One of the more interesting aspects of MMOs are the fact that we interact with the world as a representation of our selves that we create; the avatar. These avatars are created based on our preferences (for the most part) within the constraints of the game.
Then we traverse the various experiences in the game (questing, meeting up with other players, instances, selling things, buying things, farming for items, making things, etc) as this avatar. Things that happen in the game, happen to the avatar and as the player we ‘interpret’ what that means. For example, there is a stat for how much health a player has. This stat can be expressed in various terms (depending on the game genre) as hit points, life points, etc. These hit points are then shown as a bar or some other graphic representation of the total number of points and the remaining number of points. The idea being that when the points are at 0 the avatar has died.
As the points are being expended in various way (via battles, or exertion, from not eating) there is the bar that shows you you are loosing ‘life’. But sometimes in a game there are other graphic representation. The avatar might start to slump or turn colors, or whatever. But in most every case, the process requires the player to interpret the data. The player must look at the health bar, the color of their avatar and decide, hmmm I am in a bad way and need to rectify this matter.
Most other indicators in the game are simlar. There might be one for determining how much magic a mage has used and how much potentially he/she might have left. There might be an indicator for how rested a player, etc But all of these are indicators, we as the player must interpret to understand what it might mean to the avatar and the game play experience.
Sure there are forced feedback systems and what not, but that is a translation. As a car rumbles around the track, you get force feedback in the form of a shaking controller.
Today, for the first time. There was a spell cast on my avatar, that affected me the user. Some ogre cast a spell that made you drunk and stumbling with blurry vision. I got the blurry vision (player) which then made make my avatar stagger around drunk.
The blur was applied to my entire screen. It lasted for only 15 seconds, but it was a very weird experience. Is this where we are headed with games? What potential does this bring to our body of knowledge?
Hmmm…

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Now that I am off to a running start on this dissertation thing, I am interested in getting a decent handle on the process. The actual process I will talk about more (in another blog no doubt), but additionally (or perhaps redundantly) I want to also create a wiki, to "officially" and publicly collect the artifacts and research.
I tried doing the same for my Master project, however, it did not go as well has I had hoped. Some of it had to do with the project. (the project was a series of lessons with various links, forms, and methods on teaching youth on various skills leading to a major documentary project), but mostly it had to do with the wiki I chose to use. I could make the content for the project and then cut & paste easily to finalized document. That made the whole thing -needless to say – very problematic.
So this time, I am giving some careful thought to the implementation of an appropriate wiki to serve these highly specific needs. Wikimatrix is a site that helps you pick the best wiki software for your needs. These are some of thte features I need from the new wiki.

• Maintain a reading and read biblist for the research including with an accurate references (therefore, it needs to accept XML publicaiton direct from the product I use called papers)
• Permit
• RSS feed
• status updates

I hope to have most if this done setup by the end of the weekend.
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Some terminology must be discussed in this ongoing conversation.

• Persistent: A world that continues to operate even when users are not logged in.
• Immersive: A synthetic world that makes the user feel a part of it by a number of means, including realistic video graphics, collaborative tasks, and liminal time.
• Sociable: The ability to meet people, make friendships, collaborate, create.
• MMO: A massively multiplayer online game, usually 3D immersive synthetic world and persistent.
• MMORPG: A Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
• MUD: Multiplayer dungeon, usually text-based and persistent
• Dungeon or Instance: A specific quest inside a synthetic world that might have contained better awards, armor, or treasure.
• Video game: A game that is played using technology and video.
• Console game: A video game played on various popular TV console. Popular consoles include the Sony playstation, Nintinedo DS, Wii, etc.
• PC game: A video game that is played on a computer. Sometimes these games are ported to consoles sometimes not.
• Network console game: A game that is played across the internet with other gamers.
• WOW: World of Warcraft – one of the most populated synthetic game worlds.
• Liminal time: the time it takes for users to traverse the real world to the synthetic world. this time/space is the demarcation between worlds and continues to remind the users of the difference between the worlds – Baudrillard 1981
• Simulation: A reflection or a mimic of the real world in some salient ways.
• Synthetic world: Any world that is a simulation of the real world the creates an immersive, persistent user experience.
• Infinite games: a synthetic world that creates its own space and time (vs a finite world that occurs within a world that has specific games). Carse 1987.
• Simulation type: Natural, productive, and purely simulated (Baudrillard 2000). The real world is a natural world.

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Ok, so I am off to a running start. I have plans upon plans in place. A reading plan, a writing plan, a plan to plan. This is where I plan to collect my thoughts about readings and other information. Not notes per se, but thoughts.
The reading plan is to read at least 3 articles and 1 thesis (or book chapter) per week and pull all the relevant references, and so on and so on. I read somewhere, you know you are ready to start the literature review, when you no longer find articles you have not read. Amazingly enough, I am seeing about 40% of repeat references all ready. And if not the same article, then certainly repeat authors.
It seems that MMORPG research space is not very well populated. Most researchers have been interested in the negative effects of gaming. Few have examined other outcomes. The other day, I started a book that made a specific distinction between games and gaming. Where games were the object of study, perhaps looking at the design, the aesthetic, or other matters. And gaming was examining the humanity wrapped up in the games; the why, the how, the draw.
I guess then I am looking gaming and by extension the gamer.
From that respect there have been a lot of statistics bandied about regarding gamers. Who is gaming seems to be a big conversation, with odd undertones. Apparently (according to S. Ross’s thesis), there were a bunch of assumptions made about the MMO space. She explained that the video game space (the console space) had been examined extensively and found that male teens were the most populus demographic. Thus by drawing the "obvious" conclusion the MMO space must then necessarily have the same population. To add to the confusion the distinction between video game taxonomy was never considered in the first studies, I think. Researchers  just simply looked i the window and saw a console and that was it. So regardless of the game content, it was all lumped in together.
I know from personal experience that console games are very different (as are MMOs). And certain games draw a certain demographic, very much in the same way certain movies draw specific crowds. And since I dont want to make this post too long, let me conclude by listing the taxonomies, I am aware of. And of course, there are more, but generally, video games have the following distinctions:
Game type, content type, player locus,  group play type

Game type: we have computer games, console games, and hand-held games
Content type: first person shooter, strategy, adventure, action, reconstituted board game, sports, puzzles, combat (war)
Player locus;  multiple player network single player network, single player local, multi player local
group_play type: cooperative group, combative group

I am sure there are more.
MMOs or massively multiplayer games have distinctions that console network games do not have; persistence, minimal limity space, sociability at the least. MMOs share the space with MUD (multi usre dungeons) which are apparently persistent but are text based. Therefore they lack the "immersive" quality that sets MMOs apart and groups them later with console games.
To recap:

• network console games are immersive, non-persistent, ’some what’ sociable
• MMOs are immersive, persistent, and sociable
• MUDs are text-based (non immersive), persistent, sociable

I think next I should post a terminology page that might be useful to be able to refer to.
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