The Day Has Come
After a semester and a half of working towards getting myself to DiGRA, I am here. We have a beautiful harbourside room on the 8th floor in Vancouver. Getting ready to head out to a pre-conference house party being thrown by a gracious member of the conference organizational team.

While checking into the hotel this afternoon, I think I saw TL Taylor walking into the sports lounge.. then it dawned on me .. how will i recognize people? For months, I have been reading posts on terra nova, threads of conversation on the gamesnetwork mailing list and cheking various academic game related blogs … i know alot of people by their words and ideas, but none by their face! Good thing tomorrow is registration and we all get name tags hehe… now if only i can keep my composure and not act like a 12 year old at a rock concert – everything should be just fine.

OMG I’M DONE!
For those of you who know me, I am sure this will be a (social) relief to hear! I am all but done my DiGRA paper. Now for the minor tweaking of sentences that hurt the eyes and misplaced words that hurt the ears. But I am done, and relatively satisfied with what has been written, although I strayed quite a bit from my original (accepted) abstract – the core ideas are still the same.

IBM MMOG Web Conference

I just spent the last few hours listening to the IBM Online Web Conference about the current state and future of MMOG’s. It was industry oriented, but therewere some interesting comments on community and the technical capabilities and limitations of mmog’s.

The conference will be offered at a later date as avideo on demand feature. And there is a blog as well for anyone interested in following the discussion.

Can’t Keep This a Secret
Anything that makes me laugh this much cannot be kept a secret. For anyone who has played video games to any serious degree .. click … read… and laugh your ass off =)

More Tunes
Recent favorites for your listening pleasure:

• Bloc Party (Rockin’ Album if you like the 80’s new wave sound …)
• The Wedding Present – Interstate 5 … (could listen to this one more then once)
• The Dears … if you miss The Smiths, have a listen here
• Flunk – Summer Balcony (for that mellow sunny day)

But Why Games?
I am (still) working on the paper for the upcoming DiGRA conference, and for the first time (in about 3 months of writing on and off) i let someone else read it. The feedback was not as scarry as I had imagined (isnt that always the case?) But one question that keeps coming back to haunt me thanks to my professor – why games? what is it about games – mmog’s in particular – that makes this worth talking about.

I am writting on functional roles designed into the game, the expectations that surround that role and the actualized, played role. This process is nothing new outside of the world of games. Social theory that deals with the social stucture of functioning systems (bureaucracies and society itself!) talks about individualization of roles, how this is allowed within a fixed (or necessary) functional structure.. so my question is – what is it about mmog’s (and EverQuest in particular) that makes games more then just an example of sociological role theory?

This is the question i am faced with heading into this conference. Although i am quite happy with the direction my paper is heading – is there more to it then example?

The desk of a game researcher =)

Triadic Thinking
While working on my DiGRA paper, I realized that everything I write is always compartmentalized into three sections. Every theory, every example.. and i wonder .. why 3?
The structure of my papers are always the same: Intro, three key concepts/ideas and conclusion. Even my Honours thesis was triadic in a way of sorts.. with three key themes, each with three key concepts (fixed, negotiated and fluid identity, each divided into three parts; construction, commitment and perception)… point is, why 3’s?

Making a Comeback
I have mentioned before that the game of EverQuest has changed enough to make anyone who takes a lengthy vacation feel like a first time player. Over the last few weeks, I have transfered my character to a new server to play with some old friends. Even though we are only 5 levels apart, the differences are drastic. The guys who always took care of me back in the day have once again taken up the role of caretaker. After looking at my gear, and a few chuckles later – the adventure (re)begins. I have committed to logging in every day for at least 3 hours. Today, those three hours were filled with asking stupid questions and getting lost.

Nonetheless, I am excited to be back. I got a few OMG YOUR BACK tells today, and thats what makes my moments of public stupidity worth it.

Simmel, Sociability & Fun in Games
I am re-reading an article by Georg Simmel called The Sociology of Sociability. Quite an interesting piece that deals with the question of fun, play, and the sociability that surrounds it. The jist of what I get out of the article is that in order for true sociability to exist in the context of fun, it cannot be content or purpose-laden. As Simmel states “sociability, in its purest form has no ulterior end, no content and no result outside itself, it is oriented and completely about personalities“, I am led to ask myself how does Simmel’s concept of sociability fit into the (often structured) form of play. Simmel goes on to say that once content and purpose is introduced, pure sociability is lost. Play then loses its ‘fun’ and becomes an “association determined by content“. Is that how we are to see goal oriented games? As nothing but a replica of the ‘tit for tat’ social interaction of ‘real life’?

When I play table top “social” games with friends, although there is a purpose or goal surrounding the act of play, most of us will agree that the game is an excuse to be social, this kind of reverses Simmel’s sociability, in that the social is instigated by the goal, but through the act of play, the goal gets lost and the purpose becomes the social.