News Overview Inline Listing – MacArthur Foundation

Poking around the MacArthur Foundation site I found an interesting recent study on Teens, Video Games and Civics by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The full report has too much to summarize in a blog entry. Here is their list of “Summary Findings at a Glance”:

  • Almost all teens play games.
  • Gender and age are key factors in describing teens’ video gaming.
  • Youth play many different kinds of video games.
  • The most popular games played by teens today span a variety of genres and ratings.
  • Gaming is often a social experience for teens.
  • Close to half of teens who play online games do so with people they know in their offline lives.
  • Teens encounter both pro-social and anti-social behavior while gaming.
  • The most popular game genres include games with violent and nonviolent content.
  • Parental monitoring of game play varies.
  • There are civic dimensions to video game play.
  • The quantity of game play is not strongly related to teens’ interest or engagement in civic and political activity.
  • The characteristics of game play and the contexts in which teens play games are strongly related to teens’
    interest and engagement in civic and political activities.
  • Playing games with others in person was related to civic and political outcomes, but playing with others online
    was not.
  • Teens who take part in social interaction related to the game, such as commenting on websites or contributing
    to discussion boards), re more engaged civically and politically.
  • Civic gaming experiences are more equally distributed than many other civic learning opportunities. (p. viii)

This study brought in the Mills College Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) who have released a White Paper on The Civic Potential of Video Games (PDF) which discusses the social and civic aspects of gaming. One interesting result (also found in the Pew summary) is that it seems that teens who play games socially in person “are more likely to be civically and politically engaged than teens who play games primarily alone.” (p. 18) Online gaming seems to be “a weak form of social interaction” (p. 20) compared to in person social gaming. Another finding that contradicts the accepted (parental) wisdom that gaming is bad for youth is that,

The stereotype of the antisocial gamer is not reflected in our data. Youth who play games frequently are just as civically and politically active as those who play games infrequently. (p. 24)

Pew Study: Teens, Video Games, and Civics

The Globe and Mail had a story today on Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Luddites by Patrick White (Nov. 25, 2008) that reports on a MacArthur Foundation funded study on, Living and Learning with New Media. This study looked at how youth participate in “the new media ecology.” (p. 1 of the PDF Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project.) The report describes the “always on” connectivity of youth and their “friendshi-driven” practices. I was intrigued by the description of a subset who “geek out.”

Some youth “geek out” and dive into a topic or talent. Contrary to popular images, geeking out is highly social and engaged, although usually not driven primarily by local friendships. Youth turn instead to specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults from around the country or world, with the goal of improving their craft and gaining reputation among expert peers. While adults participate, they are not automatically the resident experts by virtue of their age. Geeking out in many respects erases the traditional markers of status and authority. (p. 2 of the Two Page Summary)

The Digital Youth Project led by Mizuko Ito brought together researchers at USC and Berkeley. They have a book forthcoming from MIT Press called Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media that is online at the site.

Esquire: Future of Video Game Design – Jason Rohrer’s Programming Online Games

Screen of Passage

Esquire has a great story on The Video-Game Programmer Saving Our 21st-Century Souls by Jason Fagone (Nov. 20, 2008) which features “Jason Rohrer’s solitary and stubborn quest for a future in which pixels and code and computers will make you cry and feel and love”. Rohrer created the game Passage about which Clint Hocking of Ubisoft said:

Why can’t we make a game that fucking means something? A game that matters? You know? We wonder all the time if games are art, if computers can make you cry, and all that. Stop wondering. The answer is yes to both. Here’s a game that made me cry. It did. It really did.

I balk at the idea that a game to mean something has to have “lesson.” This reminds of the tedious pedagogical dialogues of the 18th century which really would have been better presented as lessons. The meaning of works that don’t present explicit opinions lies in the reflection provoked. Thus they are more like questions than answers. Or, to be more accurate, they are like a path of questioning since a game has the time to move questioning.

Thanks to Peter O for this.

Edmonton Sun: More fam-Wii fun despite downturn

So I got another minute of fame being interviewed for a story in the Edmonton Sun, More fam-Wii fun despite downturn. The interesting thing is how games seem to be recession-proof and how well the Wii is doing.

Despite a flagging economy, $1.31 billion US was spent on video games in October in the U.S. alone – a gain of 18% from September.

The spike is being led by Nintendo’s Wii interactive console, which according to figures from market research company NPD Group outpaced its competitors by selling 803,000 consoles in October.

I wonder how high definition screens will do this Christmas? I would have thought this is the time for people to switch, but the news suggests otherwise.

Globe and Mail: 1858: How a violent year created a province

The Globe and Mail yesterday had a full page story on 1858: How a violent year created a province. This story about the birth of British Columbia 150 years ago draws from the University of Victoria site Colonial Despatches which has images and text of the despatches. Neat project.

It’s remarkable, what a slender thread British authority hung by,” UVIC history professor John Lutz, who helped give birth to the new website, bcgenesis.uvic.ca, said in an interview.

University Affairs: Some graduates question thesis publication requirement

University of Affairs has a story online about how Some graduates question thesis publication requirement. The article gives as examples, students in creative writing programs who obviously want to go on and publish their theses. They don’t mention the serious issue of the license that Theses Canada makes you sign. I wonder if it would be possible for a graduate student to edit the license before signing it?

State of Science & Technology in Canada

Stan pointed me to the 2006 Council of Canadian Academies | Conseil des académies canadiennes report on The State of Science & Technology in Canada (Summary and Main Findings, PDF 2.6 mb). The report tries to identify Canada’s strengths and weaknesses in the Science & Technology field, though they have a broad understanding of S&T. There is good news for arts and technology.

The ICT field demonstrating the most promise in the view of respondents – i.e., with the highest net upward trend rating – is New Media, Multimedia, Animation and Gaming, where Canada is internationally recognized as a leader, with a number of successful companies as well as a reputation for superb skills training. (p. 9)

They also identify Humanities Computing as a transdisciplinary field of strength,

Survey respondents perceived significant strength in some emerging fields such as nanoscale materials and biotechnologies, quantum informatics and humanities computing. These latter transdisciplinary fields are specialities for which future prospects are seen to be more significant than currently established strength. (p. 10)

Here is a chart from page 39 showing the Humanities and the Arts:

Chart

Social Computing in 2020: Bluesky Innovation Competition – UC Transliteracies Project

From Susan a link to Social Computing in 2020: Bluesky Innovation Competition – UC Transliteracies Project. This competition is hosted by the University of California Transliteracies Project and UC Santa Barbara
Social Computing Group and is open to any student from any discipline. I think competitions like this and T-REX are going to become a more common way of fostering innovation and rewarding ideas.

Rome Reborn in Google Earth

Image of Google Rome Ever wondered what it was like to stand in the Roman forum back in 320 CE? Well, growing up in Rome and being dragged through the now hot and dusty forum I have wondered what it was like back then amny times. Now I can fly around imperial Rome thanks to a collaboration between the Rome Reborn project led by Bernie Frischer at Virginia and Google Earth. You can download the latest Google Earth viewer and relevant layers at Google Earth Rome. All that is missing is people.

This project has recieved a lot of press like the BBC story, Google Earth revives ancient Rome. I first noticed it on the Italian Google News where it made the Top Stories front page yesterday (called Prima Pagina in the Italian.) The mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno even blogged it on the Google blog inviting people to tour.

The idea that virtual technologies now let people experience the city that I guide as it appeared in 320 A.D. fills me with pride — a pride that I inherited from Rome’s glorious past.

As a humorous aside, there is an interesting view to be had if you go through the “floor” of ancient Rome. Then you see the satellite view of modern Rome (flattened) below the ancient 3D model in an interesting inversion of the archaeological layers.

Screen Shot from Google Earth Rome

Here you see the distinctive design of Michelangelo’s Campidoglio beneath the model. The lines are the flags for items of interest that you can click on to get descriptions of the buildings.

ESAC: Girl Gamers

Cover of ESA 2008 Fast FactsThe Edmonton Journal has a story today titled “It took a while, but Ms. Pacman has her audience: Girl gamers take up controllers” by David Wylie for the Canwest News Service (A10, November 12, 2008.) The story reports that a Entertainment Software Association of Canada study “found that half of Canadian gamers are women”. (The study isn’t available on the ESA Canada web site, which, for that matter, doesn’t have any press releases after 2007. Time for an update, Eh!) The story also reports that the Entertainment Software Association (of the USA?) 2008 Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry (PDF) puts the percentage of female game players at 40%. The Edmonton Journal story has some cute quotes from the woman they interviewed for the story:

“I think womean and gaming are a perfect match,” she (McIndoe) says. “It is incredibly social.” … “There is always something to talk about. And the ladies love to talk.”

“Things really took off once I met my husband; we didn’t have a lot of money, so we would stay up and play video games together. To be honest, it was him working the congroller and me shouting instructions — truly th beginning of a happy marriage.”

The story goes on to make the usual points about how games are marketed to me, how there are female-focused tournaments like Fight like a Girl (think Halo 3 for charity), and how there are all-girl clans.

I’m not sure I trust the ESA or ESAC facts, but I suspect there is a trend towards more women playing games, especially social games. What would computer game culture look like if it was dominated by older women? How would they design games?