Joey-Lee.net

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (http://jvwresearch.org) is soliciting “think pieces” in response to the following questions:

“In thinking about the spaces of virtual worlds, and the practices we witness within them, how can we define what counts as culture? Can we see any common cultural trends emerging in different virtual worlds, or are practices as disparate as the worlds and groups we find within them?”

The formatting guidelines are:

• 1000-1300 words total
• The “think pieces” are brief essays or papers intended to spur discussion
  amongst the scholarly community.
• The pieces should aim to ask provocative questions for future research and
  debate, rather than provide definitive answers.
• We encourage the use of visual aids such as images, video clips, or links
  to content in virtual worlds.
• Abstract (no more than 300 words) and keywords (a minimum of 3)
• APA Style (unless it is inappropriate for the type of essay being
  submitted)
• The website currently only accepts .doc and .rtf formats.
• Single-spaced

The deadline for submissions is: January 9, 2008, 5pm CST

Please send your submissions directly to: Mia Consalvo consalvo@ohio.edu and
Mark Bell typewritermark@gmail.com

So it’s the end of another busy semester.  Life’s been really good lately.  Thank God   I’ve been productive — submitting papers to conferences, submitting job applications, writing, desiging, coding..  also setting aside time for important things – e.g. time with family, close friends, and my wonderful girlfriend.  I finished designing and coding one of the games for my thesis.  I really like how elegant Actionscript 3 is.  It took a while but I figured out how to use Flash AS3 to log a participant gameplay to server side files. 

I’m really excited about the social issue Serious Games that I’ve been making.  l’ll post up some of examples soon.

I’m scheduled to defend my dissertation proposal next Wednesday.  Here’s the abstract for my proposal:

          Serious Games are digital games with an educational, informative, or persuasive goal beyond mere entertainment (Abt, 2002).  They are promising because they often contain features that appear to be useful for learning (Squire, 2004), eliciting behavioral or attitudinal change (Yee, 2007) or encouraging new perspective taking, empathy, and new ways of thinking (Thomson, 2006; Gee, 2005).  As of yet, not much research yet exists on how to effectively use this form of technology to support identity development, raise awareness about social issues, or foster positive social or personal change (Thomson, 2006).

          In this Design-Based Research (DBR) dissertation study, I propose and test a specific Serious Game design that I call Identity Supportive Games (ISGs).  Specifically, I design and test a game that allows players to explore Asian-American identities in relation to ethnic stereotypes.  Many misconceptions and myths persist regarding Asian-American issues (e.g., the effects of seemingly positive stereotypes such as the “Model Minority” image that depicts Asian-Americans as intelligent overachievers who rarely fail).  In reality, these stereotypes and self-beliefs can lead to problems including identity crisis (Erikson, 1968), mental illnesses and depression (Cohen, 2007), poor self-esteem and self-image (Mok, 1998; Sue & Sue, 2004), decreased academic performance (Steele, 1997), decreased opportunities (Cheng & Thatchenkery, 1997), and pigeonholing (Sue & Sue, 2006).  With this in mind, I seek to understand how Serious Games can support identity development, impact self-concept, and broaden possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986) in the face of the limiting and damaging effects of ethnic minority stereotypes.  This work also seeks to produce design principles for attitudinal, affective, and learning outcomes in digital games.

          The issues to be explored run parallel to those in similar groups in other contexts, such as other ethnic minorities in schools and the workplace, as well as women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.  This mixed-methods dissertation study, largely drawing upon the theoretical frames of Erik Erikson’s model of identity development, Marcia’s Identity Status paradigm and Markus and Nurius’ notion of possible selves, leverages recent work on identity play in digital games (e.g. Turkle, 1995; Yee, 2007) and generates “theories-in-action” (Sandoval & Bell, 2004) on identity and learning within digital games for social impact.

I just finished teaching a two week Computer Game Design course (as part of Summer Study at Penn State). It was a fun experience for the 15 high school students and myself alike. The students first designed and made board games in groups to learn basic game mechanics and principles, and then they moved on to making simple computer games using a free tool, Game Maker 7. They learned about values in games, designer meta-goals, Serious Games, narrative, and basic game design skills. The highlight was when they made “Games for Good,” basically serious games for change / social impact computer games. They chose to design and create games that incorporated themes including peer pressure, cigarette smoking, teen pregnancy, obesity, and making wise choices.

You can play their games (.exe files) at the course webpage: http://gamedesign2008.pbwiki.com/ (you can view screenshots and a few photos there too). Some games are definitely more polished than others (some are a little bit… crude and buggy) — but they’re all playable enough, and some have neat ideas buried within.

Teaching this class was valuable for me, personally, research-wise (helping me think about some thesis ideas) and otherwise. The students seemed to really enjoy the class, giving it really high ratings and some going out of their way to say nice things to me. More importantly though, some students indicated that they’re more inclined to consider computer science careers, and that they have the power to impact society through technology (especially through digital games, a medium with such potential for expression and persuasion). Anyway, feel free to check out the students’ work if you have time.

I’m leaving tomorrow for the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS ‘08) at Utrecht, the Netherlands.  This conference is held every other year, and it’s always very high quality.  I got accepted into the Doctoral Consortium, which is an exciting opportunity to network and meet up with more senior scholars and other doctoral students from around the world.  I’ll be presenting early work on my dissertation, called “Understanding How Identity Supportive Games Can Empower Asian-American Possible Selves.”  I’m also participating in a symposia panel on Web 2.0 Learning Opportunities.  In that session, I’ll be reporting a study on “Stereotypes, Identities, and Avatars for Success in Math,” in which we asked students to create avatars of themselves and avatars of what they envisioned successful math identities would look like.  This process elicited some pretty interesting stories about how students viewed themselves in relation to math experts — in some cases, students created ethnic- and gender congruous identities of success, which was fascinating.

I’ll be sharing more about the conference when I return.  This will be my second time to the Netherlands — hopefully everything will be copacetic and a fun trip!

I just got back from the 5th Games for Change Festival in NYC!  About 350 people attended, mainly various non-profit orgs, funding agencies, game companies, and some academics (although far less than I expected).  I took several pages of notes and have audio recordings of some of the better sessions, if anyone’s interested in hearing those.  I felt that it was relatively high quality — thought-provoking, fun, and really useful for my dissertation stuff.

I thought I’d share a quick summary of what happened, some of the interesting points made during the conference, as well as some random thoughts/observations.

Quick summary of what happened:

• Day One: Game Design Fundamentals Workshop.  Included a game brainstorming and design session using very cool Values-at-Play “Grow-a-Game” cards that get people to consider how to design games that include values like equity, diversity, sustainability (I got a deck of these, which I’ll be using in my summer game design class). 
• Day Two: Excellent speakers and presentations, including Jim Gee’s keynote, and sessions by Jim Gasperini, Chris Crawford, and Eric Zimmerman.  Discussions on challenges related to social issue games.  Session on Alternate Reality Gaming, “collective imagination” games, mixed reality/”big urban games.”  Session on using games in the classroom (an awkward moment when speaker disses SimCity and then a member of the audience says, “I worked on SimCity for two years.”)  Microsoft Expo Night and Reception, with demos of XNA games to promote awareness of global climate change.
• Day Three: Sessions on measuring impact, funding-related issues, documentary-based games, nonprofit game designers’ experiences, game industry viewpoints, a session on engaging youth in underserved communities via game creation, and a closing keynote by Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Interesting points:

• Jim Gee observes: We live in a world of complex systems (e.g. global warming, federal deficit, food-to-fuel crisis);  We have to “game” these real-world problems soon.  Games are good for systemic thinking, for developing skills to help you develop creativity, solve complex problems, and see things in new perspectives.
• Games’ greatest strength is not information delivery; it’s more about experiences and how these experiences make you see the world in a new way; preparation for future learning (adaptive expertise?); also, not to teach you everything you need to know about a subject – rather, to spark interest and get you to want to learn more about a subject.
• Educators/designers should leverage the fact that young people are viewing games as convergent packages (e.g. Jenkins’ convergence culture book).  There’s more than just the game; there’s communities, toys, TV, movies, fiction and all sorts of gaps to be filled in (e.g. examples of Pokemon, YuGiOh)
• Eric Zimmerman points out: There are various different approaches/strategies to employing games, including (1) Information delivery (2) simulation (3) design/redesign/modding (4) getting people interested in an educational topic (e.g. using Civ 4, ages of empires, SimCity) (5) games to change behavior in the outside world.
• Games are broader than what many people realize;  They include Facebook apps (basically a social status game), Threadless t-shirt competitions, American Idol, Ebay (basically a social reputation and shocking game), Wikipedia (knowledge wars — people trying to change it, while others are defend it – even an application of Bartle’s 4-part MMO player typology),  etc.
• Right now is a very opportune moment for social issue games – noting the rise of the “socially conscious” movement – people are expecting/desiring “meaningful” games that are “good for you” – as evidenced by Brain Age, WiiFit, etc.

Examples of Games:

• The most memorable game I saw was called “Hush” – a simple rhythm game by a USC student who uses the 1994 Rwandan civil war as a backdrop.  The goal is to try to keep your baby calm by singing a lullaby, lest the Hutu patrol find you and kill you.  Miss the proper timing and your baby cries louder and the soldier comes closer.  Amazing, compelling, powerful game… You can download it here.  So simple, yet very emotionally gripping.
• Lots of other games – some really interesting, some not so much.  Ayiti: The Cost of Life (a game that gets you to make decisions as a poor family in Haiti and weigh tradeoffs concerning health, education, and employment).  ICED (I Can End Deportation) Game (learn the facts about immigration policies and deportation in America).  PosOrNot (consider your assumptions and stereotypes about those with HIV).  Peacemaker (try to solve the Middle East conflict).  Budget Hero ($3.3 Trillion dollars – what do you do with it?  Weigh tradeoffs, and try to manage the federal budget).  Many others…

I could go on about random other thoughts and lots of other stuff I found interesting, but I guess I’ll stop there for now.  More thoughts later..

I’m headed for the 5th Annual Games for Change Festival in New York next week (June 2-4). I’ve heard lots of good things about this conference.  The “only festival dedicated to the exciting new movement using Digital Games for Social Change will explore real-world impact, the latest games, and funding strategies.”  I’m excited for the hands-on workshops and to chance to hear Jim Gee and Henry Jenkins again — I loved their sessions at AERA (also in New York).  Ben Sawyer (Serious Games Initiative), Ian Bogost of Persuasive Games fame and Retired Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court sandra Day O’Connor will also be speaking.  Should be cool.  I’ll write a trip-report later.

A recent Time Magazine article reports the work of Jeremy Bailenson and Nick Yee, both at Stanford University.  It’s a pretty interesting piece that discusses the implications of what Nick Yee elsewhere termed the “Proteus Effect” — that is, how avatars (qualities acquired online and conforming to expected behaviors of the avatar) can change how people behave, at least in the short term.  More attractive avatars led to greater confidence, extraversion, and friendliness to other avatars; taller avatars led to greater aggression in a bargaining task.  This is pretty cool work.  I spent half of last fall at Stanford as a visiting scholar, and it was pretty awesome to hang out in Wallenberg Hall, but I didn’t really get to spend time with Nick and Jeremy or their lab.  It would have been fun to chat with them about Proteus Effect stuff.  Oh well..

Here is the new place for me to blog about stuff in my academic and personal life.  This site is clearly a work in progress, but at least it’s functional for now.  As mother’s day was a couple of days ago, I wanted to give a quick shoutout to my mom for her kindness, strength, and wisdom.  And now, back to the dissertation..