live from GLS
2006 Games + Learning + Society Conference: 9 AM session: Are You Experienced?*
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Presentation #1: Cognition and video games. Experienced video game players are better at new-to-them video games than novice video game players because they have already developed basic schema** for understanding and navigating games.
I’ve always thought this is why I’m relatively good with computers as compared to many members of my peer group who only really started using them in junior high or high school. I don’t know how long it takes to form such schema, but it probably helps to be young when you’re doing it, as with language skills. We got our first PC when I was about six, and so I’ve had a basic sense of what to look for in software, and what questions to ask if I don’t know what to do, since then.
Given that I never played a lot of combat-oriented/finely controlled video games, though, I’m still not sure why I don’t have the trouble with, say, stairs in CoH that plagued my father’s attempts at it.
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Presentation #2: Developing expertise in World of Warcraft (more notes, this is the one I really wanted to see). This male presenter plays a level 60 female Night Elf. Color me unsurprised. (Also pink leopard print. Business casual my way, folks.) World of Warcraft is particularly known in the field for being better designed for n00bs.
Funny Penny Arcade example: “Quests are when people tell you to do things they are too lazy to do themselves.”
Presenter won’t actually play off-color WoW “The Internet is for Porn” video. Boo.
Experts solve problems quickly, but spend more time analyzing the task beforehand (this is why I am still pretty good at chess–for a first grader). Experts are strong self-monitors.*** They possess extensive and highly integrated bodies of domain knowledge. Some of this they get from outside sources: forums, websites, etc. Travis is much better about this for CoH than I am, which is why he is a badge whore and I am inevitably surprised when I suddenly get a badge in almost any situation.
Snowball sample from presenter’s guild; 39-item Likert scale questionnaire administered to 48 experienced gamers. 40 male players, 8 female players. Primary characters: 28 male, 20 female. (Question: any gender-swapping female players? Probably not, or maybe one.) 2/3 of respondents between 18 and 25 (female players older?). Almost everyone says they “understand own character’s role”–I got yelled at once for being a bad blaster, when I’d been playing CoH for a month or so. Failure is feedback. Social enforcement is probably particularly strong for healer class characters, I bet.
Random thought: I should make a controller and actually play her. Maybe I’ll rebuild Marie LeVeau. Although I did respec Achryn and get rid of “taunt.” Yeah, that was a useful power for a controller.
Experienced players in this presenter’s sample tend to talk to guildmates and NOT non-guildmates, but then again, these are people who are in his guild and value the association enough to answer his survey questions. Expert solo players probably systematically differ from guild-oriented players–and might be more likely to use commercial strategy guides that guild players avoid, although then again, they’re probably still computer savvy enough to find all the free material available online. –He says he’s doing a larger survey now; what does the sample look like?
I should just dissolve Andromeda’s super group and join Granny’s Irregulars with her. They’ve already got a base.
No news: you need to play a game a lot, and consistently, to maintain expertise and, relatedly, in-game standing.
Presenter’s website: http://www.peegee.net
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Presentation #3: Games as a starting point for general IT expertise. “Islands of expertise”: topics in which children have an interest and develop a deep knowledge of, e.g. dinosaurs. (I loved dinosaurs. I once castigated another small child for mispronouncing “diplodocus.”) Expert communities are those which are continuously changed by individual knowledge gains and attainment.
God, it’s 10 am and I need coffee like heroin. I mean, I don’t need heroin. But I sure as hell need coffee. I need it bad.
Why does everyone at this conference keep remarking about how their research participants**** are “not your typical computer geek”? It’s a freaking GAMING CONFERENCE. I think we all recognize the inadequacy of “your typical computer geek” as a concept.
This guy does Nintendo fansites. Man, I need an emulator for this laptop. I want to play Super Mario 3.
Another guy, who runs a fan fic/fan art site for Legend of Zelda. Remember the cartoon? I used to love that. He uses Terragen… I think I vaguely remember trying to use this once, but I cannot remember why. Anyway, he is now doing commissioned work for money and devoting little time to fan production. You know, older fen frequently complain about the volume of execrable Harry Potter slash produced by 13-year-olds, but as long as 13-year-olds have large quantities of leisure time, they’re always going to lead production.
So game use/fan production in particular can lead to multiple and integrated tech applications. Where are the girls? Well, they’re not writing fan fic about Legend of Zelda,***** but they’re certainly IN fan communities… But are female-dominated fan communities less tech-oriented? Certainly fan fic does not have a high skill threshhold; the people who use PhotoShop even seem to garner pretty high standing in the community thereby. But there are whole icon-making communities on LJ and whatnot.
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Constance’s summary slide for the session:
- Theoretical Models of Expertise
- Domain Knowledge
- Set of Practices/Tactics
- Outcome/Product oriented
- A Trajectory (progressive problem-solving)
- Expert subcultures
- Methods
- Prompted Recall
- Self-Report/Survey (of guild)
- Strategic Case Studies
- Next Steps, etc.
- Tie research to design
- Bearing back on theory?
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*My little joke. Not actual session title.
**Note to self: Read up on self-organizing schema for prelim.
***Note to self: Read up on self-monitoring for prelim.
****For the love of god, remember to never, EVER say “research subject” on the prelim.+
*****I knew a guy in high school who wrote a Legend of Zelda screenplay.
+Last night I had a dream that it was time for the prelim and I hadn’t done any more reading or made any notes or anything. I kept waking up and realizing it was a dream and sternly instructing myself that I did not have to take a dream prelim for which I was totally unprepared, and then I would drift back off and it would start all over again.
June 16th, 2006 at 10:46 am
I’d be interested to know the size of the WoW presenter’s guild, which I think is more important as far as far as communication outside of the guild than expertise. Out of all my guildmates, our lvl. 60 characters are far more likely to have in-game relationships with non-guildies, but our guild is SMALL. (We have ~50 characters, but perhaps 7 warm bodies who play regularly out of perhaps 11 total. Maybe more, I dunno. Guild is mainly composed of Michael’s ex-army buddies so deployment makes counting hard.) And to be at all successful in the endgame portions of WoW we have to make connections with other guilds because we can’t run a 40 man (or hell, a 20 man) raid ourselves. I’d be interested in actual statistics, but my gut instinct is that the majority of guilds who make it to the endgame have this problem.
Also, I’m wondering about the extent to which it’s possible to have an ‘expert soloing character’ past about level 45-50. At least in WoW solo non-dungeon quests pretty much dry up at that point so you’ve got to switch your expertise.
Okay, that’s all for now. I’m bored to DEATH, however, so I’ll be here all day sharing the pain.
June 16th, 2006 at 11:37 am
I’m curious as to how you were a bad blaster. Was any specific criticism given?
June 16th, 2006 at 11:41 am
It was a tank, bitching at me for not waiting for him to do his job of drawing aggro. It wasn’t until some time after this, however, that I actually learned to target THROUGH the team tank and avoid aggro even better.