A lot of things have happened over the past several weeks, keeping me not only busy, but pretty fried in the critical thinking area.
So back in time a few weeks (Week 7), I took my first stab at making something to show a virtual experience. I was advised to focus on a specific, singular experience or narrow range of experiences, even at the expense of researching into other, equally interesting topics. So the outcome of that was a focus on the experience of playing the MMORPG “World of Warcraft.” An attempt to ask a few probing questions to players in the World of Warcraft was made. What ended up happening though, was a total of no responses from players inside the WOW universe. Even after offering in-game currency, all of the users were focused on fulfilling quests and/or personal ventures. That left a few days to show something worthwhile in class. Plan B ended up being a 3D abstract model of the data accrued by recording the amount of XP recorded over time. These are the 2 videos of different versions of the model.
While an ‘E’ for effort is better than nothing, I was told that my approach was good, but the execution still needed a lot of refining. With class being canceled Week 8 (due to the 4th of July) I had 2 weeks to come up with another idea & approach.
After continuing to record my own XP accrual over time, I kept seeking out some other approach at getting to the experience that players of World of Warcraft have. The final decision was to go along the lines of cultural probes; even more specifically the Pairings Game from the very first term. I came up with a quick set of 5 different image pairs from World of Warcraft to use as an example to show during class. Through meetup.com I also found a group of WOW players that met at various times in an actual space & I was hoping to be able to give them sets of the pairings game to fill out. Unfortunately, the group’s meeting time was Sat, July 26…also known as the end of Week 11 or one week before our final presentation for Super Studio. Therefore the date for getting the completed probes needed to be moved up a week…also known as Week 10 or a total of 1 week from that current day. That left me 1 week to not only create 11 sets of probes (10 sets to deploy & 1 for documentation), but also to deploy them and get them back, totally completed.
Literally the minute that class ended on Fri of Week 9, to Tues morning I worked non-stop on not only creating the 11 sets of probes, but also publicizing and setting up interview times with WOW players. Each of the interviewees would complete a set of 8 image pairings as well as fill out a short questionnaire with 4 questions. After finishing the two activities, the participants received a 60-day Prepaid WOW Gameplay Card. World of Warcraft is a monthly, subscription-based game so 60-days effectively gives them 2 months of gameplay for free.
By Sun afternoon (today) all of the probe sets were completed by avid WOW players and the data was compiled together. Now that Week 11 is approaching, I’ve planned for a week of analysis, and then the final week will be production of that final something to make the WOW experience tangible. I’ve already started sketching a few ideas for a final item to show, but nothing has really rung true yet. I’m hoping to meet with 1 or 2 of the MDP faculty this week to go over the results & get some feedback from them. Less than 2 full weeks to go, but I was able to hand-make 176 cards in a weekend, as well as all of the other materials so I’m hoping I’m up to the task.
*fingers crossed*
