:: It doesn't happen, huh? ::

I was chatting with a close friend of mine recently, someone who is a fellow undergrad sociology student and fellow researcher on the digital games research project I'm part of at Concordia. During our conversation, I mentioned that I'm interested in studying the subversive tensions and power plays between gamers and the MMPOG VWs they play in.

She asked me, "what tensions? what power plays?"

I mentioned that one area in particular that interests me is the active underground pseudo-black market that goes on around the net for things like high level spells, game objects and game points/credits, the kind of thing that can let a 1st level dwarf in EQ become a 150 level something just by buying these virtual items or statuses on the major auction sites or at any of the player-managed auction sites that specialize in this kind of thing.

She laughs and says, "that kind of thing is over-hyped. It doesn't really happen".

Now, coming from anyone else, I might have laughed back at them and argued. But this person is an EQ veteran, participant in many an EQ quest, and one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the true inner dynamics of the game, from the player perspective.

So I didn't laugh back. I just shrugged and changed the subject.

Then today, I found Edward Castronova's blog. Edward is an assistant professor at Fullerton University and is interested in the digital games and virtual worlds (VWs), just as I am. He's been researching this stuff too, but from the economics perspective.

And there, on his blog, was my rebuttal for my friend...

Since July 1, 2003, players have traded and bought over $6 million in virtual game assets.

$6 million!

...in US dollars!

Wow!

But that kind of thing doesn't happen, huh?

Guess I'm learning.

:: Shades of HSX ::

Another entry in the "I remember when" file, as in, "I remember when this trend started on the Internet, through the Hollywood Stock Exchange. It was 1995 and I had just..." oh! um.....oh. never mind.

If you are interested in blogs and bloggers' culture, but like me are still a bit wet behind the ears, you may not have known that this existed.

Now I know. Now what?

:: Everything but democracy ::

Read this today on Terra Nova about designing virtual communities for democracy, then watching them self-organize in every way but that.

Made me go, "whoooaa!"

I smell a juicy research topic.

Anyone know any political scientists jonesing for a virtual research gig with a bunch of sociologists from Canada?

:: Reversing 'progress' ::

So this is why Turkey Days (aka Thanksgiving/Christmas) don't taste as good as they once did .... when I was little, eating holiday turkey raised on my uncle's farm.

And I thought it was just nostalgia!

Found on MetaFilter

:: That which is so in essence ::

From Shields' book, The Virtual:

The space of metaxis (is) the operation of the imagination which connects the perceptual environment with the virtual and abstract world of meanings which over-code our perceptions [p.39].

...Techniques of the virtual create the illusion of presence through props, simulations, partial presences (such as a voice conveyed by a telephone or thoughts written in a book) and rituals which evoke the past and make absent others present. They aid metaxis from the virtual to the actual by giving concrete presence to intangible ideas [p.41].

...The virtual is ideal, but abstract, real but not actual...The roots of the virtual (are) in the everyday mental ability to accept the 'almost so' in place of the actually so. Metaxis (is therefore) the ability to imaginatively close up the gap...[p.43]

Later on in the summary of this chapter of the book, Shields makes an argument for recontextualizing the polarized argument between what is virtual and what is real into an examination of the difference between what is virtual and what is concrete. This is an important argument, I think. More people need to understand it, for while it seems obvious when you read it, too many seem to feel that if it isn't concrete, it can't be real -- a sophistic assertion, in my opinion and seemingly also in Shield's.

Thus does Shield make the argument for a definition of the virtual as "that which is so in essence", a definition I accept and will use from herein.

:: Metaxis? ::

While reading John Shield's book, The Virtual, I came across a concept he calls "metaxis".

I've had to return the book to the library and now I can't claim I fully understand the concept, but it does apply to the virtual.

I'll look into it at a later date, when my own copy of Shield's book arrives in the mail from Amazon.

:: Being of two minds ::

Again, from Dewdney:

Rather than being evidence of the breakdwon of logic, or of low-grade hypocrisy, our ability to hold contrary opinions, to be of "two minds", is really a practical solution to the difficulties of dealing with complex environments. It is a mark of our flexibility and evidence of our multiplicity that we accept new ides without evicting our old "tenants".

Whatever identities we play out in our fantasies and regrets...are understudied by our multiple personalities. We tend to invent identities and characters in order to act out a particular narrative, and then, if we take our lives elsewhere, these characters become forgotten identities that we allow to wither. [p. 160]

:: What the....? ::

I've been a Sarah McLachlan fan for years, not rabid or anything, but I've seen her live about a dozen times and have all her albums.

It's been six years since she's released anything new. So it isn't surprising that I would have pre-ordered her new album, "Afterglow" [ flash required to view well ]

It came in the mail today from Indigo and I promptly opened it up, popped it into my PC (I've never bothered to buy a stereo for my office, since I have a high-quality sound card and speakers attached to my computer). I waited for the autorun to activate and for that sweet and haunting voice to emerge.

It didn't happen.

Instead, I was greeted with a screen from something called "Bandlink" that looked like a popup ad. Now, at first, I thought it was because I'd been browsing eBay and Canada.com and had both of these still open in browser windows. I thought perhaps that a popup had made it through my Google toolbar popup suppressor.

Nope. The popup was from Sarah's CD.

Hmmm...

I double-clicked on the E: drive and find it called "Bandlink". No other files apparent on the CD other than this Bandlink.exe thing. Even the CD icon showing for the E: drive is a Bandlink icon, not an icon from Sarah or Nettwerk, her production company, or anything else recognizably Sarah-related.

After 10 minutes of fiddling, I gave up. I could not access Sarah's music if I didn't install this software thingie.

With a big sigh of disgust and resignation, I gave in. I have no other choice -- as I said, I have no stereo up here.

I read the privacy statement and usage agreement for this bandlink thingie, as best I could given the highly jargoned legal language used. I watched the CD "install the software, though in reality it looks like it was downloading the music?!?!

2 minutes later, ahhhhhhh there she was.

But I'm still nonplussed.

What did I just buy? I was under the impression I was buying a CD full of music. I've got to assume there is music on the CD, or else how will I be able to play it in my car on my way to class later?

If so though, why are the music files "invisible" to my PC? Is this Nettwerk's way of circumventing digital appropriation?

The Bandlink site says this of their software. But read the small print at the bottom...i.e.:

By uniting the existing CD media distribution model with online media and new software technology, Bandlink offers the full power of the Internet without the loss of revenue and piracy issues common to many Internet Music services.

So...

Bemused and somewhat unsettled, I sit here, listening to Sarah's sublime voice slide out of my PC's speakers, wondering.

Have I just been greeted with the next one-up strategy of corporate control over culture and popular tactics, with the strategy now disguised as a copyright protection gadget and forced on me against my will?

Sarah isn't sounding quite as sweet today.

:: And now? ::

From the Dewdney book:

"The total surface area of all the virtual worlds on the Web is already seven times as large as the Earth's surface"

That is a 1998 statistic. Wow. What would it be now?

:: Life in-between ::

A concept I keep tripping across lately in the books I'm reading is the concept of liminality. Essentially it is a transient time or event boundary, an in-betweenness of a moment or event, in between one state of being or identity and another. Common liminal events are weddings, graduations, new unemployment, going into labour, etc. Common liminal moments are the person who is about to shoplift for the first time, just before they do so and become irrevocably forever a shoplifter, or the closing of a door on an old apartment or house before the person hands in the key and moves on to the new home.

I think liminality is a time in which we truly feel our humanity, our ability to choose. It's a state of being between choice and action, between decision and effect.

The poet Robert Frost understood liminality deeply -- his poems "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Eve" and "The Road Not Taken" suggest or dramatize it.

While I've been reading about liminality in Turkle and Shields, neither really fully apply the concept it to the online space and experience. Both mention it just in passing - it isn't a part of their overall thesis.

Somehow, though, the concept speaks to me at many levels when applied to the virtual experience. There are so many liminal moments and events online, enough that each person might be said to experience many in a given year. They can be as small as switching ISPs and therefore IPs, or as large as letting go of an email address and assuming a new one, deliberately killing off a character in an online game and preparing a new one, or deciding to learn a new game and thereby preparing to embark in the new online world.

If applied to digital gaming, per the example above, what might be learned if the liminal moment of "dying" and being recreated in the game are examined? If the process of creating a new character, liminal definitely, were observed and questioned and thought about? What is that feeling that beats in the chest when you assign yourself a name and begin to craft a new identity? How does that experience change a person?

This whole concept is one I'm going to bookmark in my head and here, to keep an eye on and consider as a research topic. I think there is lots there to study and attempt to understand.

::Real, authentic and saturated ::

I was thinking about identity presentation online and so I went back to flip through a few pages of Turkle's ""Life on the Screen" and found one truly notable section. It is in chapter 10, in a section called "Logins R Us" on page 256-258.

Turkle is applying the concepts of a social psychologist called Kenneth Gergen (1991) and she makes reference to his theory of the "saturated self".

She says of the concept:

"we colonize each other's brains" causing us to become "saturated with the 'many voices of humankind -- both harmonious and alien'…we exist in a state of continous construction and reconstruction; it is a world where anything goes that can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality'…(we) come to embrace new possibilities. Individual notions of self vanish "into a state of relatedness. One ceases to believe in a self independent of the relations in which he or she is embedded'…". (p.257)

I've deliberately picked out what I see as the the best parts of her argument to share here, but I invite you read or re-read the section…For now, I'll use Turkle's own words to sum it up .. It's about the idea of "identity as multiplicity" (p.258)

What fascinates me about this is the juxtaposition with the other things Turkle has gone over in this book i.e. is online real? And can online be authentic? When these questions are fused with the question of a saturated self or a multiplicitous self, a new meta question appears...How does a real person who happens to be virtual also be simultaneously multiple and authentic?

Other questions are also suggested...

Where are the boundaries between front stage and back stage?

Do they still exist?

If they do, are they even relevant in this context?

The questions, then, aren't so much about the "why" of it all, as it is the "how" and the examination of the end result. While Turkle didn't deal specifially with the gaming identity aspects of MOOs and MUDs and MMPOGs etc, the question is clearly there in her work, though not necessarily synthesized in this way.

When you add in aspects of gaming where the demand to juggle an ever-larger multitude of selves that may or note be "other" for your flesh self, when your online identity saturates and splits and refracts your presentation of self over and over, what is the micro and macro social and personal consequence of this act? And is this act truly so different from the multitude of selves we already juggle in our daily lives i.e. co-worker, mother, manager, webbie, etc. etc. etc.? or is the only difference the place or the quantity of selves juggled?

It is my belief, therefore, that this is where sociologists should be focusing attention, in order to observe, examine, ponder, theorize and inform. This is certainly an area I intend to focus on in my own future research.