I've scaled back since then. Less online play, not less work, but more focus on academics again. Im hoping to persue my PhD this fall, and if I learned anything yet in university, its that writing down my ideas tends to steer me in a direction that's much more concise that if I don't. It's how I stumbled on metanomics years ago, so I figure...its how I should end it as well.
I wrote a synopsis for my research a few weeks back, but not before it was a rambling explanation of where I was coming from. I'd like to share it here, as a new beginning to this blog:
Metanomics is a term that was just recently introduced to me. Oddly enough, it was by one of my fellow gamers in World of Warcraft. Metanomics, as described on the collaborative webpage (http://metanomics.net), is as follows;
“Metanomics” refers to the study of the business and policy aspects of the “metaverse” of virtual worlds. Metanomics can focus on issues arising within virtual worlds, such as how developers manage the economy of a game world (like World of Warcraft), or how residents of virtual worlds manage and regulate business. Metanomics also includes the study of how real-world businesses can use virtual worlds as part of their strategy, and how real-world law and regulation might apply to virtual-world activities. Finally, metanomics includes the use of virtual worlds as laboratories in which to study real-world business or policy issues.
It may not mean much to most people, but its been a driving force of research for myself for 5 years now. It’s just uncanny that others have finally tapped into the potential and organized such studies under a classification of its own.
I’d like to consider myself someone who actually was a part of the Massive Multiplayer history. It may be a minute ripple, but I still have had a participation in occurrences throughout the past ten years, rather than just an observer that can recount the history of a certain niche group of individuals and how their society reflects more mainstream. It may skew my own opinions of events, but at the same time, it can give meaning and understanding to them otherwise may be missed.
I grew up a Nintendo Kid in the eighties. I also owned a Tandy 1000, and played the Sierra Adventure games that were dominant at the time. Video Games were always (and probably will always be) a part of my life. The existence of stories that played out somewhat like movies, but with user interaction, captured my imagination in a way those same movies couldn’t. I was hooked. When I began French Immersion in grade seven, I convinced my mother that buying me the French version of Zelda for the SNES would help my language comprehension (it did, but it of course wasn’t the driving force of buying the game). I’ve owned just about every platform gaming system available.
When the internet became available to me, about when I was 13, I constantly wanted to play, to explore, to learn. I played with anything online available to me, learned of chat groups, instant messaging, and making a websites and communities on the early Geocities homepages sites. Needless to say, I had a lot of spare time on my hands to experience the new media frontier.
However, the breaking point was in 1997, around Christmas, when everything I ever loved to play finally tied into one package. Ultima Online, the first mainstream market Massively Multiplayer Online Game, was dropped into my hands, and the next ten years of my life, whether I wanted to admit it or not, revolved around online gaming.
By the time I had finished my first few years in university, I had been accepted into the seer program, (otherwise known as digiteers, or players with creative powers to make event-stories in game for other players) becoming their youngest volunteer/employee in the seer program. I had also beta-tested almost every single first-generation MMO and their expansions - including Everquest, which would vault MMO’s from just barely mainstream gaming to the media limelight with its subscriber base. I was discovering and learning about the digital landscape, certain basics that were predominant in all online games and gamers.
I gave up on my first foray into university, finding pure sciences were not my strengths. At the same time, UO made a historic move, severing ties with its volunteer corps when it was sued over its work scheduling. I was online at the time, and watched with confusion and sadness as the dismantling of something that I wholeheartedly believed was a community-building experience, and something that marked me with a desire to examine the hows and whys of the so-called metaverse better. However, at this point, I moved home, unsure of both my direction in school and online existence.
I went back the next year to university, closer to home, learning business administration to work in the family owned business. I became a development board regular for Star Wars Galaxies, posting design ideas, arguing player psychology becoming more and more involved with just not playing, but with those why’s and how’s involved. Dev board activity also gave me a break into my final choice for a degree, as to help with remembering my intro economics class theories, I wrote a pseudo-paper that explained how each theory worked into online world development. I showed it to my professor. He got me to switch fields, wanted me to write more on the subject. I have yet to go back directly and address gaping holes in the paper, but somehow it still gets referenced more in other’s works than anything else I have worked on up to and completing my master’s degree. My paper on Online World Economies, as well as my work on political/urban foundations in online worlds for SWG (which, whether they like to admit it, was copied directly into the game) is referenced now and then. These two papers created a bond between my research and my gaming that still exists today.
More online games have come and gone since. The desire to connect research in a meaningful way to gaming hasn’t left however. With my current levels of education, I am looking back to the beginning. I want to translate what I have done in the past ten years especially, into something that can be understood, and built upon. Political Economics, and more specifically this take on metanomics, has taken the forefront now for research angles; a mix of both my university education and my gaming pastime.
There’s still a part of me, the inner gamer that goes “I want to design a game”. I can’t help it, it’s ingrained into my very being. More than likely, the attitude permeates any paper I could write on the subject of digital media more than I would like it to. However, it is my hope that the desire to portray such mediums as a meaningful example of human behavior, in such a way that we can further understand ourselves in one way or another, shines through stronger and connects with you the reader.
No comments:
Post a Comment