"Play Money" and RMT is why I will never play MMORPGs again.

Critique, Games, Opinion, Readings No Responses »
May 142010

I just got finished reading Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot by Julian Dibbell, and I must say that no book in recent memory has riled me up so much.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not angry because I am naive about virtual worlds and their economies. As matter of fact I am fascinated by real money trade in virtual worlds, and I understand economics well enough to see that real money trade is not only an inevitable facet of virtual worlds, but is in some ways a beneficial one. Having attended Indiana University, I have even had the pleasure of sitting down with Edward Castronova, author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, and who was mentioned several times in Dibbell’s book. And I agree with both of those guys that the production and trade of virtual goods should be viewed more seriously as a legitimate economy. However, because of this I also think that people who hack and exploit code in order to make money should face harsher consequences that just having an account banned. Continue reading »

Posted by Chad at 11:58 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Capstone Theoretical Stuff

Capstone, Games, Projects, Readings No Responses »
Feb 122010

Design is a balancing act, and one of the things I find merit in tossing into it is a strong understanding of theory and literature. It helps to recognize and acknowledge your values in the design process so that they can be made explicit to yourself and all other stakeholders.

That being said, I now present a brief overview of my capstone project and some of the theoretical stuff informing it.

INTRO
This project seeks to design a system that preserve the experience of virtual worlds, in this case World of Warcraft outside of the through the use of screenshots and metadata. The design aims to give players some out-of-game representation of their experience Continue reading »

Posted by Chad at 2:37 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

My Thoughts on "Thoughts on Thoughts on Interaction Design"

Design Philosophy, Human-Centered, Readings 2 Responses »
Jan 242010

J. Ambrose Little just posted recently about reading Jon Kolko’s Thoughts on Interaction Design.  While I am new to this whole design thing, I have previously posted about my uneasiness with the claim that we design behavior. 
Continue reading »

Posted by Chad at 3:43 pm Tagged with: , , ,

Interpreting Interaction Design

Readings No Responses »
Sep 172009

As I was reading Verbalising the Visual, I came across a passage that seemed to set of a big, fun, messy string of thoughts about the ways things are interpreted.  Clarke states:

It is sometimes thought that interpreting images of functional artefacts, such as a food processor or digital camera, is easier than interpreting works of fine art, be they painted, sculpted, photographed, or otherwise. At least the utilitarian, functional dimensions of the artefacts might provide a common basis for understanding. Without any comparable basis in the practical, fine art artefacts are judged to be far less contained.

Are the words functional, utilitarian, and practical problematic here?  And what do these descriptions mean for interaction design, where all of those are balled into one?  Continue reading »

Posted by Chad at 3:58 am Tagged with: , , ,

Literature, Film, and HCI

Critique, Design Philosophy, Readings No Responses »
Mar 042009

After reading this paper, Interaction Criticism: A Proposal and Framework for a New Discipline of HCI by Jeff and Shaowen Bardzell, I came away with several insights to add to my personal design philosophy.

In the paper the authors claim that the HCI design process is missing an integral final step, the step of interaction criticism. There are many other art and design oriented fields, such as film and literature, which already have a culture of expert critics. Continue reading »

Posted by Chad at 2:01 pm Tagged with: , ,
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