What About Thesis Defenses and Flow?

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...

What Motivates You in Gaming- Pain or Pleasure?

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.