State of the Blog, September 2008

It’s time for some navel gazing as we take a look at who is taking a look here. I could tell school was back in session when the numbers started spiking in September. Judy Wilson and librarian Katy French over at Palomar College in San Marcos, California added an old post of mine to a list of web sites for students to examine in a course on website evaluation. Learning Family Values While Killing Monsters was written back in November last year, and discussed an article by Robin Torres over at WowInsider.com. I suspect it was included over at Palomar College not just for my excellent writing (haha), but also for the fact I referenced the source material. The instructor indicates sourcing of materials lends credibility to a post.

Those opinion-meisters at Reddit posted a link to my post from late July regarding the new ESA survey indicating females comprise 40% of the gaming audience. Discussion so far has centered around whether females truly comprise 40% of the audience for advanced MMORPGs and not just casual games. Read the profanity-laced conversation here.

Lee Wilson and Nicola Whitton, both of whose opinions I respect, linked to my post on Seven Questions to Ask Before Using a Video Game In the Classroom. Both disagreed with Question 7: Are the graphics and gaming quality on par with contemporary entertainment titles? Both seemed to suggest the graphics in casual titles may not compare with the newest $60 games for home consoles, but were adequate in relaying pedagogical content. I suppose I should have elaborated and indicated I was concerned with really basic graphics that are even below casual game standards. Probably I was thinking of the research outcomes from the old AQUAMoose project at Georgia Tech, where programming a game from scratch (not the programming language Scratch, but literally from scratch) led to some disappointing feedback from the target audience.

To sum up, I’m still here and posting, and thanks for the feedback. The old goal of one post each weekday has been suffering of late, but I should manage to get something of interest up on a regular basis. As always, shoot me an e-mail if you’d like to call my attention to something.

Georgia Tech Presents: Living Worlds IV – Interplay

Living Game Worlds IV: Interplay - NEW DATES - December 1-2, 2008

Living Game Worlds IV will focus on the theme of networked play and
engage dialogues on the rapidly growing domain of multiplayer games and
virtual worlds, including online networked entertainment as well as
pervasive, mobile and tangible gaming. The symposium will explore
various aspects of networked play from historical, cultural,
technological and design perspectives, as well as current and future
trends such as user-created content and the rising use of virtual worlds
in the workplace.

Keynotes: Raph Koster, Christopher Klaus, plus a "Pioneers" panel
featuring some of the people who made it all possible, including:
Richard Bartle, Brian Green, Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer, and
Pavel Curtis.

Confirmed sponsors:
Turner Broadcasting
Georgia Film, Video and Music Office

About Living Game Worlds:
Living Game Worlds is an annual symposium presented by the Experimental
Game Lab, the School of Literature, Communication and Culture and the
GVU Center of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Each year, Living
Game Worlds brings together luminaries from academia, industry and the
arts to explore topics related to research, design and cultural
practices of digital games.

For details and registration, visit http://gameworlds.gatech.edu
For sponsorship info, contact celia.pearce at symbol lcc.gatech.edu

World of Warcraft and Baby Grace

In recent weeks, Texans have been riveted by the Baby Grace saga, which started when a plastic storage box washed ashore in Galveston Bay with the body of a two year old girl inside. In due course after national exposure, the parents of Riley Ann Sawyers were located, and a tale of alleged death by abuse has unfolded. When news broke the parents met on World of Warcraft, my wife asked when WoW would be blamed in the little girl’s death.

Eyder Peralta, writing in the Houston Chronicle on Thursday, offered a sober and balanced look at the question of blame for WoW on the death of children (a couple other cases have occurred in Korea). Peralta spoke with Dr. Celia Pearce, director of Georgia Tech’s Experimental Games Lab, who said, “We have to be cautious and not think everyone online is crazy.” Dr. Pearce also pointed out that with membership approaching 10 million players, two or three negative occurrences show little in the way of supporting a relationship between playing WoW and the death of children. Dan O’Halloran, over at WoWinsider.com, and Frank Pearce (no relation to Dr. Pearce), senior VP of product development at WoW parent Blizzard, also receive prominent mention.

Dr. Pearce is allowed to wrap up the article, maintaining that relationships beginning online are substantially the same as relationships beginning in a bar or some other RL place. After all, people are people, wherever they first meet.

It is unfortunate that every murder case where somebody played a videogame, be it the victim or the suspect, will be trumpeted in the press. This continues to make acceptance of instructional videogames that much more difficult in school settings. Peralta does a good job this time, however, in bringing in the experts and getting a much clearer perspective.

References:
Peralta, E. (2007, November 29). Did meeting online have tie to baby’s death? Houston Chronicle, p.E7. [Online]. Retrieved December 2, 2007 from http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/main/5336859.html

Programming a New AquaMOOSE? Virtual Real Worlds Using MellaniuM & Unreal 2

The famous AquaMOOSE study came out of Georgia Tech a few years back, led by Amy Bruckman. High school students were exposed to a game developed by the team focusing on three-dimensional mathematics (think of Logo, only in 3-D). However, the students had high expectations going into the study, and were disappointed with the graphical sophistication of the home-brewed software. Since then, and maybe because of Team Bruckman’s findings, educational gaming research seems to have shifted more to examining pedagogical potentials within existing products.

On many levels, this makes sense. When one considers the multi-person staffs, high dollar budgets, and extended timelines for creating top notch videogames, replicating that level of sophistication becomes problematic on the typical budgetary levels professors are used to winning in grants. Big grants offer a nice exception to this rule. Even then, the funds may run out, as we saw earlier this year when Castronova over at Indiana was forced to pull the plug on Arden, his ambitious Shakespearean-themed VW.

So existing game engines are hot, especially for serious game development. Appropriate the engines already developed and focus on the pedagogy … this seems to be a guiding principle. Fortunately, folks are out there working to help us utilize some of the state of the art platforms for business and educational purposes.

I spoke via e-mail recently with Joe Rigby, over at MellaniuM, who offers a look into his company’s product that allows highly detailed representations of real world objects created in AutoCAD to be exported into the Unreal 2 engine. Elaine Alhadeff has written an excellent entry in which she explores the product and interviews Rigby. The video Rigby has shows things like a World War II Spitfire, half in shadow, half in light; a motorcycle with multi-spoke wheels (each spoke standing out in detail); and a horse-drawn carriage that looks incredibly detailed.

The product highlights the notion of “virtual real worlds,” where users can explore realistic representations of locations that exist now, in the past, or in imagination. Training or exploration within such environments may be advantageous to police teams learning to deal with emergency situations; military groups learning urban warfare; and college students interested in exploring architecture, archaeology, or historical contexts.

Details within virtual real worlds can be extremely important, and products such as MillaniuM’s offer tantalizing possibilities to programmers.

References:
Elliott, J., Adams, L., & Bruckman, A. (2002). No magic bullet: 3D video games in education. Proceedings of ICLS 2002. Seattle, Washington, October 2002. [Online]. Available: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/aquamoose-icls02.pdf