Current Interests
I am currently leading a research project supported by a grant
from the National Science Foundation to investigate the socio-technical
processes, work practices, communities, and policy
issues emerging in development of open source software systems. This
focuses on a comparative empirical examination of four different communities
including that centered on Internet infrastructure, X-ray astronomy and
deep space imaging, academic software design research, and networked computer
games (NCG). In the NCG world, I am particularly interested in the development
and deployment of open source game "mods", career contingencies of game
mod'ers, grrl gaming, and how the processes and practices of the NCG world
are similar to and different from the other communities in the study. I
have been focusing attention to particular game worlds associated with
Unreal
(including Half-Life, Dr. Action, and Unreal Tournament),
Quake
Arena, Neverwinter Nights, Everquest, and The Sims.
I have also recently submitted a proposal
to NSF for a new study that seeks to investigate how NCG systems can be
opened, modified, or extended to serve as a "work practices simulator".
A WPS is a NCG system that supports the modeling and situated interaction
of complex technical work activities (e.g., conducting astrophysical observations
using a national virtual observatory, setting up a LAN party, or conducting
an internet-based chat meeting), based on data, socio-technical actions,
and hyperlinked artifacts collected in my open source project.
Emerging Interest in Persistent Game Worlds
and New Media Arts: Game Grids
I have an interest in participating in the design, prototyping, use,
and community evolution of game grids. A grid
(e.g. Access Grid)
can be a network/cluster of possibly heterogeneous NCG systems that collectively
enable the (re)composition of geographically dispersed groups of game/NMA
participants into virtual organizations that can share infrastructure and
exchange resources for collective interests. Game grids should enable a
group of interested artists/others to rapidly form persistent, NGC worlds
using open source and peer-to-peer resource sharing techniques for diverse
cultural expressions. Game grids may be mobile, decentralized, and potentially
anonymous. Game grids may also represent an approach that accommodates
the collective development of persistent game worlds of extraordinary
scale and scope (ESS). ESS is meant to point to future scenarios where
hundreds of thousands of participants might join a given grid (e.g., for
a QuakeCon tournament,
a real-time visual art performance, or a community anijam).
Yet, to achieve Game Grids fostering ESS will require interdisciplinary
research into matters like how to achieve extraordinary ease of development
for content, system, and virtual organization, and how to rapidly create
high
performance users and usage scenarios. Advances in techniques such
as these would enable collateral advances in other realms of scientific,
engineering, and artistic practice and collaboration. I believe that the
CalIT(2) project can expand its agenda and resources, as well as engage
industry/government sponsors, around an emerging interdisciplinary focus
on game grids.