betajames

Providing a writer with the opportunity to revise opens the door for executive decisions. Not only might we see a potentially strong point jettisoned due to lack of development in a timely manner (aka, Steven Seagal's Colonel Travis (skip to 9:21 if impatient)), but it is also possible even something more substantial might not make it. What follows is that something more, "A Potential Model of Online Engagement," a later section of a piece I'm revising under deadline this week. Given the focus of the essay, "Potential Model" didn't quite fit; I knew it when I submitted the piece and those who reviewed it only reinforced this knowledge. So, rather than subject it to the editor's knife, I made a pre-emptive strike, an executive decision, and offer it up here instead for your perusal. 

Also, I need to get some less militaristic metaphors (or maybe more Seagal references).

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Because of my diverse research interests in composition, pedagogy, technology, and videogames, it is essential to remain current. Offline methods include organization memberships, attendance at discipline-specific conferences, and subscriptions to journals and other publications. However, I also keep active accounts on Delicious, Posterous, Scribd, and Twitter. This not only makes scholarly activities accessible and public, but also allows me to follow those with similar interests and keep abreast of new developments. Interaction via these communicative technologies is somewhat akin to subscriptions to academic discussion boards and mailing lists but in ways more accessible, open, and public. Through social media tools, I show academic work performed on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis as well as the fruits of those labors. 

Functioning as a model of sound academic research online, these four social media tools also work together as a performance of public intellectualism. For instance, I store all online information relevant to my interests on Delicious, a social bookmarking site that allows me to maintain a public, reverse-chronological record of the most recent developments in research through the application of tags like "pedagogy," "rhetoric," and "videogames." Meanwhile, Posterous functions as a vehicle for working through ideas in a public format and further recording the directions my research interests take. It is also in this space that I document the drafting of more traditional academic pieces, such as this very chapter. I post these more traditional academic pieces on Scribd, which is similar to Youtube in that anyone can post any text-based document for others to see and read. I use it as an online repository for all my efforts I consider to be academic work, including assignments and syllabi for past, present, and future courses as well as my dissertation and essays approved for publication. In other words, I use it to provide tangible evidence of my academic output. I announce much of this output on Twitter, which also provides a way to brainstorm new work. 

There is an implicit encouragement to finding community with others on Twitter, but it also functions as a launching pad to the other online spaces mentioned here. In fact, Twitter offers what Henry Jenkins calls "spreadable media," noting that, as an academic, broadcast channels are important if he is going to get his ideas into broader circulation: "I don't have access to the airwaves or to a printed publication which might bring what I write to a much broader readership. I don't have an advertising budget with which to put my ideas onto billboards. Twitter, as a platform, alters the scale of my communication by allowing me to expand my readership". The expansion of readership via Twitter often leads to further conversation among interested parties; such conversations continue to have a direct influence on my own research and scholarship.

A tangible example of what this online scholarship makes possible concerns my recent involvement with the Great Lakes THAT (The Humanities and Technology) Camp. Ethan Watrall, Assistant Professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media at Michigan State University and director of the Great Lakes THAT Camp, encouraged me to submit a proposal because of prior Twitter-based conversations about open courseware. These are the kinds of scholarly activities in which I engage almost every day. In this particular instance, it led to a conference presentation that furthered the academic interests of THAT Camp attendees. 

Maintaining a persistent presence online also has some significant connections to professional service. By remaining active via Posterous and Twitter, I not only make new contacts in my fields of inquiry and interest but also have additional venues for sharing ideas and information. By posting items relevant to my interests as well as those following me on Twitter and subscribing to me on Posterous, I encourage and support the work of others. I also engage in learning on a level that is similar to, yet different from, conversing with colleagues in the halls of the English department. Such online engagement is a kind of worthwhile public intellectualism and it continues to have a direct impact on my pedagogical and publishing interests.

Again, it is vital to be informed about the latest research on topics of importance and interest; online communicative technologies help me do that. Partaking in such activities, though, also reveals something about the university I work for. I am an online representative of the English department at the University of Michigan-Flint. I remain mindful of this in every online action I take and I emphasize this point to students in relation to their own academic, online work as well.

Experiential writing and anecdotal evidence can be worthwhile additions to discussions of meaning. However, I remain unsure if either stands all that well on its own. Personal perspective can help others come to see how we view something, but if we desire to convince others of why that something matters, we need to do more. This might be my main issue with Extra Lives, by Tom Bissell. Rather than doing more, Bissell does more of the same. He engages in revelry, not revelation. As this is a book intended for a mainstream audience, perhaps this is okay, but I found significant portions of the text lacking.

Bissell's account is personal, but not unique. Anyone reading this review has had comparable gaming experiences, perhaps even attempted to relate them to friends and colleagues who just don't understand. Countless blogs and forums are further testaments to a certain commonality of experiences in videogames. No one can say Bissell doesn't like, or even love, what games like Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV provide, but if it was the author’s intention to go beyond that and support the “why videogames matter” subtitle, success is questionable. 

If it had been “why videogames matter to me,” I would have had different expectations as a reader. I wouldn’t have been disappointed about the missing definitions of “character,” “narrative” and “story,” terms that Bissell throws about in an irresponsible manner. Bissell does refer to others who play and/or make videogames, like Cliff Bleszinski, Jonathan Blow, Clint Hocking and John Hight, but these references most often regard problems of the medium. Given how many words and paragraphs given to these problems, a better subtitle might have been “why videogames don’t matter” or “why videogames don’t matter yet.” 

The main title, “Extra Lives,” fits well with the content of the book. The idea/argument that part of videogames’ appeal involves exciting escapism, the opportunity to experience additional lives is one that Bissell makes accessible and appealing. What gets in the way of this argument, though, is Bissell’s writing, which I don’t think is very strong. It reminded me of something Marci told me about Julie & Julia, how distracting the book was because the author thought she was so self-aware, self-referential and funny and that the movie was much better because all those attempts at humor weren’t present. In other words, Extra Lives reads like a series of blog posts; some good and/or interesting ideas are present, but none get fleshed out because there isn’t a comment section. 

Related to this is how Extra Lives just kind of stops. The last couple lines of the last chapter resonate well, but I wanted to turn the page to something more conclusive. After all the personal accounts of various gaming experiences and conversations with assorted industry insiders, I hoped Bissell would perform some kind of a wrap up. It isn’t that I wanted everything together in a neat, little package; I just had an interest in Bissell returning to the introductory “Author’s Note” in which he states that we are in a “golden age of gaming.” That Bissell never revisits this statement is unfortunate and, for me, supports the idea that many of his ideas are unsupported and/or incomplete.

I don’t think Extra Lives can or should be the text to validate videogames to the masses or to, as Entertainment Weekly put it, “make you feel better about spending 50 hours on Call of Duty."