What we play is life, version v5.2 – methodology development, causing yet another total rewrite
The previous post – version 5.1 was a mess and I found it really hard to work through all that stuff. Part of my frustration is the feeling that I am doing this to get academic research funds, but I don’t really care about this aspect of the academic rigour, and that doesn’t do wonders for the motivation. That changed this week. I’m really starting to see the value in it, for designing an actual game, for example, and I’m having fun! My brain hurts, but hey.
I’m currently looking at building something like a participation curiosity scale or something like that, inspired by Kahan’s article. I’m a bit embarrassed to say I’ve been quoting Tim Harford left and right since 2017, but only actually read the article that he quotes this week, spurred on by Ricardo’s mention of causal approaches and me having a panic about how one measures ‘replacing judgement with curiosity’.
Scientifically literate people, remember, were more likely to be polarised in their answers to politically charged scientific questions. But scientifically curious people were not.
Curiosity brought people together in a way that mere facts did not.
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What we play is life. Project v5.1 – focus on measuring behaviour change, or: focus on the “play”, and less on the “what”.
After thinking through the fifth iteration and asking for help about being stuck in the weeds, Ricardo reminded me that what we’re trying to do is influence behaviour, more than contributing to understanding it (because I was also inspired by Chan’s article about a cohesive theory of value). I was really stuck with my methodology, and he suggested I look into causal approaches. Things that measure actual behaviour, not just what people say they would do, or like, or believe in.
Continue reading “What we play is life. Project v5.1 – focus on measuring behaviour change, or: focus on the “play”, and less on the “what”.”What we play is life
This is the fifth iteration of my project idea. Wow. Previous version: The potential for emergent games to foster curiosity
The quote “What we play is life” is attributed to Louis Armstrong, and suggests that the way we approach and engage with activities, whether they are games, hobbies, or even daily tasks, reflects our attitude towards life itself.
Continue reading “What we play is life”Community engagement using cats as metaphor
This came from a Friday evening casual chat in the OMI group discord, where we were wondering about how to retain members amidst different personalities, while attracting, and more importantly, retaining new members. We spoke about herding cats, and that you don’t herd cats, you throw some tuna where you want them to go – the tuna being the shared vision that people want to be part of.
But this wasn’t the full story, and fuelled by my most recent project iteration (blog forthcoming but this note pad has rough thoughts) and a bit of beer, I thought, it’s not just about tuna. So I shared my cat situation along with how I think this translates to community management. Writing it up sober, I still think it works well. Also adding cat-specific details for posterity.
Continue reading “Community engagement using cats as metaphor”Notes from Henry Jenkins book: Convergence Culture
I started reading Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006) up to where the free sample ends, around page 78. Right before I chose to buy the ebook, I found a more recent book, Participatory Culture: Interviews (2019) as well as his blog, https://henryjenkins.org/. Ooh, and then also the book Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change (2020). So, distracted. But great notes here and the thoughts they triggered.
Continue reading “Notes from Henry Jenkins book: Convergence Culture”The Proteus Paradox – notes from Nick Yee book
I was looking for an updated game player categorisation. Everyone still talks about the Bartle player types (achievers, socializers, killers explorers), but they don’t cover what I think needs to be covered. Through a rabbithole I stumbled across Nick Yee’s site, and because that seemed a bit out of date I went to his company site, and THERE I found what I was looking for: Gamer Motivation Model (Quandry) His three clusters of gameplay motivations relate to achievement, social interaction, and immersion.
After that I had to read his book too: The Proteus Paradox. It was published in 2017, and a lot has happened since then, but it really inspired me. Some notes here. It’s a lot, so I will make another post with the more relevant stuff.
Continue reading “The Proteus Paradox – notes from Nick Yee book”Talk: The potential for emergent games to foster curiosity
This is a talk I gave for the Distributed Immersive Participation group, Stockholm University on 28 March 2025. I was happy to have a reason to update my talk, as the ones I gave on this topic in 2019 and 2022 were terribly out of date by now.
Slides: https://indiebio.co.za/curiosity_metaverse_adapted_24mar2025.html
pdf (27MB)
recording: on youtube
notes from in a Human Voice for the patriarchy stuff
This is a complement to another post focusing on the ethic of care as it relates to my next project. In that post, I try hard to remove any man vs woman, masculine/feminine, patriarchy mentions because it triggers things I do not wish to shine a light on in that context.
But the whole point of the book is about those splits. In my project I am trying to apply it in a different way, but some things deserve to be mentioned. So, another post then.
page 17: where patriarchy is in force and enforced, the human voice is a voice of resistance.
Continue reading “notes from in a Human Voice for the patriarchy stuff”notes from In a Human Voice – Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan wrote an article in 2014 “Moral Injury and the Ethic of Care: Reframing the Conversation about Differences” and it has stayed with me. An ethic of care is a core tenet to my next project, and I would hope the next stage of my academic career. So I was more than pleased to see this book published in 2023, updating her thoughts.
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