Michael Van Etten Games and Community “Living in Virtual Worlds” An Addiction to Socialization?

Michael Van Etten “The MMORPG” “All play means something” Huizinga (1949) The cultures of participation that exist during both “logon” and “logoff”.

Michael Van Etten Constance Steinkuehler Cognition not only “in the head”, but the action and interaction in the social and material world. “Community of practice” Learning therefore becomes participation

Michael Van Etten Ideal Pedagogical Environments? MMORPGs are the ideal environment for experiential learning? Our own design! Experience replaces logic constructions. Identity and Community

Michael Van Etten MMORPG Activities: a.Socially and materially distributed cognition b.Individual and collaborative problem-solving c.Multimodal “attentional spaces” d.Significant identity work e.Empirical model building f.Joint negotiation of meaning and values g.The coordination of people, (virtual) tools and artifacts and multiple forms of text.

Michael Van Etten Victoria Vesna The time that we have to build a virtual community takes away from the time to build a “real” community.

Michael Van Etten Working on Networks Three qualities are necessary for work on the networks: 1. Need to connect 2. Willingness to collaborate 3. Embracing change Social networking, on or offline, is directly connected to our relationship in time.

Michael Van Etten MR. Simon Penny The persuasiveness of interactivity... The ongoing interaction between the (onscreen) representations and the embodies behavior of the user that makes “such images more than images”

Michael Van Etten Validation Through Participation in Digital Communities Receive recognition from participation within a digital community. Adopting the communal views of ourselves. Losing the sense of “self (real or digital) to merge with the feelings of the community as a whole.

Michael Van Etten Towards an Understanding of MMORPG Addiction According to the center for addiction and Mental Health, addiction is a psychological or a physical dependence on something. Are we missing a social element?

Michael Van Etten Addiction? Excessive MMORPG users are not actually dependent on video games not because they are addicted, but because it is the only comfortable social medium for them.” ?

Michael Van Etten MMORPGs as an Addiction to Power? “Power of being a cause” “Compensation or wish fulfillment”

Michael Van Etten MMORPGs as an Addiction to Socialization? “the social, temporal and material contexts...” “intact activity systems...”

Michael Van Etten Works Cited Ahn, Joe. “Computer Game Addiction.” Clemson University. (2007). Morell, C. “Radicalizing Recovery: Addiction, Spirituality, And Politics”. Social Work. 41(3) (1996): Penny, Simon. “Representation, Enaction, and the Ethics of Simulation”. First Person. Cambridge: MIT Press, Steinkuehler, Constance. “Cognition as (Inter)Action in the Social and Material World.” Sept October Steinkuehler, Constance. “Massively Multiplayer Online Video Gaming as Participation in A Discourse.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 13(1) (2006): Steinkuehler, Constance. “The New Third Place: Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming in American Youth Culture.” Tidskrift for lararutbildning och forskning 3 (2005): Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.