Rationalization and Instrumentality in Play - Characters that don't feel "real"

The topic of rationalization and instrumentality in play is a particularly interesting topic to me, but only because I shy away from achievement systems myself. I am also not sure I understand the motivations of other players when they head straight into the “XLMMO”, the concept Mikael Jacobsson applies as a gateway to understanding what in the world is going on here in “The Achievement Machine”.

My WoW achievement sheet. Click to evaluate!

I remember a WoW player who once explained that she found the decision to change her main to her alt a very hard one to carry out. Not because it had ramifications for her spot in the raid or similar, but because the alt, the secondary character, didn’t feel as “real” until they have achievement points, pets, and mounts. She had been playing WoW before the achievement system was implemented, and now she was hooked and could barely explain why.

A dev version of Modelviewer being buggy.

I am nothing like this. When they announced they were going to add achievements to WoW, the most effort I put into my reaction was perhaps raising an eyebrow. Did these achievement-points act as a currency? Could you purchase nice stuff with these points? If not - meh!

Nope, you just accumulated them and they were, of course, on display (A small portion of them, however, did earn you stuff - titles, pets and mounts being the most notable, but these are few). 

Was this something I needed to work on too? How much of significance would this strange system have? 

Later I earned achievements, but never on purpose, I just randomly earned them out and about, except for the times I was unfortunate enough to be grouped with a guild member(s) who were very fond of them, and I would have to endure strange and elaborate tactics to fulfill an achievement that to me sounded like a bad joke. Of course to the achievement-player, these are not just extra challenges, they are more than that!

But I’ve seen the light, I understand better now, in a rational way (ironically), but not in an experiental way, I don’t know how it feels to be compelled to do them. But Jacobsson found a way to analyze achievements through the MMO terminology: 

“When we look at achievements as parts of the XLMMO, we see that they are more than just rewards.[…] The gamerscore can be compared to experience points, games become quest lines, and the gamertag is the character name.”

I now understand the WoW player with the mysterious and, to herself even, inexplicable sense of an unfinished and unreal alt that was to become her main. 

In the XLMMO, a character, regardless of whether its actual level is 85, has not really leveled that much. It needs more leveling, more experience in this meta system, before it can gain the appropriate status of a “real” main. And this player's meta system even included collections - both pets and mounts. I am telling all the non-WoW players, that completing such collections inevitably will be both very expensive in gold, time and patience.

Jacobsson explains (amongst other things - also my attitude): 

“The different strategies and ways of conceptualizing the system shows how players have appropriated the technology and socially reconstructed it to fit their gaming pleasures, while at the same time, many players remain deeply conflicted over these gaming habits and feel trapped in a deterministic system dictating to them what to do.” 

Besides Jacobsson and I at first having our confusion and curiosity in common, I think me and the achievement-WoW-player also have a lot more in common than we think: one of us has signed out the other signed in, but both can sometimes feel trapped by a system whose ability to be forceful traps us both.

As a final note, I find the expression that the character doesn’t feel “real” to be very interesting. Why the word “real”? It's a big word. What does this mean?

Well, it’s not like the feeling of “realness” doesn’t apply to me, I find the word “connection” to encompass more of the relationship I have with my characters/avatars. I tend to connect with my characters very quickly, and sometimes my sense of competence through the character is what makes it real. I can get a very tangible sense of a character at the level of 5 to be very real and with huge potential, despite the fact this character, in both the MMO and the XLMMO is far far from “experienced”. 

Could there perhaps be a relation between embodiment and achievements, at least for some?

Gender and Gaming II - Initial Social Access Points Coming to a Place Near You!

The session on Gender and gaming this week dealt with three texts in particular:

•    Yee, “Maps of Digital Desire”

•    Lin, “Body, Space, and Gendered Gaming Experiences”

•    Jenkins, “Complete Freedom of Movement”

In game deterrents and barriers

We wanted to play this video in class, but ran out of time. It's a machinima produced by WoW players and can thus be seen as a humorous response to how female players are sometimes treated in WoW (confer both Yee and Lin).

The video brings forward the double edged sword that female players are sometimes confronted with. I find the video funny, but I also consider it a criticism. It wouldn't be funny if it wasn't referring to a pattern and then reversed to expose the ridiculousness of female players acting this way. I'm seeing a message in this video that, besides the giggles, the viewer is meant to take away from this.

On one hand, female players/avatars are sometimes met with a differentiated treatment, where they are regarded helpless and in need of protection (i.e. from a male player). Other times female players are treated more generously, help is easier attained and players can be more forgiving if a female player makes a mistake.

There is another side to this coin, where forgiveness is replaced by distrust in the female player’s skills and abilities to play well. It can be disheartening to be treated as an inferior player, suspected of not being able to fully perform to the standards of male players. 

For more on this, consider reading Esther MacCallum-Stewart's article Real Boys Carry Girly Epics: Normalising Gender Bending in Online Games (2008).

I think the video displays many of these points, both the positive of getting the offer of free materials for a new item, but also the negative. For example when Jesse leaves, one of the women says she wouldn't have liked to carry him through the dungeon and outperforming him anyways.

I also see this video as an example of a deterrent that is operating within the game. So the female player may have made it as far as to actually play, but can find the tag "female" occasionally creating problems.

I've had a few experiences with this myself, but most of the time, being female has not been an issue.

I'm wondering though, in relation to the video, does male players meet any barriers in game? In what way would these barriers intersect with fx age, sexuality, race etc? And how are these different from the barriers girls and women meet?
(Maybe I'm reaching too far into next session's theme..)


Out of game deterrents and barriers

In line with Lin's study on gendered gaming experiences and how they are physically structured around the home, cybercafés and dormitories, this is an example of a larger roadblock, still cultural, but also in the more serious category.

Quoting from Kotaku in Well, That’s One Way to Combat Misogyny in Gaming:

Enthusiasts of military-style first-person shooters are not well known for their progressive thoughts on the matter of gender. The organizers of a large LAN party in Texas, scheduled to celebrate the launch of Battlefield 3, have decided the best way to deal with any slurs hurled at female gamers is to simply forbid them from attending.

"Nothing ruins a good LAN party like uncomfortable guests or lots of tension, both of which can result from mixing immature, misogynistic male-gamers with female counterparts," the organizers originally wrote in an event FAQ. "Though we've done our best to avoid these situations in years past, we've certainly had our share of problems. As a result, we no longer allow women to attend this event.

This paragraph has since been removed, as the stink over the exclusion went viral, and replaced with: "This event is a 'gentlemen's retreat'; as such we do not allow women to attend."

This is an obvious barrier, they simply will not let you in. Comparing to Lin's example with cybercafés that culturally was considered dangerous and inappropriate for females, where also the interior layout of the cybercafés acted as a hindrance, here they have tried to solve this problem by segregating the genders and creating a pure male space (notice what they are wanting to evoke by the phrase "gentleman's retreat").

So far, using these two examples, I've painted a pretty grim picture, it sounds like female players are barely wanted in these games by the male majorities and if they get in, their role is clearly marked.

However!

Initial Social Access Points coming to a place near you!

This link was shared on Facebook a few days ago, it's from the Diablo 3 forum and titled How to prepare your girlfriend/wife for diablo III. The problem is: These players are excited about Diablo 3, they know they will spend substantial time when this game comes out and they are already thinking about how to deal with some potential future conflicts now:

"What I mean by prepare is that... You prepare her mentally for all the hours you WONT spend with her and all those hours you will spend with Diablo 3. "

The author ends his post by saying "leave some tips!"

I've seen this dilemma presented on other game boards as well, and this thread looks like a standard "how to deal with girlfriend/wife & gaming" case. What I want to highlight here, is that one of the bits of advice usually given, is expressed as the best case scenario:

"4) Try to convert them to games (best option). Maybe you will even play together?"

And later by another commenter:

"I feel sorry for you guys. You should try to find a grl that loves games :)"

Having/finding a gamer girlfriend is again by a third commenter framed as optimal, this guy considers himself lucky!:

"Guys i gotta tell you,i must be one of the lucky guys :))

My girlfriend,age 22,hardened WoW player,W3 player,and other tons of games,liked D2,and D3 got her quite excited,she`s always asking about that beta key :-<"
                               

We're clearly watching the "initial social access points" in the making as Yee talked about. Notice how forthcoming the guys are in this process, the male players are actively seeking to involve their female aquaintances, here romantic partners, or at least this is the advice given.

When I read this thread, I couldn't help but to also find it endearing. While looking at the negatives on this topic, the previous examples given, this does not give the impression of male gamers aggressively defending their turf, setting up a "do not enter if has boobs" sign as with the Battlefield 3 LAN.

I'm curious about the access points for female players in Battlefield 3, is this not a game that inspires the male players to invite their girlfriends/wives?
Would Battlefield 3 also be able to cultivate a "girlfriend-effect" or why does this game seem to move in the opposite direction?
Is the "girlfriend-effect" an MMO phenomenon only?
And how about expanding the "girlfriend-effect" to also include female players recruiting their female friends? Personally I'd love to have a bigger female player network at my disposal! 

And last but not least, bikini plate!

Here's an example of bikini plate from WoW. Should I add, the gear is the same, it just looks different depending on the avatar body.

.

Note: I accidentally misrepresented the avatar sizes, the female avatar is (of course) shorter than the male.

Embodied and Material Play - The Cyborg

"Control Life" by Mads Peitersen

The class on Embodied and Material Play focused on aspects of the interaction between users and technology. I found the whole topic to be really complex, difficult to understand and most of the time complete science fiction, at least the discussions we had in class. It turns out some of it isn't even fiction.

Isaac asks on his blog forest temple: "Although one may be more “body-natural” than the other, is there one that is more “mind-natural” than the other one?" So I'm going to use this third case I found.

Meet Professor Kevin Warwick, the world's first cyborg.

Warwick is a cybernetics professor at Reading University (UK). The chip he's holding in the image to the right is a small transmitter which he had operated into his arm. It identifies him to the building and his computer, it opens doors and switches on lights. It sounds pretty simple and harmless, but it would be similar to having the yellow CPR card implanted into you.

He later went a step further and had a tiny little thing operated into his central nervous system, which enables him to connect with a computer using basically his brain signals. Further he speaks about extending the human senses to also experience ultra-sonic using these small inserted devices and having him and his wife's nervous systems communicating.

The video below shows Warwick speaking about the experiments and what he envisions for the future. He sure doesn't sound like your stereotypical English professor (I dare say!) but I believe he is the voice turning science fiction into science.

So what is Warwick doing? Is he at the machine? In the machine? Is he the machine?

It sounds like he thinks of the body itself as a machine, able to be modified, upgraded and configured to become more than it biologically was made to be. The two share an electrical language and the computer is just a tool - patching is the new word for school (...that rhymed).

Dovey & Kennedy talks about the cyborgian relationship between the player and game, they are interdependent, irreducible and inseparate. SixthSense and Kinect with their "old-fashioned" insistence of flapping arms enforces a physical mirroring of an avatar, but what happens to embodiment when the controller is gone, the physical mimicry is gone and the player controls the avatar by thought alone? Is this the closest we can get to downplaying the situated body and enhancing the embodied player or are we losing out by trying to erase the body from this interaction?

Where does Warwick place himself in relation to the machine? Is he displaying complete mastery by utilizing it and bending the strength of the computer to his will? There is no longer any period of time where you have to tolerate the clumsiness of learning to handle a new controller. Is he an equal to a computer, as his body is basically a computer too? Or is he subjugated, plugging into the master, thankful for being granted access to the building where he works?

Admittedly, Warwick seems to be spending a lot of time in front of a computer when engaged in his experiments, it doesn't quite look as shiny and transparent (yet) as the SixthSense "future vision" video below.

Warwick also speaks about moving away from being human ("a subspecies") and becoming a cyborg. He frames it as a movement that can be excluding to those not initiated, something we are already seeing with our present technology.

Finally, while thinking of Bart Simon and case modding aesthetics, Warwick seems to be moving towards the indistinguishable cyborg, the machine is hidden as it's operated into the body covered by the skin. However, will case modding in Warwicks version of the future perhaps move on to the body itself, a type of body art or fashion statement?

The science fiction characters did it!

The cool people are already totally doing it pretending to do it.