I find that I accrue interesting links much faster than I can blog about them.
Continue reading “Links: Nerdcore, Fake Boys’ Schools, Online Dating for Online Gamers, and More”
Assessing Quality in Media Research
A few months ago, I started taking notes for a post titled “Quality Should Not Be a Dirty Word.” This was initially prompted by reading that Ed Norton (an actor whom I like) would be starring in the next Hulk movie (a franchise I think could be fun), but that the movie would be directed by the fellow who did The Transporter 2 (a fairly abysmal movie). The disappointment I experienced made me want to write a blog post, and it seemed geeky enough to fit in here, but then I realized that it seemed somewhat out of bounds for an academic blog: Media researchers aren’t supposed to make evaluative judgments like this. That kind of reaction is for fans—though, when you think about it, it’s not like media researchers’ tastes don’t influence what they write about. Thoughts of the Hulk behind me, I suddenly started taking notes on the relative lack of research and reflection on the how aesthetic standards are formed and applied, including by academics (at least since Bourdieu closed the book on it for many since he described taste in terms of class values).
Links: Lightsabers, Nerdcore, & More
A couple more long(ish) posts soon to come. For now, here are some links.
More on Beautiful Geeks
I’ve got some links today following up on the other day’s long post about auditioning for Beauty and the Geek and attending Nerd Nite in Boston over the weekend. I called it “Polar Expeditions” because of the differences between the events, but the real polar expedition was made by my fellow geek “Karen”—LeDiva on Livejournal—who emailed me after reading my post and referred me back to her own post on the audition. Her journey also included some time spent with the women auditioning for beauties, which sounds like a whole other world right in the same room.
While I do often get to compare my field notes with other bloggers’ posts about events like Comic Con in a broad sense, this must be the first time I’ve been able to compare notes on such specific situations at such an event. I was pretty amazed to see how similarly we described it all. (However, I totally made up the part about her being a grad student. We agreed that we got along with one another, though, and more than half my friends nowadays are grad students, so somehow I just filled in the blank on that one for myself.)
Additional reports on the casting call come from Bostonist (link via Church in my last post) and BU’s student newspaper (which I remembered to check because I saw a guy taking photos and asked where they’d be). That rapping fellow with the MIT chains and LED belt buckle sure made an impression on us all, apparently.
Now, back in Philadelphia, I’m finding that “I auditioned for Beauty and the Geek” is a great conversation starter with people. I also find it both kindly complimentary and vaguely unsettling that people keep telling me that I’m clearly not geeky enough to make it on the show. I’m doing a whole dissertation on geek culture here. How much more geeky can I get? This, along with my lack of interest in running Linux, is another reason why I have trouble explaining to people whether I can consider this project a “native ethnography.”
Thanks to LeDiva for emailing and giving me permission to link her post, and thanks also to Ben from Nerd Nite for commenting on “Polar Expeditions.” Interviews can be fun, but It’s especially exciting to have people contacting me to volunteer information about the events I attend for research.
Polar Expeditions
Yesterday, Dan (who has requested to be referenced as my “partner in crime”) ushered me around the greater Boston area for an ethnographic adventure. First, we went to an open casting call for Beauty and the Geek near Boston Common. Later, in the evening, Genevieve joined us and we moved on to the Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain for Nerd Nite. In the span of a single day, I feel like I visited two poles of the geek culture spectrum. Here is that story, adapted from my field notes.
If You Build It, They Will Wrock
I once lamented here that I had no idea how to keep track of geek music shows. Well, I’ve got some new heroes. Church emails me to announce
StopStandingStill.net, by Matt S.
The site’s welcome post explains:
SSS is a listing of geek music concerts from all over the world. By clicking the Calendar link, either in the heading or over on the side bar, you’ll see all the listings that we currently have for geeky shows in the near future. The pickings are a little thin at the moment since I’ve primarily been focused on getting the overall site up and running. Over the next couple of weeks though, I plan to continue to flesh out tour dates for other artists.
The longer answer is that SSS is a site dedicated to promoting geek culture as a separate and distinct entity equal to the Mainstream and Underground cultures that dominate our world. Geek culture is not a new idea, but it has gained in popularity over the last several years and it is now time for it to get the recognition that it deserves. While the site is currently focused on only concerts and musical gatherings, my goal is to expand it to include listings for all kinds of various geek gatherings.
Church notes that the site will be covering a variety of genres including nerdcore, chiptunes, VGM (video game music), and Wrock (that’s Wizard Rock, or Harry Potter tributes for the uninitiated). If you’re interested in helping out on the project, they’re looking for it, so go take a gander.
In the long term, I’ll be interested to see where this goes insofar as the geek culture manifesto is concerned, which makes a pretty clear statement about insiders vs. outsiders and “the Geek Community’s” resistance to co-optation. In the meantime, I’m just so thankful that I can finally find some concerts.
Linking With a Vengeance
Things have been quiet here for a few days while I’ve been away at a wedding and then polishing up a couple papers to submit to a conference. Now I’ve got more links of interest than I can shake a stick at. I’ll skip the stick-shaking, then, and just try to post a bunch of stuff without much further comment.
(Why) Should Games Be Art?
I wrote up a critique of Bioshock recently—a game which seems even more impressive to me now after playing through the much-hyped Halo 3—and among the comments following the post was one that deserves special attention. Z. said:
Not to rip this train from the tracks, but your post, like most other pieces on games and art, brings me back to the simple question of do games *need* to be art?
I understand that following a nebulous, subjective, functionally rhetorical question with yet another nebulous, subjective, functionally rhetorical question is fruitless ploy, but with your admitted focus on adult play I’d love to glean your opinions on the conceptual artistic merit of gaming versus its sheer interactive entertainment value. Personally, I enjoy games that are thematically challenging and emotively immersive, but do you feel such elements at all undermine the simple value of play itself? And, concerning the subjective nature of art, is a game that is emotionally resonant (such as Ico) significantly less “artistic†than a game that is, by design, more visually artistically stimulating (like Rez). I guess my question is simply does art warrant observation or interaction, and, if the latter, does the induction of the player into the formula make games more artistic in and of itself?
That’s a fair question, and I think that I’ll be writing enough about games and play enough that the response deserves its own post. My short answer is this: “Art” is a frustrating term, but yes, I think (at least some) games need to aspire to greater depth if this medium is ever to fulfill the promise that its fans would like to see.
Here is the longer answer:
The New “Direct Market”
Note: This entry has been cross-posted to Shouting Loudly, where I tend to put most of my policy-oriented writing.
The Register notes that while Manhunt 2 may have been effectively banned from distribution in UK stores by the British Board of Film Classification’s refusal to assign a rating (again), the game could still sell online, via direct download (link via Game Politics).
Sound familiar? If you’re familiar with the regulatory history of the comic book, another medium stereotyped as juvenile, it should. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_AuthorityComics Code Authority similarly banned certain comic books from newsstand distribution by refusing to grant approval, which killed entire genres of crime and horror comics for years. The medium only began to see adult work widely distributed again through a direct market of fan shops (which was partially built on a network of converted head shops that had been selling underground comix). This is, as the previous Wikipedia link notes, the “dominant” channel of distribution for comics today. It’s also notoriously unstable and frequently resistant to reach beyond an aging group of superhero fans, rather than appealing to new readers. Comic stores also have a reputation (sometimes deserved) for being inhospitable to newcomers.
Would the “direct market” of digital distribution for games be more open and accessible than the direct market of comics? I’m not sure it would be, at least not at first. It certainly hasn’t pulled comics out of its own network of specialty stores. Despite proclamations that webcomics would be the future of comics distribution, able to reach whole new audiences, they are still overwhelmed by content aimed at geeky niche audiences. (And while I’m not sure that things will stay that way, it’s worth noting that there hasn’t been much of a move to suggest otherwise just yet.) While online distribution does get around the physical problems associated with specialty stores (such as infrequency or occasionally surly staff), it does still require a certain degree of technical aptitude. It makes retail locations destination stores, where hardcore fans could find what they want but newcomers and gift-buyers would be unlikely to tread. Moreover, digital distribution limits the kind of technologies one can use to consume content: Webcomics generally can’t be held in the hand and flipped through until converted to print, and downloaded games over a certain size would need to be on PCs, despite that consoles are the platform of choice for many.
Of course, we’re only talking about one game still—Manhunt 2—which hasn’t even been announced as being distributed digitally. The whole issue could be moot. I’m just very wary about announcing that direct downloading will be the savior of game distribution in the wake of overly restrictive industry self-regulation.
“Nerd Clothes for Thugs in Training”
The title of today’s post comes from a comment on Kotaku in response to pics from the upcoming Nintendo by Torrel clothing line. (More on Torrel and the line at this article from Black Enterprise.) In the words of Kotaku writer Michael McWherter, “Torrel LLC has taken the best of Nintendo, run it through the ‘urban market’ filter with plans to provide thousands of clothes-conscious gamers with over-sized and wildly tacky Nintendo authorized gear.”
Geek Studies 