No idea is new, no idea dies

So, I haven't been reading my assigned textbooks - big surprise there - but I've been reading a book I think we all need to be familiar with: Designing Virtual Worlds by Richard Bartle. I'm only on page 160, and already I've been blown away by a variety of concepts. Unsurprisingly, they've resonated with the topics of what we've been talking about in other contexts. Like, for instance, did you know that Lave and Wenger stole the idea of legitimate peripheral participation from the writings of a sys admin for a Lucasfilm MMO?

Okay, they didn't steal it. But in what's clearly a case of the permanence of ideas and how they bubble up and down through the ages, F. Randall Farmer described in a 1992 paper his experiences as a sys admin in Habitat, where he posits a five-step process, that he calls the "path of ascension", where MMO players progress from "The Passives" to "The Actives" to "The Motivators" to "The Caretakers" to "The Geek Gods". Doesn't sound like LPP enough yet? How 'bout this?

"Encourage everyone to move one role to the right, and the result will be a living, self-sustaining and thriving community where new members can always feel encouraged to become vital citizens."

Bartle also cites a similar model from an Ultima Online player, Hedron, who described it as six circles, from Survival, to Competence, to Excel, to Prove Mastery, to Seek New Challenges, to Everything Is One.

The challenge for all of us, I guess, is to find descriptive models to fit our world into. When Sue Talley was trying to teach me Lave & Wenger and LPP, I only finally got it when a metaphor popped into my mind - the whirlpool (or that large white ball-rolling example of a vortex so common at tech museums). At the edge of whirl, we move slowly in large paths around the center - and not always in a perfectly circular path - but by the time we reach the center, our movement tends toward the tightly wrapped circular motion, rotating at a high speed. What's fascinating to see is that, what ever the model, we all seem to get to the same place.

It Takes a Village: Socialization as a Practice Community

Yesterday several guildies were online at the same time and we all decided to do Blackfathom Deeps, yeah another instance. Balamor was one of those available, and he had in tow a friend he'd made while playing a few w0eeks back. Her name is Moonbows (as in rainbows), and she is 14 years old, but a level 40-something mage or rogue. The rest were adults.

As we began, I joked that I hoped there wasn't any swimming involved. (See my entry on swimming.), and was told no, no problem. Of course, that meant there was swimming, but only a little bit. There was also jumping across gaps, which can be a challenge when you are a tiny gnome. At each of these elements, I stumbled. At one point I suggested the group go on w/o me till I'd gotten a better grasp on my physical abilities. James was obstinate and actually used CAPS to encourage me to try again and again. He also went back to wait for me at the instance entrance instead of making me fight my way through to where the group was waiting. He demonstrated very kind and patience and supportive behavior, and with his help, I finally I got through to the group and we finished out the cave with much gusto and comraderie.

However, James is not the point. Well he is, but not just to commend his behavior. After the instance was over I realized that the whole experience had given the 14 year old girl the opportunity to hang with adults, see adults problem-solve, but most importantly, see adults help each other. The adult group, especially but not only James, demonstrated values in action, the kind of values that I think we'd all love our children to adopt and display as throughout life. It was better than Sunday school...well, as good as?...no it was better. This was not schooling ABOUT values, this was not a demo or a role playing experience. Even though we were in roles at the time, the behaviors were emanating from real people engaged with other real people. This was better than an afterschool special. This was a community of practice in action, where the practice was prosocial behavior. This was the village raising the young.

Now where else in real life do kids get to be part of something like this? In the structured play we offer them, e.g., Girl Scouts, sports teams, summer camp, the adults are really not engaged with other adults AND the child/children at the seam time on the same task. They are teaching or herding or parenting. There's got to be another place, though I am hard pressed to think of one. Perhaps in an emergency, say in New Orleans, you might get that experience. And perhaps that's why it happens in WoW. We must be able to rely on each other. We are brothers in arms and we know we need to foster relationships to make that possible. Because children are also playing the game, they get sucked in to that experience as well. Hopefully they also learn the value of collective relationships, and how and why to tend them.

Pondering all this and happier to have Sarah (now 12) playing WoW than Neopets or ToonTown, which are a kids only communities. (Actually she's safer on WoW than on either of those because those are magnets for inappropriate adult behavior whereas WoW is an adult space with adults actively, publicly monitoring their community.).

We should find a way to talk to the tweens and teens playing this game. I know I've commented on the shaping of youthful behavior in this blog before.

Hallgrima

Got UI?

The first time I got asked that I was hugely confused. I know what UI stands for, user interface. So of course I have UI, I"m playing in it. Then I found out what it means inside MMORPG land, in this case, WoW, where it is also often referred to as addons

The client for WoW is written in XML and is therefore, extensible. A huge, and I do mean huge, developer community has arisen around WoW (and around other such games), working with support and encouragement from the game devs, to develop additional features for the client software.

It reminds me of the old days of computer OS, when developer community folks would construct useful widgets, INITS, that we'd all find, swap, and install in our system to facilitate the navigation and improve the useability of the standard interface.

At any rate, I got myself some UI/addons. It's interesting to look at the code. It's very simple and readable. I'm thinking, jees, I could do this if I bothered to learn the primitives and syntax. Pretty straight forward stuff. Anyhow, I got a shard management system for warlocks that hangs on the side of my mini-map. It sorts and counts soul shards in my bags. It also reminds me of cool down times for shard-related casts, such as soulstone, firestone, and healthstone. I also grabbed a more generally useful addon that posts the x,y coordinates of my current position. THis is very useful because a lot of the quest info on WoW db sites anchors information with x,y coordinates.

Two primo sites for UI/addons are listed in the links panel. I'll post a snap of the mini-map with addons when the Moon server is back up.