And another post to catch me up for now. There are only a few really good resources for people researching new media from a social sciences perspective. Terra Nova is one of the best. Terra Nova "is a blog about virtual worlds and their implications. Virtual Worlds include synthetics worlds, MMOs, MMORPGs, Social Worlds, MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHes. Terra Nova authors include scholars, practitioners and writers."
The discussions are deeply academic and examine both common topics like violence in video games, as well as more obscure concepts like the rights of players to control user content (one instance where several users had their accounts/characters deleted from an online game was characterized as murder). The authors are a veritable "who's who" in the study of virtual worlds.
If you have any questions or would like to know more about the study of virtual games let me know. One of my classes in Undergrad was an ethnographic research project undertaken in the MMO World of Warcraft. It was only the second or third time a class like that had been offered in the nation and it was interesting both to research in that type of environment as well as endure the kind of scrutiny a class of that nature created in both the academic as well as virtual world.
For example, we often had lectures in-game so that we could talk with some of the most well-respected researchers in the field. Nick Yee "visited" with us in World of Warcraft which proved challenging as we met near a "public" road in-game. The "sight" of twenty gnomes sitting in a clearing, attentively listening to a Nigh Elf discuss age of consent forms for survey takers on a public chat channel drew a lot of interest, as well as criticism from fellow gamers. The reaction of the academic community to our endeavors was similar as well, unfortunately.
My paper for this class, which examined Western colonial themes built into World of Warcraft, was featured one month on Terra Nova, in an article on Cultural Borrowing in World of Warcraft. The ensuing ruckus was a sight to behold as academics, players, and anyone else who wanted to get involved promptly did so, loudly, and not always nicely. It really highlighted for me how important this growing field is academically, and also, on many levels, how misunderstood it is as well.
2 comments:
Reading this makes me curious. Have you looked into "Second Life"? Did you buy Linden dollars? I'd be interested in what you thought of it.
I tried playing Second Life (it was actually one of the games used in subsequent versions of my class). I'm definitely NOT a social gamer though (I detested the social aspect of World of Warcraft), so I had problems getting into Second Life (which has that as its main purpose). Plus, the system was still growing and was experiencing a lot of lag.
We did have some ethical debate and whatnot over gaming economies, and a few of the other student papers addressed that topic.
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