I was originally not planning to return to PAX on Sunday, as various family obligations seemed to rule out a third day at the conference. Having been given a last-minute pass on all of the above, however (just in case there's any doubt, which there isn't, my wife rules!), I caught the early train into Boston so that I could take advantage of my media badge. I'd hit the Exhibit Floor an hour early, perhaps sign up for a demonstration of the new Dark Sun setting for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, and just squeeze as much game time as I could out of the final day of PAX East. After all, that's what brought us all here in the first place, right?
Although I had god intelligence that media badges have allowed early access to the game floor on previous days, I was very disappointed to find that security was barring those of us with yellow passes from getting into the Exhibit Halls until general admission at 10am. That being said, those of us representing the Fourth Estate did have first dibs on whatever it was we wanted to see by virtue of already being at the doors when said doors opened, and so I strategically positioned myself opposite the one vendor demo I absolutely, positively wanted to get my hands on before the gamer hordes turned every line into an hour-plus long queue:
That's right, folks. I made a beeline for Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption, their much-anticipated Western epic built on the Great Theft Auto engine. I am a huge fan of Westerns, and have always waited for a videogame that did the genre the justice it deserves. Just looking at the giant LCD screens showing previews of gameplay to passersby you could tell that if nothing else, this game was a cinematic tour de force. The Old West is rendered in loving detail, all the way down to the dust and the tumbleweeds, and just like GTA you are given the freedom you want to explore this virtual world by foot, by horse, or even by rail, from the Southwestern U.S. circa 1900 down into Old Mexico.
I'm not going to attempt to review Red Dead Redemption since our media walkthrough was fairly scripted and each of us only had a precious few minutes at the controls-- though I did have the stick long enough to jump my horse off a cliff and kill the protagonist! -- but the game got me to thinking about the intersection of virtual worlds and education. While educational games often fall flat with the gaming public, one can see in a game like Red Dead Redemption real potential for teaching gamers about the Old West. While the historical details are admittedly mixed and matched and the level of violence is what you'd expect from Rockstar's studios, immersive virtual worlds such as Red Dead Redemption are getting so good that the INCIDENTAL educational value they contain rivals the content being produced in games or simulations designed explicitly for educational purposes (like Second Life's Deadwood).
Think about this for another second, because when I made this realization it totally blew my mind: the gaming industry is now capable of bringing to bear so much creative power when designing an historical FPS that they can't help but produce something that has some absolute educational merit. And assuming that Red Dead Redemption will be a huge seller (something the buzz seems to suggest and the demo seems to validate), this may very well open the floodgates for other similarly-conceived projects. We have already witnesses the success of early Renaissance Italy as a setting in the very popular Assassin's Creed series- the historical backdrop to these games is becoming less and less wallpaper and more and more interactive virtual history.
Granted, because the primary purpose of these games is not educational one must always be wary of the liberties that will be taken by designers with actual historical details and events, but as the whole of history becomes the fodder for games like this with ever more granularity how long will it be before gamers derive their primary knowledge of history through games such as Assassin's Creed, Red Dead Redemption, and their successors instead of through other forms of media? I can definitely see, for example, a college history professor asking his students to play a game like this and compare its depictions of the Old West with accounts from primary sources, or for communications or literature faculty to ask their students what role historical appropriation plays in modern media. The mind truly boggles.
Alas, because I was getting the media tour of Red Dead Redemption I missed my chance to sign up for the Dark Sun demo, but I promise I will contribute some thoughts and reviews about pen and paper role-playing games such as D&D in future posts at 8bitlibrary.com! What I'd like to close my Day Three Recap, however, is a look back at old school gaming, thanks to the Retro Arcade Lounge provided by the folks at ACAM- the American Classic Arcade Museum, located in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. ACAM brought a subset of their vast collection of arcade games from the 20th century, including Frogger, Space Invaders, Sinistar, Donkey Kong 3, Food Fight, and the laserdisc interactive fantasy cartoon Dragon's Lair (which incidentally I dumped who knows how many hundreds of dollars into back when I was a kid in order to "solve" on the Ocean City Boardwalk in New Jersey!).
While we talk about how librarians can incorporate games into their collections and the classroom, the founders of ACAM have gone and actually created a playable library of classic arcade games. As an all-80's soundtrack blared and ACAM staff members kept feeding a bottomless supply of quarters into the machines so that we could all enjoy as many free plays as our hearts desired, I realized in between my attempts to destroy the Sinistar (whose evil floating head still managed to quicken my pulse even all these years when I saw it appear on screen again) and try to remember all of the winning moves to Dragon's Lair that this is as much about having fun as it is about preserving an important era in American history for posterity or study.
The play's the thing, after all.
Showing posts with label 8bitlibrary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 8bitlibrary. Show all posts
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
PAX East Day Two- Hurry Up and Wait in Line
(This is my Day 2 recap from PAX East, cross-posted at 8bitlibrary.com!)
As if the Disney World-like lines to see Wil Wheaton weren’t enough of a test of one’s stamina and willpower, it appears that every event and/or panel here at PAX East has a queue going out the door, down the hallway, around the rotunda, and back down the hallway in the other direction. One the one hand good for PAX, as this is the surest sign that this East Coast spinoff of the Penny Arcade Expo is an unqualified success, but on the other hand a conference this well-attended is really pushing the limits of the facilities. I wonder if Penny Arcade will attempt having PAX East 2011 at the Seaport Convention Center? There’s a ton more space, the building is still virtually brand spanking new, and judging from all the Twittering librarians the wi-fi there is lightyears beyond what Hynes has to offer.
Also daunting are the crowds in the Exhibit Hall for the product demos. All but the smallest indie booths are mobbed with gamers waiting for a few minutes at the controllers, but that doesn’t stop JP and myself from pushing our way through the lines to try and talk to as many developers, CEOs, and PR folks that we can about games and gaming in libraries. And how cool was it whenever we met a developer whose face lit up when JP said we were from 8bitlibrary and they told us that they’d seen us online? It’s interesting to take in the reactions to JP’s 8bitlibrary “elevator speech”- some game companies clearly see how gaming, education, and librarianship all potentially intersect, but other shops seem just as at a loss as do our librarian and educator peers when we try to demonstrate the relevance of gaming to our discipline. This suggests that the silos we’re trying to break out of are not entirely of our own making, and that maybe the game content producers themselves could benefit from thinking outside the traditional confines of their current business models. There’s a lot of fertile ground here for advocacy.
The Death of Print- a panel lead and moderated by The Escapist’s Russ Pitts, featuring freelancer Julian Murdoch, Jeff Green from EA, Chris Dahlen, managing editor of Kill Screen, and John Davison, E.I.C. of Gamepro
Niche printing as a craft market
In the US % of newsstand sales ae pulped
Print has copyeditors and fact-checkers- how much of this can carry over?
Advertiser balance with media changing over time
No ads can result in a “pure craft” product a la McSweeneys
In the US people expect free magazines whereas in UK customers pay for premium print content
Ipads and the new tablet magazine format- you can charge for content without the waste of print
Social media will always win in terms of delivering information
E-print pubs need to focus on content that isn’t news, because paid news is dead
However, sometimes people just want something on your shelf, and Kindles on a plane still need to be turned off
Q: How many of you have a magazine subscription? Most of room- half are game-related pubs
Q: How many go to game websites? All in room. How many use Adblock? 3/4’s of room.
“We (the industry) may have killed print but you guys are killing online”
Online is all about reach- print is still disproportionately valued in publishing and critical circles however
What does the media future hold?
Print on demand future?
Small print run business is getting very interesting
Problem is that it’s all happening in China so you have to allow for lead time and lower quality
Higher quality and local printing equals a very expensive product
Q from audience: re: the packaging of content can we learn anything from the mp3ification of music? Can we succesfully monetize “chunked” print content?
A: Look at e-comics and Dark Horse, it seems to be a viable model for certain niche markets
Why are we buying this content? As a consumer or as a collector? If you are a consumer why not get it digital?
Can we get away with timely digital content for premium pricing (i.e. download now for $15, buy next week for $5)
What about the New Yorker? Can that mixed/exclusive model survive?
Q: What about a “freemium”-tipjar model for opt in payment? Didn’t Penny Arcade do it this way in the first place?
These kinds of operations can work but they don’t necessarily scale
Q: How do you fit online features like streaming video etc back into print? Tell the right story for the right medium.
Some stories will work in some media but others will fail miserably- e.g. do people really want a transcription of a podcast?
There’s a palpable difference between a print byline and An online personality
Online is still evolving as well
Journalism is suffering from the “flight instructor” problem. There are alot of people who are passionate about games of which a fair percentage who can write. Do the math. If you want to make money as a freelancer, you need to do more than just game rviews
Tablet editions are a “big f***ing job” and are extremely labor intensive. Can you do this with a niche publication?
Final thoughts: print isn’t dead, it’s undead.
Fail Now!-
Jason de la Rocha
Rock band stated at MIT Media Lab- Harmonix had a very rough outing
Branded as “horrendous failure” at first
Overnite success is not the rule- failure needs to be embraced as necesary risk taking
Professor assigning game design students to create a breakout clone. Why? “I don’t know how to grade innovation” !!!
Risk aversion= reward aversion
Example of console sales- PS3 and XBox tightly coupled and steady whereas Wii and DS are much stepeer. Why?
(Note to @librarianjp- check out Vgchartz.com for gaming metrics!)
Playfish doing social networking- wildly rampant growth, and of course Zinga with Farmville
Traditionally there has been a stark delineation betwen games and causal gamers
Now the data is much more granular. You have power gamers, social gamers, even incidental games (like the star collector in Super Mario Galaxy)
Gaming demographics have changed radically
Traditionally “horsepower” was the driving factor in game development and the industry optimized itelf along those lines
Once you hit the saturation point you need to find new ways to break into the market- e.g. the Wii, a new interface or a new approach
The new thing is hard to predict, so established powers have no incentive to take risks
Example: Sony PS3 is wicked powerful but they don’t had a new hook
The Medici Effect- interesting things happen at the intersection of ideas
Quantity can lead to quality
You have to do a lot of crap and work through the creative process to create something good… failure is the critical ingredient
Article from The Escapist : “Why your game idea sucks”
There’s no value in “ideas”- everyone has them. The value comes from the execution.
Mark Surney (Robotron, etc). Famous for the “Surney Method”- put many ideas into production all at once – nor sure which idea will work , axes the ones that are crap
Out of this winnowing process comes one completed game which has already beeen tested
Initial risk for future benefit
Identify where your risk costs are low- that’s where you permit yourself to fail!
If you want to fail, fail fast
Agile development does two to three week schedules and reevaluates constantly rather than setting two to three year schedules- have an iterative project plan that allows for failure
Alexander Siropian (Halo) – Set up an “idea funnel” idea meetings every week would result in ideas on sticky notes
Making ideas “not precious” is key
Changing the pitch to publish ratio which is usually 1:1 in gaming circles
People who are less attached to one idea are more likely to come up with good ideas
World of Goo people, @ Carnegie Mellon a class with 50 games in one semester
Every week would be something new = more risk taking
Crayon Physics Deluxe. Petrie makes a new game every month.
Cactus. Flash development. The extreme end of this.
Jonathan blue GDC does presentationss of gaming failures
Locked a bunch of game designers in a barn and had a gamer “jam”
IGA does a global game jam
Little Big Planet rapid iteration- if someone had an idea they were sent off to make a quick prototype AMA experiment molecules. If they worked they were added as features to the game
The Apple app store is another great example. The barriers to entry are so low that it’s easier than ever to innovate
This is changing the business model of gaming radically
Traditional model is that you spend a lot of money out the outset launch and hope you make a lot of money (and maybe you’ll break even)
Now the risk model spends just enough money to get a viable game then launches
The engine is sound but the games are not necessarily content-complete
Risk is being managed in real time
If a game isn’t producing you pull the plug- similar to the tv model
Instead of one fifty million dollar bet you have ten five million dollar bets
Understanding your users better gives you tools to manage your risk and failure.
Graph of ludic to story horizontal abstract to simulation vertical
Story is more expensive than ludic simulation is more expensive than abstract
Higher costs come with less risk tolerance
More risks hapening in the ludic and abstract quadrants
Q and a time!
Unless you actually build a prototype you’re just not going to be able to evaluate whether an idea sucks or not
Indie gamers utilize the open community to test their prototypes
When have you failed? Persisting through failure is a real danger this is ESP so when ideas are “precious”
As if the Disney World-like lines to see Wil Wheaton weren’t enough of a test of one’s stamina and willpower, it appears that every event and/or panel here at PAX East has a queue going out the door, down the hallway, around the rotunda, and back down the hallway in the other direction. One the one hand good for PAX, as this is the surest sign that this East Coast spinoff of the Penny Arcade Expo is an unqualified success, but on the other hand a conference this well-attended is really pushing the limits of the facilities. I wonder if Penny Arcade will attempt having PAX East 2011 at the Seaport Convention Center? There’s a ton more space, the building is still virtually brand spanking new, and judging from all the Twittering librarians the wi-fi there is lightyears beyond what Hynes has to offer.
Also daunting are the crowds in the Exhibit Hall for the product demos. All but the smallest indie booths are mobbed with gamers waiting for a few minutes at the controllers, but that doesn’t stop JP and myself from pushing our way through the lines to try and talk to as many developers, CEOs, and PR folks that we can about games and gaming in libraries. And how cool was it whenever we met a developer whose face lit up when JP said we were from 8bitlibrary and they told us that they’d seen us online? It’s interesting to take in the reactions to JP’s 8bitlibrary “elevator speech”- some game companies clearly see how gaming, education, and librarianship all potentially intersect, but other shops seem just as at a loss as do our librarian and educator peers when we try to demonstrate the relevance of gaming to our discipline. This suggests that the silos we’re trying to break out of are not entirely of our own making, and that maybe the game content producers themselves could benefit from thinking outside the traditional confines of their current business models. There’s a lot of fertile ground here for advocacy.
The Death of Print- a panel lead and moderated by The Escapist’s Russ Pitts, featuring freelancer Julian Murdoch, Jeff Green from EA, Chris Dahlen, managing editor of Kill Screen, and John Davison, E.I.C. of Gamepro
Niche printing as a craft market
In the US % of newsstand sales ae pulped
Print has copyeditors and fact-checkers- how much of this can carry over?
Advertiser balance with media changing over time
No ads can result in a “pure craft” product a la McSweeneys
In the US people expect free magazines whereas in UK customers pay for premium print content
Ipads and the new tablet magazine format- you can charge for content without the waste of print
Social media will always win in terms of delivering information
E-print pubs need to focus on content that isn’t news, because paid news is dead
However, sometimes people just want something on your shelf, and Kindles on a plane still need to be turned off
Q: How many of you have a magazine subscription? Most of room- half are game-related pubs
Q: How many go to game websites? All in room. How many use Adblock? 3/4’s of room.
“We (the industry) may have killed print but you guys are killing online”
Online is all about reach- print is still disproportionately valued in publishing and critical circles however
What does the media future hold?
Print on demand future?
Small print run business is getting very interesting
Problem is that it’s all happening in China so you have to allow for lead time and lower quality
Higher quality and local printing equals a very expensive product
Q from audience: re: the packaging of content can we learn anything from the mp3ification of music? Can we succesfully monetize “chunked” print content?
A: Look at e-comics and Dark Horse, it seems to be a viable model for certain niche markets
Why are we buying this content? As a consumer or as a collector? If you are a consumer why not get it digital?
Can we get away with timely digital content for premium pricing (i.e. download now for $15, buy next week for $5)
What about the New Yorker? Can that mixed/exclusive model survive?
Q: What about a “freemium”-tipjar model for opt in payment? Didn’t Penny Arcade do it this way in the first place?
These kinds of operations can work but they don’t necessarily scale
Q: How do you fit online features like streaming video etc back into print? Tell the right story for the right medium.
Some stories will work in some media but others will fail miserably- e.g. do people really want a transcription of a podcast?
There’s a palpable difference between a print byline and An online personality
Online is still evolving as well
Journalism is suffering from the “flight instructor” problem. There are alot of people who are passionate about games of which a fair percentage who can write. Do the math. If you want to make money as a freelancer, you need to do more than just game rviews
Tablet editions are a “big f***ing job” and are extremely labor intensive. Can you do this with a niche publication?
Final thoughts: print isn’t dead, it’s undead.
Fail Now!-
Jason de la Rocha
Rock band stated at MIT Media Lab- Harmonix had a very rough outing
Branded as “horrendous failure” at first
Overnite success is not the rule- failure needs to be embraced as necesary risk taking
Professor assigning game design students to create a breakout clone. Why? “I don’t know how to grade innovation” !!!
Risk aversion= reward aversion
Example of console sales- PS3 and XBox tightly coupled and steady whereas Wii and DS are much stepeer. Why?
(Note to @librarianjp- check out Vgchartz.com for gaming metrics!)
Playfish doing social networking- wildly rampant growth, and of course Zinga with Farmville
Traditionally there has been a stark delineation betwen games and causal gamers
Now the data is much more granular. You have power gamers, social gamers, even incidental games (like the star collector in Super Mario Galaxy)
Gaming demographics have changed radically
Traditionally “horsepower” was the driving factor in game development and the industry optimized itelf along those lines
Once you hit the saturation point you need to find new ways to break into the market- e.g. the Wii, a new interface or a new approach
The new thing is hard to predict, so established powers have no incentive to take risks
Example: Sony PS3 is wicked powerful but they don’t had a new hook
The Medici Effect- interesting things happen at the intersection of ideas
Quantity can lead to quality
You have to do a lot of crap and work through the creative process to create something good… failure is the critical ingredient
Article from The Escapist : “Why your game idea sucks”
There’s no value in “ideas”- everyone has them. The value comes from the execution.
Mark Surney (Robotron, etc). Famous for the “Surney Method”- put many ideas into production all at once – nor sure which idea will work , axes the ones that are crap
Out of this winnowing process comes one completed game which has already beeen tested
Initial risk for future benefit
Identify where your risk costs are low- that’s where you permit yourself to fail!
If you want to fail, fail fast
Agile development does two to three week schedules and reevaluates constantly rather than setting two to three year schedules- have an iterative project plan that allows for failure
Alexander Siropian (Halo) – Set up an “idea funnel” idea meetings every week would result in ideas on sticky notes
Making ideas “not precious” is key
Changing the pitch to publish ratio which is usually 1:1 in gaming circles
People who are less attached to one idea are more likely to come up with good ideas
World of Goo people, @ Carnegie Mellon a class with 50 games in one semester
Every week would be something new = more risk taking
Crayon Physics Deluxe. Petrie makes a new game every month.
Cactus. Flash development. The extreme end of this.
Jonathan blue GDC does presentationss of gaming failures
Locked a bunch of game designers in a barn and had a gamer “jam”
IGA does a global game jam
Little Big Planet rapid iteration- if someone had an idea they were sent off to make a quick prototype AMA experiment molecules. If they worked they were added as features to the game
The Apple app store is another great example. The barriers to entry are so low that it’s easier than ever to innovate
This is changing the business model of gaming radically
Traditional model is that you spend a lot of money out the outset launch and hope you make a lot of money (and maybe you’ll break even)
Now the risk model spends just enough money to get a viable game then launches
The engine is sound but the games are not necessarily content-complete
Risk is being managed in real time
If a game isn’t producing you pull the plug- similar to the tv model
Instead of one fifty million dollar bet you have ten five million dollar bets
Understanding your users better gives you tools to manage your risk and failure.
Graph of ludic to story horizontal abstract to simulation vertical
Story is more expensive than ludic simulation is more expensive than abstract
Higher costs come with less risk tolerance
More risks hapening in the ludic and abstract quadrants
Q and a time!
Unless you actually build a prototype you’re just not going to be able to evaluate whether an idea sucks or not
Indie gamers utilize the open community to test their prototypes
When have you failed? Persisting through failure is a real danger this is ESP so when ideas are “precious”
Saturday, March 27, 2010
PAX East Day One
I'm pleased to announce that I will be joining folks at 8bitlibrary.com this weekend to provide coverage at the PAX East Conference! It's both an honor and pleasure to be working with JP Porcaro and Justin Hoenke, so I shall endeavor to be worthy of my post.
Day One (Friday): Wil Wheaton was right.
Clearly the news that Wil Wheaton was going to be offering the keynote to the PAX East conference here in Boston was a Big Thing (tm). Not only is the child actor turned successful writer turned adult actor a heck of a speaker, but he's also a hopeless gaming nerd who never met a d20 he didn't like. So even though I was originally not planning to attend PAX, when I heard that Wil would be kicking off the festivities I realized that I'd be a fool not to go, if nothing else than for the keynote.
My initiative (so to speak) was rewarded mightily. For not only did I manage to meet up with a couple of local librarian gamers with whom I correspond regularly on Twitter- @calzone and @jmgold, who were gracious enough to let me tag along with them for most of yesterday afternoon as we waited in line for our opportunity to witness Ensign Crusher to take the con- but I also got to experience first-hand the crazy arena-rock reception that Wil Wheaton received when he did appear on stage to the blaring tune of MC Frontalot's "Your Friend Wil (Don't Be A Dick)".
Wil assumed the podium with an axe to grind, and he ground it well- time and time again the enemies of gamers have attempted to smear and/or marginalize them, but despite the best efforts of these "concerned citizens" and social critics gamers have demonstrated that not only are they not dangerous deviants, but that gaming culture has proven to be a powerful lens through which gamers have focused their creativity and imagination in an unprecedented manner. From Atari 2600's Adventure to Dragon Age: Origins, from the "Red Box" Basic Dungeons & Dragons set to 4th Edition D&D, Burning Wheel, and Dogs in the Vineyard, gaming has always challenged players not just to passively consume their entertainment but to immerse themselves and fully participate in it.
We are only just beginning to understand the ramifications of this tectonic shift as we move from what Laurence Lessig terms "R/O (Read Only) culture" back to the "R/W (Read/Write) culture" that our ancestors took for granted before the rise of mass-produced content that was awkward to share, difficult to copy, and of dubious legality to modify or remix. While digitization has rendered all but the aforementioned legal limitations virtually obsolete, Wil reminded us that this R/W culture did not begin in the ginormous antiquated servers of DARPAnet but in the wood-paneled basements of a generation of tabletop gamers, who were ripping, mixing and burning a new participatory creativity right there on their formica tabletops with painted lead figurines and funny dice.
So what does all of this have to do with libraries? Wil Wheaton's anecdote about his free day captures it perfectly- finding himself with 12 whole hours where he was left to his own devices, Wil had originally planned to fill this half-day unencumbered with family responsibilities with a marathon re-watching of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on DVD when he found himself inexplicably drawn to spending his free time playing the new FRPG Dragon Age: Origins instead. Why would he, an admittedly devout Tolkien enthusiast, do this? His answer: "Because I already know how it ends." Faced with the choice of passively consuming a masterpiece of the fantasy genre and actively participating in his own epic quest, Wil chose the latter, and so does an ever-increasing percentage of our population. Whether or not these people choose to identify themselves as "gamers" or not is irrelevant. A new media literacy is evolving right here and right now, and if we are only just beginning to make sense of this in general popular discourse can you imagine how behind we are with this as librarians?
As an academic librarian I have seen questionable choices made with regards to popular literature and new media such as music, movies, and game. Some libraries made early snap decisions that these latter-day items would always be ancillary to their research collections, acquired either begrudgingly or not at all. To be fair there is a new generation of bibliographers who understand that with the rise of interdisciplinary studies and the serious study of popular culture one must be prepared to collect anything-- my favorite example as an Interlibrary Loan librarian is our acquisition of the Death of Superman comic book for a senior faculty member who professed never to have read a comic in his entire life! How long until that same patron or someone like him returns to us looking for a playable copy of the Legend of Zelda or Activision's Pitfall!?
R/W culture has only just begun its Renaissance, and it won't be long before academics train their research on the origins of this movement when gamers helped a generation wrestle the means of cultural production from the titans of Big Content and start telling their own stories by playing- in this regard we can't start collecting games soon enough. But it's not just about collection for academic posterity. To borrow from Wil's keynote, games have become a "default setting" of our cultural discourse, as sure as have books, music, television, and movies. As digitization accelerates our still-nascent R/W sensibilities it will not be long before games become *the* default setting for our culture.
Are we ready for this as librarians? Ready or not, the Wil Wheatons of the earth are here in force.
Day One (Friday): Wil Wheaton was right.
Clearly the news that Wil Wheaton was going to be offering the keynote to the PAX East conference here in Boston was a Big Thing (tm). Not only is the child actor turned successful writer turned adult actor a heck of a speaker, but he's also a hopeless gaming nerd who never met a d20 he didn't like. So even though I was originally not planning to attend PAX, when I heard that Wil would be kicking off the festivities I realized that I'd be a fool not to go, if nothing else than for the keynote.
My initiative (so to speak) was rewarded mightily. For not only did I manage to meet up with a couple of local librarian gamers with whom I correspond regularly on Twitter- @calzone and @jmgold, who were gracious enough to let me tag along with them for most of yesterday afternoon as we waited in line for our opportunity to witness Ensign Crusher to take the con- but I also got to experience first-hand the crazy arena-rock reception that Wil Wheaton received when he did appear on stage to the blaring tune of MC Frontalot's "Your Friend Wil (Don't Be A Dick)".
Wil assumed the podium with an axe to grind, and he ground it well- time and time again the enemies of gamers have attempted to smear and/or marginalize them, but despite the best efforts of these "concerned citizens" and social critics gamers have demonstrated that not only are they not dangerous deviants, but that gaming culture has proven to be a powerful lens through which gamers have focused their creativity and imagination in an unprecedented manner. From Atari 2600's Adventure to Dragon Age: Origins, from the "Red Box" Basic Dungeons & Dragons set to 4th Edition D&D, Burning Wheel, and Dogs in the Vineyard, gaming has always challenged players not just to passively consume their entertainment but to immerse themselves and fully participate in it.
We are only just beginning to understand the ramifications of this tectonic shift as we move from what Laurence Lessig terms "R/O (Read Only) culture" back to the "R/W (Read/Write) culture" that our ancestors took for granted before the rise of mass-produced content that was awkward to share, difficult to copy, and of dubious legality to modify or remix. While digitization has rendered all but the aforementioned legal limitations virtually obsolete, Wil reminded us that this R/W culture did not begin in the ginormous antiquated servers of DARPAnet but in the wood-paneled basements of a generation of tabletop gamers, who were ripping, mixing and burning a new participatory creativity right there on their formica tabletops with painted lead figurines and funny dice.
So what does all of this have to do with libraries? Wil Wheaton's anecdote about his free day captures it perfectly- finding himself with 12 whole hours where he was left to his own devices, Wil had originally planned to fill this half-day unencumbered with family responsibilities with a marathon re-watching of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on DVD when he found himself inexplicably drawn to spending his free time playing the new FRPG Dragon Age: Origins instead. Why would he, an admittedly devout Tolkien enthusiast, do this? His answer: "Because I already know how it ends." Faced with the choice of passively consuming a masterpiece of the fantasy genre and actively participating in his own epic quest, Wil chose the latter, and so does an ever-increasing percentage of our population. Whether or not these people choose to identify themselves as "gamers" or not is irrelevant. A new media literacy is evolving right here and right now, and if we are only just beginning to make sense of this in general popular discourse can you imagine how behind we are with this as librarians?
As an academic librarian I have seen questionable choices made with regards to popular literature and new media such as music, movies, and game. Some libraries made early snap decisions that these latter-day items would always be ancillary to their research collections, acquired either begrudgingly or not at all. To be fair there is a new generation of bibliographers who understand that with the rise of interdisciplinary studies and the serious study of popular culture one must be prepared to collect anything-- my favorite example as an Interlibrary Loan librarian is our acquisition of the Death of Superman comic book for a senior faculty member who professed never to have read a comic in his entire life! How long until that same patron or someone like him returns to us looking for a playable copy of the Legend of Zelda or Activision's Pitfall!?
R/W culture has only just begun its Renaissance, and it won't be long before academics train their research on the origins of this movement when gamers helped a generation wrestle the means of cultural production from the titans of Big Content and start telling their own stories by playing- in this regard we can't start collecting games soon enough. But it's not just about collection for academic posterity. To borrow from Wil's keynote, games have become a "default setting" of our cultural discourse, as sure as have books, music, television, and movies. As digitization accelerates our still-nascent R/W sensibilities it will not be long before games become *the* default setting for our culture.
Are we ready for this as librarians? Ready or not, the Wil Wheatons of the earth are here in force.
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