Too Much Media Too Little Time

tmmtlt has moved

2007-02-02T10:56:00.000-05:00

Hi all two of my loyal readers,

Just wanted to let you know that I have moved out of blogger and onto a real website.

Check it out here, and change your bookmarks.

CFP: Japanese 'Cute' Children's Culture 1995-now

2007-01-17T09:01:00.000-05:00

Modern Language Association (MLA) 2007

Chicago -- December 27-30 Children's Literature Division

Japanese Kawaii/Cute Children's Culture 1995-Now

Cute, as we now commonly conceive of it, originated in the U.S. in the late 19th century. Japanese 'kawaii' is a quite recent import altering and adding to 'cute' in a variety of ways. Contemporary Japanese artists creating animated feature length films, children's picture books, video games, characters, and fine art gallery and museum installations, are both borrowing from and also changing children's literature and culture.

This panel seeks to explore the uniquely Japanese form of 'cute', known as 'kawaii'. In the United States, Asian-American subculture is increasingly identifying with kawaii, as is the larger American culture (e.g. Target and other retail stores consistently sell Hello Kitty books and merchandise, Katamari video games, and Spirited Away DVDs.) This session invites papers that approach this topic from any angle, but particularly welcome are scholars taking an Asian-American, post-colonial or international perspective.

Papers might address why Japanese artists whose kawaii art depicts children or children's literature references are receiving international recognition and top auction prices when all other Japanese artists are virtually ignored. How does this change North American conceptions of multiculturalism? How and why are countries including Korea, China, France, and the United States consuming kawaii Japanese artists/products so happily and then changing these artists/products? How is this proliferation changing children's culture production and conceptions of the child internationally?

Possible artists include Hayao Miyazaki, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, Chinatsu Ban, and Aya Takano. Possible characters include TarePanda, Hello Kitty, Pucca & Garu, MashiMaro, Cinnamoroll, Burnt Toast, Chibamaru, and Mr. DOB.

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2007

Please submit abstracts for a 15-20 minute presentation or 8-10 page papers along with a short bio and contact information to: jmmann@english.ufl.edu

Jaimy M. Mann

Department of English

University of Florida

P.O. Box 117310

Gainesville FL 32611-7310

www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jmmann

Yes! Finally Had an Excuse to Post a Pic of Angelina!

2007-01-16T11:51:00.000-05:00

The award ceremony of the Golden Globes was on TV last night. I don't watch that stuff, too much talking and what they call jokes and at many, lip-sung performances. These things should take an hour, max. Anyhoo, I much prefer to read the results the next day and look at pictures of what people were sporting.

I was made happiest by the wins of Ugly Betty and America Ferrera. Apparently such a win is atypical because of the relative youth of the show (not even one season long), but it is easily explained. No matter how much I love my crime, hospital, and supernatural action shows, Ugly Betty is a breath of fresh, funny, touching air. A comedy that is not a sitcom? Get out! And it works. Sending up not just the fashion industry but racial stereotypes, Sex-and-the-City love and sex dillemas, and gender roles, Ugly Betty is smart packaged as cute and kitshy. Plus the writers and actors have fun playing with the audience, as evinced by Amanda's double role last week as her skinny, hot pant-sporting self as well as bespectacled mess at the other mag. And who doesn't love Cristina? Mark? Vanessa Williams's completely hyperbolic evil bitch character Willemina? Now if only they could replace that dud of an actor playing the not-so-prodigal son, Daniel.

Other awards went to Babel (must-see), Studio 60 (whatever), Grey's Anatomy (so good), Borat, I mean SBC (over-hyped), and Helen Mirrin for The Queen (eerie eerie good). And they all say that the Globes are a pretty good indicator for the Tall Gold Man Statue awards. We shall see...

Oh yeah, Angelina was there, looking like perfection.

A Timeless Question, or, Gaming to Learn

2007-01-15T10:31:00.000-05:00

The BBC reports West Nottinghamshire College teachers used Atari's Neverwinter Nights to reach "disaffected" students and improve their literacy and numeracy skills. Research on the project found that successful learning of key skills had tripled, to 94%. Over 700 learners played the modified game, which cost $25 million to develop from the original game.

Long before I got into video game theory I was working as a instructional designer for e-learning tutorials (my lawyers tell me not to disclose any further information on my employers). Anyhoo, I read a lot about the use of 'interactive' tools like games for learning, with many e-learning folks in favor and traditional book-learning people against. The whole design of online learning is geared toward mainly basic skills such as grammar, writing well, etc. because the quick delivery method is posited to lend itself well to lower-wage, perhaps non-English learners without the time or money to go to the community college for courses. Furthermore, rather than pedantically telling the learner the parts of grammar, these tutorials largely teach through examples, scenarios, questions, and tests, thereby immediately putting all knowledge into action.

We have known for a long time that there are many kinds of learners, tactile, auditory, by-experience... Most of these courses work on all levels, comprising audio elements, learn-by-doing activities, etc. And to me, games always seemed an excellent avenue for this.

Later, I read a chapter in the Video Game Theory Reader on an experiment at MIT where a few games were developed with loads of money to teach university-level students. The most compelling game was one that allowed students to better understand the obscure physics theories that could not be experienced in life through game mechanics. Instead of memorizing a theory, they were feeling it as they hurtled through space. Genius, I thought. Too bad most places do not have a third of MIT's budget, or $25 million to mod Neverwinter Nights.

But do we need that much money? Are we spoiled forevermore by the graphics, interfaces, and engines of commercially-produced games, to the point that anything lesser would be more remarkable for its cruddiness than its lessons? Why did that college need to use such a sophisticated game to teach area and volume anyway?

Perhaps the best route for delivery of teaching games would be through the same companies that make textbooks. If the cirriculum endorsed a game made by a familiar name, they would be in the schools and the bookstores. But I cannot envision a game labeled McGraw-Hill Ryerson, can you?

5 Days To Go!

2007-01-11T08:36:00.000-05:00

Browsing the BBC, I came across an article on World of Warcraft and its first expansion, The Burning Crusade. Due in stores in the first minutes of January 16, 2007, this expansion to the world's most popular online role-playing game ever has been garnering pretty much universally good reviews from the closed beta.

Some of the additions offered include a new race for both sides of the fight, the Blood Elves for the Horde and the Draenei for the Alliance, each with a whole new set of storylines, capital cities, and a brand spanking new continent. Additionally, these new races bring complexity to the war, as they are both traitors to the other side. The expansion also offers more enemies and allies for each side. Finally, Horde can now play as paladins and Alliance as shamans.

Furthermore- my favorite trait- players are now able to Look for Groups doing the same quests. Other expansion characteristics include expanded talent trees and new professions such as jewel-crafting, and the removal of the fairly useless (to me) honour system.

Why am I, whose main is only level 16, so excited about an expansion that is mainly geared toward lvl 60 players, with new quests, zones, mounts, and instances reserved for these high-enders? I guess part of it the knowledge that at some point I will indeed be one of those crazy nerds. The other part is that I love the idea of being able to do quests in groups easily. But finally, I so badly want to play as a Draenei, who crashed their spaceship and who you begin play as surrounded by the wreckage of your ship and the corpses of your comrades. Awesome.

A Wii Legacy?

2007-01-10T08:37:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't be so silly as to say that Nintendo started the trend of focusing on novel external interface devices with the Wii-mote, but it would seem to me not only anecdotal that 3-D computer mouses had a strong showing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas (no, that is not where the IPhone debuted- that was the MacWorld Conference and Expo).

CBC reports that the three different computer mouses, meant to enhance play in 3D environments, have three entirely different approaches to carrying out their goal.

Novint's Falcon stands out just because of its odd appearance. This 'mouse' is shaped like a globe attached by three arms to "what looks like a lunar module resting on its side". The three arms allow 3D movement, and the controller is posited to allow the feeling of force effects during play. Sandio's Game O' mouse does not sound too innovative as it is described as akin to a standard mouse except that buttons on the side of the mouse slide both sideways and up and down. Cylo's 3style mouse sounds the most tactile-intuitive. It is a round wireless mouse that is controlled by how gamers spin it.

I think the development of external interface tools is an interesting method for exploring and improving gameplay (graphics and processor speed are a tired route). The Wii-mote has been a success in console gaming, so what can we do for computer gaming? I am not sure huge, chunky devices will take off. Of course, only play will tell, but do you think these are all simply gimmicks?

Slamming Slamdance for its Slights

2007-01-09T08:33:00.000-05:00

Some pretty big news in the game world this week doesn't come from reports on sales figures but from a controversy generated by the Guerilla Gamemaker Competition of the Slamdance Festiva;. After courting the game, electing it by jury, and advertising and promoting its status as finalist, the organizers pulled Super Columbine Massacre RPG from the competition. The game is pretty much what it sounds like, that is to say you role-play as Harris and Klebold on the fateful morning of the Columbine Massacre. In all likelihood, this description elicited either of two reaction from you, either complete disgust that anyone could make a game of such a tragedy, or that this is just in line with the production of fiction films like Gus Van Sant's Elephant that explore one of the darkest moments in recent history.

Needless to say, this variation in potential reactions is fueling a pretty big debate and backlash. Besides a number of debates raging on the usual gaming sites, Grand Text Auto, The Ludologist, and Water Cooler Games are reporting that Brad, flOw, and Everyday Shooter have dropped out of the competition in protest.

Before you pass further judgement, take a look at some screenshots from the game here. The two quotes at the bottom (and their inclusion) are to me very telling. The whole issue also seems to drive home the question of what games can do, and what they as a form are allowed by the media and the public to do.

The Boys Are Still Missing

2007-01-08T09:39:00.000-05:00

The BBC reports on a Pew Internet Project study that finds that "55% of American youths aged 12-17 had accounts at sites such as MySpace and Facebook". One of the most important conclusions of the study was that the assumption that youths plastered their personal profiles for all to see was false; these young users instead were found to largely use filters and restrictive devices to protect their information from the larger population.

The study also found a difference in how the sexes use these social networking sites, with girls using them to connect to exisiting friends and boys employing them to find new connections. Interestingly for my research purposes, the study found that "these sites were most popular with girls aged 15-17 as 70% of those questioned said they had an account at one or more of the social networking sites. By contrast only 54% of boys aged 15-17 were such keen users". I have not yet seen any site posited to be more popular with boys than girls. Where are the boys online? My proposed PhD research aims to study the gendered aspects of virtual communities and to pinpoint the activities of boys online. At this point I can only guess, but I would be guessing that online gaming is still the hideaway of boys, because sociality can be linked to play.

Any boys want to reveal their favorite spots online?

The Worst of the Worst

2007-01-05T08:35:00.000-05:00

The annual Foley awards are distributed to mark the utter incompetence of both American governmental agencies and policy makers in the domain of digital media. While I and non-American readers may not be automatically familiar with these agencies/policies/politicians, the links provided make for some good laughs. My un-favorites include:

Worst overall web design of a government website
"It started parodically bad, it continues to be appallingly bad, and it seems like it won't cease to be bad any time soon. The prize for the all-around worst government website still goes to Ready.gov, which merits the recognition in a number of categories. The fact that they created a truly abysmal children's page this year (see this story in July) and threatened the Federation of American Scientists with a trademark infringement lawsuit because they made a critical counter-site (see this story in August) makes them worthy of the dishonor."

Worst government-funded videogame
"I asked Ludology czar Gonzalo Frasca this question, who said, "I would say that by far the worst government funded game is the War in Iraq. And they're losing!"
I like the Federation of American Scientists otherwise, but I think the NSF-funded Immune Attack is probably the biggest unrecognized taxpayer turkey this year. Not only is this a classic example of "content stuffing" into a genuinely un-fun game, but the representations of microscopic body components are often wildly inaccurate in color, size, and behavior."

Worst regulation of technology in response to a craven fear
"Banning access to social networking sites in schools and libraries may be the worst regulation of a common technological practice in response to the bogeyman of the child sexual predator who was haunting the House Energy and Commerce hearings all this year. The Deleting Online Predators Act may have many unintended consequences for those who depend on Internet service as a cheap alternative to long distance phone calls for the poor or as a way to access social services and other important cultural goods."

See the whole list of 'winners' here.

Lonely Horde, Affable Alliance

2007-01-04T10:41:00.000-05:00

The last issue of Games and Culture was dedicated to World of Warcraft, and there was some discussion of what kind of players chose to play as the Horde and which select the much prettier Alliance characters. The general consensus was the noobs and girls play as the Tolkienesque avatars of the Alliance, allured by the familiar good-guy rhetoric of elves and such, while hard-core gamers with experience are attracted to the monsterous orcs and trolls of the Horde. I was pleased by this originally because the first time around I played on the Horde. However, when I signed up after xmas on my own account, I was encouraged by friends to join them on their servers as Alliance members.

The difference in my experiences was striking. I figured my loneliness grinding away at the lower levels as a troll was symptomatic of being below level 10. As a night elf, I was quickly surprised by how much nicer and more social Alliance players are. I have grouped multiple times, spontaneously united with players to defeat a non-quest monster, and just generally chatted pleasantly. Businesslike calls for groups, trades, and tips were equally balanced by joking around and playful emotes. I am guessing that part of being a hard-core gamer is that all that sociality gets in the way of leveling efficiently and is only really desired when necessary for play.

Someone should do a study. Anyhoo, I know many of my untalkative readers are WoW players. Any comments on Alliance-Horde differences?

They Took Away My Free Skype So I Will Blog Instead

2007-01-03T16:43:00.000-05:00

Since I am on a graduate school hiatus (that awkward time between defending a thesis, graduation, and hearing back from PhD programs), I am suddenly overwhelmed with ideas and potential arguments for papers. Of course, this could be due to the fact that ideas are easy, its implementation that's work, and I have no real pressure to do the latter. On the other hand, it may be because I have time to canoodle and browse articles at my leisure, without having to preserve brain space for positions only relevant to my thesis.

Three ideas in particular keep bopping around my skull. I have had more, but they seem to largely require extensive ethnography in Asian countries, and I am currently SSHRC-less. These other ideas are theoretical and in some ways interrelated.

1) The Holy Grail- I posted about this before. What makes a game fun? What makes MMOGs work as immersive environments? What is that elusive element of games that everyone knows about but universally cannot put into words, theory or design. So instead design is often based on hardware capabilities like improved graphics, tried-and-true franchises, and gimmiky personas. Theory attends to other dimensions of games like structuralist analysis, discussions of representation, and studies of gameplay experiences. This leads to-

2) Smackdown Academics Vs. Designers- Otherwise known as Ivory Tower-supported anti-intellectualism. This is exemplified by the article “Immersion Unexplained” in Issue 57 of The Escapist, which charges academics with discovering how immersion works but dismisses the work done thus far by video game theorists, argued to be mainly semantic quibbles. Varney, who is a game designer, sums up the long and complex narratology versus ludology discussion as “airy palaver” (p. 22) and “buffleheaded pedantry” (p. 22). He charges academics to "get a job" (p. 22), preferably in game development. Varney is fixated on what amounts to the dismissal of academia and its work. This is simply representative of the derision felt by some game designers and industry heavyweights toward academics, and the sentiment that academics merely talk about games without ever playing them. As Andrew Stern writes in his response to Varney’s article in the Grand Text Auto blog, the pursuit of knowledge is not by definition necessarily applicable to the building of anything, including immersive video games.

3) Slacker Games- This leads nicely into my third fascination, which is thoroughly unprofitable to game design, and that is pinning down what makes a game a game. No not fun. Just a game. Because I think tying down a definition can be productive, and yet people seem to really like messing around with them. Jesper Juul, for instance, just posted his newest article, on games without goals. This piques my interest because I would argue that games require goals just as much as they require rule systems. I haven't read through this article yet, but his examples of GTA, The Sims, and Wow (all games I have played and enjoyed) are all to me totally wonderful examples of how goals can vary, not of how games can be termed as such without goals.

So I expect that more posts shall follow in the line of these 3 interests, especially since I have some reading to do, and reading is more fun when you can write about it later.

By the way, anyone know of a good free replacement for my beloved lost Skype?

Game On In 2007

2007-01-02T08:48:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! Every year, news outlets, websites, and TV specials commemorate the previous year and make predictions for the next. In honor of this timeless tradition, I will highlight some that I have seen in my first post of the new year.

Kotaku's 2007 predictions and choice 2006 moments were turned over to readers to decide. Resoundingly the Wii was posited to be the surprise of 2006, and price drops on xBox 360s, PS3s and Wiis in the New Year one of the predictions. Many were looking forward to Wii developments, such as a colorful version, connectivity, and more games. I was tickled by chibihobo's comment, "i think 2007 will be a big year simply because people will not be buying old generation hardware anymore". We got a Sega Dreamcast over xmas...

Terra Nova predicts Second Life backlash and takes bets on 13 possible media stances over 2007, with #13 being that the outside bet that the persistent virtual environment turns out to be as wonderful as originally imagined. I see #6, #8, #10, and #11 as most likely, just based on historical evidence of media and popular reactions to other media.

Joystiq and Gamespot chose Gears of War as game of 2006, despite EA's report that Madden NFL 07 was the best-selling game of the year and that many other random reviewers cited The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Whatever, comparing shooters and action games goes against my beliefs in genre-specific analyses. Check out X-Play best of list here.

My predictions? Video game studies is fueling up to be even more dynamic in 2007. Just before the ball dropped Game Studies published a new (and long-awaited) issue and receiver magazine released a special issue on gaming and playing. Games and Culture journal released a call for papers for a special edition on Asia-Pacific Game Studies that emphasizes the importance of local studies of game play using the example of Korea's public play and Japan's private gaming. DiGRA 2007 hits Tokyo this September, students and profs alike have a backlog of books from 2006 to catch up on, and all signs point to a hot year for video game studies. I can hardly wait!

On a personal level, I finally got my own copy of World of Warcraft so I can guild and make as many characters as I like without pestering my brother for time on his account.

Do you have any crystal ball insights for the upcoming 363 days?

I Wish My Picture on the Cover of Time was Photoshopped a Little

2006-12-21T18:33:00.000-05:00

In old news, me and you and my baby brother and my slacker cousin and my cross-eyed uncle were all named Time's Person of the Year. Well, people. And we are not alone. Everyone who uses the Internet, in fact, was named a Person of the Year, for contributing to what they call the "new digital democracy". This translates to rampant usage of MySpace and YouTube (also the invention of the year).

Here is some of the most flatulent rhetoric, courtest of CBC:

"It's about the many wresting power from the few," wrote Lev Grossman, Time's technology writer.

[The internet is] a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.'-Lev Grossman

Grossman also pointed out that blogs are "often more immediate and authentic than traditional media."

Uh-huh. So by stealing and uploading copyrighted material, advertising your musical taste and sexual proclivities, and rambling about your vacation in Tunisia, you are suddenly part of a digital democracy that provides you with agency over the dominant powers that be and also allowing more authenticity to bloom on the Net?

In the words of Philip, I ain't drinkin that Kool-aid.

Nintendo Responds to the Cry 'Wii Need Thicker Straps'

2006-12-15T09:20:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well... I could see this coming. Wait for the bugs and their fixes to emerge I said pre-Wii and PS3 launches, a reproach that fell on deaf ears. And what do you know, I was RIGHT!

CBC reports that after multiple reports of broken glass, TV screens, and in one case a "fan apparently sprained and cut a finger on her right hand while trying to rally for a comeback victory in Wii baseball", Nintendo is offering a replacement of the previously flimsy 0.06 cm straps with sturdier o.04 cms versions.

The article goes on to declare Nintendo the (sort-of) current winner in the console wars despite "Wii controllers going ballistic".

Man those writers have got a sense of humor.

Early Adopters, Laggards, and Blogging

2006-12-14T10:21:00.000-05:00

Gartner Inc., a tech research company, predicts that the adoption of blogging softwares will peak in 2007 and then level off. The CBC reports that this is not due to an inherent flaw in blogging but that this is characteristic of all new products. I learned this in an undergraduate course on marketing. First, early adopters snatch up flashy new products and through word-of-mouth spread news and hype/trash about the good. New customers follow in waves depending on their relative openness to new goods. With techie goods this tends to have a very rapid progression; DVDs for instance were one of the most quickly adopted formats. Laggards are the type of people that still use a VCR and disdain DVD technology, searching stores for VHS cassettes.

The article on blogging notes that those who would want a blog would have started one by now, and those that had one and were disenchanted have moved on. Sure, those who are into trends have probably moved on somewhere else, but I think blogs have great potential, especially for research, collaborative work, and distance communications. I have seen many grad students blogging for posterity, posting their findings and jotting down preliminary observations. When I worked at MDCN, we blogged questions, process, sources, and plans. Finally, with the many profs and students one meets at academic conferences and meetings, blogs make a great method of keeping up with diverse research projects.

Obviously, my position as a student researcher flavor my view of blogging. I know some of you out there blog as a professional endeavor, as a personal diary, and as a method of keeping in touch with loved ones. Do you see a future in blogging beyond the rise and fall of consumer goods with planned obselence?

What About Thesis Defenses and Flow?

2006-12-13T19:36:00.000-05:00

So I am happy to announce and revel in the completion of my Master's thesis defense, where my 144-page tome was 'accepted as submitted', which is as good as it gets. I had a very lively and dare I say fun Q&A session with my committee which included Dr. Leslie Shade, Dr. Marty Allor, and Dr. Kim Sawchuk.

Already moving on... my next beautiful, virgin research area will be the intriguing question of flow in video games. From what I have seen, most people are referring to the work of the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. According to Wikipedia, Csikszentmihalyi uses flow to describe "the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment". So flow would describe the engagement experienced in sports, playing an instrument, and the play of video games.

This leads to preliminary research in psychological research on affect, cognition, motivation, and flow. A tad dull, but I know it will be worth it for when I can move into computer and science and technology studies to get in deeper into this topic.

Jenova Chen's MFA research popped up, and I must say that game is very pretty but not altogether addictive. Her thesis looks fairly interesting though, as I think flow is an intriguing way to get at game design. I'll keep you posted!

Nice to be back...

Look But Don't Touch

2006-12-07T07:40:00.000-05:00

That was the message I got when, weighed down with Christmas and miscellaneous baggage at Angrignon mall, I walked by a demo booth for the Wii and Wii Sports. Two booth babes (not scantily clad but demurely donned in Wii T-shirts and jeans) played away, one swinging a golf club and the other a baseball bat. They were encircled by a small but older ground of people seemingly fascinated by what they were seeing. The girls took a break to talk to people, promoted the system, and then went back to playing- none of the onlookers got the chance to try it out.

Perhaps in my seasonal malaise I imagined it, but there was some pouting going on. What kind of stupid idea is it to show the action you could see in a commercial but not let anyone try the wi-mote out? Especially when people may very well have headed off to buy one as an xmas gift for their spoiled grandson.... or retired hubby.

Anyhoo, I apologize in advance for some blogless days to come. I have muchos busy days away from home to come, culminating in my thesis defense on Monday. I hope you all have a less crazy weekend than me, though I hope you will attend a party like the one I will on Saturday in benefit of Sun Youth. Food, toys, and money are all welcomed at this time of year.

MySpace Goes Medieval on Sex Offenders

2006-12-06T07:44:00.000-05:00

The CBC reports that MySpace, in collaboration with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp, is now using the software Sentinel Safe to locate and subsequently remove registered sex offenders from the site. The software works by comparing the data of the sex offender registry to the information in users' MySpace registration, including name, age, hair color, distinguishing marks, and hopefully in the future, email addresses.

I have two seperate problems with this, neither of which have anything to do with defending sex offenders. 1) Do people really think sex offenders on the prowl on MySpace would provide their actual name, age, or other information? Furthermore, do you think, with the ease in using public computers and signing up for free email addresses, sex offenders looking to do no good would honestly register all of their email addresses? 2) What is implicit in this project is that the administrators of the website regular troll your personal information in order to surveille and regulate their site. Why do we have rooted problems with the government doing so, and yet none with commercial websites? MySpace is only one example of the freedoms we extend to commercial ventures and yet fight against in RL (for instance, zero intellectual property rights in MMOGs).

Obviously, in theory the idea is pretty nice. But you know what really protects people against sex offenders, including children? As I noted in my previous post, media literacy. This includes navigating virtual communities where a person could come into contact with just about anyone. Instead of assuming that the structures of a given site will protect you or your kids, teach them and yourself how to deal with people online, including keeping your personal information guarded, never making plans to meet someone alone, and always keeping in mind that anyone could be behind the adorable screen name.

Online Addictions, Offline Afflictions

2006-12-04T07:57:00.000-05:00

Nick Yee posted yesterday on Terra Nova about Internet addiction. Spurned on by a piece from the San Francisco Chronicle that stated the Internet is "seductive on the surface, but seeded with subterranean hazards", Yee argues for a nuanced understanding of what addiction is and the relationship between external factors like games and other contributors to addictive behavior.

The SF Chronicle article is to me another in a long line of fear-mongering, moral panic-inducing texts that show only the most extreme of downsides and downplay any agency, intelligence, or even responsibility on the part of children. Some of the hazards the author highlights include, along with addictive online gaming, are online bullying, profiteers who market illict goods to children, websites that promote unhealthy behaviors, and communities like MySpace that allow young people to expose themselves, potentially to harm.

If you say that these do sound like legitimate causes for concern, take pause for a moment. While the fact that children are not allowed to vote until they are 18 indicates that we do understand their capacities, responsibilities, and cognitive abilities as different, do we want to return to the past when we understood children as complete innocents we could imprint or impress any beliefs upon? Ethnographic research into children, especially in relation to technology, demonstrates more complex relationships and behaviors. Furthermore, the hazards listed above all incubate in the here and now.... the Internet is a new venue for old problems to be enacted. Bullying started in the schoolyard, as do the psychological grounds for addiction and other self-destructive behaviors. A pro-ana website will not convert a perfectly healthy girl into an anorexic... the seeds must have been already implanted.

Rather than blaming the nebulous web of networks called the Internet, just as we have in the past blamed the television and the radio, parents needs to understand the concept of media literacy and teach their children how to understand the complex tapestry of messages they receive each day. They need to be involved in this type of education, not with Net Nanny programs but with a savvy eye for not just the obvious but for the implicit messages embedded within the most child-friendly sites like Neopets.com (in this case, of rampant consumerism).

So, in a totally different way, I agree with the article's last paragraph: "Cyberspace can be an eye-opening, fun and even magical place to explore. But young voyagers -- and wise parents of those sojourners -- must be keenly aware of the terrain, and even more careful of where they step".

Reblog: JPN Wii Launch: Not Homeless Winos, But Elderly Gamers

2006-12-02T09:11:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the cheating, but I am all wrapped up in RL and living not writing at the moment, will be back shortly I hope.

From Kotaku:

What do you call groups of old men standing next foreigners at a PS3 launch? Gray market. What do you call the same at a Wii launch? Expanded demographic, that's what! It's still early, but I'm seeing some of the same type of thing that plagued the PS3 launch present at the Wii one (pockets of old men), but noticeably absent at the 360's (rude, I know).

CFP: DiGRA 2007: Situated Play

2006-11-30T07:59:00.000-05:00

This is the next conference I will be (hopefully, pending acceptance of my paper proposal) speaking at. Ah, Japan. Karaoke, sushi, and gaming, oh yes, lots and lots of gaming.

1. Date and Venue
The conference is planned to take place from September 24th to 28th. This will be immediately after the Tokyo Game Show 2007, which is currently scheduled from September 21st to 23rd (There is still a small chance that these dates might change).

The conference venue is expected to be the University of Tokyo's Hongo campus in Tokyo, Japan. As a thriving center of digital culture and games, Tokyo is an extremely relevant location for the conference especially given the proposed theme of "situated play."

2. Conference Theme: Situated Play
Games are everywhere. On subways, we see people playing Tetris with cell-phones. On the street and in restaurants, kids play with GameBoys and other portable devices. At home, we gather around the console or collaborate with a family member to take out a monster in a multiplayer game. In our offices, we spend stolen moments playing PC games. Our elderly are whiling away free hours playing online games. Games are everywhere, and becoming more deeply embedded in the fabric of our everyday lives.

As digital games penetrate our life and society, they are increasingly difficult to ignore. Games have created huge industries in some countries, while still others note this success and clamor to build industries of their own. The idea of games as mere entertainment is beginning to fade: the potential of games is now being recognized as they are becoming progressively more employed for education, job training, physical exercise, rehabilitation, psychotherapy and more. Children and adults spend a substantial portion of their life playing games - in many cases, spending more time with games than television or other media. Games are now an integral part of our societies and lives. Games, therefore, deserve serious attention.

Yet, we have a problem. A digital game is an extremely complex aesthetic, social and technological phenomenon. Games are not isolated entities that one can effectively study in vitro. Games are situated in culture and society. To truly understand the phenomenon of digital games, it is not enough to merely study the games themselves or short-term impacts as described by laboratory experiments ---these are only part of the story. Their context begins when the games are marketed and circulated, and they reach the hands of players. Context continues to build as potential players satisfy certain prerequisites: resources to obtain a console or a PC, time and motivations to play games, and skills to enjoy sometimes very complex digital games. We need to understand not just narratological and ludological aspects of the games, but also the industrial and economic contexts that produce them, and the socio-cultural backgrounds that produce game players and generate gameplay. In short, to understand games, we need to investigate at them from multitude of different perspectives.

To make the case even more complex, while games are ubiquitous, they are geographically diverse, and game play is local. Games are produced and consumed differently in Japan and in North America. Online games have different meanings and functions in Korea and in Europe. When we look at the situatedness of games, we see greater cultural diversity in games, even beyond the superficiality of geo-political boundaries into myriad sub-cultures that might find unifying interests across traditional cultural lines. Gameplay is messy. Yet we must strive to understand it, even if that means pulling together many small pieces of the overall puzzle together in the hope that the whole might reveal itself over time.

We, therefore, need to unite. We need to mobilize all those who can provide any insights about digital games, from academia to industry, across a wide range of disciplines and expertise. In particular, we need to gather voices from around the world to better reflect the wide range of experiences and perspectives that games solicit. Tokyo is a very appropriate city for game researchers from around the world to meet, and an excellent place for game studies scholars to talk with practitioners from game industry. We propose that this conference be an opportunity to act as a bridge between West and East, Industry and Academia, the result being a greater holistic understanding of games, their impacts, and potential in our world.

3. Call for Full Papers
Papers and panel proposals are invited for the third Digital Games Research Association International Conference (DiGRA 2007) in Tokyo. The theme of this conference is "Situated Play." Its goal is to shed light on various kinds of situatedness of games. In particular, the conference aims to create a bridge between professionally and geographically diverse scholars and practitioners. We therefore welcome panel proposals and papers that tackle various facets regarding the situatedness of digital games and attempt to combine a range of approaches in innovative ways.

The deadline for papers and panel proposals is midnight (Apia time), February 14, 2007. The selection will be based on full papers and panel proposals. The time allotted to one paper is 30 minutes, and the submitted papers should be between 2500 to 6000 words and an abstract must be attached. A panel session will have two hours, and a panel proposal should be up to 800 words in addition to all the full papers in the panel. Authors and organizers of panels will be requested to specify a relevant thematic focus (see below) and their relevant disciplinary backgrounds. Submission will be accepted by an online review system. Practical details of submission will be announced on the conference website in January.

Based on the abstracts and the specified disciplinary backgrounds, the Review Committee Chair Douglas Thomas will assign papers and panel proposals to a Review Committee member, who will assign three or more reviewers to the paper. Based on the double-blind evaluation of the reviewers and taking the relevance of the papers to the conference theme into consideration, the Program Committee will select approximately 50 papers.

In addition to full papers, there will be lightening sessions, student round tables, and poster sessions. A call for papers for these kinds of sessions will be announced later. The deadline of submissions for these sessions is planned to be in May.

Further details of the conference will be announced on the conference website (http://www.gamesconference.org) as the preparation proceeds. For inquiries, contact Kenji Ito at kenjiito67 [at] gmail.com.

4. Thematic Foci
Thematic foci are meant to be used to help organize sessions and tracks. They are mainly for the convenience of conference attendees, and is certainly not meant to be overly prescriptive.
Player-Focus: Sociology and economy of MMORPGs, sociological approaches to games, gender and gaming, player engagement, player co-production, cross-cultural issues, etc. Relevant disciplines include: sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, history, economics, and psychology.

Content Focus: Theory and practice of game design, game storytelling, game graphics, etc. Relevant disciplines include: literature, film studies, art studies, and game design theory.
Learning/Education Focus: Teaching and curriculum development in game programs, serious games, games at school, learning and games. Relevant disciplines include: education and psychology.

Technology focus: Game programming, AI, computer graphics, computer hardware. Relevant discipline include: Computer science and electronic engineering.

Business Focus: Economics-based studies of game industry, business models, sociology of game production, copyright and legal issues, national policy of game production and training, independent/amateur designers, etc. Relevant disciplines include: business and management, economics, sociology, history, law, and political sciences.

Interdisciplinary: Any studies to cross these themes or innovative attempts that do not fit in any other theme areas.

For more information on the Review Committee Chair, International Advisory Board, and the Local Organizing Committee, check out the second circular of the Digital Games Research Association here.

The Hardcore Casual Gamer

2006-11-29T07:59:00.000-05:00

Today I deposit my Master's thesis at the Thesis office at Concordia, which is basically the last official step before my thesis defense on December 11. Unofficially, I will be madly rereading my references and trying to remember how I had these brilliant thoughts last February.

Anyhoo, in the second-to-final edits of the thesis, my supervisor Dr. Leslie Shade asked me to include within my third chapter, which is centered around case studies of 7 video games, my own particular position as a gamer. In other words, to answer the question- what kind of gamer are you? Upon a little thought, and research into what defines hardcore and casual gamers, I included within my thesis the designation of a hardcore casual gamer.

No, this isn't a slippery way of getting out of the question. Rather, it highlights the variety of dimensions that comprise the definitions of both hardcore and casual (nevermind the ferocious denigration connoted by each camp when discussing the other). I am a hardcore gamer simply based on the numbers per week I play video games (typically over 10 hours a week). I am a casual gamer because of the types and range of games I play. Besides World of Warcraft, I play mainly 'soft' video games, especially the simulation games I so enjoy mastering and the classic games like Super Mario Bros. I play on my emulator. I also play a few games dedicatedly and repeatedly rather than playing rapidly to completion and then moving on to another game.

As a state of mind, I would say I am a casual gamer, playing for pleasure with little motivation to play new games, but hardcore in terms of interest, seeking news daily on a salmagundi of sites and blogs daily. How would you classify your gameplay? Where do you stand on these labels, which are so pervasive I had to include them in my thesis?

Or are you simply what Kotaku calls an insane gamer, like this poor soul?

Ever Noticed No One Ever Talks about Being a Library-Potato or a Book Addict?

2006-11-28T08:24:00.000-05:00

I noticed that my last string of posts revolve around video games, which would be a fairly one-dimensional account of all the media I love. I was thus pleased to see an article on the CBC about Alberto Manguel’s books A History of Reading and The Library at Night. Manguel uses the library to discuss the human urge to find meaning in chaos. He also admits to his ambivalence to the Internet, comparing it to a snack rather than the square meal that is the library, and notes that the Net doesn't encourage the type of musing that library reading does.

In my opinion, comparing the Internet and the library can only result in bellicose, circular contention. Thinking of them as companions in a modern academic environment is much more fruitful. Manguel notes that electronic databases can help readers gain access to esoteric or other kinds of works that are difficult to obtain. Not only that, in the process of my own research, I found that the Internet and Concordia's databases of journal articles allowed me to think and brainstorm through research.

In a way I am starting to personally believe Vannevar Bush's premise in "As We May Think". Written in 1945, Bush's article described the concept of the memex (short for memory extender) as an electronic link to a library that allows the reader to easily link and cross-reference associations made by texts. For example, in this blog, this article would have automatically displaying the CBC article, books review and perhaps a bio of Manguel, Concordia's library page, and the Atlantic Monthly archive with Bush's article and some criticism.

A regular library simply cannot do this, not without a few dozen library minions running around for you. But the memex or the modern equivalent shouldn't replace this bastion of peace and quiet, coffee-scented pages and microfilm machines. Instead, it can oriente and organize your library experience, leaving you more energy for your reading and taking some of the hassle out of your research.

I know some of my readers are neo-Luddites and avid bookophiles. What's your stance? Alternately, some of you people scream at the sight of a book. Do you love Wikipedia?

Duck!

2006-11-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

Kotaku reports that an informal poll they ran returned the number 338. That rather large number represents those of about 5700 reporting Wii users that had their wii-mote strap break and therefore cause their controller to fly across the room. Considering that this gadget has been out less than a fortnight, that seems like one of those things I referred to when I recommended to all my geek friends to hold out a few months and wait for the bugs and flaws and faults to emerge before purchase. But I digress. Apparently the instruction manual states that players are required to wear the strap during play, and some conspiracy theorists I know claim that the wii-motes have sensors that report to Nintendo when you are not using them in the proscribed manner.

Anyway, see the breakage in action at YouTube. The moral of the story here of course is do not get excited and slippery when playing with your wii-mote.

PS- Clubbing seals is very bad and I am not in favor of it. Save the seals, OK?

The New York Times Blows a Raspberry at the PS3

2006-11-25T08:59:00.000-05:00

At over $600, do you really want your new system to "fall far short ... of providing the world's most engaging overall entertainment experience"? That quote is from Seth Schiesel's PS3 review, and its not an undue criticism either. It ain't all about the "megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks", nor about advances in graphics. This of course leads back to what makes a game gameable and a player want to play, and the concept that seems to be the holy grail of gaming- emergence. Wikipedia defines it as "the process of complex pattern formation from simpler rules". Not simply another catch term for the already problematic concept of interactivity, emergence describes gameplay that feels smooth, with every reaction, new option, all choices feeling like a direct response to a player's action. This leads to seamless play, believable play, and above all immersive play (another holy grail). Too bad Sony didn't direct more attention to this.

See the NY Time review at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/arts/20game.html?ex=1321678800&en=9123d99977b60756&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss.

PS3 Can Cure Cancer? I Knew It!

2006-11-22T10:20:00.000-05:00

It must be true, cuz Sony said so. To quote the extremely credulous CBC article, "when Cure(at)PLAYSTATION 3 is launched, PS3 owners can register their machines with Stanford, download specially designed software and leave their machines online to process data when they're not playing". This is all supposed to go down when the console is available worldwide, which means at least spring 2007.

Damn, and when I read that headline, I thought the stone cold foxes of Eyedentify would infiltrate yet another place they should not and magically laser tumors through your TV screen. Bummer.

CBC's former Middle East Bureau Chief Gets a Second Life

2006-11-22T08:22:00.000-05:00

The CBC's online portal today has a feature by Adrienne Arsenault about her forays as a "cyberphobic" in Linden Lab's Second Life. I am always drawn to news of Second Life because of my own lack of experience in this area (somewhat like reading about the techno cultures of Japanese youth). The article serves as a basic introduction to the virtual world and its two most salacious elements, money and sex. Yet I was warmed by the account of several Second Life users with cerebral palsy who were able to move around and make friends in a way they were not able to in their 'first life', and who used the money they made in this virtual world to contribute to a tsunami relief fund.

I was also interested in her citation of Tim Guest, author of a forthcoming Second Life book, who stated that the mass migration towards virtual worlds offers an ease of the pain of real life, which includes greater isolation and reduced economic health.

What bothers me is the resemblance of Second Life to MUDs, MUSHs, and MOOs of the 'olden' days, except with a thorough proliferation of commercial interests. But, from the sound of it, these capitalist influences have not kept people from staking their virtual homesteads (in the words of Howard Rheingold) in Second Life. I wonder how people navigate this....

Wii Will Wii Will Rock You

2006-11-21T18:04:00.000-05:00

On Sunday morning I got up much earlier than usual to stand in line to pick up a Wii pre-order. I was surprised and disappointed at the overall mood though, as everyone seemed to be rather blase about the whole thing. After seeing footage of riot police and fist fights in relation to PS3 lineups, I was really disappointed at the orderliness and underwhelming patience of the Nintendo fanboys and nerdgirls. The only amusing portion was when, 10 minutes after asking "no fistfights?" I got whacked in the face accidentally by a Toys r Us employee.

Later that day I got the opportunity to test drive the new wii-mote and watch as people set up their Miis (their system avatar). I was tainted by a feeling of too-much-hype-not-enough-substance, but I was impressed by the ease of use of the newfangled controller. Probably would have been a lot more interested if a Mario game had been released as well... what's Nintendo without a little Mario?

The best moments of playing the Wii- watching an enthusiastic Wii Sports player swing his remote right into a nearby exercise machine, and after tinkering around with the system, returning to the old pleasure of Soul Caliber.

What did you think of the new system?

Wacky Wii Wabbit courtesy of Jostiq.

Picture of the Too Lazy To Post Properly

2006-11-18T10:31:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows that Picture of the Day is all about having post volume with the writing to back it up, right? Just like reblogging and posting really long CFPs (all of which I am or will be guilty for sure). So, without further ado (or time-consuming writing), here is my rib-tickler of the day.

Gamers Exhibit Patience

2006-11-17T10:09:00.000-05:00

So midnight saw the first chance for North Americans to pick up the newest Sony platform, the Playstation 3 or PS3. For all you nongamers, this explains the snaking line of geeks and whipped parents trapped under tarps and on camping chairs around your neighborhood Best Buy. Stopped in myself at the Dundas branch of the store to pick up some techie xmas gifts and politely inquired as to whether the perky group outside would luck out with a midnight launch or would have to wait in the rain until the opening time of 8AM. The employee informed me that, despite having to camp the night (a second one for those closest to the entrance), they were 'blessed' (not my words or his, just deduced from the shining eyes of all the geeks, including my fiance, nearby) with not a mere 15 but 76 units. Rapid phone calling ensued...

Stay tuned, because I will be joining the ranks of the nerds when the Nintendo Wii launches Sunday. Ah, the things you do for love.

The pic comes courtesy of my favoritest geek over at Photendo.

From French: To Stick

2006-11-16T23:11:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to post for posterity, since my few days turned into nearly a week, and give a shout-out to Ryan for creating my new Too Much Media, Too Little Time banner collage. With some of my fave pop icons and iconography, this collage is a colorful reminder to me of some of my favorite forms of mixing and matching. From the technique of photomontage to the creative and ironic mashups like the Grey Album, a remix of Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles White Album. It would seem that the gaming equivalent is the Surrealist game, as found at The Experimental Gameplay Project. Play Classic PuffBOMB for some good laughs and physics practice.

In the Interim...

2006-11-11T22:37:00.000-05:00

OK, so the conference was really productive, interesting, surprising, and above all saturating (9 presentations in 9 hours, plus socializing at coffee breaks, lunches, and wine and cheeses). Met plenty of cool people, and heard some great research, and came away with some pretty astute observations ("the nature of the digital environment will influence the type of research collected"). Don't have the time or energy to post today or tomorrow, as they are and will be sapped by both wedding and travel requirements. So, in the meantime, I am linking to the Digital Girls projects, which was well-represented at Trials and Tribulations by Sandra Weber, Claudia Mitchell, Jacqui Reid-Walsh and Shanly Dixon.

Keep your fingers crossed- entered many a contest to win a honeymoon!

Discussing Trials and Tribulations

2006-11-10T07:55:00.000-05:00

Not going to be blogging any more today, because I am going to the Trials and Tribulations conference on research methodologies in digital environments. It's going to be pretty interesting- Mia Consalvo, Marinka Copier, Jacqui Reid-Walsh, Sandra Weber, plus some of my favorite budding profs like Shanly Dixon and Sara Grimes. It was organized by the former and Kelly Boudreau, and I am especially looking forward to this morning's "Youth and Technololgy" panel.

So I leave you with a picture of Kelly, Shanly, and their GameCODE colleague Regina, from the Canadian Game Studies Association symposium.

What Motivates You in Gaming- Pain or Pleasure?

2006-11-09T17:45:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I sent in my application for a PhD position at the University of Amsterdam within the School of Communications Research. In the Netherlands PhD students occupy a sort of space between student and researcher that commands a salary, an office, and benefits but also can, as with this position, require the student to complete up to 5 years of research on the lead professor's project of study. I was in the process of devising one of these positions, called an A.I.O., with Professor Joyce Goggin (another Canadiana in Holland) on boys and virtual spaces, when this job ad came up.

Pain and Pleasure in Gaming is a pretty engaging topic I think... especially statements like "self-determined forms of regulating gaming activity contribute to stronger positive affect and lessened impact of negative affect on persistence". Over at Terra Nova there was a post today on grinding, which is when a player is required to kill simply to level, an activity that is pretty much a fact of life in my WoW play, as I have no urge to be slaughtered by a Level 15 boar at Level 10, though a quest may require me to wander where these superior beasts tread. What makes the player get through the grind and still revel in this as play? I think, after all the bantering about ludology vs narrative, these are refreshing and more vital questions for the field. So I hope to work with Dr. Tan on this project, or at the very least communicate with him when I am at UvA working on my own research (if of course that is where I do go). Sorry to sound so cagey.

In case you're wondering, the picture is of a gynormous LAN party, looks like its somewhere hot.

CFP: The Feeding Tube

2006-11-09T10:38:00.000-05:00

Posting this call for papers serves a dual purpose: a) For any of my media studies buddies, this may be conference of interest, and b) For all of my non-academic friends, you can see what kinds of wacky but oddly fascinating research is done. Here goes:

Food is a part of our everyday existence: we must eat in order to survive. For most people it is hard to imagine a day without food,whether we’re grabbing a snack from the vending machine or sharing a leisurely dinner with family and friends. Similarly, television has reached such a saturation point in our culture that we have, in many ways, become as dependent on it as we are on food. We gather in each other’s homes to watch season finales of our favorite shows, discuss the previous night’s HBO series broadcasts at the workplace watercooler, or just consult the local news for a weather report. We often eat while watching television, nourishing our bodies while allowing the information from television into our consciousness.

To that end, this proposed panel is concerned with the ways in which television mediates our cultural relationship with food. What can we observe about our society and our roles within it from the ways in which food is portrayed on television? How does it affect our relationships with our bodies? With each other? How does the food we see on television shape our regional, national, class, racial, sexual, and gender identities? Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Food and gender on TV
Food in reality TV
Sexuality and food
Sex and food (i.e., “feeding the beast” in Grey’s Anatomy)
Race and food
Candid TV & food (i.e., Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations)
TV advertising of restaurants, weight-loss programs, and food items
Power and food
Cooking shows (and daytime shows with cooking segments)
The History Channel and food
Food and eating on Sex & the City
Food and eating on Desperate Housewives
Food and eating on the Sopranos

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words by November 17 to Melanie Hauptat http://ca.f329.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=mkhaupt@mail.utexas.edu&YY=62762&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b

Despite loving to cook and eat, I never got into any of those cooking shows crazes myself. How about you- did you ever get all hot for Emeril or Nigella?

Normaler Than Reality

2006-11-08T22:00:00.000-05:00

Been a pretty busy few weeks for movies... saw Marie Antoinette, The Prestige, and now Stranger Than Fiction in theatres. This was a gratis premiere pass scored by my mother in trade for a bus pass loan, and so we had to endure the requisite bag search prior to entering the theatre. I am not too sure what these bodyguard/bouncer types from the movie companies think their actions are preventing... though I am sure they would turn away anyone with a video camera, all they could say about cell phones was "please turn them off". As if such a kindly phrased request could deter an ambitious cam-er.

Otherwise, Will Ferrell was a pleasure to watch, as were his onscreen cohorts... besides having a fabulous premise, the dry acting and well-characterized settings (Harold's ecru-tinted apartment, Anna's left-wing bakery and similarly pastiche-like flat, Karen's barren, cigarette-in-napkin littered work hole) were remarkable. Must commend Hollywood for becoming postmodernist (from here on out, know that this is always used ironically and shortened dryly to po-mo) in the right way.

I would also, despite its uneven reviews, recommend Marie Antoinette, because I think the criticism was more aimed at a director more famed for nepotism than talent despite her successes, an actress more known for her snaggletoothed grin than her range, and at a false sense of what must constitute a period piece. Also, it was a poufy, candy-toned film that reminds you what an aesthetic orgasm feels like.

OK, gonna catch the rest of CSI: New York (gotta love Gary Sinise).

All You Can Say is... WoW

2006-11-08T10:07:00.000-05:00

So the most recent edition of the academic journal Games and Culture was dedicated to articles on World of Warcraft, aptly abbreviated WoW, a phenomenally popular release in the genre of massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Previous to writing my thesis, I had always found the idea of these games compelling- they truly do seem to represent digital 'third spaces' (see Steinkuehler and Williams' "Where everybody knows your (screen) name: Online games as 'third places.'") , or at the very least microcosms of social life accessible to those interested in a variety of questions ranging from the economic to the cultural to the legal. But it was only when I was engaging in case studies on seven varying genres for my thesis that I actually created an avatar and joined the huge numbers within the WoW universe.

Even though I found it to be a game that managed to strike a balance between an immersive persistent world with lush settings and well-plotted landscapes and a game with a series of at times repetitive quests required to allow the player to level sufficiently high enough to progress through said landscape, I became one of the statistics in Ducheneault et. al.'s abandonment rate after getting to level 9, largely because I was killed on a distant island and felt too aggravated to find my corpse again (in proof of their statistics on class and abandonment, I was a shaman).

But upon reading this journal, I felt compelled to again take up Mashyla, my dwarf shaman, and see if I couldn't get past those nasty voodoo trolls and further into the game.

My persistence (truly, I was killed another 18 times on that quest, so persistence may be another word for obsession) paid off. I made it to the Crossroads, where a quest led me to my first flight on a winged beast, over the landscape I had spent hours running across, to the huge commercial centre of Orgrimmar. Huzzah!

All this to say, stay tuned for lots and lots of WoW posts in the future. Every quest you complete and level you reach opens up new terrains, trickier quests, and meaner enemies, as well as greater oppportunities to meet other players. Reaching Orgrimmar opened up whole new channels of communication, and in the time it took me to disembark, I saw more real other players run by than my entire time playing. It seems to me like it may just be time to put my own post onto channel 4, LFG.

Believe it or not, I never used to be a video game geek before this game.

Massively Mediated Mama

2006-11-07T20:31:00.000-05:00

Rather than beginning this blog with a justification of blogs, I will start instead with a description of the elements of my personality that led to the staking of my flag in an admittedly cluttered if not littered landscape that is the blogosphere.

As a student in a department called "Media Studies", as a person who feels that any less than 6 hours a day of CBC Radio (that's the Canadian Broadcast Corporation) equals complete ignorance of the world, as a couch potato who manages to keep up with no less than 10 primetime television series, as a person who, in her tenure as a video store clerk, watched no less than 80% of the store's inventory, as an avid visitor to 3 celebrity blogs and 8 video game blogs, and as an ardent player of not only single-player but massively-multiplayer online games, I can be called perhaps the ultimate, supreme mediaphile.

This list does not even take into account my voracious reading habits, music consumption, or art interests. At the same time, I feel that the pace of change, expansion, conglomeration, convergence, and disapperance too rapid to ever feel fully informed or at least up-to-date with the major media forces of our times. I will be honest- I have never visited Second Life, taken a strong interest in MySpace, or spent hours browsing the offerings of YouTube. For this, I feel ashamed.

This blog will thus be not only a venue for the discussion and exploration of content and forms I am already well-versed in, but the impetus for further examinations into new forms. To be honest, it is hopefully also a venue to get some of my beloveds engaged and in active discussion on the things that seem to eat up lots and lots of my time.

So, one and all, please join me in this public dialogue about the most picayune and grand elements of the media that engulf out everyday life. Don't be shy- the most banal topics may be the most topical simply because the nature of the everyday life is pervasive and definitive of ourselves. Also, you may be surprised to find that those strong opinions you never thought you had can be aroused by something so simple as a free blog.

And now, time for some House.