textuality.org

Day three of my notes from the Games, Learning, Society Conference!

After the jump: A lot of notes.

Liveblogging yesterday's GLS conference went pretty well, so I'm back at it today! Today's a full da, so there's going to be even more after the jump!

This is my first attempt at liveblogging.  The plan is to take notes on each session here in textuality, then to later write some entries in greater depth on particular topics.

After the jump: notes on the sessions!

This week I've been preparing for the Games, Learning, Society 5 conference coming up in a few weeks -- which, embarrassingly, means going through all the flyers, papers, and postcards that I picked up last year.  So this week's reading is GLS + links.

Beyond the jump: academics, academic papers, and transmedia.

This was the second year that I've run a game design workshop at the I-CON SF & Fantasy convention.  It was the second year, as well, that very few people showed up but that those who did seemed to enjoy themselves.  I've gone back and forth on the design of the workshop itself, but both years ended up with a similar setup due to the constraints of a convention.

I think that it's worth doing a bit of a post-mortem on the workshop, the workshop within the con, and just generally posting this for comment.  I'd love to improve this for other events!

Beyond the jump: Summary, Constraints of a convention, and possible revisions.

I set myself some criteria for random web readings about two months ago, as I was rebuilding this blog: if I write it up on the blog, I can read this. That's a pretty good way to go, if the time spent reading doesn't use all the time available for writing.

Which I have let happen.

So I'm going to make sure that I post those readings regularly, even if they're still queued up for reading and writing.  Starting now!

• The Chinese Language, Ever Evolving - several experts' take on the Chinese government's efforts to manage the written language.  I'm intrigued by efforts to standardize (and maintain) languages because it seems like such an important, significant, and fundamentally futile activity. Documentation, yes.  Archival, yes.  Management - doomed from the moment ink hits paper.
• Google Chrome Tech Doc - I'd probably have read this regardless of its presentation, because every now and then Google turns the world on its ear and I'd like to see the thinking as it does so.  However, they had Scott McCloud illustrate this doc, and ... it helps.  I was skeptical by page 3, thinking that sometimes he was just coming up with cute illustrations that added nothing (making me wish the space had been given to more text).  By page 8 I'd been swung around.  The important text is there, and some of the concepts get just that little push into clarity with a bit of visual support.  Now I'm wondering what the process was for creating that document-- did he interview people there, or just work from docs and photos?  How many of the people illustrated are now using his drawings as their avatars?

Last weekend I attended I-CON 28, a pan-geek convention on Long Island.  Sci-fi, fantasy, anime, furries, you name it and they're there.  It's often odd not merely by design but because it's both large and small-- large enough to have been running for 28 years and to often get some decent Guests of Honor, but small enough to have an "e-gaming" track of six people and to include me among them.

This year I was on a panel called "The Best Games You've Never Heard Of."  I've got some thoughts on the panel below the jump, but what's really worth relating is the list of games that the panelists made.  I *tried* to get every one mentioned, but I'm sure I missed a few.  Add your own!

Beyond the jump: the list, and thoughts on it.

This weekend I went to ICON and ran a game design workshop and was in a series of panels on the game industry and topics in "e-gaming".  It was a great time and I think the panels were all even better than last year.

If you're here from ICON ... welcome!  You made it to the right place, though this site may not look like it's about game design just yet.  I'll be posting resources related to the panels and workshop over the next few days.

The most common complaints I see on the Wii Fit are: 1) No one uses it after the first day anyway, and 2) it's a placebo - any benefit that people see from using it they could just as easily could/would have gotten from any other exercise.

To both of these complaints I say: who are you to tear something successful down, and you're wrong, besides.

If you know me, you know that I have very little time for people whose first reaction to success is to minimize and denigrate it.  Their efforts add nothing to the world and take much from it.  There is utility in analyzing a success to learn how it was done, and even more utility in looking at how something harmful has become successful and how to stop it.  But the arguments against the Wii in general, and the WiiFit specifically are not doing that.  Here's an example:

Talk to anyone that actually works in fitness - it isn't actually Wiifit helping them get fit. Wiifit is essentially a placebo. You'd get the same amount of exercise trying to play with the dial on a measuring scale by shifting left and right.

There were two paragraphs in this person's comment, but they both said just that: there are other ways to do this, the WiiFit is fake.  Now, there is nothing productive here.  WiiFit makes *some* people lead healthier lives, gives *some* people the little nudge they need to do that thing they'd been knowing that they should.  That nudge might send them to the gym, in other circumstances.  But in the cases under discussion, the nudge came from WiiFit.  And there is nothing *wrong* with that.  Additionally, if they're not misusing 'placebo', then it actually argues against them. 

Now, my frustration with this has an element to it that is very relevant to textuality.org.  One thing that is very special about playing and about games as they promote play is the creation of a space, temporal and physical, where some of the rules of everyday life are suspended.  In that space, you get a chance to try something that you would not normally do.  The "magic circle" around games allows people to practice at things as well as to sublimate antisocial desires.  Sometimes the thing being practiced is useless, but sometimes it's very very useful, as in the case of WiiFit.

I will, begrudgingly, admit that there's very little "game" in the WiiFit as people commonly use it.  There are mini-games within it, but they are by no means the focus, and there's no metagame around them.  

What there is, however, is a $70 peripheral, a console, and a whole bunch of software creating a "magic circle" ... around *exercise*.  Whether or not people get really into it, at some level they are role-playing a healthier person.  A home is a private place, which makes it excellent for self-conscious people to exercise in; the WiiFit gives them a structure to do that within.  It tracks their progress.  It lets them fail an exercise without embarrassment.  It makes them focus on the screen and their progress rather than on the jiggle of some body part that shouldn't jiggle.   And yes, I speak from experience.

Sometimes the lovers need to wander off into the forest and be enchanted by fairies to sort out their squabbles.  Sometimes a White Wolf LARP is enough to teach someone to socialize.  Sometimes a "game" is all that's needed to change habits, because what's really needed is an excuse to be someone else for a little while.  Sometimes the placebo works, and that's productive. 

A while back, and spread over a year, two friends and I had a discussion of the semantics of links, spurred by some irritating automated dictionary linking. I tried to summarize the discussion in a couple of ways, but I couldn't do better than the original. Here it is.