Torill Mortensen, a good colleague and my fearless and dedicated guild leader has been interviewed for Norwegian Televison (NRK1) Schrödingers katt - Spillforskere i felten about her research in WoW. The interview includes some brief scenes from a guild meeting, the guild of which Im also (a currently rather passive :( ) member. Unfortunately, I couldnt be there the evening they filmed the guild, an absence for which my character Miredam has constantly been blaming me since - she would so have loved to show off one of her dresses on public television...

Guild fame potential aside, Torill says some very sensible things about the need to do research in-world if you want to understand what MMOG's are all about. It's puzzling how journalists still keep joking about how we as game researchers "have to play games" as part of our research ("høh, høh"), they never joke about film researchers having to watch films, or literary scholars having to read novels: "høh, høh, so you're actually being paid by the government to read books to do your research". The media scepticism towards the playing part of games research demonstrate that there are still some bridges to cross before games are fully acknowledged as a cultural phenomena on equal footing with films and novels.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 16:58