The Gaming Generation & Libraries: Intersections

defined Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)
– highly graphical 2– or 3–d videogames
– online social interaction
– persistent virtual worlds
– real-time, perpetually accessible
– loosely structured by open-ended (fantasy) narratives, but…
– players free to do as they please
– “Escapist fantasy” yet emergent “social realism” (Kolbert 2001)

people end up spending a lot of time in these games worrying about things like crime, families, etc.

spotlighted Lineage II
showed her character, which is not a Barbie
military strategist; 2–6 weeks to plan a siege!
showed a clip of a siege

audience question: what happens in a game like this when you die?
Constance: it’s not permanent death; I’ll die 12 times, but I’ll lose a little “experience” (which is like losing work and time)
highest level character is 72

audience question: is there an overlap to playing multiple games?
Constance: they’re time-intensive, so overall, not more than one or two at a time

showed Everquest money for sale on ebay 
77th largest economy in the real world w/GNP between Russia and Bulgaria; platinum piece trades higher than both Yen & Lira

intellectually rich environments
– collaborative groups that look like “cross-functional teams” by Glenn M. Parker; starts to look like fast capitalism
– constellation of literacy practices (“the literacy scare” out in the media) – have to define reading in the first place! showed a “constellation of literacy practices” just from Lineage (just dealing with print, reading and writing)

in-game talk
example: afk g2g too ef ot regen no poms; necessary when you’re dealing with 58 players
if you do the functional linguistic analysis that acknowledges the intact activity structure, coordinates the other participants who remain, and displays community standing as “beta vet”

— missed a bit while we looked for Michael’s suddenly missing Airport Express!!!! — anybody seen it?!

talked about massive sites that fans maintain (similar to Wikipedia)
Constance is looking at scientific inquiry in fan forums
personal gameblogs are very popular, documenting all of the escapades you go on
fan fiction
– showed a couple of great examples from kids (middle schoolers); the writing is part and parcel of game play

MMOGaming isn’t replacing literacy activities. It is a literacy activity.
if you compare the writing to NCTE standards, it’s not bad; same for technology standards
these literacy practicies exceed national reading, writing, & technology standards! (10th graders)

so what’s up the media scare?
– fear of technology
– fear of youth culture (while they claim kids aren’t reading and writing, they’re really more concerned with WHAT they’re reading and writing)

systems of reciprocal apprenticeship
– orientation to goal
– practice —> feedback
– focuses learner’s attention
– practice —> feedback

mentor actually teaches, without waiting for the apprentice to get an 85% or better on the quiz
master elf’s actions tied to a particular set of values, a particular view of the world
peers are enculturating each other into the world!

so what’s of value?
what is she overtly or tacitly trying to teach me?
you can see the signals in the transcript
– procedural dexterity
– mentorship
– (virtual) material is mithrill and it’s good
– membership
– equal distribution of opportunity * (not equal distribution of outcomes, but opportunities)

ethos of meritocracy
– used example of MadamSin transcript; she owned 4 of 6 castles in Lineage I, and two years later, she’s still well-known, part of the lore (in real life, she was an illegal immigrant welder, and yet she is a powerful leader online)
made the comparison of high schools – what if kids had had these virtual places to be something other than themselves?
– participatory culture
– awareness of different ‘games’
– primacy of the subjective (being the hero of your own story; McLuhan: searching not for goals but for roles, a striving for an identity that eludes”

videogames are a push technology
as gaming enters the home, computers go along with that
not just hardware, but norms as well; participatory culture

why should libraries care about videogames?
– intellectually rich environments
– collaborative
– sites for literacy practices (compare to libraries – how similar, how different?)
– enculturation into practices & perspectives (cultural shift towards participatory consumption and then sharing it with their social network)

modding

“social mod” – put aside their fighting to “farm the farmers” to get rid of the people making money off them; the company that made the game had NO idea this was going on!

showed a mod (built for fun) downloaded more than 1400 times
average download for academic papers is 1.8
– user identified a problem, built the mod, had conversations with other mods, and now he no longer plays – gaming becomes modding)

www.warcraftmovies.com
– they’ve started recording movies of gameplay of World of Warcraft
– “beer for my horses” movie – 164,000 downloads of just this one movie (923 a day!)

— found the missing Airport YAY! wireless network is back up! —

idea of third place
– video games are third place for today’s youth
– they build social networks here
– they bridge networks here

audience question: is there the possibility for mutiny in Lineage?
Constance: ohhhhhh, yes

next Games, Learning, & Society conference will be June 15–16, 2006

Technorati tags: GaminingLibraries2005