Responses to posts so far

First - the airport in Las Vegas has free wi-fi. If I'd have known that I wouldn't have spent so much time walking the strip

Ok - business time

Ryan asks a good question - if you're assigned to do something (like interact with the website called The Goat in the Gray Fedora for instance) are you playing a game or working a game? Rand wonders the same thing. This could be an important question. What if people react differently when they're freely playing than when they're doing an assigned task that just happens to be "play a game"? This could mess up experiments and other kinds of research.

Beth starts out by commenting on how somethings we just know - like what's a game. "Swag" adds to that by saying that sind he/she is a gamer - they know what a game is (or do they). But when we start to think about them and consider htem from different angles - the definition isn't so cut and died. This is important for reserach because some things we might take for granted aren't necessarily true on closer examination.

Bridget points out that it may not matter what OUR definition of a game is, but rather the definition of the person "playing the game". If people define game differently in our research, we could get very different (and unexpected) results. Seventy-three uses the example of the movie Saw (some Parkies worked on that for their internship) - the people being tortured definintely didn't see what was going on as a game altho the scary guy did.

Jessiero5 adds to the definitno that games are usually a distraction from reality. Cassandra says that's true especially for graphic games. Is that true for all games - how about educational games or political games (to teach you about a candidate)? They're sort of tied to reality - but also sort of removed from it. Sara turns this on its side and says a game pulls your attention into it. And away from reality?

Rand and Amy Z both say that a game has to be outside of our normal habits and routines - but what if i make a game out of washing dishes or doing the laundry - see if i can get the dishwasher loaded before the commercial is over - if so I get a cookie. Is that a game?

Here's another pic from the conference - AOL had a cybercafe for us to use during hte week and they were pimping their new in2tv and viiv services.