Notes from the Spice Mines of Kessel

Apologies for the darkness of Living Epic over the past few weeks. As you’ll gather from the notes below, I’ve been busy not just with my ordinary teaching duties (this semester that’s Greek Civilization, Intermediate Latin, Plato-as-practice, and Plato’s Phaedrus with my advanced Greek students [even more glorious, and even more sexy, in the original]), but also more importantly with the center.

Now that our first grant proposal is in, and I have a better feel for how the whole “You know, you really should give me all your money” game, I’ll be trying to get back on the blog, though I suspect for a while it’s going to be an echo-chamber sort of thing: I’ve got an incredible back-log now of amazingly smart things people like Michael Abbott, Iroquois Pliskin, Corvus Elrod, Steve Gaynor, and Duncan Fyfe have said that I want to comment on, however briefly. Since I’ll be starting to develop the materials for the courses now, also, I’ll be able to post about that, too.

Anyway, the first grant proposal, for a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up grant, was uploaded yesterday. I’ve posted the narrative on the wiki, here. Comments on it are beyond welcome--I would upload my firstborn if I thought it could get a conversation started that would improve the center's self-formulations.

Next up is the Macarthur foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Competition, due in a week. The money would go to making our own persistent world with Sun’s Project Wonderland resources, and to giving out our first fellowships. In turn, that would mean we could do our first real symposium, and publish the proceedings. It’s all happening, maybe!

I’m giving a lecture, in the fun UConn Honors Last Lecture series, next week called “Bioshock in Plato’s Cave: How Video Games Can Lead Us into the Light.” Two weeks later I’m doing a scholarly luncheon talk at the UConn Humanities Institute called “End-Game Gear and the Multiplayer Epic from the Iliad to World of Warcraft,” which is pretty much an academic version of “Achilles’ Phat Lewtz,” which in turn is the prelude to what I hope will be my first peer-reviewable classics ‘n’ gaming article.

Finally, we’re getting very close to registration for the courses in January and the spring semester. I’ll post again with the relevant links soon!

(Gaming) Homer Course-design (3): Units (syllabus, more or less)

This is a post in a series taken from the preliminary version of the course-design document for CAMS 3208. Dig in and see what you think! Please do let me know if you’ve got suggestions for other activities, or if you think anything needs clarification. I really want this course to be something gamers with the slightest interest in the ancient world, and classicists with the slightest interest in gaming, are drooling to take. :D

At some point, probably in January, I'll post the actual syllabus for the course, but the following is pretty close to what it's going to be. If you're feeling really clicky, you can correlate the letters A-E in parentheses with the goals and objectives in the first post in the series, and the readings with the list of activities in the second. Think of it as a game! ;-)

Unit 1. The bardic occasion, then and now (A, B) (3 weeks)

• Activities: (reading) Iliad 2, Odyssey 8-9, Lord, Singer of Tales; (gaming) Play a level or quest three times, preferably in co-op; (discussion) in-game discussion; develop interview questions for developers.
• Sub-objectives: 1) describe the bardic occasion; 2) summarize oral formulaic theory; 3) produce a report of a gaming session as a bardic occasion.

Unit 2. The Aristeia and levelling (A, B, C, D) (2 weeks)

• Activities: (reading) comparison of aristeiai, Nagy, Homeric Questions; (playing) level an RPG hero; (discussion) in-game discussion; conduct and analyze interview; proxy visit to MMO developer studio.
• Sub-objectives: 1) describe the practice of the aristeia, with examples from Homeric epic; 2) produce a report of a videogame aristeia, with reference to ancient material.

Unit 3. Gear (B, C, D, E) (2 weeks)

• Activities: (reading) Iliad 18, Selected passages; (gaming) Equip Master Chief correctly for the situation, gain gear for an RPG character; (discussion) in-game discussion.
• Sub-objectives: 1) describe the function of arms and armor in Homeric epic; 2) produce a report of a videogame despoiling and resulting combat, with reference to ancient material
  sub-obejctive; 3) produce a report of RPG gear aggregation, with reference to ancient material.

Unit 4. Ethical critique (C, D, E) (2 weeks)

• Activities: (reading) Iliad 9, 24; Odyssey 11, 22; Nagy; (gaming) play an RPG scenario light and dark; play Halo “save the marines” moment; (discussion) in-game discussion; develop interview questions, conduct and analyze interview.
• Sub-objectives: 1:) descibe the ethical critiques mounted by the Iliad and the Odyssey; 2) describe a potential affordance of videogames for ethical critique; 3) produce a report on an experience of an ethical videogame situation, with reference to ancient material.

Unit 5. Minigames (C, D, E) (1 week)

• Activities: (reading) Iliad 23, Odyssey 8; Nagy; (gaming) Lego Star Wars; (discussion)in-game discussion.
• Sub-objectives: 1) describe the functioning of embedded harmonizing reprsentations like funeral games in Homeric epic; 2) produce a report on an experience of a harmonizing minigame with reference to ancient material.

Unit 6. Psychology/Sociology of Epic (C, D, E) (1 week)

• Activities: (reading) Iliad 20, Odyssey 23; (gaming) Halo 2 Arbiter level; (culture) forum observation; (discussion) forum discussion.
• Sub-objective: 1) describe the psychological model proposed by the Homeric epics; 2) describe the pscyhological model proposed by an adventure videogame, with reference to ancient material; 3) produce a report on observations of psychology and/or sociology in a gaming community, with reference to ancient material.

Unit 7. Anti-heroism (C, D, E) (1 week)

• Activities: (reading) Odyssey 11, Iliad 22; (gaming) Grand Theft Auto series; (culture) forum observation; (discussion) in-game discussion.
• Sub-objective: 1) describe the figure of the anti-hero in Homeric epic; 2) produce a report on an experience of playing as an anti-hero, with reference to ancient material; 3) produce a report on anti-heroic behavior on a gaming community forum, with reference to ancient material.

Unit 8. Community and Polis (A, C, D, E) (2 weeks)

• Activities: (reading) Odyssey 9; Plato Apology and selections from Republic, selections from Herodotus and Thucydides; Nagy; (culture) forum observation; (discussion) in-game discussion; design, conduct, analyze developer-community-manager interview.
• Sub-objectives: 1) describe the role of Homeric epic in the rise of the Greek polis in the 7th and 6th Centuries BCE; 2) produce a report on findings about the role of community in gaming culture, with reference to ancient material; 3) produce a speculative report on the affordances of adventure videogames for community-building in the modern world, wirh reference to ancient material.

(Gaming) Homer Course-design (2): Activities

This is a post in a series taken from the preliminary version of the course-design document for CAMS 3208. Dig in and see what you think! Please do let me know if you’ve got suggestions for other activities, or if you think anything needs clarification. I really want this course to be something gamers with the slightest interest in the ancient world, and classicists with the slightest interest in gaming, are drooling to take. :D

Here's the planned range of course activities for the course. I'm incredibly excited not just about the cool individual items (in-game labs and discussions, interviews with designers and community-managers, internet forum observation), but by the way they're all going to fit together in the matrix for the course, so that every unit (the next post in this series will have the specific units) is going to have a mixture of enlightening and fun stuff to do.

Readings: Homeric Iliad, Homeric Odyssey, A. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambrdige, MA: 1960); G. Nagy Homeric Questions (Cambridge, MA: 1996)

Lectures by podcast and video podcast

In-game labs in Halo, Fable, Lego Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings Online

In-game discussions in The Lord of the Rings Online

Internet forum discussions

Internet forum labs through observation of discussion on gaming web-forums

Designing, conducting, and analyzing interviews with developers’ personnel (incl. community-managers) about what it means to be an interactive storyteller

Visits by proxy (video podcast) to developers’ studios

Quibus lusoribus bono?

My provocation of the field of game studies and its practitioners has appeared today in The Escapist. My heart quails a bit at facing the consequences of this kind of piece, but while I admit some hyperbole in the cause of getting a conversation going, I stand by my central point, that the attempt to marry game criticism to game design is not a good idea.

At any rate, I'm in the process of trying very hard to put other people's money where my mouth is, and thereby to keep that mouth flapping. This is as good a time as any to announce that there's a Center for Video Games and Human Values in the works, for which my course "(Gaming) Homer" is actually the pilot. The center will be based at UConn, but its true existence will be entirely online, and it will include scholars of game studies, should they want to participate, alongside a truly interdisciplinary mix of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, Fine Arts, Education, and Business.

I'm pleased to say that Michael Abbott and Jeff Howard are my extramural collaborators on this project. I'm hoping they'll keep me from saying anything quite so provocative in the future, since they're much more sanguine about game studies than I am!

Course activities for "(Gaming) Homer," the online UConn course in Spring 2009

This is a post in a series about my UConn course, CAMS 3208 "(Gaming) Homer." I will offer the course in Spring 2009 in an online, heavily game-enhanced form, and I will have a few spots available for non-UConn students. E-mail me (amphiaraus@msn.com) if you’re interested in getting onto the waiting list. General information on registration and fees may be found here. Note that it's too early to register as of this writing--but I'll be sure to notify readers here when registration becomes available!

How should I teach Homeric epic as a video game? Let me know what you think of what I’ve got planned, and about any ideas you’ve got for gaming-related activities!

I can think of three activities that I think would set this course far apart, and that will illustrate Homeric epic in a really interesting way: in-game discussion sections, gameplay labs, and in-game discussion-interviews with game-developers.

In-game discussion sections on the one hand are only a way to get some kind of synchronous discussion going: to have the whole class in one place at the same time, even if that place is LOTRO’s version of Rivendell. At the same time, it will be possible to demonstrate certain play dynamics and experiment in an informal way with how different facets of the narrative experience of the specific game, and of narrative gaming in general, work. Adventuring together, with the interactions availably with the game and with each other, will give students the ability to analyze things like quest-structure and grinding very closely.

What I call in-game labs will be more targetted in-game experiences in specific games, some of the single-player variety and others of the multi-player (both versus and co-op). The idea will be to carry out a specific experimental assignment, like “Finish the first level of Halo 2 three ways, and analyze the experience as a story.”

Third, we’ll get a chance to talk to some of the people who work with these games everyday, and ask them questions that we’ve drafted beforehand about how they tell stories and how they think about their task and about their audience. Students will collaborate in small groups to write-up reports on these discussion-interviews.

Another idea I’ve had, but need help fleshing out, is to have students make observations of what goes on on several different internet boards of gaming communities, and write reports about how the storytelling of the games brings about (or fails to bring about) certain kinds of community, just as the Homeric epics were vital in the constitution of the early communities of Archaic Greece.

Living Epic: the ONLINE COURSE!

In Spring 2009 I will offer Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies 3208 "Homer" in an online format that will use games and game-worlds as integral course material. Labs and discussions will occur in-game in games like Halo, Fable, and The Lord of the Rings Online.

I will have a few spots open for students outside of UConn. The waiting list starts here, and I'll have information available soon as to how to sign-up, and what fees and arrangements will be (it's my hope that I'll have money for scholarships, but that's not clear yet). E-mail me (amphiaraus@msn.com) if you’re interested in getting onto the waiting list. General information on registration and fees may be found here. Note that it's too early to register as of this writing--but I'll be sure to notify readers here when registration becomes available!

Following the example of my friend Michael Abbott, the Brainy Gamer, I want to enlist my readers here in helping to plan the course. Are there games you think are particularly epic? Are there things you'd like to do in-game like labs and discussions? Are there conversations we should have with developers and/or their community managers? Let me know!