Get a "Nicktropolis" Life

What is being touted as a kind of "Second Life for kids", Nickelodeon's "Nicktropolis" is a place where:

Children will be able to create their own personalized 3D rooms on the site, which launches on Tuesday, and move through Nicktropolis by taking on a self-designed 3D avatar similar to those on popular virtual world Second Life, choosing from an array of hairstyles, skin tones and clothing styles.

The site will feature gaming, online video, popular Nickelodeon brands and other elements to help children interact with each other or Nickelodeon characters in
real time.

You can read more about the marketing ploy masked as social software for kids here and here.

8-bit Screening

Another interesting upcoming event well worth the time and $8 (for IGDA members, $10 for non-members) cover, is the screening of the documentary 8Bit at the "Society for Arts and Technology on February 17th. The evening also includes dj's and cocktails For more detailed information check out the SAT's website.

Excerpted from the advert 8Bit is:

A visually and sonically dynamic mix of rockumentary, art expose, and critical exploration, 8 Bit is the definitive documentary about video games and their intersection with the art world and culture at large.

By weaving together arcane histories of digital subterfuge, candid interviews with cutting-edge artists and theorists, wild videogame concerts, and highlights from the best digital artwork being made today, 8 BIT: A Documentary about Art and Videogames exposes the cultural ramifications of video games and proposes that Generation X’s coming to grips with its digital heritage signals the beginning of a new social and artistic reality.

Winter Wonderland

On my walk home from the University yesterday, I walked past this ice building in front of a local eatery, restaurant garcon. As temperatures dip well below zero (minus 19 celcius this morning - "feels like" minue 27 with the wind chill factor) I know that winter is here full on.

Seeing this ice entrance to the restaurant reminded me how much I love my four seasons, and would never trade the cold months of winter for a never ending summer.

(sorry, its not very clear, its a phonecam pic)

Video Game Orchestra

An interesting article here about Edmonton's Orchestra playing to a full house - video game classics no less.

Relax, Its in the Stars

It has been many years since I have taken a horoscope seriously or have been moved by one, but this week's, found in the local weekly free newspaper the Mirror, I read this:

To Create a pearl, an oyster needs an aggravating parasite inside its shell. It builds layers of calcium carbonate around the invader, gradually fabricating the treasure. How long does it take from the initial provocation to the finished product? Five years for a pearl of average size, and as many as 10 years for a big one. I hope that puts into perspective the tenacious work you're doing on your own master project, Libra. It may seem sometimes as if you've been striving to transform your irritant for an eternity, but you're actually right on schedule.

For anyone who knows me, I am at the end of writing my Master's thesis - and this horoscope seems quite eerily apropos.

MySpace & Parental Responsibility

Over the last year or so, I have been hearing stories of parents sueing MySpace for not protecting their children adequately from predators, the latest one coming from four families from different parts of the United States. When I read articles like this one, I have a tendency to get quite irate. Like so many other issues in our 'civilized' world, when bad things happen, we need someone to blame.

Interestingly, Law & Order did a show on a crime that occured that was linked to a "BFriendz" social networking site. I was impressed with how they doled out responsibility on the show - citing that the company did have to be more legally responsible; especially when complaints are filed, but when the parents were crying that they couldnt have done anything, good 'ole McCoy stated that indeed, they could have, seeing as their daughter's internet activity happened in their home, on their computer. That as parents, they have a responsibility to know what their children are doing on the very public World Wide Web. Again, to be fair to the differences of the actual cases and the television show, the daughter in the show was not the victim.

I don't want to be someone who said that the victims involved in the crimes detailed in this article were asking for what happened to them, no one deserves to be harmed. But what I don't understand, is why the onus lies on the company and not the parents for these bad things. I don't want to be mean-spirited towards those involved but as a mother two web using daughters, I understand that it is my responsibility to make sure that I know what my children are up to when on the internet. For partly this reason, our 'family' computer is in our living room, in plain view of our everyday activities.

There is no parental control on the internet - believing (sadly perhaps) in a panoptic type of surveillance. My children know that I may not ask what they are doing on every click, but I reserve the right to read over their shoulder at my discretion. Sure, they don't like it - but they understand that its better than the alternative. It allows them to make decisions on their own, and we talk regularly about what is acceptable behavior online and what is not. I check their favorites, and google my children's name from time to time as well - they know this and usually behave accordingly.

To be fair, it has not always been a perfect rose colored journey, I have caught my daughter pretending to be a year or two older than she actually is. And in those cases, we have talked about the consequences of doing so. As well as the golden rule of not sharing our personal information such as last names, addresses, the city we live in or the school they go to. I have been told, by friends, that it is different because I study social issues in technology, am technologically advanced, am open minded, have a close relationship with my children. Shouldn't this be the norm and not the exception??

The question that I have is, if this were to happen in a coffee shop - where a teenage girl met a man who she befriended (because you cannot be 'friends' or meet people on MySpace without having some communication with them - especially if the user is underage). If they were to meet in a coffee shop - a public, social place where networking happens, and something bad happened to the girl as a result would the owner of the coffee shop be liable? As an extreme example, they have already dismissed gun manufacturors as responsible if one of their guns were used in a crime - is this any different?

Do the parents feel that they had any part in what happened? Did the predators hack their computers and find out where they lived? I don't know - to me, there are just so many other questions and places to point the finger - maybe we just have to point more than one finger ... I don't know, but when I read things like this, it makes me sad.

/rant off

Thesis Writing

The time has come for me to buckle down and put all my words from mouth to paper. A project that I have been working on for what feels like forever, my Master's thesis has become the largest and most complex jigsaw puzzle I have ever had to put together.

For years, all of my work was designed to speak to this moment, but what is the most difficult is that although the topics were related, I realize that it was impossible to know exactly what form my thesis would take until I started writing it. So the 40 page literature review that I did a while back is only good now for the experience of writing a lengthy review of a body of literature. All the books that I have read, the articles that I perused, require new introspection to fit the final structure of ideas that came about only because I had written all those papers around the same topic.

On that note, I am on page 50 of 100-ish, so much more writing and editing to do - must...not...get...distracted.../google!

Upcoming GameCODE Event

Although due to tight deadlines and struggling thesis writing, I will not be able to attend, there is an upcoming gameCODE event that looks like alot of fun. Details below:

A Montreal Game Studies Symposium: Guitar Hero: Playing at Playing Guitar

Friday, January 26th 1-5pm

Hall Building rm 1120

Concordia University

1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.

Montreal

A video game does not have not have to tap a prevailing moral panic to engage scholarly critique. Our case in point this year is Guitar Hero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero). This immensely popular game combines familiar features of digital game play, music play and fan culture to produce an intriguing new media form that challenges game studies, music studies and digital culture studies scholars to think again about issues of gameplay, interface and embodied play, performance and spectacle, player culture and game audiences, game design and markets, musicality and authenticity, sound simulation, play and the magic circle, cognition and skill, and nostalgia and cultural fantasy.

In our continued effort to develop Montreal game studies around interdisciplinary engagements with shared objects of inquiry. We announce that the Montreal Game Studies Symposium for 2007 will focus on the Guitar Hero franchise. The symposium will be held on Friday January 26th from 1-5 pm. The event will feature head-to-head competition on Guitar Hero 2 and a series of short talks and discussion from invited scholars in the Montreal area.

Everyone is invited to attend the event and no prior experience with the game is necessary. If you do play GH or GH2 and would like to participate in the symposium competition then please contact Bernard Perron (perronb@total.net) who will sign you up.Any other questions can be directed to the organizers, Bart Simon (simonb@alcor.concordia.ca) and/or Bernard Perron (perronb@total.net).

Perception of Avatars

Alot of my research centers around the construction and maintenance of avatars in video games. There has been alot written about the desire for female gamers to have avatar options in single player games that represent them in game play. Although Lara Croft offered them a female avatar to navigate, there has been rumblings about her over the top design, being more for the male players than for the female players.

But this isnt really my point. Again, on the dance dance revolution note - the other night (of which the last 2 posts are based on) there was a bit of an avatar disagreement between myself and my oldest daughter. When we were selecting the avatars to be displayed on the screen, I had asked her to set it to female avatar rotation only. For myself, this was a gendered decision - I am a female and therefore saw the avatar on the screen as some sort of representation of myself within the gamespace (no matter how animated). My daughter - in stark contrast, fought for the male avatar rotation only (cause they are cute to look at). For her, the avatar on the screen was a spectacle, for me a representation of self. Humourously, when I made my request for an all female case, my daughter inquired if i was "switching"! (sexually speaking of course).

Which made me come back to the idea that (*warning: broad, sweeping generalization to follow) men prefered avatars they could watch. We see this alot in mmo's where guys choose female avatars that are hot and many have claimed to me that 'if i am going to play 30 hours+ a week, i want a hot booty to look at'. Often, women choose avatars that represent themselves (whether consciously of subconsciously) or they choose a male avatar to avoid the sexualized social interaction that often happens when playing a female avatar.

So, with my daughter's reaction to my desire to have an all female DDR cast, I wonder, does the desire to represent ourselves online and in game spaces a generational thing?

Just Briefly...

After writing my little post on DDR, I was wondering about the notion of cheating in games like DDR, eyetoy games and the like. The study of cheating in games has a solid place in Game Studies, and for the most part, I have agreed with both sides of the debate (although surely there are many other sides than two) - that cheating affects the integrity of the game, and of the play itself. In social games such as mmo's, cheating damages the 'social imagination' of other players and creates and imbalance of play opportunities. The other side of that argument is that it is just a game, and therefore cheating (if remotely possible, is indeed "allowed" through its design) is not bad but just another way to play.

So, do the social games mentioned above fit into this argument on cheating? Is it only when the play is competitive that it matters? Or collective? .... Why do we care about cheating in games (besides the research angle)? If a group playing a particular game all agree to bend or alter the rules for the sake of entertainment, is it still "cheating"? And is there any difference between digital/video games and traditional social games (board games, cards etc.)?

Dance Dance Revolution

A gift we bought for my youngest daughter, has become one of the social focal points in my home (and those I've travelled to who own a ps2) since Christmas morning. As much as I have enjoyed playing mmorpg's on my pc, there is something completely different in the gameplay with physically interactive games like the eye-toy, ddr and guitar hero. They remind me much more of the 'jeux de societé' (or duly called board games in english) we used to play as a family. Although you can play alone (yes, sadly, I have been known to play scrabble alone pre-pc days!), the fun comes from playing in a group. The game is designed for single player, or competition mode (with 2 mats), but cooperative play is possible if you ignore the design of 'game mode'.

Along with the game mode, there is a stellar master mode, this allows you to unlock different avatars (for spectators to watch, since the player has little time to look at anything but the scrolling arrows), and new songs to dance to. Each 'level' is designed as a planet, and the points are based on cumulative dance sessions in packets of three.

After a few weeks of playing on beginner mode, tonight we decided to play on "basic" (the second of 4 levels - beginner, basic, difficult & expert), figuring we were getting the hang of the movement and the pace of the game. After a few miserable failures, and one physical break down, where a friend, after struggling with the speeding arrows passing her by, chose to simply lay down on the dance mat and roll around the arrows hoping one or two would hit.

So many ways to "play" this game outside of the proposed design. My daughter and said friend played 4 feet 1 dance mat, each person choosing 2 arrows that they would control - sadly, even in all of the chaos, their score was higher than mine was ...

Although many of the questions I am thinking are elementary in terms of game studies, I am curious as to how these games (ddr, guitar hero, wii et. al) fit into the 'social' study of games. In terms of studying player interaction in physical spaces via the technology they are playing in and with, do these games pose questions different than socially dependent games like mmo's?

For now, I will try not to think too much and concentrate on the flurry of arrows that will surely pass by in my dreams.

Where it's at

Yet another reason to have done my PhD in Copenhagen, we need more courses like this around here!

Welcome, Another Year

Finally back from being on holiday, a nice visit with my family always rejuvenates me. But now it is time to start another year, make a new to-do list for the next 4 months and work towards crossing things off. Finish my thesis, finish phd applications, and blog more are the top three things that are crying for a big black line to be blasted right through them.

Resolutions, as cliché as they may be, are as follows: return to the gym from a 2 year hiatus, eat better (which is directly linked to the first one) spend more time with my family, as my daughter's turn 11 and 15 this year, I am realizing that they will not be home for a whole lot longer. And finally, to dedicate myself to my work (less procrastination). At least I dont have to give up smoking!

Here's to a new year!