Gaming+Research

====Post links to articles, videos, or webpages that are useful to those of us who are studying video games, including online gaming such as World of Warcraft. Or use the Discussion tab above to share ideas and thoughts about this research.====

Here's a link to James Gee's research website called games+learning+society, which has a lot of articles on video games and their connections to learning: [|games+learning+society] You'll want to check out the "news" and "research" tabs.

Gee: “Video games operate on the principle of ‘performance before competence.’ That is, players can learn as they play, rather than having to master an entire body of knowledge before being able to put it to use. Research shows that students learn best when they learn in context—that is, when they can relate words, concepts, skills, or strategies to prior experience. In fact, many students are alienated from what they learn in school because those connections and experiences are absent.”

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/hot-circuits-20090115

http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/36/reading_writing_and_playing_the_sims/

Video of James Gee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGd1URORsoE&feature=related

UC, Irvine Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds: http://today.uci.edu/news/nr_gamecenter_090901.php

David Perry on Video Games: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_perry_on_videogames.html

Here's a paper written by one of my former students, Ross Childs, where he uses learning theory to explore his WoW play:

Article that debunks 8 myths of video game play:

Article about games and education by James Gee:

Article about women and gaming:

Article about connections between character and identity in MMORPGs:

Link to Kurt Squire's research. He has a lot of links to articles on his site: [|Kurt Squire Video Game Research]

Link to sites with gaming as a focus:

[|Ludology]

[|Joystick]

[|Watercooler Games]

[|Newsgaming]

[|Persuasive Games]

Tega Okoro "T HE DRAMATIC INCREASE in the number and quality of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) since 1997 has impacted not only the game market but also multiple aspects of gamiing society and culture.1,2 The popularity of gaming and the formation of MMOG communities have resulted in a breakdown of boundaries formed by age, sex,race, and national origin. MMOGs and online/offline social interactions are drawing considerable attention from researchers in the computer and socialsciences.3 Topics attracting the greatest research interestinclude how players participate in processesthat form social norms in virtual societies and howplayers gain experience and expand their social networksinside and outside the games they play.4 Inthis study, formal player organizations called // guilds // serve as the basis for addressing these questions.Online game guilds have a hierarchical leadershipstructure that allows players to act as unified groupsto solve joint missions. Whereas guilds used to beviewed as informal and unplanned organizations, some recently released online games have incorporated guild formation into their structure, addingmechanisms for establishing guilds and designinggoals and missions that require coordinated actionsby members of well-organized teams.5,6,7 Since online players frequently change their personal gaming goals, they often leave active guilds to joinothers. Accordingly, online guilds are now experiencing cyclical lives that entail creation, development, member suspension, splitting, merging, and disbanding."

College of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, Republic of China. []

WoW and Social Media

By: Ashton Holland

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When is comes to gaming people sometimes choose to avoid a game by simply not buying it. Certain games though, you cannot get away from by just staying away from Best Buy. World of Warcraft (WoW), actually its company Blizzard Entertainment has inserted it self into the social media. In this article we have a man talking about how addicted he is able to become to certain video games, so he himself tries to stay away from World of Warcraft. "The realization came to me as I was watching the University of Texas-University of Oklahoma football game last fall. A commercial came on pitching the Toyota Tacoma pickup. It starts with three animated " World of Warcraft " characters choosing steeds to ride into their upcoming quest. One chooses a bright red Tacoma. They set out to slay a dragon. It eats the truck. A few seconds later, the truck bursts out of the dragon's chest, the beast's beating heart in the cab." (Marty Toohey, Warcraft Bewitched Wide Audience, 2008) We see that WoW itself has become a part of not just the gamers life but the life of us all. We see it here at football games, on television, and all over the internet. Blizzard has even had celebrities make commercials for this game. In one particular commercial we see Verne Troyer (Mini Me from Austin Powers) tell us that he is a mage, and that World of Warcraft is his game. This game is grabbing the attention of a myriad of people each and every day, and this company is doing this through social media. Works Cited: [] ======

By: Andrew Davis
== The article //Xbox Live – The Shift to Social Networks// written by Christopher Mack goes on to explain how Microsoft is changing the look, feel, and full on capabilities of Xbox Live. On November 19th, 2009, Microsoft plans to launch the update they call the “New Xbox Experience” “to shift Xbox Live from a mere multiplayer matchmaking tool to a much more engrossing entertainment based social network,” explains Mack. Since the new avatar update of Xbox Live (which the author explains is a marketing strategy by Microsoft to keep up with the sales of Nintendo’s Wii), gamers have been applying physical characteristics to their virtual identities. After the system update, the way people live their lives will be imitated in a virtual reality allowing gamers to watch movies, listening to music, and even socialize with an alternative being. == == The advancement of technology is so fascinating but the idea of a complete virtual world makes me ponder. How will that society develop? Will the virtual world being developed by Microsoft be like an alternative life? Xbox communities are notorious for cyber bullying so will cyber gangbanging be a problem? What will it really be like? This article gives me an idea…we can see how Xbox Live develops with its participants and how people will adapt to the technological advancement. Will the people portray themselves as they do online or will this be a more realistic version of the web? Only time can tell. ==

Arya Omshehe

"Data revealed that 11.9% of participants (840 gamers) fulfilled diagnostic criteria of addiction concerning their gaming behavior, while there is only weak evidence for the assumption that aggressive behavior is interrelated with excessive gaming in general." This quote has to do with my topic about world of warcraft and how people become addicted to the game. The hole article is about web 2.0 and the web expanding so much not only through internet but also games that use the web. []