A view from the outside: my experience at the 2013 Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Research Symposium

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!

My research, using the ten hundred most common words

A while ago, I ran across the famous XKCD comic, Up Goer Five.  That comic inspired the namesake text-editor, which makes for a very interesting communicative challenge.  Being a fan of unique ways to communicate science to the masses (e.g. The Tiny Transactions of Computer Science), I took the time to write down what my thesis work aims to achieve using the ten-hundred most common words:

Computers can tell stories, but they can’t see what goes on inside your head; more to the point, a computer can’t see what you remember, which is actually a key part of how well you enjoy a story. My work deals with finding out what you remember from a story as you are reading it. I will then get a computer to track what you remember, so it can change the story on the fly to give you a great one. My work can be used in both usual stories, and in games.

I submit this to Ten Hundred Words of Science, and I encourage you to do the same.

Game-Theoretic Analysis of Doing What You Like v. Getting Tenure

Earlier this month I had a chance to sit for lunch with a longtime friend and professional colleague, Dr. David L. Roberts.  We had a small chat of the State of the Union, where I commented on one of the personal weaknesses I have when it comes to professional engagements: I have trouble saying ‘no’. (I’m working on it!)

In general, I like doing a lot of things and I get distracted by shiny objects.  David smiled the smile of “been there, done that,” and said: “let me show you something that was shown to me in the context of tenure.”  Using a really bad paper napkin and a pen that could barely get ink out, he drew the following chart:

(Doing…)	Things that get you tenure	Things that don’t get you tenure
Things that you like	[ +2, +2 ]	[ +1, -1 ]
Things that you don’t like	[ +1, +2 ]	[ -1, -1 ]

Game-Theoretic Analysis of Tenure – Your payoffs are shown in bold, with the other payoffs corresponding to the University, which we will assume wants you to get tenure and has the capacity to do so.  +2 payoff is highly desirable, +1 payoff is desirable, and -1 payoff is undesirable.  The strategy of doing “Things that you like” strictly dominates doing things you don’t like.

The justification for the payoffs is simple: you prefer doing things you like all the time, you’d rather get tenure than not, and each individual reward is independent and discrete (so getting tenure is +1 unit of reward and doing something you like is another distinct +1 unit of reward).

Anyway, the point he made (and very eloquently), is that “doing things you like is a strategy that strictly dominates doing things you don’t like”.  Recalling the wonders of dominated strategies:

We say that s_i strictly dominates s′_i if, for every choice of strategies by the other players, the payoff to player i from using s_i is greater than the payoff to player i from using s′i.

I felt it was a very interesting game theory problem, since you can kind of abstract this setup to anything that fits the pattern: “things you want to do v. things you have to do”.  In fact, David brought it up precisely because I had a situation that fit the pattern: the problem of doing things you like v. graduating with a Ph.D.  The above abstraction does not capture (even though it could) the repercussions of taking extra time in doing things you like that don’t get you tenure or get you graduated, so if you would like to do this for your own case, be sure to change the payoffs to your desired level of detail and/or sophistication.

I think I’ll be chasing some more shiny objects until these payoffs change for me.

“You’re just making games.” – The Importance of Marketing in Our Controversial Science

(This is a cross-post from my entry in the Liquid Narrative blog at NC State University)

I have been on the receiving end of the title quote.  Often, I receive it verbatim.  Other times, I receive it in spirit.  As games researchers, we walk a fine line between art and science.  In my short academic career, I have found that justifying our work to scholars of the arts and the humanities is not as difficult as justifying our work to scholars in the sciences; not for lack of scholarly rigor in the arts and humanities, but rather because artists and humanists already know that it is important to look at games for what they represent, as well as their ubiquity and communicative power.  Our peers in the sciences, it seems, need a little more goading.  However, it is not their fault.  It is ours.

I admit, on the surface, it is difficult to imagine how the scientific process fits inside the machinery of video games. Games are primarily known for entertainment, and so, what possible science could there be?  What compounds the problem is that it is very easy to imagine that video games are a waste of a person’s time.  My anecdotal experience is very telling of this:

Exhibit A:  at a conference that was not focused on games, I had the very challenging experience of explaining my research to a community of scientists and non-scientists.  I had the opportunity to engage with some of the brightest minds the world has to offer…who (without fail) asked of my research:  “where is the science?”  I smiled every time, and tried as best I could to explain the complexity and the implications of my work.  Some got it (and were genuinely excited), others didn’t (and diplomatically dismissed the work).  Those who didn’t are especially memorable, for reasons I won’t go into here.

Exhibit B:  when I applied for the Graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, I received praise for the general quality of my application.  However, I got one specific bit of feedback that I will never forget:

“his proposed research topic – digital games – may be less critical for the society.”

My gut reaction to these experiences is always the same:  diplomatic anger, followed by personal disappointment.  It is not easy to get a Ph.D. in the first place, and it becomes more difficult to justify its worth when a community of scholars cannot see why games research is real science.  My mentors have often said that it is important to have thick skin and mental toughness for getting a Ph.D.  However, nothing really quite prepares you for a scientific community that routinely reminds you that “your problem is not worth solving.”

It’s easy to say:  “The scientists are bound by the shackles of the old guard.  They’re old, and close-minded.  They have lost touch with what is really important.  They don’t realize that games are a multi-billion dollar industry, eclipsing Hollywood and providing a pillar for the U.S. rebound economy.”  All these comments and many more are whispered in the halls of game research centers, and screamed in the heads of the scientists that study games.  However, I do not fault scientists for being skeptical; a healthy dose of skepticism is necessary for science.  It is our own fault.  I blame ourselves for not knowing enough marketing.  And I don’t mean marketing in terms of buzzwords (adding the terms “crowdsourcing” or “metaspectral” add fluff and will only impress marketers by trade),  I mean marketing as in “communicating science.”  We are not the only ones under this pressure; the government funding agencies have recently come under fire for funding basic science research that has no apparent immediate benefit or application.  This cascades into making video game funding especially hard to come by (who wants to fund a bunch of graduate students to make games?)

We games researchers are not doing enough to communicate the importance of our science, both to our scientific peers and the (much greater) non-scientific community.  And who could blame us?  We already know that it sucks to talk to scientists that look down upon your work.  As junior scientists, we seek experiences that help us grow professionally.  Pungent criticism stunts growth if you’re not prepared to handle it (and junior scientists, myself included, often aren’t).    This leads us to become a recluse of the general community – we prefer hanging out with our own crowd; publishing in blogs, conferences and journals devoted to games research, preparing posters that other games researchers will appreciate, and eventually establishing a network of games researchers.  This has to stop.

Rather than making the critical feedback personal and seeking the relative security of the games research community, I have set myself the goal of improving my science communication, actively seeking ways to engage and publish in other communities and I urge all games scientists to do the same.  The mindset of “they don’t understand and therefore they are close-minded” is not helpful nor productive.  Instead, ask yourself what I ask myself every time I encounter someone critical of my work:  “what am I not communicating that makes my audience think this is trivial or not worth doing?”  This becomes an issue of developing a deep understanding of your work, as well as anticipating potential criticisms, and knowing your audience, challenging aspects of research that are nonetheless do-able.  When someone tells you that you are just developing games, the correct response is:  “It may seem like it, but this is why it’s so much more than that: …”

The SVN Model of Scientific Writing

It has been far too long since I actually coded something, and I miss it.  I actually enjoy creating software.  It’s part puzzle-solving, part artistic expression.  I have, however, been advancing my Ph.D. research.  So, in an attempt to justify my lack of software, I thought of a way to think of my research in terms of software development.

All it is is a simple epiphany.  Advancing research is like software development.  Instead of committing code, you write a research paper.  And thus, the SVN Model of Scientific Writing was born (in my head).  For the uninformed, SVN (short for Apache Subversion) is a software version control system, a tool that facilitates the storage of software (in truth, any text file) for purposes of archival, retrieval, and distributed development.  I admit that, without understanding SVN, this post becomes tedious to go through.  Especially, since I want to (generally) keep my posts brief.

The SVN Model of Scientific Writing is simple:  each of the SVN commands has an interpretation in research.  Like the real SVN, there is an appropriate use of the rSVN commands (commands for the research-SVN system).  The rSVN commands are syntactically equivalent to SVN commands, and we will discuss some of the most basic commands in the sections that follow.

rsvn checkout

This command is used to pull a research trunk relevant to your research onto your local research.  Usually, this means finding a foundational paper or series of papers relevant to your field.  If you are into AI (as IA ((get it?)) ), you are in luck because there exists a website that contains a Reading List for the Qualifying Examination in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford (It’s from ’96, but the list is still very useful).

You should only need to do this once.  But research is full of fun moments like existential life crises, and discovering really cool applications completely outside of your field, so you may need to execute rsvn checkout several times.

Also, you may need to do this both for the general field and for your depth area.

rsvn update

When you are done checking out the foundational paper / series of papers, you will probably execute rsvn update, in an attempt to find work which has progressed from that starting point.  This is where the wonderful tool Google Scholar comes in.  Type in the foundational paper’s name in Google Scholar, and click on the “Cited by…” link to begin your rsvn update.

rsvn add

When you have progressed in your research, you execute this command by submitting a paper for publication.  You normally won’t add incomplete works in the svn, and the same goes for rsvn.  Execute this command when you have completed a measurable quanta of research work.

rsvn commit

Like most development environments, to earn the right to commit the file, you must demonstrate that the work is as bug free as possible and that it accomplishes a specific measurable task.  This is where peer-review comes in.  If the peer-review process comes back with a favorable result, then you will execute rsvn commit by submitting the camera-ready copy of your paper.

 

Those are some of the basic commands you will execute.  The number of svn commands is (currently) much greater than the number of rsvn commands.  I am, however, interested in seeing more mappings for some of the other svn commands, and I may come back to revise this list as those mappings become clear.

The problem with being precise

I love science.  Science demands precision.  I should love precision.

I don’t like being precise; at least, not around people I’m not familiar with.  I feel I come across as a jerk.  At least, that’s my theory of mind of the person I am talking to when I am precise.  I always envision the opposite party in conversation judging me how I used to judge people when they were being precise.  I have only recently begun to enjoy being absolutely precise in my wording and speaking.

Why?  Because people immediately associate precision with pedantry.  And pedantry is bad; at least, people don’t seem to appreciate a pedant.  In fact, the dictionary on my laptop defines “pedantic” as:

a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning.

I don’t think that’s fair.  If you are trying to present an artefact of science, precision is necessary.  You can’t just say “people seemed to react differently in these two experimental groups” – there must be some way of demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that a phenomenon was observed as evidenced by a particular data set.  Being chastised for being precise is probably a remnant of the time when jocks ruled the Earth and being nerdy was still uncool.  To be precise is to desire understanding, to be elegant in thought and to be clear in conviction.

Next time you think that someone is pedantic, think instead that the same person is just being precise.  You might see them differently.