And there are huge gaps in what we don't know. Where is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Would like to experience wonderful life in MMORPG, here you need to buy some World of Warcraft Gold are on hot sale on all servers, especially on American servers. You can Buy FFXI Gil from us, a professional, loyal and reliable SWG Credits exchange corporation work group.Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from it. I hope the audience did as well.
After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know. Where is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from it. I hope the audience did as well.
But overall, I like to think that the attendance demonstrates that developers are interested in what academics might be able to tell them (again I will point out: no fruit was thrown). And all week, I talked with developers who were interested in what was going on with research, from the smallest to the largest companies. Maybe the issue is the "larger" community. It's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that level. But I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going on. I don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to be. But then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet.
After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us. It was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations.
State of Play II kicks off today. Most of us will be in transit today, but we'll soon be covering events in this space -- stay tuned. Is the success of City of Heroes due to a nearly flawless launch? Maybe, but you could just as easily argue that the game's success is due to genre, to satisfying a particular market niche (simplified combat-centric MMOG), or due to the luck of good timing (launching in an open window when there was little else available to MMOG players looking for the next new thing). Would CoH have failed or underperformed if it had been horribly buggy or unstable? On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere. It is how most of us conceptualize a simulation.
The most obvious is the time players spend in groups. In the early stages of the game (level 40 and below), it hovers at around 30%. Even if we assume players spend a fair amount of time crafting, selling goods on the auction house, etc., it is hard to see these activities accounting for 70% of the time spent in-game. It is only at level 56 and above that players spend the majority of their time in groups (probably raiding high-end instances). Moreover, players favor "soloable" classes (warriors, hunters) that, by design, survive mob encounters better in solo play - the more social classes (e.g. priests) that require a group to work well are among the least favored.
More importantly, guilds are also very sparse social networks. Our analyses indicate that the average guild member in WoW spends little time with a large majority of his/her guildmates. Over a month, the average guild member is online 20 minutes or less with 80% of his/her guildmates.
In the caverns are one hundred orcs, initially spread evenly over each distinct cavern-room and remaining within the cavern to which they are initially designed. Each cavern-room is roughly circular, ten hexes in diameter. I suspect that the difference here comes down to one's view of embodiment, the avatar-as-self, and the distinction between game worlds and social worlds. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us. It was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations.
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