We talk a lot about "designers" as a group, and attribute some authorial intention to them in aggregate (as in Richard's recent posting to Terra Nova). At the same time, avid gamers and game critics are very aware that game creation is a structurally complex and expensive process, and that even relatively low-ranking programmers and artists may be effectively authorially responsible for particular features or images in a game. With some games, it's not at all clear to me how to talk about the authorship. This is particularly true for massively-multiplayer persistent world games. Who is the auteur of Star Wars: Galaxies? It isn't merely the size and complexity of the game that complicates that question: it is that the designers of SWG (and most MMOGs) often work to obscure authorship, in a way somewhat reminiscent of bureaucracies, so as to diffuse responsibility for the game's functioning.

One of problems that I think both middlebrow criticism and academic scholarship focusing on videogames faces is how to talk about authorship. Andrew Sarris' famous importation of the French "auteur theory" into American film criticism in the late 1950s proposed that the author of a film is the director, and that directors should be encouraged to conceptualize themselves as such and seize authorial control over a film. Besides giving generations of academic film theorists something to attack, Sarris' intervention also had a profound influence on mainstream film criticism and eventually became a common part of how most movie audiences perceive the author function in films. After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers.

VZones developer Strategem has just launched a virtual world called Virtual Votes. According to a press release announcing the project, Virtual Votes is "a free virtual world where anyone can go to discuss the upcoming U.S. election, the candidates and anything else related to the election of a new U.S. president." The general idea is that Virtual Votes serves as a no-hold-barred forum for real-time political debate in which regular moderation rules will be lifted in order to promote a freer discussion of political issues and candidates. CEO David Andrews says, "In the Virtual Votes world, we intend to let the visitors take off their gloves and duke it out.” After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger.

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers.

Clive Thompson's comments (Oct 2) presents yet another foray into the Ye Old Punch and Judy Show (Narratology vs. Ludology). He cites Andrew Glassner's latest Interactive Storytelling (e.g. this Slashdot ref). His discussion flows from a claim of the "masochism of stories:" should we really be all that concerned about "story" and "narrative" when it comes to the design of our games? He suggests that perhaps in the rush to don dramatic straightjackets we may be using the wrong leash to guide the players... After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research.

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know. Where is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from it. I hope the audience did as well.

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know. Where is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from it. I hope the audience did as well.

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know. Where is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from it. I hope the audience did as well.

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know. Where is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from it. I hope the audience did as well.

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know. Where is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from it. I hope the audience did as well.