My thoughts on AGT 09 so far...

This is the best act I have seen so far in AGT this year. Unpretentious. Great voice. I put my money on him winning the competition. One thing that puzzle me is the lady below who appeared in both Kevin Skinner's and Lawrence Beaman's auditions. Who is she? If the clips are genuine, she and her friends (near her) must be working for the producer of AGT that they can afford to jet-set and attend auditions in different cities in America.

In Beaman's audition, she sat behind David Hasselhoff on the front row, swaying her body when Beaman sang. Skinner came in EP 3 when the auditions were held in NY and Beaman, EP 5 in LA. And in between these cities, AGT went to Houston. The clips looks so similar that I am encourage to believe it is only real for Beaman. I wonder when these audition clips were first made available to the public.

Anyway, another comment I want to make is that had Simon Cowell been one of the judges, half of the act that got throught the next stage would have been kicked out. Like The Texas Tenors and Timez 2. The judges have to commit to say "NO" more often to audience who are easily moved by county nationalism with little regards whether their support is aimed at real talent. Simon knows when to do that when the audience fails to discriminate craps from talent.

Lastly, what do AGT and American Idol teach us about learning? How you assess shape the kind of gems that will come out through the education system. You would not get to see that phenomenal talent of Kevin Skinner and Susan Boyle from the idol format. So again, it is meaningless to talk about how the effectiveness of educational intervention when assessment could not assess the learning afforded by the intervention. Just my thoughts...

I'm so exhausted : /

I'm in such a bad state now. Weeks of energy-sapping work have taken a toll on my health. In the past 24 hours I had spent more that 12 hours sleeping. Still, I woke up felling more exhausted. The only thing that occupied me in sleep these past few days was work. Crazy. I even think about what I plan to do the following day in my sleep. I had no bandwidth to blog these days and I still had not completed the last 3 sections (from a total of 9 sections) of my methodology chapter. Arrgghhhh.....

Ok. Calm down. I'm on mc tomorrow. I'll spend the whole morning tomorrow finishing off the tail end of what that kept me busy. Then I will start working on my dissertation and hopefully over the weekend, I can finish 2 more sections of the methodology chapter. And yes, I hope to start blogging again.

Oh yes, I got news last week that I will be posted out the end of the year. I need to find time to update my cv and submit application. I'm tinkering where I should go. My guiding principle has always been that when you pursue a part-time graduate study, try your best not to make life-changing decisions, like changing job, move house, etc. Keep everything constant so that there would be no disruption to your study. Well, getting posted out is beyond my control. Where can I go where I can create a false sense that nothing much has change in my job and working environment? Hmm...tricky.

Mental hallucination: Another bad press about gaming

GamePolitic.com ran a post a few days ago alerting of a TV series portraying gaming in the bad light and add to the already public paranoia about the impact of gaming. The TV series is Mental. Yeah, it is crazy but it is named as such because it is about a bunch of doctors (remember ER) looking into mental patients. These doctors are probably bored to death with their job because they try so hard to squeeze something mysterious from their patients' case to make their job more fun.

So episode 4 is a another of hallucination about a kid gamer who is described in its preview as:

An 8-year-old bipolar boy whose life is consumed by a video game he plays in his head is admitted to Wharton Memorial for an accident involving a knife. When it turns out the accident was really a suicide attempt, Jack must try to get inside the little boy’s head to find out what is triggering his life-threatening rages. But when the boy bolts from the psych ward, Jack must try to save him by engaging him in his own mind game.

Respondents to the post in GamesPolitic.com (who are likely gamers) ridicule the episode and treat the mind game part as a poor excuse for a joke. Again, this kind of bad press is the last thing we need to raise the awareness of the non-gaming public what is real and what is perceived to be (or hallucinated) about gaming.

Porn producers and technology: Like moths to light

I am lost for words when I read news about Rez Trance-vibrator. First, it was Rapelay and now, this! God knows what else in between these two that I miss. I can't bear describing the Rez Trance-vibrator. You can read a gamer experience with it here (pics are available there too).

While I am excited about Project Natal and look forward to it being made available in stores, I am equally worry how the technology will be used as another medium for porn. The developers of Project Natal envision how the future of play looks like and I can just imagine what porn producers see the 21st Century porn see and feel will be. Let me just stop here. I leave everything to your imagination.

I guess there is a market for this. While people may not talk about sex openly, I guess they are thinking about it a lot. I was quite surprise to learn that you can find sex service in Second Life and people associated with SL are very open about it (see report).

Anyway, I have to draw a perimeter what my research is and is not. Else, it gets very complicated and difficult trying to defend all fronts. I leave you with a glimpse of the possibility with Project Natal below. I know you are looking forward to have your hand on it too.

First six-month report of my PhD journey

I am in my first six months of my PhD journey. I have completed the first chapter and now working on chapter 3: Methodology which I plan to complete by the end of June. I just got my first semester results for the two modules I took - 1) Social foundation of learning sciences and 2) Qualitative methods. And guess what? I did well with an "A+" for the first module and a "A" for the second. I am so happy.

Next semester, I am going for just one module: Advanced special topic in the learning science. All other modules are not relevant to my research or I had taken them during my Masters programme. Everything is moving on well now. I am excited about moving into the next semester and start working on my literature review. I have been blogging regularly to shape ideas for the literature review and I can say that I have a good idea now how I want to approach my literature review.

Games, shooting spree and strategy for an election win

GamePolitics alerts me of this article in Spiegel Online translated from German to English by Google. It reports Germany's Interior Ministers have asked their parliament to ban all violent games. The move is in respond to shooting spree by a youth who plays shooting games during his free time. If you read further, it also reveals that the move is orchestrated with the hope that the parliament will approved the ban before the coming election. So it is more likely that call for the ban is political motivated than a serious attempt to go to the root cause of the violence.

This is somewhat similar to incident in Thailand which I have made a commentary here. Serious attempt to understand why teens kill have to go beyond from looking how they spend their leisure time, into investigating their socio-background to find the root causes what motivate them to have the instinct to kill. Ken Hardy and Tracy Laszloffy, family therapy scholars, warn us from blaming simple environment factors like video games and guns, but trace the roots of teen violence to four things: devaluation, erosion of community, dehumanized loss, and rage. I have a commentary of that here. Fascination to link media with violence will there all the time and if we read in between the lines, we can see that much of the euphoria is because playing the blaming game is easy, taking advantage public paranoia, than to uncover social ills as a result of bad political governance and our own neglect.

Experience opposing perspectival views from both side of a conflict in MMOG

Briefly, Gonzalo Frasca's article in Serious Game Source talks about change in perspectival view players experience when they play the role of the enemy in videogames. I have heard of videogames that allow players to choose whether they want to take the role of the good guy or the bad guy at the start or at an advance stage of playing so that they can experience opposing perspectival views of both side of the conflict.

In WOW, Nick Yee found that players would usually go for characters that are visually pleasing and associated being on the good side when they first sign up for an account. For their second account (alt) they would go for the least popular, gore-looking characters. While these visually least pleasing characters are not the bad guys of the game (but perceived to be by players), players using them experience being treated to some degree as social outcasts. In Whyville, Kafai reported that white players facing social discrimination in the game world when taking up black-bodied avatars.

So experiencing different perspectival views mediates what players take away from playing, impacts their identity development and how they "read" the game. Granado Espada does not have characters that are perceived to be the bad guys or allow players to take the role of the enemy. All characters in GE are pleasing-looking, and have their own attractions and special abilities. So opportunity to experience different perspectival view is non-existent in GE. But interestingly, there is a particular faction in the server that I am playing that is well-known for being the NUMBER ONE enemy of botters and macro-users. They seems to be policing the game for IAH (:D I'm just joking).

I can say they are disliked by many players. I wonder what it will be like to be in their faction, listen to their faction chat, and get into their faction activities like reporting and pk botters and macro-users. That will surely provide a good window why they do what they did. I think I should explore this. Or interview someone who have experience playing in their faction and other faction that are open to botting and macroing. Wonder what interesting insights can I gain.

Theodore's Every Picture Tells A Story

Theodore has a great article in Gamasutra giving an insight on the link between graphic artists' work and the narrative players make from a game scene. It seems that every single peripheral things that may deceivingly look insignificant, in reality are important because they provide a sense of before and after events.

Theodore uses the example of a plane wreckage to elucidate this point. The wreckage is the main graphic and every additional details, no matter how small they are, have their own narrative to tell and it is up to the players' imagination what collective narrative they want to take from the graphic which is situated in their playing experience. For example, bullet holes on the plane tells us that the plane was likely to be shot at. Or a charred plane tyre in a far distance background might possibly tell us that that the type could have burst into flame upon landing and forced the plane to swerve dangerously to its side before coming to a stand still. This is just one interpretation and the possibilities are only limited by players' imagination.

I thought that this is an important insight because the article bring to attention another key player whose works deserve recognition and not look upon as part of a collectively work normally credited to game designers only. So graphic artists too play a part in the kind of narrative players create from their game playing experience.

MMOG situated in multiple of networks that mediate players' identity development

Upon reflecting what I had learnt yesterday from the CRRP Conference 09 invited panel discussion, I realise that in trying to understand how players "read" and what they take away from playing an MMOG, we cannot solely look at culture and practices in the small "g" (g)ame and big "G" (G)ame, as Gee puts it. I figure that the MMOG under study is just one of many nodes in a network and that network too sits in a web of multiple networks. In Demerath words, negotiation and "orchestration" of competing discourses and social structures in these nodes and networks mediate players' identity construction. It will be quite difficult to see which node or network exerts the greatest influence on players' identity development. This is because very often it is not so much of the content that players are confronted with, but the social discourses that emerges from their interactions that mediates the meaning they take away.

I like to draw an example of a game that will definitely make many people in one particular country in the Middle East to frown in rejection (well, there could be many too who will rejoice :D). It is a game called Nijabigame. Below is a description of the game taken from its game website.

Ninjabi is an empowerment fantasy game set in the Muslim world, where a young woman dares to defy the rules and fight for her rights. The term Ninjabi is a combination of ‘Ninja’ and ‘Hijabi’ and is used by Muslim American women to subvert stereotypes. Ninjabi is a superhero who, like many Muslim women, sees her hijab as a symbol of strength.

In this platforming and fighting game, the player must collect support from the community by tagging the environment in order to make enemies vulnerable.

The main character, Layla, begins the game undertaking small acts of rebellion against the status quo. She sneaks begins her adventure by sneaking out at night, and tagging her neighborhood with her signature. This symbolizes mobility and claim to physical space as the a first step towards freedom. Layla’s adventures attract attention from the women in the neighborhood and she uses their support to confront their oppressors face to face.

Whatever lofty goals the developers of nijabigame hope to achieve, the process of shaping players' identity and worldview is not so simplistic. Players come into the game having armed with life experience, and exposed to real-world discourses as well as what they find in cyberspace pertaining to the central issue of the game. Negotiation of meanings from all these exposure can be reflective and kept with personal domain, but they can also be engaged in a social discourse. The two comic strips on the left are taken from nijabi.blospot.com and nijabi.com. They are just samples of many more available at their respective websites. Cartoon strip from nijabi.blogspot.com appears weekly on the Texan Daily. The descriptions read:

The ninjabi in this editorial cartoon is a fusion of this and a Texan identity. She reflects the voice of many Muslims who have experienced discrimination and struggle with defining their identites post-9/11.

It is an example of a node (if you wish to say so) or a network (if you look at the activities around the cartoon strips). And if nijabigame players are fans of the cartoon script, how they"read" and what they take away from the game will be mediated too by the node or network (cartoon script).
I am sure that there are many people out there who are confronting or exploring their subjectivity in various ways and means. Drawing cartoon scripts is one way. We can take the artists of these scripts as special individuals who are exploring and trying to come to terms with their identity as Muslims in a new found land. So drawing and sharing their arts and ideals can be so liberating and empowering, and can bring together like-minded people into constructive discourse. So if they too play the game, how they "read' and what they take away from playing will definitely be mediated with this new found space that liberates and empowers them to express what they truly fell.

So again, looking at what is within and around game is not enough. We need to see the multiple networks of nodes where the game sits in (and these networks and nodes are concerned too with central issue/themes of the game) in oder to understand what mediates how players "read" and what they take away from playing a game.

Popular Culture

I attended an invited panel session at CRPP today entitled: Popular Culture and Education is Asia. Panel included Peter Demerath (University of Minnesota), Zawawi Ibrahim (University Malaya) and Yoshitaka Mori (Tokyo University of the Arts).

What I take away for my research are these questions:

From Demerath

1. MMOG is a playground that attracts players from all nooks and corners of the world. Various culture and practices emerge when people of all background meet and interact. Players become "cultural innovators" whose identities emerge from the negotiation and "orchestration" of competing discourses and social structures.

Beyond MMOG, what are the multiple networks that have "educational effects" on players' identity development?

How is the mass culture associated with globalising era, consumerism and individual freedom mediate players' identity development?

What kind of cultural resources players draw on to make powerful moral judgment about appropriate selves?

How players' identities impact how they "read" and what they take away from playing?

How to establish players' critical media and digital literacy? How do they learn these? And how they impact how players "read" and what they take away from playing?

From Zawawi

2. Cosplay is one of the emerging popular culture associated with media and videogames that transcend beyond game environment into the real world. Granado Espada too is a big hit with players for its baroque period costumes. I wonder what motivate players to engage in cosplay and how immersing in this culture (whether they are participants or just observers) impact how they "read" and what they take away from playing.

From Mori

3. When popular icon in television or videogame crosses into the realm of players' everyday life (Mori used the example of Doremon who makes an appearance in textbooks and other print materials), how would players read this development?

Do they see it to mean that the television programme or videogame associated with the popular icon is accepted by society as safe and good?

How would this perception impact how they "read" and what they take away from playing?

Granado Espada is the first and so far the only MMOG recommended to be used in Singapore Schools. While it has yet to make an appearance in the curriculum hours, only find solace in after-school activities, still what does it mean to players when they can play GE in school.

Another day to go for the conference tomorrow. I hope to take away as many probing questions for my research as possible.