The Semester Ahead

Looking forward to this semester. Although slightly intimidating for me to be working on my Master’s degree, I am excited to be in a program that looks challenging and mind expanding (finally!). This semester, I will be taking a methods course – which I was dreading in the beginning, but it actually looks like a good course that will help me focus on the details of my thesis.

I am also taking a theory course – Classical Social Theory – dont know what that will look like yet as my first class is tomorrow night. And finally, a course called Sociology of Culture. The readings look challenging – 5 books:
Marxism & Literature
Revolutions du Capitalisme: Paris
Simmel On Culture
Undoing Gender
World Beyond Difference

Ill try to post my thoughts as I work through the readings. Other then course work, im looking forward to another semester of working for gameCODE, social events and more Everquest play/research ..

Back to School
Well, its back to school for me. Pardon for the long interval between postings, but after the submission to the DAC conference, I have been busy ‘lfg’ and ‘grinding’ in EverQuest to make level 70 – Which I am proud to say, I did a few weeks ago now. In honour of the occasion, i splurged and bought some armor dye for Velix’s older, more retro gear so they werent as distinguishable when looking for a group. (People can be so judgemental when it comes to gear!)

I have also been schmoozing the server community – i transferred servers in may 2005. It has been a very successful schmoozefest resulting in invites to several guilds =)
But my heart still rests on Rodcet Nife and my old guild TCA, so for now, i am enjoying the attention, logging and dissecting play sessions and searching for the nuggets and gems that make or break my research.

As I enter my first semester of my Master’s degree, i can only cross my fingers that I can keep up with my course work and keep up with the required play time in EQ necessary to maintain social networks. If ever there was a space to study perceptions of time and flow, i think an mmog would be the place… miss a week and you can be quite out of the loop!

Anyways, all this to say YEAH! i dinged lvl 70! and now its back to school!

Second Chance
I had all but given up on the DAC submission, but happily, I was not the only one affected (and perhaps disappointed) about the time zone issue. Crossing my fingers and hoping this is a sign =)

Today on the DAC site:

09.08.2005 The submission site closed down midnight Danish time on August 8th, this made it impossible for people trying to submit before deadline at US time to upload their papers. We accept these papers of course, so if you had any problems with submission in this regard, please contact us and you will receive instructions so your paper can be submitted.

Grrrr Time Zones
Just spent my day writting, cutting, pasting and editing in the hot hot sun. The deadline for the DAC conference was today – August 8th. Its only 8pm here, and I was quite proud to get my paper written before midnight. I excitedly log into the DAC website to submit my paper, and the link is gone with a note “Submissions are no longer being accepted”. I looked down at my clock on my laptop … 7:59 … hmm… thats … 12:59… am … august 9th in denmark! Guess I will keep this paper under my belt for a while longer and see if something interesting pops up.

Still on Vacation
Heading into August and I am still seaside on vacation. I must admit that this point into my 5 week holiday, I get a bit homesick.
I am working on a paper for submission for the DAC conference, but it is hard to concentrate in a house of 9 people – no matter how big the house is.
This paper will (hopefully) explore how visual elements implemented into MMO’s to simplify navigation and gameplay affect the social elements of the game. Lets see if it materializes into something worth reading…

Virtually Real Memories
Today we were driving along the highway when I saw some beautifully picturesque landscape. As i looked out my window, I got a sense of familiarity – like I had seen it before. Then it dawned on me… this hilly landscape with the old wooden fence around a few old houses reminded me of the human villages in WoW just a ways along the path from the Undercity. When I realized this, I was in a little bit of awe that my memories of both virtual and tangible worlds have become so interchangeable. I know this has been written about before over at terra nova (i may have even posted about it here before), but i guess it just struck me a bit awe-inspiring and weird at the same time.

Summer Vacation
I make my annual migration eastward this coming Sunday. I am looking forward to spending a few weeks on the beach with my family. Sun, sand, beers and barbecues indeed =)

Although I look forward to this time of year, I always get nervous about cutting myself off from technology for 5 weeks. I spend two weeks with no internet, no television or telephone. Just me, my family and my laptop. (the other 3 weeks is spent with a dial up connection at least)

The thought of uninterupted days of quiet and relaxation (and writting) is both exciting and scarry to someone who lives in a very wired house that usually runs 3 computers, internet radio and television all at the same time in the same room (its a big room heh)

Being a family that games together online (EverQuest, DaoC, Sims and currently full family fun in World of Warcraft) I’ve been preparing for some alternative family fun. I bought Carcassonne for “family game night” at the cottage, along with Risk: Godstorm and for some good old fashioned solo play – Rush Hour.

Summer vacation is also our family’s big reading burst. I’m reading Collapse and Lessig’s Free Culture for a book review over at Ukula, my oldest daughter is reading TTYL (appropriate literature for a connected girl of 13 heh) along with the Madison Finn series and my youngest daughter is reading the Witches series. While my spouse – who will undoubtedly go through the largest vid game withdrawal of all of us – will finally get around to reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver… a good summer’s worth of reading ahead indeed.

And if I happen to find myself bored or lamenting the busy days of the academic year, I’ve made it my goal to further develop the two papers presented at Digra for publication before the fall semester begins – what better place to be inspired to write then sitting on a private beach, pen and paper in hand?

WoW vs EQ
Much to my kicking and screaming, I have decided to use up my boyfriend’s 10 day trial WoW disk…
I have been adamant about not playing the game. Anything with that much hype has always turned me off, and I have always been quite happy with my EQ play-time and friends. Although I have played DAOC and LineageII, nothing ever replaced EQ in terms of the experiences and the ‘non-gameness’ of it (the experiences and relationships being comparable to rl).

So, I’ve started playing WoW, and realize that there shouldnt even be a comparison made. I enjoy WoW for completely seperate reasons than I enjoy EQ. WoW has nothing to do with interaction, community and relationships, (at least in the early lvls – i am lvl 16 now). WoW has everything to do with exploration, quests and hunting… all without the social obligation I feel in EQ. To be fair, I am lvl 67 in EQ and cannot really (at least for decent exp) solo, whereas in WoW i can log in for 20 minutes, kill a few things, finish one quest and log off again. Reminds me of my early days in EQ where i would log into Oasis and solo for 20 minutes before work every morning. Chat with a few people briefly and head out without the feeling of obligation to the game or anyone else.

And so I am reminded that EQ has taken alot of myself to become the game, the space – that it is to me, but sometimes,, I just want to play a game.

Hybrid Games
From console to pc, eye-toy to mobile games, innovation and creativity in the field of video games is a constant goal for designers. Among the many interesting works seen at DiGRA (mentioned in previous post) one of the most interesting and imo, innovative is the game Scoot

SCOOT is a mixed reality experience designed to explore the potentials of a relatively new(ish) form of game design, location-based games (LBGs), that employ the web and mobile devices as tools of play. SCOOT is set in both the physical world and a virtual facsimile of the site situated online. Players are challenged to find and solve clues in BOTH worlds in order to reveal the dynamics of the site and progress in the game. SCOOT also exploits known tropes from treasure hunt and puzzle games in the real world, supported by online navigation and communication.

DiGRA
Its tuesday, and I am home and exhausted. Happy to be in my own bed, but sad that i dont have a maid coming in every day to make sure my room is all clean =)

For my first international conference, I must say that DiGRA was an incredible success. My presentations (2) went over without a hitch – i even decided to ‘wing it’ for my formal mentoring session. It went way better then I ever could have imagined I must say. There was alot of genuine interest in both the socio-semiotic paper Maude and I presented, as well as my paper on role theory. I was astonished to have some (imo) senior academics in the field actually approach us to talk about the future of our work. I met so many people that I have read and cited quite often – it was fabulous.

And as for the social networking, I met some great people and had a great time all in all. Some were purely social, others purely work related, but both were great.

Oh

And there were some pretty decent papers presented as well as some great alternative games (one that was controlled with a full face gas mask and movement on the screen was activated by heat from one’s breath..and another that was voice controlled – but needed 4 voices, each voice controlling a seperate direction, requiring the four participants to work cooperatively to work the disk through the twists and turns)

All in all, the conference was an opportunity, and worth the sleep deprivation that accompanied it.