Else-If-Then

Author: Kim

  • When Players become the Story

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    Clan Lord differs from other MMOs in many ways; one of the most basic is longevity.  The game has been running since it was released in 1999 And there are a number of players who have participated since the beginning.  This longevity suggests that there must be some unique features, and there are — but…

  • Designing Cooperation

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    I said I’d have more to say… So here are some ways Clan Lord pretty well forces people to cooperate: The display is looking down from above, rather than heads up, and you can’t “run through” other players and most objects, so coordinating movement during a fight or hunt becomes a priority and requires agreement.…

  • Games and Community

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    So I’ve been playing my first MMORPG ever, and surprise, have gotten a little addicted. But this one differs from most in being designed to require cooperation; it’s very difficult to play alone, and not as much fun.  The game is Clan Lord, by Delta Tao; the first ever MMORPG designed for Macs. It first…

  • Teaching with Blogs

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    There are many reasons I use blogs for teaching and encourage others to use them as well. I’ll elaborate further soon, but here is a prezi I’m using for a talk tomorrow: Why Blog? on Prezi I also made a pdf version; I’ll need to adjust the scale of some titles or make slightly different…

  • So…

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    The Semester has been busy.  My three classes are going ok, and I participated in two conferences.  One was the RSA Security conference, which I mentioned earlier, and that went well.  I’m hoping they post video soon. I also was on the agenda for CCCC 2010, but since travel funding has been cut, I instead…

  • Upcoming Conferences

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    I have two conferences in the next few weeks, the RSA Security conference, in San Francisco, and CCCC, in Louisville, KY.  I’m not actually going in person to CCCC, because again, can’t afford to travel…no travel funding from my school for anyone this year…  Ideally I’ll video-skype in and talk over my slides that I’ll…

  • Fun With Cloud Hosting and WordPress

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    I’ve just switched from a regular hosting plan on one server to cloud hosting, which should make my sites much more stable.  Unfortunately I did not back everything up exactly right and have spent days sorting out my databases and WP installations.  For some reason, though everything else seems right, the theme I was using…

  • Teaching loads and research.

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    Research came grinding to a halt this fall because not only did I have more classes, they were also all over-enrolled and my teaching assignment changed two weeks before classes started when my university laid off most of the adjunct faculty and cancelled a bunch of courses.  Thank you ongoing state budget crisis. This month…

  • Cyborg and Techno Anxiety

    —

    by

    Kim
    in

    I meet a lot of people who are very anxious about and suspicious of technology.  I was going to write a whole post about this, but I recently found a great historical survey of techno anxiety.  Right here. The funny thing is, just as each technology has led to fear over intellectual property issues, they…

  • Also forgot MLA… New Media Divergence: The Problem of a Fragmented Disciplinary Discourse

    —

    by

    Kim
    in , ,

    I spoke at MLA last December about what I feel is problem in current academic discourse about new media: The impact of new media on our society, and on the humanities in particular, has been widely recognized and researched, yet many faculty in the humanities seem to resist considering formal qualities of new media texts…