A History of Silence

So, to start with my customary thought: I am horrible at blogging. I'm not sure who I do this for, other than myself and maybe a few friends, but oh well. I still enjoy it when I have the time. And if there is any place that ought to give me the time to blog, it is the Peace Village that I am currently staying in for the Images and Voices of Hope 2010 World Summit. While I knew that it was some kind of spiritual retreat location, I had no idea how integrated the reflection and meditation would be with the summit content. Actually pretty cool, if a little hard to describe.

The conference started with a moment of silence. Immediately, I began reflecting on the simple topic of silence, which makes me think of many things from my past. I break these things into two intersecting axes of categories, each with two divisions. On the first axis is scope: personal or communal silence. On the second axis is tone: abrasive or supportive. There are many things that could fall into these categories, but I'm going to reflect only on the ones most pressing in my mind: just one from each group, though it will be hard to choose in some places.

First, personal abrasive silence. A dominant example in this category for me was Catholic church. I absolutely despised the time in which we would get off the pews, kneel down, and be expected to pray on cue. I would stare blankly down at the floor and think about anything that came to mind, but I would very infrequently pray and mostly feel uncomfortable. This is not to say that I never prayed, just that the format didn't appeal to me. I actually developed a dislike of crossing my hands or arms together and bending my head down for a while, for whatever purpose. Playing 7 Up in class was particularly reminiscent of the church prayer experience for me, and subsequently abhorred.

Next, personal supportive silence. Probably the exact opposite of the previous experience; I think here about stargazing. There is something inexplicably personal about this activity for me, even if I am with other people when I do it. Stargazing has been a regular activity since I can remember (even when it was just moongazing when we lived in Queens), and I suspect it is the sense that I am looking outward at something so vast that forces me to reflect on my place in that vastness. To me, that experience is more spiritually inspiring than any church pew. Lumped into this category I would also put other connections with nature: viewing mountains or bodies of water, and laying out on grass during rain storms or sitting on sand dunes. I love all of it, and there is something about the experience of it all that inspires quiet, calm, and contentment.

Third, communal abrasive silence. This is a rare thing and in my opinion extremely uncomfortable. Standing in an elevator with people you don't know and that clearly don't want to talk to you. Riding the bus home with teammates after going to state finals and placing second by just one point. Watching your high school chemistry teacher fume in silent anger after someone eats dry ice. I've broken my rule of only giving one example, probably because these instances of silence are so torturous as to not even bear discussion or deep reflection. They are the moments in which you want desperately to say something, and yet have nothing meaningful to contribute. And you know that everyone else present is likely feeling the same way. It just sucks.

Lastly, communal supportive silence. My favorite. This brings to mind above all else my primary school music programs. I loved the moments when you knew that everyone was thinking the same thing and working towards the same goal without uttering a word. The best songs we sang or played were always the ones that required long pauses, deep silence, and then a gentle step forward together, timed perfectly after months of practice. The most memorable of those moments came while in the Ira Allen Chapel on UVM campus, winning the regional portion of the National High School A Cappella Association's annual competition. There are other events unassociated with music that stick out for me here as well. The prayer circle around our flag pole on September 11th. The moment of silence on my graduation day for the two students that had not lived to see it. Even driving in a car next to someone else and knowing that you are both enjoying the experience without the need to vocalize it. Social moments of positive silence are by far the most refreshing, comforting, simple but perfect versions of peaceful reflection, I think.

Not sure if that should really lead anywhere. These are just some observations from my personal life. While the thought of silence makes me cringe when I think about how quiet I used to be, and that my favorite quote in my high school year book is "Silence is golden," it's actually quite a rich and enjoyable topic to delve into right now... I suspect it will remain that way for years to come, and that the nuances of the topic will only grow in detail.

Growing Ripples

I don't have much to say, except that I'm absolutely thrilled to know that there are people out in the world that I went to high school with, some that I would have never considered close friends by any means, who have donated to the UN project. And others that have found connections to share the story of the project with. It's truly heartwarming to watch those ripples of awareness and support grow and spread. I can only hope that they continue to do so until we have reached our goal of $250,000.

Don't let the ripples die off before it happens!

Many Hands Make the Load Lighter

Just after the crisis in Haiti, I bought a t-shirt from Threadless to donate to the cause. The slogan of the shirt was "Men anpil chay pa lou," which translates to "Many hands make the load lighter." I didn't think much about the phrase at the time, aside from admiring the beauty of such an idea. That idea feels a wee bit more pertinent to me now.

Last week, I almost lost my job. Sort of. Without going into detail, I'll sum up by saying that the project I've given my heart to for almost two full years now may not see the light of day without some serious fundraising. We're talking about $250k of seriousness. That's a big number, but it could come down quickly.

If you're reading this, you probably know me at least a little. Maybe we're not friends that give gifts to each other, and maybe we haven't seen each other in years. But if I bumped into you on the street and asked if you could spare five bucks, would you give it to me? What about just one dollar? Well, I'm bumping into you on a metaphorical street right now. And if you have one, five, ten, whatever dollars to spare, I'd ask you to donate it to my project. Make my project into our project.

You may not have seen the same faces of young boys that I've seen, and you may never have wondered what those boys are being taught by their peers and elders about how to treat a girl and how to love someone. But I hope that you at least believe me when I tell you that they're out there, and that the project I'm working on could give them a chance to question the things they hear, see, adopt, and someday might practice.

If you can't spare that few dollars, or even if you can, perhaps you can instead spare a few minutes. Tell someone else about this project, forward my message, or just share the donation link. It would quite literally mean the world to me.

You can read about the project here, or jump straight to the donation page. Many thanks in advance for your small acts that can make this enormous but powerful load a little lighter.

The Happiness Project

So I've been reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and I think it's made me realize that I've been working on my own happiness project for about a year now. Maybe not as methodical, but perhaps just as effective.

Rubin tackles the task of making herself happier by outlining 12 topics to cover over the course of 1 year: marriage, parenthood, friends, eternity, attitude, work, play, passion, energy, money, and mindfulness. She took on one subject each month, adding to the resolutions from the previous month and leaving the 12th month of the year to juggle all 11 topics.

So far, I've read her first two months/chapters entitled "Boost Energy" and "Remember Love." The first in particular allowed me to notice changes I've made in my own life. I play DDR for an hour and a half on Saturdays and Sundays, half an hour on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and 45 minutes of Wii Fit on Tuesdays and Thursdays (I've lost 5 pounds this month, hopefully that's only the beginning). I make a list of chores to get done on weekends; even if I don't make it through all of them, I still feel accomplished. To clear clutter out of my apartment, I look for something to bring down to the dumpster or the recycling bins with me every morning (and it's gotten to the point where I literally hunt down emptied and useless items). I listen to songs that make me walk faster on my way to and from work. If I feel like singing or dancing to that music, I do (to varying degrees depending upon the presence of other people).

I've also worked a bit on the interpersonal side. I only say no to a social engagement if I'm double-booked, where previously I might hesitate due to the uncertainty of the outcomes. If my family or a friend calls, I call them back as soon as possible instead of waiting for them to check in again in a few weeks. I try to be an initiator and encourager instead of a responder and an agreer. I've stopped accommodating others at the cost of my own mental health - or at least, I don't do it without speaking up a little.

Now I'm following the book and thinking about what my resolutions would be each month. What would this month be? I think boosting energy is more than just physical for me, so it warrants two months of work. What I would call "Feeling Smarter" in a sense, keeping myself actively reflecting, learning, and creating. I've started playing one song on the keyboard every morning, watching one piece of media in Japanese with subtitles at least once a week, and hopefully keeping up with my blog more regularly. Once I have furniture in my apartment again, I'm hoping to get back into pastels on the weekends - I have five small frames I bought to fill with artwork weekly.

Anyway, more important than the details of such a plan is the engagement and determination to do it. I think there are very few people that wouldn't benefit from such an endeavor. Just something to ponder.

Schoolwork, Internship, Apprenticeship, or Ownership

I've just been introduced to an interesting thought regarding my workplace that had never occurred to me before. For anyone reading that is not familiar with the Emergent Media Center's project structure, we hire students for pay to work on projects under the supervision of staff and faculty advisors.

I've always been aware of the fact that this is very different from a classroom experience. In a classroom, the teacher challenges the learner to exercise gains in knowledge through activities that mean little beyond the educational realm; your homework does not profit the teacher in any immediate sense.

This is also different than an internship; while an internship is provided to a learner by a teacher in order to acquire profits and sustain a pool of employees, interns are notoriously buried in menial tasks that are not worth the time and effort of a more skilled worker. This makes for a very long process of gaining knowledge and transforming learner to teacher. Someday, that intern may be the skilled worker laying tedious assignments out onto new interns, but that ladder may be a tall one to climb.

The closest comparison I could come up with is apprenticeships of old; someone would take in a successor to their profession and teach them the craft. This process also allows the teacher a degree of profit based on the learner's progress, and the knowledge gain is steeper. There are no intermediate positions, just a transition from learner to fellow teacher. Still potentially a long process, but more focused on the topic of knowledge gain from the start.

Even this does not suffice to explain the model here at the EMC. Here, teacher and learner both strive for the exact same goals, and may indeed be doing the exact same task. Given how much responsibility for the product is laid in the hands of the learners, one can even argue that the learner's progress, product, and profits become more important than the teacher's. This is not to say that the presence of the teacher is unnecessary or insignificant, but the fruits of the teacher's labor are minimal and sometimes nonexistent.

Having reflected upon this, it truly is fascinating how similar and yet different the dynamics are from classroom to EMC: similar in feeling, but different in realization. While we can only hope that there are never any tremendous failures on the part of our learners, the rewards or consequences of good or bad work have so much more impact than one letter of the alphabet stamped on a paper or inserted into an email. And I think perhaps the teacher's interpretation of the learner's progress is far different. In this space, a major failure can still be an "A moment" if the conclusions and resolutions that come out of that failure express true learning. Here, the process to reach the final product is just as important as what you "turn in" at the end of your time on a project.

The evaluation of a learner's growth is so interdisciplinary here too. Sure, maybe you're a writer, and if this were a classroom environment we would grade you on the script you turn in. But even though you're a writer, we still see and appreciate your communication style and behavior management. You may not be an artist, but we find value in those stick figure storyboards you used to get yourself to the end goal. You didn't have to talk to the programmers, but we admire your choice to learn how your script will be programmed into a game. Teachers don't have the time to observe every moment of work on an assignment in order to grade the process, but aside from it sounding a little creepy, I think our world would see better learners, and ultimately better teachers too, if the entire journey were under examination for praise or critique.

I've digressed a little, but my main point is that I like where I work for all the whos, hows, and whats involved. The process is just as awesomely emergent as all of the products it generates.

Pausing the Game

Yes, it's been a year since I last wrote on my blog. What's happened in my life since then? I'll allow those reading this to guess at what level of change in my life would leave me no time to write about it, though reflection time abounds on my walks to and from the bus stop on Cherry Street every weekday. Here are a few hints. Work. Apartment. Exercise. Sunshine. Friends. Family. Cooking. Cleaning. Spontaneity. Reading. Email. EMAIL.

I am yet again on my way to GDC in a week, but that is not my impetus to write. I feel compelled to write because of a little game that just came out on the Playstation 3 called Heavy Rain. There are a dozen fan-girlish things I could say about the game that thousands of other people would say too. I will take a moment to lay praise on the game for merging cinema with gameplay. From the moment one watches the opening credits, included the "Written and Directed by" line that everyone looks for in a movie and no one ever looks for in a game, the experience read "movie" without reading passive. There were passive elements to it, of course - the cinematic cuts and choices made by unplayable characters, but those elements were so cleverly paralleled with interactive content that I truly felt engaged throughout.

There, praise laid. The point that I want to get to is how this game made me think about the work that I am doing right now with games and attitudinal or behavior change. I am quite certain that Heavy Rain is the closest I've ever come to seeing games evoke an emotional response from the player that is strong enough to drive a change in attitude or behavior. I'm not saying that (SPOILERS!) I've decided I'll never kill a man to save my son or that I'm not going to trust private investigators without doing a thorough background check (END SPOILERS), because the content of the decisions I made are of no interest here. What really struck me was the process of decision making.

Keep in mind that this game took about 10 hours to play through, and there was no traditional game UI or mechanical systems such as scoring, time huds, health points, or levels (there were levels, but they felt much more like scenes in a movie). You step into the shoes of four different characters throughout the course of the game, and it's possible for any and all of those characters to die before you finish; these deaths do not end the game, presumably until the fourth character dies and you no longer have someone to control in the storyline.

Although all four characters are trying to accomplish the same thing - catching a killer and saving a little boy - each has a different "flavor" of conflict. The private investigator gets into "wrong place, wrong time" types of trouble that are loosely tied to his mission but entirely coincidental. The FBI guy stands as the voice of reason pitted against a partner in analysis willing to bend the law (though sometimes FBI guy can bend the law too). The reporter faces survival conflict; similar but different to the PI, her brand of struggle is entirely directed at her and serves as a result of her own actions. And last and most important of all, the father faces desperate moral conflict in which he must make choices that will ostensibly impact whether or not his son lives or dies - imagine Saw crossed with John Q.

Now to the meat of the matter: the transition made in my decision making process. When I played as these characters, I felt very strongly connected to their existence, and I knew that these characters could die. This was powerful knowledge. I also knew that time in the game progressed without me. Combine these two thoughts, and snap decisions become abundant. Add to that equation the fact that you may make choices that allow you to survive but also come with a heavy level of regret or remorse for other characters. Now we have one tough decision making process to master.

Most games are about the survival of your character, this is nothing new. But few point out that your survival can be at the cost of another's. Some make you feel regret that you must harm others to continue, but it doesn't usually stop you. Jason Rohrer's Idealism does this in a very abstract way, but it gives you no alternative: create hostility or fail. Heavy rain paved the road to regret by allowing you to fail at surviving, succeed at surviving at another's cost, or succeed at surviving without pushing others down to the ground. It's more compelling because it's more like real life; by making it more like real life, the game is more likely to also elicit real emotion.

At the start of the game, I found myself making a lot of bad decisions. I hurt someone that appeared to be a danger to my life yet turned out to be totally harmless. Why? Because I knew I had to make a decision, and that this person I was playing didn't have much time to do it. What surprises me, and what I can't truly explain, is that it never occurred to me to pause the game. I don't think I ever would have if a friend hadn't prompted me to when we were making an incredibly important decision. From that moment on, the game felt totally different to me. It also reminded me of something I'd discussed recently about the potential of games to create behavior change.

In a passive medium, the audience needs time to reflect on the decisions that the characters have made. This reflection time often takes place after the choice because you need to know what the character decided to do in order to analyze why they did it and why certain consequences fell into line. In a game, that reflection time takes place before the decision because you're the one making it. Heavy Rain made me feel so much like I was part of a movie that I forgot about some of my game player "super powers," like the option to pause time and consider my options. In some ways, it felt like a cheat. When the game wasn't paused, time passed, and that passage of time sometimes took control of the story away from me; choosing not to make a decision was a choice of its own. By pausing the game, I was eliminating that choice.

I think the game could have easily been done without an ability to pause; it would only be one step closer to real life, to have to make decisions with the situation staring you in the face, never looking away from the TV screen to confer with a friend while the menu hovered over the content, blurring out the details. But by adding that menu, I think this game (unintentionally or otherwise) made a statement that decisions you make from moment to moment are important, so you better think hard about what you do. If this game were meant to teach behavior change, it would provide for the player a unique balance between understanding the pressures you feel when making such behavioral decisions and the amount of thought that needs to go into those decisions. If it were a longer game, I'd bet it could even teach you to make the right moral decision without needing to pause.

One last observation and then I'm done. I love the treatment of morality, a subject that has been played with in games to date in such a light-hearted, explicit, game-y way. Here, you don't get good and evil points for what you did. Here, your character won't grow horns or halos. The closest you'll come to receiving quantitative feedback is through trophies, which you earn for making good or bad decisions alike. All that confronts the player is the situations and the story. But, I would also have to admit that beyond the content, I think it takes a very mature gamer to appreciate a game like that. I hope I'm wrong on that part, but I can't really prove or disprove myself unless I abduct one of my non-gaming friends and sit them down to my PS3 for an hour or ten.

Long story short: play Heavy Rain if you think games can't cause the player to question their behavior, their life values, and their decision-making processes.

Possible Futures and My United Books of Academia

It's almost the end of March, and there's snow in the sky. I don't think I need to say anything else about that.

As I'm preparing to take off for GDC, I find myself gazing wide-eyed into the future - or trying to anyway. There are so many things for me to learn and so many people for me to meet in the days to come. But more importantly, there will be so many opportunities for the things I learn and the people I meet to boomerang around again and show up in my life in an impactful way. I'd like to hope so, at least.

Another thing that has me looking far ahead is The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half  the Twenty-First Century. It's a few years old, but I've been so tuned out of science since I graduated high school that it's fascinating me. The breadth of the essays contained within it also promises insight into a stunning array of specialized fields. Right now, I'm reading about how science has been able to transfer portions of the brain between species, and what consequences these types of transfers might have on humans. Bizarre stuff that one would only expect to see in fiction.

The reason I'm reading this is because I was inspired to look to the future by the post-literacy presenter at ACRL. While post-literacy served as a starting point for my research, I'm bouncing around quite a few ideas right now: nanobiology, transhumanism, the post-information age, and plain old human and brain evolution. All quite fascinating. I think I may have been spurred to dive into the stacks and max out my borrowing allowances because I had just come from a library conference, but it's been a while since I got my hands on a big pile of books, and I'm really enjoying the process of scanning through them for the information I need, while paging more slowly through the information I like. Ain't research grand?

I'm also trying to whip through a book on why children need fantasy violence, Killing Monsters. It's a pretty interesting read thus far, explaining how violence represented in media that are distinctly separate from a child's reality (toy soldiers, comic books, cartoons) can help children to understand violence better rather than desensitize them to it. I'm curious to get to some more in-depth analysis of where the border is between fantasy and reality, because that's where trouble often ensues, at least from the critics' perspectives.

This post was a bit all over the place, but I'm just out to share my thoughts lately - it takes a lot less time than actually stringing together the pieces, and guarantees I share anything at all!

Rousing Round Table

I've just come from the working lunch round tables, and although I'm not sure the round table discussion wound up being about the true topic at hand, it was fun nonetheless. I sat down to a table centered on the topic of "Delivering Resources to Developing World Users." Naturally, I was curious what the library industry was doing to address this issue - I hoped to gain insight into some possibly non-electronically based delivery methods. The table facilitator was Jaron Porciello, a librarian from Cornell University working on a project called TEEAL: The essential electronic agricultural library. Sponsored by a long list of partners, this LanTEEAL 2.0, or the Agricultural Library in a Box, works to deliver hard drives jam-packed with full-text articles to agricultural scientists in four different languages.

Two of the women at the table sat down because they saw that we were relatively lonely, and Tim joined as well (obviously because I was already there). The last contributor to the discussion was a man from the Netherlands working with learners in developing countries. He said that at least one of the foreign libraries he was working with had only one computer with a .5kbps dial-up Internet connection to service the entire campus population. The librarian also knew little to no English, and therefore could only sort the books in his library by the LC classification, having no other idea of what each book actually contained. I mentioned to him that we were using cell phones as a way to reach populations with limited computer access through the UN project, and he received a few other helpful contacts from the women at the table before taking off for another.

As seems always to be the case, the conversation diverged because there was an interest in hearing more about the projects that we were working on. One of the women at the table has a 44-year-old brother with cystic fibrosis, so she and Tim fell into a rather natural conversation, while I continued talking to Jaron about the possible entry strategies to marketing and distributing the UN game in the long run. The conversation was wonderful, fruitful, and energizing. I look forward to continuing a correspondence with her in the months to come as the UN project really getes underway with its development.

All very exciting, and it all happened in such a short amount of time. Even if my ever more frequent contemplation of what life would be like as a librarian turns out to be nothing career-altering, I'll never stop loving what the world of academic libraries has to offer me.

Sky-High Night, Low-Hanging Morning

Fortunately, the title of this post has more to do with the weather and my current location than it does with my spirits. Last night, Tim and I went to the Chair's Reception at the Columbia Tower Club, on the 75th floor of the Columbia Tower. The view was absolutely gorgeous - it reminded me why cities everywhere fascinate me. We had a good conversation with Mat Willmott, the puzzle master for the earlier MIT session, too. Looking forward to getting a peak at the Cambridge area from an insider's perspective at some point in the future.

This morning, the classic Seattle clouds have finally rolled in, and rain is on the agenda. This may give me more motivation to stay indoors and do work than I already had, but I may still venture down to Chinatown with my camera - I promised someone I'd get a few good pics of the city.

I'm looking foward to a wrap-up of the conference. Though it's been a great experience, it'll be nice to get back to the normal ebb and flow of things for...well, a few days before I'm off to San Francisco. I can't stop thinking about how bizarre and wonderful the past two years of school have been. I'm definitely going to miss it, but I think I'll enjoy the days without a constant surprise on the horizon more than I can even imagine right now.

The Absolutely True Conundrum of Sherman Alexei

So the rest of conference day 2 was a bit up and down. I listened to a panel presented by a group from MIT who were using puzzles published in their student newspaper and posted around campus to teach students about the tools available through the library. Very cool, makes me wish I were better at making cryptograms and psuedo-sudoku that embed a necessary recognition of ISBN numbers and how to request materials from archives.

Then, local writer/poet/playwright/comedian Sherman Alexei gave a keynote speech. Having read his bio in the program, I came into the session wondering what he could possibly say that was at all related to information literacy. Sadly, I came out of the session thinking the answer was "not much at all." Don't get me wrong, he was an entertaining speaker, quick with his words and unabashed in his self-expression, but I was frankly surprised that his talk was so much about himself and his perception of the world. I am left wondering now if he was tasked with being the mid-conference keynote speaker simply to provide a pick-me-up for the attendees.

On my way out, however, someone turned to me on the escalators and said she recognized me from my presentation earlier in the day. We had a brief conversation about gender studies, and I wish I had gotten her name to continue the conversation. For me, that was the pick-me-up needed.

Surfacing for Air

I keep saying it: I'm a terrible blogger. But wow, 3 months this time...oh how the time goes by. I'm listening to Owl City's "Hello Seattle" in...you guessed it, Seattle. Maybe it's because it hasn't rained yet, but I'm really loving the city. Well, I am now that I've been down to the Pike Street Market. It's the largest year-round market in the country, which I think is just phenomenal, not to mention its diversity of offerings in local and imported arts and crafts.

I discovered today that wearing my polka-dotted dress, Ann Taylor sweater, white costume jewelry, and funky red lipstick, while not particularly mature by my standards, has gotten me called ma'am an awful lot. Or at least that's what I attribute it to. Maybe eating and shopping alone is just considered an older person's thing to do. What I also discovered was the best panang curry I've ever had in my life, at a Thai place called Typhoon down by the water. Perfect combination of creamy, peanutty, and spicy. And the deal-sealer: it was cheap. I love a place where I can afford to be a foodee.

My presentation this morning with peer Tim Miner and Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen was quite possibly the most fun I've had giving a presentation in a long while. Many of the questions we expected to be grilled with were passed off on the presenters just before us, who were paired with our session. Either way, I think we could have handled it, and our ideas were generally accepted well. Yet another day where becoming a librarian feels at least marginally feasible.

I say marginally because being here makes me realize how little I really do know about librarianship. I've done my best to get excited about the panels and contributed papers, but I just don't know what a lot of them are trying to address. That said, this is probably the friendliest community of conference goers I've met thus far, and so I at least don't feel like running out of the room when I realize I don't know much about the topics at hand.

So, one more day of the conference to go before I fly home and get back to business, which there's been quite a lot of lately. I got my first apartment, which has switched on the financial freakout flashing red light in my head, and consequently I've been becoming increasingly more nervous about securing a sustainable career in Burlington. Heck, I'm even unsure of finding a sustainable job in Burlington, let alone something that will advance my life goals. I hope my portfolio will sell my abilities as an individual, and I hope that I soon find the time to work on that portfolio more!

But enough of worries. There are plenty of things to celebrate. I'll be going to GDC for the first time in just over a week now, and I was on VPR last month talking about games and higher ed. with the fabulous Ann DeMarle and Wesley Knee. That was another fun presentation-esque experience, and yet another strange thing for me to put in my CV.

I'm seeing more and more that my life may not always be full of surprises, but it sure is full of strange things, and I think it's something to be valued. On that note, back to the conference I go!

There's a Battle in My Head...

There's a battle in my head that stops the words in my mouth before they dare escape. It renders me motionless, pulling my mind into a state of complete philosophical quandary. I start to see conflicting factors cast above me like stars, and the voices around me feed into this elaborate atmosphere. Meteors, constellations, and nebulous schools of thought begin to form, but none claim my focus as I probe for the answers to life... or at least, the answers to my life.

For a long time, I've considered games with meaning and an intellectual or educational purpose as the pinnacle of my design goals. I expected to be fighting an uphill battle, but I felt that the fight would be one that engaged many: strong, sharp minds sounding the call to war, weathered hands with experience and determination wielding the standard. What I forgot to expect was the vast array of problems that slow down any band of warriors: the volley of setbacks that snag the troops with budget restraints, communication breakdowns, and deadlines that force a loss in quality.

It's gotten me thinking about whether it is worth the scars. Would it be any easier to ignore the intense messages and clearly-defined educational goals of "serious" games? Would it make things simpler if I focused on creating games for people who already play them, love them, and will shell out their money for anything with strong reviews and a good ad campaign? Would I feel better if I allowed this conflicted battle to carry on around me without my input at all? It's not unreasonable to expect that someone is going to come up with an idea for me rather than with me, and that I will only find challenge in working within such constraints. Would it be best for me to cool my fires and settle to the task without question and concern?

Easier, simpler? Maybe. Better? Definitely not. It isn't in my heart to stand down, to stop pushing boundaries, to stop asking questions. I certainly don't expect to be able to devise the strategy for every revolutionary assault on game development, but I do expect to remain a messenger and a reporter in the fray. I see a lot of things, and they aren't often pretty or easy. My only hope is that the relay of such observations will not fall on deaf ears. I can see that I am in a good place to sound the warning, and while messages are often lost in the frantic swells of production, I think a watchful hand from above that knows how to use its many eyes and ears is really all I can ask for.

Long Day, Late Night

Well, I'm sitting in the Emergent Media Center and it's 1:30 AM. Don't worry, I'm not working overtime - I'm just using an incredibly quiet space to catch up on my academic life. A programmer sits across the table from me, doing the same. I could take this as a bad sign, but I am beyond contemplative right now. I have reached a point where there are decidedly too many things to do in a day...so I'm going to do them through the night for a bit as well. I'm confident that nothing is riding on me being awake right now, but it certainly is nice to have a moment to lay down some thoughts.

I was actually inspired to write by someone else. I would call this person a co-worker, colleague, and peer, but I'm not sure that he would view me on such equal footing. As projects are wrapping up for the semester, he approached me to ask what I thought of the situation, and we proceeded to spend the next hour talking about the projects we're working on together, his classes, how much he learns from other students, teachers he likes, teachers he's frustrated with, and the ability to capture my personality for use as a constant source of motivation. I never thought anyone would want a "Lauren in Pocket" as he called it, but it was rather touching to hear that I have had such a positive impact on another person's college experience. I've never viewed myself as particularly inspiring, but I suppose a kind ear goes a long way. With a spring in my step despite the late hour, I went on to shoot the professional breeze with the other young worker in the room for another half hour or so. Just one night of such conversation has left me pondering the immeasurable value of human connections.

If anything needs to be a part of my daily/weekly/monthly routine, it is finding time to talk to interesting people. It may feel highly unproductive at times, but it stirs up a sense of accomplishment that reaches beyond to-do lists and milestones. In this particular situation, it did turn into quite a valuable conversation, allowing me to tune into the flaws of production processes past and present as viewed from someone else's perspective. Next step: finding a way to accommodate those disparities. Maybe I like being a producer more than I realized.

Moral of the story: talk to people. Talk often, and on any subject that presses against the edges of your mind. You never know what will come of it, but it is guaranteed to make you feel better on a deeper level than any mild source of entertainment or leisurely recreation.

Tools of the Trade

Okay, so I haven't blogged since September. I'm a bad person, I know. I would argue that my life is busy, but the whole point of blogging is often for me to share my ideas quickly with a handful of incredible but widely scattered people. If I have lost anyone's interest by taking so long to get back on the ball, I'm sorry!

I definitely haven't written for lack of things to write about. I gave a speech at the EMC's Grand Opening about a month ago, and I just got back from the Montreal International Game Summit. It is for the latter reason that I now write, and that I now force myself to publish the post without leaving it drafted for another three weeks. There are many things to consider and share about my time at MIGS, but I'm going to break them down into chunks that are easier for me to commit to writing.

So, the first thing that became a pretty strong trend over the course of the conference: meaning in games. I will have to stay away from commenting on Jonathan Blow's final keynote speech on the subject because I left early to help out at the glorious Gamma 3D party, but I did catch enough of his presentation to know that he was addressing the issue. I also attended a panel discussion on the subject, however, which was followed by a round table. In that time, I noticed a very interesting dilemma.

During the panel discussion, it was easy to observe that the men lined up before me to debate the issue of meaning in games were not new to the industry; they looked at least a little seasoned and comfortable in their shoes as creative directors (Although Jason Della Rocca was on the panel and isn't a creative director, he looked quite comfortable anywhere I saw him over the course of the conference). At the round table after, I was struck by the fact that 95% of the participants were students. What does this mean?

To me, it means that being able to inject meaning into games, or even being able to stop and think about it seriously with others, is a privilege within the industry. In college, we are pushed to experiment and question and theorize in ways that we cannot when there are jobs on the line. Once you've climbed the latter and find yourself resting on a sturdy rung, you can then return to the thought that you should hold firmly to values and create meaningful experiences.

At least that's the way it looks right now. If I turn to Warren Spector's opening keynote speech on the game industry, it was clear that he had a great amount of faith in the upcoming generation as design pioneers, ready to take the foundations of game development and utilize them in previously unforeseen and unfeasible ways. I hope that his was an accurate forecast of times to come. If it was, I would be legitimately excited to immerse myself in the game industry and to create something that is both meaningful and engaging. However, it was made abundantly clear that this is not industry standard at present.

One of the first sessions I attended was a talk by Eric Chartrand in which the paradigm of games was identified as unrealistic and inaccessible to most members of the new game audience. He pushed for games that would appeal to larger markets, and for doing so by questioning the facts of games we take for granted. They were humorous rules, noting that all good things must come in crates and that every few minutes a huge bad ass monster boss fight will occur, but he made an important point. We have established a language of games that is neither comprehended nor appreciated by a vast majority of human beings.

Randy Smith went on to reference similar aspects of games in his talk on games as art. Observing that games are able to make as much or more money than films when only targeting a small slice of the audience that movies touch, he called for a shift in beliefs away from the fact that games have to be fun and for more informed design choices that speak to a real message. This is not necessary in all games, but it is important to compare movie and literature genres to game genres. How long has it taken for us to begin to encompass not only sci-fi and fantasy, but horror, comedy, historical and realistic fiction? When will we get to the documentaries, dramas, and biographicals? How lightly do we touch on these genres without ever getting beyond the surface? When will there be games that feel like short films, or even poems?

I have reached the conclusion that if I get into the gaming industry without veering off in the direction of serious games entirely, I will want to make a game like a poem. A really epic poem.

Expansion Three: The Working World

Today's tidbit before the real deal is: I got my letter to my dad back in the mail today. This saddened me a bit, but the good news is that it was returned because it couldn't be forwarded to the right address, not because he did not read it and returned it himself. So, round two with a different address begins tomorrow. I hope it works out better.

So, on to the main topic. I'm in a strange state this year, it's official. I don't feel ready to venture out into the world, but the tediousness of gen. ed. classes is wearing me thin. I rush to get done with simple reading and writing assignments, and find myself with little real time to commit to my design work. I have great hopes to complete some real work of my own this semester, but I also have great desires to see the other projects I'm working on come to fruition in the best possible way. In some ways, it's frustrating because I feel like I don't have quite enough effort to go around. In other ways, it's refreshing to have responsibilities in my workplace that are purely focused around my field of study. This is my first year without a desk job that fills my time with peaceful but irrelevant tasks. Any work that I'm doing outside of the classroom right now is definitely a part of who I am and where I want to go in life.

That said, I still haven't quite nailed down the "where I want to go" part...A month ago, I was ready to start applying to the JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching) Programme, which would ship me off to a school in Japan for a year starting next July or August. It's a rigorous application process, but it's a wonderful opportunity to see the country and to be immersed in the language. After only a day of listening to my family speaking rapidly back and forth in Japanese, a part of me felt at home again, and even more determined to push my education further.

About a week and a half ago, however, I was reminded that I had expressed interest in helping my program director start a gaming business right here in Burlington. There are many things about this plan that appeal to me. I love Burlington and the Champlain community. I want to make games with a meaning or a message that is more than just entertainment value or driven by profits. And I want to stay tied to the college community in a way that may allow me to help expand the possibilities for Champlain students to the point that I'm painfully jealous of the opportunities available to them. This would be a pretty big feat, given how lucky I think I've been in my own college experience, but it's one I'd be happy to strive for.

Then there's the down side...is it a good idea to stick so close to what has quickly become my home? Should I be getting my feet wet out in "the real world"? Am I going to be missing out on opportunities of my own by staying? I can't answer any of those questions, which is part of the reason why it's so easy to commit to Burlington. And if I don't reach out, no one's going to reach in and pull me away, that's a guaranteed fact. As more and more of my friends and colleagues begin to take wing, I'm sure I'll be wondering even more than I am now.

But no matter my conclusions, I must remember two things...I'm young, and the future is vast. Even five years in Burlington would be a drop in the pond (I hope) by the time I'm done with my professional career. And given my track record so far, I know that amazing opportunities can pop up right underneath your feet. So, I'll be holding out and chugging along for the next eight months, and here's to whatever comes next!

Expansion Two: Thoughts from South Africa

Before I delve too deeply into the emotional hurricane that was the South Africa trip, I have new and exciting news (as ever). I will be going with Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen to Seattle in March for the ACRL 14th National Conference, where we will be leading a speaker session based on our proposal, "Percolating the Power of Play." 230 applications were submitted this year, and only 19% were accepted. Admittedly, I have never been so thrilled to be involved in the library space. Now I only hope that the game(s) we have to show will help us prove our points!

I am still not sure I'll be able to put into words all the wonderful, beautiful, heartbreaking things I saw and experienced in Cape Town, but I will do my best to try.

Flying over and into the country, I definitely felt like I was on my first trip overseas. What I saw below me was something so different from everything I knew...I was so excited to see more. Very quickly, the economic diversity of the country began to show, as miles of townships were painted into the foreground of the picturesque Table Mountain.

Going into Langa on our first real day there, we were greeted by throngs of smiling children. They all clambered to have their pictures taken, posing for us and grabbing our hands as we walked down the streets. Some pleaded for small things that we carried, others simply wanted to say hi.

This behavior was almost scary to us - what parents would let their children run in the street with adults from another country? But we quickly found that it was due to a strong sense of community, that every pair of eyes looking out from the houses and shops might as well be the eyes of mothers and fathers, whether they actually were or not.

The feeling of communal love is something we don't often experience in our own culture. Maybe in my backwoods hometown in New Hampshire, and maybe a little bit within the community at Champlain, but in neither of those places is it so prevalent in the atmosphere as it was in the Cape Town townships.

Despite this overpowering presence, there was still sadness tearing them apart. Many things were hurting the people of these small communities: from the half-rennovated hostels that housed as many as three families in a single bedroom,

to the all-too-common poor driving that hurt this girl and kept her at home all day.

The thing that struck me most, though, was that talking about violence, abuse, and gender inequality was not necessarily casual, but it wasn't taboo as we might have expected. It was spoken of as if these things were just a part of life, to be accepted and to submit to. There was no sense of power in the bright young individuals, and even in some of the sharp-witted adults, that we met each day. There was no feeling of empowerment, independence, strength of voice, strength of choice. These young adults were intelligent, expressive, creative, complex, and completely helpless in their own minds to change anything about the world around them.

We found some points of inspiration, some nodes of empowerment in each community. But there is not enough support for them, and there are not enough of them to change every young man and woman's life, to keep the majority of kids off the street and out of crime. It is easy to see why they perceive change as something impossible, because their numbers are so small.

But change has to start with one person, always. Someone has to be willing to speak out, no matter the consequences. They are fortunate that they have such a powerful role model as Nelson Mandela in their recent history. They have fought so much already, and I can see in their faces that they have the strength to fight onward. The only question is if they have the time...

We met so many of what we would call "broken families," without parents and with young girls and boys taking charge of households before they were even out of school themselves. We saw classrooms without teachers, we heard stories of people calling desperately for the police and receiving help hours later, if at all. And we saw the other side of the coin: rich young children, unaware of the tragedy just outside their neighborhood, ignorant of the conditions, more interested in games than even the people sitting next to them. In a word, familiar: more like us, too much like us.

Going into this trip, I expected to find answers, but I didn't expect to fall in love. There was something so simple about the beauty of Cape Town. No matter what troubles littered the city streets, it was so easy to look up to Table Mountain, to see the beauty of the world and pull it closer to your heart. But there's only so much that a pretty reminder can do for you. It's nice, but it's not enough, nowhere near enough for those wonderful, fortunate but unfortunate people. They need more, and if it's something I can give them, I'd like to try. I don't think I'll forget what I saw there for the rest of my life, for even a day or a moment. If I do, I'll spend the rest of my life trying to remember it again.

Expansion One: Family Time

While this post is intended to elaborate on one of the brief points I made in my last entry, there is something I have to say first about blogging - it's the strangest addiction I've ever had. Once I've written a post, even if it was something small, I find myself gripped by a strong desire to write again. In the face of ever-busier days and grueling nights, it's easy for me to lose sight of this urge, but if I even have enough time to click on my Google Reader and scroll over the posts of my friends and colleagues, I get the itch. Unavoidable, it feels, but I'm not complaining.

So, family. It's a beautiful thing, and something so special when you really think about it. We often induct people into the circle that we claim as family, but upon visiting my aunt this past month, I had to really wonder if those other relationships would be able to endure a decade of silence without showing any wear or tear. I'd certainly like to hope so, though I also hope I'll never have a reason to test it out. I'm glad to say that at least in the case of real family, it felt like I'd heard those familiar voices, seen their smiling faces only a day before.

There are very few things that keep me quiet in life (these days, anyway). One of them is a fear of inflicting pain. I was so young when my family started to crumble. I was too young to understand why it was happening, and too old to ask without thinking. I couldn't remember ever hearing a word of real explanation, but I could easily recall tears and frustration. So I held my tongue, even though my greatest pen pal, my aunt, hadn't written in weeks, months, years, and the last postcard we got from her trip to Japan hung gathering dust on the refridgerator, next to a picture of my two-year-old cousin's face.

In the long run, I had to hope those relics of a wonderful relationship were on display for a reason. At my ripe age of twenty-one, I also felt strongly that I didn't have to involve anyone else in my endeavors to reconnect. Of course, finding an address may have been a problem when I was ten years old, but the power of the Internet has matured just as well as I have. And thank goodness for that, at least in this situation.

A letter and an email later, I was relieved, overjoyed, heartbroken to have missed so much, anxious to learn so much more. But I was also still a little afraid of causing pain, uncertain as I picked up my phone to tell my mom the news. There were so many ways it could have gone, given my limited knowledge, but the emotional highway simply continued to speed off in the same direction I'd been paving it. Myself, my mom, my sister were all touched to see pictures of my aunt, uncle, and cousin. We were all electrified with desire to make plans, and for once I was ready to throw work out the window and get in one real week of vacation.

I did get that week, and it was probably one of the longest in my life. I can't say I really have a working memory of any other vacation that long - sad, I know. In some ways, it became a bit of a struggle towards the end to not go nuts wondering how my projects were doing. But the benefits of shutting myself off from life, cell phone service, and Internet access almost completely were immeasurable. In one week, I learned more about my family - my grandparents, my greatgrandparents, my dad - than I had in the rest of my life. I saw things that sucked me back in time in a matter of seconds, tasted things I hadn't recalled the existence of. I absorbed all the Japanese language I could, and yearned to see all the places my family had visited in their trips to Japan over the years. The only disheartening thing I took away from all of it was that no one has heard from my dad. I can't imagine living life without contact with my parents and siblings, as infrequently as I may call up my own.

Ba-chan is turning 81 on Thursday. She seems to despise anything that focuses on her, including a camera lens, so I'm hoping a simple card written in my rudimentary Japanese will be good enough. I wish I could give her the gift of a connection with her oldest son again. I don't know if I can, but I've started the process of trying. I mailed a letter to what I hope to be my dad's current mailing address. If I get a response, the mix of emotions will most likely be a bit more complicated than the last bout. If it comes back to me, I'll try a slightly different address I found. If nothing happens...well, there are bound to be complex feelings there too.

I'm Alive!

I've sat down to the computer several times to get out all the thoughts that go with the multitude of things that have happened in my life recently. I've come to the quick conclusion that it's just too much for me to process all at once. So, here are some tidbits from along the way, and I'll try to elaborate on one at a time.

First off, I love my family. I don't know how I ever went so long without seeing them.

Secondly, I love South Africa. It is such a different place, full of beautiful people.

Thirdly, the school year promises to be busy, and I'm itching for a job other than student.

Lastly, I love my division, dean, and program director!

I'm not sure whether this is a sad thing or not, but most of my time spent at the computer these days is spent on academic affairs. I'm starting a philosophy blog for my Critical Thinking course, a globalization blog for my Seminar in Contemporary World Issues, and a Japanese blog, if it'll let me write in hiragana, for my own personal practice with the language. Maybe somewhere in there, I'll have time to do some more creative writing and poetry...maybe!

Everything In Motion

It feels like forever since I last had the desire to sit down at the computer after hours, but I feel compelled to because so much has happened recently.

Family is on my mind in many respects. I must start with the most pressing of matters on the familial front - my thoughts are now constantly with my cousin Chris. He was not my closest cousin growing up, but he was still like a brother to me for a long series of years. I have just today been informed that a tumor, which was removed from his cerebellum late last week, was cancerous and will require him to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment. His grandmother, a nurse, says there is a 50-75% chance he will make it through just fine. I believe that his strength will put him on the higher end of this statistic, if not well above and beyond it.

Turning towards more distant family, I will shortly be heading down to Virginia! There are a few things I'll be missing while there, but they are well worth the trade-off. There will be so many emotions to experience and share...I can hardly wait. Whoa! I just got tickled by Brian. Anyway...

Another family on my mind is the one comprised of the EMC. I had a wonderful time at Ann's house this past Saturday, and every day at work builds anticipation for the trip to South Africa. On top of that, a new space for all of us hardworking kids is on the horizon. I saw the designs today and they look awesome!

I'd like to say more, but my brain is melting. Good night, everyone!

A Living Cycle

I feel like I'm the only one who hasn't blogged about this yet, but whew, UN orientation...some definite highs and lows, scary and otherwise. I'm excited about the group as a whole, though sad to see that all the familiar faces I've worked with before were drawn away from me. It's not that I don't like new groups by any means. It's simply that every new group has so many quirks, goals, ambitions, motivators, outside influences on behavior, and so on. I often love learning these nuances of people, perhaps as part of the human frequencies I wrote about before, but it is admittedly draining. After having taken all summer to finally crack the last few members of my Info Lit team, it feels like it may take just as long to do the same with this new group, although there are only about half as many students. I think as far as managing other people and driving them towards both productivity and enjoyment of their work, this summer's project has been the most taxing by far. But I feel like it's something I should be comfortable doing, which I am. That said, the school year promises to be one of my most challenging yet, I think.

Now that I've accidentally written part of an assignment for the project, I'll move on to something else that I've been contemplating: the role of women in video games. It's easy to say that they're unrealistic, made to be either objects of male possession or quippy, foxy heroines. Much the same level of fantasy is achieved in most male roles in video games as well. But what about the women that have no names and well-defined parts in games? How often do they come up? How many shooting games have females thrown into the NPC (non-player character) population? Does it change the way you play if there are any?

Most instances of female filler characters I can think of are civilians: random women walking down the street in the Grand Theft Auto series, women carrying pots on their heads in Assassin's Creed. Sometimes there are entire throngs of women without any men, as in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Gerudo Valley. But how often do we really see men and women stacked up against the hero of a game? Why is it that nothing springs to my mind?

There may be several reasons for this, one being that I do not play the plethora of games that other kids my age do. Another reason may be that if you're only going to make one model with slight variations to populate a game, males are to be expected and are also easier to model. That aside, I'm now quite curious to know whether or not making a more balanced population in games, let alone one that might accurately represent the 60-40 distribution of women vs. men on this planet, would have any impact on the players. Would the players even notice? Would they have the sense of something being different without being able to place their fingers on it? Would they pick up on it right away? Would they treat the women computer characters any differently than the male counterparts? Too many questions, no way to study them at this point in time.

This whole idea is just one that I'm not sure has been taken into consideration yet for this project. Yes, video games are popular among young men. But the role of women in these games is often one of low or disrespectful status. As in society, is that what the target demographic will expect in any video game? Is that going to be a difficult hurdle to overcome? My answer is yes, but I also see many ways in which it could be done. The most prevalent in my mind at the moment is only half baked, but I have this overwhelming feeling that if we want to convince these boys that things are not as nice the way they are as they might believe, we must first present them with what they expect to see in a game, and then turn it completely on its head, in steps that are gradual enough that they would not confuse the player or make them lose interest.

Just some things kicking around my head on this first weekend after our commencement of the project. Developing this strategy any further, or developing any strategy for design at all, is still far in the future. However, I cannot stop these thoughts from being a dominant part of my mindset when going into the research. Hopefully that will prove to be a good thing.