Re: [xmca] online games as tools for sociability

Very interesting comments, Wagner. I tried Second Life for a while but I
found it pretty boring. But I am totally hooked on World of Warcraft. It
seems they stroke a perfect balance between user-friendliness and challenge.
It's a kind of "flow" experience.

This news from Brazil are weird, to say the least. Everquest banned??? As for
Counter Strike, my son plays it and I find it mostly harmless. Unless they
are going to blame not only all videogames that involve multiplayer tactical
cooperation, but also any play activity that does the same.

And tabletop roleplaying games are one of the sources of this whole gaming
culture. Gary Alan Fine's "Shared Fantasy" is a wonderful book documenting
the phenomenon in the early 80's.

Regarding "game society", there is this guy, Edward Castronova, who is
speculating about what may happen when people start spending more time
in "synthetic worlds" than in "real life".

Cheers,
Luiz

On Sun, 3 Feb 2008 10:56:39 -0200, Wagner Schmit wrote
> I study games too, but right now i am more focused on table-top roleplaying
> games... And i was away from the list quite some time too =/
>
> Two interesting facts... in the same week that i saw a new from Blizzad
> saying that his online game world of warcraft reached 10 million subscribers
>
> (http://www.blizzard.com/press/080122.shtml), i saw some news about how
> things are going down and fast on second life (banks closing, number
> of subscribers going down, etc)...
>
> Well.. the game industry is getting bigger and bigger every day, now
> it is already bigger tham hollywood... I hear some people saying
> that we are entering some kind of "game society" era...
>
> It is interesting how games makes such a fuss in some places, here
> in Brazil our goverment just banned two games: Counter Strike and
> Everquest (the law here is very very slow, and the process for this
> was opened on 2002, but this opens the way for other games to be
> banned, and faster)... The alegations are that CS helps training
> drug dealers and Everquest because it "brings the player to total
> distortion and 'heavy' psychological conflicts because the tasks
> that it receives in the game can be good or bad".
>
> wagner
>
> On Feb 2, 2008 8:08 PM, Luiz Carlos Baptista <lucabaptista@fcsh.unl.pt>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Rachel,
> >
> > Thank you very much. Play Between Worlds was already on my list, but I
> > didn't
> > know about Mia Consalvo's book.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Luiz
> >
> > (btw, thanks to everyone who is helping me, xmca is such a great
> > community)
> >
> > On Sat, 02 Feb 2008 13:33:32 -0800, Rachel Cody wrote
> > > Hi Luiz,
> > >
> > > I'd also recommend TL Taylor's work, /Play Between Worlds. /Mia
> > > Consalvo recently published /Cheating: Gaming Advantages in
> > > Videogames/ which was based on Final Fantasy XI.
> > >
> > > Rachel
> > >
> > > Luiz Carlos Baptista wrote:
> > > > Thanks a lot! I had already downloaded all files from gamestudies and
> > had
> > > > bookmarked DiGRA, but I didn't know about GLS.
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > >
> > > > Luiz
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 08:51:28 -0800, Mark Chen wrote
> > > >
> > > >> Hi!
> > > >>
> > > >> In case you haven't already, take a look at Gamestudies.org. Some
> > > >> good theoretical/phil writing there. There's also archives of talks
> > > >> at DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) and GLS (Games Learning
> > > >> Society) you could delve into.
> > > >>
> > > >> mark
> > > >>
> > > >> On Feb 2, 2008 5:15 AM, Luiz Carlos Baptista
> > > >> <lucabaptista@fcsh.unl.pt> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>> Thanks a lot. I already knew Constance's and Kurt's work, I'll check
> > the
> > > >>> european guys.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> As regards data, I will draw on current and ongoing ethnographic and
> > > >>> sociological approaches, as well as my own experience as gamer. My
> > > >>>
> > > > interest
> > > >
> > > >>> is philosophical rather than "empirical".
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Best,
> > > >>> Luiz
> > > >>>
> > > >>>
> > > >> --
> > > >> Mark Chen | PhD student | Games researcher/designer | Tech instructor
> > > >> College of Education - Ed Tech | University of Washington - Seattle
> > > >> My games research and life in academia blog: markdangerchen.net
> > > >> _______________________________________________
> > > >> xmca mailing list
> > > >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > **********
> > > > "The brain is a wonderful thing. Everybody should have one."
> > > >
> > > > Luiz Carlos Baptista
> > > >
> > > > Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem
> > > > Universidade Nova de Lisboa
> > > > Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
> > > > Avenida de Berna, 26-C
> > > > 1069-061 Lisboa
> > > > Portugal
> > > >
> > > > lucabaptista@fcsh.unl.pt
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > xmca mailing list
> > > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > > >
> > >
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> >
> >
> > **********
> > "The brain is a wonderful thing. Everybody should have one."
> >
> > Luiz Carlos Baptista
> >
> > Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem
> > Universidade Nova de Lisboa
> > Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
> > Avenida de Berna, 26-C
> > 1069-061 Lisboa
> > Portugal
> >
> > lucabaptista@fcsh.unl.pt
> >
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> >
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**********
"The brain is a wonderful thing. Everybody should have one."

Luiz Carlos Baptista

Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Avenida de Berna, 26-C
1069-061 Lisboa
Portugal

lucabaptista@fcsh.unl.pt

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Received on Sun Feb 3 06:51 PST 2008