Image: I can just imagine this Blood Furnace boss exhorting people “L2P!” as he kills them over and over.

It is day two of the writing regime. Today’s plan is writing 750 words, writing CMA feedback, and working on the paper. I was musing last night about the approach to the paper, thinking that having an abstract or an introduction actually makes it easier to write because it provides a focus for the paper’s direction. I have heard other people say that it makes sense to leave the introduction to the last because then you know what you’ve written. I think the former approach might be more sensible for me. I can always go back and revise the introduction if it does not reflect what I end up doing. Focus, however, is priceless.

In addition to an introduction or an abstract, a title might also help. I was experimenting with variants of “L2P! Learn To Play Or…”. I thought that was clever, as it’s something you often see more experienced, impatient players saying to players who they think are not living up to their expectations in terms of expertise or speed. In the context of my work, however, it probably makes more sense to say “P2L! Play To Learn”, but I’m not sure how many people will get that. Nevertheless, a title is a starting point. I had both before I started my keynote writing and that turned out well. Perhaps I can incorporate the factoid into the abstract.

Abstract:

“L2P! L2P!” This is the exhortation you might encounter in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) when other players around you believe your skill or speed in playing is inadequate. It means “learn to play”. In this paper, we demonstrate how L2P has been turned on its axis to yoke the trials of play to the game of learning. 39 World of Warcraft players primarily playing in Europe submitted essays answering the question “Why do you play World of Warcraft?” in a 2010 study.

Using a grounded theory approach and discourse analysis, the essays were analyzed to ascertain the contributors’ motivations for playing and their reasons for persisting in playing. Yee’s player motivational framework subcomponents (Yee 2005; Yee 2006) were applied to each essay and contrasted with Bartle’s original player typology (Bartle 1996; Bartle 2003) in aggregate to determine overall, general motives these players had. While participants were not asked to write explicitly about learning and many did not provide any examples, several contributions are examined here as case studies of mundane and unusual examples, illustrating what these adults are playing to learn–a learning that goes beyond dungeons, dragons, and dwarves.

That does not seem too bad as a first go. I need to check on the discourse analysis; it might not be completely true. I also have no idea how I am going to write up the grounded theory bit appropriately, but at least that is accurate. I definitely followed that kind of approach in tagging the essays. I need to find some time to pore through the James Paul Gee’s book on discourse analysis. I just saw someone else in #phdchat mention it again yesterday. It keeps cropping up and I keep not reading it, even after I went to buy it and then realized I already had. That is trying to tell me something, if I would only listen. I also need to check on what to call Yee’s framework.

References:

Bartle, R. (1996) ‘Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs’, Journal of MUD Research, 1 (1). Also available from: http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm (Accessed April 22, 2011).

Bartle, R. (2003) Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders Publishing.

Yee, N. (2005) A Model of Player Motivations, [online] Daedalus Project. Available from: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001298.php?page=1 (Accessed March 31, 2011).

Yee, N. (2006) ‘Motivations for Play in Online Games’, CyberPsychology & Behavior, 9 (6), pp:772-775. Also available from: http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772 (Accessed March 31, 2011).

Image: The blurred boundary between the Stranglethorn Vale, Duskwood, and Deadwind Pass zones in World of Warcraft.

I posted this entry originally early in November, but somehow an entire paragraph disappeared, so I’ve re-posted it with a new date. — Michelle

_arien:
games based learning, i think has potential but learners struggle with transferring the learning & dealing with blurred boundaries #fote10

Eingang:
@_arien I think you’re right that learners have trouble with learning when boundaries blurred like in GBL, because of context. #fote10

_arien:  
@Eingang exactly, our minds still work in boxes and takes practice to cross between formal and informal contexts

Eingang:
@_arien Blurred boundaries & different contexts are particularly problematic for, eg, people w autistic spectrum disorders. #h810 #fote10

Eingang:
@_arien AR can help overcome the context issue/blurred boundaries of learning we were just discussing, because RL there too. #fote10

The above is an extract from a Twitter conversation I had on October 1st during the Future of Technology in Education conference (#fote10) with @_arien.   Arien was attending the conference, watching Ollie Bray’s talk, while I was following the conference on Twitter.  Arien, as it happens, is one of my Open University H810 students.  Ollie Bray (@olliebray), of Learning & Teaching Scotland, was discussing the use of computer games in education.

I think Arien’s hit the nail on the head: it is about context.  One of the reasons game skills don’t transfer to learning well is because learners/players do not see something in a game as being applicable to something academic.  Much learning we do is completely context-based.  Without the context of the “subject”, we do not necessarily think to apply something we have learned or maybe even realize that it is applicable.

That is, of course, only true when you are dealing with games intended to be games, and not necessarily with products developed or intended to be educational games.   Let me clarify that with some examples.  Ollie Bray talked about a handheld brain training game.  One of the brain training game exercises has you complete as many math problems as you can within a certain time span.  The math problems are usually simple addition or subtraction.  While the object is to do as many as possible to achieve the highest score, the context of doing math problems is familiar and immediately recognizable.  This particular “game” helps encourage the practice effect that is necessary for so much learning.  The practice effect is also present in World of Warcraft, where someone may be doing complex comparisons of one set of gear statistics versus another.  That also requires mathematical skills, but it is not obvious to the learner that they are practicing a math skill.

The gear statistics example from World of Warcraft is not, I admit, a good example, because it does not illustrate learning.  Actually, technically speaking, neither example so far does.  They are both about practicing skills.  You have already learned how to do the math somewhere else.   In the brain training example, the domain it is applied in is the same as how you likely learned the skill.  In the World of Warcraft example, the domain is completely different and not so obviously related.

I think there is something here to explore about blurred boundaries and learning and I would like to return to it at a later point.  Thank you, Arien, for starting me thinking about it.

Image: Howard Rheingold and Elsheindra, Michelle’s World of Warcraft character, together at last.

Howard Rheingold contacted me in September to interview me about World of Warcraft and learning, because he knows I’m researching communities and learning in World of Warcraft.  We were finally able to meet up today for the interview.   He is working on a book about the kinds of skills people need for life online.

His first question was: What kind of collaborative skills have I found to be valuable from World of Warcraft?

I discussed how people come together in groups and need to be able to collaborate in two ways: one by taking instruction and two by giving or receiving advice.  The main idea there was that people initially learn from others who have already done something before or who have read it.  Then they too later pass that knowledge on to other people that they come in contact with in the same circumstances to help ensure the success of that future group.  It’s a kind of a just-in-time knowledge transmission.  When the knowledge doesn’t already exist or isn’t known, players build models or theories based on what they observe happening and then test those theories out.  If necessary the theory is adjusted until they come up with something that works.  Those players or others like them may then come together again but outside the world in wikis, forums, and blogs to build up a community of knowledge, taking it from the tacit to the documented known.

I also talked about leadership skills and performance metrics and how WoW provides mechanisms in the game that allow people to examine their own performance and the performance of others around them outside the game.  That’s used to learn and to improve individual performance or group performance.  Reflection and review, as well as leadership, are valuable skills in the real world, because we need people able to organize people and to look at problems creatively.  World of Warcraft fosters and rewards people who are willing to do that.

Finally, I discussed the variety of people present in World of Warcraft.  In Europe the groups vary not just by age, but by culture as well.  Being able to organize and maintain social groups is a skill.  Most guilds don’t last a year, but some of the guilds I’ve been associated with have been around since World of Warcraft started and that’s a testament to the skills their leaders have in maintaining community.  While communities can coalesce on their own.  They don’t maintain themselves.

I can’t remember precisely what I said and I have possibly been more literate in places in this post, but the above is some of the gist of what I discussed in the interview.  I didn’t record the session.  Luckily, Howard’s going to send me a transcript. I’m really excited about the things I’m discovering in World of Warcraft. It was a pleasure to talk to Howard about it.

Credits:

The screen composite of Howard and Elsheindra is licensed by Michelle A. Hoyle under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Joi Ito published the original image of Howard Rheingold under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Tony Hirst (@psychemedia) built a Google custom search engine that scraped the profiles of Twitter users employing the #altc2010 hashtag for website addresses.  For a laugh, I typed in “World of Warcraft”, not expecting much to show up other than myself.  Well, I was there, but so was mention of a poster and a talk entitled “Cultural Capital and Community Development in the Pursuit of Dragon Slaying (Massively Multiplayer Guild Culture as a Model for e-L:earning)” at the 2007 Alt-C conference by David White.  That pointed me to an Alt-C talk and a GLS one in 2007.  So, not long before I started my Ph.D., David was already out there talking about this.  Ouch!  The “ouch” part is that I met him earlier this year at a gaming-related discussion panel.  He was chairing my table, but  we were discussing  digital residents and visitors.  David follows me on Twitter too!  World of Warcraft has never come up.

The abstract mentions guilds, World of Warcraft, social capital, and communities of practice.  His description is eerily similar to my current focus.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a matching paper for the talk.  There’s just the GLS 2007 26-minute talk embedded in the blog pos from Tall Blog.  I’d best add this to my list of things to investigate soon.  It sounds very, very relevant.  Perhaps he has something I can build on or I will obtain some ideas on how to differentiate my work.  I am also interested in seeing his ethnographic approach and what he discovered.  This is a challenge, not a disaster.  There is always something different you can do.  You just need to find it.

Elsheindra the Druid

I have been reading slowly but surely through James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have To Teach Us about Learning and Literacy over the last six months. The following is based on notes I took for my research journal while reading Chapter 3 on learning and identity. In particular, I focus on the notion of the tripartite identity and what that means to me in the real world and in the virtual world in which I play.

Role playing games involve three identities: you, the real-world person, who is playing a role-played character; the role-played character, a virtual identity played by you; and a projective identity, the interface between you and the virtual identity, where you project your values onto the virtual character and see the virtual character as a personal project under your control. This is Gee’s notion of the tripartite identity. Gee differentiates between these by emphasizing different parts of the phrase “James Paul Gee as Bead Bead”. “James Paul Gee as Bead Bead” is the real-world Gee. “James Paul Gee as Bead Bead” is the virtual world character. Finally, “James Paul Gee as Bead Bead” is the projective identity.

The projective identity involves meta-reflection. You consider what kind of “person” you want your role-played character to be. Gee (2007, p. 51) comments that “A good role-playing video game makes me think new thoughts about what I value and what I do not.” The virtual character’s history and future is all part of the projective identity. “[you] feel responsible to and for the character.” (p. 53)

“When you have chosen a video game well, the virtual world it allows you to live in is quite compelling.” (Gee 2007, p. 59) Gee asserts that if the virtual world and the player’s virtual identity are not compelling then little deep learning will occur, because the player is not invested in mastering the domain. That is, they see little point or reward to investing effort, time, or practice required for domain mastery. What makes the realm compelling varies from player to player and even at different times. I know from my own experience that I initially was enthralled by the amazing and expansive world created in World of Warcraft. These days, however, I am interested in teamwork and achieving goals, so I spend very little time admiring the fantastic scenery or engaging in exploration.

High stone pillar adjacent to the Druid's Temple near Ilton

If the virtual identity and world map onto your real world identity and experiences, that also helps make a game compelling. As an educator who specializes in online distance education, part of my key real-world identity is community builder. One of the first things I did in World of Warcraft was create a guild and start building a community. I later expanded on that by helping form and run an alliance of social guilds, an even larger community. People and the ability to help people was a strong compelling factor that the game afforded me, bridging my real-world and virtual identities.

It is clear how the game itself was able to map onto my real-world skills and identity, but it is probably not so obvious how that is woven into my virtual identity. My first character, which I still primarily use, was Elsheindra, a night elf druid. As Michelle, I am keenly interested in helping people, which is why I enjoy teaching so much. As Elsheindra, I could be a restoration druid, a healer. Not only does this enable me to help people by healing them or making them stronger, it ties into my original desire to be a doctor. As Michelle who grew up in Canada and spent a lot of time hiking and camping, I have a deep love for trees and green, something I think is epitomized by the druid class, as druids in the game lore are keepers of the world and masters of nature, similar to Celtic associations. As a result, Elsheindra, for many years, did not kill things. Partially because healing druids were really poor at it, but also because I didn’t think it was appropriate for a healer to be gratuitously taking lives when she is supposed to be devoted to saving them. That was not who I wanted Elsheindra to be, a clear example Gee’s projective identity.

References:

• Gee, J.P. (2007) What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, 2nd edition, New York, NY, United States, Palgrave Macmillan.

Images:

• Elsheindra the Druid ©Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.
• Druid Temple ©Phil Catterall licensed for reuse under CC-BY-SA.

In the actual experiment, I gave Basil the following three essays:

Essay 1:
At first it was a way of keeping in touch with friends after I’d moved away. But I made more new friends throughthe online gaming community that occurs around the game. I’ve met a good number of my fellow guild members, including my guild leader and most of the other officers. To me, game has always been about exploring, storylines and the exotic locales presented therein. That’s all secondary to killing bosses, and trudging through raids really.

Essay 2:
I play WoW and other MMORPGS for the simple reason that I’m intrigued by the online community and game play aspects. WoW is my particular favourite that I return to again and again. I believe the reasoning behind this is the friendly community that has matured to quite a size over the number of years I’ve been playing. In addition to the community I find the story lines within the game interesting, challenging and sometimes, dare I say it, exciting. By exciting I mean, that like a good book, you want to see what is going to happen next!

Originally I started playing WoW for the simply reason it was an MMORPG. I was intrigued by the genre and WoW was really one of the first to be highlighted through the media, etc. As I progressed in the game, I discovered that it was a great way to relax after a busy day. As a form of escapism, it helped with relieving stress.

Now I rarely get to play WoW or any other MMORPG for that matter, however, for the same reasons of relaxation, online community, exciting stories, I still try to play as regularly as I can.

Essay 3:
Originally I moved to WoW simply because the majority of my guild had moved from DAoC, when WoW was released it was the next game that the existing guild members were collecting in. Ironically even though I followed my guild to the game I am actually motivated by the personal achievement.

I am the kind of player that likes to explore every location, complete every quest before moving on to the next zone and maximise trade skills. With each expansion, I spent most of the time solo’ing to the level cap, then exploring group content with my guild or raiding alliance.

With access to the raiding alliance I get to try challenging content which often require a level of skill and co-ordination. Currently I am motivated with the challenges of raiding with the aim to have completed as much as possible before the next content patch.

I know there is a sigma [sic] attached with gamers, but when you consider some people will return from work and just sit passively in front of a TV for 5hours. Similarly you see people sit all night on online chat channels. Given how some spend their time, how can spending your time problem solving and socialising with others with similar interests be so wrong.

Basil was asked to summarize the main ideas that occurred in each essay. Unfortunately, he was somewhat influenced by the question and noted down what people said their initial impetus for playing World of Warcraft was and then why they continue to play. I had to send him off to do it again. Table 1 illustrates our responses.

When I looked at essay 1, there was a question about things being “secondary to killing bosses , and trudging through raids…” Secondary implies that the other things were of lesser importance, but the negative tone implicit with words like “trudging” would seem to bely that, so I didn’t include the raiding. In talking to Basil, I know he had the same problem, because he asked me about it and I told him I would not give him an answer. As a result, he included raiding, whereas I did not.

On the whole, we don’t seem that different. If we had gone through the essays in advance together and agreed on some themes, I suspect the coding would have been similar. What do you think?

WoW Learning Project Questions PDF image

Downloadable Resources:

• WoW Learning Research Project A4 poster (230 KB PDF)

The One and Friends at the start of Razorgore encounter in Blackwing Lair in March of 2010

I’m now in week two of my first survey into learning, communities of practice, and World of Warcraft in support of my doctorate. The first part of the survey is collecting some in-game demographic details, such as how long people have played, what their first character was, favourite professions, etc. The meat of the survey, however, is a short answer question about why people play World of Warcraft.

I am still looking for additional responses and the survey is scheduled to close at the end of this weekend (April 18th). If you play World of Warcraft or know other players, I would be grateful if you could encourage them to visit the survey information page and participate. On completion, participants will be given a code to enter a draw for three Blizzard store pets as prizes.

Tweet, ask in guild, ask at university, or poke your workmates to pass the word along. Just remember that it’s only open to those 18 years or older as I’m interested in examining adults and learning and there are restrictions on participation in things by those younger than 18.

Thanks!

• Survey 1: Why Do You Play World of Warcraft

1. 60% of MMORPGs players are in the 20-35 year-old demographic (Nick Yee in Escoriaza 2009).
2. In World of Warcraft specifically, 47% of players in 2005 were 26 years or older. (Yee 2008).
3. About 75% of new students to The Open University are 26 years or older (Jha 2010, p. 20).

When you consider that World of Warcraft had more than 11.5 million active subscribers by the end of 2008 (Blandeburgo 2009), that’s more than 5.4 million people in an age group very interesting for my work in higher education via distance education. In particular, remember that these 5.4 million people are often very compelled (sometimes even addicted) to play. What is it that motivates these people and what real-life tangible learning benefits are derived?

Those are questions that I intend to answer in the WoW Learning project, a study of learning in World of Warcraft. Quietly built earlier this month and located at the memorable WoWLearning.org, it will be a repository for data, posts, and papers about my Ph.D. research into the learning, motivation, and communities of practice formation demonstrated by World of Warcraft players, both in the game and on forums.

As the project will include ethnographic work in World of Warcraft as well as surveys, in the interests of transparency and to help foster credibility, postings are made using my World of Warcraft character name “Elsheindra (Michelle)” instead of my full real name or commonly used Internet nickname of “Eingang.”

References

• Blandeburgo, B. (2009) ‘Activision “WoWs,” But Where’s Wireless?’, The Game Trade Journal, blog entry posted March 4, 2009. Available from: http://www.gametradejournal.com/2009/03/activision-wows-but-wheres-wireless.html (Accessed March 30, 2010).
• Escoriaza, J.C.P. (2009) Second Skin. [MPEG 4 Film]. United States: Liberation Ent.
• Jha, J. (2010) ‘Harnessing Technology To Open Up Learning for All: Interview Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor, Open University, UK’, Global: The International Briefing, 2 (March 2010), pp:18-21. Also available from: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/d118c039 (Accessed March 30, 2010).
• Yee, N. (2008) The Daedulus Project, [online]. Available from: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/docs/shared-data.php (Accessed February 21, 2010).