research topic
hey guys, sorry i hadnt posted anything on my blog in a while but first I was pretty sick and then went to Mexico (no access to computer). Hope you guys had a good time during the Second Life Lecture, I am getting ready to look at the slides in a little bit.
For my research topic, I wanted to do work having to do with buffer zones and gaming vs. real world consequences. As I talked about in class, I believe that there is somewhat of a conflict between the level of immersion that can be reached and how much of a "game" WoW is. In class, we keep talking about how people get into the game and how much they play it and to a certain extent live their lives through it. There seems to be an overall praise for the "reality" of the game: how nice the scenery is, interaction between players in different countries, etc. We also debated (and it is still being debated on forums) the cost of death and the implications that dying had in the game world. Most of us believed that there should be a cost of dying because it would make gaming more realistic. However, not one of us (i think i was the person who pushed for the most expensive cost of dying)wanted a really definitive death. Most of us are not willing to deal with the real world's consequences in the game world. All of us want a buffer zone between the real world and the game world. In other words, we dont want our actions to be definitive.
I plan to study where or how the line is drawn between realistic and "too real". I want to deal with buffer zones and how they affect gaming behavior and social motivation.