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.

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.