You can create multiple characters in WOW, and so multiple points of view. When you create a character, the story/context of that character’s race is given in a cut scene that ends with you in the game world and able to move around. As the character/creator, you are free to build a personality for your character that somehow reflects the context you were given, or to ignore this context. I have created multiple characters in WOW. Thus far I have been pretty boring in my character development- they are mostly close variations of my vision of myself. My main character is a mage, and interpersonally, she’s pretty much a push-over. She was the only character I played for a long time. When I started playing my rogue, I was somewhat surprised to find that I was less likely to help other players with quests that were too high level for them. In real life, I usually try to abide by one of Walt Whitman’s suggestions for being happy: “Give alms to all who ask”. My mage abided by this, too. My rogue? Not so much. Once I broke the rule that I always I had to help people with my rogue, I was more able to do so on other characters. This aspect of my multiple personalities changed because of experimentation with one of them. Other players of the game see me differently when I’m playing a level 20 (pretty low level)character, than when I’m playing my level 70. People ask my level 70 for things far more often than they do my lower level characters- the assumption is that my 70 has resources to burn. Sometimes I say no, most of the time I say yes. I suppose my development with my rogue could be called “How Megan learned to be bitchy”. I know some in the game world feel that way, but I honestly don’t think enabling people to coast through hard quests or giving them free money is helpful to their development in the long run. It just increases their dependency on higher level characters, and makes it so that they don’t have to perfect their grasp of their own character. My rogue gave me a space to express this. There are also people whose contact with me would lead them to believe that I’m nice, or a charitable person, or a sucker.

I found Bolter and Grusin’s arguement that a medium should be viewed with an eye toward its cultural consensus to be very compelling. If that wasn’t a clear statement, this is one of their examples: “Photography is real- not just as pieces of paper that result from the photographic process, but as a network of artifacts, images, and cultural agreements about what these special images mean and do(p. 58).” Saying that “A medium is that which remediates (p. 65)” is cheating, though.

I’ll write off the discussion of virtual reality as premature given the incredibly small amount of time spent in immersive virtual reality spaces.

As a former MUDer and occasional MMO player (not to mention Second Life “resident”) it seems rather silly to mention the issues of gender ambiguity. Perhaps these researchers miss something by examining the world from afar. When a regular player chooses to pretend a gender other than his own, it is simply a mater of course, not an experiment. Sure these outside observers can examine this behavior, but can they understand it? It doesn’t seem like they draw anything interesting from their examinations, and certainly not anything that surprises me. It all goes back to the earlier quote, that a person has as many selves as they do relationships (or connections perhaps? Words fail me at the moment).

An interesting point from the section on Diana’s death. The authors mention that really, the videotape of the funeral and the live broadcast of the procession were equally mediated, so why privilege the live broadcast? I’d suggest that while people may be free to argue against privileging seeing an event or hearing an address in person, the fact remains that the live event is more rare, and would seem to have a certain privilege for that reason alone.

I read the film section and I found the animation part of the reading to be the most interesting especially since I’m studying to be a 2D animator and my love for both 2D and 3D animation. With the technology today being so cutting edge and advanced its no wonder why in recent years Disney laid off its 2D animation staff and shut down its Florida and Paris 2D animation studios in favor of 3D especially since the success of Pixar. I do agree with Bolter and Grusin that the animated film can finally “compete with the realism of the Hollywood style” (p.150) but I wonder if it’s the remediation of technology that the audience gravitates towards or the storytelling? Both mediums show intermediacy and hypermediacy (in 2D, when a 2D character is in a CG environment)but does that truly make one better than the other? I love 3D because of the innovation in technology and pushing the medium but, as an artist I still feel that 2D has the “traditional human technique” (bottom of p.148 in regards to Toy Story) that 3D is sometimes missing. I guess what I’m saying is that as an artist I don’t get that same feeling when I’m on the computer using a mouse as I do with working with pencil -something I feel is truly a more intimate personal feeling than having a computer doing the work. I might be a little biased here, but that’s just me.

I looked at the sections on computer games (assuming we would discuss it in this class based on other students) and convergence (I wanted to see what they had to say). I picked not to read any of the chapters on photography or film because I had previously disagreed with statements made early in the book on photography.

Am I wrong or are they wrong on page 30? In foot (side) note 5, they say that Derrida would have denied that the image is a link to the world that is better than words. Would Derrida have not said, the image is a direct link because we do have words that make it so?

I also thought of my multiple avatars within Second Life. I didn’t intentionally create them as different parts of my personality, but when interviewed about them, it became clear that they were representations of my views of self. Each new one seems to leave the others behind in an odd way of becoming more comfortable with the space, as well as becoming bolder in terms of revealing personal issues with societal pressures.

I read the section on digital photography. It always amazes me that this debate over photograph as truth doesn’t often consider the photographer’s decisions when capturing the image. Yes, photographs can be altered, and yes, more easily with digital images. But what I find more interesting are the choices made when shooting. It’s not just about the ability to manipulate images during processing that raises the question of validity. What the photographer chooses to include or eliminate from an image, the angle in which the photograph is taken, the lighting, etc. can lead the viewer to an assumption about the photograph before processing ever begins.

Perhaps we are the ones that give realism to hypermedia and not as much the other way around?

Most people assume female avatars, as well as all male avatars, are played by men (MMORPG = Many Men Online Role-Playing Girls theory). Another assumption is that if a gamer is female, she will prefer to play female avatars when given the choice between male and female. The people I sometimes talk to in-game don’t know that I am female because I play male avatars, even (and probably especially) when the game gives the choice between a male and a female avatar.

We talk cordially with one another, but we’re really just strangers. Online games seem to promise a less authentic immediacy, one where a person communicates with an anonymous other person behind a façade defined by the game space that the player gets to manipulate (character customization). While the people are getting closer and successfully completing a series of quests together, they may really know nothing about one another.

I read the computer game section. Bolter and Grusin say that games and other media provide a “new and authentic experience while at the same time they divorce us from the physical world” (p. 103). But then Bolter and Grusin don’t elaborate. While our physical bodies aren’t immediate to others, our thoughts through our words are, but without seeing the nonverbal cues on a person’s body or hearing the tone of the person’s voice, words could be more misinterpreted than ever. Is this still considered getting closer, more immediate, to real life as this medium seems to strive for? The use of a collage of media in online games and other online services like chat rooms (graphics, sound, participatory interaction, etc.) seems to be doing the opposite of what it claims to be doing (social interaction with real people) while at the same time still connecting people whether in deception or otherwise. So when we speak to one another in the game, are we speaking to the avatar or to the mysterious other person behind the avatar? If the latter, how do we know that person is who we think he or she is?

I have also posted a link just in case the YouTube embedding decides to be mean.

It’s a simple example, but it opens up multiple channels for network communication. You start out in the hub of the game, where different people gather on virtual characters to speak using a text-based method. This evolves into speech using voice chat systems through Ventrillo and TeamSpeak. Outside of the group are onlookers experiencing the event within the virtual world (aka, wedding crashers). With the video, the group grows as hundreds (and potentially millions) of people view the event through YouTube. Each post on YouTube allows for the network to grow and spread. And then you have the video, the view that it is shot in, which pieces are used and which clips and thrown aside (etc.); it is all related to the remediation of this event. For me, the concept of self with this video is related to my character in this virtual world. It is not the me that exists in this world, it is the me that exists in the virtual world. (In this case, they are very similar, but the image of my character on Final Fantasy XI is the idea that people associate me, the person, with.) I know that this is a fairly simple example, but it’s a concept that could easily become more complex when discussing networking. Do I think this follows Bolter and Grusin? Almost, but not exactly. Do I think this is remediation of the self? Yes, but this can also develop more channels into intermediacy and hypermediacy. I don’t think I can draw any conclusions, but it’s an idea I’m throwing out there.

Other comments: “Remediation” reminds me a lot of the Landow reading. Bolter and Grusin have a general idea about the theories and concepts, but they miss the boat completely on the details.

I read the sections on Film and Television in section II, since they are the fields I have focused my studies in for the past few years. The quotation from Laura Mulvey about the male audience being drawn into the film is completely out of context for what Mulvey was talking about. I was praying that they would bring up Rick Altman and genre theory so I could start banging my head on the table. I think they had good intentions and the film and television are super saturated in hypermediacy, but their support and reasons fall through.