ELSE – IF – THEN

Have read and commented on one book, I’ve tried to keep going in spite of discovering that parenting full time really is a full time job.  I’m reading Synthetic Worlds by Castronova.  So far quite interesting, and again I find reading work by another gamer really influences my reception in interesting ways.  More on that eventually.  :P

I have also been trying to maintain my participation in ClanLord, for a number of reasons.  I love playing, so that’s one.  Of course it’s research, so that’s another.  But perhaps what motivates me most is realizing that I’ve come to have an important role in the community as someone who sometimes formally organizes hunts, but also tends to provoke more spontaneous hunts as well.  In a community as small as Clan Lords, this is important.  My being online sometimes means one or two or even for more people are on to hunt, and once on they may get drown into subsequent hunts and start forming friendships with people they don’t normally join. During times when I’ve been unable to hunt much because of commitments “OOC” –out of character– I sometimes have noticed a drop in the population of more than just my own absence.  I see this when other regular players are away as well.

Some players seem to act as nodes around which hunts arise.  I hadn’t planned to become one of these, but I’m not entirely surprised.  I am often the one that ends up organizing a coffee hour or some other regular set of meetings for people who share some interest or other.  This has got me thinking about the role each player has in the community.  Because the community is small, these are usually quite distinctive roles, as players become established, stronger, and better known by everyone else.

So I’m thinking about that as I read everything else, to see what others make of that aspect as they discuss MMO culture.

While there are quite a few books in the game studies field now, many are highly theoretical, considering whether games can be read as literature, how online games fit into network theory, what games say about human cultures, etc.  There are fewer people writing about games from the perspective of an active and experienced gamer, and focusing on the games themselves.  –I know this might provoke some to say what about X, Y, and Z?

I’ve read Bonnie Nardi’s excellent book on playing WoW and will likely review it here.  I’ve also seen research by Tanja Sihvonen that covered her experience with the Sims and other games.  If there are other similar pieces out there, please tell me!

Anyway, Tresca analyzes role-playing games into 8 types and devotes a chapter to exploring the history or each, as well as looking at how they compare in terms of:

• Fellowship
• Narrative
• Personalization
• Risk
• Roles
• Status

I found this way of organizing the chapters really helpful, because it allows not only for easy comparison between game types, but also let’s me think about the games I know and consider how they would fit into this grid.  For example, in Clan Lord characters face fairly high risk from wandering creatures when out hunting; the spawns in each area vary far more than they seem to in other games. But, CL has no PvP, so you need never worry about pickpockets or player-killers.  So it can be high risk, but I think less stressful.  :-)

Tresca also shares his own experiences with various games to illustrate his discussion.  While some might argue that including individual experience invites criticism that it’s analysis based on anecdote, I found it quite helpful.  Reading these experiences gave me a much clearer idea of the kind of player Tresca is and the kinds of games he prefers and so on. That knowledge makes his analysis easier for me to interpret.  Knowing his extensive background also strengthens his authority, so that if he says something is frustrating, I know he is no newbie gamer getting hung up on something we all deal with, but critiquing something that many players might find tiresome.

If you are interested in Game Studies, or are a fan of role-playing games, I recommend this book.  It provides a valuable comparison of game types and games, and is an interesting read besides.

I finally feel like reading and writing again.  After the stresses of last year, I was seriously burnt out, and ever since have shied away from my research, at least from reading and writing.  I’ve been very absorbed in Clan Lord and some other games, and that’s not without benefit (researchwise) but I was feeling a bit worried about my lack of motivation toward academic production.

Happily, the game studies books I got for Christmas motivated me to read and that is motivating me to write. I do feel that my perspective is much richer now that I’ve been playing CL for almost two years.  Plus my character has become pretty well-respected, which certainly helps my research as well, when it comes to interviewing other players.  And my kids have started playing–2 girls aged 8 and 8.5.  They are really enjoying themselves, and other players are spoiling them rotten sometimes.  :-)  I find playing with them fun, but also frustrating, because they still don’t really listen very well!  But I look forward to how it will all develop.

Now… more reading.

I’m not interrupting much at the moment as I’ve been taking a break.  But still… I oppose SOPA and will blackout my site tomorrow to show it.

And then school ended, and the kids were home! writing went out the window…

I spent the summer visting with friends, relations, and other loved ones, and playing Clan Lord.  I’m still collecting information on that, and learning more and more about both the community and the game itself.

Tomorrow not only is everyone back in school, but we won’t have house guests either.  Maybe I’ll finally be able to put some ideas down in words that mostly make sense!

Than in the last two months, I think.  Just knowing that this job is ending seems to have inspired me.  :-)

I also volunteered to help the GMs (game masters/mistresses) of Clan Lord.  I’d like to make a concrete contribution to the game, and I also want to learn more about games.  We’ll see if they have anything for me to do though.

So… I am leaving my current job, which has been a combination of instructional designer, tech support, web mistress and teacher.  I really enjoyed it at first, but it soon became clear that there was no room for me to be creative, or to experiment, or try to keep up with research–my own or anyone else’s.  Further, I was tied to a desk 8 hours a day–even leaving for lunch was discouraged.  I was away from said desk to teach occasional workshops, which were great, or to attend usually useless meetings in which real discussion rarely occurred.

This is the first time since before I was in grad school that I’ve left a job without another to walk into.  It’s scary, but also kind of exhilarating.  I think I might finally have time to really do some writing, and to learn some programming!  And I can apply to jobs that I might not have seriously considered when the choice was stable, predictable academic job vs. a fun, but risky or “unknown” job. If nothing else, I can get back to my research, and writing, and hopefully publish.  Wish me luck.  :-)

If you study MMOs at all, you may have seen Tom Chatfield’s TED Talk in which he talks about what game designers have learned about what keeps people engaged in a game. He identifies the following:

Now he was talking about how knowing this might help us to deal with other tasks and challenges, and that was very interesting.  But I am also thinking about how Clan Lord does in each of these areas, and it does most of these very well indeed.  Except for progress bars; it doesn’t have any!

As I’ve been doing research on CL, I’ve started interviewing players about what keeps them coming back, and in some cases, what has brought them back after being away for months or years.  In every single case so far (about 20 people to date) they cite the community as the strongest motivator. That seems in line with Chatfield’s last point, but it’s not just that they have friends in CL.  Many players specify that the community is mature and supportive. Though a wide range of ages is represented, the community as a whole is quite mature.  Griefing is minimal and when it occurs, other community members address it. Though the forums show the usual flamewars, the gameworld itself remains remarkably free of such conflict.

In terms of support, players are generally very helpful to each other.  Because the community is small and everyone is motivated to keep the population up and growing, most players will go out of their way to help newbies get started, supplying not only information, but donating gear, and taking them out to hunt or rescuing them if they get into trouble.  Even as players advance though, others will support them in achieving goals such as qualifying for a subclass, acquiring higher level gear, completing quests, and so on.  This has been designed into the game in the way that these goals really cannot be completed alone.  As everyone knows that they will sometimes need help themselves, they have good reason to help others. Doing so though, players often realize that helping this way is satisfying in itself.

As my character works on goals, I find myself intensely grateful that the game is designed this way, or Eirian would be sunk!

So I had been accepted to speak at a conference in Amsterdam earlier this month and I had really looked forward to being over there again.  Unfortunately, it became clear in early February that this was not going to be possible, given our budget, our financial burdens, and the total lack of travel funding, not to mention possible job and pay cuts next year because of California’s ballooning deficit. SO I withdrew from the conference.  –And no, they had no options for virtual participation.  I checked.

Disheartening to say the least.

But I’m stubborn, so I have turned my attention to conferences closer to home; I’ll try to present that paper next year at a conference on the West Coast, and submit a related one for a conference in the NL in the fall, saving up for that travel. (still iffy but you never know).  I’m also sending at least one paper based on my MMO research straight to a collection of essays later in the year (if the abstract is accepted). I don’t have to travel at all for that.

I don’t mind so much having to pay my own way, but if you work at a job that doesn’t see your research as part of the job, so that you have to do it outside work hours, and you have to keep that job in the hopes of paying for travel for that research… and when I say you, I actually mean me… well, I have to wonder how hard I’m willing  to struggle.  How much time to write and do the research can I take away from my friends and family on top of that 40 hours a week that I’m at work?

We’ll see…

For awhile I was writing here, and on my abstract, and I was not writing so much as my character.  Eventually I started to feel a kind of pressure as that blog fell further behind my in character life.  I started to feel that I wanted to write about what was happening to me in the game currently, but that if I skipped over too much, it wouldn’t really make sense. So I’ve tried to catch up over there, and thus have neglected writing here.

But now it’s time to catch up over here.  :-)

My character finally reached a benchmark I had been aiming to hit before making further choices about what to do with her.  Since I’ve not had too much time to actually play since September, it seemed like this period had just stretched on and on.  And finally I finished, and was faced with those choices. Clan Lord differs from other MMOs in the way characters tend to become more distinct as they develop, because each choice closes off other options. In many games, as players gain ranks or levels, they become more similar–very powerful in basically the same way.

In Clan Lord on the other hand, every choice makes you stronger in some ways, but weaker in others, and there’s no one best solution for every one, no perfect build.  Instead, you have to try to imagine how you will most enjoy playing in the future and aim to make that possible. This can lead to some counter-intuitive choices. Even if what you want to be the most powerful fighter, do you want to be the most resistant to creatures attacking?  The deadliest when hunting them? Able to keep swinging against numerous weaker creatures or able to take down a stronger one with one blow, but then not being able to swing again right away?

Healers face a similar dilemma.  Further, no matter what you choose, if you grind through the leveling process quickly, you can end up stuck in another way.  Unlike most MMOs, Clan Lord has no level cap.  Players can get stronger and stronger and stronger.  But as they do, they must hunt harder and harder creatures in order to keep gaining ranks and climbing the levels. Natural attrition over the years makes the number of players at the top fairly small, so there are not many people with whom they can play without getting a bit bored, if their main goal is a challenging hunt. Further, game developers themselves have trouble keeping up, creating new and harder areas and creatures to challenge these juggernauts.

Anyway, I decided to first get some more ranks in the skill that lets you skin the furry creatures you hunt, so I can actually make some money.  :-)

I got those to a useful level in about two weeks, so now I’m getting some more in pathfinding.  Some areas of the game can’t be entered unless you have enough ranks as a pathfinder and while I don’t know how far I’ll go with this in the end, for now I want just a few more. Then I’ll go back to fighter skills.  On the one hand, it’s great to see visible results from the ranks for skinning, on the other hand, it’s frustrating to know I’m earning ranks but not have my fighting improve.  I’m not gunning to hit top levels at record speed, but it would be nice to be able to go harder places, because somehow I’ve ended up closest to some players who are pretty advanced.

I feel this post is drifting into the voice of my character a bit, but maybe that’s ok.  My aim is to try and give a sense of the complexity of some decisions–and I haven’t even gotten into the different choices there are to make about fighting skills alone. These choices avoid being overwhelming because they are presented gradually, and because leveling up is rather slow, especially as you get stronger, players have time to consider and to seek advice.  Discussions of these choices and their costs and benefits make a significant part of conversation both in the game and in the discussion boards.

Interestingly, while some people focus only on what path will allow them to advance most quickly, many, even those who are not explicitly role-playing, will make choices that are consistent with some larger vision they have of a character, often related to the race of the character, the professions, and so on.  In my own case, I made no effort to play my character as different than myself, but she seems to be evolving into her own personality, distinct from my own, though still recognizable to me.  Though some players have told me they don’t feel too attached to their characters because they don’t play them as themselves, I’m starting to to wonder if I might not become even more attached because she is different.

So much to ponder…    For those who want to follow her adventures, you can visit Eirian’s blog.