World of Warcraft includes significant support for modifications to the user interface (UI) of a game, colloquially known as "mods" and "addons". At a simple level it allows full control over the content of toolbars and hot keys, as well as macros to automate sets of operations and the ability to script much more elaborate tools. The range of modifications that are available can be anything from ways to automatically advertise trade skills, to adding extra rows of button bars for spells, skills and more, to one designed for humorous intent, such as one that reproduces the infamous Leeroy Jenkins sound. The 2.0 release of World of Warcraft changed the way that an addon interacts with the game, causing certain modifications and addons to no longer function as intended. This meant that all addons designed before the patch needed to be rewritten, or they would not work.

One thing that I've been thinking about a lot lately is my set of experiences over the past two years reviewing for large grant agenices. While my experience is still a bit limited, it has been intense, and I have developed some impressions (and that is really all they are, given anyone's limited point of view relative to these funding agencies) about the current trends in social science research on technology in general (and virtual worlds in particular)... I invite anyone with experience on either side of this equation (applying, reviewing) to share their thoughts as well. Unfortunately, the incentives in this part of academia push everyone to hoard what little information they have about what works (and doesn't), but I'm actively trying to push against that here in order to ponder whether there are any important shifts or trends that we can identify. This post is also inspired by one thing that has struck me in particular: the unabashed and common presence of qualitative and exploratory research methods as components in research proposals.

Cultural anthropologists have a tendency to see themselves as the 'black sheep' of the social sciences because of the historical marginalization of both their method and their subjects (for many decades the far-flung places of the world), and this still has some validity, but it is such a dominant self-picture that sometimes we miss how our methods and perspective are in fact increasingly welcomed in some quarters. (Marketing and governmental intelligence are both growth industries for anthropologists right now--a development which makes my head nearly rotate off its axis.) My general impression about the qualitative methods, particularly ethnographic research, in these proposals (again, primarily those focusing on technology) is that it is mixed--sometimes there is careful thinking and established qualifications behind the research design of that component, but just as often there is clearly not.

In addition to my impression noted above, there is a broader trend, which the funding trend (if it exists) may be following, toward a reincorporation of qualitative research across the social sciences (most obviously in sociology). For me, the key question in virtual world research is: How do we incorporate both of these forms, and evaluate claims across them? Some see virtual worlds as having promise for their work primarily as sites for experimental research, and they look for how experimental research could be carried out within and through VWs designed for that purpose. A possible extension of this claim is that that until this research is done, all the observation and analysis of what's currently going on is not going to generate knowledge that is comparable in terms of impact.

This is not quite the same as quant/qual, although they are often treated as such. For virtual world research, the question is: What counts as macro-level? Given that these worlds still occupy the attention of a relatively small group of people, are we necessarily engaging in small-scale research, at least currently? How broad is the impact of our conclusions? Others see the current landscape of virtual worlds as already a site for such a wide variety of (potentially transformative) human activity that exploratory research is our best hope for generating knowledge about them. The possible extension of this view is to say that experimental contexts will never generate insights that apply in the 'real world', where there are real stakes.

This is to me a central, but largely unspoken, contrast that has a particular importance for virtual world research. Exploratory research, which gets far less attention as a scientific methdology than experimental, is typical of the activity of many geologists, astronomers, botanists, and archaeologists. Rather than hypothesis-testing, it is based on the gathering of information about a given phenomenon, particularly one that is large, complex, and about which we know too little to generate useful (that is, other than self-confirmatory) hypotheses. Its contribution is both empirical (lots of data--'thick description' in Geertz's phrase) and analytical, proposing possible explanations suggested by the data.

All video games are works of ideology. Often the ideology is so much akin to that of society in which they are developed and consumed that it goes un-noticed. Games that surface an agenda stick out. A case in point is the new mobile game Airport Insecurity by Persuasive Games. Works that have government backing stick out still further. A couple of years ago America’s Army was the hot topic. So it should come as no surprise after the recent coverage of gaming in China that the Chinese government would want to get in on the act too. Step forward (or is that march forward) Chinese Hero Registry a Virtual World that the blogshpere suggests is planned to be developed by Shanda on behalf of the Chinese government.

“Instead of heavily armed superheros licensed to kill, the new game will highlight the likes of a model Communist soldier famous for helping other people. To advance in this game, players won't gun down their enemies. They'll mend socks, lots of them, and gain points by getting appreciation letters for doing good deeds such as helping old ladies home in a rainstorm and stopping people from spitting on the sidewalk. The prize is a signed virtual copy of Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book. This soon-to-be-released video version of a vintage Communist scenario is part of an effort to clean up the Internet.” There are analogs with different genres of PBEM games. The point is that for each turn time stood still. Yes, there was the rest of the game, a full process to be tapped and of which you as a player are fully aware, but that moment, this turn was always the pivotal one. True, with PBEM the intervals between turns are exaggerated in comparison to other turn-based experiences.

“While it will take as long as a decade to introduce the registry's entire slate of 100 heroes, the first batch of five starters will include historic figures such as the imperial eunuch many believe sailed to the New World seven decades before Columbus, a Ming dynasty general who defeated foreign aggressors, and an incorruptible judge” OK, sounds dully, really really really dull. But then again Second Life sounds dull to most gamers. Thing is it also sounds virtuous, a game based on being nice to people – what could possibly be wrong with that? One characteristic of my experience with this kind of play was how much anguish went into each turn. The planning, the 'what ifs...' Because there was the time and the imagination...When I used to play LSN much of my effort went into planning and replanning 'covering fire' actions.

The Methical EQ II dupe story has made it to the mainstream media. Mark Turner writes a piece for the Financial Times about the incident (mentioned previously here), quoting Ted and Josh, among others. Ted says: "The phase we're in right now is that everyone is ­trying to apply the proper metaphor. This is terra nova; a lot of these phenomena are frontier phenomena." One of my favorite computer games is X-COM (UFO Defender). A classic turn-based strategy game over a decade old. I still play it. The Gollop brothers who originally developed the XCOM games went on to create Laser Squad Nemesis (LSN), an innovative and modern take on the venerable Play-By-Email (PBEM) genre. I used to find the anticipation between turns in LSN riveting.