something for the weekend

Last Post of the year: Facebook, SingStar and 2009

Well, I am obviously a dreadful blogger….  I keep getting distracted and forget to update it, then I forget that about the things I wanted to blog anyway…  A few things have happened recently that I wanted to jot down.

1) I was at www.icis2008.org early in December presenting our work on Facebook (see my last post).  The work went down well (I think) we still have some more work to do on making the contribution stronger, but it’ll get there.  I’m particularly interested in looking at the power as related the morality of technology – how do non-human actors engage in the processes of the exercise of power with us?  Also, another interesting thing happened at ICIS, a few people asked about my work on www.gaydar.co.uk, not only was this flattering, but it was satisfying given the age it has taken to get this work published!  Also, it was great that both men and women asked about the work as central to some of it are notions of masculinity and all too often this can be conflated with men, and men’s interests… So the fact that women gender researchers were interested in this was refreshing given the nature of the conference – (within information systems gender, I feel very much equates with Women in the main and I don’t think that’s very helpful).  Obviously it’s different in other fields where gender research takes place – I do acknowlege that.

2) This is as exciting as my life gets…. Finally, Sony have seen fit to release an update for the SingStar PS3 game which allows PS2 discs to be used within the PS3 game (although only on certain versions of the PS3 console which is strange).  As I’m researching this, it’s going to be interesting to see how this change is viewed by the players I am enaged with.  I know on various social networking sites and forums, the upgrade has been eagerly anticipated, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in practice.

Anyway, all the best for 2009 for those people that actually look at this – I’m hoping my cold shifts soon, so I feel a bit more refreshed before I go back to work on the 5th January…  I’m sure I’ll get through my new year party though… ;o)

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!

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?