2.5 All the world’s a game: virtual worlds, interactivity, convergence

This week we are looking at virtual worlds and the way people participate in these worlds. Ornebring's (2007) article on ARG's (Alternate reality games) discusses he way in which people get involved in ARG's through their fandom of the original text. The example used in the article is the television show Alias and the many ARG's set up to market it by the broadcasting companies - plus the fan created ones. The article looks at what ARG's are and what it means to be apart of one. I believe ARG's are an experience rather than a persons inability to detach from a virtual world. These worlds are created by the media and are extended by internet and I don't feel as though they pose a threat to the mental health of individuals using these worlds. A good point made was that ARG's and other fan fiction fill gaps left in storylines and plots by the original texts which helps people who have become huge fans to find a form of closure. 

The second reading for the week looks at the sharing of digital commons. The debate in general is wether or not corporations lose property rights when there is voluntary and outsider input into these commons, which generally generates a more creative and exciting experience for the users. I did stuggle slightly understanding the internet in terms of being a common ground, as the internet is not as tangible as land for example, so I did some more research and found this great vid explaining commons, the way they are run (and should be)  - but more importantly, it helps understand how the internet can be utilised as a common:

I think its important that corporations producing software have rights when it comes to the use and accessibility of their works - but at the same time I feel like we are guided by intense copyrighting laws that there shouldn't be too much of a debate on that. Creative commons licensing is great because it helps these big corporations realise that the outsider input can sometimes assist is the promotion and quality of their products and it gives us the right to do so.

My remediation is almost done. I have used the screen capture function in Windows to capture images from the film clip, now I am working on them in Photoshop - playing around with filters. I have pretty much just used Photoshop for it at this point and am playing around with the tools available on Flickr for the upload. It looks like uploading the images as a set is my best option at this stage.

Coleman, S. & Dyer-Witheford, N (2007) Playing on the digital commons: collectiveities, capital and contestation in videogame culture. Media Culture Society 29: 934

Örnebring, H (2007) Alternate reality gaming and convergence culture: The case of alias. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 10(4): 445-462