something for the weekend

AOIR Presentation Video

This is the video I showed at the end of my presentation at AOIR this year.  I think it’s a good video as:

1. it is seemingly a home made recording of a video uploaded to the ‘closed’ in game SingStar online community, and then reposted on YouTube, and thus shows how users are willing to innovate at the local level,
2. the use of a dog as the main performer draws from YouTube culture (and TV shows before it like ‘animals do the craziest things’) and in doing so, goes beyond ‘typical’ SingStar performances.  I’ve only seen these emerge since the PS3 in game community was launched in December 2007,
3. points 1 and 2 provide good evidence of a challenge to the slightly deterministic pronouncements of Jonathan Zittrain regarding a lack of generativity of certain new ICTs.

Enjoy!

Post AOIR Thoughts

I REALLY enjoyed AOIR.  I met some really interesting and friendly people and saw some interesting presentations.  The vice panel – aka “Inside and Outside AOIR” was so helpful for building up my understanding of the community as an AOIR virgin.  It was also interesting of itself with Terri Senft’s theorsation of risk (and later tales of sports bras), Susanna Paasonen’s call for more porn research and Holly Krusse’s for increased gambling stuff.  I also liked Charlie Breindahl’s call for extending the agenda on digital games research.  Indeed, given the content of Susanna and Holly’s talks, I’d like to see it extended in those directions too.  Games research, can be a little vanilla and MMORPG oriented.  Whilst I really like this work and real value in it, I reckon we need to do more work on other types of games (I would say that wouldn’t I!).  Doing some research on some more ‘mainstream’ games such as those on the Wii platform I think could help further challenge the stereotypes around gamers (as geeks) and the discourses regarding addiction and violence (yawn).  But also, I think we need to look at some of the less well researched aspects of games.  Jenny Sunden’s queering of WoW study is a good example.  Indeed, I can think of loads of examples from my own experience, of areas which need further study. Like Jenny, I think there’s more to do regarding sexaulity and play.  Members of gaygamer.net for example had discussions about how to make the Wii game, wario smooth moves work as a strip game… it was also hacked not too long ago (the rationale being homophobia).  Another example is SingStar Anthems – it may as well have been called SingStar Gay Anthems – see the packaging posted here.  Maybe I’m reading too much into things, but if you look closely at the non singers – are they admiring the performance or something else?  Maybe they’re cross-eyed bisexuals or straight trannies?  Or maybe they’re just enjoying each others company? If you can get hold of it, the intro video to the game on the disk is a sight to be seen – all feather boa’s, and if I remember rightly the odd drag queen thrown in for good measure!  Anyway, check out the tracklisting!  I rest my case…  

Anyway, pics of AOIR9 can be found on flickr – search IR9 and on Facebook…  I am looking forward to what conference dinner photos there may be soon – I am proud to say with the help of TL Taylor, I introduced AOIR to the world of SingStar – and I think mine and TL’s rendition of the Darkness was a definate ‘accept with no changes’ ;o)

Here we go again!

Well, as usual, I’m running late with my preparations for a conference – I leave for the AOIR meeting in Copenhagen tomorrow.  Not since I was a research fellow over 12 years ago have I been able to plan my trip properly!  I have however made a point this time of printing off the programme as it looks really interesting – in fact it’s one of the most interesting programme’s I’ve seen in a long time and I’m really looking forward to presenting our work on SingStar.  Who would have thought that I’d end up presenting in the Music stream! As I’ve mentioned before, I am doing some work with Elaine Ferneley and Gordon Fletcher regarding how the move from the PS2 to PS3 platform has reconfigured the gamer’s experiences (or not) and the experiences of those who gamers interact with beyond the game. Here’s the title and abstract… 

Access All Areas? The Evolution of SingStar from the PS2 to PS3 Platform  - Despite many challenges to technological determinism it is fair to say that technological development is often still presented to, and by, those in organisations and society as inevitably good.  The internet is positioned as affording access to a range of information and services that can qualitatively improve our every day lives.  Whilst this clearly can be acknowledged as the case, we also know that the internet can raise difficulties and even disadvantages.  Understanding this interconnected complex domain of sociotechnical experience precludes broad generalizations and requires recognition of the nuances that surround specific sets of sociotechnical assemblages.  By drawing upon Dutton’s (2005) reconfiguration of access arguments we investigate the use of digital games within recreational environments. The ideas in this paper are based upon two intersecting ethnographies and a qualitative non-participant field study of the console based game, SingStar. Through this approach we demonstrate that the sociotechnical choices associated with different versions of the game have constructed a reconfiguration of access to SingStar that critiques the automatic association of new versions of technology with improvement and examines the ways in which non-use and, in effect, non-access could similarly alter and even extend a game play experience. More broadly, studying the evolution of what was, in effect, a ‘stand alone’ digital game to a network enabled version demonstrates how a move to becoming an internet based platform may restrict rather than enable access.  Utilising an entertainment oriented activity and technology to examine the issues that underlie Dutton’s rubric of ‘access’ also permits intersecting consideration of the respective roles that developer, user, non-user and technology have in the mediation of social experience.

You can find a copy of the paper here (aoirv7 )- admittedly we need to work on it some more. Comments welcome!

Meanwhile, I need to get home, get packed and go for a guitar lesson….

SingStar Abba

I’ve prompted myself to do this as I realise I need a space to jot things down as I remember them.  Like today, I discovered the tracklisting for SingStar Abba, which I know my friend Helen will be dying to get her hands on (and so am I – let’s be honest).  I think this is an important development in the game’s development trajectory as it is a disc dedicated to a particular artist.  The tracklist is at the end of this post.  Interestingly on the forums, there are many people saying they don’t like the idea of songs that are not well known going on this disc, and the fact it’s a disc rather than the content being made available via the SingStore.  Personally, I like the idea of disc because (as me, Elaine Ferneley and Gordon Fletcher have written about and will discuss at AOIR 9.0), it extends the gameplay experience by allowing you to easily take the disc to someone elses house (it’s a bugger trying to cart a PS3 around with all your downloaded songs on).  There’s also chatter from those who enjoy Guitar Hero and Rockband.  Although these games are also in the genre of  ’music as gaming’ as I like to call them, they are very much, I feel, targeted at a very different market to SingStar (male teenagers me thinks). It seems these gamers want SingStar to be like those games – very rock oriented…  They’ve described SingStar’s current content as camp – which some of it is, but there’s a lot that isn’t.  Very strange when you think one of the tracks on the first Rockband disc is by Garbage – who have written about gender bending! (see: Androgyny)  There’s something here to look at, just not quite sure what yet!

Anyway, who knows if I’ll keep this up, it’s taken me about half an hour to write this post!

The SingStar Abba Tracklist for PS3 (supposedly): Chiquitita, Ring Ring, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight), SOS, Take A Chance On Me, Summer Night City, Dancing Queen, Super Trouper, Does Your Mother Know, Thank You For The Music, Fernando, The Day Before You Came, Happy New Year, The Name Of The Game, Head Over Heals, The Winner Takes It All, I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do, Under Attack, Knowing Me Knowing You, Voulez Vous, Mamma Mia, Waterloo, Money Money Money, When All Is Said And Done, One Of Us.

What more could you ask for?