Avatars, MMORPGs, serious games, 3D virtual worlds, clans, grinding and twinking are all part of the everyday language of online gamers. More and more this language is becoming relevant for those of us in educational and organisational contexts and yes you might need to get the tourist dictionary to converse.
If you are still in any doubt about the arrival of games, after Jenny's introduction, consider the corporate sponsorship of clans in massively multiplayer online games which might have gone to sporting teams in the past. Mexican and Chinese farmers game in the in 21st century digital sweatshops to acquire game assets that can be traded as commodities in an open market. Wells Fargo and Sony Music have open virtual worlds to market their products and services. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra was the first to perform in the 2005 version of PLAY a symphony of game themes. But the arrival of games offers up much more than opportunity for CAPITALIST US to act entrepreneurially in THEIR WORLD.
I have worked for the past three years as part of a team exploring virtual world architecture Active Worlds for educational purposes in Quest Atlantis. My interest in this area arose not from some inner desire to join geekdom but to further explore and understand online social contexts and how identity, relationships, knowledge and skills can be developed within them. I came into this from several years working to understand and build Internet-mediated communities of practice. As an ex-teacher I had some understanding of the use of games and simulations in learning but I was totally unprepared for how engaging and socially-oriented the new breed of online games and virtual worlds would be.
Over the next couple of days I want to differentiate games and virtual worlds and explore what makes them exciting prospects for us. While there might be little argument over the popularity of games and virtual worlds there is a lot of debate about the reasons for their coming of age. A recent post on the Wired Game Life Blog opens up a number of the issues I would like to explore in the coming days in relation to games. You might read this post and the ensuing comments and consider how reflective (or not) many of the gamers are about their "play" and what your current position is on this issue of games as social contexts.
Bronwyn
