Rather than overdetermine the kind of exploratory research you during afternoon exercises I want to provide some basic introductory questions each week to help guide your time. The afternoons should also be strongly informed by the themes we are dealing with in the seminar session, i.e. identity, intellectual property, socialization, and the like.

Week 1 : Finding a fieldsite and prepping for tech & culture discussion

Select a multiplayer space to be involved with for the duration fo the course. You might want to try out a few to find one that fits your style but ultimately I want you to pick one to really hone in on.

Consider the initial experience of starting the game. Was it difficult, easy, disorienting? How do you know, and figure out, how to play? Can you win the game? Is there a community within the game?

Do you have an avatar? If so, what do they look like? Can you customize them? Do you have some kind of "character" or player info sheet? What kinds of things are contained in it?

Read the Terms of Service (TOS) and End User License Agreement (EULA) for each of the games. What is the framework for using the game that it lays out? Are there rules noted there? How does it handle questions of intellectual property, i.e. do you or the company own your avatar?

Visit the official website for the game. What kinds of information does it contain? Does it give you clues/links about other players? The community?

Consider some of the identity issues Turkle raises. Think about the process of creating an identity in the game and review your notes from last week about your avatar creation. Do you select a prepackaged game character? Create your own? If you create your own, what kinds of things can you select/alter and what can you not? Can you pick your own name? Can you have more than one character? Is reputation somehow embedded in the game character? Social connections?

Next, think for a moment the place of the body in gaming. You are both sitting at a computer or in front of a TV/console but also have a representation of yourself within the game space. Do you experience any sense of embodiment in the game space? Do you feel "there" in some regard? What happens to your corporeal body as you play? Do you forget it? Lean into the computer? React to what happens onscreen? If possible, you might want to watch someone else play and observe what they do and how they orient within the play moment.

And finally, bring in a color photo of your play space. It may be your desk area, your living room, maybe even on the train if you have a mobile device. Feel free to make a collage out of it, capturing the different spaces you play in. We will use the photos from everyone to talk about the role physical setting and location play in gaming.

Take a close look at the interface of the game you are working with. Beyond ease of use, consider what functionalities are built into, and left out of, it. Think about the ways the game system imagines particular kinds of users with particular kinds of competancies. Consider the issue of delegation that Latour raises - how might we use his analysis to understand computer games as technological systems?

If your game allows for players to modify it, take a close look at how that schema works. How are mods produced? What kind do you see? Do they do particular kinds of "social work"? Personal labor? Are player modifications of the interface or system regulated, either formally or informally (think about approval structures, tools, reputation or social vetting, etc.

Week 5: Doing research, thinking about methods

In addition to some methods readings you have a selection about formulating a question and a problem to research. I would like you to come to our next session having thought about this in relation to your work. Using the format Booth discusses I would like you to come up with:

Topic
Question
Rationale
Significance

as it applies to the game you are studying. Then, as a next step, give some thought into how you might actually go about answering your question. What kind of method do you need to use? Observation? Interviews? Survey? Close reading of a text? Content analysis? Think about how your question may prompt particular kinds of methods to be best addressed.

We will discuss this all more in depth during the class but I’d like you to have given your own project some thought (remember, this is what will form the basis for your synopsis and final exam) and come prepared to present at least an initial plan for what you want to research (topic, question, rationale, significance) and how you plan to do it (method).