Being at the intersection of gaming, stories, computation, and cognition (as my blog’s headline suggests), I often have a research identity crisis, which I suspect (although this has yet to be confirmed) is a shared feeling with other researchers in my field. This inner confusion does have its advantages; like a chameleon, I can float around different kinds of people and find some language in which to converse. Such was the case at the 2013 Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Research Symposium, where I was scheduled to talk about my research “Computational Models of Narrative and their Relation to Human Action,” as part of a panel on Gaming. My “language” was cognition, and (I think) it was the most appealing aspect of my research to the community . Regardless, there were several takeaways from the symposium that I wanted to share:
- Everyone is working on something related to everyone else
Something I perceived, which was most likely affected by my inexperience in CRDM, was the fact that everyone seemed to be working on topics that were relevant to everyone else. What was remarkable is that seemingly disparate topics shared a common thread (which was often Dr. Carolyn Miller’s landmark paper: Genre as Social Action). The concept of genre (I learned) is definitely a cross-cutting thing, and has useful taxonomic properties, as well as historical fingerprint qualities. The fact that this common thread was woven, I think, was probably due in part to the excellent focus of the workshop.
- Support is overwhelming
Despite feeling I was overly technical, and that my presentation had too much jargon, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I had several people throughout the presentation nod in agreement, had others tell me afterward that the presentation was well done, and even had one professor approach my advisor to congratulate me by proxy. I’m sure I’m not the first one to say this, but having experienced it first hand, I think the following is worth repeating: communities certainly welcome outside perspectives. I think it’s worth reaching out.
- Be precise!
Like Dr. Nicholas Taylor said before delivering his talk at the Gaming Panel, “all games researchers apologize before beginning their talks,” as a way of acknowledging that, because we’re all from such diverse fields, there’s bound to collision on some aspect of research. I did, in fact, apologize for “possibly offending someone with my research.” While, at the time, I sincerely doubted that my scientific advances would constitute an offense to anybody, it did help a bit. Someone called out distinction of the virtual v. the real, alluding to the philosophical arguments relating to phenomenology. All I meant to highlight was the distinction of video games and non-video games. Specifically, I was talking about the challenge of borrowing non-interactive narrative concepts to analyze an interactive medium. I should have been more precise.
- Keynote by Dr. David Herman
Dr. David Herman, Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University, was the evening keynote speaker. His talk was probably the most valuable aspect of the whole symposium, because his research has been highly influential on my own and because we both see narratology as a cognitive science. In essence, narratives are such a core part of our lives, that we use them for more than just entertainment; we use them for sense-making, for structuring our reality, and for guiding our future action. These ideas merit their own set of posts, but my ideas aren’t completely formed yet.
All in all, a very fruitful symposium. I hope I get to invade other types of academic gatherings to gain unique insights going forward!
On Games, Narratives, Computation, and Cognition 