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: Intro, no exercises

Week 2: Finding a fieldsite

You should have started to give some thought about the multiplayer space you want to be involved with. You might have 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.

With your working group:

Have some preliminary conversations with your working group about the space(s) you are thinking of exploring. Are you already starting to see some interesting angles? Is there something you are already interested in doing research on?

On your own:

Consider the initial experience of starting the game or interacting with the space. 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 space?

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?

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.

Week 3: Embodied Play

On your own:

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.

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?

With your group:

Have a play session together and do some close observation of this issue of the body at play and how interface shapes the experience. Watch some play sessions (single, duo) and observe what they do and how they orient within the play moment. Have each other "talk through" their interface of the game each is studying. Pull in some of the observations you made on your own from the previous section of this week's task.

Week 4: Exercises will be guided by the guest speaker, Jessica Evenold

Week 5: Exercise period will be attending the meeting with the Danish Minister of Science, Helge Sander in the KMD Lecture Hall

Week 6: Avatars, Gender, and Identity -- Research Prep

Consider some of the identity and avatar issues raised in last week's reading. Think about the process of creating an identity in the game and reflect on how the process was handled in the game you are researching. 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? 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? How do you typically think about the notion of identity when it comes to your own play? Do you experiment? Simply think of the character as a tool? Try to match your offline self as close as possible?

Think about your avatar in relation to this notion of identity, but also in terms of the social context of the world. Do you think of the avatar as a tool or something more? Do you think genre affects the answer to such a question? What is the relation, if any, between your avatar and your coporeal body? Do you feel physical sensations (vertigo, personal space, etc.) in relation to what is happening to your avatar? Reflect on the idea that avatars inhabit a social space that gives them meaning. Does the avatar perform your identity to the game community in meaningful ways (for example, as you customize or outfit your avatar does that provide key information to others)? Does your avatar represent to you forms of identity that you find compelling?

Finally, consider the role of gender in the discussion. How is gender handled in the game? Is gender difference "just" representation or does the game try and tie it to mechanics or core structures of play? How does the game community itself negotiate gender (for example, do you see any important differences in expectations, treatment, norms, roles play out within the game)? Consider too how the game itself is marketed, packaged, promoted in relation to gender. Do particular images of feminity or masculinity get used? Are some gender identities conspicuously absent?

For next week:

Please come to class with the following prepared. Type out your responses and bring enough copies for all your group members.

Two weeks ago you began some work with Jessica Evenold to start thinking about research topics and questions. You now need to finalize what you will be doing your final report on. Provide the following per the format below. Review the Booth chapters (in particular pages 36-45) for this process.

TOPIC: Here you will give a general overview of the topic that you are interested in. Topics are often quite broad and probably have no clear question yet attached to them. For example, you might say "I'm interested in intellectual property in games."]

NARROWED TOPIC: Now you try to hone the topic down a bit. Perhaps, in relation to the above example, you clarify a bit further by saying "Actually, I'm interested in how intellectual property work with regard to avatars in MMOGs."

QUESTION(S): At this step you should be trying to refine down your narrowed topic into a question that can be actually researched and answered. So for example, the previous topic my be honed into the following question, "How does X game situate players rights over IP in relation to their avatars?" You may find you have a few additional questions that are important to tie in, for example "How do players think of their own IP avatar rights and is that in alignment with both the companies, and the laws, handling of the issue?"

WHY IT MATTERS: You should also be paying attention to what I often call the "what is at stake" question. By this I simply mean, force yourself to try and clarify why the topic and questions you are addressing matter in a larger sense and what is at stake in considering the issue. What makes this a non-trivial issue? Why should your reader care about this question? Why is it important to think about and research?

METHOD: Now you need to consider how you might answer your question and, importantly, think about if it is even answerable. What kind of research do you need to do to answer it? Say, for example, you decide the question can only be truly answered by doing a large survey, consider if you have the training and tools to do such. If not, you should probably tweak your question a bit to find one that fits methods you can actually execute. Most importantly, make sure your method actually matches your question. Will actually be able to tap into the data you need to address your question(s)?

LITERATURE: Part of what you have to do in your work is both find out if anyone has tackled the issue you are researching before, and also if there is related literature that you should know because it is relevant for the work (remember, there is valuable work outside of game studies you should probably make sure to cover in most projects). Brainstorm a bit about what kind of subjects you should do some lit review on, think of keywords, topics, etc.

Week 7 -- Project Work

Based on the discussion in groups and class about your topic make any tweaks or refinements you need to it. If you haven't already you should start on your literature review. You should also be working on your research as detailed from your new revised plan.

Week 8 -- Spring Holiday

No exercises. Please continue working on your project, in particular your lit review.

Week 9 -- Emergent & Distributed Culture

You can probably think about the readings we did on socialization and community and fold it into this week a bit as well. One of themes in the readings this week is how game communities may produce unanticipated and emergent cultures that are unique to their game/server/etc but also how their practices might alter and shape the very way the game is played.

Take a look at the game you are researching and keep an eye out for several things. What are the practices around gameplay that may not be in the manual but seem to have come from the community itself (for example, are there important norms around how loot is handled etc.)? How are new players socialized into those practices? Keep an eye out as well for contested practices. Are there things in the culture the community is quite split over and debates? Have there been some debated issues in the past but they have now been worked out?

Think a bit about how the game company, and the officially released game, intersect with some of the practices you identify. Are they ever at odds? Does the game company use emergent culture in interesting ways to (re)shape the game? Are there some properties in the emergent culture that seem to be "deal-breakers" for the game company? Is there any relationship between the emergent culture players have produced and the official release of the game (for example, think about how modding in WoW is often folded back into official builds)?

Finally, think for a bit about this notion of distributed culture. What might it mean in light of your own game? How is game knowledge shared? Developed? Are there ways in which the culture of the game exceeds the boundaries of the boxed product?

Week 10 -- Player Producers and Co-Creation

Last week you spent time reading and thinking about the notion of emergent culture and some of the play practices found in game communities. Picking up on this theme, consider a bit more how we should understand and situate this kind of activity. Whether it is the ways players may come up with play norms that designers notice, or the way they may use mods to change games, how should we think about the productions players make in game space. Should we consider it work? A labor of love? A kind of playful activity? Should, for example, modders get paid for their contributions? Or does paying for this kind of thing somehow "ruin" the process? Do the ways players are able to creatively intervene in games signal a democraticization of media? Or simply cooptation (exploitation?) by media conglomerates? How do we conceptualize the design process in light of these activities? When you look at the space you are researching, how are designers and players dealing with, and making sense of, the productive activity of players? How are companies at an organizational level addressing this issue of player-created content? How are the communities you are looking at dealing with these issues and what kinds of practices are emerging to handle them?

Week 11 -- Regulating Culture & IP

If you haven't already, carefully read over the End User License Agreement (EULA), ToS (Terms of Service), and any other legal documents associated with your game and how its use is proscribed. What kinds of activities are disallowed? What is the status of fan fiction for your game? Fan art? Websites that collect data from the game? Modding? Avatar "ownership"? What kinds of ramifications come from breaking any of the agreements? Do you notice widespread practices in the game that regularly break these? How are players of your game talking about these legal structures (if and when they do). Are there any existing legal cases involving your game?

Think for a moment now about some of the arguments Lessig is making terms of the relationship between code and regulation. How does your game - at the software level - structure and regulate action. Consider his example of AOL and the issue of speech, identity, anonymity, and community as embodied in the very architecture of the space. How might you link his argument to what you observe in your own game? What does it mean to argue, as he does, that code is law?

Finally, please bring in a printed copy of your game's EULA and ToS to class as we will use these for discussion.