New year, new meetings

After falling dormant for a bit, we will be renewing the group with regular meetings beginning next Monday at 9:30 (Sept. 2) in Derby 3116. All graduate students and faculty are welcome. Our first meeting will be briefly discussing the purpose of the group and members sharing their current video-game related projects.

Mention on The Mary Sue

Congratulations to group member Wai Yen Tang, whose Gamasutra blog post on a study of reactions to womens' voices in an FPS game was mentioned in an article on themarysue.com, a well-known sci-fi/fantasy/gaming blog.

The antihero tradition in gaming

Popmatters.com has an interesting commentary on the nature of the antihero in gaming, and specifically the recently released Borderlands 2.

Is gaming unique in the way it typically portrays the player's character as an antihero to justify violent acts?

EDIT: I recently came across another discussion on the topic of antiheroes in gaming... interestingly enough, by Anthony Burch, the lead writer for Borderlands 2.

Proteus-effect article on CNN

Without even realizing it (and unfortunately without mentioning any of the research behind the phenomenon), CNN published a story on the Proteus effect. An EVE Online player decided he wanted to be as fit as his avatar, and made it happen.

Virtual reality: Avatar inspires gamer to hit the gym

Upcoming meeting schedule

This is still two weeks out, but I thought I'd post it here before I forget. As we get closer to the end of the semester, holidays (and the school's job searches) have caused a couple of scheduling changes:

Monday, Nov. 5: Meeting at 1:30pm in Derby 3040 3116
Monday, Nov. 12: No meeting (Veteran's Day)
Monday, Nov. 19: Meeting at 1:30pm in Derby 3116 (Not our usual location, for this one meeting only)

EDIT: We have been asked by the front office to relocate two additional meetings this semester, so I have made the decision to shift our recurring reservation to Derby 3116 for the remainder of Fall. All meetings beginning with the Nov. 5 meeting will be in Derby 3116.

Night and the City (and a note for next week)

Great story on Eurogamer about Rockstar's recreation of 1940's Los Angeles in L.A Noire, from the point of view of a man and his father who lived in LA at the time.

Modern technology has allowed game designers to create increasingly accurate depictions of real spaces. How might the gaming experience change when the place depicted is somewhere the gamer has actually been? Does the same "uncanny valley" effect we see with virtual representations of humans apply to virtual representations of locations known to the player?

Next week: Mike Hanus and I hope to have some preliminary data from our ad study.

Can Dungeons & Dragons Make You A Confident & Successful Person?

How do we measure confidence and success?

Possible venues:

• Academic performance, academic Engagement, motivation and honesty (?)
• Books, books and books 
• Media habits and preferences
• Narrative simulation, understanding, (topics that we can pry out of Dan's class)
• Big Five Personality Traits, pretty sure openness to experience is a big positive
• Creativity, adaptability to novel situations, problem solving abilities
• Coping skills (emotion-focused versus problem-focused)
• Uncertainty tolerance (I don't know how)
• Civic engagement (clubs, political discussion, etc.)

Speaking of D&D, what can we say about Fantasy Football?