Monthly Archives: September 2008

New Pew Internet report looks at teen gaming and civic effects

During my last six months in DC, I worked almost exclusively on the Pew Internet Project’s most recent report, Teens, Video Games and Civics, which was released Tuesday. This report looks at the gaming activities of 12-17 year-olds in the U.S.: the types of games they play, how they play them, and the social aspect of gaming. Furthermore, the report found positive connections between gameplay and civic behavior.

Having been a gamer since about age 6 when I would play Space Invaders and Breakthrough on my parents’ Atari, this report is very near and dear to me. Gaming is now ubiquitous — 97% of teens play video games. this means that girls are now playing games about as often as boys, which was certainly not the case 20 years ago. I remember being one of the only girls in my gradeschool who actively played video games on a regular basis; while it didn’t seem to bother me at the time (because finishing Ninja Gaiden was too important!), I am heartened that kids share games to a larger degree now.

Based on the data in this survey, I think we can safely say that video games are not the devil-spawn that some more of the more outspoken conservatives like to proclaim. Gaming, like everything else out there, has a good and a bad side, but in my opinion, the good tends to outweigh the bad. Kids who game are not missing out on life, but are instead interacting with their peers, and in some cases, learning from their experiences and getting more involved with their community.

Learning the rules (the hard way) in WoW

When I moved to Michigan last month, I decided that one way I could bide my time while waiting for school to start would be by checking out World of Warcraft. Not only am I an avid RPG fan going back 20 years to the days of the original Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, but online gaming research is a hot topic within my PhD program. So not only would I be having fun, but I’d be advancing my academic knowledge, I told myself. (Fabulous excuse, I know.)

At first, I started a character on a random server, not really understanding the whole concept of servers and how your character is locked to that server (unless you’re willing to pay the relocation fee). In fact, I didn’t really ask anyone for advice or look up anything online at first, choosing instead to just dive in. The game is rather self-explanatory on a basic level. As you get into the nuances, however, it can become very complicated. Especially when you are interacting with other players.

So I’ve been playing for almost a month now and have several characters on different servers so I can play with various friends. When playing alone in the last week though, I’ve had a couple rude awakenings that have shone me a very fascinating aspect of WoW community that surprises me, even with my research focus on online communities.

One would think that with so many players (10 million +), people would not be very organized. At the very least, one would expect there to be a high degree of things like flaming and lack of courtesy. This, however, is far from the truth. Instead, it is I, someone who thinks of herself as a generally courteous and polite person in the real world, who is repeatedly committing offenses and being reprimanded for not being “nice enough.” This amazes me. And people have no sympathy for my ignorance either.

Take tonight, for example. Two other players asked me to join a group. I didn’t need to join, as I was finishing a low level quest, but I accepted because I thought that it might speed up the process. For a reason I am not aware of, they set the looting option to free-for-all. I didn’t notice, because the only other times I’ve ever joined a group, it’s been set so that it is spread out among the group members. Yes, I should have realized this was not the case when I could loot all the enemies, but I just assumed since one of the two players was a high level player (level 65) and the other wasn’t jumping to loot the enemies, that they had gotten what they needed. When I got the item I was looking for, I asked if they still needed my help, they said no, and I left. Five minutes later, I am assaulted textually by one of the group members about how rude it was that I ninja looted everything when he needed an item (the same one I was trying to get coincidentally). I apologized and said that I had asked if they needed help. He proceeded to get very angry about it and how horrible what I did was. I said I was new to the game, not aware of all the rules, and asked why no one said anything as I “ninja looted” away. He decided to ignore this question and continued harassing me for a good 7-10 minutes, mainly just to drive the point home that I was horrible. I kept saying that if anyone had said anything, I would have stopped. Finally, I told him that now I know better and basically thanked him for reprimanding me. That seemed to placate him, and he wished me well. Very weird.

What I perceive from this interaction is that it is very important to the community of players (and perhaps critical to the world’s stability) that these unwritten rules of interaction be followed. Deviation from these rules needs to be punished quickly to ensure that no further infractions occur. This other player, who didn’t know me, had no reason to pursue the matter so far. I can’t imagine I affronted him to such a degree that he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, yet he still carried on a long conversation with me. And I actually felt bad afterward! Mission accomplished, I guess.

I also think it’s pretty safe to assume that the vast majority of players have been playing the game for a long time and thus know the “rules” inside and out. So maybe it made sense for this other player to assume that I was a veteran player who was simply taking advantage of the situation. This makes play even more difficult for new players like myself who may be venturing through the game without someone to guide them. While I certainly don’t forsee this instance of WoW “hazing” (for lack of a better term) to deter me from playing the game, it certainly does not make me feel like I am being welcomed with open arms. I guess in the realm of WoW, respect must be earned in hours of play. And I’m thinking I probably need a few thousand more hours of playing before I have half of it figured out.

Tired of their kids’ $1200 cell phone bills, Congressmen stick it to mobile providers

I used to be anti-texting. Why send someone a poorly worded, 160-character-or-less message when you can call them (if it requires an immediate reply) or email them? Texting encourages bad grammar, is impersonal and can sometimes be downright annoying.

That quicky changed, however, once I began graduate school. For all intents and purposes, I was forced to get a texting plan on my phone after my new-found friends started texting me. A lot. It wasn’t a lot of texts compared to other people I know, but $0.10 per received or sent message adds up very quickly. My first month at Georgetown, I noticed my cell phone bill was $15 or so higher than normal, so I caved and got a 500 texts per month plan for $5. Even then, I was surprised at the priciness of texts, as I was pretty confident the transferral of such a tiny amount of data between phones was not costing the phone companies that much.

Since I’ve been on a texting plan ever since (and now on a data plan too with my Verizon Voyager — I’m so hip), I had no idea that rather than prices for texting decreasing, they have instead been increasing over the last year. The price of sending or texting now costs $0.20 per message on each of the four major carriers (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile). I can only imagine the first billing cycle after the price increase in many an American home: parent opens phone bill, sees their 12-year-old has decided to become hyperactive with her texts at exactly the wrong moment, and now has to pay nearly $100 extra on the phone bill so her kid can engage in conversation via text with the person sitting next to them. What’s up with these kids anyway? Haven’t they heard of whispering? And what kinds of pressing secrets do 12-year-olds have anyway that need to be communicated via text?

Anyway, it seems that the ridiculosity of these increases has reached Congressional notice, and one Senator (hopefully) plans to do something about it. Herb Kohl (D-WI) has sent a letter to the presidents of the four majors, demanding an explanation for their outrageous texting prices.

Who knows if this discussion will actually lead to any pricing changes for the millions of texters in the U.S., but I must say I am looking forward to reading their lame attempts at justifying their pricing plans. It seems pretty obvious to me that these companies thought they could get away with jacking up prices because of the exponential increase in demand over a few short years, but they must have forgotten Moore’s Law along the way, which when applied to data technology, says it should be half as costly now than it was just two years ago.

Read the Ars Technica article here.

I’m baacckkkkk!

Okay, so I took a two-month break. Sue me. I was enjoying every precious second I had left in the glorious city of DC. Now I am living in the less-than-exciting state of Michigan (although it has yet to become the icy wasteland I previously predicted).

On the bright side, school has begun and I’m enjoying it so far. I’m studying social networks and online communities Michigan State’s Media & Information Studies PhD program. I cannot begin to express how amazing it is to work with experts in your field, where you no longer have to second-guess yourself because you have no one more knowledgeable about the subject matter than yourself. Now I am not only being taught by experts, but in some cases, by the people I cited most heavily during my thesis research (i.e., Joe Walther, Nicole Ellison, Cliff Lampe, Chip Steinfield, among others).

So keep your fingers crossed that Lansing grows on me like a dirty fungus and that I don’t crack under the pressures of “PhD paralysis.”
I’ll be trying to update this blog regularly with interesting posts related to my research.