Scott Rettberg

I’m at a seminar in Oslo focused on mixed reality narrative. A couple of interesting projects: Julianne Pierce from the UK artist group Blast Theory presented Ulrike and Eamon Compliant, in which the interactor is put in the role of one of two IRA terrorists, about to undergo interrogration, and Rider Spoke, an interactive performance piece for cyclists. Petr Svorovsky from the Oslo National Academy of the Art also presented Flirtman, a mobile phone game in which players control a human avatar. Petr had some interesting observations about how people related to social codes differently when controlling the actions of another human being than they did when controlling a virtual avatar.

I guest-edited a just-released issue of the Iowa Review Web focused on the ways that different forms of new media writing reconfigure concepts of place and space. Another way of looking at the issue, however, is as a Grand Text Auto takeover of Iowa’s finest web journal. The issue features Jeremy Douglass’ interview with Nick Montfort on his interactive fiction Book and Volume and Brenda Bakker Harger’s interview with Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern on their interactive drama Façade. I also interview Shelley Jackson on the various manifestations of the human body in her corpus of work, and interview Jane McGonigal on alternate reality gaming. A short introduction contextualizes the various approaches that authors of electronic literature have used to conceptualize space and place. I hope that you’ll visit, read, and enjoy. Thanks to the authors and contributors and to Iowa Review Web Associate Editor Benjamin Basan for helping to put the issue together.

Today’s New York Times offers an article that investigates the origins of the joystick and credits it as one of the most overlooked acheivements of the last century.

Drew Davidson passes along word of the recent fourth Media in Transition conference at MIT. From the list of abstracts and papers, it looks like the conference was indeed an interesting gathering, including quite a bit of work on nonlinearity in movies (e.g. “Run, Lola, Run: Film as a Narrative Database by Jim Bizzocchi), narrative in computer games (e.g. “Test-Driving Avatars: Max Payne, Ergodic Texts, and the Character-Vehicle” by Robert Buerkle), emergence in nonfiction film (e.g. “The Narratives of Nonfiction in New Media and the Concept of Emergence” by Rod Coover) and topics in hypertext literature (e.g. “Construction of Spatial Narratives in M.D. Coverley’s Califia” by Burcu S. Bakioglu). The abstracts suggest some interesting interdisciplinary fusions, and many of the abstracts are also linked to full papers.

Gamespy reports that Warner Brothers has employed a full-time troupe of 20 actors who will interact live with players of Matrix Online. “These people will assume the roles of popular characters, interact with players, and generally move the stories in ways that only live “actors” can.”

This entry was originally published on Grand Text Auto.

Alright, I guess I'm discovering that people do, in fact, use the internet for other things than reading interactive literature. I think I'm getting addicted to Games.com which has not only Scrabble but a fastpaced cross between Scrabble and Boggle, Scrabble Blitz, not to mention Monopoly, Centepide, Missile Command, Tempest. I could get lost in there for hours. I'm regressing. I'm rewarding myself for getting through stacks of papers with the games of my youth.

Kind of cool — earlier in the week, I heard a comment from Stan Corkin, who used to be chair of graduate studies when I was at U of Cincinnati, on NPR's Morning Edition.

Tonight, listening to The World, I heard Gonzola Frasca and fellow GTxAer Noah Wardrip-Fruin commenting on newsgaming. Gonzola is the co-creator of September 12th and Madrid, online simulations which you should experience, and think about, if you haven't already.

Nice to hear voices I know contributing to the national/international debate on where We're headed.

CNN is running a story on the upcoming October issue of Playboy, which will feature a photospread on the Women of Gaming — that is the virtual characters. Perhaps it won’t be too long before all of Playboy’s photospreads are CGI. The story also covers a slough of recent adults-only games, and discusses potential industry concerns that “female characters appearing topless could reinforce the outdated stereotype of gamers as shut-in losers who lack any sort of social skills.” It also notes, however that the gaming demographic is now generally older than it used to be, with the average gamer a crusty 29 years old, and the average game buyer 36 years old, making it a good match for Playboy’s (33 year-old median) demographic.

This post was originally published on Grand Text Auto

In “Virtual Camp Trains Soldiers in Arabic,” the Times reports on a video game being developed at the University of Southern California’s School of Engineering as a tool for teaching soldiers to speak Arabic. The game also uses AI, giving characters such as patrons of a Lebanese cafe “arousal levels” to let soldiers in training see if their use of Arabic and non-verbal cues is effective or not. I think this type of military video game sounds much more useful (and less bigbrotherishly frightening) than first-person shooter recruiting games designed to turn mall rats into soldiers.

This post was originally published on Grand Text Auto.

Jill stumbled upon one word, a nifty little writing game. Each day the site features one word. Each participant gets 60 seconds to freewrite from that word, and after posting his or her response, gets to read the other responses.

Nick Montfort slipped the URL of Grand Text Auto into a New York Times Circuits article, The Ivy-Covered Console. The article is about the growth of games studies and an upcoming conference at Princeton. I know Nick's going to be there, presenting on “Combat.” Way to go, Nick.

I recently downloaded the demo of ToySight, software that uses the mac’s iSight camera to integrate object and motion control into a variety of videogames and “toys.” The demo includes “Freefall,” a game in which you stand in front of the camera with arms extended as your avatar falls through the clouds, trying to collect balloons and land on target, and “Laser Harp,” a toy harp in which you pluck strings that appear in front of your image. It might just be the gee-whiz factor, but I see a lot of potential for this kind of cam-based interaction (admittedly not enough to buy the package, but I looking forward to playing more of the games with my friend’s daughter when she gets it). I wonder what kind of electronic literature we might dream up for this form of interaction? Maybe something like Noah et al’s Talking Cure could soon be coming to a laptop near you.

This post was originally published on Grand Text Auto.

Finally, a version of Online Scrabble that works on macs.

Arcadia definitely falls under the “wasting time while trying your multitasking” category.

Over at GTA, Andrew found this link to Virtual Worlds Review, a review of the crop of virtual environments/avatar games that are becoming increasingly popular. I'm still noodling on how I might craft a virtual worlds writing assignment for the Internet Writing & Society class I'm teaching next term. I poked around a couple of the virtual worlds that actually work on Mac this afternoon, “Coke Music“, “Faketown” and “Habbo Hotel.” None of these three seemed to be among the “most cool” of the bunch (although it was fun popping into Faketown's virtual arcade to play Space Invaders), and all seemed pretty crassly commercial. I'm still wondering about the potential for narrative in such virtual environments. I think I still lean towards the viewpoint put forth by Richard Powers in his essay “Being and Seeming” — that is that even if we could develop virtual worlds as realistic and limitless as Real Life, we'd still need old-fashioned narrative to limit it, to bring order, coherence and poetry to lived experience.

A link off of Grimmelman’s article led me to the curious AgoraXchange project, which will launch in January. A team including net artist Natalie Bookchin and political theorist Jacqueline Stevens is behind the project, the goal of which is to create an MMG that poses an “alternative to the present world order” guided by four decrees that include the abolition of inherited property rights. The ambition of the project appears to be to create a game that will be instructive in reshaping global society. While such a simulation is unlikely to overthrow capitalism, the idea is a refreshing turn from many MMGs that seem hell-bent on promoting the acquisition of virtual wealth as the highest virtue to which gamers can aspire.

This post was originally published on Grand Text Auto.

At Law Meme, James Grimmelman has written an excellent article in the wake of the State of Play conference: “Free as in Gaming?.” Grimmelman’s article follows up (extensively) on a question posed by Yale Law Professor Yochai Benkler at the conclusion of the conference, after Second Life had announced its decision to allow players to retain copyright to in-game intellectual properties:

“You’re creating this world in which people come to play and be creative, and yet you’ve given this world a system that has been extensively criticized as limiting creativity. Haven’t you just given them a new set of hurdles to creativity?”

This post originally published on Grand Text Auto

Another essay from the State of Play conference, MMORPGS in the College Classroom by Aaron Delwiche, has me thinking through some of the problems I might encounter trying to use MMOPRGS in the classroom. Delwiche's class spent a whole quarter on Everquest. The steep learning curve of the game, Everquest burnout, and even the trouble with presenting Everquest as a convincing homework assignment (not that all of my students seemed convinced that reading a book is a reasonable homework assignment) are explored in this essay.

I'm thinking that team-written group papers exploring the social aspects of several different games over a shorter period of time (say two or three weeks) might be more doable in one of my courses than a full-blown ethnographic study.

On his weblog, Julian Dibbell chronicles his life as a seller of virtual goods and properties from Ultima Online. He claims that “On April 15, 2004, I will truthfully report to the IRS that my primary source of income is the sale of imaginary goods — and that I earn more from it, on a monthly basis, than I have ever earned as a professional writer.” Dibbell is a the author of My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World, and has been writing essays on digital culture since 1993, several of which are available on his site.

Also on this topic, an abstract of the talk Dibbell presented last week at the State of Play conference in New York: Owned!: Intellectual Property in the Age of Dupers, Gold Farmers, eBayers, and Other Enemies of the Virtual State and another, more substantial piece, Virtual Property by Dan Hunter and F. Gregory Lastowka.

Lawmeme reports that Second Life, an avatar game discussed in recent posts, has made a decision to let player-characters keep the intellectual property rights they create. Players, for instance, have the right to sell movie rights for their character. See Participant Content under the Second Life terms of service agreement. Of course, the player also grants Second Life nonexclusive rights to the content, but nevertheless, this is a fascinating decision with regard to virtual property. I think it also has some interesting implications regarding the idea that games can be a creative environment, in which players actually make new “works” that could have some economic value.

This post was originally published on Grand Text Auto.