Presentation at the Purdue Serious Games Research Forum, October 2007. Talk was on new literacies and games, with data shown from a conversation with Merci Hammon, designer of the Passively Multiplayer Online Game (PMOG).

1. Writing New Games:
Designers Enacting the New Media Literacies
Alice J. Robison
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 1

2. 55% protect their personal information online
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3. More than half of all
American teens--and 57% of
teens who could use the
internet--could be
considered media creators.
55% protect their personal information online
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4. More than half of all
American teens--and 57% of
teens who could use the
internet--could be
considered media creators.
22% have their own homepages
55% protect their personal information online
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2

5. More than half of all
American teens--and 57% of
teens who could use the
internet--could be
considered media creators.
22% have their own homepages
55% protect their personal information online
33% share what they create online with others
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2

6. More than half of all
American teens--and 57% of
teens who could use the
internet--could be
considered media creators.
22% have their own homepages
55% protect their personal information online
33% share what they create online with others
19% blog and 19% remix content they find online
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2

7. More than half of all
American teens--and 57% of
teens who could use the
internet--could be
considered media creators.
22% have their own homepages
55% protect their personal information online
33% share what they create online with others
32% report they’ve
experienced
“cyberbullying”
19% blog and 19% remix content they find online
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2

8. More than half of all
American teens--and 57% of
teens who could use the
internet--could be
considered media creators.
22% have their own homepages
55% protect their personal information online
33% share what they create online with others
32% report they’ve
experienced
“cyberbullying”
19% blog and 19% remix content they find online
55% use online social networking regularly
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2

9. More than half of all
American teens--and 57% of
teens who could use the
internet--could be
considered media creators.
22% have their own homepages
55% protect their personal information online
33% share what they create online with others
32% report they’ve 85% use Facebook
experienced
“cyberbullying”
19% blog and 19% remix content they find online
55% use online social networking regularly
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2

10. More than half of all
American teens--and 57% of
teens who could use the
internet--could be
considered media creators.
22% have their own homepages
55% protect their personal information online
33% share what they create online with others
32% report they’ve 85% use Facebook
experienced if available on their campus
“cyberbullying”
19% blog and 19% remix content they find online
55% use online social networking regularly
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2

11. What do we mean by “literacies?”
encoded texts that can be retrieved, worked
with, and made available independent of
the physical presence of another person
What do we mean by “new literacies?”
blogging, fanfic writing, manga-producing,
meme-ing, photoshopping, podcasting,
vodcasting, gaming, html-ing
(Lankshear & Knobel, 2006)
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24. new (media) literacies
technical stuff: we can now use cool stuff to do the
same kinds of things we have previously known; a
“physical-industrial” mindset--individualized,
enclosed, product-centered, hierarchical
ethos stuff: co-existence of physical space and
cyberspace; a “cyberspatial, post-industrial”
mindset--collective, distributed, decentered, process-
focused, change-based
Lankshear & Knobel, 2006
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 5

25. it’s not a big truck
“The internet isn’t just
something you dump
something on. It’s not
a big truck. It’s...it’s a
series of tubes.”
--Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
John Hodgman’s Reply
Ted Stevens Remix
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26. tagging,
folksonomies
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27. data visualization of
online identities
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28. online social
networks
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29. alternate reality games
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30. is it possible to make a
game out of all those
new literacies?
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31. http://bud.com
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32. http://bud.com
PMOG “adds an element
of score-keeping, gentle
competition, cooperation
and self-reflection
through scorekeeping
and game dynamics
added to web-
browsing” (Justin Hall, 2007)
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 12

33. http://bud.com
PMOG “adds an element
of score-keeping, gentle
competition, cooperation
and self-reflection
through scorekeeping
and game dynamics
added to web-
browsing” (Justin Hall, 2007)
It opens our eyes to what
the web really holds, to
expand our grasp of
meaning-making
experiences with the web
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34. PMOG
literacies
identity play
affiliations
affinity spaces
collaborative problem-solving
circulating information & data
surfing with others
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35. if you were actually playing the game and you
had the sidebar open, I feel like you actually feel
like the web is a place, not like it’s a series of
separate places. But that you are in this one
sphere of activity with all of these people at the
same time. And this is just surfing of course, not
like being on an AIM or whatever-- then you’re
just obviously with people online. But the
experience of surfing itself can be a pretty lonely
one, because you’re like going willy-nilly. But this
is allowing other players to influence what your
experience is like, and influencing the surfing
experiences of other players as well.
--Merci Hammon, PMOG
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 14

36. I feel like having a persistent presence in a web
browser is very much like being a role-playing
character online. Because you’re in this environment
that is necessarily different from...linked-to, but
different. Next door to but not on top of your actual
life. And you get to re-present yourself as a person
online. And so you already are kind of a role-playing
character when you go from Facebook to MySpace.
And there are a lot of people who actually make fake
profiles, so they’re like Jesus Christ or Buddha online.
And so I think that one of the best things about being
persistently present online is the ability to play with it
and to be a character in this other universe.
--Merci Hammon, PMOG
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 15

37. 2.0 ethos-> PMOG
• Kodak Picture Gallery --> • stickiness--> syndication
Flickr • demographics--> identity
• Britannica Online --> play
Wikipedia • developer-written-->
• personal websites --> players co-writing
blogging • individual competencies
• evite -->upcoming.org --> collaborative questing
• publishing--> • value dependent on
participation scarcity of products-->
• content management value dependent on
systems --> wikis behavior choices
• directories (taxonomy)--> • surfing alone--> surfing
tagging (quot;folksonomyquot;) with others
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 16

38. what can your game do?
What do you think PMOG has the potential to do? Either
conceptually or long-term?
“I think that potentially it could
be an enormous amount of fun.
That’s the primary goal. It’s a
game, and it should be fun.”
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