No mice?!

I haven't played since Sunday. I tried to play today, not out of desperation, but out of obligation. The lab was bursting with the midterm buzz and I couldn’t find a mouse to accompany my keyboard. I gave up after ten minutes and returned to linguistics, in which I have a midterm tomorrow.

Brendan and I visited Thayer today to check the installation status of the computers. More than a week ago, when we met with Mark (the computer directed of Thayer), he said that we might encounter difficulties with installing the program (Thayer programs its comps through a clone system) and that the engineering school would want to somehow hide the program from other students. Video games aren't desirable on computers (in the engineering school) that support CAD and other design-related programs. We tried multiple labs but weren't to find Warhammer. I'll be contacting Thayer tomorrow about this.

Although we weren't successful in securing the Order location for this project, I came to a very honest realization: I'm becoming addicted to this project, not the game (I’ve only played Warhammer twice). While Warhammer is fun, I'm prone to project-oriented obsession. Generally (so family and friends have told me) when I find a project or activities that I'm passionate about, they consume me. This tendency is not necessarily negative and "consumed" should be loosely interpreted, not as a negative term. I'm also more of an "idea person". This means that, (1) I expect more enjoyment from an activity than what I actually experience; (2) I get more excited about the idea of an activity than my excitement when I actually partake in this activity, and (3) I’m generally unrealistic in expectations for projects.

I can’t stop ruminating over the possible outcomes of this project, I haven’t been particularly involved in carrying out the play aspect of Warjammers. I hope I’ll balance out those who very interested in play. I guess I shouldn’t judge the game on my initial experience. Improvement in terms of skill is inevitable (maybe?) and, like most people, when I’m better at an activity, I tend to enjoy it more.

I would also like to add that I emailed and discussed the proposal with an x-EA employee and avid MMORPG player last night, Eric. He was concerned that our scope is too broad and also had this to say:

He was initially concerned that we're looking at videogames too negatively (maybe the proposal came off that way?). He also said that our scope is way too big and that we should focus on interviewing different types of players and see what the individual is all about. He divided the gamer into four types: hardcore player (+40 hrs/week), casual/ social player that's interested in the communication aspects of the game, the lone wolfs who aren't active with guilds, and the supercasual player who only plays a few hours/week. He suggested we interview and compare these different groups. He was really interested in interviewing players that run guilds. He has a friend who used to work in the military and he now runs a guild for the sense of leadership.

In light of Eric’s opinion, we have somewhat decided to focus on gamer interviews. We are in no way abandoning the individual “experiments” we initially proposed. Instead we are focusing our scope on more tangible results. Peaces of out

-Anna