From the POV of another identity, that of educational technology doctoral student, interested in MMORPG gaming environments as interfaces for learning environments, I find SL to be more promising for my interests. (I am not at all interested in games for a "spoonful of sugar" approach, btw.) For my interests in online communities and online communities of practice, WoW would be a rich focus of study. However, I find that the WoW story system – which Celia Pearce defines as “A rule-based story system or kit of generic narrative parts that allows the player to create their own narrative content,” (“Towards a Game Theory of Game,” chapter in “First Person,” 2004), and the WoW metastory (“A specific narrative ‘overlay’ that creates a context or framework for the game conflict”) (Pearce, 2004) are TOO constraining. Some have complained that there is a lack of imagination in the applications of SL – limited to consumerism and monuments to vanity.
Certainly, when I travel around in SL, it isn’t clear what it is for – there is a completely unstructured story system, and at this point, only a limited metastory that some find frustrating. When I travel in WoW, the story system and metastory are completely clear and structured, and I can immediately begin constructing a personal narrative with my quests. I have immediate gratification. But that same strength appears also to be a weakness for its use as a learning environment: any potential personal narrative is VERY constrained by the WoW story system and metastory. At this point, the SL environment, if leveraged skillfully and with imagination, seems to me to have more potential for a wider, almost unlimited range of learning experiences and emergent narratives – and so I continue to be intrigued with the use of the SL gaming environment as an interface for a learning environment.
Well, I guess it feels more like a staging ground with a partiuclar set and costume arrangement. I do have my own narrative experiences as I cruise around in there. For instance, in one entry in this blog I remark on how inappropriate the dinosaur-like creatures are. They totally break the LOTR mood (Lord of the Rings). They are just wrong and that's all there is to it.
ReplyDeleteWe talked, James and I, about running through a new territory and blogging about it as an adventure. Almost as if we'd had a Wizard of Oz whirlwind set us down in some foreign place, with its own culture and history. I do hope we get to do that.
However, the gaminess of it does intrude and actually works against that suspension of disbelief. I mean, at some point I find myself just wanting to go out and clear out an area to level up. So I'm immersed in a fantasy, and then suddenly compelled to wipe out a species. LOL.