Passively Multiplayer Online Prototypes - Justin Hall

if the game is good enough, it's teaching you to be in that space and you don't even know you've gone through the tutorial
wants to merge the web and gaming yesterday
pmog - http://bbc.bud.com/
audited what sites people looked at
Firefox extension with optional sidebar that tracks where you're surfing
rewards you for looking at "better" sites (non-tabloids, Arts & Letters Daily, etc.)
prompts you to surf better places
level 5 - MySpace, Archive.org, BoingBoing (internet culture)
level 10 - Bloglines, del.icio.us, digg (tools to help you)
level 15 - Technorati, w3.org, Creative Commons (ethics)
at this point, your profile is public and it's a point of pride
- it's a D&D character sheet (skills, traits, etc.)
can see the levels of your play in real-time
includes text-based chat
every time player hits a top-level domain, they get one data point
have to surf broadly to be "wealthy"
with enough data points, you can buy tools to playfully annotate the web
can buy a mine to drop on a website - it exploded when Justin landed on the site because he visited it afterwards
his fiance mined their private wedding wiki, anticipating where he would go

battle of order and chaos between people who want to distract you and people who want to help you
the more you use the minds of the distractors, the more you help them
they have 141 quests to find specific things
museum consultant who read about the game and now creates quests based on her research
- eg, make your own internet art, big blue marble, yummy food that's good for the world, solutions to giant construction problems, fun with tesla coils
each time you finish one of her quests, you get a badge saying you know how to solve giant construction problems, etc.

looking to layer and embed play across the web
why don't I get points just for hanging out on my computer?
all you have to do is surf, but you then decide when you want to drop in and redeem the points

people can embed items using microformats on your site
treasure that can be unearthed in your website
internet as landscape with shiny things you can pick up and use

letting players tag sites
"our tagging system also has to let users delete tags"
creates an implicit struggle to help people find stuff and make it difficult
can delete tags for good or bad

sees this kind of merging of ordinary online communications and video games happening all around us - he likes it

web + video games
- "game neverending," "sheet of paper"
kind of like a critical theory MMO
such a good system for relating objects to each other that it became Flickr
- live.xbox.com friends list
lightweight social surveillance
connected scoreboard that lets you peer into your friend's living room
tells you friend is "watching a movie" but not which one
- edison thomaz
built a system that watched what you did and posted it to the internet
Slifeshare; if you're young enough, this would make sense
"myware" - software that you agree to run for yourself, harvest your own data about you; gives you a sense over time of what kind of computer you are
- medium Firefox sidebar
another real-time presence indicator
chat based on the URL you are at
sense of wanting co-presence
- attent with Serios
take MMO dynamics and apply them to the enterprise
venture-funded company
each email you send, you attach a currency to it; the amount you attach weights it
when someone opens it, they earn that currency
MMO emailing that earns you badges
when you read someone's email, you can see their level
"bunching" - adds up all parts of your day that are at least 15 minutes separate from your last email activity; helps you avoid letting email interrupt your work
if you chart email correspondence, you see hierarchy transgressions
- askville from amazon
search engine of questions and answers
threw in some MMO dynamics with web search
earn experience points - cost to learn, learn actions ("learn power")
spend coins at super power shop
reward participation in popular culture
- Gaia
- pixel joint
by participating, you earn points and pick your levels

these types of passive MMO games are everywhere, big and professional and small and amateur

what if you just started giving kids points for doing things in school
sounds capitalist, but what if?

nike has added digital pedometer to shoes that hooks up to your iPod Nano
Dennis Crowley thinking about games that carry you through a city based on shoes and walking

"itty bitty RPG" - embedding MMO elements in web pages

play the BBC game at http://www.bud.com/
--

The EcoRaft Project: From Research Prototype to Robust Exhibit — Bill Tomlinson

started as an interactive museum exhibit at first GLS Conference in 2005
content domain - restoration ecology

core ecological premises:
- species interdependencies
- source of biodiversity
- conservation
- cooperation

built these four themes into the project

miscues:
- dropping the tabelts (happened once)
- using the button as a mouse
- poking the big screens
- superstitious behavior
- misplacing/stealing the tablets

the math of breakage:
3000 people = 1 drop (real)
2 drops = 1 breakage (projected)
1 breakage = $2000
270,000 people = $90,000
not feasible for science museums

challenges of large-scale deployment:
- no presenter
- minimal instructions
- wide range of expectations
- wide range of interactional styles
- robustness
--
The Development of Distributed Expertise Across Physical & Virtual Worlds in a Tween Gaming Club — Deborah Fields & Yasmin Kafai

had an afterschool club of 20 kids playing on Whyville, almost all of whom were new to the site
tracked who gained expertise, how, etc.

problem of separation of worlds & methods in research (physical & virtual)
two areas of research in virtual worlds:
- online/virtual gaming communities (Steinkuehler, Taylor, Turkle, Yee...)
- offline/physical gaming spaces (Swalwell, Beavis, Nixon, & Atkinson; Jansz & Martens, Laegren & Stewart)

different methodologies:
- ethnographies, qualitative
- surveys, quantitative

how can we study learning in these merging social world?

http://whyville.net/
mini science games that earn you points to buy face parts to let you look good, which is how you socialize with people
overall goal is socializing with friends
- 2.1 million registered players
- 20,000 daily players
- 68% girls
- 12.3 years
- 40 minutes per session

Ymail - message center
hanging out is the thing to do, even in an exclusive, limited edition car
can drive around whyville or make it a private chat space
popular place to hang out is the beach

the after school club:
- 1 hour after school, M-R
- 3 months duration
- 4th-6th graders
- 12-20 kids clustered around 10 computers
- loud laughter, physical interaction, collaboration, throwing projectiles at each other in whyville

ways to be "in the know" in whyville
- looking good (avatars)
- knowing where to go (teleporting); certain places only a few people know about
- making money (cheating)
- socializing

trajectories of learning:
one 'piece of knowing' to rule them all
one 'piece' to bind them
one 'piece' to bring them near
and in the darkness FIND them

data they have:
- 2 videos per day
- field notes
- interviews
- tracking data (every "click")
- chat/whisper data
- hundreds of hours on whyville

methods: connective ethnography
video & field notes (qualitative) --> chat data (quantitative) --> chat data (qualitative --> video & field notes (qualitative) --> interviews (qualitative)
all while playing on whyville themselves to understand it all

throwing projectiles in whyville
different uses for different projectiles
"cause you don't like them"
also throw them at friends for fun
can also throw in a direction instead of at someone
throws at random people
who learns to throw first and how often?

socio-cultural factors that impact participation
- proximity
- community events ("the incident")

the kids preferred learning from a friend in the club
then they would supplement that with learning from someone on whyville
would experiment with trial and error

where boundaries are created socially
the throwing incident crossed insider & outsider knowledge
social "closeness" (touching in a firtual world)

everything whyville - http://kafai-whyville.blogspot.com/
--
erica halverson, respondent

researching fantasy baseball, which is the kind of gaming she does
doesn't consider herself a MMO gamer
new players appreciate the diversity, by which they meant the multiple ways to get into playing the game (through liking baseball, through being a gamer, etc.), which is more diverse than the MMO gaming world

loved justin's presentation and that you can get points just for being yourself
whyville offering live spaces that merge live social interaction with a social gamer structure
both offer multiple paths into gaming, multiple ways into game worlds
which offers entrance into museum gaming space

as we move into gaming in education, need to recognize multiple ways to enter the games

relationship between identity and learning, particularly as its taken up in literacy
for her, identity is about exploring the way you see yourself, the way others view you, and where you fit in
each of these presentations fit in this notion of identity
----
question about privacy and tracking users' web surfing - how handle that?
justin: we take the URL, attach meaning to it (mines, etc.), and then we ditch it so we can't be subpoenaed

how sophisticated is the Eco Raft project? simulated articial life?
bill: intentionally not an accurate simulation, but hopefully it helps them understand the ecosystem and they can pursue accurate simulations afterwards

how is bullying behavior being handled in whyville?
deborah: it does happen, but can earn high ranking roles that have status; newbie-bashing does happen

do you see transformative effects from participation in these games/sites?
deborah: in interviews with club members, they note having a bank account and managing your currency; exciting field to make friends; all of the face parts on whyville are designed by the kids themselves; by choosing those displays, you draw people to you based on interests
bill: in 5-7 minutes, they have a lot less time to measure this, but they are interested in exploring ways to expand the game to allow for this kind of thing
justin: if we looked at all of your habits and judged you, it would be flawed, so we might as well be playful and let other players add to you; whyville frighteningly seems to emulate biblical behavior of stoning :-p giving away the power to arbitrate humanity

classrooms are standard-based; the blurs that you're illustrating, do you have any notions about how this could manifest itself in a classroom, either tomorrow or 10 years from now?
justin: has thought about this a lot because the woman building quests is using their system to generate content (some user-generated content is scary, especially from 14-year old boys); doesn't know if user-generated content is ready for schools; endless possibilities if we can get past this; a teacher could now assign students to go to 4 sites as part of a project, now she can track that they actually went there, and they get a badge for doing it
deborah: has actually used whyville in a classroom already; creator trying to make it more useful to schools; creator is trying to make it more science-based; climate change and virii already on whyville; invested the most popular place to hang out - the beach - with algae and kids have to pay extra to plant seeds to help combat it; one of the things she likes about virtual worlds is the multiple entries; if we can build the structures....
bill: eco raft was built to take into account various science standards at various levels; could easily be tie-ins to classrooms

gls2007