Mark and I have collaborated on a number of things these last few years, and now that he has finished his doctoral work (woot!), I invited him to guest author and summarize his work for us. Mark is another virtual worlds researcher who relies on traditional anthropological methods to understand social dynamics and learning. He's a great researcher and an extremely passionate gamer.
Using ethnographic methods, Mark Chen focuses on teamwork, communication, and expertise development in situated gaming cultures. Currently, Mark is a post-doctoral scholar at the UW Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, working with computer science folks to study player learning through science and math games that take advantage of massive amounts of computational and human power. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, College of Education, looking at the practices of a group of gamers in the online game World of Warcraft. Prior to doctoral work, Mark was the webmaster and a web game developer for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, OR. He holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Reed College and grew up in the Bay Area as a child of the 80s. You can read more about Mark on his blog...
Mark's also a phenomenal artist.
Posted by: Lisa Galarneau | Oct 28, 2010 at 13:17
Welcome, Mark! :-)
Posted by: greglas | Oct 28, 2010 at 13:49
Thanks so much! Now that I've graduated, I hope to get back to doing art, too. :)
Posted by: markchen | Oct 28, 2010 at 13:55
An outstanding choice! Grats, Mark!
Posted by: John_carter | Oct 28, 2010 at 15:28
呵呵，有意思
Posted by: 苹果醋 | Oct 29, 2010 at 00:25
I hope to get back to doing art, too. :)
优文网 好秘书
Posted by: sina | Oct 29, 2010 at 04:10
Hola Mark
Have you ever looked at how 'voice' affects teamwork in a MMO? Specifically, whether a group leader's voice when played over some VOIP tool affects perceived leadership ability?
Or put more simply, can a guy with a squeaky voice be a better leader when he doesn't use voice?
Posted by: thoreau | Oct 29, 2010 at 10:04
Hi thoreau,
That is quite interesting, though I haven't personally looked at the effects of different leaders' voices. My study was on one group of players so I didn't really have the necessary ingredients for a comparison study (though we did have various subsets raid with different leaders for the different runs). The leadership roles and tasks were divided up in a way that was organic out of our existing network of players that we formed while leveling up. In other words, looking at voices with my group might have less power than looking at voice effects with PUGs.
Still, I believe there is some research on this topic... Or at least it's not the first time I heard the suggestion. Maybe someone here can chime in? Maybe Moses Wolfenstein looked at voice in his diss (also recently completed!) on leadership in WoW.
Posted by: markchen | Oct 29, 2010 at 14:02
Oh, and there's stuff about how voice can break anonymity for women or transgendered players... so maybe the performance of masculinity in voices do have an effect...
Posted by: markchen | Oct 29, 2010 at 14:05