Although I still haven't yet played it, the more I explore There and the other avatar/gameworlds, the more I become intruiged by the idea of integrating an avatar world experience into one of my NMS courses — perhaps as a collaborative student project/cultural study in the Internet, Writing & Society course I'm teaching next semester. I'm fascinated by the way that There and the Simverse, etc. develop a whole culture around the game. There, for instance, has its own virtual daily newspapers. A two-week analytical immersion in the game followed might fit in well around the time we're reading Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen. I'm playing around with ideas on it. It might even be a interesting project to collaborate on with students at another university.
Being There
Avatar Worlds
At GTA, Andrew has been following recent developments in avatar worlds. I hadn't been paying much attention to the virtual world scene for some time, and was pretty surprised by how advanced (and alternately simply strange) the avatar software is becoming. Mac isn't supported by There, but the demo for this avatar world in which virtual personas “explore, play and hang out in a world full of parties, races, fashion shows, conversations and more” looks pretty impressive. Andrew also links to Seducity, an “adult” avatar world in which avatars do more than talk. This is all a far cry from the cartoon figures with the talk bubbles over their head I remember from the avatar MOOs of the early days.
An earlier post from Andrew also pointed to Second Life, which looks like a cross between something like There and a more traditional online fantasy RPG such as Everquest.
Jill's also doing some writing about avatars for her trial lecture, part of her upcoming PhD defense, and has some great observations about the complex and relationship that gameplayers (or cybertext users, or interactors, or what you will) form with onscreen avatars in her dissertation.
This is probably old news to most of you, but I just heard about the US Army’s latest recruiting tool, America’s Army. The army spent $4.5 million to develop the game, and is reporting that it has been wildly successful. In a Chicago Tribune story, the game’s project director, Col. Casey Wardynski, reported that on the night of Oct. 28 alone, “1.3 million games got played . . . At six minutes a game, that’s 150,000 hours of game play, where kids were virtually inside the Army.” Wardynski praises the game as a cost-effective recruiting tool. The game takes kids from basic and special forces training to virtual battlefield operations.
I guess it’s one way to keep those body bags filled.
What’s next? The CIA could be at work on America’s Effective Intelligence: Mission One — Learn to Translate Arabic. Maybe the State Department is working on America’s Diplomats: Mission One — A Nonviolent Solution.
Nah. Where’s the fun in that?
This post originally published on Grand Text Auto.
Kayley's on the Ball
I just posted an entry about playing a computer game with my niece at Grand Text Auto . . .
Grand Text Auto Newbie
Today the young new media elites over at Grand Text Auto invited me to join their fraternity, and I eagerly pledged. The initation ritual involved masks, blue margaritas, an Atari 2600 Joust-to-the-death battle (I did just barely win, thankfully, and Nick was incinerated in the lava pit), and some things I'd just rather not discuss (let's just say they involved Hamlet on the Holodeck, Afternoon, a story, Lev Manovich, and more than one goat — it wasn't pretty, I can assure you of that). This means that I'll be doing some split personality blogging. I'll join the thriving discourse community over there at GTA for my more serious, if nonetheless informal, new media musings, while over here I'll keep everyone up to date on my niece and nephew, adventures in toyland, Stockton related course stuff, personal accomplishments, identity crises, gardening, political rants, etc. We'll see how it goes, I think they can kick me out during the first semester, but I couldn't be happier to be joining Michael Mateas, Nick Montfort, Andrew Stern, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin in the blogosphere (or is it noosphere?).
Grand Text Auto
Grand Text Auto is a new blog that should be worth reading. Five of the smartest people working in new media, Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern (authors of the forthcoming interactive drama Facade), Nick Montfort, Stuart Moulthrop, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin will be the drivers this blog dedicated to “mashing up digital narrative, poetry, games and art.”
I've been a bit slow on the blog lately — end of term and other fracas. My cat and I are moving to a new place on the beach on Memorial Day, and I've begun the post-term indulgence of working through a stack of new novels by some of my favorite writers. I finished Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis, and I'm about 100 pages into Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions. After that, Richard Powers' Our Time of Singing followed by Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex. And I'm going to try to write a plain old linear short story longhand on legal pads. In a green lounge chair. On the beach. Look for beach book reports if I manage to muster the energy for an occasional post.
Has the Gaming Industry Gone Hollywood?
Andrew Stern, coauthor of the forthcoming innovative Interactive Drama Facade, passes along a link to Greg Costikyan's take on the Game Developers Conference.
“Inexorable business forces–fueled at least as much by the lack of imagination of publishers as their risk averseness–have nonetheless squeezed the range of the commercially possible down to a few hackneyed lines.”
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