October 3, 2014

Today

1) An opportunity 2) Discussion: The Proteus Effect3) Discussion: De Certeau4) Discussion: Dat Second Life5) Thinking toward Wednesday6) What do we want to play next?

Long about November…I’d like to take a couple of days in November– a Saturday and a Sunday– to play some Dungeons & Dragons. How many of you could make it for several hours on either November 8th or 9th (or both)? We’d meet briefly on Friday (after my second class) to generate characters.

also…During finals week, I was thinking we might meet at Arcade Legacy in Cincy. Is there interested in spending a little money (probably $6-10 a head) to geek out for an afternoon/evening?

Beatdown Time:How many of you have a 3DS and plan to pick up Smash Bros?

Next week (well, on the 17th, so next next week), I’d like to have a class Smash Bros tourney. Do we want to use the older game or a newer one?

The Proteus Effect

‘The basic question is the degree to which avatars are useful proxies for humans. “Some of the social norms that govern social interaction can transfer into the virtual world,” says Yee.’

‘Yee hypothesizes that people will conform to stereotypes of their digital bodies, in terms of gender, size, and attractiveness. Dubbing this the Proteus Effect, Yee studied the degree to which avatar appearance influences virtual behavior.’

‘Yee created avatars of varying degrees of attractiveness for subjects in the lab, and then allowed them to interact in Second Life. He discovered several interesting trends. “Attractive avatars are friendlier, and more revealing about themselves,” he said. “And taller avatars bargain more aggressively than shorter avatars.”’

Example (from my own research)

When I played that particular toon, I played with my fiancé. We were often given “free stuff” by people (who found our elves “sexy”), and we role-played like essentially in-game Mean Girls. Julie eventually joined an all-female guild. They invited me because they needed one more person to raid one night.

To make a long story short, that guild folded, and we were absorbed by another guild who didn’t know the one difference between me and the other members. But because I was RPing, and the Proteus effect impacted my behavior, no one ever realized I was a man.

Where do you see the Proteus Effect in your own gaming experiences?

Transition: De Certeau

For today, I had you read a piece by French theorist Michel de Certeau. De Certeau is famous for the concepts of “strategies” and “tactics,” but this particular piece looks at something I think he dwells on that is far, far more important to our lives : practicing things into being. To understand precisely what he means, however, you have to relax your own sense of what “being” or “reality” means and you likewise have to nuance your sense of what “practice” means.

Michel de Certeau isn’t really someone we’d place in game studies. He’s a theorist, with methods drawing from philosophy, social sciences, and history.

His interests focus on how we operate in our daily lives. He’s also very, very French, and French scholars loooove to think around a central point.

I know, right?

Try this one:

“First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), than the walked actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial elements.”

“The same is true of stories and legends that haunt urban space like superfluous or additional inhabitants. They are the object of a witch-hunt, by the very logic of the techno-structure. But [the extermination of proper place names] (like the extermination of trees, forests, and hidden places in which such legends live) makes the city a 'suspended symbolic order.' The habitable city is thereby annulled. Thus, as a woman from Rouen put it, no, here 'there isn't any place special, except for my own home, that's all...There isn't anything.' Nothing 'special': nothing that is marked, opened up by a memory or a story, signed by something or someone else. Only the cave of the home remains believable, still open for a certain time to legends, still full of shadows. Except for that, according to another city-dweller, there are only 'places in which one can no longer believe in anything.”

“Far from being writers—founders of their own place, heirs of the peasants of earlier ages now working on the soil of language, diggers of wells and builders of houses—readers are travellers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves.”

So what’s de Certeau trying to tell us?

Here’s my tl;dr version:

Places exist because we practice them into being, we know they should be there and hence we, through the use of space, insure their existence. This leaves us to ponder the question: is anyplace anything if we don’t USE it?

Intentional transition to Second Life!

Quick History Lesson

In March of 2002, the first resident came to Second Life. In October of that year, the public beta started.

Second Life opened to the public at large in 2003.

For eleven years people have “lived” in Second Life.

A couple impressive avatars

So what it is…• Second Life is a sandbox, where you can build things

out of “prims.” • You can buy stuff. And wear it/use it.• You can, of course, sell stuff you make.• You can interact socially. • You can exchange real money for “Lindens” to

spend in the game world.

Can we “play” there?

Playing…• We could role-play in Second Life. Lots of people do.• We could find a pre-made game or make/make up a

game.• We could likewise make a game of “messing” with

the expectations of the software.• We have the free will to do a number of things we

might want to.

But is it a… game?

I’m going to assert…• …that Second Life is not, strictly speaking, a game.• Because of the lack of a defined rule set that would

form any sort of competition,• The lack of any really centralized goals,• And perhaps most importantly, something we haven’t

stressed in our definitions, but there’s no real reward for skill (beyond being able to make money). How do you “get better” at Second Life? How do you become elite?

Let’s try the key points from your definitions.

Does it have goals?

Is it immersive?

Is it participatory?

Is it organized?

Is it intuitive?

Are there obstacles to overcome?

Is it about the journey, not the end?

Are there boundaries?

Is it relaxing?

Is it an “experience” to undertake?

Is it voluntary?

Is there a feedback system?

Is it enjoyable/fun?

Is it engaging?

Right now, there have been just over 1 million unique logins to Second Life in the last 60 days. That’s around 7 million less than World of Warcraft and 31 million less than League of Legends.

There are 37 million Second Life accounts. 1 million are active. That’s 2.7% of the population.In other words, Second Life is pretty much over.Our question: why?

For Wednesday

Read: some Baudrillard (see schedule)

In class, we will talk about simulations and what is real. And we’ll start your gameplay for the week in-class.