Understanding and Games

"...it is easier and better to design games around understanding that it is around memorizing."

This from an interview with Eric Klopfer of The Education Arcade on Henry Jenkins' blog.  It was made in the context of a discussion about what kinds of topics make for good games, and it is connected to the concept of abstraction that some game theorists have discussed.  Specifically, if the focus of a game is on enhancing understanding of a concept, group, or event, then the designers necessarily begin by arranging those principles in the abstract and then shaping their game around them. 

Or maybe they don't.  I've never designed a game; it just seems like the process would be similar to writing or video production, and in both those endeavors, with which I do have some familiarity, having a concept at the center of your work tends to entail development through abstract lines.

(As an aside, I just stumbled on a blog about study habits in college, studyhacks.com, in which the author discussed the importance of taking notes in class very lightly, combined with mp3 recordings for subsequent listening, in order to be able to focus on the big picture of the lecture.  This is instead of getting lost in the minutia of writing everything down.  There is more than a passing relationship between this concept and Klopfer's comment as well.)

Overall, it makes sense to me to think about game design as an opportunity to transform the abstract characteristics of something into concrete--though still paradoxically abstract--simulation media in the form of an "educational" game.  This surely must make the process of learning, through doing--even if abstract doing, much more effective than traditional techniques.

Testing this new Flock thing

Yeah.  Just heard on Tekzilla about Flock, and honestly it seems pretty cool.  It allows me to use my webmail, rss reader, facebook and other social networking accounts, and some web media streams likes flickr all in the same browser-style interface.

Supposedly, you can also post directly to your blog, just by logging into it (as I did for my reader, webmail, and facebook).  But I've got several blogs under the same Blogger account.  So what's gonna happen when I hit publish?  If you're reading this, it worked like a charm, allowing me to choose this blog and not one of my many other blogs I use for coursework.

Edit: That worked really well--I love the simple interface that shows all your blogs, and the options (like the "Blogged by Flock" insert below) are useful if you want them. If you want to check out this thingy, just click on over there.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

What Are the Topoi of New Media?

I am fairly sure I'm not using this term entirely in the classical Greek sense. However, my understanding of its meaning as "places"--especially in the way used by classical Greek rhetoricians to indicate categories of knowledge for a given topic--is one I reflect on often in thinking about how to organize my "New Media" course. If one attempts to subdivide theory and criticism of the various social and cultural dimensions of the communication media developed since television, one question that always crops up is "What should be covered each week?"

I don't have a pat answer for this; I've taught this course twice and I've organized it differently each time. One fundamental question to ask is whether organization by medium is appropriate: e.g., a course unit on the Web, a unit on video games, one on cell phones. This raises several related questions, such as whether these three media represent the most prominent new media, whether selection on the basis of "prominence" is better than "influence" or "intellectual potential," and whether there might be other technologies that also ought to be included. But I tend to stay away from this kind of organization for another theoretical reason, which is how such an arrangement will necessarily privilege a degree of technological determinism, whether strong or weak. Students pick up on things like course structure in subtle ways, and I don't want mine starting off with a bias in favor of such a theory of media. (On the other hand, I'm equally aware of the fact that any course structure belies an implicit characterization of the topic along theoretical lines, so you're damned if you do....)

Recently, I've been using a modified form of the BCS-developed "Circuit of Culture," in which five "moments" in a cultural artifact's life are considered: representation, production, consumption, regulation, and identity. We spend a week or two doing some broad ontological theory of new media, trying to define some boundaries for our topic, if fuzzy ones. Then I ask students to think about how new media representations shape our culture; how production practices in the computer, technology, and media industries that tend to produce new media artifacts literally mold those technologies; how patterns and practices of new media use necessarily alter our understanding of new media; how the laws and social conventions (and their enforcement) in various cultural milieu both activate and constrain certain behaviors with regard to new media. I personally have reservations about the prominence of identity in the model, not least of which is that at the very least it probably ought to be "identification" instead to match the process-based nature of the other four moments. So I tend to continually raise the question of identity in class, but don't make it a separate unit. I also don't currently spend really any time actually explaining the Circuit itself--the model is sortof silently embedded into the course structure.

Even though this is precisely the point of this post, let us not dwell too deeply on whether this choice of unit-level categories is the best approach, and for now move on to the next level down, which is "Given these four categories, what should be the weekly or daily topics around which to focus students' attention?"

With a 14 week semester and 2 weeks for general theory, we've got essentially 3 weeks per unit, with 2 or 3 class meetings per week (it's Monday/Wednesday, with Fridays officially on the schedule but I tend to reserve them for workshops, so usually no new theory is considered on the third day of a week). So that leaves about six or possibly seven topic days for each unit, assuming equal weighting, which I also don't tend to do because production is a slightly less prominent dimension of current new media theory than the other three (though that is certainly one assumption of this discussion I'm open to thinking about more deeply).

And the question remains: what six or seven topics in each of these four areas best address the broad, inter-disciplinary field of "new media" I've set for myself and my students? How can we best consider the topic in a systematic but fruitful way that leaves them both with clear routes to pursue to learn more but also raises an array of new questions?

I'd like to make this the first of five posts: in each of the other four, I will explore the topics of one of these units in depth. I may also write a postscript 6th post reflecting on what I've learned in the process. See you in the next post, but feel free to comment now if the mood takes you.

AWE-some (in more ways than one)

Whoa! AWE-some long time since the last post. No fanfare. Just skip to the new post.

AWE-some ONN clip on WoW:


'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Not sure much more comment is needed on my end. What do you think?

Video Goes All Share-y

For those interested in a helpful little review, check out these ten video sharing services compared. But this review is something of a signpost for me, because it points to the ways digital video, networked computers, and social networking software have all evolved over the past decade, for better and for worse.

I find the rubric itself interesting: "appeal" and "interface" are standard, but "editing" and "sharing" are especially telling for this convergence. Editing has always been the kind of thing you do before you think about distribution. From the early days of cinema through the arrival of digital video with Avid and Final Cut, producers finalized their production before seeking a distributor. Not to take these limited editing features offered on sites like Jumpcut too far, but having access to iMovie-like editing online Ajax style provides a level of flexibility some producers may find helpful, especially if they're rolled into a free online package.

In addition, and perhaps more importantly, having a variety of easy ways to distribute--or, when money is not the central component, "share"--your production with others has become the hub of a rapidly expanding set of social networking practices that takes all comers: family home movies, indy film makers and posers, viral marketing attempts, and just stuff to share. That a site comparing video distribution websites needs to compare "sharing" as well as "interface" shows how fundamental the social aspect of the internet has become.

Of course, sharing is the strength of some sites and merely an afterthought or not a feature at all of others. But for us users looking at the field all at once, the variety of ways to share stands out as one of the most crucial aspects of the lot.

I have to wonder, though, whether all this excitement and euphoria about "Web 2.0" feels a little too much like our circa-2001 euphoria for dot coms. My sense is that much of these startups today are the same as those of five years ago, in that they encourage us to imagine a world in which consumer demand does two things it has never done before: push out further and further with limitless boundaries, and keep moving rapidly over time. There have of course been occasionals spikes of what feel like sustained periods of expansion and multiplicity, but these are always quickly subsumed by the equilibrium and univocality. Don't be surpised if two years from now even two of the sites reviewed here are still around. But even the faintest whiff of money will bring all the ideas out of their little holes, no matter how half-baked they are. I wish them all good luck, but I'm not holding my breath.

Disney Exec Doesn't Seem to Have Watched His Own Movie

A Musical for Tweens Captures Its Audience - New York Times
Just read this piece, and I have to say, those songs are catchy. My daughter watches this thing in pretty heavy rotation on our DVR, and the other day somebody in the house couldn't get one out of her head.

However, the assertion made by Gary Marsh (President for entertainment of Disney Channel Worldwide) that " 'High School Musical' embodies the basic DNA of who we are and the themes we represent....Express yourself, believe in yourself, celebrate your family, follow your dreams" is dubious at best.

How does "High School Musical" embody a celebration of family? None of the kids' families are represented in the program in any way, and Troy's (Zac Efron) dad turns out to be a complete jerk who only seems to care about whether his son will win basketball games for him (he's also the coach).

The other three elements Marsh mentions may very well be part of their "DNA," if by that they mean the formula they use to guarantee profits. But Disney's management needs to be a little more careful about how they speak about their own texts if they hope the audience will find them (or their goals) credible.

Differences & Repetitions-Ted Striphas

[So maybe this won't be so regular after all.]

This is a blog written by a new member of my (hopefully soon to be) old grad school program. He has gotten me thinking about a couple of things regarding cultural and media studies.

First, I'm hoping the reference to Burke in his upcoming book title is as overt as it appears to me, as I would love to see an entire work that connects Burke and Media Studies.

Second, I am using Grossberg's textbook for my Intro to Media Studies course, so I am glad to know there are others out there who support his work in Cultural Studies.

Third, I'm glad to be made aware of the Cultural Studies special issue on IP, as it is increasingly becoming one of my areas of interest.

Finally, his argument in the blog makes me want to read some "D+G" as he succinctly calls them, because I have never read their work but see them referenced often. Hopefully this summer the dis will be done and I can spend some time developing new coursework.