The Sandbox Project - Virtual Cities

Inspired by Darcy Osheim's thesis that examines World of Warcraft from a pedagogical perspective, I'm launching a little experiment in paragraph-level writing that explores the intersection of pedagogy and sandbox style gaming, focusing mainly on console games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and LA Noire. Aside from common interest, my project and Darcy's thesis are unrelated. These 'graphs are written without an outline. Their connections may be tenuous or superfluous. I may never finish. 

Video game cities can populate our material experiences of urbanity; they certainly add layers of meaning to my walking experiences. I remember a few years back when Jenny, Vienna, and I drove to L.A. to catch an international flight. We arrived early, which inspired Vienna and I to convince Jenny that we should cruise through Compton "to see where C.J. lives." This was when our family was briefly addicted to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

The afternoon was such a kick, poking along pavement that seemed so familiar. "Ahh, that's where I got into that wicked firefight!" "Isn't that where you bought a house?" We barely considered the absurdity of taking a video-game tour through a neighborhood of living, breathing people who do not imagine themselves as occupants of a video game. The three of us were simply grooving on the idea that this place could possess the patina of our imaginations, that another continuum of reality could be laid upon this one.

Sometime later Jenny and I were in Florida, driving to South Beach, when we got lost (as usual). We were plying the causeway east toward the Atlantic, crossing over lush islands dotted with mansions, when I realized how familiar this setting seemed. Thanks to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, I'd been here before. I was able to use my memories of those virtual streets to navigate us to our destination.

From these moments I find myself wondering about the uses and gratifications of video game cities. Not those fantasy domains of dragons and wizards, but the simulacra of real places that contain increasingly striking degrees of verisimilitude. What does it mean to reproduce a city for a video game? How might we study such an environment -- as play, as rhetoric, as social commentary?

I might as well start close to home. Thankfully Wikipedia's got a list of Video Games Set in Los Angeles.

The Sandbox Project - Virtual borders

Inspired by Darcy Osheim's thesis that examines World of Warcraft from a pedagogical perspective, I'm launching a little experiment in paragraph-level writing that explores the intersection of pedagogy and sandbox style gaming, focusing mainly on console games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and LA Noire. Aside from common interest, my project and Darcy's thesis are unrelated. These 'graphs are written without an outline. Their connections may be tenuous or superfluous. I may never finish. 

Sometimes the edges of a sandbox video game make sense; others, not so much. The best way to establish a border to a theoretically endless world is to install a natural barrier. I'm now playing Red Dead Redemption, and it appears that those white mountains in the North -- beyond the Tall Trees region where the bear and wolves await hapless explorers -- cannot be climbed. You can try, and I have indeed managed to coax myself up to dizzying heights. But eventually all players face the merciless constraints of virtual gravity.

I've read that Rockstar Games patterned the Redemption Mountains after the Rockies. Thinking about this choice summons memories of my family's first drive back in '96 through the snowy pass that drops into Denver. I recall an image of towering stone and frozen water emptying past the city into a flat green plain. Beyond that pancake prairie land lies more towns, more people. Drive long enough and you reach the ocean, yet another boundary that beckons us to beat on against the current.

Of course the ocean in some games is merely another kind of border. For players of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the ocean means certain death, which seems pretty funny to me. There I am, pumped and armed, a walking gun show, walking to my doom in four feet of water. A few steps, just a few more, and then… there I am, a virtual tough guy drowning in a sea of pixels. Apparently my avatar never learned how to swim.

Later iterations in the GTA series relax this draconian restriction somewhat, allowing players to swim for a while (conceivably forever in GTA: San Andreas, though into an endless plain of undifferentiated monotony). The GTA IV oceans, however, are not endless. Supposedly you can swim for about a half hour (real time) until the hitting a virtual wall [a gamer named indianasmith27 even produced a YouTube video to demonstrate this feat].

In one GTA forum, players compare this feature to The Truman Show, raising some interesting philosophical questions about the necessity of boundaries, both physical and virtual. One illustrative quote: "There's going to be nothing 'out there.' It's just the ocean or the desert. It would have mattered if we had some incentive to go out there and look for something. But that has never been the case."

Fair enough. Yet I wonder, what if there is something "out there," past the point where most players stop clicking those buttons (or peel the tape off their trigger), a new level waiting for that chosen few willing to endure to the end. Moments like this, I can't help but imagine that the next religion will be founded in virtual space.

The Sandbox Project - Channeling Chandler

Inspired by Darcy Osheim's thesis that examines World of Warcraft from a pedagogical perspective, I'm launching a little experiment in paragraph-level writing that explores the intersection of pedagogy and sandbox style gaming, focusing mainly on console games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and LA Noire. Aside from common interest, my project and Darcy's thesis are unrelated. These 'graphs are written without an outline. Their connections may be tenuous or superfluous. I may never finish. 

It's 1947 in all its postwar glory, and I'm stalking these sunburned, dusty streets, going nowhere. All my leads have dried up and the clues are cracked like a broken beer bottle. All jagged edge, not one piece that fits. It's a good day to be on the beach. It's a bad day to be a cop. What's worse, my partner is wearing my nerves down but good. He's aways sour though. The kinda guy who liked The Wizard of Oz just fine until they switched on the color. He lost his passion for this job years ago, he's worthless in a firefight, and he yelps every time I sideswipe a Studebaker. Still, I can manage him. Just one gentle press on the B-button turns him into a talking map: "Hang a right at the next corner," he opines. "Roll right through this intersection…" In mid-complaint he becomes as handy as Rand McNally. Just one button. And I need him like that, friendly and docile, because this town is a big place. Bigger than me. And it groans. The City of Angels stretches for miles, jammed with construction sites (new housing for returning GIs), packed with blocks of dive bars that swim in neon and despair, and pulsing with crimes of all shape and size. I'm playing L.A. Noire on my Xbox, filling my clue book with names and places, when the radio squawks out an APB. A bank job's gone bad. I guess they all do in the end. But this one features some twisted whack-job who's decided to spray the downtown gentry with an army issue machine gun. Some guys, I'll never understand. But I know my job. I hit the siren and bang up a few more unlucky parked cars on the route downtown. Cocked and loaded, I'm feeling the itch. 

The Sandbox Project - Tutorial

Inspired by Darcy Osheim's thesis that examines World of Warcraft from a pedagogical perspective, I'm launching a little experiment in paragraph-level writing that explores the intersection of pedagogy and sandbox style gaming, focusing mainly on console games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and LA Noire. Aside from common interest, my project and Darcy's thesis are unrelated. These 'graphs are written without an outline. Their connections may be tenuous or superfluous. I may never finish. 

Educators should play more video games. After all, consider how the contemporary video game teaches its player how to play; there's a lot of serious theory at work. And that theory is backed by mammoth budgets and based on high expectations for ROI. Yet the standard video game contains no syllabus, not much of one at least. I can't think of the last time I started a console game by reading the instructions. And what if I did? Most booklets include a glossy, mostly useless insert. There may be a basic overview about running and shooting and driving, maybe a fold-out map, but little else. The instructions that come with LA Noire? 12 pages of pictures and button-functions, followed by 11 pages of tiny font listing everyone involved in the game's production. Generally the "instructions" that come with most console games are scanned once and never used again. We learn to play videogames through trial and error, advancing through tutorial levels that implant button combinations at an almost unconscious level. If the process works we learn by doing, sometimes aided by explicit instruction but generally by playing. One may debate the virtues of video game content, but one can hardly doubt that game designers know how to teach.

To Read: Erik Andersen et al.'s "The Impact of Tutorials on Games of Varying Complexity"

More Alive at 45

I remember a former SJSU colleague popping into my office a few years back to announce, "Being 50 sucks." This guy was (and I'm sure still is) almost superhumanly fit and active. And here he was standing in the doorway, assuring me that the next decade will be filled with aching joints and cloudy thoughts. Joy. At least this decade has been a blast. I feel more comfortable in my own skin, less concerned about pleasing others, and I'm increasingly focused on challenges and opportunities that seemed invisible just a few years back.

Given that my birthday comes near the beginning of the year, I'm especially inclined to think of this day as an opportunity to look ahead. So far, 2013 is shaping up to be quite an adventure (though I hope it won't be as crushingly packed as its predecessor). I'm just about done working through a delightful holiday bout with pneumonia, a fighter that likes to sneak back into the ring after the bell's already been rung, and I'll soon submit grades for a winter public speaking course. Spring semester is coming. Time to clear the desk.

So what's next? Well, I've received a contract to co-author a book entitled Die ortlose Stadt: Die Virtualisierung des Urbanen [The placeless City: The Virtualization of the Urban - Yep, it's for a German press], I'm working with David Terry on an essay about rhetoric in the DPRK, and I'm collaborating with Kathleen McConnell on a project designed to help students think about writing as a form of navigation. The "Origami Urbanism" piece is in press, and, of course, I've got a gaggle of Humanities Honors lectures to write. My mind is spinning, but in a good way.

Travel plans, strangely, remain inchoate. I hope to spend a week or so somewhere on the road this spring, though I've yet to finalize an itinerary. I'm tentatively scheduled to lecture this summer in Austria - again, details remain to be ironed out - and I'm hoping that Jenny and I will take a side-trip to Russia for a week or so. I'm kinda bummed that there's no China travel in the near future (though looking at pictures of Beijing smog, I might be lucky to take a break from the PRC).

Anticipating the year to come, I've got to acknowledge that my plans wrap too tightly around professional objectives, not enough around friends and family. Sure, the various parts of my life overlap in occasionally surprising ways. And I simply can't imagine a meaningful divide between my work and some of my closest relationships. Still I hope to define myself less by the things I do and the places I go, to be someone who is more present with people. That's my goal at 45.

Here's hoping...

2013's Banned Words and phrases (Part 2 of 2)

Following up on yesterday's rant, let's wrap up 2013's list of words, phrases, or things that need to be banished to the land of wind and ghosts.

Honey Boo Boo Alana Thompson portrays this gawdawful character on TLC, a station once called The Learning Channel (former actual slogan: "A Place for Learning Minds"). When the cameras are off, I'm sure Alana's pretty much like any other kid. I hope so. So I'm not dissing a little girl. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, though: that show's got to go. No less a D-lister than Kathy Griffin said as much while working to elicit girlish giggles from Anderson Cooper this past New Year's Eve. And when Kathy Griffin says your time is up, your time is up.

"_____ on steroids" I'm not sure what's worse about this phrase, the sense that its user has simply stopped caring about saying anything original, or the icky images conjured by its use. Either way, unless we're talking about bulging muscles, leathery skin, and bad acne, let's ban steroids from all future political and pop culture commentary.

Record Needle Scratch So you're sitting in a movie theater, watching the trailers. Let's see, there's that new blockbuster about comic book heroes (in 3D!), there's another Fast and Furious sequel (just how furious can these people be? Too much fury just makes me sleepy), and, ah, there it is: the Cute Family Comedy involving meddling mothers-in-law, adorable kids, and a scene where the family dances in the kitchen to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" -- but there's a twist, something like, "Except. Everyone. Is. A. Robot... In 3D!" That's when we hear the dreaded Scratch, the Wilhelm Scream of movie trailers. Note to Hollywood Producers On Cocaine: Most folks in your audience have never played a record. Lose the scratch.

"At the end of the day" TV talk shows about politics and the economy are one of my guilty pleasures. I've got a crush on Rachel Maddow, of course, but I switch things up too. I give Bill O'Reilly a listen from time to time, and I've been known to watch an entire Ann Coulter segment without piercing my eyeballs. But no matter the network, I want to throw my remote at the screen every time someone says, "at the end of the day." For many politicians, journalists, and commentators, the phrase seems to bolster otherwise trite analysis with some sort of credibility, as if one person's words can summon forth the debate's closure. Each time someone says, "at the end of the day," that person's IQ drops 10 points. Every time.

YOLO This is a sign of my age, but I don't know a single person who has said or written YOLO, which is an acronym for "You only live once." Suddenly I'm reminded of Pauline Kael's response to Nixon's 1972 election: "I don't know how he won. None of my friends voted for him." Anyway, I only read about YOLO in articles who've texted the phrase before attempting a stupid feat ("I'm going to produce a shot-by-shot remake of Jackass: The Movie. Looking for a shopping cart. YOLO!"). So I guess the phrase works as a gene pool scrubber. Hmmm… Maybe YOLO can stay.

2013's Banned List (Part 1 of 2)

OK, let's get this out of the way: I'm gonna trash some words, phrases, and things as being so clichéd and hackneyed that they should be banned in 2013. Problem is, "Banned Lists" are themselves a cliché. So beware. This post is so overdone, it might consume itself and set off a self-referential chain reaction that turns the universe inside out. That proviso aside, we'll proceed.

"Where's my jetpack?" Remember the turn of the century? The Year 2000? That's when we were promised flying cars, robot butlers and, of course, jetpacks. We got George Bush, jr. instead. Naturally we're all disappointed. Problem is we've been inundated with that "Where's my jetpack?" lament ever since. "Where's my jetpack?" has become an all-purpose stand-in for all manner of Great Disappointment. It's been 13 years, folks. There's no jetpack in your future. Let it go.

"Double-down" Every politician these days is a gambler, announcing some initiative or policy and then, faced with opposition, actually sticking with their idea. It sounds daring, but mostly the "double down" comes across as a screw-you to political foes. GOP: "You thought you hated us when we threatened to send us over the cliff? Just wait until we close down the whole government!" Lame Commentator: "Looks like they're doubling down." Doubly stupid.

Baby Bump In celebrity culture, pregnancy seems like the ultimate product spin-off ("This fall we're releasing a new movie, my first album is dropping, and, oh!, I'm having a baby!"). Turns out, producing an Actual Human Being is kind of a big deal. Labeling it a "bump" makes the kid sound like an add-on feature, something you complain about when the hotel tries to charge extra at check-out. We're already doomed to follow Every Moment Of Kim Kardashian's Pregnancy. Let's at least give her kid a break.

Selfie When our future robot overlords look back upon today's society, these happy years before machines become sentient and start sporting baby bumps of their own, they'll remember the one thing that made their rise possible: We were so busy taking "selfies" (most egregiously holding up iPhones and, ye Gods, iPads in the bathroom to take duckface portraits) that we never saw them coming. Let's cut back on the selfies, or at least get a tripod.

LOL We laugh. And most of the time we laugh out loud. That's lovely. Laughing is lovely, and we should let loose at least one good guffaw each day. But every time I see someone comment on a Facebook post with LOL (or worse, lol), I just think to myself, "No you didn't. You did not laugh out loud. Why would you lie to me? You're supposed to be my friend!" What's worse, by the way, is when folks append this acronym to something snarky ("Your duckface Selfie looks like someone tried to iron your lips lol."). Please, no more.

[Check back tomorrow for Part 2]