online/offline

A note on the current state of my blog...

2011-10-18T14:38:00.001-07:00

Hello new readers!

I realize that this blog is full of course stuff right now, which I will be moving out of the way to make room for my video game pontificating once again.

Until then, if you want an up to date account of what I have been working on, check out the research tab at www.kellybergstrom.ca and send me an email if you want to see some slide decks.

1c: Modern Foundations of Literacy

2011-08-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

Then write, in your own words, a summary of one of the central concepts/tenets in Goody's work, choose a representative quote (e.g. one that someone who hadn't read Goody can understand) and finally (because this is the most difficult part) ask a question.

Summary:

Goody describes non-literate society as being "homeostatic". Non-literate societies pass on three types of information to new generations: information about day to day life (what plants won't kill you; information about the physical world around them), information about how to act (how to cook the plant that doesn't kill you, or how to cultivate crops), and information about the symbols attached to the words the society uses to communicate. This information about symbols is also related to the collective memory, shared by all members of that society. Information about the past can only be shared through conversation, so in other words, all talk of history is done so in the present. This information is regulated in that the relevant/useful information is remembered, while the information that is no longer relevant is forgotten (and not passed on to future generations). Much like how organic bodies maintain homeostasis through regulation of what comes in and out of cellular structures, so too do non-literate societies regulate what maintains part of the society, and what is discarded as no longer being useful (or, waste).

The social function of memory - and of forgetting - can thus be seen as the final stage of what may be called the homeostatic organization of the cultural tradition in non-literate society. The language is developed in intimate association with the experience of the community, and it is learned by the individual in face-to-face contact with the other members. What continues to be of social relevance is stored in the memory while the rest is usually forgotten: and language - primarily vocabulary - is the effective medium of this crucial process of social digestion and elimination which may be regarded as analogous to the homeostatic organization of the human body by means of which it attempts to maintain its present condition of life.

Question:

I am interested in this idea of the social function of memory and forgetting. While Goody is focusing on non-literate societies in his discussions of memory/forgetting, I can't help but wonder if this is something that is still relevant in 2011. For example, I remember one of my former colleagues bemoaning the fact that they had to go to the archive -- why should they have to do such a thing when "everything has been digitized and mostly available online"? I am left wondering, with the push towards digitization, (for example, digitizing the archive), what happens when something gets missed? If a single piece of paper gets missed when scanning in a whole document, does that piece of paper cease to exist? Sure it exists in a filing cabinet somewhere, but does the digital version become the "real" copy? And of course (probably being cheeky here), if the servers go down and all copies of the data has corrupted, are we not in more danger of losing that knowledge/forgetting than non-literate societies ever were?

1b: Modern Foundations of Literacy

2011-08-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

Goody references work and uses terms/words you might not have heard of before (likely not ALL of it). Your task is to pay attention to what you do not know (no skipping over people you haven't heard of or words you don't understand). To take the time to find out who/what those things are/mean, and to on your OWN website, gather together the terms, etc. plus what they mean.

Goody & Watt Vocabulary

tripartite: Quite basically, 3 (or, three parts). Often used for things like 'father, son, holy ghost', but in this case Goody uses it for zoology, anthropology, and sociology (the triforce of studying 'mankind').

Weltanschauung: "A particular philosophy or view of life; a concept of the world held by an individual or a group" (OED)

semantic ratification: (I believe) the ability to look at something and immediately distill the social context in which it is situated.

Trobriands: archipelago off the coast of New Guinea.

social morphology: (see Durkheim) the study of social structure & the changes that occur in them.

eponymous: someone who gives their name to something, as opposed to being etiological, something invented in order to explain something.

constituent units (of the society): a smaller group, part of the larger society.

paramountcy: supreme rule or authority

Goody & Watt References

Author/theorist cited	Description of their work
Durkheim	Foundational in sociology. Interested in studying society as a whole, rather than the actions of an individual. Also interested in how societies stay together when a shared religion/ethnicity could no longer be assumed.
Malinowski	Influential in sociology and anthropology, 'pioneer' in ethnography. Argued for participant observation, that the ethnographer needs to have day to day contact with their informants. Argued that culture exists to meet the needs of the individual rather than society as a whole -- when the needs of the individual are met, the needs of the society are met.
Mauss	Relative of Durkheim, influential in sociology and anthropology, influenced Levi-Strauss. Well-known for work on gifts and reciprocity -- gifts are never "free", there is a sense of obligation to reciprocate. Like Durkheim, interested in the solidarity of societies, for Mauss social bonds are formed/maintained through gift exchange.
Halbwachs	Sociologist, influential because of "collective memory". So not only does each member of a society have their individual memory, the society has a collective memory in which a society collectively remembers (and understands their shared pasts).
Frederic Bartlett	Psychology, considered himself to be a cognitive psychologist but now seen as being more akin to social psychology. Cognitive and social processes of remembering.
Moses I. Finley	Classics (American and English) scholar. Notable for his argument that antiquity societies were governed by ideology rather than rational economic motivation.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard	Social anthropologist, felt that anthropology belonged more in the humanities rather than the natural sciences. The work of the anthropologist is translation-based, between the people they are studying and their own culture. Argued that believers and non-believers study religion from different viewpoints
Laura Bohannan	Cultural anthropologist, known for "Shakespeare in the bush".
Meyers Fortes	Anthropologist, trained in psychology. First-borns, kingship and divination.
Paul Bohannan	Anthropologist, studied the Tiv, spheres of exchange, divorce in America.
Franz Boas	"Father of American Anthropology", applied scientific method to the study of human culture and society.
Ignance Gelb	Assyriologist, widely seen as the first to scientifically study scripts.
Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin & Carl Voegelin	Anthropologist, folklorist, ethnohistorian, expert in Native American Folklore.
David Diringer	Linguist, paleographer (studied ancient writing), known for his work on writing systems.
Samuel Noah Kramer	Assyriologist, known for reassembling tablets that were key for re-discovering stories from Sumerian history.
Sterling Dow	Greek epigraphy and history
Stuart Piggot	British archeologist.
John Chadwick	Linguist and classical scholar, deciphered Linear B (an early form of Greek writing that pre-dated the Greek alphabet). This writing was believed to only have been able to be done by particular scribes and when the palaces they served were destroyed, the language died out.
Solomon Gandz	Historian of Science. Medieval Islamic and Jewish societies, especially the history of math and astronomy.

1a: Modern Foundations of Literacy

2011-07-31T14:58:00.000-07:00

Taking the paradigms chart as your starting point , choose an educational philosopher/theorist (Pythagorus, St. Augustine, Aristotle, Plato, Hildegard von Bingen, John Locke, John Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Pestalozzi, Maria Montessori, Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey, ~~Paulo Freire~~, (no more Freire -- he is done. Too "safe" of a choice -- explore/choose someone else), Ivan Illich, and Maxine Greene OR ANY OTHER) and build a paradigms chart for him/her, modeled on the one found in de Castell and Luke (hint: do not choose someone in their chart -- too tempting to copy).

I read Emile as part of a reading course back in the spring, and I am still absolutely amazed at the number of people I talk to in my program who are in love with Rousseau. I feel like I have become a bit of a broken record, trying to explain that actually, he is a jerk. Jane and I are planning on having Emile be the Aug/Sept book for the education reading group, and I am curious about how many people will slog through the whole thing, and who will get buy on excerpts (or read any of it at all). In preparation for this meeting, I figured I would use my old friend Rousseau to fill out this chart, as a refresher on his educational theory:

Rousseau's Educational Paradigm

	Description
Philosophy	Education makes the difference between a man and a citizen -- develop respect for one's fellow men, through education.
Psychology	Education happens in incremental growths. I think the idea of tabula rasa would also be appropriate for Rousseau, that man is a blank slate that needs to be encouraged to develop. The right upbringing/education will turn a pupil into a proper citizen (and if not educated properly they will be more like Hobbes' state of nature, out for themselves, not working for the greater good).
Sociology	An education for upper class men is key for society. Women are educated too, but in a fluffy kittens, sewing pretty dresses superficial kind of way (i.e. know your role; women should be moulded into the ideal wife for their husband). It is her husband's job to instruct his wife and insure she is educated 'properly', that is, weak and passive with her husband's needs/pleasures being the most important thing in the world for her. This sets the stage for Wollstonecraft's smackdown and wondering perhaps maybe women should be thought of as people too.
Conception of literacy	Literacy is a social obligation, assuming you want your son to be a functioning, productive member of society. It comes in the form of 'ah ha' moments throughout his education, putting the pieces together slowly (all the while being guided by a mastermind aka tutor).
Attitude to education	Education is essential, if you are the son of a rich, white dude. Education for women is a waste, except to turn them into dolls for their husbands.
Curriculum	While Locke felt that the bible is the ideal text, Rousseau says the only book required is Robinson Crusoe. Keep returning to this text over and over, each time pointing out new things, building on previous lessons. It is also important for one's pupil to have a trade.
Pedagogy	Exploration is key. The tutor will always be there in the background, guiding their pupil in the right direction, but learning is through exploration: take the pupil out into the world, have them explore/discover something, then come back inside and figure out the why/how/what for behind it. Education happens in incremental steps, each building on the last.
Evaluation	The tutor evaluates all: they decide when the pupil is ready to move on to the next 'stage' of their education. Rather than letting the pupil say "I'm ready", the tutor is the one who decides (for example, the tutor deciding that Emile is not ready to marry Sophie, so he forces Emile to put the marriage on hold)
Outcome	A well-educated ruling class in which (male) members of society become part of the social contract, rather than being selfish.

10: Choose your own adventure

2011-07-28T19:14:00.001-07:00

For my "choose your own adventure" activity I decided to try my hand at making a course outline (which can be found online here). This was inspired by my writeup for Activity 7, where I started wondering outloud about what role Facebook should play in the classroom. A few notes about my course outline:

A lesson learned: I decided to jump right off the deep end and create an outline for an upper level undergraduate education class to give pre-service teachers a chance to critically reflect on social networking sites and the possibilities they may have in their (future) classrooms. This being a special topics class on a fairly specific subject, there weren't really any samples that I could mould my own outline after. Perhaps it would have been easier to do a more general survey course about educational technology, as I suspect there would have been far more samples to look at.
Resources for making outlines seem to be sparse. I am not sure if any sort of guide really exists. Once school starts up again and the teaching resource centre starts running courses again, I will be looking for workshops about writing outlines. I believe they have one called "best practices for course directors", so that might be one to look at.
Writing outlines is time consuming! It took me a few days to track down and read through sources. Even trying to figure out the trajectory of the course took a lot of time (and many revisions). I'm still not 100% happy with it, but at least it is a start.
Coming up with assignments is kind of fun. I'm not sure if I was specific enough in the expected learning outcomes. As a new course director I suspect I am going to have to be REALLY specific about this if I want to get approval to do anything "out of the box".
EDIT: I forgot to mention that dana boyd's list of papers on social networking was an invaluable resource when putting this outline together!

8: 21st Century Media (Technology) Education

2011-07-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

Drawing on this (rather lengthy) piece of Jenkins' and the research, writing and reflections in this course on educational media forms, past and present, what do YOU think the education of a '21st century digital learner' should look like, aim for, and involve, and what specific media do you think would function well to advance those goals. Make sure to provide one or two substantive examples (what medium, to teach or learn what, and why that would be educationally valuable?). Length: 600 words max HINT: look back at paradigm chart activity, plus the history of media activity and the above readings. The is a REQUIRED entry for your digital portfolio.

Of all the things that Jenkin’s lengthy piece discusses, it was his discussion of appropriation that struck me as being by far, the most essential component of a ‘21^st century digital learner’. Jenkins describes appropriation as “a process by which students learn by taking culture apart and putting it back together” (32). In my experience as both a student and a teaching assistant, I feel that there is such a fear of plagiarism (or the fear of giving students the potential to be tempted into plagiarizing) that remixing is out of the question.

I feel that learning by taking things apart and then putting them back together is something that has a long history in education, but perhaps has been lost (or at least fallen out of favour) more recently. Instead of starting with a finished product and working backwards, we build upon things incrementally. Being married to a physicist and studying education, I have been asked at far too many parties what my feelings are about what physics education should look like (this sounds like a tangent but I am going somewhere with this, I promise). It seems like physics education is having a bit of a crisis, as it is difficult to get students excited about a subject that is so esoteric and (omg) math-heavy. Traditionally, the physics model of education has relied on teaching students things in baby steps, one piece of information at a time, building on things year after year until finally you get to the “cool stuff” in the 4^th year of your undergrad. However, up until this point you have been focusing on equations and seemingly pointless experiments to “prove” something that has already been proven a million times over. This is boring to students and boring to instructors, and despite promises of neat things coming later, undergraduate students are hard to keep enrolled in the physics major [1][2]

A new generation of physics educators has decided to turn the incremental model on its head: instead of building things up in baby steps, they start with the big concepts and work backwards. A more hands-on approach is taken in physics labs, where students are given a bit more flexibility. Instead of being required to produce x result, they are given dials to turn and buttons to press in order to “play” and see what actions cause what reactions. The rationale is that by allowing students to experiment at an earlier stage in their education, it will hopefully inspire them to continue on with physics. This new approach seems to be gaining a foothold in physics classrooms across the country... But why stop at just physics?

While my above example was about physics and Jenkins was talking about playing with culture, I don't really see them being all that different things. Sure, the actual materials are different, but who is to say that students can't learn about music by taking apart and putting songs back together? Art classes have used the "copy the masters" technique to great success, I mean didn't Bob Ross build his empire around the "copy me step by step" approach to painting?Sampling has a long history in contemporary music [3], and long before sampling technology there were variations on other people's melodies.

To me, sampling, modifying, deconstructing and re-constructing your own variation of a previously existing work should be a part of this 21st century digital learners education (and computer programming classes, and art classes, and creative writing classes...). By having assemblage and remix integrated right into the curriculum it will not only provide students with tools for self expression, it will also open up the room to discuss issues such as the nature of copyright and 'intellectual property'. Whether we agree to it or not, students of today will grow up to be members of tomorrow's knowledge economy. By having assemblage as part of the 'legitimized' curriculum, perhaps these students will go on to change the archaic intellectual property laws that (in my opinion) are holding back programmers, artists, musicians, and creativity in general.

So basically, I'm hoping that remix culture wins out, this generation of students goes on to change intellectual property laws, and a number 3 of this never needs to get made:

1. What to do with a degree in physics?

2. "Does it really matter that the number of students studying physics is falling?"

3. For example, a favourite band of mine from the 1990s was Pop Will Eat Itself, which was short for "popular culture will eat itself". Their entire musical production was based around samples and loops. Despite the fact that they have long since broken up, fans still maintain databases and lists to uncover where all there samples came from, such as this one.

2: Postmodern Epistemic Foundations

2011-07-28T19:10:00.000-07:00

For posting to your personal website. Having read both articles, attempt the following for each: 1. pull out key concepts; 2. for each key concept write 2-3 sentence summary in your OWN WORDS (no quotes); 3. select a quote to support each key concept/summary; 4. having completed the summaries, now make the two articles talk to one another --- create a conceptual bridge and explain how one might relate to the other.

Lyotard, J. F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Progress.

Key Concepts:

1. Knowledge's understanding and value does not stay the same:

Knowledge is something that is in flux (that is, a society's understanding of "knowledge" changes depending on a number of factors, especially what stage of development the society is currently in (industrial, post industrial, post modern, post post modern, etc).
Recent developments in science surrounding linguistics, informatics, and cybernetics have helped shape our most recent understanding of knowledge, especially when coupled with recent developments in technology (and technologically mediated communication, and technologically assisted learning), etc.
Advances in technology have allowed us to physically move, but also to send communications across the globe almost instantly -- this has forever changed the way knowledge will be understood and used by all, not just Western society.
"It is reasonable to suppose that the proliferation of information-processing machines is having, and will continue to have, as much of an effect on the circulation of learning as did advancements in human circulation (transportation systems) and later, in the circulation of sounds and visual images (the media)." or more simply, "The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation."

2. We live in a knowledge economy

Rather than knowledge creation for knowledge's sake, knowledge is now a commodity. That is, it has (economic) value and can be traded, knowledge is no longer ideas, it is now a "thing".
The workforce has changed in developed countries to accommodate the shift from producing "goods" to producing "knowledge"; this is something that developing countries are constantly needing to play catch-up, yet the gap between developed and developing is constantly widening.
"Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its "use-value".

3. The one who has the knowledge, has the power (*cough* not the state *cough*)

Just as in the past nation states competed for natural resources and cheap labour, so too do nation states compete for (and strive to protect their own) knowledge by both industrial/commercial means, as well as political/military means.
While knowledge has previously been the responsibility of the state (i.e. public education), ideological shifts towards transparency and competitiveness (i.e. capitalist free market economy values) which sees the state as 'bloated', 'useless', or 'opaque', will see knowledge production increasingly shift into the hands of those of the private sector (which is viewed as where innovation happens).
With technological advancements being made by the private sector (and outside the hands of government), there are pressing concerns about who controls knowledge and whether they hold society's or their stockholders interests as primary (as these two stakeholders are seen as being mutually exclusive).
"Suppose, for example, that a firm such as IBM is authorized to occupy a belt in the earth's orbital field and launch communication satellites or satellites housing data banks. Who will have access to them? Who will determine which channels or data are forbidden? The state? Or will the State simply be one user among others? New legal issues will be raised, and with them the question: "Who will know?""

4. Multinational corporations undermine the State

The state's authority has become undermined by multi-national corporations, that is, mega corporations that transcend State boundaries and are driven by economic (rather than humanitarian) goals.
A lack of any real alternatives to American capitalism has all of us headed down a path with (seemingly) no turning back, and technology is helping this take place at a rapid pace. Now is the time to reflect on this -- is this what we really want?
"Already in the last few decades, economic powers have reached the point of imperiling the stability of the state through new forms of the circulation of capital that go by the generic name of multi-national corporations. These new forms of circulation imply that investment decisions have, at least in part, passed beyond the control of nation-states."

5. Knowledge requires someone with power in order to be legitimized

The political and shifting nature of knowledge is concealed in myths surrounding the idea that knowledge is cumulative, that each discovery builds upon the last and we are constantly adding to the existing body of knowledge in regular increments (perhaps ever marching forward towards the goal of knowing everything about everything).
The difference between "new scientific breakthrough" and "yet another crackpot" is whether it has been legitimized by someone in power. This is nothing new -- since Plato's time the idea of the person infused with the power to decide what is law, has also been the one infused with the authority to decide what is "fact" or "true".
"The question of the legitimacy of science has been indissociably linked to that of the legitimation of the legislator since the time of Plato."

6. Language games

The meaning behind (and infused within) a phrase can be multiple. Much like a game of chess (which has multiple moves that one can make) the rules may be simple, but this can still lead to complex outcomes (and are highly dependent on the initial conditions).
"...to speak is to fight, in the sense of playing, and speech acts fall within the domain of a general agonistics. This does not necessarily mean that one plays in order to win. A move can be made for the sheer pleasure of its invention."

de Castell, S. & Jenson, J. (2004). "Paying attention to attention: New economies for learning". Educational Theory. 54(4)

1. "Attentional economy"

The increasing proliferation of technology amongst all aspects of our lives means that attention has become a commodity of value. Education now finds itself in competition with advertisers, toys, gadgets, and finds itself having to integrate new forms of literacy (especially digital literacy) with more "traditional" approaches to learning.
Attention as having a "value" is not something new to education -- we can easily read student-teacher interactions through the lens of exchange as students have previously exchanged their attention for grades. However perhaps now the table are turned: rather than students needing to prove that they deserve the teacher's positive attention (or are not the ones who deserve their negative attentions, i.e punishment) it is teachers who now must "justify" why they "deserve" the attention of their students.
"Education, which has always been in the business of capturing and holding attention, has sustained serious blows to its capabilities as core values, along with traditional tools, means, and purposes, have been progressively troubled, destabilized and finally unseated by new literacies and digital epistemologies."

2. New technologies reward children with choice

The idea of "choice" is something that has remained largely outside of education's vernacular, especially with for example, the banking model of education. However, education has a harder time justifying this lack of choice when students are given the opportunity to decide what/when/how they want to interact with the technologies that are competing for their attention.
New technologies promise (or illusion) of multi-tasking are more rewarding than education's traditional "unimodal" approach. Students in the classroom are expected to focus on the task at hand, while outside the classroom they can be shifting between multiple things at once. This would be seen as "distraction" or "off task" within the actual classroom.
"Children quite literally pay their attention to new multimodal tools designed for them. These tools undermine singular modes (such as text) so completely that even technologies like the telephone, once tied to boxes and switches, have broken free both materially and symbolically..."

3. The blurring of entertainment and education

With two-income families reducing the chances that someone will be at home when the children return from school and the increasing idea that "outside = dangerous and unsafe", kids are left alone more than ever before. Educational video games are one of the things that are being used to fill this void with "useful" entertainment.
The immersive nature of games is something of interest to education scholars, just as it is at best strange, at worst, threatening, to teachers and parents who might not understand the ways in which these technologies become part of children's lives and social structures.
"Gaming's ability to mobilize and sustain a culture that immerses and fully absorbs its participants makes it threatening to many parents and teachers. And in many ways, it is. Today, for example, as a direct result of the proliferation of digital technologies in education, in work, and in social life, children live in the same physical spaces as their parents but inhabit different worlds, speak in new languages, write in new forms, and communicate using media in ways and for purposes parents can scarcely comprehend".

4. Play is important for learning

Play-based learning is something that traditionally, at best, is found in the earliest grades but is something that children are supposed to "grow out of". However, educational research recognizes that the games mentioned above can be valuable in their immersive qualities that can be immensely valuable for education.
Males (both men and boys) tend to be the primary consumers of video games, which accounts for their interest in and confidence when working with computers. With boys more likely to be playing games in the home, they are at an advantage if and when technology is brought into the classroom.
With females (both women and girls) continuing to be at the margins of gaming (and computer) culture, their lack of opportunity to play puts them at a great disadvantage for learning.
"This early gaming experience amounts to a "head start" for boys that accrues incrementally for the duration of schooling and beyond, such that we continue to see a dramatic, and indeed increasing, underrepresentation of women in computer and technology focused subjects and fields."

5. Attention is a "fixed resource" or "zero sum" and multitasking is a way around this

While the variety of interesting, alluring, and shiny technology continues to grow, human beings only have a fixed amount of attention they can "pay out". Basically, in order to pay attention to one thing, you have to disregard an increasing number of other things.
However... multitasking calls this into question. Younger generations seem to have a super-human ability to keep their eyes (and attention) on many balls in the air at once. But perhaps they are just keeping themselves occupied, as traditional educational delivery has a lot of downtime and requirements for students to wait for the teacher. With so many things competing for one's attention, it seems like the days of sitting at a desk waiting patiently until the teacher is ready are now gone.
"How much more absurd it must seem to today's students that they should spend so much time simply waiting on teachers -- it is not at al surprising that they often do not. This attentional restructuring has presented particular difficulty for teachers trying to adapt to instruction in computer lab settings: students at computers do not just "wait until the teacher is ready"; they do their email or surf the Web or chat or draw."

6. Towards a multimodal approach to education

Ranciere's argument that all people are equally intelligent and capable of learning without a teacher, on their own is seen as "radical". However, the embracing of all sorts of new technologies by young people show that perhaps this isn't so radical after all. Video games can perhaps provide a way into this for educators, where students can take control of their own learning objectives and the pace at which they complete them.
Students have embraced new technologies, but educators have been much more reluctant to do so. However, no matter as much as one might want to put their head in the sand, students are engaging with new technologies (and new was of forming knowledge) and to ignore this is to render the educational system completely obsolete.
"In education, pleasure does not figure prominently; neither, we would argue, do relevance or context. Schools and governmental policies still prioritize (in print), and teachers still enforce in practice, an "old fashioned," exclusively text-based literacy, despite well-worn arguments and new theorizations that have taken the term to mean much more than reading and writing text".

Conceptual bridging:

Perhaps it is too simple to say that both articles are talking about economies, but they are. In Lyotard's writing he lays out the argument that knowledge is not only a commodity, it is a commodity that bundles with it a large degree of power, influence, and political cache. For de Castell and Jenson, it is attention that is the commodity in question. Just as nation states are quickly losing power and control (and this power and control is being taken up by multi-national corporations), so too are traditional approaches to education losing the attention of the students they are trying to reach. Both of these papers act as a warning -- pay attention (hah) to what is going on or else traditional seats of power are going to be rendered obsolete.

Both of these papers, in their concerns about economies, are talking about two parts of the information economy. While in the past economies were built on raw materials, or perhaps what sorts of goods could be built with those raw materials, now it is knowledge that is bought, sold, and traded around the globe. However, knowledge being an "economic good" wasn't always the case. Somewhere along the line people had to be convinced that knowledge was something that should be protected, rather than shared. A new generation of workers needs to be trained in this fundamental shift in the understanding of knowledge. Students are told that they must be prepared for this new economy, so technological skill is something that should be a goal. However, just as Lyotard points out that developing countries are being left behind at an ever quickening pace, so too do de Castell and Jenson point out that women (and girls) are being left behind in this technological revolution. By calling attention to these problems with the notions of progress (and tradition) I feel that both these papers act as a warning. However, I fear that the people who most need to hear these warnings are too busy chasing bunny trails to know that this is something actually worth paying attention to.

4: E-Learning Paradigms

2011-07-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

Following the discussion, and as a contribution to your digital portfolio/course blog, your task is to use Taylor's borrowed terms, describing your own current situation in relation to your education at York. Think here also of the 'relative value' of your degree under conditions of massification of education.

Taylor borrows the terms "centre", "periphery" and "border" from Brown and Duiguid (1994) as a means of avoiding an uncritical approach to the use of technology in open learning/de-centralized education (63). Centre and periphery are used to signal a fluid, shifting set of social AND material relationships, social conventions and objects, that are constantly changing (what is central in one situation may not be in another). The border is where the centre and the periphery meet. None of these can be pre-determined, "...borders arise through social practices, and the elements of centre and periphery arise only in a particular interpretive context" (65). Borders also exist to maintain authority (66), and Taylor uses the example of the teacher being an authority in the classroom mostly because of social convention, and not due to the affordances of the classroom setting.

I see "border issues" popping up with the addition of certain types of technologies to the classroom, especially social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. For example, when Facebook first came out, it seems like there was a wave of early adopters who were pretty keen about the whole thing. As more people joined the site, the waters started to get a bit muddy and it was difficult to figure out (just by looking at your news feed) what was actually appropriate for Facebook, and what was over the line. In some people's rush to participate in this new technology, they may have over-shared, either in terms of too much information, or with too many people. I remember having to draw the line with my own Facebook friends list when one of my fellow undergrads went on to become a 4th grade teacher, and happily allowed all her students to add her on Facebook without limiting her profile in any way. In this rush to adopt a new technology, the critical moment of reflection can be lost and suddenly if this over zealous 4th grade teacher decides to roll everything back, is it too late? Or has that boundary been forever perforated?

It is Taylor's discussion of "mass education" that struck a chord with me (and my group when we were having our Skype discussion about the paper). I recently completed the Doctoral Seminar required as part of the PhD in Education at York University. This year it was taught by two professors who specialize in psychoanalytic theory, so (understandably) psychoanalysis was a theme running through the entire seminar. One particular topic that seemed to keep cropping up is the traumatic nature of what it means to become educated. This came up first with Frankenstein, where with the monster's education also carried a loss of innocence (and understanding of the unfairness of humanity). The monster's education was a one way street -- he could never unknow what he had learned. In his learning he became isolated, and when Victor declined to make him a partner, there was no choice but to die. Bleak? Yes.

This thread of learning being traumatic returned again later in the semester, when the professors were doing their mid-semester check in to make sure all was well... And it seemed like things weren't. I remember looking around the room and seeing a lot of shell-shocked faces. It was a part-time member of my cohort who actually vocalized nir discomfort, to put it on the table for the rest of the class to analyze and discuss their own misgivings about graduate school by proxy. Ne was concerned that nirs education was alienating them from their family. Perhaps if your partner is a graduate student, they will understand that you are particularly busy around midterms. Grandparents, not so much. This student was so traumatized by their experience in the PhD program to date, that ne wanted to switch nirs dissertation topic to be about exactly that: how does graduate education alienate one from their surroundings?

I have been at York for a year now, and I have been a TA for one undergraduate class. York is different from my previous university experiences because never before have I interacted with so many undergraduates who are the first of their family to go to university. This is something that doesn't seem to get acknowledged in many discussions of mass education -- you can't just say "okay now everyone is going to have access to post-secondary education", waive a wand and then be done with it. Poof! An educated populous! Not going to happen. Instead, what is much more likely is that an increasing number of people in each subsequent generation will go on to post-secondary studies, when their parents did not. I feel like at York, I am seeing a shift between these two demographics, parents (who did not go to university) are seeing their children go to university. And there are growing pains. These growing pains are not something that should be ignored, but they probably are because they are icky and don't have easy answers, and it is easier to pretend they don't exist.

In terms of my own degree, I think the easiest way to apply massification to my own situation is the sheer number of PhDs being granted each year. I feel like there is this sort of mythical fair tale that gets told about "back then" where every PhD student had a job lined up by the time they were ABD, that they would defend their dissertation and immediately go off to their new life as a professor. But I find this a bleak view of my future. Rather than viewing my cohort as competition, I'd rather view them as colleagues. Part of doing a PhD is creating that new piece of human knowledge, so (theoretically) we should all be doing something different. Maybe a job will pop up in my area of interest, maybe a job will pop up in ECE. Academia is one of those weird places where you can't really plan for the future. You just have to wait and see what happens next.

I will however, add with a quick rant about MRPs and course-based Master's programs. I don't like them. Or really, I don't like that someone who took 7 courses gets the same degree that I earned by writing a 200 page MA thesis. In my Master's institution, there was a "industry-based" Master's degree that basically existed for financial reasons. It attracted a large number of international students (who were paying international student fees) and despite the faculty not being able to teach the types of courses that would be appropriate for an applied, industry-focused degree, students were admitted year after year. It was a part-time program so it wasn't unheard of someone to be in their 4th or 5th year of this degree. Very few students seemed to finish, they would just burn out, their credits would expire, and then they would fade away. To me, this seems like the degree continued to stick around solely for financial reasons (perhaps maybe, how part-time unfunded PhDs can be seen as financing my own funded full-time degree?). This is the ugly side of massification -- people are willing to pay to get a degree if they feel it will help them in their goals. And it seems like cash-strapped universities will certainly be happy to cash their cheques, enroll them in a few classes, and (maybe) send them on their way with a trademarked degree. /rant over.

6: Gender and Technology

2011-07-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Survey the internet god/ess' (Wikipedia) entry on Feminism. Then, using a similar approach/format, construct an encyclopedic type reference that uses either reading as the primary text. Hint: choose the primary POINT that you want to make, based on the argument present in either/both readings and then give evidence from either/both readings to support that point, including any secondary points. If you have NEVER written a wikipedia entry before, the best thing you can do is READ a few to get an idea of the form/shape they take. The entry should be no longer than 250 words.

Gender disparity in IT

Gender disparity, that is, the lack of an unequal ratio of males and females, is often framed as a “problem” to be solved, especially in relationship to the field of Information Technology (IT). The reasons for disparity (and by extension, the possible solution for the disparity) are highly dependent on the ideological standpoint upon which one begins from. Some examples of ideological framing of gender disparity include:

Gender Equity Discourse

Larger numbers of males working in IT is due to the ways in which males are more likely to feel comfortable and/or empowered to work with computers. Because males dominate the IT industry it is understood that the industry also privileges “male” forms of interaction with computers, perpetuating a continuing cycle in which females (and female ways of knowing) are largely ignored by IT (for example hard/male vs. female/soft mastery of computers [1]). This interpretation has been critiqued for essentialising gender differences and that the disparity can be reversed with simple interventions [2] such as increasing funding to encourage women to choose IT related university programs.

Critical Discourse

Rather than essentialising gender into a male/female binary, this view is much more likely to view the disparity to be a result of longstanding systemic issues, especially in early education. In this view, the problem is seen more broadly, stemming from the social construction of IT being a masculine domain. Solutions to the disparity come in the form of rethinking education and widening the scope of what ‘counts’ as IT-related knowledge and expertise [2].

Works Cited:

1. Turkle, S. (1984). The Second Self: computers and the human spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster.

2. Abbis, J. (2008). Rethinking the 'Problem' of Gender and IT Schooling: Discourses in the literature. Gender & Education. 20(2) 153-165.

9: The New Knowledge Economy: Students and Teachers as Media Producers

2011-07-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already seen it in action (sometimes a little nauseating) or tried it yourself, Prezi is a tool that allows you to create a 'different' kind of interactive presentation, much like powerpoint, but with a different kind of "canvas" and different linking options. Your job is to link the key 3 main ideas from EACH text to one another using Prezi. Make sure you attempt to not JUST use text -- it allows, as does powerpoint, you to integrate images and video, etc. It is free for a 30 day trial, so make sure you download it and use it within that time period! P.S. it will export as a .pdf document for me to view, or you can send me the URL.

My Prezi is located online here!

7b: Sociable Media & "Technologies of the Self": Youth & Learning Online

2011-07-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

Adventures in Habbo Hotel

Time for a bit of living in Second Life OR any other Virtual World (VW) of your choice. For you novices, this will mean downloading the program, creating an identity, creating a character and then spending some time (at least 30 minutes) wandering around, etc. Your job is to screen capture your character in the environment, post it to your website/blog/wiki and include a commentary on what you saw, felt, thought about, etc. and try to link it back to the readings. For those of you who have spent time in SL already, choose another VW or simply blog about what you use SL for, take a screen shot, tell me about what you do there, and try to link your experiences back to the readings.

I actually had a hard time picking a VW to spend some time in for this part of the assignment. These days my RA work finds me spending time either in Rift, or watching someone play it (often for the first time). I've come to know the starting area quite well, and if I ever decided to sit down and play the game myself, I'm sure I could whiz through the starting areas quite quickly. However, something about the game's affordances just really puts me off. Recently another RA and I played through to about level 10 together, mostly because we wanted to know what a rift was like (just in case any of our multi-session participants actually got that far), and also to do a bit more exploring in the game world. The more I play Rift, the more I dislike it. I find the graphics clunky and just overall ugly, but I also don't really care about anything that is going on in the game. The story just isn't compelling. My other easily accessible VWs are WoW and EVE, both of which I have spent so much time in (and writing about them) that it didn't seem fair to use them for this assignment. Which lead me to spending an afternoon in Habbo Hotel. Now do I have some stories to tell!

First things first, why did Habbo Hotel catch my attention? I must confess, I already knew about Habbo Hotel (at least vaguely) from the fact that it was a target of a 4chan raid ("Pool's Closed, further explanation here on Know Your Meme). But really, I didn't know much about Habbo Hotel at all. So, curious about what it was all about I ventured in and created an account.

Avatar Creation & Customization:

Upon first logging in to the game I am given the choice of a male or a female avatar. They are both ghosted out, really just an outline of what the generic male and female bodies look like. I flipped a coin and decided to make a male avatar.

I'm not sure if Habbo Hotel randomly generates an avatar or if this is the default male avatar... But given the Pool's Closed avatar was a black man in a business suit, I briefly wondered if the game could read my mind and knew what originally drew me in :P I found it interesting that avatar customization came after deciding between m/f. I guess I am used to the avatar creation systems of more RPG style games where you can look at all the options for customization before committing to a male or female avatar. Habbo Hotel does this the other way around -- choose between m/f first, THEN customize your avatar.

In the customization screens there are a large number (well, a large number compared to other games) skin of colour swatches. Obviously they are not completely inclusive of all possible skin tones, but given that I have been recently been watching a lot of new players struggle with the whitewashed character creation of Rift, I was excited to see more options beyond "pale white" to "white, but perhaps spent a bit too much time out in the sun". In the end I made a purple-skinned avatar, just because I could.

I started looking through the accessories and found some things that surprised me in the hat section. There weren't a lot of choices, but they seemed to take a scattershot approach to the options ranging from what I can only thing to describe as a "Rasta hat - along the lines of these" to a top hat, to various animal ears. The very last choice was a full face balaclava, which just seemed... weird? I had always imagined Habbo Hotel to being a kids-oriented space,so I'm not really sure why they would include a balaclava. In my travels throughout various rooms I didn't see anyone wearing it (but I did see a character wearing the Rasta hat, who was accused by other players as being a "white boy trying to be rasta". My first thought was that it was there for people wanting to RP a casino heist, but I highly doubt that is the balaclava's intended purpose...

In the end I made a purple skinned avatar with an awesome goatee. In terms of clothes, I found a shirt that seemed similar to a red shirt (from Star Trek of course) which seemed fitting because I am almost certain that this avatar will be used once, and then abandoned forever... Not wanting to spend too much time on the avatar I made my selections and ventured into the wild unknown world of Habbo Hotel.

"white boy, trying to be Rasta?"

Interacting with the world:

The first thing that the game wants you to do is to customize your living space. The first series of "quests" (I have a hard time calling them quests, it seems like "objectives" is a better fit, but the game asks you to complete a series of tasks and then you are rewarded with credits, which you can then turn around and use as currency to buy more items for your apartment). This reminds me very much of The Sims, so for a few minutes I happily arranged (and re-arranged) the default furniture that came with my apartment.

I noticed that a large package appeared on the floor, and upon clicking it I was directed to check my email. Ah ha! This is how they confirm that you supplied a working email address! Without it, I would not be able to claim my pet cat! I confirmed my email address and momentarily panicked trying to think of a name for my new virtual pet. I stuck with my default name ("Waffles") and soon enough Waffles was wandering around my apartment sitting on furniture that wasn't there, and demanding to be petted and played with. Waffles also was complaining of thirst, so I looked in the in-game store for a water bowl. From what I could tell, water bowls could only be paid for by real world currency, so it looks like Waffles is going to be thirsty for a long time. I see now that Habbo Hotel falls into the micro-transaction style of game (free to play, but anything beyond the basics cost RW cash). I suspect that much like Maple Story, people will be able to "know" I am a noob because I am only wearing free things, unlike the nicer looking store-bought items.

I quickly became bored with the customizing of my apartment (because really, how many ugly tables can you move around before getting tired of the process, amiright?) so I decided to venture out into the shared, public spaces of Habbo Hotel. My first public space was one of the "recommended" rooms, which is where I saw the racialized insults mentioned above. I wandered around the room, sat on things, and then began looking for a room with more players. Which brings me to my next stop, the "Sexy Singles Room".

Entering into the Sexy Singles Room, I realize that Habbo Hotel is NOT a game for children, like I had originally thought. This was quite a tame screenshot, compared to some of the other things that were happening while I was spending time in here.

Perhaps because I was playing a male avatar (that looks quite silly, IMO) no one really interacted with me, except one other male avatar who waived at me when I was laying down on the bed. Which brings me to my first question.... What the hell is up with the beds? You can see them on the left hand side of the screen shot. A room full of beds where avatars would lay down side by side, and then I'd notice that text bubbles would appear over their heads, indicating that they were chatting with each other (I think?). There was a female avatar laying in the bed the entire time I was there, and the man in the suit was beside her for a little while, then he got up and walked away. When he left the room I lay down on a bed that was empty, to see if anyone would try to interact with me, but after a few minutes it was apparent that I was on my own. Just before I got up the man in the suit appeared at the foot of my bed and waived at me, but no chat accompanied his wave (that I could notice).

The whole room seems to have been set up to encourage 1 on 1 interactions between avatars. There are a series of seats that are pushed up together that fit two avatars face to face, and then a series of loveseats where two can sit side by side. I'm sure if I had spent more time in the room the interactions would have taken on a bit more of an observable pattern and I'd have a better idea about what was going on... But another room with an interesting name caught my eye, so my adventure continued!

The next room I visited was the America's Army room. This was fascinating! I still can't tell if it was an officially sanctioned US Army activity, or if it was a group of people role-playing a recruitment office. What would happen is that new people would enter the room and wait in a line. Upon getting to the front of the line they would be asked to change their outfit to a grey t-shirt, black gym shorts, and black boots. They would then be directed to sit at one of the desks that ran across the middle of the room and were told to change their note to "Recruit". Occasionally I would see people wearing khaki pants and white dress shirts wander through, who I think MAYBE were "Officers", but I wasn't quite sure. I sat in the lobby for quite a while but my name was never called, so I never quite figured out what was going on.

While I was waiting to see if any of the recruitment clerks would engage with me, I noticed an interesting exchange between two players: one was a recruitment clerk, the other was seeming to be recruited. The recruit had changed into the required outfit, but balked at being told that they had to remove their necklace and the feather from their hair. They continued to question why they had to remove those items that helped identify their avatar from others, and the recruiter said that they didn't make the rules and they had five seconds to remove them, or they could leave. I still don't really know what I stumbled in to, perhaps I will go spend some more time there to try and figure it out.

Finally I went to a nightclub, which seemed to be quite full. I sat for a few minutes to try and get a sense of the conversation, but it seemed like a lot of people talking over each other, and not really talking TO each other.

Another overwhelming room... what is going on?

Theorizing Habbo Hotel:

After going into Habbo Hotel cold (well, despite knowing a bit about the website via reading about the 4chan raids) I decided to do some research about what exactly it was that I saw and experienced. It turns out that Habbo Hotel IS directed towards younger people -- While not the children I originally assumed, Habbo Hotel is meant to be a social networking site for teenagers.

Comparing Habbo Hotel to boyd's (2008) description of MySpace, I've had a difficult time trying to figure out the overlaps and differences between the two sites. Are they even after the same target demographic? boyd's characterization of MySpace leads me to believe that the site was built, THEN the teens arrived. Indie bands were the first to flock to the site (and now that MySpace is seemingly on the way out, musicians seem to be the only ones still actively involved in updating their profiles). Habbo Hotel was (probably?) geared towards a younger demographic from the start.

boyd's interviewing of teens on their use of MySpace, specifically the lurking or creeping on other people's profiles is a behaviour I find interesting. Much like Facebook (and probably Google+, if it ever gets off the ground), social networking sites allow for a voyeuristic look at your friends and friends of friends lives. Far too often the critique of excessive use of social networking sites seems to rely on MySpace/Facebook friends not being "real" friends. It is a way of "playing" at being popular, at least according to the bloggers and journalists who like to write stories about inviting 500 Facebook friends to a party and no one showing up.

I'm not sure if Habbo Hotel is really designed for that sort of creeping and lurking. Instead, the "Habbo Armies" and "FBI"/"CIA" seem to provide another form of interaction in group roleplay. After my stumbling across the America's Army room I did some more searching about Habbo Armies and it turns out that there is more than one. It is a "job" that you can take on in the game, and for some people, they take these armies very seriously. On one website I found a list of people who had been "dishonorably discharged" from the army and others who were "quitters", with their infractions/reasons for quitting made public for all to see (and attached to their avatar's name). For many, it was that they had stopped showing up in-game. For others, they no longer had the time to commit to the army, and needed to quit in favour of RW obligations.

Much like boyd, Weber & Mitchell (2008) look at the connective possibilities of social media, as well as the possibilities for construction of (perhaps multiple) identities. However, both of these studies are at least partly based on RW interviews. My time observing Habbo Hotel was based solely in the VW -- I honestly have no idea what anyone "truly" is in the RW. All I have to go on is their avatar's appearance, name, and how they choose to present themselves in the VW. I do think that there are likely more interesting things to be discovered about Habbo Hotel, especially since I am getting the impression it is about "playing" work (with all these references to in-game jobs), and in addition to socialization and interaction. Perhaps work on The Sims would be a bit more insightful for my wonderings about this VW...

I don't know if I will ever log back on to Habbo Hotel. I'm curious, but I'm not sure what to make of everything that was going on. Then again, Waffles is probably REALLY thirsty by now...

7a: Sociable Media & "Technologies of the Self": Youth & Learning Online

2011-07-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

Many of you probably have for some time participated in social networking sites. If you haven't, you should have some idea of how they work, what their limitations and affordances are, and what many many people world wide use them for. Your job in this activity is to theorize, from your own standpoint, and in consultation with the readings how you might use these kinds of technologies as part of a curriculum you deliver (if you don't already use them). Make sure you choose a quote to support your main point.

The Problems with Facebook (or, what role should Facebook play in the classroom?)

In my experience as a Teaching Assistant, social networking sites such as Facebook have come up multiple times as a subject of discussion both in tutorial and in larger lectures. Most recently the experiences of another TA at YorkU provided a cautionary tale about privacy settings and perhaps what should (or shouldn't) be talked about on Facebook. Instead of using this story as a scare tactic (don't ever put anything online, ever!!!), I used it to start a larger discussion about the "purpose" of Facebook and shifting expectations of privacy in an online space. I provided my students with another side of the story (nicely summarized here) and we were also able to discuss "gotcha journalism" and the morality of The Excalibur's and the journalist's actions in this situation.

I haven't had the experience of designing a course (yet) but I have often wondered what sort of technology I would use to support my students both inside and out of the classroom. While Facebook has yet to be a required part of any of my classes (either as a student or as a teaching assistant) I have heard from friends who have had their participation in Facebook mandated by a course syllabus. For the most part, their reactions were overwhelmingly negative. I could understand their concerns with being "forced" to participate in a website that many people (myself included) have very serious concerns about both privacy, and the ways in which our information becomes commercialized (for Facebook's profits/gains).

I do understand the draws of having one's course discussions on Facebook. The groups feature is an easy to use application within the website, all one has to do is plug in the relevant information, invite the participants who need to be invited, and then you are off to the races. A Facebook group takes a lot of the backend work out of the equation, and based on my experiences with Moodle, Blackboard, and FirstClass, I agree that Facebook's interface seems a lot more intuitive. But the difference between Facebook and these other three sites is that Moodle, Blackboard, and FirstClass are designed for online academic collaboration. Facebook is not. Facebook exists as a social networking site, and (in my opinion) its goal is to get users to share as much information as possible, which is then sold to advertisers. These sites are designed with different goals in mind, and to use Facebook interchangeably with them (in an uncritical manner) is at best naive, and at worst, lazy.

Concerns about privacy were dealt with in one particular class by the instructor saying "oh just register under a fake name", but in my opinion this doesn't address the concerns with mandating Facebook use for a class. I believe registering for a "fake" Facebook account goes against the Terms of Service, so all it would take is one discussion to get out of hand and you can be reported and removed from the site. What would happen to your grade then? The use of Facebook for course discussion seems to mean that there are a lot of assumptions made on the part of the instructor, that not only is everyone in the class comfortable with posting to the site (both in terms of comfort in technical skill, but also comfortable in participating in the site in general), but also puts the onus on the student to ensure that they know about their rights/responsibilities when using the site, but also that they make themselves aware of the tools at their disposal to protect themselves.

My biggest issue with mandatory Facebook use in a class is that too often it implies that everyone in the class is already familiar with the site, knows how to use it, and uses it in the same way. The quickest way to annoy me is to start citing off some digital natives nonsense, which seems to be a catch all term to describe anyone younger than yourself who (is apparently) an expert on all things technological. boyd's (2008) discussion of MySpace is quick to point out, "although news media give the impression that all online teens in the United States are on MySpace, this is not the case" (pg. 120). She goes on to explain who does use MySpace, and more importantly, who does not. In her qualitative studies she breaks out two types of non-participants: "disenfranchised teens and contentious objectors" (pg. 121). That is, there are those who can't participate due to access (for example lack of internet access, or parents blocking access) and those who don't participate (for example, "because it is stupid"). However, boyd found that for many that claim not to participate, many do have an account. To me this seems like an appropriate approach -- it certainly makes sense to log on and take a look at what you are objecting to. It makes sense to know what you are rejecting and WHY you are rejecting it (or risk being called a luddite I guess). I wonder then, what happens when boyd's objectors are then put in a situation where they are "forced" to use MySpace (or whatever other social networking sites they are objecting to). How would they react if they ended up in one of the classes I was describing above? And how accommodating should an instructor be, if a student objects to the expectations of using Facebook for class-related activities?

When I was first introduced to Twitter I thought it was a stupid idea and I pretty much ignored it. It seemed silly and vain, microblogging... wtf? It was only when I attended the tenth annual Association of Internet Researchers conference that I saw Twitter being used in a way that was relevant to me. I saw that it was a quick way to meet fellow conference attendees, and great for organizing last minute social gatherings. Using the conference hashtag was an efficient way to get the attention of other tweeting conference goers. I also saw that Twitter was being used as a backchannel. Audience members could comment on presentations while they were still going on, adding additional insights (or just as often, "adding" to the snark). I found it an awesome tool for handling a multi-track conference such as ir10. I couldn't be everywhere, but if I followed the Twitter feed, I could feel like I was (almost) part of the audience. So where before I was decidedly anti-Twitter, I had now seen the site in a different light, and it was a way that spoke to me. I became a Twitter convert, and convinced many of my friends to try it out too (most of whom enjoyed it).

I really liked the idea of a Twitter backchannel, especially in that it could provide a way for authors to go back and look at a record of the audience thoughts while they were presenting. I began to think about how useful it could be as a tool in 500 seat lectures, where it could be intimidating for a student to put up their hand and ask for clarification. What if they could tweet the professor? They could then clarify the fuzzy bits at the next lecture, or better yet they could have a live feed in front of them so they could keep a constant eye and know when students were getting lost. I thought this was a great idea, and couldn't wait until I would have a chance to try this out.

I realize now that this idea rests on a lot of assumptions. First, it assumes that everyone in the classroom will have a computer (or some other device capable of tweeting) and access to the internet. I can't be critical of all things "digital native" and then assume that everyone sitting in my classroom would have equal access to a particular form of technology. I also realize that I would likely be faced with a large amount of resistance from administration. It seems to be that laptops and cellphones are THE ENEMY of higher learning, that is, we can't trust students to not be distracted by their shiny electronics. And finally, I realize that this idea assumes that students are going to be comfortable with raising questions in an (online) public way. Perhaps speaking up on twitter is just as scary (if not more so, as in order for this to work tweets would have to be public, which means anyone could take a look at what you wrote). Just because I am comfortable on Twitter, doesn't mean I can assume that all my students will be. I should also point out that Twitter backchannels have been known to go horribly, publicly wrong.

But! Let's say I found myself in the position of being able to design my own undergraduate course, and I am strongly encouraged to use some sort of social networking site as a means of engaging with the students. All kids are on Facebook, right? It seems far too easy to set up a Facebook group and say "this is where all out of lecture discussions will happen", pat myself on the back, and then call it a day. Instead, I would encourage students to engage with Facebook in a more critical way. Again, it seems easy to SAY that, but what does that actually look like? Perhaps for my "choose my own adventure" I will design a course syllabus, but for now I would say it would include things like:

Using the YorkU TA as an example of what can/does happen when private and public spaces collide.
Research what sort of behaviours/activities will get you banned on Facebook, and what "you can get away with" without attracting attention. Perhaps this will involve making fake Facebook profiles?
Screen The Social Network and then compare/contrast the events from the film with some of Mark Zuckerberg's own writings/interviews.

Ken Jenning's casual sexism

2011-02-17T08:22:00.001-08:00

So I have been following Watson's appearance on Jeopardy quite closely. And now that he has thoroughly crushed his competitors, I have been following their reactions.

Of particular interest is Ken Jenning's editorial in Slate about his competing against the (vastly superior) AI. I was reading it and then I came to this part:

Indeed, playing against Watson turned out to be a lot like any other Jeopardy! game, though out of the corner of my eye I could see that the middle player had a plasma screen for a face. Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It's very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.

And then I started to get annoyed. What does he mean by "never known the touch of a woman"? Is Jennings making a play on the (tired, annoying) stereotype that those who are intelligent are not successful in the romance department? Or is he saying that no women were involved in the creation of Watson?

If you watched the full episodes, especially the first one, you will have noticed that there WERE women involved in the creation of Watson. They made a point of making sure they interviewed them and did it in a respectful way. The women who were interviewed were interviewed because they were experts and part of the project, not because they were token talking heads. Maybe they were peripherally involved in the project and were there as token female techheads, I'm not sure. But to say that no woman ever touched Watson (in a literal or more figurative sense) is wrong. So then I started digging.

Now, Jennings is not exactly a likable character in this tale. He let his fame get to his head and turned on the very people who made him famous (the producers of Jeopardy; Alex Trebek) and started blogging about how they were behind the times. The Buzzle writeup of his blogs explains:

He said that the median viewing age of the show is 91, and the questions are about "some effete left-coast crap nobody’s heard of, like "Opera," or, um, "U.S. History" or whatever…I mean, wake me up when you come up with something that middle America actually cares about." Jennings lists a few suggestions for categories, such as PlayStation, Reality TV, Men’s Magazines, and Skanks from Reality TV Who Got Naked in Men’s Magazines.

Yep. Skanks from Reality TV Who Got Naked in Men's Magazines.

I am so very happy that Jennings got his ass handed to him. Now I hope that he will go back home and realize that he is no longer "the guy who won 2.5 million on Jeopardy", he is now "the guy who got beat by the computer".

And I for one welcome our new AI overlords. All Hail Watson!

York University questioning every angle about video game play

2011-02-03T13:35:00.000-08:00

I noticed this image a while ago, but had forgot about it until yesterday. Here in Toronto we had a weather alert on Tuesday/Wednesday, so I had been checking the York University website to see if the campus was going to be closed or not. Eventually the video game slide popped up again, and it has been bothering me ever since.

So... York University's website has this ongoing advertisement about the interdisciplinary nature of the programs here. Other graphics include a high rise, a cross-section of a brain, and a stone of some sort. There are always three "interpretations" listed, and the catch phrase "question every angle" always appears too. I think there are "problems" with a few of the graphics, but the video game one really bugs me.

If you click here, the slideshow should start automatically. Feel free to go watch it, don't worry, I'll wait. Back? Okay, good!

Let's investigate the three interpretations further:

A psychologist sees disappearing interpersonal skills
A health scientist sees rising obesity rates
A pedagogical specialist sees a teaching aid

The first one is an obvious bother to me, as my entire MA was writing about the positive social aspects of online gaming. The second one seems to ignore the recent developments in gaming, especially the kinetic gaming "controllers" such as the wii balance board. And while I am glad that the web designer is taking the time to recognize that yes, York is a major centre for game research and education, games are not just a teaching aid.

I get it, it is a simplistic, catchy ad to try and brand York as an interdisciplinary research university. But do we really want to be branding ourselves based on these tired cliches and stereotypes? And rather than focusing on these abstract ideas that may or may not be the focus of someone's research here, why not focus on the ACTUAL innovative research being done at this institution? For example for myself, York was NOT on my radar. I had ever intention of going back to my undergraduate institution, but then I met my current supervisor and the rest is history. I am here specifically to work with one professor, but also to work with the research group that she has formed. If this group was at different institution, you better believe I would be there and not here.

It is also fair to acknowledge that people do move around. I understand that they probably don't want to create an advertising campaign around specific people at York, because it would be insincere (or a waste of money) to advertise using someone's face/research only to have students show up and realize they accepted a position elsewhere. I just wish that this advertising campaign was innovative enough to move beyond the tired cliches that those of us in game research are so frickin tired of hearing. But at least they successfully avoided the "girls don't play video games" trap!

January recap

2011-01-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

With the end of the month upon me, feeling like I got NOTHING done I thought it would be an interesting exercise to start tallying up some of the things that have kept me busy. I recently got an email saying that my first year progress report is due at the end of February, so I need to be in the habit of making lists to show what I've been up to. Off the top of my head, in the month of January I accomplished the following tasks:

Marked 25 exams and 25 essays, and a backlog of weekly reading responses.
Calculated my students grades to date and gave them detailed feedback with suggestions on how to improve their grades.
Applied to a summer doctoral program.
Coordinated a four author paper and submitted it in time for SIGGRAPH.
Submitted three abstracts to various conferences.
Revised a paper for publication (still needs revisions before it will get out the door though).
Revised my CV (again).
Wrote a paper for my doc seminar.

And for coursework I've read:

Plato. (2006). The republic. (R.E Allen, Trans.). New Haven: Yale University.
Locke, J. (1996). Some thoughts concerning education: and, Of the conduct of the understanding. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishers. (Original work published in 1693).
Arendt, Hannah. (2006). Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin.
Coetzee, J. M. (2001). The Lives of Animals. Princeton University Press.

Britzman, D. and Pitt, A. (2004). “Pedagogy and clinical knowledge: Some psychoanalytic observations on losing and refinding significance.” JAC, 24:2, 353-372.
Gilbert, J. (2006). “‘Let us say yes to who or what turns up’: Education as Hospitality.” Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies. 4:1, 25-34.
Pitt, A. (2010). “On having one’s chance: autonomy as education’s limit.” Educational Theory 60:1 (1-18).
Zembylas, M.(2009). “Making sense of traumatic events: toward a politics of aporetic mourning in educational theory and pedagogy.” Educational Theory 59, 1 (85-104).
Felman, S. (1992). “ Education and Crisis, or the vicissitudes of teaching” In S. Felman and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. Pp. 1-56. New York: Routledge.

This doesn't include the papers I've been reading as part of my RA work/paper writing.

When I write it all down, it sure doesn't seem like much. Looking at this list, I know I can't afford to take time off to go visit my brother's new baby over reading break. Of course I have the excuse that I sprained my wrist and it has slowed down my typing dramatically. I'm up to typing for about half an hour before it really starts to ache, and I've been giving my phone quite the workout (swype ftw), let's hope that February is an injury free month.

Another day, another report reinforcing 'girl play' and 'boy play'

2011-01-27T07:41:00.000-08:00

So, a lot of things have happened since the winter break. I haven't blogged about any of them, because I am currently recovering from a sprained wrist, and typing for too long gets pretty painful. But, I'm going to type through the pain for a moment, and mention a story that bounced around my twitter feed this morning:

Gamasutra - News - Research: Less Girl Game Time Down To Multitasking Behavior With Tech

The report that the article is referencing can be downloaded here.

Going to take a break from typing, and when I come back, a rant will likely appear below. Just warning you.

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

2011-01-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

I don't really have much to say right now, I'm pretty much spent from finishing off a paper today. I have at least a week before the next abstract is due, so tomorrow I plan to do some RA work to decompress tomorrow.

But quickly before I go and have a wonderful night's sleep, it is amazing how coming back to this video a few months later changes things. Now that I've done a lot more reading around education, it is amazing how many more connections I am making. Looking forward to watching it again in a few months after finishing this philosophy of education reading class!

Cosmo, World of Warcraft edition

2011-01-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

So The Daily Blink has a series of fake World of Warcraft related magazine covers, including a Cosmo parody:

Cosmopolitan: Azeroth edition

Okay, so let's take a look at the cover stories:

What tier armor is right for my body type?
Ventrillo: girls, it's not just for raiding!
New Badge gear. Our fashionistas weight in!
3 stances that will drive your boyfriend wild (including berserker)
How to burn calories during your corpse run
The hottest hunks in Stormwind
Letters to Cosmo: How do I tell my guild I'm a guy?
Slyvanas speaks: Her Diet for a sexy midriff
And the hover-over text is: "Dear Jaina: My husband brought the succubus to bed with us last night. How do I tell him I'm uncomfortable with this? Sincerely, Whipped Warlock Wife"

Overall, this seems like a pretty accurate assessment of what Cosmo would be like if it suddenly decided to go for a gaming audience. I understand that this is in jest so they probably ran with the first ideas off the top of their head... I just find it really fucking sad that this is such a pervasive stereotype. Arg.

"games for girls"

2011-01-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Let's start the year off on the right foot, sending a look of disapproval in bored.com's direction!

The "girl" category of bored's free online games.

͠ʘ_͠ʘ

Future Shop's take on social gaming

2010-12-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

I was at the mall this morning, killing time before my dentist appointment. I decided to wander through Future Shop and check out the xbox section, maybe pick up a copy of the latest Assassin's Creed. As I was wandering around, I noticed a single shelf on the accessories rack that was labeled as "social gaming". I was curious so I started looking through the games and it was full of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. And that's it.

On academic freedom

2010-12-10T08:57:00.000-08:00

Right now there is a battle raging in Ontario.

Here are the facts as I know them. Jennifer Peto wrote a MA thesis at the U of T called The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education”.

This caught the attention of the media and members of the Ontario government. The thesis is being condemned, and Peto is being thrown under the bus by pretty much everyone.

I have read the introduction and conclusion of the thesis, and took a look at the bibliography. From what I can gather, Peto's thesis is calling into question the idea of being privileged, and trying to understand why anti-Zionist Jews are marginalized and debates shut down for the sake of maintaining hegemonic power. It seems to be that this outrage is an example of this shutting down of the debate she wrote her thesis about. As a disclaimer, I haven't read the whole thing, maybe there is something overtly racist in the chapters I didn't read. I'm not going to be commenting on the content of her thesis. What concerns me is the way her thesis is being discussed.

I'm really concerned about the amount of people condemning both the thesis and Peto as a person, without even reading the damn thing. In fact, this really, really, REALLY, scares me.

For example:

But as far as Peter Shurman is concerned, all hate should be condemned — and hate is exactly what he believes this particular thesis is.

"I am sure that the legislature is a place to discuss anything that affects the general wellbeing of the people of Ontario," said the Thornhill MPP who was part of Tuesday's condemnation. "I'm not sure Ontario is an appropriate place for preaching hate."

He hasn't read the paper, but nonetheless owes it to his largely Jewish constituents to defend Israel on their behalf, he said.

HE. HASN'T. READ. THE. PAPER.

Some of my friends have been debating this on facebook and there are two streams of debate. My academic friends are having a debate about academic freedom, and if the province had any right to step in and condemn the thesis. They are debating if this is a matter for the university to settle, and if this sets a dangerous precedent.

My high school friends are commenting on Peto herself. Because we went to high school with Peto. And some of them are so confused about 'how she could turn out this way'.

I myself have fond memories of Peto. We were both founding members of our high school's first women's issues club. We protested together outside the hotel that housed an anti-choice group who came to Toronto for a meeting (an anti-choice group that had ties to murderers who assassinated doctors who performed abortions). She was the first people that encouraged me to be vocal and proud about being a feminist. I owe a lot to Peto, and I am sad we lost touch when I left the province.

Peto came to our school in grade 10. As she explains in the introduction of her thesis, she had been at a private Jewish school prior to that. Quite a few people I met in high school had been at that private school and switched to public school in grade 9, including the resident bully/mean girl of my grade 9 circle of friends. This bully heard about Peto transferring to our public school and proceeded to start a full fledged smear campaign against her. Her crimes? The bully said she wore Gap reverse fit jeans. This coming from the bully who thought it was 'funny' to tell everyone in our grade 9 geography class that I had crabs. She even wrote "Kelly has crabs" on my trapper keeper binder. As a grade 9 who had never even kissed another person, this was mortifying. If Peto was someone that this bully was so against/afraid of, I knew Peto must be a cool person. And she was.

I am concerned because the debates in the media are quickly becoming a personal attack on Peto, explaining that she must just be a self-hating Jew. I really hope that she continues on in academia and does a PhD, rather than letting this immaturity turn her off. This is not what academia is supposed to be about. In academia there is supposed to be room for debate, critique, and counterarguments. Don't like what someone said in their last paper? Write a rebuttal and publish it. Allow for a proper back and forth, rather than a one way attack via the mainstream media.

Is this really what we want to be teaching the next generation of academics? That you don't need to read what you are critiquing? And you better pick a thesis topic that won't ruffle any feathers? It's bad enough that those of us in social science are tailoring our SSHRC proposals to be more 'business-friendly', but now we can't write about whole topics at all or else the Ontario Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will call your work disgusting? This isn't what I signed up for when I sold my soul to the academy. If this is the way things are going to be, I want out.

What makes a game good, according to a 3 year old

2010-12-09T08:25:00.001-08:00

"I have a game called Donkey Kong, and it is a good game. It is a really good good good good good game. It's a good game because you don't miss."

I'd ask for more clarification, but he's busy playing with his cars right now.

Canadian Game Studies Association - Call for Abstracts

2010-12-09T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

The 2011 Canadian Game Studies Association's (CGSA) annual conference will be held in Fredericton, New Brunswick from May 30-31, in conjunction with the Congress of the Social Sciences & Humanities. This year's theme is "Coasts & Continents: Exploring People and Places."

We invite both national and international paper proposals on digital games research, broadly defined. In keeping with this year's Congress theme, we also encourage work that examines game and player boundaries and boarders, spaces and places, whether that be in Multiplayer Online Spaces or in the space and place of everyday lives, from couches in living rooms to massive gaming LANs or the furthest reaches of mobile augmented reality play.

Please send an extended abstract of no more than 500 words for paper proposals, or a summary of a proposed panel of no more than 1,000 words to your 2011 Conference Co-Chairs, either Suzanne de Castell (decaste@sfu.ca) or Nick Taylor (nickttaylor@gmail.com) by February 10, 2011.

Looking forward to seeing you in the Maritimes!

- Your friendly neighborhood CGSA

Neil deGrasse Tyson on why there are no women in science

2010-12-09T06:08:00.000-08:00

Neil deGrasse Tyson is my favourite famous scientist, hands down. I love his sense of humour, I love the topics he covers, and I especially love his philosophy of the public and science education/awareness. He is at the top of Richard's list of physicists that he would like to meet and he is at the top of 'awesome people' I would like to meet.

So anytime I see anything related to Tyson, I always make sure I click on it. Sure enough, there was a discussion on TwoX on reddit this morning about Tyson's answer to "why are there no women in science". It was 5 in the morning, I am the only one awake in the house, I had no headphones on, but I clicked the link anyway. I don't think I can embed the link because I want to send you to the specific answer (though the entire panel is worth watching), so click here to watch Tyson's answer.

Now, let's set aside the fact that the question was phrased as "what's up with chicks and science" (or at least that's what I heard. Please please please comment if I am wrong). And then the moderator asks if anyone wants to touch the idea of if there are genetic differences which will explain why there are more men in science. Huge red flags, any other time I would probably get my back up and just close the link. But I was promised that Tyson would be answering, so I continued to watch.

Tyson seems to be the only one who wants to answer, and he starts off by disclaiming that he has never been female, but he has been black all his life. He then outlined how everything seemed to line up against his announcement that he wanted to be an astrophysicist when he grew up, and any hurdle put in front of him, he used it as fuel to push harder. And now years later, he is a publicly recognized figure... who still has security guards follow him while he shops because they are afraid he is going to steal something. He has this awesome quote, "Now here I am, one of I think, of the most visible sciences in the land and I want to look behind me and see the others who might have been this, and they're not there. And I wonder what is the blood on the tracks that I happened to survive that others did not, simply because of the forces of society prevented it at every turn. At EVERY turn. "

I really love this imagery, it really is blood on the tracks. When you grow up hearing "no" at every turn, it can be hard to keep getting up out of bed every morning and continue to push that boulder up that mountain. So Tyson ends with the comment that we have to change the social forces at work before we can really do anything to improve the lot of anyone other than white men who want to be a scientist. At this point I give a nod to Tyson because hopefully this is one of the areas that my dissertation will ultimately address. But I am not the first, and unfortunately I will not be the last. Things won't change if we leave well enough alone.

The commentary on TwoX about this video was really polarizing. There are those who say "YES! Thank you Tyson for saying this" and then there are those who say "I don't see what the problem is, women are equal now, why u mad?" Thankfully, the actual feminists seem to outweigh the "I'm not a feminist, but..." type people in this community, but it still really bothers me that people, especially women, can be so blasé about gender. Gender matters. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either selling something, or has internalized their own oppression to the point that they have become the oppressor.

When gamers subvert their play...

2010-12-01T06:14:00.000-08:00

Last night we had our final presentations and got to show off our game designs to the rest of the class. Both my group and one other (or at least I think there were only two) that overtly talked about subversion and non-prescriptive gameplay. In my group's game (which deals with bullying) we didn't want to force or coerce players into feeling obligated to play nicely. We want kids to have the chance to play as a bully or bullied (or somewhere in between). With most of the language stripped out of the game (taking cues from The Sims) it is easy to project one's own thoughts and meanings onto the interactions in the game. So we created a sandbox game without rails... in the hopes that players will well... play with it.

We have high hopes with what can happen, but part of me is always wondering if it will turn into another Moonbase Alpha. The game's original intent is to allow players to get a feel of what life would be like on the moon. The description of the game explains:

In Moonbase Alpha, you assume the exciting role of an astronaut working to further human expansion and research. Returning from a research expedition, you witness a meteorite impact that cripples the life support capability of the settlement. With precious minutes ticking away, you and your team must repair and replace equipment in order to restore the oxygen production to the settlement.

So, that's what the designers intended. A quick look on youtube shows what some players actually ended up using the game for:

This one frequently appears on Reddit, often with a caption along the lines of "this is why teenagers are not allowed to go on space missions".

This one doesn't allow embedding, but the ending made me laugh so hard that my sides still hurt. It looks like the space station is on fire at some point, which I don't understand because I don't think fire CAN happen on the moon... But after all this mayhem and destruction, the last line of the video made it all worth while: "Science. We just did science".

I'm sure the creators of the game are less than pleased with the 4chanification of their game, but at the very least people are having fun. Maybe they are learning something, maybe they aren't. But a little subversion never hurt anybody, right?

Errata

2010-11-24T22:05:00.000-08:00

Casual? Hardcore? Just plain mad? You decide. Choose your own adventure this week.

I feel that talking about casual verses hardcore is the latest "in" topic in games research. The first talk I saw on the subject was at the Pop Culture Association's national conference in 2009. This past AoIR had entire panels devoted to the 'casual' games of social networking sites. I figured instead of writing up a big discussion about the problems with these two labels, I'd start doing a preliminary lit review of the subject, and see what comes up. This is going to be quick and dirty, more of a "running through the building locating the emergency exits" style approach, rather than a detailed and/or exhaustive search. I'm not going to even bother loading up a periodical database, I'm going to keep this to Google Scholar for now.

Search #1 "hardcore + game*"

As a way of keeping this list manageable, I am only listing those with "Hardcore" in the title.

Kirman, B. and Lawson, S. (2009) Hardcore Classification: Identifying Play Styles in Network Analysis. Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2009. 5709, pp 246-251.

Abstract: In the social network of a web-based online game, all players are not equal. Through network analysis, we show that the community of players in a online social game is an example of a scale free small world network and that the growth of the player-base obeys a power law.

The community is centred around a minority group of “hardcore” players who define the social environment for the game, and without whom the social network would collapse. Methods are discussed for identifying this critically important subset of players automatically through analysing social behaviours within the game.

Tobias Fritsch, Benjamin Voigt, and Jochen Schiller. 2006. Distribution of online hardcore player behavior: (how hardcore are you?). In Proceedings of 5th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games (NetGames '06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, , Article 16 . DOI=10.1145/1230040.1230082 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1230040.1230082

Within the last few years the game market has seen a tremendous growth. On pair with that, the way games are played has also evolved. Not only the community and variety of gaming has grown in numbers; the way games are understood has fundamentally changed. In fact terms like "hardcore" and "casual" became well known in the player scene. Even so called pro-gaming (professional gaming for money - like sportsmen) has led to tournaments and world championships.

The underlying social deterministic and the changing player behavior are responsible for upcoming game design. First of all one must understand the user's perspective to find effective solutions for open problem fields.

This paper introduces a large user survey about hardcore player behavior and gaming. It will show correlations between game types, deterministic factors, game related behavior and different ways of approaching games. Furthermore it features a detailed statistic analysis with surprising results.

Bosser, A.G. and Nakatsu, R. (2006) Hardcore Gamers and Casual Gamers Playing Together Online. Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2006. 4161(2006), pp 374-377.

In this paper, we discuss why Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) need to attract both hardcore and casual players and study the evolution of MMOG features for this purpose.

Mia Consalvo. 2009. Hardcore casual: game culture Return(s) to Ravenhearst. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 50-54. DOI=10.1145/1536513.1536531 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1536513.1536531

Scholarly attention to game culture has mostly focused on games that cater to gamers that the literature has deemed 'hardcore,' 'heavy' or at least 'mainstream,' games. Researchers doing so have explored how those who put in large amounts of time playing such games are also productive of the culture surrounding the game. Yet in relation to casual games and their players, we have seen a curious omission. Are elements of game culture such as game capital and the creation and avid use of paratexts specific to traditional gamers? And if not, do casual players differ in specific or important ways from those norms? This paper uses a case study approach to investigate those questions, as well as to draw attention to a neglected group---devoted fans of casual games.

Kubik, E (2010) From girlfriend to gamer: Negotiating place in the hardcore/casual divide of online video game communities. PhD dissertation. Bowling Green State University.

The stereotypical video gamer has traditionally been seen as a young, white, male; even though female gamers have also always been part of video game cultures. Recent changes in the landscape of video games, especially game marketers' increasing interest in expanding the market, have made the subject of women in gaming more noticeable than ever. This dissertation asked how gender, especially females as a troubling demographic marking difference, shaped video game cultures in the recent past. This dissertation focused primarily on cultures found on the Internet as they related to video game consoles as they took shape during the beginning of the seventh generation of consoles, between 2005 and 2009. Using discourse analysis, this dissertation analyzed the ways gendered speech was used by cultural members to define not only the limits and values of a generalizable video game culture, but also to define the idealized gamer. This dissertation found that video game cultures exhibited the same biases against women that many other cyber/digital cultures employed, as evidenced by feminist scholars of technology. Specifically, female gamers were often perceived as less authoritative of technology than male gamers. This was especially true when the concept "hardcore" was employed to describe the ideals of gaming culture. It was harder for female gamers to claim the identity of hardcore gamer because this ideal referenced masculine attributes that women were perceived as lacking. Rather, female gamers were lumped into the category of the "casual" consumer of video games, not valued in the community and sometimes also seen as problematic. Biases against perceived feminine gaming styles were also discovered in formal structures of video game cultures, as evidenced by analyses of video game reviews. This data suggests that female gamers had a harder time fitting into video game cultures than male gamers because of gendered biases within the cultures. This dissertation advocated for the dismantling of hidden male privileges underpinning these biases so that a more equitable gaming culture could be achieved.

Aaaaaaand this is going to quickly spiral out of control. I'm going to cut it off at five and break this into another post, just so it doesn't end up as a giant wall o' text.

More reflections on group work

2010-11-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

I met with the rest of my game design group on campus today and we managed to plow through a LOT of our material for the presentation. A common theme in our discussion was just how easy everything was coming together. We are going to write up something formally as part of our larger game design document, but here are some of the secrets to success we came up with today:

Always have an objective
When meeting as a group, it is important to have a set of tasks laid out that you want to accomplish. It also helps if you have someone who is good at bringing things back on track AND keep an eye on the time.
Meet frequently, but for short periods of time
No one wants to sit through a three hour meeting every week (I see how bitter it makes my husband, but he has been having to sit through weekly physics meetings for YEARS. We talked as a group at least once a week, but tried to keep our meetings to an hour or less. Also..
Be flexible where/how you meet
Not everyone likes teleconferencing, but it is important to be flexible. Quite a few students at York live nowhere near campus, so rather than expecting everyone to commute 1+ hours to campus for a one hour meeting, consider meeting on Skype or MSN.
Break large jobs into small tasks
This was a key thing we figured out today. Rather than having huge milestones to meet every few weeks, we broke things down into smaller, much more manageable tasks. Having a weekly meeting helps keep everyone on track. It is really hard to slack off when you know you have to report to the rest of your group and explain why you didn't finish the things you said you would.

Or... You could be like these guys:
How to fail building a Massively Multiplayer Online Game

Playing and Difference

2010-11-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

Recreate and/or produce from scratch if not in attendance, the mapping exercise that you created in class tonight. You can use any tool you like (mind mapping program, word, picture, etc.) and you don't have to be comprehensive, but you should attempt to be conceptually sound. For those not in attendance: Mapping exercise asked you to literally 'map' your way through the course both on an 'intra' level -- eg course readings and book reviews -- and an 'extra' level -- eg course blog, plus other readings/courses/your own blog.

Well, here is my first crack at using FreeMind to create a mindmap. It isn't very pretty, and actually I find it really confusing... I think I will try to recreate it with something else, but at least it is a start!

WoW, duh - Intellectual Production pt 2

2010-11-10T13:07:00.000-08:00

By the end of the night you will have played WoW for a bit of time. Your job is to take two concepts and/or theories from the readings (any) and apply that to your experience playing WoW. Think of your self as a mini-ethnographer who enters the field and has to make sense of what they are saying. In this case, use observation and bring what analysis you can to enrich, critique, and/or extend the concept/theory you have chosen.

I broke this post into two parts because it was starting to get really long.

Anyway, discussing map and territory re: WoW

Aarseth, E. (2009). A hollow world: World of Warcraft as spatial practice. In H. G. Coneliussen & J. W. Rettberg (Eds.). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

I've been thinking a lot about the "lay of the land" in WoW these days, especially with the new expansion right around the corner. The latest expansion no longer has us going off to some new world, instead we are back in the land of "Vanilla WoW", but Vanilla WoW with a facelift.

When I first started playing the game, I had no idea where anything was, or what was ever waiting for me around the bend. I believe I have blogged about this in the past, but one of my strongest memories from my early WoW days is still about how I was always wanting to uncover new pieces of the map, both to get the small amount of experience from doing so (usually on par with killing one mob) and also just to see what else was out there. When I was around level 20 I wandered into the next zone and decided to try and uncover some of the map. I knew it was far beyond my level, but I also knew that more advanced zones gave more experience for discovering new parts of the map. I had run myself into Felwood, and despite looking everywhere for a flight path, I attracted the attention of too many monsters to outrun and I was quickly killed.

The designers who create the lands of WoW have used mountains, water, and other physical elements to create "natural" boundaries within the world of Azeroth. They are both the markers where you should and should not go, but also forever unmoving and incapable of being changed by player behaviour. Every time I go to visit Hillsbrad Foothills to do some mining (note: copper sells really well on my server, especially with the expansion right around the corner) I chip away at the base of a mountain. The node I mine disappears, but if I stand there long enough eventually it will come back. The fact that it comes back is actually quite useful, I have a circuit that I can go back to again and again, anytime that I need to make some quick cash really. What I find interesting though, is the type of player whose inspiration is sparked when they are faced with a wall that says "no, you can't go there". Perhaps this has been done a bit in Consalvo's Cheating, but if I was to set out to extend this particular paper, I would go out and talk to people who (at least attempt to) circumvent the in-game physical boundaries of Azeroth.

World of Warcraft is FULL of Easter Eggs just waiting to be found. The biggest one off the top of my head is the troll village in the mountains above Darkshore that one usually flies over when taking the flightpath from Moonglade. I believe once upon a time this was supposed to be the troll starting area, but plans change and the area was closed off. You really aren't supposed to be able to visit the troll dance party, and I'm sure not everyone even knows where it is. It is one of those "blink and you will miss it" moments in WoW, if you aren't sitting there watching your character fly on the wind rider (I had a friend who finished book after book while his character was on the bat) you would never have any reason to know it was there. I remember the first time I saw it, I did a double take, turned my camera around, and then immediately bought another ride to go back and see it again. I quickly figured out that there was no observable way to get to this village, but that didn't stop some people:

Toque (who was actually one of the people I interviewed as part of my MA research) does some extensive investigating within the game (she blogged about her visit to this troll village here). Her explorations don't involve wall or flying hacks, instead they are places that you can find with a little creativity or patience. To me, these add to the rich storytelling of the game. Maybe these seemingly abandoned farms were areas that were forgotten by developers, or maybe they are in the game for the sake of role-players... Some of them I have found by accident on my own, others were new to me. For me, I just really like finding hidden places in the game. As I'm flying around and I see a neat place, I file it away for future reference. But places like Challe's Home for Little Tykes STILL bothers me and gives me chills. That is one place that I wish I hadn't discovered in my explorations.

WoW, duh - Intellectual Production pt 1

2010-11-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

By the end of the night you will have played WoW for a bit of time. Your job is to take two concepts and/or theories from the readings (any) and apply that to your experience playing WoW. Think of your self as a mini-ethnographer who enters the field and has to make sense of what they are saying. In this case, use observation and bring what analysis you can to enrich, critique, and/or extend the concept/theory you have chosen.

The two things that struck me the most in this week's readings were explorations of map/territory and gender within World of Warcraft. Of course there are many other topics that were covered in this week's readings, but these were the two areas that seemed to be the most problematic in our discussions, and the two areas that I would like to explore further.

Exploring Gender in WoW:
Last night my group and I were quite critical of Corneliussen's World of Warcraft as a playground for feminism. Not that we disagreed with the idea of needing to see more equal (and varied) representations of women in games, but ultimately that the project that she outlined was far too flawed to actually make any project on the job she set out to do. Our complaints were about how much specific WoW-related knowledge was required to unpack this article, but also in the end it seemed to be nothing more than a counting exercise. Larger questions are at play here, especially about gaming community norms and expectations about the "proper" roles of women in fantasy based games, and how these norms carry stereotypical gender roles into the constructed world of a MMO. A MMO is a constructed world and World of Warcraft constructed Blizzard. Each NPC was placed by a designer (and the decision to make it a male or female NPC was based on an overall plan) so more work is needed on interrogating WHY these decisions were made, not just oh there are x number of male NPCs and y number of female NPCs.

I have been reflecting on my own WoW play, and when I chose to subvert gender, and when I just go with the flow. Sometimes when I make an avatar, I will go with pure aesthetics. I like the way the female undeads look and their spell animations, and that tends to be my default choice. I'd say over half of my avatars are undead females. The rest are a scattering of male and female, different races.

Back when I first started playing, the first character I spent a significant amount of time on was a female Night Elf druid. I liked the idea of a druid, and I didn't realize understand the differences between Horde and Alliance (my boyfriend at the time played horde). I realized that the night elf females were hyper sexualized and the most aesthetically pleasing out of all the races. When it came time to name this avatar I thought about it for a moment, and then named her Gramsci, after one of my favourite theorists from my ComCult days. I figured this could maybe be a way to subvert this avatar (and game) ever so slightly. Then the questions started.

"Are you really a dude or a chick?"
"What's a Gramsci?"
"Why do you have a dude's name?"
"Are you hawt in real life?"

I quickly found friends to play with and they liked to laugh at me, the girl who was playing a female character with a dude's name. Eventually I shelved that character and moved over to horde, where my female toon with male name trope continued with Sisyphus. Partly I was being tongue in cheek because I was leveling a holy priest which is 'just like pushing a frickin rock up a mountain', but also because it was big academic nod for me. Very rarely would people get the reference. My guildies shortened it to Sissy and occasionally strangers would whisper me to ask why I named this character after a STD. After that, I pretty much stuck to naming my toons after fonts.

But back to to the critique at hand. I don't think that a counting exercise will do anyone good. What I would have liked to have read about was a breakdown of the NPCs in the game and who did what. If all the tailoring and cooking trainers were female, then well I'd be pretty pissed at blizzard, plus it would be the start of a more nuanced critique on gender representation in online worlds. Actually... if that hasn't been done already, I think I will just do it myself over the break.

Moving beyond guild ethnography

2010-11-09T05:54:00.000-08:00

So I said something controversial on one of my recent conference backchannel adventures in regards to a series of presentations at ir11 and homoludens. When I said it, people were first like whaaaa? And then when I elaborate they're like oh, good point. So here it goes. First draft of my first PhD manifesto.

It's nearly 2011 and I think we should be beyond doing ethnography of our own guilds in World of Warcraft.

Let's face it, there is a FLOOD of information about World of Warcraft. Yes, yes. I wrote my own MA thesis on World of Warcraft, and at the time it made sense for me to study the most popular MMO. But at this year's AoIR meeting it felt like the majority of game stream presentations were about WoW (and so it became a running joke to apologize before one's presentation started to warn people that they too, would be focusing their discussion on WoW). Presentations that talked about a game OTHER than WoW practically got a standing ovation. When I saw a presentation about L4D2 I wanted to cry tears of joy.

Why was I so happy to see something other than WoW? Because there are games other than WoW, and genres other than MMOs. By tunnel visioning on to one particular game (albeit the most popular game currently on the market) we can fall into the trap of thinking that all games operate like WoW. I've been studying EVE Online for about a year now and I can already tell you that while there are some areas of overlap, EVE ONLINE IS NOT THE SAME GAME AS WOW! Sociality is shaped in different ways. Research done (and proposed methodology) on WoW cannot be overlaid onto the world of EVE without adjustments needing to be made. We do a disservice to the gamers we claim to want to help (by writing about gaming we seek to make playing games less strange and more socially acceptable). There are people other than WoW players and far too often, these players really do not appreciate getting lumped in with "that" MMO.

It's the same debate as "casual" vs "hardcore" or making a case for studying games on social networking sites. Gamers come in all shapes and forms and it is not our place as researchers to decide who is more "worthy" of the title of gamers. I was really happy to see entire panels devoted to SNS games at ir11. There is a lot of interesting work to be done in that area, and as soon as my order for a clone comes in, I'll get to work on yet another project.

But back to the topic at hand. Why am I getting my hate on towards such a specific genre of PhD theses (and really, it is grad students that seem to be guilty of falling into this trap based on my recent conference fiesta). Because it has already been done, and it has been done WELL. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. While I know it is hard to do a lit review and figure out what is already being written by other grad students, I feel like that is what conferencing is for. Going out and seeing what other people have already started. Talking to your fellow graduate students about what they are working on.

On the other hand, knowledge gets replicated all the time. I had the experience of sitting through a presentation at homoludens that talked about a recent study that was the EXACT same presentation that Tam and I gave at CCA. That was a weird and strange conversation at the cocktail party afterward. But I wasn't (am still) not mad. Ideas don't spring into your head out of nowhere (take that, auteur theory). What Tam and I noticed would obviously be noticed by other people, and I found it reassuring to see that they had the same findings. So let's leave this question of "new knowledge" aside for now.

My primary concern with doing research on one's guild is how does one maintain a level of objectivity, especially if one holds a position of power within the guild. And let's face it, your guildies are probably your friends. I know that I wouldn't be able to write an objective piece about my friends, just as I would probably have a hard time getting IRB and committee approval to do an ethnography of what it is like to be a PhD student in my current PhD program, as I am going through the process of a PhD program. It could be an interesting study to come back in five years and follow up with my cohort (actually... that would be a really interesting study, to see where people end up) but I don't know what I would be able to uncover right now while submerged in a world where I would be both a participant and a researcher.

This is something that concerns me about doing ethnography on one's own guild. Having a prior relationship with one's guildies is probably going to colour what you will find, and I fear that it will lead to a tunneling of one's vision. When you are so immersed in the game world, what other things are you missing? Are you only looking for what you want to find? I felt bad for the PhD student who got asked this question of objectivity at a recent conference, they stammered and did not have an actual answer to "prove" that their findings are objective, only that they get asked that question a lot. To me, if this is a question being frequently asked of your research, is it not a sign that maybe there is a problem? I'm not saying that we need to be detached and arms length from our object of research, but I am concerned about being too embedded in your subject may lead to skewed or false results.

I was having this discussion with Richard the other night, and he suggested that an appropriate analogy would be dealers who start dipping into their own stash. I'm not sure that many people would be happy with that analogy, but at least for some of the presentations I saw, it seems to really fit... Researchers too close to their subject and missing out on some (in my opinion) really obvious blind spots. And also, this tendency of wanting to turn their researcher into a "good news story" (I know I am guilty of this in my own MA work, but at least I was upfront about it and said that was my goal in my opening paragraph). But this post has gone on long enough, I will finish my thoughts in a new post sometime in the near future. It will also give those who disagree with me time to start sending emails explaining why I am wrong. But I will leave you with some reading material:

Taylor, N (2008) Periscopic Play: Re-positioning "the Field" in MMO Research.

And of course I couldn't leave you without PhD dissertation work that I felt handled this subject well:

Chen, M (2010) Leet Noobs: Expertise and Collaboration in a World of Warcraft Player Group as Distributed Sociomaterial Practice.

Reflections on online group meetings

2010-11-08T10:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my game group held a meeting over MSN to check in and make sure we were all making progress on the task we assigned ourselves for the week. I quite enjoy using MSN as a meeting tool, it immediately cuts out the "can you hear me? How about now? Now? Can anyone hear this" that inevitably fills up the first 10 minutes of a group Skype meeting. I also like how it has a built in transcript, as long as you save your chat log, you will be able to go back and re-read the meeting if you need a refresher a few weeks later.

For the last MSN meeting I sent around an agenda, this time I forgot. However, I did start a google doc with the three areas we gave ourselves as "homework" and sent it around a few hours before the meeting and asked everyone to copy and paste what they wrote. I think this was MUCH more effective than sending around an agenda. This way there is a document with everyone's findings, and it was ready for all of us to read and be on the same page, and the meeting itself was talking through a few issues of confusion. In the end the meeting was only an hour long, and people kept writing in the google doc long after the meeting was over. I think we have found our optimal set up for meeting online, and it only took two tries!

I find myself trying to be super organized for meetings. I think it comes from the epic 4 hour staff meetings we used to have at the gallery, where people would talk and talk and talk. The ED would ask us to write up reports so everyone could read them prior to coming to the meeting, but what would happen is most of the chattier staff would still verbalize everything they just put in their report (completely negating the purpose of the reports). I was never impressed, then again my yearly progress reports always scolded me for having "standards that were too high" and how I set the bar so high that other staff members felt bad about themselves. I guess I have always been an overachiever... Probably why I went to grad school?

Anyway, in this note to Future Kelly, the google document worked quite well... you should do it again for online meetings in the future.

What makes a game “educational”?: Let’s think about Learning

2010-11-03T13:03:00.000-07:00

Choose one article and apply 3 concepts in the article (state what those are and define them) to a BRIEF (no more than 1/2 to 1 page) review of a commercial game OR an "educational" game.

Charsky, D. (2010). Serious games: A change in the use of game characteristics. Games and Culture, 5, 2, 177-198.

Reviewing Braid

Braid was released for the Xbox Live Arcade in 2008, and then was released for PC and Mac in 2009. I really can't describe it as anything other than a puzzle/platform style game and it is one of those games that you just don't want to ruin the ending for those who have never played it. I feel like if I talk about the ending, I will be taking away something from everyone who has yet to play it. I do understand that this has probably made the game precious to me, but what I want to stress is just how great this game is and how much I think everyone should play it.

To avoid spoilers, I'm not going to put any videos detailing the game play, so instead here is the official trailer announcing Braid's release for Windows:

In Charsky's (2010) discussion of serious games he argues that serious games can be a way to further entwine gameplay and learning. However, this is easier said than done. Probably the worst possible thing would be to re-create popular serious/commercial games and just insert learning into them. Within this article, Charsky discusses many concepts, but in the interests of space I am only going to touch on three:

Context: the setting, story, scenario, characters, back story, problem, etc. for the gameplay
Fidelity: use of graphics, audio, video, 3D VW and AI to authentically represent reality; "true to life" graphics, sound, video, etc to create immersive context
Challenges: simply, these are game's tasks/activities

It seems fitting to be reviewing Braid using Charsky, as Braid (from what I understand, and wikipedia seems to back this up) Braid was made as a critique of everything that the designer felt was wrong with the game industry.

Braid starts out in familiar territory. You play as Tim, and your goal is to rescue the princess. You are not sure exactly why or what your relationship to the princess is, only that there is something that Tim is trying to atone or are seeking forgiveness for. As a first time player your understanding of the full context of the game is murky at best, and yet you are compelled to keep going to try and understand why you have been thrown into this confusing world. Unlike so many other games that force you to click through page after page of plot and tutorial before allowing you into the "real" game (I'm looking at you, Super Mario Galaxy, Fallout 3/New Vegas, Dragon Age, and so many others...). I haven't looked at a game manual in YEARS, because it seems like it is built right into the game and you can't get past the tutorial until you make it through all the hoops put ahead of you and memorize 3/5ths of the story. I kind of miss those days when you are just thrown into a world and suddenly you are Link or Mario and if you want context, you have to read the manual. In fact, the only way you will ever really understand why you are doing what you are doing in Braid is if you finish the game (or, read plot spoilers). I think this was a smart move, instead of spoon feeding the player everything, you reward them by finishing the game.

I would argue that Braid's cartoony style doesn't really lend it itself to being 'realistic', but it doesn't change the fact that it is a compelling game. But just because a game isn't flirting with the uncanny valley doesn't mean that it can't be immersive. Braid seems to operate more like a dream than 'real life', and part of what compels me to keep playing is its beauty. It's graphics take on a painterly quality, for example:

Screenshot of Braid title screen, taken from the official website.

So in my opinion, Braid's fidelity is not to real life, but more of a realistic depiction of a dream state, perhaps one of those dreams that doesn't make sense until much later, after you have more context and understanding of what your brain was trying to tell you. THEN you can put the pieces together.

Finally, Braid's 'challenges', which I find so compelling. They take everything you know about a platform and/or puzzle game and turn them upside down. For some this might be disorienting, but I have yet to meet someone who has played Braid and not absolutely raved about it. I was curious about that so I just started looking around for negative reviews of the game. On metacritic there are 111 user reviews of the game. 98 are positive, 4 are mixed, and 9 are negative. Reading through the negative reviews, it seems like the vast majority of the negative reviews are from those who only played the demo and did not want to pay for the full game. Others found it boring and stopped after 15 minutes of play. So that is to be expected, what is compelling to some people isn't enough to get over the initial hump and find something to keep them going in the game. Maybe some people enjoy the usual conventions of a platform game and don't want to deviate from that. But for me, these deviations are what make the game so compelling.

I'm not sure if there is anything overtly educational about Braid, but that was never really part of the game's intention. Instead, it does give the player a lot to think about. Unfortunately, I don't want to spoil the plot so I don't want to discuss these here on my blog... But if you have played the game and want to chat about it, feel free to send me a message!

Thinking through design pt 2 - intellectual production

2010-10-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

Choose one theme from one of the articles and offer a critique that makes use of OTHER literature -- e.g. a critique of the idea that somehow 'girls' like to create certain kinds of games, or that designing games in educational contexts is somehow innately educational. Make sure you reference one outside source.

I started doing this last week, and I'd like to expand further on the connections I see between Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the critiques we have been reading about educational gaming.

Freire writes of the banking model of education and the relationship between teacher and students: "the more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor." (Freire, 72) This, to me, sounds exactly like the goals of those games that carry the label "edutainment". These are the drill sorts of games, where students are expected to memorize and regurgitate back facts as an example of how much they have "learned".

The banking model of education is alive and well, both in educational games but also in education in general. My students this semester need to memorize definitions to be well prepared for their multiple choice exam in a first year coms class. At this point I can kind of justify this memorization and regurgitation, they are in first year and they need to learn the vocabulary of the discipline. But come fourth year if that is still going on, it would be a serious cause for concern.

Freire seeks a more dialogue-based approach to education, which seems to be mirrored by the potential reforms to educational gaming that we have been reading about and discussing in class. In order to truly engage students, we need to create environments that foster curiosity and do not provide an easy answer. But this is scary. How can we "prove" something is educational if we don't have a test to spit out at the end to show that students are progressing? Just like it is scary to move away from the drill method of education. It requires teachers to be able/willing to converse about a wide variety of subjects, rather than just what is on the answer key. It isn't an easy way of teaching (just as it isn't an easy way of making games) but if we actually want to move forward, it is what we need to be doing.

Charsky meets Freire

2010-10-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

I'm typing up notes for my other blog (I keep a blog about everything I read as a repository to come back to later) and I just had one of those ah ha moments. I just read Charsky's "From Edutainment to Serious Games" for my education and gaming class, and I am also reading Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed for my doc sem. And it just hit me that "edutainment" games ARE the banking model that Freire is rallying against. A simple observation and I feel silly now that this wasn't apparent to me from the very start... But it is nice when there is so much synergy between my classes.

ir11 recap

2010-10-26T02:40:00.000-07:00

So I have returned from Gothenburg and am now fighting with the jetlag monster (woke up at 4:30AM this morning). Without a doubt, AoIR is my favourite group of people to hang out with. Too bad ir12 is in Seattle on Canadian Thanksgiving :|

Getting there was pretty straightforward, we booked ourselves onto KLM and didn't have a very long layover at Amsterdam, so the actual travel time wasn't bad. Unfortunately the plane was far too warm which made it difficult to sleep, so that first day I was going on maybe an hour of sleep. Not fun at all. But we found our shuttle bus and hotel without problem, and I spent the rest of the evening trying to stay warm (when I get over tired I have a hard time keeping my temperature up).

Registration went smoothly, ran into Jeremy in line and when looking around I realized that I knew half the line through twitter. "I know you through your twitter pic" became the line of the conference.

My presentation was on the first day, first session. The room started about half full and by the end of the session was 3/4 full. I cut a lot from the presentation and said that the details were found in the full paper, and focused on the interesting parts of my paper and the new developments since I wrote it. The liveblog and tweets I read about it were all positive, and as I met people throughout the rest of the conference they said "oh YOU wrote the trolling paper! I heard good things about that talk, sorry that I missed it for x reason". So it looks like word got around quite quickly. I haven't figured out where I'm going to try and publish this paper, it is on my to do list for the end of the semester.

Highlights of the conference include seeing Jonas Linderoth talk (and seeing that he is teaching a games and education class this summer) and watching the Copenhagen crew's panel on social networking site games. Linderoth is such an engaging speaker and I was really interested in his talk (about Left4Dead pick up groups). It reminded me a lot of the paper that Tam and I tried to write about the WoW Random Dungeon finder, except he stayed tightly focused on the social capital part of the equation. And of course his was an actual rigorous study based on hours and hours of observation, rather than the auto-ethnographic approach we took. I have a draft of his paper and I am really looking forward to the final version when it is finished.

Unfortunately the SNS games panel was up against the York panel but I was strongly encouraged not to go to the York panel. In the end this worked out for the best because the Zynga panel was pretty informative and exposed me to a lot of ideas I otherwise would have overlooked. It is nice to see work not on World of Warcraft, and the work being done on Farmville is REALLY interesting.

Thankfully there weren't a lot of presentations on World of Warcraft, but the ones that I did see were pretty much clones of each other. I have lost track of the number of times I have heard "I did an auto-ethnographic study of my guild". I am getting pretty sick of it and every time I hear those words I want to scream THERE ARE GAMES OTHER THAN WORLD OF WARCRAFT! The saddest thing to me was during Linderoth's question period, everyone wanted to bring it back to MMOs and World of Warcraft. At least the backchannel seemed to agree with my assessment, and the WoW studies were not as positively received as those who *gasp* looked at other games.

Now I need to start working on my paper for next year. The paper I have in mind involves a lot of data collection, so I should start on that soon. Looking forward to the end of the semester so I have a month of uninterrupted writing time...

Reviewing the reviewers

2010-10-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

Select 5 book reviews to view and in no more than 4 pages, double spaced, make them ‘speak to you’ in some meaningful way, whether that be a ‘sorting process’ in terms of what you think you might read and why, or it is simply for the engaging work of your peers. Try including some ‘tie back’ to the book you reviewed and the topic you chose to report.

Andrew's review of Final Fantasy and Philosophy and Vicky's World of Warcraft and Philosophy

Andrew and Vicky both reviewed books from the X and Philosophy series, which is currently up to 53 (!!!) titles. While Andrew's critique is a bit more pointed and developed, Vicky makes the same criticism about her book being overly focused on the philosophy and glossing over aspects of the game. I suspect that this is a common theme throughout the entire series, which seems to assume that their reader is an avid fan of X subject first, and interested in philosophy second. I remember many years ago looking at a copy of The Simpsons and Philosophy and being less than impressed (Lisa can be a way to look at the concept of 'Zen', Bart is a hedonist! ZOMG!), it seemed a little reductionist and not worth the expensive cover price. I'm not so surprised to see this series alive and well nearly ten years later, I guess they found a model that works and will keep it up until they run out of ideas (or stop selling books).

Much like my review of Au's The Making of Second Life, these X and Philosophy books are not directed at an academic audience. I do realize that my own critique of Au's book had conflicting expectations, but I guess my own standards are probably a little too high. By the end of Au's book I felt like I was missing something, and wanted something a bit more academically rigorousness. I have a feeling that I would feel the same way after Final Fantasy and Philosophy or World of Warcraft and Philosophy, so they probably won't make it very high on my "must read" list. Without any background in Final Fantasy I am sure most of the references would be lost on me, and my lack of any real interest in the game would probably make it a long, slow slog through the text. World of Warcraft, on the other hand, I am well versed in both the lore and the mechanics of the game. I am probably the book's target audience (a WoW player, and interested in philosophy), so on second thought, maybe I will see about getting it out of the library!

Micheal's review of A Casual Revolution

Despite Michael's review and my having read a few chapters out of A Casual Revolution, I'm still unsure if I will actually devote the time to read the rest of the book. I'm interested in players and behaviours and at first glance, it seems like A Casual Revolution should be right up my alley. But I think the big problem is that I just don't buy the casual/hardcore divide. Sure, I have used "hardcore" a lot, especially when describing playing habits in WoW, especially in my old raiding habits (progression raids 6 nights a week in a bleeding edge guild). But even in that time, my play habits shifted back and forth. Some times I'd log on just to say hello to my friends and chat a bit, other days I'd be grinding for hours on end to make gold to pay for an epic mount (back in ye olde days when an epic mount was super expensive and it was really hard to make gold). I behaved in both casual and hardcore ways and oh geeze, the fact that I have a vagina complicates this even more. I try not to use 'hardcore' anymore, just because it is such a loaded term.

I'm not sure if Michael's review really captured this tension identified both by myself and others. Instead, he seems to accept the terms, or at least 'hardcore' as he ends his review with a recommendation that hardcore players should read it for a better understanding of casual players. I would have thought that a review would at least try to complicate this dichotomy, especially it is one that so many people do not believe actually exist. However, Michael did seem to really be in to the book, so maybe it is a good read. Perhaps it is something that will get added to my reading list, but probably not too high in the queue.

Michelle's review of Communities of Play

Ah ha! Now I know who had the book out of the library and why I couldn't get my hands on it!

On the surface, this seems like it should have a lot of overlap with the book that I reviewed. It seems like maybe this is the book that I wanted to read (rather than the book that I ended up reading). Well, I don't mean that I wanted to read Communities of Play, I mean that this is the type of book that I wish Au had written, rather than the journalistic account that he ACTUALLY wrote. Au did try to tackle emergent behaviours in Second Life, but it sounds like Pierce was actually successful. I also appreciate Michelle's description of the way that the book is laid out, as it sounds like Pierce wrote a true ethnographic account, rather than an auto-ethnography or a journalistic piece masquerading as something a bit more objective. I will definitely be adding this to my reading list!

Sandeep's review of Women and Gaming

This, without a doubt, is a book I should read. Gee and Hayes writing about the differences between male/boy and female/girl play? Nope, totally not relevant to my dissertation proposal, not at all!

Sandeep's critique of the book seems to focus on what seems to be a lack of balance. Gee and Hayes focus on all the positive things that women have got out of playing The Sims, but she comments that they don't really acknowledge what happens to players who aren't so good at the game. Are they not passionate enough? Or are they just outliers who were conveniently left out of the writeup of the study? From this review I get the impression that Gee and Hayes are overly focused on the 'good news stories', and really, that just isn't helping anybody.

There seems to be a lot of attention being paid to women who like The Sims (or really, women who are vocal about their like of The Sims). Would the same attention be paid to a group of women who are really vocal about their love of Halo? Oh wait, I do know women who play Halo but they are considered weird outliers! The Sims is a safe game to vocally announce one's allegiance to, and by extension, use as an object of study for women and gaming. I'll be getting a copy of this from the library as soon as coursework is over. Expect to see my own critique of this book soon!

Philosophies of Play - Caillois

2010-10-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

a) Define each element of his classification of games in your own words, using no more than 3-5 sentences; b) for each element find a video game and/or game 'modes' (E.G. World of Warcraft PvP) that fits the category, and if possible one that violates that category; c) choose a representative quote from the reading; d) ask a 'burning question'.

Caillois' classifications of games:

Agon: Competition-based games that are ultimately the vindication of personal responsibility, Caillois description of 'agon' involves allowing a player to demonstrate their superiority at a particular activity or in a particular area. These types of games are seen in children and animals and can involve training or the development of particular skills.

Example: Games like Counter Strike require a certain level of skill, in the form of hand-eye coordination and memorization of the game's mechanics. While there are some instances of luck in the game, I'd say that those more familiar with the game would have an advantage over those that have less experience playing CS.

Alea: These sorts of games negate the 'work' of agon, and are far from games of skill. Instead, alea describes game of chance whose outcomes are independent of any action of the player -- the winner is decided by fate, not one player demonstrating mastery over their opponents. These sorts of games are not seen in the animal world, as it requires abstraction unlike games classified as agon.

Example: Within Fable III (and previously, Fable II) there are a variety of ways to make money in the game, one of which is gambling. For example, a character you meet earlier in the game that asks you to decide if you should let some chickens live or die returns later in the game with her chicken racing mini-game. In this game you can bet on a chicken you think will win, watch the race, and then collect your winnings. I haven't found anything that you can do to increase your chances of your chosen chicken winning, so this mini-game is entirely based on chance.

Mimicry: These types of games are well at home in the realm of 'make-believe', where the player becomes an imaginary character.

Example: Games like Guitar Hero, DJ Hero or Rock Band where you press buttons to imitate the actions of playing an instrument are a form of mimicry. Players know they are not ACTUALLY playing an instrument (at least in the case of guitar/bass) but it can be fun to pretend that you and your friends are a "band" and go on "tour". Some players may take the game really seriously, and refuse to play with people who are noobs and might drag the rest of the band down. I've also met a few people who like to brag about their ability to play Free Bird, which I then have to clarify and it turns out they can play Free Bird on Guitar Hero, not an actual guitar.

Ilinx: (in my opinion) the most abstract concept to apply to a game, which is primarily concerned with the pursuit of vertigo and the temporary suspension of one's control/perception. Like agon, it can be observed within the animal world.

Example: Mirror's Edge seems to be a good example of ilinx in video games. The parkour-style game is primarily played in first person and many players complained of motion sickness (it was so bad for me that I couldn't even watch someone else play it). However, players managed to find a way to circumvent the mechanics of the game and hacks like this became popular to play in third person (and remove the ilinx properties of the game).

Burning question: Games like World of Warcraft seem to occupy a grey area for me. In many ways they are games (and played for fun) but for some people they view it more as work because there are things that they feel they HAVE to do in the game (farm materials for their guild, attend guild events that they don't want to). When does a game stop being a game and cross over to work (or something else)?

Research methods + video games: Tales from the Field

2010-10-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

Choose ONE reading and apply the following exercise to it: 1) Select 3 primary themes from the piece, say what those are in your own words, selecting a quote to support your claim; 2) Choose one of the three themes and put it to use -- show how it could be used to analyze or interpret something from your own experience; 3) ask a BURNING question!

Pearce, C. & Artemesia (2009). Methodology: Playing ethnography. In Communities of play: Emergent cultures in multiplayer games and virtual worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

1. Studying video games requires the researcher to step inside their object of study. Therefore someone conducting an ethnography is actually doing a sort of autoethnography because the researcher is involved in the community they are studying, and by extension need to be aware of their impact on their subject.

"Game ethnography is one of the rare circumstances in which an ethnographer is required, to varying degrees, to actively participate in the culture she is studying, not simply to observe it. The reason for this is more technical than philosophical: you cannot observe a virtual world without being inside it, and in order to be inside it, you have to be "embodied." (196)

2. Building on the first point, Pearce goes on to describe how she informed her participants of who she was and how she gained their consent to conduct interviews. By gaining informed consent via avatars, this opens up a bit of a legal minefield (at least as far as IRBs seem to be concerned) with questions about what do we define as public space, and if a virtual world is considered a public or private space. The paperwork and red tape of an IRB undoubtedly shapes and changes the type of research that can/will be conducted in a VW.

"Most players in online games appear in avatar form and this can be leveraged to protect subjects' privacy, which is one of the concerns of human research ethics. However, human research review boards frequently require a signed consent form from subjects. This create two significant challenges: one, it means breaking subjects' anonymity; and two, it requires a significant bureaucratic procedure that can be unwieldy to the point of making research with large distributed groups impossible." (200)

3. Pearce also argues that a mixed-method approach to data collection is ideal for doing ethnography in a VW, but his results in a HUGE amount of data for a researcher to sift through. Because it is so much easier to collect data online (especially with automated programs or even the ease of taking screen shots) it is possible/likely for the researcher to overwhelm herself with the sheer amount of data collected. Some sort of plan to process/deal with all this data is a must.

"While it seems that different games researchers favour different data collection methods, I would argue that a mixed methods approach capturing multiple and diverse levels of detail and points of view provides us with more dimensions of information to work with. The ease of data collection in digital contexts, however, introduces a new challenge by generating even more data than is generated by real-world ethnography." (204)

My response:

I understand and agree that studying a VW seems to require being a participant of said VW. Unless you have ties with the developer who can ghost you in to a dungeon in a Game Master spot, you are probably going to have to be part of the group going through the instance portal. But how does one continue to remain reflexive of one's position as the researcher, or is this reflexivity even required? I am worried that some of the games research that I read has the researcher positioned too close to their object of study. I also wonder if this is the reason game studies gets such a bad reputation (far too often I tell people what I study and they are all... cool, you must really enjoy playing games all day). Doing games research is far more than sitting around playing xbox or WoW all day. It requires some degree of critical thought and theoretical focus to guide one's experience and figure out what you are looking for.

However I fear that games like WoW are so immersive that sometimes one's researcher hat can get permanently switched with one's cap of pwnage. It seems like it is a very fine line to walk between doing participant observation and just being part a regular part of the group. I wonder if maybe it all comes down to whether you put yourself as a researcher first and a player second, or if you first consider yourself a player, and then you ALSO do some research on the side. When I did in-game research in WoW as part of my undergraduate honours project, I made a special toon (named Surveylady) on a server that I had never played on (and have never played on since). There was no chance of me being able to use my in-game ties to encourage someone to participate in my research, these were all cold calls (or cold whispers I guess). It worked, and I had some interesting results (a writeup of this project can be read over at Stream and the cprost digest).

I understand that if one wants to research high level raid groups, you are going to have to flex your gaming capital. This will probably take the form of showing how l33t you are, justifying your space in the raid. But what happens when your fellow raiders become friends, can you still see them as research subjects? Won't this change the type of findings you are looking for or maybe become blinded to other things that aren't so flattering for your new friends? If one is doing auto-ethnography under the guise of ethnography, is more disclosure needed in the final product of one's research? Or is there another way to approach this that I am not seeing?

Law & Order takes on video gamers!

2010-09-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

I have a paper I am picking away at (slower than I want to be, but hopefully I can hammer out a full draft over reading break) and part of it talks about the ways in which The Guild and Pure Pwnage hurt gamers. And then stuff like this shows up on Law & Order.

Thinking through design

2010-09-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

My group met online via MSN messenger. Our writeup is on google docs. I can reshare if needed!

Star Wars Battlefront II - further reflections pt 2

2010-09-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

I feel like the intended draw to this game is the narrative elements. Specifically, it is supposed to appeal to the big Star Wars fan is to act out/be a part of the major battles in the series. While it didn't seem to have any emotional impact on me, I am sure it would actually be quite thrilling to feel like you are part of the action and play as major characters from the series. I asked a fan (Richard) if I was on to something and he confirmed that his favourite think about the game is being able to crush rebels in an AT-AT.

In terms of actual gameplay, I am sure that I missed out on some key elements by playing in dual screen mode (rather than single player straight FPS mode). I did however, appreciate how quickly it is to start playing the game. Rather than having to sit through ages of tutorials or what I refer to as the "talky talky" (I'm looking at you Dragons Age/Red Dead) you can create a playlist of your favourite maps and just cycle through them over and over without having to go back to the main menu. The downside of this lack of talky talky is that short of sitting there and reading the manual, I didn't know what was going on. I had to rely heavily on Richard to explain what was going on/how to play/objectives, etc. They were not clearly laid out for me as a new player.

What's in a Game?: Rules, Narrative, Play

2010-09-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

Related your game play to the readings: what do you notice? what concepts are 'in play'? Are you 'persuaded' by play? Narrative? Graphics? Then, based on in-class activity: 1) summarize ONE of the articles in your own words, using no quotations, in no more than 4-5 sentences; 2) Pull out, in short hand, the large themes and sub-themes in the article; 3) choose a representative quote; 4) ask a burning question.

Newman, J. (2004). "What is a Video Game?" in Videogames (pp. 9-28). New York: Routledge.

Newman's article attempts to provide answers to the question "what is a video game" with the goal of further defining games as an object of study. Explaining the difference between 'paidea' (games with simple rules) and 'ludus' (games with more complex rules) as well as introducing the reader to Caillois's (via Huizinga) four types of game: Agon (competition dominated), alea (chance and randomness dominated), ilnix (pleasure is derived from movement), mimicry (games oriented around simulation) Newman reminds the reader that how a game is played, the venue in which it is played, and the rules (prescribed or modified by the player(s)) must all be taken into account by game scholars. To merely focus on one of these areas will overly simplify the experience felt by game players.

Key themes:

Genre is messy; boundaries between video game types can be hard to define; is this even necessary?
Context is key: experience of play is shaped by game design, where the game is played, motivations for playing the game, etc.
Definition of key terms of use for future game studies readings
Explaining video games: both how to define them and how to define what we say about them

"Videogame play can be understood as exploratory, open and free-roaming just as it can be puzzle-oriented and rule-based. Moreover, it is important to note also that the term 'player' is ambiguous as video games are often experienced in groups with 'non-controlling' players, and are absorbed and understood within participatory cultures of talk both online and offline (Brooker 2002; Jenkins 1992). As such, concentration on just those clutching joypads reveals only part of the story and discussion of videogames as embodied experience can only account for the use of a portion of the audience."

Burning question: Newman makes an excellent argument against seeing video games as existing in a vacuum. However, this leads to questions of methodology. What methodology best lends itself to accurately reflect a truly well-rounded representation when studying games?

But I AM doing my homework!

2010-09-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

So last night I sat down to play a few hours of a video game as part of the homework for my Tuesday evening class. This seems like it would be an easy task, but first trying to figure out what game to play (no, I didn't think it would be fair to play WoW), negotiating time on the TV with Richard (who usually gives it up willingly, unless he is really in the groove with whatever he is currently playing) and figuring out what to play. We have a box of games that still is unpacked (our TV still sits on a stray dining room chair), the various consoles are all over the living area, most of which are not hooked up. Finally I settled on Star Wars: Battlefront II (which involved finding where the PS2 controllers went, but that is a story for another day).

Playing a Star Wars game is not a typical choice for me. I am a bad geek, I don't really like Star Wars. I prefer my Stars in Trek form. I've never played the Star Wars MMO, I don't really pay attention to the new releases, in fact I would probably pass over a game that I might like, just because it is Star Wars. So why did I play it? It came highly recommended. And it was one of the few games sitting around the house that I had absolutely no familiarity with (a criteria I set for myself when picking the game to play for homework).

So, Star Wars Battlefront II. Dr. Nick says it is awesome, Richard starts telling me about all the fond memories that he has playing with JRock back in Calgary. I don't know anything about it. I knew it was going to be interesting.

Richard LOVES this game, so we decide to play in split screen mode. I realize this is a FPS style game. I know this is going to go badly. I am terrible at FPS and they just aren't my cup of tea. I can't move around fast enough, I am terrible at aiming, it is just better for everyone if I don't play. My team always loses in CS and I always get stuck playing as Dom in Gears of War and can never revive Marcus fast enough. Skills, I am lacking them. So anyway, back to the game play.

This is a PS2 game and I am immediately reminded of it. Most of the games played in my house these days are on the xbox 360. The PS2 rarely gets brought out, except to inflict Katamari on a new victim. I don't know the difference between the planets so Richard sets our play list. Our screen is small, it is hard to read the text. Everything is chunky, I am a clone trooper on some made up planet and suddenly I am splashing around in the water, going in the exact opposite direction of the action. Richard tells me to follow the dots, I don't know what he is talking about. I finally realize there is a tiny map (much like the mini map in WoW) so I start walking towards the blue and red dots. I die. Richard tells me to just jump right back in, it isn't really about staying alive, it is about getting back in the game as fast as possible, until you run out of reinforcements. Apparently we are on the same team, trying to protect our outposts from droids. Oh shit, friendly fire is active. I just killed all my dudes. I am ambushed and I die quickly. I take my time getting back into the action. Finally, this campaign is over.

Our next campaign is in vs. mode and I'm on some snow covered planet. I have a gun, I see a giant metal donkey (Richard reminds me that they are called AT-ATs). I start shooting it. Crap, I am the empire, I am shooting my guys again. Finally I figure out that I can climb IN one of these metal donkeys and I am slowly trudging towards the rebels. Richard runs up and tries to kill me, I squish him under my feet. It is accidental, I swear. Just as I get the option to play as Darth Vadar, Richard's side wins. I am a sad panda.

Next we play capture the flag. I camp Richard's spawn point and kill him a few times. I feel a slight sense of victory, and then I die. And die. And die. My NPC droids keep capturing the flag, I have done nothing to help my team. I don't think I win. I am pretty sure I never won at all over the course of time we played.

As we continued to play, the work I have done with verus this summer keeps coming back to me (especially gendered co-situated play). I am content to let Richard be the teacher, I don't know anything about this game or the Star Wars lore it is presenting. I take no form of leadership at all, but every time I discover something cool, I share it. But I am never the leader.

Coursework begins!

2010-09-19T17:20:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I have fallen off the wagon in terms of blogging. It is that time of year where even though I have been picking away at my scholarship applications off and on all summer, I finally see the deadline looming and realize that I should polish it up before it is too late. It is also that time of the year where there are new faces around campus, the lines are too long, buses too crowded, first years a little too chipper...

It feels a bit weird to be back in class. It also feels weird that I am closing in on the last few classes that I will ever *have* to take. But I am looking forward to doing some intellectual heavy lifting. I know these next few weeks are going to be painful, but in the end worthwhile (I hope).

Women with PhDs having kids

2010-08-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

This survey was in my twitter feed this morning. Here is the information about the survey, and why it is being done.

It isn't part of a formal study (but I really do hope they write it up).

Race and game studies

2010-08-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was in the lab and another PhD student came by and was looking for one of my fellow RAs. This RA was in a meeting so I asked if I could help, and it turns out she needed to bounce some of her diss ideas off someone, so she asked if I studied race. I said no, she said no worries, and we went our separate ways.

This interaction has been bugging me since then. One thing that bugs me is that I wish I had found out the questions she was going to ask me. I am sure they were interesting and would have led to an awesome discussion.

The thing that bugs me the most is why I said no. Okay maybe critical race theory didn't make it into my MA thesis, but there is no way that race doesn't enter into the picture. There is so much inherent racism in gaming... and probably not nearly enough academic work being done on it. I remember a few years ago I saw a presentation on race and World of Warcraft, and the presenter's entire presentation was simply pointing out the racial sterotypes that each of the races were based on. I remember saying "okay, and...?" feeling that their analysis was lacking. There is so much more that can be done then pointing out the stereotypes. Why do those stereotypes exist? How is it that Blizzard is able to justify them? Why do gamers not object to these stereotypes? Those who object, in what ways do they show their opposition?

Discussions about race and gaming are out there. For example, when Richard and I were sitting outside on the patio and I brought this up, he immediately told me about this story about racism in a star wars game. So these stories are out there. And I need to start paying more attention to them.

Reading outside academia

2010-08-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

I still find it strange when I meet someone who says "I don't read". Usually there is some sort of excuse or story that immediately follows that statement, such as oh I had to read so much in my undergrad it killed the joy (and I never want to read again). Or reading is for losers. Or I don't have enough time, etc. Perhaps if one took the time spent justifying their lack of reading and actually poked around a library, maybe they would find something to rekindle their interest? Maybe?

I always have a book with me. I may not always be reading it, but I have something tucked away in my bag for the subway or when waiting for a late appointment. Sometimes it is academic reading, but the past year or so I have been on a huge SciFi kick. For whatever reason I was never really interested in SciFi when I was younger, but (thanks to some gentle prodding from Richard) I now realize that I quite enjoy the genre. Currently I'm working through the Hyperion series, but I have another set of books waiting for me back in Tdot, courtesy of Dr. Nick.

I doubt that everyone who says "I don't read" is anti-intellectual, but some days it really feels that way.

vacation? what's that?

2010-08-11T10:42:00.001-07:00

Last week as I was gathering the footage I was taking with me across the pond, the project's video editor started asking me about my "vacation". He was shocked that I was shocked that he used the v-word. I can't remember the last time I have taken a vacation. Even when I travel someplace 'fun', I usually have some reading or writing with me. Maybe the week after I handed in my thesis? I think maybe I played Warcraft for a week straight to try and unwind, maybe. But even WoW becomes work, or at least research for potential papers.

Such is the life of a workaholic?

Completely unrelated: Attempting to do a spell check in english while accessing a french language server = sea of yellow.

PLEX now lootable

2010-07-13T05:12:00.000-07:00

Things in EVE are about to get a lot more interesting:

If you blow up a ship that happens to be carrying PLEX, it may drop the PLEX as loot or it may be destroyed in the conflagration (much like any other item in a ship's cargo hold). The refund policies for PLEX will not be any different from any other item.

ABSTRACT: EVE 101

2010-07-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

EVE 101: An exploration of the research potential of EVE Online
Presented at the 2010 Canadian Game Studies Association

CCP Games’ space-themed Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO), EVE Online, differentiates itself in the MMO market by providing players with an extremely free-form experience. Unlike games such as World of Warcraft where players are aligned with fellow players in ‘sides’ (Horde verses Alliance), EVE Online provides an environment of ‘you verses everyone else’. Often overlooked by the game studies community, I argue that EVE Online provides a data-rich environment and is worthy of serious academic study.

Unlike most other MMO developers, CCP very rarely interferes with the gameplay, tending to take an ‘anything goes’ approach to player actions within the game. As long as external software or modifications that substantially change gameplay are not being used, players can do almost anything they desire including lying, cheating, stealing, and especially double-crossing one’s allies. While adventuring in New Eden, players are under constant threat of attack -- at any point in time another player outside your alliance can open fire on your avatar and destroy everything you were carrying on your person. To deal with this constant threat, players band together to form corporations (EVE Online’s version of guilds). The world of New Eden is much like television’s Survivor, where the goal is not to make friends, rather one must do whatever they need to do in order to get ahead. Due to the brutal player verses player environment, players form alliances out of necessity rather than for the sake of building community. Some of these alliances are more powerful than others, yet none of these alliances are immune to espionage and assassinations. Ultimately, even the most powerful corporation will begin to crumble and a new power will rise in its place.

This paper acts as an introduction to EVE Online with the serious game scholar in mind. It discusses a selection of the interesting investigations presented by EVE Online, such as explorations of power, trust, and sociality. It concludes with a discussion of my PhD proposal which suggests that the world of New Eden is akin to Hobbes’ state of nature. My own research seeks to explore CCP’s role of the absentee soverign, and determine if evidence of a social contract amongst EVE Online players exists without the developer’s intervention.

can't sleep, blog needs updating

2010-07-12T22:51:00.000-07:00

This summer has been pretty busy, I've been working full time on VERUS. I spend most of my days up on campus, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the apartment is still full of boxes. I figure the rest of the unpacking can wait until after Richard gets back. He needs to do his share of the unpacking too :P

Nothing much to report other than THE GIANT SHITSTORM CAUSED BY BLIZZARD'S REAL ID FIASCO. *ahem*

No word on if I have moved up the waitlist for SSHRC, so I have already started working on my 2010/11 application. I think it is a lot stronger, so hopefully I will have a 3 year CGS with my name on it come April 2011. One of us just has to move into health research, and then Richard and I will have covered off all the tri-councils. Word.

I haven't been spending a ton of time in EVE these days, but my presentation was well received at this year's CGSA. I really should get around to writing it up into a formal paper, but until then I will probably just throw the slide deck up here (internet spaceships are srs business). I am making vague plans to attend fanfest in the spring, assuming it doesn't conflict with coursework and my brother's wedding. Anyway, that was a roundabout way of saying if you think you might want to try out EVE, see about joining Dreddit for some space pew pew pew.

SSHRC update

2010-06-15T05:46:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention I am on the waitlist.

Not expecting any money, but I feel pretty confident about my 2010/11 application.

Carrying around tools of knowledge

2010-06-15T05:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday my friend briefly carried my backpack. We have been friends since elementary school, so he has had many occasions to carry my bag. He was shocked that the weight of a PhD student's back is probably 1/4 that of when we were in elementary or high school.

I made a comment about how I just carry a laptop with me everywhere, instead of a bunch of textbooks. Laptop, iPod, cellphone, a single hardbound notebook. That's all I need to get my work done on campus these days.

Maybe it is a comment on how much stuff I carry around inside my head. Or maybe it is a comment about how much I rely on technology now.

Or maybe I have just decided to give my back a break.

Back from Congress!

2010-06-05T08:31:00.001-07:00

As per usual, the Canadian Game Studies Association's conference was wonderful. I really enjoy the game studies community here in Canada, and it is great to see what everyone has been up to for the past year. I did my intro to EVE talk, which reminds me that I should probably throw the abstract up here on ye olde blog.

CCA was a mixed bag. I went to show my support at some friends' panels, and Tam and I had a good turn out for our talk. But some of the other game related talks were absolutely maddening. I was absolutely shocked to hear that some people still make the argument that video games cause players to dehumanize others. Sweeping generalizations are bad, you'd think a PhD candidate would know better. But I guess not.

waiting waiting waiting...

2010-05-07T05:37:00.001-07:00

I am finding it hard to concentrate knowing that the SSHRC results letters are in the mail as I type this. I think it is going to be a while before mine surfaces, as it was supposed to go to Calgary but I set up mail forwarding to my family's place on the west coast.

Some of the message boards I frequent are full of people waiting for their SSHRC results, and some have received them already. Only one via mail though, the rest got their news leaked through their grad program administrators. I think I am going to have to wait for my letter to find out anything (one of the drawbacks of taking a year off), but I have my fingers crossed that it arrives quickly with good news.

I think only 47% of the doctoral applications are funded this year (down from last year's 55%), so I am preparing myself for the worst. At least I should feel good that my application was forwarded to the final pool, so I must be on to something for my proposed PhD research. If nothing comes of this year's competition, at least I can apply for SSHRC and OGS for the upcoming year. But it would be REALLY nice to not have to worry about applications while I am doing my coursework!

Back from the wastelands!

2010-05-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

Well, it certainly has been a while.

I had to leave Calgary much earlier than I expected, so the past month and a half have been a bit of a whirlwind. Packing, arranging for a mover, making travel plans, finding a place in Toronto, getting set up at York... It seems like things are finally starting to settle down. Our new apartment is still full of the cardboard remains of flatpack furniture, waiting to be taken down to the recycling bin. We still don't have a couch or a TV (so the xbox is still sitting there all lonely). But this place if finally starting to feel like home.

It is hard to believe I have been away from Toronto for 10 years. People ask if I am happy to be back, but this isn't the city I left. I was 19, just finished high school, living in the burbs, and a totally different person when I left. Aside from some family roadtrips stateside and a trip to the Bahamas in grade 1, I had never been out of the country. I've come back to the city as a different person, and this city is a different place. But I am excited to be here.

In terms of academics, this is going to be a busy summer for me. With papers accepted at CGSA, CCA, EASST, and now IR11, I have a lot of writing to do. At CGSA I am presenting on my PhD proposal, I am looking forward to the feedback as I jump in head first this fall. CCA and EASST are a joint paper with Tamara, where we are looking at the ways in which the new random dungeon finder has changed the social landscape in WoW. And finally, IR11 is something completely different -- I am looking at identity play among trolls on Reddit.com. At least all of this will keep me busy (I hope).

Freeware = tightwads (apparently)

2010-03-11T06:56:00.000-08:00

I am back in Calgary (but not for long).
I received a generous PhD offer and I plan to take it.
I hate packing so very much.

Completely unrelated:
I find the comment thread on this Gizmodo post a little disheartening:

Dress Yourself, Linux Users

Apparently women (or at least attractive women) shouldn't know what linux is. But even more insulting is that linux users = tightwads because of their use of free software. I suspect that the number of people who use linux simply because it is free is quite small. I suspect it has something more to do with being able to have more control over your computing experience, but what do I know? I'm just a girl.

A few updates

2010-02-22T15:37:00.000-08:00

PhD applications
I am currently playing the waiting game. I knew of two other people applying to the PhD in CMNS at SFU, one got an acceptance the other got a rejection. My status still hasn't changed, but at this point no news is good news.

I don't expect to hear anything from York for a while, as far as I know their admissions committee hasn't even met yet.

Android Phones
We found a Canadian company that sells unlocked phones. A HTC Hero is currently on its way!

Current Research
I have been doing a bit of work about reddit.com and the self-policing of identity. I am a frequent visitor to the website and I noticed that this is currently the top post:

Payback for a cheating girlfriend and her female mentor who was helping her get away with it: Chris in St. Louis, your girl is cheating on you.

I find this interesting because it is not only a public shaming of this girl, the hivemind is also attempting to reach out and contact this Chris fellow to make sure he knows his girlfriend is being unfaithful. Identifying information about this woman has been posted online so it is only a matter of time before someone recognizes her. What is more likely is that many guys named Chris in St. Louis will be getting phone calls from people wanting to give him a heads up that his girlfriend is cheating which could lead to some collateral damage. I plan to keep an eye on this situation as it continues to unfold.

The state of Android in Canada

2010-02-10T20:10:00.000-08:00

I just spent two hours going from cell provider to cell provider trying to get an Android phone. In the end, we were unsuccessful, but walking back and forth from the various providers left us with some useful information, which might help someone else in a similar situation.

Rogers
Rogers has recently discontinued their HTC Android phones (the Magic and the Dream) due to concerns with their ability to contact 911. Fine, I get that they can't be held responsible for people not being able to get through to emergency lines. I am sad because I really wanted a Magic, but the only way to get one these days is second hand. Rogers sells the Eve but the demo model was already broken and it looks a little flimsy.

Telus
Now that the Dream and Magic are gone, my second choice for an Android phone would be the HTC Hero, which is sold by Telus. Our plan was to pick up a Hero without a contract and get it unlocked. As soon as we said we didn't want a contract and we planned to unlock it, the price of the phone jumped to $630 (previously quoted at $499 no term). They also said it was final sale, no returns, no exchanges, even if it was a factory defect (we would have to deal with HTC directly). Oh and tough luck trying to use it anywhere in Saskatchewan.

We made it clear that we are under contract and open to switching providers, but they didn't pick up on the fact that we had thrown them a bone and they didn't see the opportunity to sell us on why we should move to Telus. Instead we got a lecture about why unlocking a phone is a terrible thing to do. This made it clear in my mind that I will never deal with Telus.

Bell Mobility
We went to visit the people at Bell Mobility and they were quite helpful, but their Android phone left me feeling meh compared to the HTC models. HOWEVER! Bell is clearly ahead of the game and will unlock your phone for a fee of about $60. The phone will not work in Saskatchewan, which is a deal breaker for us, but once they get that fixed we would seriously consider signing on with Bell.

Fido
The guy at Fido was really helpful but they don't carry anything Android (really, Fido just tends to carry cheap handsets). However, the salesperson had a HTC Dream which he had unlocked and was using on the Fido network. I'm with Fido now and I can't really complain about their service, so I'd recommend them to people looking for a provider if you source a handset from elsewhere.

So, in summary:

Goodbye HTC Dream and Magic
Telus wants to lock you onto their network
Bell is a good option if you don't spend time in Saskatchewan

But really:

Buy an unlocked Android phone somewhere else, and just use it on Fido

GoonSwarm.... disbanded?

2010-02-04T20:39:00.000-08:00

It seems like stuff is going down in GoonSwarm... I haven't logged in to see the aftermath in game. Maybe this weekend when I'm at the in-laws place.

Massively.com covered the story and included an interview with darius JOHNSON:

GoonSwarm alliance disbanded in EVE Online political drama

In praise of Jezebel

2010-01-26T15:50:00.000-08:00

I was going to write something about the Xbox Live lawsuit, but I'm pretty sure that is going to get blogged and reblogged elsewhere. The point system sucks because you end up with leftover points that you need to buy more points in order to make the old points useful. Etc.

What interests me more is the recent post on Jezebel debunking myths about women and marriage. I am especially happy to see the stats (which of course are broken down into easy to follow pop culture form) going against the popular notion that educated women won't get married or that successful women have unhappy homelives. This is a nice addition to the previous posts skewering those who think settling for Mr. Okay (or Mr. Right Now) is better than waiting around for Mr. Right. Every time I read Jezebel I am more and more impressed.

Yesterday's article dealing with the crazy baby craving woman who will get pregnant on purpose was also great. Apparently the ones doing the condom puncturing are sometimes men. Glad to see that the other side of the story is also being discussed.

New gaming book features EVE

2010-01-19T08:19:00.001-08:00

I've just added Rossignol's book to my Amazon list.

A review of This Gaming Life.

There isn't a lot of stuff written about EVE and this sounds like it will provide a great history of the game (which cuts down on the amount of stuff I will have to write myself).

CGSA 2010 CFP - deadline extended

2010-01-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

The Canadian Game Studies Association's CFP has been extended slightly. They are now due Jan 22, information can be found here. I've already got two abstracts in, what are YOU waiting for?

The Canadian Communication Association has also extended their deadline to Feb 1. There are not so many game related panels there, but a lot of the Canadian crew from AoIR will be there, so I am looking forward to that conference too. Plus Congress is in Montreal this year, how can you say no to Montreal?

Alan is a guitar hero?

2009-12-19T08:51:00.000-08:00

I first saw this a few weeks ago and it has been bugging me ever since:

I can't quite put my finger on the exact reasons why, but this video really bothers me. Perhaps because it presents Alan as a loser who only his mom thinks he can rock, but he can find solace in a game. Which is conveniently on sale.

Anyhoo, once I am done my PhD apps I will be back to my regular writing schedule. Happy Holidays folks!

EVE Online is for... BoB?

2009-11-30T00:25:00.000-08:00

A short little song that outlines an old piece of drama from the EVE community. In a nutshell, there were allegations that CCP was showing favoritism towards Band of Brothers.

No real commentary from me at this time, I think this video is funny more than anything else.

When things fall apart

2009-11-25T10:06:00.000-08:00

A Psychology-based Approach to Alliance Failure in EVE Online

I have read theses and articles about why/how people quit games, but I've read less about how guilds fall apart. This step by step breakdown of a 'failure cascade' (I really love using this term and I was surprised to find that it actually originates with EVE) by The Mittani is really awesome. It speaks to both the psychology of a gamer, and society as a whole.

Why do things fail? Why are people jerks? What went wrong? On a long enough time line, will everything fall apart? These are all questions that fascinate me. No wonder I am often pegged as being a pessimist.

Does how we respond to challenge change the way we play games?

2009-11-24T19:21:00.000-08:00

Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

I am not sure how I feel about this post quite yet. It feels 'real' when you finally down a hard boss for the first time. But maybe it is just our brains playing tricks on us?

One thing is for sure, the comments are just as interesting as the blog post itself!

A thesis to watch for

2009-11-24T17:03:00.000-08:00

I can only hope this thesis gets all the attention it deserves.

The Cyclical Nature Of Songs About Sexual Violence

On pregnancy and academia

2009-11-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

I have entered in to academia with my eyes open. I know there was no prenup arrangement, no one is obligated to take care of me once I make it to the other side and am officially Dr. Bergstrom. Perhaps I have an overly pessimistic view of the academic job market (as I have always said, expectations lead to disappointments) but that isn't going to stop me from doing the other things that I want to do in my life.

One topic of conversation that seems to be coming up frequently these days is when is a good time to have a babby. There are those who have decided to remain Child Free (either being extremely vocal or more subtle with their choice), those who have gone ahead and had a babby, and those who are waiting for the perfectly planned time. For the longest time I was a member of the Child Free camp, but have since realized that it was more to do with me being in crappy relationships that were not conducive to raising a child, rather than me not actually wanting to have a kid. Now I align myself with those who are waiting until a better time to have a kid. I'm thinking post candidacy exam will be better than where I am right now.

I don't think there is ever an ideal time to have a kid, but it is something I have been thinking about a lot more frequently these days. If I do ever come up with the perfect answer I'll be sure to blog about it( and be featured on Oprah).

Little Bees

2009-11-21T22:08:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty vocal about my switch to EVE. Anyone who is at least remotely familiar with the game has an opinion about GoonSwarm. The amount of negative things I have heard is astounding, even from people who have never played EVE.

I have always held a special place in my heart for the bad guy or at the very least, the underdog. My own personal biases aside, I don't think that the goons are the bad guys in EVE. I don't think they are ruining the game, I tend to view their actions as a scathing critique... Or maybe they are just a bunch of people having fun and forming bonds that will exist long after CCP says adios.

So what DID happen to Second Life?

2009-11-21T07:08:00.000-08:00

This showed up in my newsfeed, reddit, and on the AiR list, so I finally sat down to read it this morning:

What happened to Second Life?

I think it is a common story. Someone says THIS NEW INTERWEB THING IS GOING TO BE BIG! And the bandwagon is jumped upon. And then it doesn't get 'big' in the way people think it will.

My favourite quote from the article:

"It was a real pain. You have to learn how to control things and read manuals on how to get to islands and get off. Half the time you're just wandering around talking to weirdos."

Oh journalism about sociality online... How you never cease to make me laugh.

Personally I have never been all that interested in Second Life. I know more happens then standing around talking to other avatars, but I have always been interested in the social interaction that happens in and around a game. Now that I think of it, some of my favourite memories from my MA involved sitting around a table at the Grad Lounge playing Killer Bunnies. Speaking of which, I should probably set up another game night in the near future, it has been far too long.

Jonathan Coulton explains the tragedy of suburbia

2009-11-16T10:49:00.001-08:00

Why write a 190 page thesis when you can explain everything that is wrong with suburban life in a 4 minute song? :)

On Nostalgia and WoW

2009-11-12T06:16:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about nostalgia and gaming recently. Not really in the hipster sense (where 8-bit characters appear on anything from t-shirts to tattoos), but specifically in the context of World of Warcraft.

Back when I was a young nub, I was obsessed with exploration xp. I'd try to uncover every part of my map that I could. As a Night Elf druid, I was in Ashenvale and I saw that Felwood was a much higher zone (and therefore going to give me much higher exploration xp). I ran up to the first village, drawing aggro... Hoping at the very least to get a flight path. Little did I know that I was there three years to early (the flightpath to the cenarian village was added much later). I think I ended getting suck and having to spirt rez, and thinking that I would never be high enough to quest in felwood. Eventually I was, but every time I cross the threshold into felwood, I feel a little twang in my heart.

I have also kept gear that reminds me of the good ol' days in Vanilla WoW. Hell... I have a toon that I won't play, I want to leave my undead priest exactly the same way as she was when Thorns of the Black Rose fell apart. I spent so much time raiding, I could never bring myself to disenchant the gear she has.

I also keep things that might be useful for future alts. On second thought, maybe I'm not nostalgic. Maybe I'm just a WoW Packrat.

Newsround

2009-11-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

I've been quite the busy bee these past few weeks, but first some good news: my SSHRC proposal was forwarded to the university wide competition. Woo! I won't hear about the next stage until January 2010, but at least I know I made it over the first hurdle. Yay!

PhD applications are coming along, working on a paper to shop around to journals in the new year, doing some RA work, and of course I'm still working at the bookstore.

A few things that have caught my eye recently:

Our Avatars, Our Selves: Gender & Second Life
I have never been all that enthralled by Second Life, but this does look like an interesting study on avatar creation. Worth reading further. Also, if you don't already read Jezebel, you should start!

EVE Developers Blog, explaining the POS Exploit
I really appreciate how open the EVE Developers are, inviting us to look under the hood and explain how this exploit worked.

There are more, but my folks have just arrived (convocation tomorrow) so this post will be cut short. Perhaps I will come back and edit it later.

D&D meets Google Wave

2009-10-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

We had an interesting conversation about Google Wave at last week's innolab. If I remember, I'll have to bring this up in this week's newsround:

Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D

Give a bunch of computer geeks a new medium to play around in, and you could probably guess that the first thing they'd think to do with it is... no, not that, we're talking role-playing games.

I have yet to give Google Wave a spin, and I've heard mixed reviews. However, I am totally disappointed with myself that I didn't call this sooner. Of COURSE when you give geeks a new toy, they're going to use it to take geeking out to the next level. <3 <3 <3

Ethics final report: accepted

2009-10-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

Just got the word that my final report to ethics was accepted. Huzzah! The only things left on my list are to get my thesis bound (dreading that one... going to be expensive) and attend convocation in two weeks.

Also, hello my thesis:

Video games are cheaper than couples therapy

CGSA 2010 CFP

2009-10-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

Help spread the word! The CGSA call for papers is live!

The email being circulated reads:

The 2010 Canadian Games Studies Association annual conference will be held in Montréal this year from May 28-29, in conjunction with the Congress of the Social Sciences & Humanities. This year, the theme for the congress is "Le savoir branché/Connected understandings".

As usual, we invite both national and international paper proposals, on digital games research, broadly defined. In keeping with this year's Congress theme we also encourage work that arises from 'connections' among scholars, researchers, and player communities -- ie. that represents and reports on collaborative work across linguistic, institutional, and disciplinary boundaries.

Please send your extended abstracts, maximum 500 words, to either Jen Jenson (jjenson@edu.yorku.ca) or Nick Taylor (nickttayor@gmail.com) by January 10, 2010.

Looking forward to seeing you in Montréal!

Jennifer Jenson & Nick Taylor (Conference co-chairs)

Or, you can find the call online here.

Proposal writing season is coming to a close!

2009-10-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

I have been spending a lot of time these past few weeks submerged in the world of EVE.

I think my SSHRC/PhD proposal is about 90% done. As of Friday, SSHRC will be done and it will be one more thing to cross off my list!

Dear World of Warcraft guildies: I am coming back soon, I promise!

I am looking forward to coming back to the game as a player, not a researcher. My studies on WoW have been fun, but I really am ready to move on to a new game. EVE, you are the red headed stepchild of MMOs, and I love you for it. You and I are going to have some awesome times in the next 4 to 5 years. Woo!

The cult of numbers

2009-10-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

I know this post will get me in trouble with a lot of people but there is something I need to get off my chest:

I don't think quantitative research is all that interesting.

Okay, it is needed if you want to generalize to a larger population. I get that. Certain disciplines are all about statistics and significance. I get that too. But the quantitative research I saw here at the conference was boring as all hell. I just can't get excited about numbers. Give me a rich, thick description over statistical significance any day.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I believe that if you are researching humans, you should talk to humans.

I did a lot of brain picking down here at AoIR, asking people what their opinions were for a school that met (what I thought) was very loose criteria:

Game Studies (or at least digital) friendly faculty
Digital friendly IRB
Freedom to do qualitative research

The first one was easy, everyone who was presenting here was somehow related to digital studies.

The IRB board question was a bit tougher, but I found that smaller schools seem to have more problems, and European schools are way more open to bleeding edge research. Across Canada things seem to be a bit easier, with a few exceptions (that weren't really on my list of places I am applying anyway). However, the IRB thing isn't even a huge deal to me. I have never been one to back down from a fight and if faced with an IRB that didn't support in-game research, I'd be happy to drag them kicking and screaming into our current century.

Now... Qualitative research seems to be a bit of a sticking point. Some of the big name schools I was super keen on seem to have a crush on numbers. While this isn't readily apparent from the research they are producing, talking to the students themselves seemed to give a different picture. I am not interested in having to fight to do qualitative research. In the end I scratched a few schools off my list, but then that was the point of going to AoIR anyway. But really, I was shocked to find out that qualitative research was such a no-no in some schools.

Perhaps I have been spoiled. So far none of the mentors I have encountered on my academic journey has ever suggested that my research needs to be generalizable to a larger group. My background would allow me to do quantitative if needed, but my heart wouldn't be in it. I take that as a pretty good sign that a qualitative program is the right kind of program for me.

Last day of AoIR :(

2009-10-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

Well, the last day of panels at AoIR has come and gone. We decided not to go to the banquet, but we will be at the reception later tonight. I am sad to say goodbye to my new found interweb researching friends, but so very excited to find out that AoIR 11 is in.... Göteborg!

Yep, those are the guys I'll be studying next year. Rock, rock on!

more AoIR!

2009-10-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

I am still down at AoIR and I am having a blast. Great panels, great people, great beer (it is in Milwaukee after all...)

Learning lots, meeting tons of people... I can't say enough good things about this conference!

AoIR and reflections on my choice of grad school

2009-10-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention that I am at AoIR this week. This is my first time at this conference and so far everyone has been really welcoming and inviting. For whatever reason I have never attended this conference before (it was even in Vancouver recently!) but I'm making up for it now.

One thing I have noticed right away is how isolated I am out in Calgary. When I was finishing up my undergrad my honours supervisors were pushing me to get more involved and make connections with other people interested in games, but I wasn't at the point in my academic development where I felt confident in myself (and my work) to think of myself as anything more than a huge noob. Since then I've become a bit more confident (and of course, fallen on my face a few times), and I realize how important conferences are. It's not just about showing off your new research and how awesome you are, it is also about creating an extended family and making connections with other people who are interested in what you do.

Do I regret going to Calgary? Not really. Without the set of experiences that I had in Alberta, I would not be the person that I am today. I do realize that I should have put a bit more care into how I picked a grad school. I picked a school that worked for my relationship at the time (which went on to crash and burn in the most spectacular way) rather than a school that had faculty interested in my research topic. But. BUT! I made the best of the situation and I think I ended up on the other side of my MA a stronger student (and person). Now I'm a little older, a little wiser, and I know that picking a PhD program involves more than randomly picking the school with the nicest graduation robes.

Which is why I am here -- shopping for a PhD program. Speaking of which, I better go back downstairs for the reception, it has already started. Time to talk to more grad students (and potential supervisors)!

Happy day!

2009-09-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

Last night I went and printed my thesis at the local big box store. This morning I completed the last of the paperwork, burned a CD for the Library of Canada, and then hauled it all over to the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Everything is signed, submitted, stamped, and filed away at FGS.

I am officially done my MA and will be part of convocation in November!

Back to school!

2009-09-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

Happy first day of school everyone!

I'm sticking around in Calgary for an extra year, spending the year as a TA while Richard finishes up his PhD and taking a break before I start my own. Today is the first day of classes and tomorrow begins my year of TA duties. Despite the fact that I have defended I still have a lot of things on my plate this year. Maybe I'll have time for a rest in January ;)

Braving the post-defense world

2009-09-04T20:51:00.000-07:00

One thing that rarely gets talked about in the post-defense world is that immediately following your defense, it is pretty easy to feel a bit blue. I imagine it would be very much like the post-wedding blues -- so much time is spent building up to the "big day" that once it is over, suddenly there is a big empty void. Sure you will probably have some revisions to take care of, but there is no longer this soul crushing fear of your defense looming over your head.

I found myself feeling down the week following my defense. I suspect that so much of my identity is tied to being a student, and now that it is gone it is a little overwhelming. I can only imagine what it will be like when I finish my PhD. I feel like it was a good idea to go to Vancouver and chill out with my family for a week and get away from Calgary, I suggest that those of you reaching the finish line should also plan to keep yourself busy for the week or two following your defense.

Richard defended his MSc from Geneva so he never got any time for it to sink in, he was right back to shift at the antimatorium. I suspect he will feel the same way once he is Dr. Richard. But don't worry, I already have a plan in place. You better believe that Richard and I are going to Space Camp after he finishes his PhD ;)

In my defense...

2009-08-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

Now that the defense is done and I know that my revisions will only take a few days, I am finally starting to wind down. I really was a ball of stress for the weeks leading up to my exam and now it feels like it was all a dream. However, I have had some time to reflect on the defense process and here are a few notes for those next up to bat:

Defend as early in the morning as possible.
If you are anything like me (and get very nervous going into an unknown situation) you will likely be a huge ball of nervous energy. Defending early in the morning minimizes the amount of time you spend worrying about the defense that day. It also reduces the amount of food you will have to eat (and possibly throw up) prior to your exam time.
Bring water with you to the defense.
It may seem simple, but having a bottle of water helped clear my throat (you will be doing a lot of talking!) as well as give me a reminder to slow down when I was talking. It is also a good way to hide your nervousness. The instructors at the ISW also suggested that taking a drink of water is a natural pause, so it could also work if you need a moment to collect your thoughts before answering a particularly tough question.
Write a script for your thesis presentation.
Usually I roughly outline my presentations, but I am really glad I wrote a script. It kept me from rambling and acted as a bit of a security blanket. I also had it timed and I knew it would come in well under 15 minutes, which was great because my neutral chair changed at the last moment, and my new chair was very strict about the time limit of this presentation.
It is okay to be selfish.
I had felt a little guilty about asking for a closed defense, especially when after the notice was posted and I had a few people ask why they couldn't come. I didn't want to feel like a performing monkey, and I was worried with the amount of microphones in the room (my external was dialing in from Montreal) too many people would make it harder for her to hear us. Plus faculty members pointed out that this is one of the few times in your academic career where other people have read your work cover to cover and will spend two hours talking about YOUR work. It is okay to be selfish and want that all to yourself. So my advice... Don't have an open defense unless YOU want it.
Make sure you know where you are going next with your research.
You will get questions about next steps in your defense. Either your committee thinks your thesis was a stinker and don't see how it will add to your chosen field beyond what you just did, or they think it is awesome and are excited for where it will go next. It doesn't matter, you WILL get questions about future areas of research. I gave a brief thumbnail sketch about my proposed PhD research and it got a thumbs up, so not only did I present a thoughtful response to the "What next?" question, I also know that I am on the right track because I got a positive response right there in the examination room.
Understand that you WILL have revisions.
Your thesis will never be a perfect document, don't get caught up in the writing phase looking for perfection. My revisions are minor, but they were things that bugged me about my thesis and probably would have fixed if I had waited another month or two to submit. There will always be typos or things you can expand on or a wonky entry in your bibliography. I only know one person who had absolutely no revisions, it is pretty rare. Get your ideas to the point where you can defend them and have a reasonable chance of passing and go for it.

There are many more things I can add, but this is already turning into a wall of text. My further suggestions shall be a post for another day!

By the power of greyskull....

2009-08-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

I successfully defended my MA thesis yesterday.

*cue Masters of the Universe jokes*

MA defense tomorrow!

2009-08-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much to say these days as I am prepping for my defense.

It is scheduled for tomorrow morning and I keep wavering between confidence and chest crushing fear. I think that is a good place to be.

Locke, Hobbes, and game studies! Oh my!

2009-07-15T04:15:00.001-07:00

I just remembered a snippet of conversation I had at the Canadian Game Studies Association conference a few months ago... One of these days I should elaborate on the fact that the problem with some MMO interactions is that Lockean behaviour is expected in a Hobbesian world.

Picking a PhD program

2009-07-15T03:44:00.001-07:00

As my MA defense date draws near, I am keeping an eye on the horizon. Sometime in the next few months I have to get my PhD applications all in order. This means studying for the GRE, putting together a SSHRC application, meeting potential supervisors... I will be quite busy and right now I am extremely glad that I made the decision to take a year off between finishing my MA and starting a PhD. This will allow me to tie up some loose ends in Calgary, get another year of teaching experience under my belt, attend a few more conferences, massage my thesis into a few papers, and (most importantly) get some rest before embarking on the intense intellectual adventure that one calls a PhD.

Picking a PhD program is very important. Everyone has a different piece of advice, but I thought I would collect some of the suggestions I have been given so far:

Pick a school that best meets your needs.
For me, this means going to a school that will allow me to continue studying MMOs. What might be an amazing school for rhetoric, performance studies, or critical theory may or may not be an ideal school for my own research interests.
You shouldn't have to go into debt for grad school.
I agree with this one. The job market for social science faculty is looking pretty grim, and I think going into debt for the sake of a PhD is probably not a smart idea. I would probably go back to work in the non-profit sector for a few years and go back to school later, rather than taking out a loan and crossing my fingers that a faculty job will be waiting for me when I graduate.
Do a PhD because you love it, not because you think it will get you a job.
This is related to number 2. I do not expect academia to take care of me. If I get a tenure track position, awesome. If I don't, that's fine too. Going to grad school was never about the job prospects. I make jokes about how I was promised fast cars, hookers, and blow by signing up for grad school, but we all know that is a lie. It was about scratching that itch that gets under my skin and a desire to immerse myself in the subjects that I love.

I have run into people who feel like they are 'owed' a job once they graduate. They feel that they have given their best years to the academy, that they have chosen to forgo relationships and having babies, for the sake of their degree. But that's the thing about going to grad school, you didn't sign a contract or a prenup that will take care of you when it is all over. No one is going to give you anything for free, you have to make your own success. I wish these people the best of luck, I really hope their dreams of a tenure track job upon graduation come true.

As I remember more tidbits of advice, I will add them. But at least this is a good start.

On conferences

2009-07-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty bad in terms of blogging about my conference experiences. I always set out with the best of intentions, but usually I get so caught up with networking, all the cool talks I am trying to see, and (of course) nerves about my own presentation. Perhaps one day I will successfully liveblog throughout an entire conference...

Over the course of the last year I have presented at three major conferences (two national, one international) and helped organized a student conference. It has been a busy year between TAing and writing up, but I am really glad that I took the time to go to these conferences. I was asked if I had any advice for the rookie MA student looking to start into the conference circuit, and here are my thoughts (so far):

Conferences don't have to be expensive.
If you are a graduate student, there is probably a some sort of grant you can apply for to help offset the costs of your conference related expenses. I've received funding from my department, the Graduate Student Association, the University, and from the Associations that I have presented at. Do some digging, there is probably some help out there somewhere.
Conferences are about networking.
Take a look at who else is presenting -- this is when you can get some facetime with your favourite author. If you're a MA student, this is also a great way to find out about PhD programs that fit well with your research (and maybe meet some potential exerternal examiners for your MA thesis and/or PhD supervisors). It is also a great way to meet fellow graduate students. These connections are key, especially during the lonely writing stage of your degree! Yes it is great that you are getting to present your work, but a few presentations isn't going to make that much of a difference on your CV. If you're really worried about beefing up your CV for grad school, focus on getting published.
It's in your best interest to spend as much time as possible at the conference.
As related to number 2, conferences are about networking and making connections. That isn't going to happen unless you're actually at the conference. Sure, we all play hookie from time to time but it's bad form to only show up for your own talk. Don't be "that guy" or "that girl" who only shows up for their own stuff. You'd be surprised how many people actually notice this.
Your significant other is probably going to be bored out of their mind.
This can be ignored if you and your partner are in the same field.

Traveling alone can be scary, but I think it is unfair to bring your partner along unless they have something else to do in the city. Remember attending a conference is about making connections, meeting potential collaborators, and seeing interesting (and inspiring!) research. It can be hard to devote time to networking if you are constantly worried about your partner being bored or sitting alone in your hotel room.
Your talk can be a great way to get feedback on your current research.
Everything I presented this year was related to my thesis. This was a great way for me to get feedback about my work in progress, and give me some new ideas to think about. It was also a great way to answer questions about my work, which has helped prepare me for my defense.

Some people may choose to present old papers that they wrote as part of their coursework, which may work for them. I would probably only do that if I was planning on publishing that paper, or planning to revisit it soon. Instead, I focused on my thesis research and I not only got some great feedback, I came back with papers that I could fold into my thesis.

Bonjour!

2009-06-20T00:46:00.000-07:00

Well here I am in France (Richard's apartment is just across the border from CERN) and while it felt nice to sit down and relax for a few days, it's time to get back to business. I have the apartment to myself for the next few days, Richard is working evenings at the antimatorium and the new recruits don't show up to take over the other bedroom until Monday... Might as well take advantage of the peace and quiet and get a large portion of my revisions done!

Taking a break from the thesis

2009-06-12T14:04:00.001-07:00

I made it home from Ottawa, but shortly after my return from Congress, Richard left for Geneva. Since then I have been revising the first completed draft of my thesis, poking away at bits and pieces until I need a break, then I go outside and poke around in the garden.

I'll be leaving for Geneva myself in a few short days, and I expect to finish my final draft and immediately start studying for the GREs.

Anyway, I don't think I am ready to start blogging about the meat of my thesis, but this post
struck a chord with me:

In Warcraft, I give a vanishing potion to a lovelorn farm girl, and she disappears and walks away…only to immediately respawn as I stand agape with a Young Forest Bear steadily chewing on my ass. I regularly run into people doing stuff I just did and wanting me to help them do it again. It’s the nature of the beast, I realize, but it’s demoralizing. …especially in Westhell.

That is probably one of the reasons I find leveling an alliance toon so painful... I hit Westfall and then suddenly I feel my soul being sucked out through my eyeballs. But even as horde, I have had the unfortunate pleasure of heading through 'Westhell'. There is something about that particular zone that I find... icky.

But this idea of NPCs respawning wanting help again and again is something that bothers me too. The feel good effect of doing one of those particuarly emotional quests is shattered as soon as you see the NPC back in its original state, crying for help again. It may not be a big deal for other poeple, but it certainly bothers me.

Canadian Game Studies Association - Day 1

2009-05-23T19:43:00.001-07:00

Today was a packed day at the Canadian Game Studies Association conference. Today's panels were really informative, it was really interesting to see the variety of work being done by Canadian game scholars. Even better was meeting other people using Oldenburg in their own work.

I think my presentation went well, I got some great feedback. I even found a co-author for a paper! I'm not really going to go into any of the specifics of the conference at this point in time, but when I get back to Calgary I'll try to arrange my thoughts in a slightly coherent manner.

thesis update!

2009-05-18T15:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I finished writing the conclusion for my thesis. Eight chapters, woo! I am doing some infill and then will gladly send off my completed draft to my supervisor later this week.

The end is in sight and it feels GOOD!

Adventures in LaTeX!

2009-04-27T19:57:00.000-07:00

I am currently working on a paper due later this week - as part of the CCA Masters panels I have to submit my paper about a month before the conference. I'll be presenting on a small portion of my thesis, specifically how the data I have collected seems to support this idea of MMOs acting as a virtual third place (see Ray Oldenburg's The Great Good Place for a description of third places - it is also a quick and easy read).

This paper also marks my first adventure into LaTeX, and at this point I can't say enough good things about it. Richard has been listening to me complain about how annoying Word can be (it always seems to eat my formatting). While probably a little bit of overkill for the type of work I am doing, It is still very freeing to not have to worry about formatting for once. It took me about an afternoon of fiddling around (with Richard working on the other side of the office - within shouting distance for me to ask questions when I got stuck) but I seem to have enough of a grasp to be working on a short conference paper all by myself.

I like that it completely frees me up from the formatting aspect of writing a paper. I load up a template and it takes care of everything for me - it may even be almost zen like. I just have to focus on the content. I'm going away next week and when I need a break from transcribing I'll be working on converting my thesis over to LaTeX. It will be a bit of a pain but I think in the end, it will be worth it.

Something need doing?

2009-04-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

I've been quite busy since getting home from the PCA, doing one last round of interviews and transcribing away in my office...

I don't have much to say other than 'work, work' (I just wasted far too much time trying to find a soundclip of that) but check out this blog that talks about one of the interviews I just did, from the perspective of one of my interviewees!

I have returned - PCA recap

2009-04-14T16:27:00.001-07:00

Obviously my time in New Orleans was quite busy and I didn't update my blog while I was gone.

I will do a quick and dirty rundown of the PCA now, filling in the gaps once I look over my notes.

Basically, the PCA was a lot of fun. It is quite a big conference (2500+ attendees I believe) that ran Wednesday to Saturday in New Orleans. This was the 39th annual PCA National Conference (next year's 40th anniversary is in St. Louis). There is a wide variety of scholars who presented, ranging from game studies (wooo!) to horror to television and film studies. In a nutshell, I saw a lot of bad scholarship, but I saw even more presentations that had me captivated. The highlight of the conference was the panel on Diary of the Dead, it was proof that one can study horror, be a fan of zombies, and still present a brilliant academic paper. I was less than impressed with some of the vampire panels, some felt like book reviews rather than serious scholarship.

The game studies panels were quite informative, and it was interesting to see what other people in the field are doing. Unfortunately my panel was at 8am on the Thursday so it wasn't as well attended as some of the other game studies panels, but I still had some people come out, ask really interesting questions about Surveylady, and offer up some great suggestions. My fellow panelists were also very interesting, one looked at Don Quixote through a game studies lens, and the other presented a case study of community theatre within World of Warcraft.

Anyhoo, that's enough for now. I will surely write more later.

PCA National Conference - Tuesday morning

2009-04-08T05:43:00.000-07:00

Ray and I got in to New Orleans late last night, checked into our hotel, and crashed pretty quickly. So far I haven't seen much of the city (as it was dark by the time we left the airport), but I've been really impressed with our hotel so far. We're staying at the Best Western around the corner from the conference, on Magazine St. and it is a converted warehouse of some sort. All the walls have exposed brick, and when I open my window I can see a ledge with Mardi Gras beads. Wooo!

Now time to grab some breakfast and get signed in for the conference. I believe the first game studies panel is later today, so I will have more to report then.