Rainy Holiday

Am on my annual pilgrimage to eastern Canada for summer fun (and work of course). However, the forecast shows rain, rain and more rain. It is one of the few times I hope the weatherman is blatantly wrong – or else, why have the beach so close when you are stuck indoors! And the weather gives me little excuse to procrastinate my long to-dop list – bah!

Full Circle

Sometimes the research and the writing process has nothing to do with actually reading and writing, but rather, letting things stew in the back of your mind while you do other things. This is a hard process to accept – especially in the world of deadlines and other people’s schedules. However, I am happy to say that my indexicality paper has finally come full circle, and, while a tad late on the delivery, is ready to be taken seriously, and written. Essentially, I had to completely abandon the original text to even get back to it. I had torn it apart to its bare bones, barely recognizable to its original source, but after etching out a whole new outline, doing some more reading on (what was originally) peripheral topics, I realize the whole problem that I was having was that I was trying to work with someone else’s words, and not wholly my own ideas; using the wrong literature really. Once I realized this, I had come to the conclusion that in doing so, I was actually approaching my whole research question wrong; I was thinking about indexicality as something concrete – related to the materiality of the object; when in actuality (for the overall argument I was trying to make in the first place), it is really about its referentiality. Thinking of it this way makes more sense to what I am trying to say (will share that at a later date, since its all still in the writing stage), and helps me move away from concepts of indexicality traditionally used in film studies (often to make a case against digital media).

So – while it took longer than I wanted it to – I am happy to say that the “thought process” did it’s job. Now for the tediousness of writing it again!

It’s (almost) Summertime

(Finally) got news back from DiGRA – it’s a ‘yay’ .. now for the budgeting… I am excited to go to London again, but oouf the $$!  Oh well, if I have to pay for one conference this year, it would be DiGRA =)

Things have been chugging along- working alot at EA – was in a small rut there for a bit, but am finally starting to balance my work there and my academic life and family. This week is the last big push before I can head into summer work mode (which really just means doing the same amount of reading, writing and editing but on a beach or poolside in the country – thank you extended family). My to-do list is massive, but I think it’s a manageable massiveness. Fingers crossed that I am not fooling myself.

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EverQuest: 10 Years and still chugging along

The sad thing is, I missed EQ’s actual “anniversary”  this past March. The good news is I found an absolutely great write-up on it. As someone who started her hardcore gaming with EverQuest in August of 1999 (notwithstanding weekend-long Killer Instinct parties and an addictive passage through Super Mario Bros. on the SNES when I first started my bachelor degree in 1994 … ) this write up definitly encapsulates the nostalgia I feel when I talk about playing EQ “back in the day” and the sadness I feel when I tell people what I don’t like about World of Warcraft (and why I quit before the first expansion …). While it might not sound like fun, there has yet to be another mmo (imo) that developped such a sense of belonging to something – a community .. a world … in the same way.

Here’s a short excerpt from the article linked above (written by Egon Superb …)

To all but the most hardcore World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online or Age of Conan players, the original EverQuest would have seemed a monstrosity of unforgiving difficulty. There was little or no guidance beyond the original tutorial, and there were literally tens of quests, with no shiny yellow exclamation marks bobbing above NPC’s heads. In fact, most of the game was left up to the imagination and investigation of players, who were given no guidance beyond the knowledge of the name of areas and cryptic clues left by the designers throughout the original world.

In fact, the beauty of “Old World EverQuest” (referring to either the very first release of the game, or said world combined with the Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious expansions) was that most of the game – and I really mean almost everything – was left unexplained. After ‘hailing’ an NPC (pressing H or typing “Hail”) players would have to communicate with them – typing in random words and names, or handing over particular items in the hope that it would unlock the next step of the quest. This was at times aided by particular words being in square [brackets], signifying what word to type, but many times it was left up to the whimsy of the player to work out what to say. Much like the average player’s conversation with a woman.

Many of these quests didn’t reward experience, and for the most part you were left to grind – a negative term in the industry nowadays – all the way to level 50, then 60, then 70, then 80. The idea of moving to specific areas and completing quests was an alien concept – players did what they could to score as much experience as possible, and always in a group (as going solo was eventually suicidal). Some classes – for example Druids, Necromancers, and (during the Planes of Power expansion) Enchanters – would ‘kite’ enemies in circles, chipping away at their health bars with damage-over-time spells and keeping themselves as far away as possible, hoping that their prey would die before they got too close.

Back to Indexicality

I have been working on my secondary comprehensive exam paper/topic again . Again might not be the right word. It started out as a paper on figural meaning and its relationship to indexicality through the process of one’s imaginary museum (Lefebvre), but for the allocated length of the paper, it was way too much. I had tried to simply cut out the section on the imaginary museum – which left me with a paper on figural meaning and its relationship to the indexical, but then I was left with a conceptual gaping hole. After a meeting with my advisor, we both agreed that the section on the figural felt tacked on and incomplete. So, we decided to nix the figural altogether, and reinsert the section on the imaginary museum. However, after trying to rewrite sufficient transitions to make the paper the least bit comprehensive (ha!), I realized that the imaginary museum made little sense in my overall argument without the backbone (weak as it may have been) of the figural.

So It was time to go back to the outline writing stage again (thnx Shan) even though I already have over 8k words written, chopped to bits and reassembled multiple times…; in the end, I am left with a paper on the shifting (conceptual) boundaries of indexicality across medium (photo/film/videogames). While the idea of meaning making and memory is completely lost (will save it for another time), for the first time in a few months, I actually feel pretty good about the direction it is heading and the readings I have (re)selected. Now, here’s to crossing my fingers that I get a legible draft done by Saturday (advisor imposed deadline)!

Horror: Hell in a handbasket I tell ya!

Sitting in the car last night, stuck in traffic, a radio announcement came on for the new movie “Drag Me To Hell“. At first we thought it was a parody, or some strange credit commercial; but no – it was dead serious – meant to make us scream in terror. If horror films follow contemporary social fears – from the  “Frankenstein Complex” to articles like this and books like this; then what does the premise of this movie say about the current state of our society? (can’t help but chuckle even as I type this at 7:49am!)

The premise – straight from IMDB:

A loan officer ordered to evict an old woman from her home finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse, which turns her life into a living hell. Desperate, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point.

… and from Wikipedia:

Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer with a good job and a promising future. With a promotion up in the air between her and another employee, her boss, Mr. Jacks (David Paymer), advises her that she needs to demonstrate she can make “the hard calls” and make tough decisions. When Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver), an elderly Slavic woman, asks for a third extension on her mortgage, Christine, against her better instincts, denies her in an attempt to prove herself. In desperation, Ganush prostrates herself before Christine, begging and kissing the hem of her skirt. As a crowd of customers and employees gathers, Christine panics and shoves the woman away, gravely insulting her.

That night, in a parking garage, Ganush, enraged and humiliated, exacts revenge by attacking Christine, pulling her out of her car and tearing off one of the buttons the sleeve of her jacket before using it to place a curse upon her. Shaken by this confrontation, but sure that no further harm will come of it, Christine tries to forget what has happened and move on with her life- that is until she is haunted around the clock by a mysterious and terrifying entity that only she can see.

APA Style Guide Update – 2009

Thank you to the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list (and to Debashis ‘Deb’ Aikat, Ph. D., Associate Professor and Media Futurist
School of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for posting it to the list), there will be a “6th” edition of the APA guidelines – which will include the following:

Key to the “sixth edition” of APA style is a Web presence. On July 1, 2009, APA will launch a fully revamped website featuring tutorials, sample papers, frequently asked questions, an APA Style blog, and
other resources about APA Style.

The sixth edition of APA Style offers new and expanded instruction on publication ethics, statistics, journal article reporting standards, electronic reference formats, and formats for tables and figures.

Some select features include:
~~ “new ethics guidance on such topics as determining authorship and terms of collaboration, duplicate publication, plagiarism and self-plagiarism, disguising of participants, validity of instrumentation, and making data available to others for verification;”

~~ “significantly expanded content on the electronic presentation of data to help readers understand the purpose of each kind of display and choose the best match for communicating the results of the investigation, with new examples for a variety of data displays, including electrophysiological and biological data;”

~~ “consolidated information on all aspects of reference citations, with an expanded discussion of electronic sources emphasizing the role of the digital object identifier (DOI) as a reliable way to locate information;”

~~ “simplified APA heading style to make it more conducive to electronic publication;”

~~ “new guidelines for reporting inferential statistics and a significantly revised table of statistical abbreviations;”

See more details at http://books.apa.org/books.cfm?id=4200066

The Day After

I have posts from pre-CGSA (friday night fun in Ottawa) and Day 1 to wrap up and post, but I have to say, the day after any conference, there is always a feeling of both relief and exhaustion. A mix of feeling a bit lighter (something you have been working on and stressing about over the last while is over and done, and if we are lucky, done well heh), and a returning feeling of stress – having to get back to the other things on my to-do list that have been pushed aside in the final week leading up to the conference.

So today, although I have a mere two weeks to rework my secondary comps paper (not as bad as it sounds) and make the minor but necessary edits to my proposal (both due June 6th), I will try to rest up and recuperate. Bring the laptop to bed, dilly dally with a few books, jot down a few notes if I am so inspired and maybe even do a crossword or two. Tomorrow, life begins again – but until then… =)

CGSA – Day 2 – Panel 4 & 5

Session 4 – Alternative Play Spaces

This sessions dealt with the ever-neglected (imo) topic of health issues/education and videogames.  Fern Delamere kicked the 4^th session off with her presentation called Place Matters: social Construction, Disability Groups and the Virtual World Second Life.  Her focus is to look at the virtual worlds in respect to the social communication and the fact that space matters for people with disabilities in terms of the support. The virtual space allows people to get together and interact in ways that they may not be able to in their everyday, physical lives. Looking at the supports systems and services, the relationship between health advocacy and those who participate in these communities. These places level the playing field (physically and socially) for those who go to them – neutral places – and this is important. Fern spend a nice portion of the presentation talking about places like The Virtual Ability Island which offers those with physical disabilities to participate in things that they may not be able to do otherwise and (Virtual) Help Island that focus on health and disability information (i.e. meetings and advocacy) and multiple groups such as the American Cancer Society, Wheelies in SL (social dances for those with disabilities) and Gimp Girl, which is a group of women with disabilities who work towards re-appropriating the word gimp as something that is empowering and unifying. All of these groups and spaces broaden the scope of social meaning and education for both disabled and able bodied people.

The second presentation in the panel was presented by Bill Kapralos titled Community Health Nursing Education Comes to Life and aimed to talk about serious games, the motivation behind the project, and mSTREET, which is a modular synthetic training .. slides moving fast – I missed the last few words). Bill frames the talk by contextualizing the target audience for digitally mediated education as those who have been raised in a “sensory flooded” society (dubbed the Millennial Student – 1981-1999). They expect learning to be “fun” and therefore serious games can be an innovative tool for education. The focus of the presentation is on Community Health Nursing which encompasses home care/public health as something that is moving away from the hospital and into the community. The video game aspect is related to ways to develop its curriculum as that which is contrasted to traditional nursing education. Through serious games and simulations, it can provide the students with a safe practice environment. It would also develop critical and reflective thinking skills, and reinforce key learning concepts. Admittedly, a step or three away from topics that I am usually drawn in by, sometimes it is quite interesting to see projects that attempt to use innovative teaching and research tools to move a field (any field) further.

Session 5 – Identity in MMO’s

Probably the session that I should have presented in (oddly, I cannot remember the last time I presented my identity work in a peer public venue). That being said, there couldn’t be a better topic (imho) to wrap it all up.

Alison Harvey presented her work titled Situated Accounts in Non-Places: Doing Empirical Research on Online Gaming which dealt with methodology, specifically ANT (Actor Network Theory), SST (Social Shaping of Technology) and Post Structural Feminism. Messy methods – John Lay – After Method: mess in social science research.  It is important to keep in mind that research methods are not value neutral – this needs to be taken into consideration when one chooses their methods for research. Alison spent the first half of the presentation taking us through the bullet-pointed definitions (the best kind) of ANT, SST, SCOT and how these theories can be used in research (specifically ANT). She also makes parallels between SST and post-structuralist gender/queer theory as something that tries to move beyond dichotomous thinking. Describing games such as Club penguin which reifies gender norms in video game design – compared to how gender norms are actually performed. A few phrases that stuck out as Alison was wrapping up her presentation: Gender in action instead of as innate traits. Methods from the margins. Allow the messiness of life into the rigid boundaries of research methods.

The last presentation of the day was given by Elkan and Sheldon Richmond – The Question of Identity in Massive Multi-Player Games and Social Reality. As a game designer, philosopher and systems analyst they open the presentation off with questions for the audience about the multiplicity/singularity of identity, getting the group to collectively challenge ideas of reality, being and identity, morality. “Am I my job” ; “how do different social roles or identity related to my ‘real’ identity”; and “if my ‘real’ identity is above and beyond what I do, what is my identity” (the last question was let go, as the audience did not take the dialogue in the (potentially) desired direction). A philosophical presentation that seemed to aim to get the group to discuss the banality (or purpose?) of studying videogames. However, the presentation never really got to talk about videogames at all in an informational sort of way. Too bad really.

All in all, it was a great conference, a few good meals, a couple of good brew (Young’s Double Chocolate Stout baby!), a lot of great conversations and honestly, nothing better than being able to meet once a year with a group of similarly but just different enough-thinking peers.

CGSA 2010 – Concordia University, Montreal Canada next May.

Quote of the day: I guess you can call it informed, directed ignorance

CGSA – Day 2 – Afternoon ( Panel 3)

Session 3 – What Really Happened?

After a great morning, and a pretty decent lunch with pretty great people, we are head into the last two panels of CGSA 2009. Kicking things off is Cindy Poremba with her talk Frames and Simulated Documents: Indexicality in Documentary Videogames which focuses on the game JFK Reloaded, and the representation of actual (historical) events within the game, how they are related to indexicality and what purpose it serves. She argues that the game is not about the reference to the real – the actual event – but to the resurrection of the archives of the event. Bringing indexicality into videogames serve two primary functions –  (1. Bah! I was too slow to get this down before she moved on!) and anchoring the player into the “real world” in conjunction with the game-world. She continued on to talk about simulation and representation and the truth value of the claims being made through the use of them. The core of the presentation discussed the issues and problems that simulations present when used to offer motives and insights into the historical event itself. She wrapped it all up talking about the relationship between memory, experience, simulation and indexicality (apologies if my summary doesn’t actually do justice to her presentation, but I was busy paying attention  ;-)

The second presentation in this panel was presented by Stephanie Fisher (Originally titled Great Expectations: WWII Games and Informal History Education – However, the title was changed but did not have time to take it down before diving into the presentation). Dealing with the ways in which historical teaching and learning for K-12 education. Her introductory argument follows that the playing of WWII video games may lead to increase interest in, and learning opportunities about historical information (in this case WWII games such as Call of Duty and  Medal of Honor). Key statements and 4 levels of appropriation for analytical use to explore how students use videogames to learn history (Pattern/result: the larger the role/investment WWII gaming plays In their lives, the higher level of potential appropriation).

• Level 1: Tangential Learning – may encourage specific research directions
• Level 2: Preconditioned Expectations – For gamers, it structured their historical thinking Preferred military history over other branches + in-depth examinations (characteristics of WWII FPS games); for non gamers, it expanded their knowledge
• Level 3: Safe Spaces – Entertainment-based source = contested information = safe space to practice historical skills (however, historical bias as per the market/reworking of the historical accuracy of the events portrayed in games)
• Level 4: Unsafe Spaces – Using the information learned in the ‘safe space’ outside of the game i.e. In the classroom

She wrapped up the presentation saying that history is often an unpopular class in school, and perhaps there is room for games to be used/brought into the curriculum.

Both presentations inspired flurry of questions on the relationship between game design, what is real and the player experience. In such cases, it is sometimes sad that there are only 10 minutes for questions for every two presentations.