why second life can't tip: the power and perils of living la vida ludic

Title cardWhy Second Life

Can’t Tip: The

Power And Perils of Living

La Vida Ludic

Why Second Life

Can’t Tip: The


La Vida Ludic

Barry JosephGlobal Kids, Inc.

Tampa, Florida09.06.08

Barry Joseph

H E L L Omy name is

Gk logo

AUDIENCE

AUDIENCE

“People used to make records as in a record of an eventthe event of peopleplaying music in a room”

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AUDIENCE

“People used to make records as in a record of an eventthe event of peopleplaying music in a room”

Ani Defranco

AUDIENCE

AUDIENCE

here there then

AUDIENCE

here there then

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3Big Ideas

Ecology of games

“The minstrel tradition… is visible in the digitally manipulated black caricatures that populate urban/street themed games.”

“High-tech Blackface”

“Our focus… is on gameplay and what we believe is another manifestation of minstrelsy in gaming—performance. How, we ask, do urban/street games establish a powerful learning environment for not only portraying but also performing race in the form of blackface?”

4Tipping

Malcolm Gladwell“a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does.”

Rate of Growth

Rate of Growth

35 Million user hours a month

8/08

Brands In

Competition

Pop Culture

No Plans?

PlateauKingdon on Second Life's

Recent Concurrency/Active User Plateau

Brands Out

5Digital Minstrelsy &

Me

Grand Theft Auto

Guitar Hero

Lars and Stone

6Mercury

Metropolitan

Mercury Metropolitan

Mercury Metropolitan Ryan Winters

jolsonJolson

jolson2

“Jolson was the first openly Jewish man to become an entertainment star in America. His marginal status as a Jew informed his blackface portrayal of Southern blacks.”-- St. James Encyclopedia Of Popular Culture

“Creating a virtual identity that was different from my real identity, but remaining transparent about my real life identity if ever questions were brought up in conversation. Being honest about your real identity is important if you want to form ‘real’ friendships, ones that can even extend outside of the virtual world. I was actually treated even better than I was as a white male avatar. There were also a lot more clothing choices as a female. I've grown attached to this female avatar.”

“At first it was really a personal experiment. I wanted to see what sort of reaction I received and if I was treated any differently. When I first started, I was a white male avatar, and found it difficult to fit into some already existing cliques. So, I wanted to try a different approach:”

7“Ludic”

&the Modernist Divide

GonzaloFrasca

"We will propose the term ludology (from ludus, the Latin word for "game"), to refer to the yet non-existent 'discipline that studies game and play activities'."

Play Money

ThomasMalaby

“Johan Huizinga set the tone for much of the inquiry into games and society in the latter half of the twentieth century with his book Homo Ludens (Man the Player) in 1955…

Later in the book [Huizinga] speaks of the “play-element” (a type of experience or disposition), rather than of “play” as a (separable, safe) activity...

This play element is marked by the legitimacy of improvisation and innovation that it allows.”

"...it was not my object to define the place of play among all other manifestations of culture, but rather to ascertain how far culture itself bears the character of play."

Thomas Malaby

“There is a standard account of what games are that saturates both popular and academic accounts of games.

This is the idea that games are a subset of ‘play,’ where play is understood to be something fundamentally opposed to ‘work.’

The primary shortcoming of seeing games as play, and play as opposed to work, is that games become domains intrinsically set apart from people’s day-to-day life.”

“Gaming becomes sensible not as an escape from everyday life but as just one of its multiform domains…”

Classroom vs recess

8“A Ludic Century”

DISCLAIMER!

“Have a box or similar non-human object with the name ‘Eric Zimmerman’ on it, and you should do my voice and make it clear that it is just your construction of me.”

Eric’s Books

“…games represent one of the most robust and inventive vectors of digital culture.”

“…games represent one of the most robust and inventive vectors of digital culture.”• Complex Systems

• Global Collaboration

• Mod/Hack/Transform

“Games do not merely represent new systems of meaning, but are new paradigms under which meaning might be created.”

A Ludic Paradigm

Over the last century, the industrial age was replaced by an era of information, as factory processing and paper bureaucracy… reached their practical and physical limits. In this context, the study and production of information in and of itself arose…”

“Just as the information age replaced the industrial age, a ludic age has already begun to replace the information age.”

“Information as a paradigm is inadequate to describe emerging cultural systems like Wikipedia, multiplayer online games, or global financial networks.”

“These phenomena are not just based on the formal complexity of abstract information processing, but are very human, creative systems.”

“It is inhabited, played with, evolved, and transformed, by a social organism that itself is changing over time.”

“It is inhabited, played with, evolved, and transformed, by a social organism that itself is changing over time.”

“The free play of gears or a steering wheel”

“The play only exists because of the more

rigid structures, but also exactly despite them.”

“Games are the embodiment of this paradox of rigid rules and free movement, of locked formal structures and playful improvisation. And it is this movement from systems of information to systems of play that is increasingly defining our time.”

• Love• Work• Learn• Engage Government• Produce Knowledge

9Living La Vida Ludic

Global Kids, Inc.

B.Z. A.Z.G.K. = Youth Development

SL = Embodied, Constructivist

Learning

G.K. & SL = The Ludic Life!

The Ludic LifeWe are finding a new way to live our lives within a virtual world by collapsing the modernist divide, allowing us to live or approach our lives in news ways through integration with play-elements.

10Designed or Emerged?

Philip Rosedale in Fast Company

(Aug ‘08)No Hassle/Fee Conference Call

Better Audio Quality

Bottomless Bag

3D Prototyping

Tiki Hut on Beach

Funny Hat

“Being able to do your work in a virtual workspace that makes it fun and reduces your travel time is a tremendous benefit to a company.”

No Hassle/Fee Conference Call

Better Audio Quality

Bottomless Bag

3D Prototyping

Tiki Hut on Beach

Funny Hat

“As fans of cognitive science, there was a desire to use 3D representations for communication and collaboration, but we didn't design SL to be good for business meetings or education… [But after launch] educators descended in increasing numbers, demonstrating the value of SL as a space for conveying, storing, representing, and consuming information.”

Cory Ondrejka by email(Aug ‘08)

“As fans of cognitive science, there was a desire to use 3D representations for communication and collaboration, but we didn't design SL to be good for business meetings or education… [But after launch] educators descended in increasing numbers, demonstrating the value of SL as a space for conveying, storing, representing, and consuming information.”

"My impression is that although it may not have been designed specifically to a ludic end, Philip's being inspired by Burning Man led to a desire to build a toolset and an environment where it was understood that ludic behavior would have naturally resulted."

Blue Linden by email(Aug ‘08)

“I am about to leave for Burning Man... but I think this is a great topic. Like Blue said, I really built SL as a place to make things, to create. So the 'Ludic' element I guess comes with that because along with one's ability to create the world around you is the ability to create yourself and your timeline/narrative. So the Ludic thing springs from a creative platform.”



Philip Rosedale by email(Aug ‘08)

“…[Lindens] had not expected the cultural aspects of SL to happen at all, and they were still very much in a period of adjustment in this regard… this was revealed in the changing status of ‘content’ around Linden Lab.”

Thomas MalabyMaking Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life.(Coming out in early 2009 from Cornell University Press.)

“Even in 2005, it was clear that for the most part SL ‘content’ was for Lindens content in the game developer sense: stuff that was built, scripted, and texture-mapped in SL. As users created other things, such as support groups, or social events, Lindens had to work to get in the habit of thinking of these social creations - which depended little if at all on the conventional content creation tools - as content just the same.”

“Rather than think about what is happening now as somehow a ‘break’ from the past (a new era, or somesuch), it is rather that the way everyday life has always been game-like is only now coming into focus, becoming more and more difficult to deny.”

Thomas Malaby by email(Aug ‘08)

“Since the world is moving towards more mutability and creativity in general (not even counting SL), I'd say Eric Z's thoughts are correct.”

Philip Rosedale by email(Aug ‘08)

11Salesman Dwight

vs. Philly Jim

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The office

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Thesis: SL is for playJim: “Playing that game again?”

Antithesis: SL is not for playDwight: “Second Life is not a game… it doesn’t have points or scores.”

New Thesis: SL is for your lifeDwight: “My life was so great I literally wanted another one… absolutely everything was the same.”

Living in SL Playing in SL

Thesis: SL is for your lifeDwight creates Second Second Life

Antithesis: SL is pathologicalJim: “It’s for those people who want to be even further removed from reality.” Pam: “He’s really in pain.”

New Thesis: SL is for playPam: “You’re a sportswriter in Philadelphia? Nice build, too. You have a guitar on your back?!!”

Dwight the SL Salesman

Jonathan FantonMcArthur Foundation

Henry JenkinsM.I.T.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo

International Criminal

Court

Philly Jim the reporter

Hamlet AuNew World Notes

Walker SpaightSecond Life Herald

Katt KongoMetaverse Messenger

12Ludic Life & Education

Human Barometer

Avatar Barometer

The Ludic Life Continuum

LUDIC

Ryanpretendingto be a woman


LIFE

Ryanappearing

as a man


LUDIC

Ryanpretendingto be a woman

LIFE

Ryanappearing

as a man

LUDIC LIFE

Ryanappearing

as a woman


LUDIC LIFELUDIC LIFE

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Harry Potter Dance Party of Good and Evil





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• A Professor appearing as himself,

• Addressing a real world subject,

• With an audience that through their preparations became proof of his thesis.

Living in SL Playing in SL

• Henry as Dumbledore,

• Meeting in an H.P. set designed for the talk,

• For teens who created the set, their avatars and outfits, and the props,

• To dance to fan-music about Harry Potter.



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International Criminal Court



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"IT WAS REALLY FUN!!!! I enjoyed building a solar/ hybrid car [in TSL] for my project and I enjoyed making a billboard. I would recommend this style of learning for any subject because it keeps us (students) pushing because we are using a game for learning." -- Ernesto



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13The Subversive

Nature of the Ludic Life

Tipping image

Background/foreground

LIFE

LIFE

WORK

WORK

PLAY

PLAY

PLAY

PLAY

PLAY PLAY

PLAY

PLAY

stuff

LUDIC LIFE

22 33 44

14Second Life Can’t Tip


Can’t Tip: The


La Vida Ludic

Why Second Life

Can’t Tip: The


La Vida Ludic

“Can’t Tip”

Second Life will never tip.

or

Second Life has yet to tip.

The Ludic Life & SLED

• We are comfortable with this ludic life tension.

• We thrive and seek this tension.

• The ludic life can be said to have tipped amongst SLED educators.

Ludic Life Discomfort



CSI

TheOffice

CongressionalHearings on Second Life

What Can We Do?

1. Ludic Luddites Can Be Our Allies.

2. Abandon the myth of infinite possibilities.

3. Second Life can’t tip until the Ludic Life tips first.

4. The Ludic Life won’t tip unless we make it happen.


Can’t Tip: The


La Vida Ludic

Why Second Life

Can’t Tip: The


La Vida Ludic

Barry JosephGlobal Kids, Inc.

More information at:RezEd.or/groups/ludiclife

Tampa, Florida09.06.08