Superstition and Powepuff Girls???

I was watching Powerpuff Girls cartoons with my kids this evening from youtube when I saw this one below. The theme for this episode it seems is too teach kids to kick out superstitions. People love it and it gets 5-star ratings. Wonder how should I read the ratings. I didn't realise that the entertainment industry sees great need to educate kids about superstitions. It makes me wonder how prevalent are superstitions among kids? I remember reading somewhere that says kids drop their superstitions as they grow older. So superstitions affect all ages. I wonder what superstitious belief my kids have. I'll go find out. ^^ You may want to find out what superstitious belief your kids have. Glad if you could share. : )

Understanding superstitions in MMOGs paper completed

Phew! I have just completed my "Understanding superstitions in MMOGs" paper for Dr M's class about five minutes ago. 17 pages in all. It took me 9 days to finish writing it! I am pretty much breathless now. Let me catch my breath first. huh..huh..huh..*panting* : )

This paper was meant to support certain conjectures I make about MMOG in my Chapter 1 but the analysis and findings portion took it to a different path. I did not anticipate this but I guess that what happen when you do research, I mean you have to expect that you research may not turn out what you though it would. Any case all is not lost. This experience is a good reflective exercise for me to look deeper into my research site. There are links to my research topic which I need to uncover.

My next paper for Dr M's class is a follow up paper to this where I will provide more evidences to support my findings and suggest how superstition in MMOG can be redefined. I have identified two forum threads and will analysis the discussions there. I will be focusing on the interplay between individual cognition and community cognition. I have written a nice abstract for that. I look forward to the critique session with Dr M this Wednesday.

Definition of superstition

I enjoy my literature review on superstition a lot. I have been reading these books and an immediate sense I get is that there is a difficulty to pin down what it is as there is no way to differentiate superstition from other belief and action. On whose authority do we take a belief or an attitude to be superstitious? If we turn to religious authority, there is a continuing debate whether superstition can be distinguished from religion or is the latter itself, as Cattell puts it, just “silly superstition”. If we turn to science, experts often have different opinions and even if scientific community can come to a consensus, other group may not necessarily agree with them. If we leave to “the reasonable man in present-day Western society” or the consensus of the educated people to decide what superstitious belief is, we cannot avoid complicating the debate with cultural and historical issues. I know that it is beyond my paper to enlighten how superstition should be defined. For the aims of my paper, I think it is best to stay away from the above contentious areas and settle with Zusne & Jones’ (1989) definition that superstition is a “(a) specific, circumscribed belief or act that (b) involves magical thinking, either actually or as a remnant, held or engaged in because (c) it is culturally transmitted or learned through fortuitous reinforcement and (d) is resorted to under conditions of uncertainty. To act on a superstition is to become momentarily a magician on a small scale” (pg. 242).

More reading and writing for now...

Why looking into superstitions in MMOG is important?

Dr M has asked me to include in my abstract why looking into superstitions in MMOG is important in the first place. There are no scholarly work on superstitions on MMOG to date and only Nick Yee, in his blog above, has started the conversation after getting players to share superstitions they seen in MMOG.

How can we benefit from knowing more about superstitions in MMOG? The first of the two video clips below makes claim that we are all superstitions animal just like the pigeons experimented by Skinner (as told by Yee above). How far have we bring our real world superstitions into the virtual world of games. Are the attributes of and our experiences in virtual worlds so comparable to our real world that we share similar fear, suspicious, rational, etc.

Said that, Yee says there are more basis not to believe superstitions in real world because of the presence of omnipotent, omniscient God whom we have no idea how He works but in MMOG there are the game developers who reign supreme. They are humans like us whom we can second guess their intentions, motives and moves. Further, I feel anything humankind creates is nothing near perfection. So they may claim to "use a random number generator throughout... but it’s also true that it takes just several lines of code to increase the chances of all rare drops" (Yee, above). So if this is the case can superstitions in MMOG be seen as scientific endeavours, testing out hypothesis to determine possible mathematical formula in game design (even for instances deem to be randomized).



Or perhaps superstitions in MMOG are at best a science of hunches and suspicious like how superstitions in real world sports (see below). Because of the need to have an edge over the opponents, even mystic are sought - like having a lucky charm in our inventory to increase the chances of rare drops.



Anyway, back to my paper, I guess what I am trying to established is whether superstitions in MMOGs, while primarily motivated by the need to be successful in gameplay, can they possibly be seen either as scientific and cognitive endeavours to establish mathematical functionings of some aspects of game design or as pursuits shape by socio-cultural forces and situated as part of the practices and culture of gamers. If superstitions in MMOGs are scientific and cognitive endeavours, then they have potential for learning that warrant more investigations to uncover the links. If they are the latter, then they are another avenue for game researchers to understand more of the meaning-making and enculturation process of players into the cultures of gamers in MMOGs.

The burden of writing

The burden of writing is not just to complete an assignment but to ensure what gets communicated is clear and readers don't take away a message but THE MESSAGE that you want them to. Dr M spent half of his lesson last Wednesday teaching us how to organise our ideas in ways that a reader can understand everything by just reading our abstract, goes to our intro or chapter one then skip everything else and read our conclusion. He said that everything in the body is implied in the intro and conclusion. I was glad that he brought us through this because so far there isn't a module that teach us how to write research paper or dissertation.

Anyway, the outline that I had prepared earlier is good as rubbish. Will work on one soon. Good news is I got my first version abstract out. Here it is...

Superstitions in MMORPG:
Identifying suitable epistemological frame for analysis

Superstitions in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) is a phenomenon that has received rare mention in present literature on game research. In this paper, I present an analysis of two superstitious practices found in a MMORPG called Granado Espada concerning enchantment and chipping of weapons and armours. For the analysis, I view the phenomenon from two epistemological frames - cognitive and social constructivism, to argue [will find out what come out from the analysis]. To substantiate my claim, I draw from [need more reading and thinking through].

Any comments?

Superstitions in MMORPG: An outline

I'm thinking about a possible outline for my Superstitions in MMORPG paper for Dr M's class.

Introduction
I will possibly start with a brief history to show that humankind has held numerous epistemological and ontological assumptions since the dawn of time. I'll talk about the forces that shape belief. I would divide this brief history into "Long view" and "Short view". Long view will cover everything before to the advent of positivism philosophy and modern science. Short view will concern with post-positivism and social sciences. I feel this brief history is important and will help me situate nicely my introduction to social scientific inquiry in MMORPG.

Theoretical framework
So I'll talk next about MMORPG and social science research in MMORPG. Here I will argue why epistemology has to be seen from social constructivism lens. I will take symbolic interactionism and Lave and Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP)as theoretical perspectives. I will highlight research from the literature that make use of these perspectives.

Now I am not sure whether to bring in here cognitive constructivism as the other epistemology lens to understand social phenomenon in MMORPG. Or should I complete my analysis using social constructivism first before moving on to cognitive constructivism. I'll ask Dr M what he thinks. Anyway, if I decide to bring in cognitive constructivism here, I will talk about cognitive psychology (theoretical perspective), phenomenology (methodology) and discourse analysis (method) which go well with cognitive constructivism as epistemology.

Literature review
So far I only know Nick Yee has written or talked about superstitions in MMORPG. While the focus is on MMORPG, I will also look at this phenomenon broadly and beyond MMORPG and discuss how it is studied by other researchers. I may also adopt, if deem appropriate, coding found in the literature for my discourse analysis.

Data
The artifact I will analysis is a short interview data. I will describe the context of the interview (including the background of the player while not compromising his identity) and how the phenomenon is situated in the larger MMORPG environment and the player real-life.

Data Analysis
I will start analysis the data from social constructivism lens. I will add input from other interview I have with the research subject and from my own observation while playing the game. Then I analysis the data from cognitive constructivism lens through discourse analysis. I will look at cognition as mental process that can be separated from socio-cultural influences.

Results
I will compare and contrast results from both analysis.

Conclusion
MMORPG is a social world and social scientific inquiry in MMORPG needs to view social constructivism as THE EPISTEMOLOGY in order to fully understand how social phenomenon is impact by complex social relations, cultural and practices, historical and political workings found no only in MMORPG, but also around it (the practices players engage in outside the game world like fanfiction, cheats, etc). And finally, real world socio-cultural influences where game playing is situated.

This ought to do it. I got a quarter of the paper done already and will continue working on it this weekend.

Superstitions in MMORPG: From cognitive and social contructivism lens

I'm thinking about Dr M final assignment. His module is about social foundation of learning sciences. What I have in mind is to present an analysis of a social phenomenon (superstitions in MMORPG) from two lens - taking epistemology to be cognitive constructivism and social constructivism. The whole idea is to highlight how taking cognitive constructivism lens will restrict the scope of analysis and disregards the impact of socio-cultural forces in shaping game play. This assignment will also help strengthen my argument for my choice of epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology and methods for the final assignment for Steve's class and for relevant sections of my dissertation.

I am all up for social constructivism as epistemology for my dissertation. For theoretical perspective, I am going for symbolic interactionism and perhaps too Lave and Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation. As for methodology, I am taking on symbolic interaction (symbolic interaction can be both at theoretical perspective and methodology levels) and for methods - observations and interview.

The artifact for my analysis is a piece of an interview script with a gamer. So, for cognitive constructivism lens, I am contemplating to go for cognitive psychology as theoretical perspective, phenomenology as a methodology and discourse analysis as method. I will also look into the literature on superstitions (I probably find nothing on MMORPG because so far only Nick Yee talk about superstitions in MMORPG) and see how codings I'll find there be useful for my discourse analysis.