Learning in Virtual Worlds

For anyone who's still checking this, things are shutting down.

I'm sorry for not tying this off earlier, but it slipped my mind.

The class this blog was written for has been concluded, so there's not much reason to continue. In the next few days, I'll write a retrospective post about this class, my experience with virtual worlds, et cetera.

If you're looking for the research paper I wrote as a final project, I'll post it here as soon as I can find the document in my email archives. If I talked to you in Vanguard, I might not be able to tell you this in game - My admin access to the Trinity computers, on which I had been playing, ended at the conclusion of the class. I doubt anyone still checks this, though, so it's probably a non-issue.

And if you're interested, I'm now blogging here. The url's just a redirect to a wordpress blog, but that might change if I get enough readers to justify the $10 a month for a unique server.

Expect this blog's last post in the next week.

-Patrick

If you’re reading this, chances are good that you’ve seen a post somewhere asking for responses from people who play online games.  I’m in a class on virtual world at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. For the past four months, we have been playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. In that time, I've raised a level 17 Bard, Redflask SoCo, on the Seradon server. Right now, I'm researching the effects of Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) on the learning process. If you are or have been an MMO player, I would love your help. If you're willing to be interviewed via email, a pseudonym will be created for you. At no point will any personally identifiable information be released.

If you are willing to help, please email me at trinitymmo@gmail.com.  By doing this, you recognize that you're over 18 years old, and have read the consent form below. I’ll send you a few questions to answer and send back.

Depending on your response, I may reply with follow-up questions. Before you answer any questions though, check out this consent form for more information about the study and what this data will be used for.

If you're under the age of 18, I'm sorry. I'd love to hear your thoughts, but we aren't allowed to research minors for legal reasons.
 

And thank you so much for your help.
 

For those who are interested in the class, you can check out these links as well:
 

Here’s a class web page with more general information,
 

And Here’s a blog that links to everyone else in the class.

Researcher: Patrick Lynch, Department of Communication, Trinity University

Supervisor: Dr. Aaron Delwiche, Department of Communication, Trinity University (210-999-8153)

 

Researcher’s statement

 

PURPOSE AND BENEFITS

 

This interview is being conducted as part of a course titled "Ethnography of Massively Multiplayer Online Games." In this class, we are studying the behaviors and attitudes of gamers who enjoy virtual worlds such as Vanguard and World of Warcraft. Our research will benefit game developers, scholars, and broader player community by increasing our understanding of this emerging medium. The results of my study might also be interesting to you. At the end of the semester (December 17, 2008), I will share my findings with Vanguard players and with the broader community of gamers. My paper will be linked to the course web site and made available to anyone with an Internet connection.

 

PROCEDURES

 

If you’re willing to participate, provide me with an email address (which will not be disclosed), and I will send you a brief page of questions to respond to. If I need more clarification to understand your responses, I may send you a follow-up email.

 

RISK, STRESS OR DISCOMFORT

 

No risk, stress or discomfort is anticipated as a result of this study. I will do everything that I can to make sure that your responses are both private and anonymous. If at any time you feel uncomfortable or stressed, you may terminate the interview immediately.

 

OTHER INFORMATION

 

You must be 18 years or older in order to participate in this study. This interview is voluntary. You may refuse to answer any questions that I ask. You may terminate the session at any time.

 

This data will be used as a basis for my academic research. My professor and I are the only people who will have access to the transcripts and survey data.

 

If your comments appear in my research, a pseudonym will be used to protect the anonymity of your real-life identity and your game character. You may refuse to participate or may withdraw from this study at any time without penalty.

 

This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Trinity University. If you have any questions about this research, you can also contact the IRB chair: Professor J. Paul Giolma, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Engineering Science, Trinity University, 1 Trinity Place, San Antonio, Texas, 78212-7200. Professor Giolma's telephone number is (210) 999-7563.

 

 

___Patrick Lynch___      ___12/10/2008_

Signature of Researcher    Date

 

 Participant's statement:

 

The study described above has been explained to me. I voluntarily consent to participate in this activity. I have had an opportunity to ask questions. I understand that future questions I may have about the research or about my rights as a subject will be answered by one of the researchers listed above.

 

_______________    ___________

Signature of Participant    Date

 

[As noted above, because collecting signatures is not practical in virtual worlds, students will instead post this form on a publicly available web page. Before conducting any interviews, they will ask the participants to confirm that they have read the consent materials and agree to participate. On-line surveys will be prefaced with a statement which reads "By completing this survey, you are indicating that you have read the consent materials and agree to participate."]

 

I'd like to vote for Stephen's suggestion of Carnelli. I think it would be fun, though I'm don't think it would involve the virtual space very much. Avatars do arrange themselves in a circle, but there isn't the same kind of space usage as in hide and seek. There doesn't seem to be very much movement involved.

On the other end of the spectrum, I'd also like to try Grayson's suggestion for Zombie. It would be hard to mark players with zombie status, as has been mentioned. Perhaps a change from adventuring to crafting equipment would work? And the issue of virtual weapons could be problematic. Either way, I'm totally psyched for these virtual parlor games tonight.

Just to keep people posted, I’ve refined my research questions:

1.            What do players of MMOs say they learn from their experience?

2.            How  do these players think this knowledge might be applied in cyberspace and the real world?

This was well-filmed, and pretty funny as far as historical video goes. Link Here

I think this would be a good game to play in Vanguard. From the site, here are some of the rules:

Rules:

Have all players sit down in a circle. One person is chosen to be the "Psychiatrist." This person must then leave the room as the rest of the group prepares to play. With the Psychiatrist out of the room and out of earshot, the rest of the players decide on a psychological illness that they will all have. Anything and everything is valid, no matter how obvious, vague, figurative, hypothetical, or stupid. 
 
Example Fill-in-the-blank Diseases: 
1. Everyone acts and responds to question as if he/she is a famous person or someone in the room. (Prince Charles, the Pope etc.) 
2. Everyone answers questions for the person sitting on their right (or left). 
3. Everyone answers questions in certain style. (See below for ideas). 
4. People have a certain aversion/obsession with a certain letter/word/object. 
 
The best ones are usually the most unusual and creative, especially if they relate to inside jokes. Once a "disease" is agreed upon, someone retrieves the psychiatrist, who then comes to the center of the circle. It is now his responsibility as psychiatrist to help his "patients" by discovering what is wrong with them. He does this primarily by asking individual people questions about anything, and noticing eccentricities and inconsistencies in the answers. 
 
If a patient answers a question or says or does something that is inconsistent with his disease or lies, another patient MUST yell "Psychiatrist!!!" At this time, the person who said something wrong and the person who called him on it must switch seats. Sometimes such answers are given accidentally, but they can also be given intentionally to throw the psychiatrist off, especially if responding correctly would give away the disease too easily. (Ex., if everyone is pretending to be one specific person, and the psychiatrist asks "What's your name?", a truthful answer would make for an awfully short round) 

Winning:

The game ends when the psychiatrist correctly identifies his patients' ailment. At this point, a new psychiatrist is chosen and a new game begins.

I don't think it would be hard to translate this. Just have all the patients stand in a circle and join some chat channel that the psychiatrist isn't on. From there they can discuss symptoms. At some point have everyone get on a second chat channel, and the psychiatrist can begin questioning. Patients can shout "Psychiatrist!" in the chat box before they switch places in the circle. To determine who is being addressed, the psychiatrist can either be explicit, or move towards that person in the circle.

Also, I think the psychiatrist should get some number of questions to ask before he or she has to make a final guess as to the patints' ailment. Just to make sure that the game doesn't take too long.

But rehab in the Philippines is awesome.

Here are some things I've found helpful. I'll try to update this as time goes on.

Ten Ton Hammer
http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/
This is a central point of Vanguard Related Wisdom. They cover other games as well, but this is the section I'm using the most.

Terra Nova
http://terranova.blogs.com/
This is obvious in the context of this class, but I wanted to include it. Terra Nova is a central source for discussion on the future of Virtual Worlds.

Game Studies
http://gamestudies.org
This is a peer-reviewed academic journal about games. I've found a few interesting things here, enough to warrant a look.

The Escapist
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
Check out their columns section. There is a lot of information here about video games and culture in general. And most of it is insightful.

IGN
http://www.ign.com/
They cover everything game related. I don't like them nearly as much as The Escapist, but it's good to be aware of the site.

I seem to have missed this topic before, so I’d like to address this question again.

How do we achieve impartiality in our research?

To some extent, I think this is impossible. In the case of this class especially, it will be hard to separate my personal biases with the information I choose to focus on as I interview people about my research questions. I think it’s critical to at least recognize, and preface profusely, that researchers are human and have inherent biases. But there are some things that might help. Practicing immersive research, or really becoming a part of the community, is important. Just by understanding all of the common frames of reference and cultural norms of a subject pool, a researcher is able to put findings into a much more accurate context.  And it’s important to, as much as is possible, approach research without any preconceived expectations of results. Tampering with evidence to “prove” a hypothesis is a waste of time for researchers and the entire academic community.

As long as you’re honest though, and try in good faith to be impartial, I don’t see any reason to worry very much about it. I certainly am not trying to fit my research into support of a thesis, so I don’t think there will be any issue with partial research.

I'm currently reading through the archives of the website Terra Nova. Looking for articles tangientialy related to online learning.  One of the first really interesting posts I came across was this one by a (former?) graduate student named Lisa Galarneau.  It relates an email from a Behavior Intervention Specialist who uses World of Warcraft.  As I plan on looking into something involving online learning, I was fascinated to see the ways social worker Mike Fread saw WoW helping his challenged patients.  The game was the first time many of them were even concerned with forming relationships with their peers.  Though the relationships between the children and their guild mates weren't very deep, their very existence was significant.  And all the reading and typing that comes with playing any MMO helped the children drastically improve their English abilities.  And Mike was better able to build a relationship with a reserved student who initially would only talk to him in game.

One interesting thing that Lisa added at the bottom of her analysis:

I`ve just been accepted into one of my three choices for a guild in Vanguard.  Funny Story:

I was just spending some time stuck on the Isle of Dawn, because I didn't want to leave while other members of my group still had so far to go. Having worn through all of the island's Adventuring and Diplomacy content, I decided to roll a new tune. This time, instead of playing as a Bard, I started on a Psionicist.  I'd heard from CDud that they're one of the easiest classes to solo. Understatement of the century. After three hours of play, having breezed through the game to level 8, someone just walked by and threw me an invite to join Oracles of Vanguard. No messages, no preface, just a walk-by invite. I'd like to think it was because I showed amazing skill as a psionicist. So that was easy.  I Still need to find a guild for my main, and communicate that I'm a researcher, but I realize that (some) guilds are much easier to get into than I had planned.

And I still haven't come up with a specific topic, but I think It'd be fun to research aspects of the learning process and MMOs. Something along the lines of "Experiential Learning through Online Games."

These are all vague ideas right now.

I need to join a guild, which isn't the sort of thing I'd normally put any planning into.  I've only ever been part of online gaming "clans," not guilds. A clan is just a group of people in a first-person shooter game. I always picked a clan based on who had the best gaming server. But that's not an issue with guilds.

Because I have no better selection criteria, I just want to be a a guild that is a) on Seradon and b) has a large number of players.

According to Station.Sony.com, my three top choices, then, are:

1. The Platinum Order

2. Safe Haven

3. Oracles of Vanguard

I don't have any preference about guilds, as I don't really know what to expect as a new guild member. It seems shallow to just want to join a group that has a lot of people, and it's hard to emotionally invest myself in an online guild, but I'll be interested to see what happens.

Well, I just found out that I'm a Killer. But, I'm a very social one. And (at least  in the context of an online MMORPG) I'm not very motivated by external achievements.  According to the quiz at GamerDNA.com (results posted below), I scored a 73% in the Killer category, 67% in Socializer, 53% in Explorer, and a paltry 13% in Achiever.  From the website:

People with high Killer scores prefer the player-versus-player aspect of any game more than anything offered by the environment. They often relish the adrenaline and challenge of pitting themselves against real players.

At least in my case, I think this is accurate.  I don't usually play MMOs, and our class isn't, I think, on a Vanguard PvP server, so I don't know if that pattern will hold true for this game. In my spare time (what little there is anymore) I've always tended to prefer (read: play almost to the exclusion of all other games) First-Person Shooters. These are the games that give you a gun and what you see on the screen is a "real" picture of what you would see as a soldier in a warzone. My three favorite video games of all time, in no particular order, are Unreal Tournament 2004 (2007 has slower gameplay), Counter-Strike:Source, and Team Fortress 2.  I love the rush of stimulation that comes from lying in wait and then taking out an entire team from a concealed sniper's den.

I lean around the corner in a crouch. Enemy sniper across the field. Not looking at me. Easy target. Headshot. I see another sniper. Line it up. Trigger, he's down. Soldiers running in the open. Bang ... Bang... Bang. Three more dead.  Killing Spree. Radio my team, "Move up and capture the point. Defense in down. Go!" I Keep going. It's all reaction now. No time for thought. Two snipers aim at me. Move crosshairs to his head. Shoot. One down, one angry. Get to cover. Wounded now, but I make I'm not in the open. Breathe. And it's time to find a Medic and some more rifle ammuniton. Take time to recover. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Or the thrill of running headlong into an enemy encampment and escaping with an enemy flag or intelligence briefcase, low on health and enemies chasing you and you going faster than they ever could and your teammates rushing to your aid, giving you the extra ten seconds you need to capture your objective. Mostly, I love to kill other players, but as part of a grander competition. I don't usually play deathmatch games, unless it's to train. In the past, whenever I've seriously played shooters, I've found myself in clans of better players. It was social, but the focus was always on the present competition.

The only MMO I really played before Vanguard was FlyFF, and I ended up in the Duel Arena in Saint Morning as soon as I hit level 45. I would go invisible, then use special attacks to surprise and paralyze opponents with two magical Yo-Yos that dealt massive damage and stunned for five seconds. Nobody within 10 levels could touch me as long as I got in the first attack. That was the last part of the game I enjoyed. Everything else was so formulaic.

I think this Killer classification is pretty accurate, given my streak of competitiveness. And I love to trash talk after a good fight. I'm also fairly interested in the social and exploratory aspects of games, so I'll beleive those scores. I don't know if my lack of achievement motivation is accurate in general, but I think it applies to virtual worlds just fine. Who really cares if I don't get some virtual "Wizards staff of Ultimate Power?" It's hard for me to value achievements in some world so divorced from reality.  I really like Bartle's rubric for it's memorability, so I'm not recommending a change. It could be a bit more in depth, changing the explorer category to distinguish exploration of gameplay mechanics from exploration of the virtual world and story.

When I saw the in-class video, I felt very sorry for the Hoards (get it, WoW...) of Chinese and Korean people, among others, who spend their workweeks playing WoW, Everquest 2, or similar games accumulating virtual resources.  It would be a mistake, as Nick Yee points out, to stereotype all gold farmes as being Chinese.  After reading the Wikipedia page on gold-farming, I'm not as sorry for gold farmers, or "professional gamers" as I was.  By relative standards, gold farming isn't a bad job in China. They can make from US $120 to $250 a month, which is better than most Chinese can hope for. And the work isn't hard, just tedious. So, all in all, if it puts food on the table for their families, it's okay with me.

The other economies affected by gold farming are the virtual ones in-game.  In this regard, I think it sucks for people to see prices for virtual goods rise as gold saturates the virtual economy. I remember seeing some items in FlyFF skyrocket in price as more Koreans were selling gold. It was a big controversy on the forums. There's a good article on gamespot about goldfarming. The top seller of WoW gold has made more than $40,000 a month, which makes it hard to feel sorry for a guy.  There's a quote in the Gamespot article from an economist at Indiana University that about sums up my thoughts:

"As a game player, I think all of that activity sucks--I hate it," Castronova said. "[But] as an economist, I look at this, and it all seems very natural to me." 

As far as Vanguard goes, I'm not that worried about gold-farming being a problem. An ebay search for vanguard gold only turns up results for baseball cards and sunglasses.

Before I forget, there are a few tips I would like to append some tips (read: feel compelled by assignment to include) from my past experience to that last entry.

1. Don't use a Dvorak keyboard. I know they're better if you must type for long periods of time. But remapping five thousand macros isn't my idea of a good time.
2. Learn how to make your own macros. Use google.
3. Decide what you want your characters attributes, strengths, and weaknesses to be before you start to level. Are you going for a DEX build, just trying to get alot of critical hits? Are you maxing STR to be your group's tank? Do you know what DEX build means? What about tank? If not, ask CDud.
4. Don't get addicted. I don't know how you should go about preventing this. Try having a lot of other things going on in your life. Or tell a friend to come turn off your computer after thirteen hours.
   
    

We just finished our first class Vanguard session. It was quite a change to see more humans than NPCs.  I only saw a few players who weren't from the class, but it's an improvement.  To address some required questions from Professor D, I've had plenty of experience with MMOs. I was too cheap to ever subscribe to World of Warcraft, but I put a fair amount of time into gPotato's FlyFF.  It's free to play, but you can use real money to buy better items than you'd ever get just by playing. It started to get repetitive in the high levels and there was only one real raid boss, so I quit. At least in the beginning, Vanguard seems to have more interesting content.  Or maybe it's just the better graphics.

Our entire group had to play as Orcs and Goblins, just to start in the same place. I thought it was interesting that there was no option to be a greenskin and play as a Bard.  Surely there could be an Orc drummer? I'd raise a complaint about racist stereotypes, but Orcs and Goblins are fictional.  The ACLU and NAACP probably won't take up the cause for greenskin rights. One problem I ran into when playing with a large group was our tendency to kill all of the mobs (wild monsters) in an area. We kept having to wait for them to respawn.  I liked that the respawn times were quick at least.  Thinking about research topics some more, I might like to explore the aspects of plot construction in non-linear games.  We all came into the world on board a slave ship. Our first mission was to free some of our fellow Martok slaves before launching a counter strike against whoever had imprisoned us.  I'm still a bit hazy on the details, but it was awesome to suddenly find myself in the middle of an Orc and Goblin war.  Much more of an in medias res start than I got as a Halfling. There were fires everywhere and I remember a large ballista abandoned on the battlefield. All in all, it was alot of fun.

It will be interesting to see how the game progresses. I feel like Ender Wiggen right now, with people tracking my progress in a giant fantasy game. I hope there's a level in the game made out of a Giant's corpse. That would be sweet.

Hello Sports Racers!

In addition to blatantly ripping off Ze Frank, I've spent a good portion of today in Trinity's Communications Lab. Aside from all the wonderful classes, I'm in love with how smoothly those lab machines run 3D games.  As a former internet game addict, I must confess with some embarrassment that my current desktop computer seems to be out matched by the school computer lab. I've played Vanguard in my dorm and up at the lab. Maybe it's my Internet connection, more likely it's the old Radeon 9800 era video card, but the game was choppy as hell when I tried to play. My poor little hobbit character kept running into the wooden fences around Rindol Field. I'm tempted to blow my next few paychecks on a nice new gaming system, which, thanks to Moore's Law, seems criminally under priced. That and everyone keeps telling my I should play Spore. But I'm not going to go crazy just yet. There is one silver lining to my slow machine: I might not get addicted to Vanguard.

I was horrified (not really, but close) to sit down, start going through quests, and only realize two and a half hours later that I had some "real life" things to do. I've been addicted to computer games in the past, and I don't want to go back down that road. A year of high school was spent on Unreal Tournament 2004 servers, alternating between games of VehicleCTF and the amazingly fun Deathball mod. Back to Vanguard though: It's fun. Very compelling gameplay. Sadly, I didn't see many avatars besides the NPCs as I was grinding a Halfling Ranger up to level 5. That won't matter much in the context of the class, though. We all will be rolling special characters for our in-class gaming sessions. There goes my unfair advantage. I've only given some thought to the character I want to play for the class, but I plan on decking out that Hobbit (maybe that word's property of the Tolkien estate, but come on) in my spare time. I'm training him in archery, and plan to put most of his (my?) Attribute points into Dexterity. He'll get more critical hits than Lil' Wayne. And with ranged attacks, I hope he doesn't see too many melee fights. We'll see what happens.

I still have few solid ideas for research questions, and I'm hoping to see more players at higher level areas in the game. I love the game itself, but worry that there might not be enough of a user base for the purpose of this class. I meant to get into more of this, but it's 2am. And class is at 8:30. That's six and a half hours, folks. Good Night.

If you're reading this, you're probably part of Trinity's class 'Games for the Web.'  If not, here's some information:

I'll be playing the game Vanguard:Saga of Heroes as  part of a college level course in interactive multimedia. I've spent more hours than I care to reveal playing video games, but this will be my first time playing a game with a paid subscription. I always liked games that were free to play and let me shoot guns. I've never played WoW, but I've tinkered with enough free MMOs to feel comfortable with most of the terminology. I don't know what specific aspects of the game I will want to research, and I haven't even started planning a character. The chief reason for this post is so that I've at least written something. I apologize you, dear reader, for not having anything insightful to add yet. Please bear with me.