The future of my research: Gaming with Mii, myself and I

Last year, I had a conversation with Mike about the role of the avatar, identity and ownership in mmog's. One suggestion that he had at the time, or question - was why we could not have an avatar that could be playable across games (and I think at that time we were talking platforms as well).

With the introduction of Nintendo's Wii, the option to create Mii, the player is able to "create a 3-D avatar of yourself and insert it into video games". Although the representation does not have to be of yourself, the idea is pretty cool (let's hope they expand their title repertoire to make it appealing). I am sure there are a thousand critiques to the idea or perhaps simply of the execution, but for now, I will hold my breath and see how the community embraces (or rejects) it.

For a while, I had been getting discouraged with my research direction. Not that I had lost any interest, but that the field itself was removing the elements that made my work possible. But over the last few weeks, I have been thinking about my PhD, and with innovations such as this (whether it catches on or fizzles out is irrelevant at this point) there is room to move forward with my research (big sigh 'o relief).