My quick apologies if the site wasn’t working for you around 10:00am today, or if you experience problems on the 1st. My hosting provider is moving their servers.
As well, I was noticing some wierd display errors while using Firefox. I think that I’ve fixed the problem, let me know if you’re getting a crazy-looking page.
Neils Clark :: Oct.30.2007 :: Games :: No Comments »
Damn. I’ve got a short list of things I’d like to do before I die, and ‘work for bioware’ was one of those things. And it actually didn’t start out as Bioware, I wanted to work for Interplay - until they were shut down by the state of California after not paying their employees. Both of these companies wove together truly creative, artful, and fun games. What they created was, at least for me, something that spoke in a way that no other media was capable of.
So I’m more than a little put off that they’ve been roped in by the largest, most notoriously questionable publisher in the games industry. The escapist’s piece by Sean Sands grabs on a lot of the speculation. Whether or not conspiracy theory is warranted, ‘work for bioware’ is off my list for the time being.
And I’ll admit it proudly, despite being told off by the makers of the game, I’m a Fallout fanboi. I know, I know. At this last February’s Game Developer’s Conference, the people who made the game told me how bad it was, and at the time I was too flabbergasted, or exhausted, to really put up much of a fight. To me it still stands out as a game that pushed the medium, and was in gamasutra’s top 5 RPGs of all time.
So, in a salutory style, I’d like to give you one of my favorite quotes from Bioware. This comes from one of their expansions to Neverwinter Nights, Shadows of Undrentide, where an artificer of ancient artifacts (hehe) discusses his being pulled into an elaborate device, and how that connects him to your honorable adventuring instructor.
—
I was doing some research on the Netherese, when I found a small puzzle box.
–
It Seemed to be just an interesting toy, but when I played with it, I was sucked inside an elaborate maze, where I wandered for several months, until I was found and released by Drogan.
–
The Netheril were so powerful that even their toys could capture the mind and hold it captive.
–
Imagine a society so rich and powerful that they can waste time and money on elaborate entertainments that last days, even months before the fascination wears off.
–
It must have been an exciting place to live. But anyway, Drogan is an old hand at solving puzzles and dealing with magic. Once he rescued me, we became friends. And that is all there is to tell.
(and that’s it)
Something that’s been wearing on my mind, lately, is that I haven’t had any luck helping to pull one of my sisters out of World of Warcraft. She’s lost her ridiculously lucrative job, insurance, and is about to loose her car. It started when, because she was playing, she just didn’t go into work. In the last two months, she’s just leveled up to 70 - not applying to any new jobs, while living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
It’s especially hard for me not only in that I opened up to her, and talked really frankly and honestly about what I went through, but I also know exactly where she’s at. I can see exactly why she’s playing - exactly what’s going on in terms of her difficulty with giving primacy to the online game world. I also know that she’s only just started to play like a fiend, so that on a lot of the neurological and psychological levels, traditional addiction isn’t exactly cemented in, but that it’s going to be a lot harder for her if something doesn’t intervene.
In the end, I think that she’s going to have to hit bottom on her own - since I honestly don’t see her boyfriend kicking her out (although in how I’m seeing things, that’s all he really wants to do at the moment).
So - these are the things that have got me a little down at the moment.
Neils Clark :: Oct.30.2007 :: General :: 2 Comments »
Man worked centuries to harness fire
To look on flame is to know comfort and caution
So deeply ingrained a flicker in our psyche
And still it eludes our control
And the fire upon which you gaze?
When our natural response is a springy fear?
I light a candle next to my chair
And stare into light
Neils Clark :: Oct.18.2007 :: Real Men Write Poetry. True Story. :: No Comments »
Shavaun and I are polishing a chapter on the ways in which children develop, and how videogames can influence that process in ways that are positive and negative.
The final section explores the “right to play.” A few years ago, the then-secretary general of the UN Kofi Annan, said that children have the right to play.
…the right to play belongs to everyone. And that, by the same token, development, health and peace are not “spectator sports”. They require commitment and engagement by individuals, communities, as well as governments.
Obviously, he didn’t seem to have videogames on his mind. Instead, he was discussing organizations like Right to Play. I’d recommend you all check out their video [here]. It’s an organization supported by a number of world-class athletes, and it’s focus is bringing play and sport to young kids around the world.
To develop right, kids need to learn physical movement, they need social interaction, and they’ve got to be able to creatively and spontaneously imagine things (”I am not Pete the 5 year old, but rather MONSTRO THE WISH-GRANTING GENIE! FEAR MY WISHES, MORTAL!!!”). As they go through different stages, what’s appropriate, and what they can understand in their play-time changes.
We tend to see videogames as something apart from ‘play,’ or ’sport,’ and some of that separation hasn’t been warranted. We like to attach words like “virtual” to online worlds, so as to understand this distance, or dissonance. In the end, the general population is still trying to understand how these spaces are different or similar to the ones we have. Nevermind that, I’m still trying to figure it out. One of my favorite papers in this area is Malaby’s [Beyond Play].
But there are also tangible differences right now, and most videogames simply don’t fit the bill for kids of certain younger ages. But this won’t always be the case. Take, for instance, Richard Bartle’s view that game companies are working on providing more agency for the imaginative elements, and Spore, the game that promises such agency. Certainly not all virtual worlds will be appropriate, as taking a game online tends to mean that lighthearted topics of discussion will meander from prim troubles to violent rape. And not all kids are developmentally at the point where they understand the facetiousness, double entendre, and plain old crudeness of that humor. Most adults don’t get it.
And with interfaces like the Wii or the Dance Dance Revolution pad, the physical activity needed for a child’s sensory integration could happen in well-designed environments via videogames.
Still, there’s just so much to talk about when we contrast that video, linked above, to kids who have been growing up with today’s games.
It comes down to the texture of the experience in the game, and understanding that there’s really a large range of experiences possible. Games could be made where young children in developing countries could create their own castles, right alongside other children in Britain, Peru and Japan. Maybe the game would make them move their body.
Right now, there are free online games which sport more gore, and are more invisible to parents than ever before. I watched a 12 year old boy play this game [Endless War] and other intensely graphic games while sitting three feet from his mother. He was on a site called addictinggames.com, of all things. I sat down next to his mother, and asked about his gaming. She said that he was a perfect angel, and used the computer for highly educational ends.
So I walked over to the boy, and encouraged him to show his mother how cool his games were. Suckeerrrrrr.
Videogames are unique experiences, and I would argue that the UN’s “right to play,” for the time being, is a wholly different game.
Neils Clark :: Oct.17.2007 :: Games, Media Experience :: 2 Comments »
Don’t let the epic flying mount fool you, I have a life.
But since I wanted to see about defending MMO games using some Richard Bartle quotes, I decided to go back to what he said at the [State of Play V]. I transcribed most of his talk at the Building Virtual Worlds panel, and I wanted to make that available for people who might want the near-exact text. The full .doc file is available [here]. The video is available [here] via a time capsule.
He discusses the knowledge needed to build the first virtual world, what he’s excited about for the future, and his worries about that future.
And if you know what the hell he was talking about with and gates and or gates, then tell me. I put those in parentheses, given that for all I know he could have said play’n gates and roar gates (thanks robustyoungsoul of Soul Kerfuffle for clarifying these as AND OR and NOT gates - terms from electrical engineering). The rest of it is pretty solid. Really, it is.
Thanks also to Bartle, who clarified [here]. The text below has been updated. Focus group testing showed it to be 2x as convoluted, so good times there.
Click the continue reading thing if you want to read it on html, and not the .doc linked above.
Neils Clark :: Oct.10.2007 :: Games, Research :: 3 Comments »
Sampling is the time-honored art of getting the right people to talk to you. If you can ask questions of a group of people that accurately represent the group you’re looking to understand, then their answers are said to be representative of the whole. Let’s just say that if you had twenty people who, by some act of magic, accurately represented all of America, then you could make a lot of money.
But it usually doesn’t work like that.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to studies of “game addiction” has been sampling. The investigators ask groups of college freshmen what they think about videogames, and not every gamer is a college freshman. The ESA believes that the average and mean ages for gamers are wandering around 25 and 30. While it’d be interesting to see how they sampled for that, and the questions that they asked, not every gamer is going to college. It’s also not always ethical to ask every gamer, since there are strict rules for polling minors.
Nick Yee (now with the snazzy Ph.D., gratz) has been getting a lot of impressive data over the years, most especially during the times of EverQuest, DAoC, SWG and the like, and has polled tens of thousands of gamers. The data that he got was crucial to painting our first picture of who plays, and because Dr. Yee’s Daedalus project is still our best connection to changing populations, should probably be explicitly funded so as to keep going. His project has gone on for many years, and again, it nearly single-handedly painted the statistical pictures that we do have. The gamers who frequent his surveys really ought to be lauded, and encouraged to keep visiting.
At the same time, some types of gamers don’t seek out websites on player motivations. Ted Castronova has been calling on game companies to open up statistical data for research use. While his focus is Economics, and I’m guessing that he’s probably most interested in seeing how some of the economical systems work, this would be an integral slice to the understanding pie. The PARC Play On Center, in a project also headed by Yee, actually used World of Warcraft’s UI to gather data, like how players name their characters. There’s no doubt that we can use this kind of data, and use it to paint some pictures of how much people play, but there are some limitations.
This data is server-side, and it only tells us so much about what happens on the other side of the screen. In going through some of my old neuroscience notes (and sorry I haven’t been posting lately, it’s been crazy insane writing time), I stumbled across some of my notes from sampling inside of games. See, when I did my Master’s thesis I actually wanted to test a method for going into games and getting a representative sample. Rather than rely on people finding websites, or only server-side data, I wanted to create a method whereby you could create generalizeable results. That is, get numbers which actually represented all gamers, everywhere.
It’s hard. Especially when you’re doing it on your own with no budget and an overloaded schedule of graduate courses. There were serious technical, but also ethical constraints. And those could fill a few volumes. I discuss it a little bit in my thesis, though it’s something I’m planning on developing better during or before I head back to school for a Ph.D. This is all really just a long introduction for some fun quotes that illustrate two points that I’m getting at:
I have a lot of notes on scientific sampling inside of MMO games. I also ran into a lot of basic stumbling blocks, and not all of them are in my thesis. But I’ve got to get back to my real work, so without further adieu, just a few of the quotes that I got permission to reproduce. These come from a range of MMO games, from DAoC and WoW, to SWG and EQ2.
Some people were very interested in addiction and player motivations, even had informed opinions on why academics needed a better understanding of gamer psychology, but they had no desire to participate.
“sorry I play so much and am so in the game that never do something else and dont have time with this surveyâ€
“I am aware of my fixation on videogames and wish you luck in your survey but am uninterested in participating in your study. Thank you for asking and good luck.â€
There’s an inherent fear of viruses, defamation and effort:
“if its a virus or something ill bonk you ! not in the british way thoâ€
“kk†then “nvm (nevermind) I thought u were just going to ask me in game†then “dont go to websites idk (I don’t know)”
Some people frequent outside sites heavily, even (or especially) when not playing.
“I couldn’t stay away even if I wasn’t playing…checked the forums a couple of times each weekâ€
One player was initially infuriated, and very intent on having my account permanently banned. After earnestly apologizing, he opened up.
“you know soe (Sony Online Entertainment, publishers of the MMO games EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies) thinks of this as spam and you should be reported†then “you did not offend me but what dose this have to do with star wars†then “to make this short I no longer work and I play this game almost all day every day for over a year now†then “I would be playing table top star wars rp if I did not have this†then “I used to table top 30 hours a weekâ€
Neils Clark :: Oct.07.2007 :: Game Addiction, Research :: 3 Comments »
Monday night I proposed a lecture for the 2008 Game Developer’s Conference. I just wanted to make a note that I’ve given some short lectures (even some inside of MMO Games/Virtual Worlds), and that I’d be happy to talk to students about what I’ve learned in the last year of writing a book on game effects, or more specifically this thing that we’re calling game addiction.
Here’s the 100 word description of the lecture proposed:
Some gamers just can’t control how much they play. While the phenomenon is becoming more pronounced, is it really an addiction?
This lecture delivers a balanced and comprehensive crash course on how games can be uniquely suited for pulling people in, how these traits can be contrasted with addiction, and what it means to play healthy.
This lecture also examines anti-addiction tools and legislation with respect to the information presented, and then briefly focuses on simple things which could empower parents of underage gamers and adult gamers.
Neils Clark :: Oct.03.2007 :: Game Addiction :: No Comments »
