I haven’t had much time in STO the past month, but I’m still in the middle of the Cardassian season, so lots of narrative content left, plus I want to do more pugging and fleet actions – did my first Borg invasion the other night, and it rocked.

There’s definitely great work to be done on the Mass Effect reaction: I think it’s going to lead to changes in game storytelling we can’t even imagine yet.

I’m still enjoying running around in Star Trek Online. The amount of episodic content available is stunningly wonderful — especially that they’re tapping into the Foundry.

On Mass Effect: I am currently trying to pitch an article to one of my magazine venues to do a literary review of why gamer culture unilaterally rejected the ending of ME3 even though the entire trilogy is greatly beloved. It’s an amazing game series and I loved playing through all of it. In fact, it ate an entire week for me.

Good luck on prepping for that dissertation, don’t fry too many brain cells.

In my understanding the whole article argues against the notion that people ought to act differently in online interactions than they do in “real life” interactions. You claim, “if it’s wrong on the street, it’s wrong on the internet.” It seems to me that dismisses the fact that even in the real world people have different personalities in different social contexts. What is wrong on the street may not be wrong in a group of close friends. What is right on the street may not be right at a business dinner. I act differently online than I do in the real world, but I also act differently when I’m with my girlfriend than when I’m out with some friends. People’s actions are always shaped by the context they take place in.

Additionally, you say that “the world turns inside out: the circle jerks would see game rules (primarily emergent social norms rather than Monopoly-like rules) trump real world rules*.” I disagree with this statement. Excuse me if I’m misinterpreting your statement, but no one makes the claim that how we act in game ought to be how we act outside of the game, that is “fucking nuts.” People simply make the claim that how we act inside the game is distinct from how we act outside the game, and never the two shall meet. The problem that arose with The Mittani’s statements at Fanfest is that it was a odd confluence of the game world with the real world, there was Alex on-stage making statements as if he was The Mittani, which got him into trouble. He brought the in game rules into real life and is facing consequences of that. An interesting example of this has been that a joke has arisen where players are saying “Kill yourself… in game, of course” recognizing that there is such a distinction. Additionally, you see the distinction arise in the way that Mittani has reacted to the media coverage, he has taken issue with the gaming media’s use of the term cyberbully and the publishing of his full real name, clearly showing that he believes there is a distinction between the asshole The Mittani and the mild mannered retired lawyer, Alexander.

What’s incredibly interesting about Fanfest is that it brings all these people who have built relationships based on in game politics and actions and places them in a “real life” conversation. You see plenty of interesting results from this. For example, one that involves the Mittani, is that for the past couple years Pandemic Legion and Goonswarm have been bitter enemies after a diplomatic break a few years ago, Mittani spend a good deal of Fanfest hanging out with some of the members of Pandemic Legion and now there are rumors that they may be deploying with Goonswarm on a joint venture.

It’s astonishing how bad the state of the art of dealing with this stuff is in academia, across disciplines. Up until about 10 years ago, most all of “games studies” looked at children’s play, especially folk games like hopscotch. There’s some really good work from the 60s through the 80s, but it really doesn’t carry over into modern gaming well at all.

Then from the 90s on, you get the “cyberspace” and magic circle stuff I go off on – a bunch of work way too informed by sci-fi, and mostly looking at hardcore early adopters (and mostly early 20 somethings adjacent to MIT). You don’t get scholar-players writing from their own experience till about 2007, and we’re all coming at common issues with different handfuls of theories.

There’s some good educational theory about group learning that applies pretty well, and some stuff from organizational psychology, mostly on how WoW guilds teach corporate management, and some very old theory from sociology (mostly Erving Goffman’s stuff)

So if our stuff seems like under-theorized crap, that’s because when we’re not writing about very narrow cases, it is. Most of my colleagues have the good sense to stick to narrow cases, and they do really good work. I’m trying to do bigger-picture stuff, exactly because we don’t have good theory to cover it, and so a lot of what I’m saying here is half-baked, literally.

Which is why I blog: I’d rather be wrong here and now, and get called out on it by smart people with more experience, than publish stupid shit in a journal.

So, thank you, to you, everyone who’s commented on the thread here and on the EVE-O forum – we may end up disagreeing, but I’m a better pilot for getting shot down by veteran capsuleers.