Virtual Learning Environments » presence

Game Studies Information!

Andrew — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:36:01 +0000

Hey all -

Since we talked about gamification, Jane McGonigal, and World of Warcraft pretty extensively, I wanted to lend my expertise and give everyone some resources for Game Studies if you are at all interested. For those who don’t know, my focus here at The New School is Game Studies. This is a new(ish) field of media studies that only recently come into being. Basically, Game Studies takes the tenets of media studies and applies them to games. However, games have an added layer of influence on the story and the experience that make them a unique study within the media field. All of my major writings up until this point have been in game studies. As such, I’ve done a lot of reading and research already, and wanted to give you all the opportunity to check out some of the fruits of my labors.

Primarily, I have books and websites/blogs that I’ve uses as resources in the past that I think have a lot of great (and really interesting information) about Game Studies. You can think of this as kind of an informal annotated bibliography. I am also going to use this information and keep updating it on my blog - www.rogue-gamer.com if anyone is continually interested in it.

There are a few websites that I frequent for academic looks at games. The first is the ever so intuitive www.gamestudies.org which is a digital trade journal published quarterly with game studies topics. Who knew? Since it’s only updated quarterly, it doesn’t have a ton of up-to-date content, but that’s also not really it’s focus. Regardless, it’s probably the single best resource of purely scholarly publications to do with video games. There’s also the more generalist webiste, www.gamasutra.com which, among other things, has very academic writings about video gaming. Bogost is a frequent contributer to Gamasutra, and there’s lots of great general information on video gaming as a whole on Gamasutra. It’s awesome for just a quick perusal with high quality content.

Finally, there’s my favorite gaming-related magazine/blog, The Escapist. The Escapist Magazine has a collection of news articles, opinions, blogs, and videos which are again, very high quality that make it enjoyable to read and highly informative at the same time. They release weekly issues, each containing 3-4 articles from contributing writers around the topic at hand. Additionally, the staff writers also maintain blogs and additional posts, as well as creating the fun extras on the site. If you have a few minutes, do a search on the site and watch an few episodes of “Extra Credits,” which is a very forward thinking weekly video that I find very informative, inspiring, and entertaining. There are some other sites, www.IndustryGamers.com focusing on the business side of the fence with some news and op-ed mix in, and websites like Destructoid, Kotaku, andJoystiq all have good articles from time to time, but are more focused towards entertainment than informing academically.

With books, Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken, which she references in her TED talk is really interesting. She paints a very powerful (if a little idealistic) view of gamification and the power that gamification can have in the world today. She has some great ideas and great insight. But as I mentioned, her view of gamification as an ultimate force for good is a little bit optimistic and idealistic. She also has a community of gamification people called www.gameful.org if you are at all interested. Gameful.org (which I’m a member of) does a lot to network like minded people, and there are groups – and they have a really interesting implementation of gamification on the website involving completing certain “tasks” and leveling up before you can post, or keep a blog, etc. I think between her TED talk, Reality is Broken, and Gameful.org, there’s a ton of great information about gamification just from Jane.

Another major player in the Game Studies field currently is Ian Bogost. Ian is a professor of Comparative Media at Georgia Tech, and has runs his own website for persuasive/serious games – http://persuasivegames.com. Additionally, he’s written 2 books thus far (with a 3rd on the way): Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism and Persuasive Games: The Expressive power of Video Games. In these books, Bogost attacks the particular challenges of critiquing games from a structuralist perspective. Unit Operations addresses the relationship between different chunks of functionality within a game, and focuses on how that relationship, that unit operation influences the player. In Persuasive Games, Ian creates a new idea, called procedural rhetoric, which attempts to address how the rules inherent in game program have a rhetorical function. His most recent book, How to Do Things with Video Games will be released on Aug. 30, 2011.

Next on my list is another name you should recognize for this summer’s readings – Bonnie Nardi’s My Life as a Night Elf Priest which is an anthropological study on gamers, and more specifically the World of Warcraft community. I would rank this as a number one must read if you are at all interested in video gaming and the communities it creates. She makes some great observations that being an insider to the game, I wouldn’t have necessarily noticed on my own. If you are curious at all about what World of Warcraft is all about, I strongly urge you pick this up and give it a read through. It shows from both an outsider and eventually an insiders perspective the phenomenon that is the World of Warcraft.

Henry Jenkins, who we also read about this semester is another big name in the game studies, though he hasn’t done as much as some others in the way of explicit writing about game studies. His book Convergence Culture, while not dealing with gaming directly, does mention it a few times and is a good for just understanding the transition of media to filling in the gaps. Additionally, his other book which is a collection of essaysFans, Bloggers and Gamers has some good material about gamers as a community, though he has some frustration with the state of video games, and that comes through in the writing strongly at certain points. But, he has been an ardent defender of gaming in the past, and noting his work is important when looking at game studies. His blog can be found at http://www.henryjenkins.org/.

Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds by Celia Pearce covers a more somber topic – the death of a virtual world. The book primarily covers the exodus of players of a game called Uru that was shut down, and it’s community of players became essentially homeless. I haven’t had the opportunity to read the entire book, but what I’ve read of it has been fascinating, and something I can related to, with the decline of a multiplayer game defined a lot of me as a gamer, Anarchy Online from Funcom. An easy read, I really enjoy what I’ve read of it so far. Another book that I haven’t read the whole way through isPlay Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture by T. L. Taylor. T.L. Taylor is another big name in game studies, but not as well known. Her book deals primarily with the creation of community within a virtual world, through the lens of the game EverQuest. You can find her website here: http://tltaylor.com/ with some additional work.

Edward Castronova also has two books that are worth reading, though it should be said I didn’t enjoy them as much as I have some others. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, Castronova tackles a primarily economic reading of virtual worlds, which I was a little turned off on when he talks about the earning potential of virtual worlds, but I’m also biased against anything overtly business related, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. He also wrote Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality. Again, I viewed his book with a bit of trepidation after the reading Synthetic Worlds, but as much as I might dislike it, it’s still important to understand the implications that Castronova tackles.

There are two other books that I want to mention here that have a less academic tilt – World of Warcraft and Philosophy is a collection of essays that are academic in nature, but geared towards an non-academic audience. There are some good seed ideas in the book, but over all I found the general critique to be rather shallow – which makes sense considering the audience. I wouldn’t imagine it to be very complicated and complex critique when not focused on an academic audience. Overall though, it’s a good, easy read with some really interesting, if mal-developed, ideas. The second, is a book by a writer and professor, Tom Bissell called Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. While not an academic writing, Bissell talks through games from a gamer’s perspective–deeming games a term of Self-Surrender. A good read in itself to help you understand the gaming world as a whole, if you aren’t familiar.

Finally, from the books I’ve read (at least in part), I have the one mention that would have to be made - Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark, who teaches at the new school. Wark’s piece I found very difficult to read. He writes in a very much flow of consciousness style of writing, and is writing strikes me as more of a manifesto. His premise is to make that we are all gamers, in one manner or another. I need to re-read the book to get a better understanding, but it’s definitely an interesting concept I’m hoping I increase my understanding of on subsequent read-throughs.

So, that’s my list to start with. Obviously this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list and there’s a lot here I’ve read, but lots more I haven’t read. If you have anything to add, please let me know. I would love to have a really comprehensive list. Anyway, from this posting here, I listed out all the resources here on the bottom with links to Amazon so you don’t have to dig down through to find something. If you have any questions (or additions!), please feel free to hit me up and let me know.

Books

Extra Lives – Tom Bissell

Gamer Theory – McKenzie Wark

Persuasive Games – Ian Bogost

Unit Operations – Ian Bogost

Synthetic Worlds – Edward Castronova

Exodus to the Virtual World – Edward Castronova

Reality is Broken – Jane McGonigal

Convergence Culture – Henry Jenkins

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers – Henry Jenkins

Communities of Play – Celia Pearce

Play Between Worlds – T.L. Taylor

My Life as a Night Elf Priest – Bonnie Nardi

World of Warcraft and Philosophy – Luke Cuddy, ed.

Websites

www.industrygamers.com

Presence and why it is important

Laura Slaiman — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:58:29 +0000

This week’s readings involved articles associating with how we engage online learning with students that we may never meet. In an online world, we are asked to work in groups and engage in discussion with one another but many problems arise. Anywhere from not all posting at the same time (that’s probably why many people have Skype sessions) or that we may post a comment on someone’s response and ignore everyone else’s. An important element that these articles discussed was about context and content. Both being very important factors to someone who on the other side of the country, for example. For myself I can see where collaboration can have its ups and downs with communication, clarifying that this is my first online class. However, to not look at everything as a negative, the timing of the discussion can be a platform for project ideas to formulate or other means of sharing what our lives have encountered. Though as we may all know, our presence online shows that we are engaging in the discussion but does that effectiveness go away, or does it spill over to a bigger discussion. Both context and content are important in any online class. It is easy enough to go a professor and asked what happened in the last class, but online, missing a class or in this case a post is like missing a part of a discussion, was it the collaboration that will confuse the person or the content that was misread, does either one over power the other?

Reflections on (tele)Presence and Networked Collaboration

venessa — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:34:23 +0000

I found this week’s readings to be particularly relevant for me, as I have been engaging in an open collaboration process online to develop an (…wait for it) open collaboration platform. (Junto) We’ve been looking a lot into creating 3D environments with livestreaming video in order for people to be able to engage in dialogue on a global scale, and have patiently been awaiting Cisco to release their multi-billion dollar telepresence system open-source later this month.

As I’ve been embedding myself into a networked environment more and more, the points brought up in the presence article rang very true for me. In fact, I’ve actually had a paradigm shift in how I understand human networks and our connectedness as humanity from a meta-systems perspective, based on my usage and research into the power of the Web. One of the big shifts was a shattering of the illusion of ego.. ok, sounds kind of esoteric, but in becoming hyperconnected and really LIVING in this space, in constant communication with a group of globally distributed humans, I really have lost the sense of self. I am a part of a greater whole, and that has changed my perceptions about personal identitiy, and increased my levels of empathy and compassion. Speaking of empathy, I recommend watching this video based on Jeremy Rifkin’s new book, The Empathic Civilization – it rocks!

In terms of the other readings on collaboration and play, I found that I’ve come to many of those conclusions through our experimentation online and through intuition. Keeping excitement and passion and energy sustained online is a challenge, and there is so much that gets diffused through various individual networks, that it is impossible to track, but keeping it FUN is definitely key. I found the 5 ‘control parameters’ in the Highsmith chapter about keeping teams on the edge of chaos very insightful. Without having identified them in words, we have definitely been practicing those behaviors. The suggestions about role-playing and creating personas/archetypes also very much resonated.

Though what we’re doing isn’t “school,” it is VERY much an online public learning environment – I suppose you could call it a community of practice. I engage with people from all disciplines, from design to knowledge management to business and so on, but the common thread is that we are all trying to learn from each other and grow.

When it comes to transferring these insights to answering the question of how to engage students online… I really think a big part of it has to do with everyone being willing to put themselves out there without fear, and also to remove the silos between the individuals and the rest of the world. I don’t think it is enough for students to only engage with each other (though in many cases this is ideal). I see the Web as being a huge opportunity to express oneself out into the ether, and then see what comes back. There are so many people out there with similar interests and a willingness to share their perspectives and experiences, that choosing not to engage is a wasted potential. I know that there is still a lot of fear with the web as a communication medium, but that can be overcome when an individual takes personal responsibility and accountability for their actions and behaviors online. It is public. If you wouldn’t say/do/show whatever you are doing online in the middle of the town square, just think twice before doing it online, because it will be seen, and unlike “in real life,” the archive lasts forever.

To be present or not…

Marie-France — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:44:11 +0000

After reading Presence, Interaction And Data Space by Mike Leggett, I began to think about what presence meant. I am quite ambivalent when it comes to the definition of presence.

However, I came across a paper on the internet written by Rita and Ijsselsteijn called Being there: The experience of presence in mediated environments. The writers mention Lombard and Ditton for their categorization of presence into three distinct elements:

- Physical Presence: idea of being physically present in a mediated space.

- Social Presence: idea that refers to the sensation of being together with a virtual or remotely located communication partner(page 5).

- Co-presence: In the middle of physical presence and social presence. Sense of people gathering in a communal space with physical and social characteristics.

You will find in this paper, ( http://www.neurovr.org/emerging/book4/4_01RIVA.PDF) on page 6 , a figure illustrating the liaison between these three concepts as well as the corresponding media that fall into the different categories.

I could not agree more with the SVE’s incorporation into the co-presence category. Video – Gamers, playing on common virtual platforms as well as First Person Shooter (FPS) games, are involved in a combative platform in which each avatar plays a significant role. These games are played online with multiple video gamers who prefer to use the voice channel to communicate. They are socially present through their voice chat but they are also physically present through their avatars on their virtual platform.

What is Presence?

AlexSwidler — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:20:43 +0000

What is presence? More than just what you get on your birthday (insert drum roll here) it is your being. It is where you are, and who you are when you get there. The problem with presence comes with the Internet. Is it possible, with the help of a server, to be somewhere, and not be there at the same time? *Fox News* showed us during it’s election coverage this year that it is possible through holograms, but what about for the common folk? Our solution is the avatar. Online chat rooms and private ims have evolved into second life (and other like applications), which makes our presence known not only through our sign in names, but through actual people that we can create and give personality to. The building of an actual, physical telepresence like that of second life turned cyberspace into just space,this turns actions into meanings, and builds the cultural framework that Legget talks about. And it is this that creates a network. A network is not just a server. It is a place where you can share in creation, and transfer information. It is a place where everyone involved has a vested interest in what is happening within it. It consists of those who are committed, voluntarily to a common goal. Virtual teams over a network must be more committed and more organized that those working together in something like an office environment. And, as a leadin to my next point, these things can sometimes be practiced and demonstrated through play.

In the “Play Ethic” we learn that “play is fun that fulfills an evolutionary task.” Play gives us “optimism that helps us triumph over life’s inevitable challenges.” It allows us to try things and experiment in a way that doesn’t really put us in danger. Play helps us practice the things that real life doesn’t give us the opportunity to practice. Real life games give us a glimpse into human nature. A lot of corporate offices have used games to build trust amongst its employees (although maybe not in the current economy where it doesn’t really matter) Even as children (I’m sorry the development psychology is coming through here) imaginary play is crucial to our development, and with the internet, we have just found the modern day alternative to the imaginary friend.

metaplace and one’s virtual presence

Jonathan — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:42:16 +0000

I found the reading this week to be quite challenging, but extremely interesting. I’ve read a bit of theory about one’s virtual presence in the past, but the works assigned for this discussion really cover the topic from all angles. Legget’s piece is very conceptual and I like how it examines the idea of presence in relation to the arts as well as science and technology. I especially liked the discussion and definition of “telepresence”, described as “a psychological state of subjective perception in which even though part of all of an individual’s current experience is generated by and/or filtered through human made technology, part or all of the individual’s perception fails to accurately acknowledge the role of technology in the experience”. I recently created an avatar on metaplace.com and was completely shocked at how well developed the site was, and especially so because it’s a free service to users. Not only that, there were so many users engaged in complex social networks. My first time “in” Metaplace, I hooked up with a user that meets his friend from California each week who he rarely gets to see. They trade off going to each other’s worlds for visits. I was actually invited over with them for this weekly get together, and it was pretty cool how they hung out in the house and chatted. While it’s certainly not like a real-life conversation, I experienced a lot of what Leggett’s discusses in his piece about failing to acknowledge the role of technology in the mediated experience. The Metaplace world becomes the focus of your perception and what goes on in Metplace translates into the experience of a real event. While I am an avid gamer and have played many completely engrossing games like WoW, I was unaware that free programs like Metaplace are available and can offer so much in the way of social networking. Additionally, I think that platforms like this have enormous promise and application for education. They can give online classrooms a central forum for students to attend class, where one’s avatar can sit in a virtual classroom on behalf of the student, allowing the student to engage his or her peers and professors directly. This would allow a weekly “class” can be held in addition to the turn based postings that currently dominate online classes.

Presence, collaboration and play:

mjzmitravich — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:28:52 +0000

Presence, collaboration and play:

I found the readings this week, interesting, especially since I never really knew there was so much thought that went into what it actually meant by describing presence, especially in an online environment. From our readings we become aware that presence simply isn’t the physical appearance in the present time- it continues with the state of consciousness and also promotes “the pursuit of verification, dispute and debate” in an oral culture. The attributes continue and are an additive to “telepresence.”

Telepresence “is broadly understood…as that sense of knowing or feeling another human presence across a physical distance mediated by media…” This idea, in our culture encompasses our everyday use of myspace, twitter and facebook, along with other social networking sites. These sites each have a space and/or profile that represent you- the user, which can then interact with other users. The profile alone gives you a presence that you are there. The interactions- posting, messaging, texting, tagging and poking – continue to strength and reiterate that presence online.

Telepresence through online classes and other virtual learning environments are a bit more complicated, especially since more interaction and participation needs to be present. Engagement within these environments has to continue with the idea presented by Michael Schrage on collaboration being “an act of shared creation or discovery.”

What I have noticed through the past year’s worth of online classes is that the New School respectfully treats the online learning outlets as “classrooms” however it is more of a team setting. Most if not all of the classes I have been a part of are structured like a sports team, where the instructor acts more like a coach in pointing you in the right direction and helping when needed and the classmates or students are part of the team, where we learn from our own performance but collectively build and collaborate together. The core values on page 129: Mutual – trust, respect, participation, and commitment are all values that a coach would sound to his or her players.

Visit Us in Second Life

ReBlog — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:29:23 +0000

Hi all,

Please visit us in the Globalhood office space in the Nonprofit Commons. Click here to teleport, or copy/paste our slurl into your browser:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Nonprofit%20Commons/229/190/26/?title=Globalhood

Thanks for a great semester.

Have a lovely weekend,
-Group 9: Ali, Juan and Theresa

Originally from http://vlegroup9.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/visit-us-in-second-life/

Project Summary – VLE Group 9 (cont.)

ReBlog — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:39:17 +0000

Your project may introduce a change to the way in which the nonprofit engages in outreach. In order for your project to be sustainable, what do you foresee will need to happen within the nonprofit?

The sustainability of our project lies in Globalhood’s commitment to the nonprofit community in Second Life, and commitment to maintaining their space. As part of the tenant agreement, Globalhood committed to maintaining an SL presence for a minimum of two hours per week, and at least two hours per month of volunteer service in the Nonprofit Commons. Having no previous SL experience, the Globalhood staff will need our help in introducing them to the platform. Our team, led by SL veteran Waxalka Zoom, will provide the Globalhood staff with training and continued assistance and instruction in that process.

Future goals:

Frank and the Globalhood kids will return from the Dominican Republic in mid-August. Upon their return, we plan to:

1. Coordinate with the ethnography team to obtain media that the Globalhood kids developed during their DR trip. We hope to display some of their video, photography, blog postings, etc in the Second Life office.

2. Throw a launch party in-world. We will use the Nonprofit Commons How To guide to promote our event, reaching out to TechSoup, Nonprofit Commons, and both Social Marketing and Virtual Learning Environments students.

We are aware that this project is a work in progress and will continue to develop and grow. Waxalka and Aiyana were SL members before the course, and will continue to be available for SL training in the future. Waxalka in particular has taken an active role in facilitating this project. She has made a commitment to the Nonprofit Commons, offering her skills in creating machinima for Globalhood and other nonprofits associated with the NPC. AliQuig’s SL experience was limited to the perimeters of this course, but she will see the project through the launch party.

Note to Jason and Josephine: our group is also willing to collaborate with fall semester (or any future semester) SM and VLE students, should they be interested in taking Globalhood’s SL presence to the next level.

Also, to our classmates with an interest in Second Life – we can always use volunteers! Bonus points if you have building experience or can create machinima. Admin work and simply maintaining an avatar in the office is appreciated as well. Contact rubioj05@newschool.edu or quigleya@newschool.edu if you’re interested.

P.S. Sarah/Billy/Emogene of the ethnography team – we’ll be in touch, once we’ve all had the chance to finish up our summer semester coursework.

Originally from http://vlegroup9.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/project-summary-cont/

Project Summary – VLE Group 9

ReBlog — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:36:27 +0000

VLE group 9 was tasked with locating and obtaining free land in Second Life to build an in-world presence for our nonprofit partner. To do so, we became a part of the thriving nonprofit community in Second Life, which is centralized in an in-world location called Nonprofit Commons. The NPC team provided us with a vacant lot, free of charge, on which to build an “office space” for our nonprofit.

Our first step was to partner with a nonprofit. The initial obstacle we encountered was determining how Second Life could be a feasible and useful platform to further the nonprofit’s objectives. Both NPs focused on children’s issues, and the Hispanic AIDS Forum expressed concern that their children did not have access to SL technologies. Globalhood expressed interest in exploring a SL presence, however, so we decided to partner with them. We decided to gear our SL space towards adults in the SL community, with the goal being two-fold: 1.) raising awareness and 2.) raising money. The NP community in Second Life is eager to expand and grow and support (with time and advice as well as money) new causes which have expressed interest in SL.

The next step of the process was to prepare a proposal for Globalhood that explains what SL can offer. Globalhood had previously not been exposed to Second Life so they will need continued guidance on the ins and outs of the unique platform. But they are eager to partner with us and jump right in.

Next, we formally applied for space in SL with a New Tenant Application. After we were approved, began to formulate a plan for filling the space. We decorated the office space with furniture, media and a donation box.

We are pleased to report that we have already raised $500 for our nonprofit, thanks to a very generous donation from Mercedes Ochs. Waxalka befriended Mercedes through the Nonprofit Commons, and she has been instrumental in helping us secure free furniture for our space. Many thanks, Mercedes!

Originally from http://vlegroup9.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/project-summary/