that lets me focus on learning in games, collaboration in games, games culture, new media culture, etc.
  • Also, obsessively playing Dragon Age. Very strong betrayal theme in the game’s plot and in the world’s lore.  Makes me think about previous Bioware games to try to identify the the one-word theme for each… Doable?
  • Editing paper with Sarah Walter on comparing collaboration in WoW and Lord of the Rings Online through a distributed cognition lens. It’s turning out pretty good, I think!
Academia, Games Research

Internet Researchers 10: Race in Second Life

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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

Academia, Games Research

Internet Researchers 10: Gaming 2

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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

Gaming 2

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

Academia, Games Research

Internet Researchers 10: Game Communities

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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

Video Game Communities panel

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.

Academia, Games Research

Internet Researchers 10: Game session 10:30-12:30

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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

Academia, Games Research

Discussion on mature games and moral ambiguity/development

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I met Sande Chen, one of the English writers for The Witcher, at this year’s State of Play conference last month. She runs the blog Game Design Aspect of the Month where different industry folks, academics, etc. write about games and features of games, etc.

Anyway, this month is on mature games, and Sande was able to convince me to submit something, which was helped by the post before mine where Nels Anderson wrote about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.

Given that I wrote about moral ambiguity and mentioned Kohlberg in my review of The Witcher for E-Learning last year, it made sense to bounce off of Nels’ post with a follow-up. 🙂

Academia, Games Research, Life

New York last week

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So I was at the State of Play conference last week, which put me in New York City!

Stayed with cousin Lee-kai on the west side. It was brilliant except that our busy schedules meant that we only actually hung out for like 3 hours total: a game of Race for the Galaxy when I arrived on Tuesday and lunch at Crema with Jafe (friend from high school and husband of Crema owner, Julieta) the next day. Lee-kai and his friends know RftG really, really well and basically kicked my ass even though just the week before I won a game at home. In my defense, I guess, I had some really crappy cards throughout the game and waffled on which specialization I should take. I don’t think that game is about diversifying at all, and I paid for it.

Crema was as fantastic as the last time I was in New York back in April 2008. Mmmmm. Other restaurants I got to try out were Big Nick’s (got a guacamole burger), Penang (got sizzling tofu which was good but had that weird slimy coating that I sometimes see on tofu; what is that stuff? Also, Krista-Lee thinks she got sick on the curry chicken… 🙁 ), Buona Notte (“the best” claimed the street hawkers), the cafe above Fairway on Broadway, Golden Unicorn (full on Chinese banquet, ftw!), and Katz’s (hot pastrami sandwich, yum). Pretty much great food all around.

Katz's pastrami sandwich
Katz's pastrami sandwich



Since I think the conference sessions were summarized pretty well by others (Raph, Tim, Bart, Sara, Greg L at Terra Nova, twitter hashtag #sop09), I’ll stick to the people I met. Anyway, I place more importance on the connections made and individual and collective collisions of people and ideas than I do on the sessions, so it’s pretty appropriate to list the fine folks I met.

Continue reading New York last week →

Academia, Games Research

reposting of Raph’s aggregation of State of Play reports

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http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/06/21/state-of-play-reports/

I’ll post some of my thoughts (mostly not focused on the panels but the events and people I met) later this week.

Academia, Games Research

Magic Circle for #sop09

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In case anyone was interested, I created a flash thing about the magic circle last summer.

Magic Circle (Flash)