Category Archives: Life

Academia, Games Research, Life

Back in Seattle. Can’t blog. Writing papers.

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So, I got back to Seattle (on the 12th) after my brother and Nancy’s wedding celebration in Berkeley (on the 10th), capping the end of a month-long trip to the Bay Area for me and a short weekend trip for Robin.

I have an ass-ton of stuff to post here but I haven’t due to lack of time.  I’ll try to keep this short, and I might have to add links and photos later.

1. Last week I was busy learning Illustrator and then using it to make some pretty title graphics for a French translation to the Dangerous Decibels Virtual Exhibit.

2. This past weekend, Robin’s high-school friend Liz and her boyfriend Rob were visiting.  They went to a wedding on Saturday while Robin and I did some house chores and caught up on some movie watching.

3. Last night Michele Knobel emailed me comments to The Witcher review I’m working on.  Unsurprisingly, I need to beef up the academic literature part.  🙂  She was kind enough to send me ideas with regards to moral development models and such from Kohlberg and Gilligan as well as some other ideas for how to talk about moral education and stuff in my review.  Due at end of this week if I want to make the issue deadline.  Otherwise it’ll wait til the December issue.

4. I’m also writing a review for Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the DS, also for Michele’s e-Learning journal.  She sent me a review copy of the game, after all… I suppose I have a moral obligation to write something.  :p  Seriously though, I think it’ll be a short but good overview of how badly I suck at action games and the various causes of failures in games (poor game ui design, poor player cognitive ability, poor player physical ability, and lack of motivation) and what this means for educators/teachers who are thinking about incorporating games in the classroom.  What if not everyone can/will play them??  Due date ditto above.

5. I need to add a bit more in my paper on ethical dilemmas while being a guild leader in WoW that I’m using for the In the Game Workshop in October.  Due Sep 1.

6. I have only an outline for another paper that I’m writing about expertise development in World of Warcraft for the new journal Transformative Works and Cultures.  I figure a solid week should be enough time to write what I need to.  It might suck at first but I think I just need a rough draft at this point.  Due Sep 1, also.

Games, Life

All quiet on the western front…

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I haven’t been posting much lately since I’ve been busy at a new temporary month-long job down here in sunny California.

Been meeting a ton of people and making new friends, as well as visiting my mom (my dad is in China right now), brother, sister, and high school friends.

Eating some good food:

  • Pizz’a Chicago — mmm good deep-dish!
  • that place on El Camino that used to be Senor Taco — sopas con carnitas!
  • Dynasty for dim sum — pretty good…
  • In-N-Out — double-double animal style
  • some new Szichuan place for really red broth beef noodle soup, scallops, etc.
  • quite good catered breakfasts and lunches at the job, too!

Playing some games:

  • Ra — Aaron doesn’t like this game.  That’s okay because it was just me and Chris and new friend Jessica.  🙂
  • Carcassonne — Jessica kicked Chris and my asses.
  • Fury of Dracula — the 1987 version.  Dracula was totally pwned.
  • Hearts — fun, old school game
  • D&D 4th Ed. — really brief intro to combat pretty much through a one-shot adventure run by Chris.  Not entirely sure how I feel about it now, as each class doesn’t seem as distinct as in 3.5, but there’s definitely more balance I think.
  • dodgeball at Jump Sky High — hella tiring!  I’ve gone before so I was prepared but damn.

Gonna try to meet up with Chris, Grey, and SG again this weekend to play Chris’s new game Pillars of the Earth and maybe War of the Ring or something.

Academia, Games Research, Life

GLS 2008 Day 2 Session 2: the WoW roundtables!

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I was part of the World of Warcraft roundtable session this morning. It went really well, and the paper figures were a hit.

I caught up with Adam Hyland who used to be an engineer and managing engineer on a NAVY boat, and it was really cool hearing about how much parallel he saw with WoW raiding and the way a NAVY boat works. We talked a bit about Hutchins and it was great to hear that the description in Cognition in the Wild is pretty close to Adam’s experiences.

Here’s the info for my session:

World of Warcraft: Modeling the Ladder to Success in the Classroom
Paul Bielema

The Complexity of Dialogues in Interactive Role-Playing Videogames
Ellen Bielema

Leet Noobs: Expert World of Warcraft Players Relearning & Adapting Expertise in New Contexts
Mark Chen

World of Warcraft Lessons Learned & Applied: Models & Professions
Kenneth Hay

Women & “Passing” in Online Games
Shawna Kelly

Finding Governance in Synthetic Worlds
Krista-Lee Malone

“N00b” Rhetorics, Learning, & Identity in Online Gaming
Lee Sherlock

A Topology of Literacy Practices in World of Warcraft
Constance Steinkuehler

Much like I would with a poster session, I lament the fact that we didn’t get to go around and talk to each other.  It seems ironic since we would’ve benefited the most.  (I just had a quick chat with Lee and Shawna who feel the same way.)

Here’s a photo of my papercraft. 🙂



Academia, Games Research, Life

GLS 2008 Day 2: late start…

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I just woke up about 30 min ago and am waiting in my hotel lobby for a shuttle to Monona Terrace. The first session starts right now, so it looks like I’m missing it… Was going to go to the session on ethics and politics:

Moral Economies of Play: Learning and Citizenship in MMO Games
Doug Thomas

Power From the People: How Videogames Foster Participatory Democracy
Lisa Galarneau

Ethics at Play: Youth Perspectives on the Ethical Dimensions of Gaming
Sam Gilbert

Since Lisa’s one of the people, maybe I can just ask her how it went… :/

Academia, Games, Games Research, Life

GLS 2008: Dinner for reals and LAN party!

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Okay, turns out we just waited 30 minutes and then all bussed over to Tenney Park.  The rain did a pretty number on the park, though, and we were pretty much standing in a watery lawn the whole time.

But it was pretty cool.  I talked with Debbie Fields about our respective research.  I met someone working on a project for native american youth in Washington.  I talked with Shawna Kelly and Lisa Galarneau (ironic 🙂 ) a bit.  Met up with Brett Shelton (who was also at ICLS).

Dinner was catered by a local taco place.  It was pretty good.  The queso was good, as was the fish taco and tamale.  I thought the beans and rice tasted funny but it was probably some spice I’m not used to.  Seemed middle-eastern a bit, though…

After dinner we wished Kurt Squire a happy birthday with cake!

Then there was a karaoke band but I had to take off on the first bus with a bunch of TrN folk to meet up with Thomas Malaby, and Eric Ellis and Linda Polin (from Pepperdine).  They were our rides over to the Union Building (not sure that’s the right url for it) for hella fun LAN raiding.  We went to AQ20 and blasted through those bosses like they were queso succumbing to our crunchy tortilla chips.






Academia, Life

GLS 2008: Dinner

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OMG, the rain is coming down hard!  The food from the park is being moved to over here at Monona Terrace, and I don’t think the TrN (sort of) folk are going to be strolling down State St. any time soon.

Academia, Games Research, Life

GLS 2008 Session 4: skipped…

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I met up with Josh Diaz (new to me blog!) earlier and we started talking about DnD 4th Edition. He mentioned he was starting a campaign with the MIT crowd he hangs out with (and that profs had signed up to play!) which coincides with me joining a campaign some of my friends down in the Bay Area are running. So I asked him character advice and lo and behold! he had the books with him in his backpack.

Long story short, I spent a bit of time looking at the Player’s Handbook. Considering either a Cleric or a Warlock. 🙂

Now the session is over and I’m sitting in the Arcade writing this. There’s a conference dinner thing at a local park but some Terror Nova folks want to get dinner on State St. somewhere and I’ll probably tag along for that.

But guess what? There’s some crazy ass storm headed our way! Hopefully I don’t get too drenched!

Later tonight is the TrN LAN party! Looking forward to that!

Academia, Games Research, Life

Chicago O’Hare and arriving in Madison

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I was all set to hop onto the net and post a photo of the glorious Chicago style hotdog I just ate at Gold Coast (intersection of H and G gates in O’Hare, and gets a bad rep on Yelp). Unfortunately, the wifi that is advertised all over the place and hawked through the PA system is not as free as they lead you to believe… Ah well…

I was lured into false hope because I was able to find a free hotspot in SeaTac at the Tully’s down my gateway. I was surprised to see that it was free, at first, but then figured, it was only a matter of time. So in Chicago, I just figured they were further along than Seattle. In retrospect, I guess that seems contrary to commmon sense, what with all the high-tech business in Seattle…

So, I’m writing this post while in O’Hare but I won’t be able to upload it until I get on a hotspot in Madison. I am not sure if my hotel has free wifi, so it might have to wait til tomorrow when the conference starts…

Awesome; my hotel has free wifi! Here’s photos of the hot dog:





I already met a bunch of people at the airport terminal waiting for the 30 min flight to Madison:

  • Judy Perry–who I think I also met at ICLS but maybe I’m misremembering
  • Eric Klopfer–who I’ve seen before but haven’t really met and still haven’t really met since he was busy with some crazy-ass small computer when I went to say to them all
  • Alex Chisholm–who maybe I met at the Education Arcade 2004
  • Andy? or maybe Dan? (I’ll double check the name and update this tomorrow)–who recently graduated and works with Alex

Then I sat next to Steve Atlas, another GLS participant, on the plane (which was an hour late). Talked a little about our respective research. 🙂

The shuttle ride from the airport the hotel was pretty cool, too. I sat up front since it was just me, and talked with Louis the driver about restaurants, World of Warcraft, shuttle drivers, etc.

Pretty nice hotel room at the Doubletree was waiting for me. The king size bed has 5 pillows! 🙂





Up early tomorrow for registration and conference. More later!

Academia, Games Research, Life

Off to Games Learning Society in Madison, WI!

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After spending a week at home, recovering from jet lag, playing some games, going to a couple of parties, and working, I’m off to another conference. This one is focused specifically on games and education and is hosted by the Games Learning Society group at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Basically, it’s the Constance and Kurt crew, plus some other profs (formerly Jim Gee) and their students, afaik.

One thing that’s cool is that a bunch of Terror Nova, the World of Warcraft guild run by the Terra Nova blog peeps, will be there and we’re planning a LAN party on Thursday night at a bar with terrace seating. 🙂

I met a bunch of them last year, but I was relatively new to the guild. While I haven’t played much this past year, recently I did start raiding with them (Kara100 was fun!), and it’d be great to strengthen my link of faces to the screen names.

Another cool thing is that I’m presenting the same expertise topic at GLS as I did at ICLS just last week in Utrecht, The Netherlands. This time, however, instead of a poster, it’s a roundtable session (with a bunch of concurrent roundtables featuring WoW research going on. I’m bummed I won’t see everyone else’s stuff, but I’m excited with what I’ll be doing.

I worked for the last two or three days on paper figures of a raid group in the Ragnaros fight. Photos are on my camera at home, and I forgot to upload them last night, so you’ll have to wait til after my session for cool photos of the diorama. But to give you and idea, below is a low-quality jpeg of one of the sheets that I printed out. While Robin and I were cutting them out last night we already learned a couple of tips to make them better. Alas, no time, but I’ll touch up the sheets with the modifications and post them here so you can make them if you want. 🙂

Anyway, I’ll be blogging updates about the conference over the next few days. Then I’m off to San Jose for a month!



Games Research, Life

OMG, look at what I missed by a day!

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Medieval Dutch city of Utrecht to host world game festival

I arrived in Utrecht on the 23rd. The Festival of Games ended on the 22nd! 🙁