Back in Montreal

After a great week in London, a delayed flight home, and an evening of struggling to stay awake so as to get back on mtl time, I am home and enjoying my late morning coffee. With a full EA workload this month, the never-ending editing of my secondary comprehensive exam (formally known as my indexicality paper, now on “impression and trace” … ) and encyclopedic entries to write for an upcoming publication, I think September will simply fly by.

On the plane home, I was reading the September issue of Edge magazine, and saw a great list of games that I really want to be playing. Hopefully after this month, I will be able to get into a play headspace (with an eye towards my dissertation of course). After hearing the panel on avatars this week, and a few comments on identity and avatars, I am riled up to write again(always a good thing).

DiGRA: Morning, Day 4

After a nice afternoon in London checking out all the great shops (like Octopus and Fortnum & Mason – should have brought a larger suitcase!) and a nice dinner at the Crusting Pipe, I am headed back into the conference rooms for one last session. Unfortunately for me, and due to some poor planning on my part, I am only able to attend the first session today – luckily for me, it is a panel on avatars and identity.

The first presentation, by Kristine Jorgensen called I’m Overburdened!’ An Empirical Study of the Play, the Avatar and the Gameworld. The presentation centered around how players view the player/avatar relationship. Although this sounds eerily familiar for me, I am happy to hear that her overarching goals is to look at the relationship between the user interface and the player, in regards to the game-world and game design. When thinking about the avatar, she uses both Rune Klevjer, and Jonas’Linderoth’s conceptualization of the avatar as an extension of the player (vicarious embodiment), as role, tool, and/or prop.  The bulk of the presentation was focused on player quotes and contextualizing them into the definitional constructs of the avatar (briefly) outlined (above).

The second presentation of the session, Emma Westecott’s The Player Character as Performing Object focused on the idea that gameplay is a performance act, looking at the moment of interaction between the player and the game-world (player as puppet-artist / puppeteer). Coming from a film and performance arts perspective and literature, and primarily semiotics of puppetry (Frank Proschan), the presentation was quite theoretical from perspectives that I am not familiar with and so made it quite interesting to think about the relationship between the player and the object of the avatar – controller and game. While I don’t usually take the direction of avatar as puppet (role, prop or tool..), I appreciated seeing the player / avatar relationship explained from a different angle. Apologies for my brief and perhaps inarticulate synthesis.

The final presentation of the day is Clara Fernandez-Vara’s Play’s the Thing: A Framework to Study Videogames as Performance which essentially is a set of tools in order to look at videogames, as well as the implications these tools carry. Performance in regards of “performance studies – human action in context (showing doing) which are necessarily activities that are separate from everyday life (Schechner, 2006; Huizinga, 1955). I spent most of the time listening intently, and taking notes, so here is the basic foundation:

Performance Framework: comparative framework

Three layers

Theatre (Pavis, Schechener)
Digital media
Games (not exclusively digital) – Hunicke et al

Theatre model – how do we understand theatrical performance

-          Dramatic text (what is ready before it begins)
-          Performance (actors concretizing the text)
-          Mise-en-scene (the necessity of the audience to make sense of the text and the performance)

Performance in digital media (Software as performance)

-         Code (instead of dramatic text – this is what the computer “has” to do –
-         Run-time (computer performs the text – the performance is not complete without an interactor – as co-performer
-         Interaction (player)

Games (Hunicke, R. M. Leblanc et al) MDA : A formal approach to game design and game research

-          Mechanics (what is needed to start playing – objects as part of the mechanics) [rules attached to the objects]
-          Dynamics (rules set into motion – applied rules, not translation of the rules, but the acting out of them)
-          Aesthetics – (ambiguous in MDA) [types of fun or activities that are engaging] what happens to the player while playing .. player experience

Player as performer and spectator = making sense of the actions (spectator) and making things happen, set things in motion.

So there it is – another interesting panel to wrap up another great conference with great people in a great place. I am both sad to leave and happy to go home and see my family. Safe travels to fellow delegates.

*Please disregard typos and poor sentence structures =)

DiGRA: Morning Day 3

After spending another great evening in Uxbridge last night, and an on campus nightcap with a few friends, I woke up a bit late (seemed to have missed my alarm!), but still managed to make it to the morning’s panels on time.

This morning’s first panel – Wii play: gestures, bodies and technologies - the presentations (by Bart Simon, Rune Klevjer & Patrick Crogan) were all quite theoretical, connecting ideas about the ways in which the Wii and its controls are pushing the boundaries between the player, movement and gameplay.

The second panel I attended was on games and education – the first speaker, Kenneth Hullett presented Better Game Studies Education the Carcasonne Way which focused on using board games to teach game mechanics in design class in response to the fact that many students who enter game design have great ideas, but lack the understanding of the mechanics. The presentation was mostly a relay of results between those who participated in playing the boardgames and those who did not to measure the level of understanding of game mechanics.

The second speaker, Suzanne de Castell, presented a paper titled  As If or Just Like:  From Simulation to Imitation in Educational Games. The presentation was relatively conceptual, but raised a very interesting point about videogames that claim to be simulation but are controlled with a traditional handheld controller. There is a disconnect between the actions on the screen and the physical actions required to make the actions occur. Whereas more ‘embodied’ games such as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero have more (intrinsic) connection between the actions that occur on the screen and what actions are required by player to make it happen. This differentiation is important when considering educational games.

The third paper The Gigue is Up: High Culture Gets Game, presented by Jen Jenson, focused on a game project they had done for the Toronto Baroque Orchestra  Tafelmusik. The presentation focused on the challenges they faced making an accessible ‘edutainment’ game to introduce Baroque music to a new generation.

Off To London

I am off this evening to London for the Digra: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory conference where I am presenting with my colleague Shanly Dixon on girls and videogames (will post abstract eventually). As always I am rushing around trying to finish up the last bit of packing, trying to find all my papers/articles/books that I will need to tweak and edit our presentation, and a few fun things for the plane. In the spirit of procrastination (because it seems when the clock is ticking, this is what I do!), here is a fun Army of Two: 40th Day trailer filmed here in Montreal.

Depending on internet connections and my access to a proper power adapter, I will try to blog the panels / events that I attend. Have a great week!

Hot Summer Days: Update #729

The first thing that pops into my head is a cheesy ’80’s song New Girl Now …click and laugh if you must, but do not judge – it was 1984 afterall!

The last few days have been scorching hot (30 c + / 80 f + ); and there is at least another week of it to come. I know at the beginning of the summer I had complained that we had barely seen the sun and that  an onslaught of rainy days ruined my holiday. Technically, I should be grateful for such balmy summer weather in the heart of August. The only trouble is – my vacation finished almost 2 weeks ago. I think mother nature got my order backwards this year – who do I complain to? So instead of sipping fruity drinks on a deck by a pool, I am inside (and sometimes outside on my balcony) trying to chip away at my to-do list and pretend I can’t see / feel the hot weather.

I have been getting some work done. Mainly stuff for my play test moderating gig, but also getting a chunk done on our presentation for DiGRA. We are looking at girls and videogames, something I have always shied away from. But at this point, it seems like not only the logical thing to look at, but the right thing (I have two girls, 13 & 17…). While they love to play videogames, and have access to half an EB Games store between my partner and I alone, what they choose to play, and purchase themselves has been provocative. Coupled with what marketing and industry claims girls like / want to play – it is easy to see a few gaps.  While there is alot of work out there on girls videogame preferences and the imbalance between market availability etc, I think what we have been working on brings something to the discussion worth adding. I must say though, digging through the sea of literature on girls and videogames has been eye opening on alot of levels.

I am also working on bits and pieces for an upcoming encyclopedia of video games (will post link when available). I always find encyclopedic / history entries interesting things to write. They take so much time to collect information, check and triple check references and timelines and in the end, after what feels like forever, you write 500 – 1000 words, trying to give the most straightforward and concise information possible without (much) bias or opinion. Of course, as I wrote somewhere on here before, history is indeed socially constructed; the choices an author has to make about what gets in their text and what is omitted is significant. I could ramble on about this, but then, I would never actually get any work done.

Random Dissertation Thoughts

I had my first full-on thesis proposal/comprehensive exam meeting on Thursday. All in all, it went relatively well. Ok – to be honest, it was a lot better than I had expected, and only have some minor tweaking on my actual proposal, and a decent-sized (but very doable) edit on my secondary comp paper. One of the things I thought I had squared away was my ‘research method’, as methods is something that I have an interest in; probably drilled into me by all my methods courses [and a few others] that always challenged us on why the methods we are choosing are necessarily the best ones to get the research task at hand done. Justification of method indeed.

So, for my doctoral research, I am working with a theoretical framework that I developed in my MA which attempts to define the necessary relationships that occur in order for a “hybrid” identity to be formed (an identity that belongs neither wholly to the player, nor the player-character on screen, but an identity that exists between them that is developed through the gameplay and other elements). I am now using this framework as a template to evaluate the process of identity construction in various genres of video games that are necessarily distinct from MMO’s. One of the goals here is to evaluate in which ways my framework (developped through mmorpg play/study) changes based on the type of game being played (and all the things that go with it), which ultimately leads to varying processes and forms of identity. I will not get into the “why” just yet, but that being said, I had chosen my research methods quite stringently, based on my sociological training of course.

Since my work relies heavily on my pre-existing framework, the analysis will be based on both the framework and personal gameplay experience (of character development, player choices etc) along with more technical elements (game design elements). One thing I never thought of though, coming out of sociology – is to record all of my gameplay. However, my advisor (from a cinema department) uses recorded gameplay extensively – and it makes sense for the research/work that he does. I just never thought about using it myself. At first, I could not imagine what use it would be other than to document the fact that I did it, and on some levels, the “play experience” analysis will not be ‘obvious’ through the recording. However, the more I think about it – the more I am thinking about anthropology and not film studies [perhaps a mental block ... perhaps lack knowing any better]; the more I think that it could be an interesting project on a personal level to record my gameplay, to track the development of expertise through gameplay, and how that influences my framework (something I hadn’t even thought of as part of my overall project).

To be honest, the more I think about it, the more excited I am! If only I can get through the next week (conference prep, out of town company and a heavy workload at EA), I am really excited to start working on this!! (Always a good thing when it comes to your dissertation ).

Oh – and for my colleagues who already record their gameplay, any equipment suggestions (brand, etc.) I know I need a dvd recorder, but any suggestions from those in the know would be great!

Game Studies – New Issue

A new issue of Game Studies – Special Issue – EQ 10 Years Later has just come out. This issue is dear to my heart not only because of the fact that we (Bart Simon & Mark Silverman) have an article in the issue, but also because it is the game that brought me to game studies. The game that has been an impossible benchmark for any other mmo’ since I stopped playing (regularly) in 2004, and that with the mere mention of its name, brings back a flood of memories and ridiculously long stories.

The Figur(ative) in Video Games … a beginning

As I have mentioned here before, I am taking my last PhD class (/cheer) entitled “The Figure in Film”. So far, it has been an interesting excursion into some very classic works from the ’20’s on – spanning avant-garde, experimental and Russian film (so far..). We have been looking at the role of metaphor, metonomy the figurative as visual representation (carrying over, appropriating and recontextualizing literary definitions). As a final project (and in class presentation) I have to  ” develop a discussion of the figure in relation to a film, a filmic corpus, audio-visual form or style or a theoretical approach to films, using the readings and discussions considered during the seminar”. While this is a pretty standard ‘demonstrate what you’ve learned in class’ paper, I am tempted to take it in the direction of my work – mainly video games. 

The project I have outlined would essentially be a comparative study – much like the beginning of the course in that it started out with understanding the figurative from a historical perspective and how it has been appropriated – theoretically – into film studies (and production). My question would be to ask what cinematic elements of figuration are carried over into v. games? What (if any) elements are purely ‘gamic’? And perhaps – does the figurative serve the same purpose in games as it does in film? I know these are pretty vague questions – but they are simply a point of departure so that I can start amassing some literature on anything related. And so – as always – if anyone has any literature to point me towards or suggestions / directions, it is always more than welcome.

Speaking of Role-Playing

Just a short post really. But I was thinking of all of the conversations about what constitutes a “video game”, and I have been wondering about online role-playing games. Perhaps a little too late for me to start contemplating this since my entry has already been written and printed on this, but thinking about my daughter’s participation in online forum-style role-playing games I wonder if my original definition was too narrow – thinking mostly of games like Asheron’s Call, EverQuest, etc while omitting most games that exist solely on the web. Funny especially since the history comes out of text based MUDs. Is this my own (un/subconscious) delineation of what a ‘real’ video game is? Like the flash games versus ‘video’ game debate? [I will dig up some links later]. 

/wonders

Spring Break, Community & Upcoming Events

How I wish I could spin some exotic tale of how we are heading down south to the sun and the sand. However, ’tis not the case. We are driving for 10-12 hours to visit my family in New Brunswick for a week of skating, tobogganing (sp!?) and sitting by the fire with a hot drink. Might not be sun and sand, but it’s just as relaxing – and that’s what counts right?

It’s always hard to leave the city for any amount of time – as I have lamented on this very blog almost every summer. We will be dragging the laptop along – and a few books in case I find myself up earlier than my 4 year old nephew.

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Over the last year, I have been lamenting the loss and touting the importance of community in one’s academic life. What I have come to realize over the last while is that gameCODE has always been my home. When I left Concordia for Universite de Montreal, I was lucky enough to be in the same city, but for some reason felt a disconnect from the group. Over the last few weeks, I am happy to say that I have come back to gameCODE (with a vengeance I might add), hoping to organize some events, informal meetings and participate in some stimulating conversations on and off line.

I have to say, it is nice to be back in the fold, and that I am amazed of how just being a part of something like this is inspiring/motivating in terms of my coursework and my academic path. To be among a diverse range of people who are motivated and eager to share their ideas is worth every minute of technical updates and organizing madness.

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Finally, before I head out to pack four suitcases for the week, there are a few things on my radar worth sharing. The Canadian Game Studies Association is holding their 2nd Annual Conference in Vancouver BC. 

The games research group out of UQAM – HomoLudens (research on the socialisation and communication in video games) is holding a talk that is near and dear to my heart (and research) – Identity in MMO’s on March 12th (please note that the page opens best on Firefox). Also sponsored by HomoLudens, and in association with the 76th Annual Congress of Acfas (Association  francophone pour le savoir),  “Le jeu vidéo :  expériences et pratiques sociales multidimensionnelles” will be held May 6 – 7 in Quebec city. Will post a presentation list when it is available (or when I can find it).

Although bearing quite a price tag – the International Communications Association is holding the annual meeting this year in Montreal in May (22 – 26). There is a section on games that might be worth sitting in on a few sessions.

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On that note, guess it’s time to pack those suitcases – have a great week.