2.5 All the world’s a game: virtual worlds, interactivity, convergence

In preparation for this unit we read Ornebring, H. (2007). Alternate Reality Gaming and convergence culture: The case of Alias. International Journal of Cultural Studies 10(4), 445-462. (electronic databases) and Sarah Colman and Nick Dyer-Witheford (2007). Playing on the digital commons: collectivities, capital and contestation in videogame culture.  Media, Culture and Society 29 (6), 934-953.

Learning Portfolio entry
1. Summarise the main points in the readings noting your agreement and disagreement with the ideas and opinions of the author/speaker.
2. Outline your plan for your remediation that identifies the form, proposed content, technological tools and intended audience of your remediation project.

These articles offered a concise and thorough discussion about gaming, fan production and how this works for and against corporations. 

Our discussion topics were:  Ethics; ownership & economics.Our learning objectives were to recognise the changes in audience, cultures & production that have driven the rise of games in relation to other media

Discussion Questions:

• What forms of participatory culture available in games? Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world.
• Consider the role of fantasy in game play, and the relationship between virtual and non-virtual worlds, What constraints are there?
• fantasy and creativity are a large part of both virtual and non-virtual worlds, although the the virtual player culture exists where games circulate for free and content is shaped by voluntary collectives and virtual worlds depend on creativity of their player populations.Since MMORPGs have many elements in common, and these cross game elements are experienced by many varied users and create a common virtual game culture among all players, leading to players expectations, for example "buffing" or "nerfing", which describe the strengthening or weakening, respectively, of particular game elements and in-game effects that temporarily enhance performance.
• How is the economic model of games different from other media? Commodification of digital networks and 'multidimensional' media model allows the examination of producers as consumers
• How is user production in games different from other media? the fastest way to progress was simply by killing the same monsters over and over again, and as this is still common in the genre, all MMORPG players know the process as "grinding", or "camping" (sitting at a monster's spawn point in order to attack it as soon as it respawns). The importance of grinding in MMORPGs, and how much "fun" it contributes to the experience, is constantly debated. Many MMORPGs have taken steps to eliminate or reduce grinding. For example, in Tibia a monster doesn't respawn if a player is near its spawn point. But few such attempts have met with success, and it is generally accepted by players and developers alike that some amount of 'grind' is required to maintain a stable playing experience.