Posted by dkidwell on January 2nd, 2009 — Posted in parenting
16 months into our Xbox 360’s life and there it is - The Red Ring of Death.  H. was out slaying zombies on New Year’s Eve (a worthy pasttime), and 5 minutes later, we’ve got the evil eye coming from the Xbox.  We bought the Elite model in hopes that we’d avoid this fate, but seems that didn’t help.
The evening continues as we make homemade eggnog and await the coming of the New Year with family.  Discussion and debates abound, with an occassional pause to go unplug the thing yet again in hopes that “this time!” the Xbox will cheerily come back to fully zombie-slaying mode. Nope!
The discussion: how long have we had this thing? Should it be under warranty? Wasn’t this issue solved by the time we late adopted bought ours?
The debate:  Is the a class-action suit we can join? Will the store take it back? Which store did we buy it at anyway? If they can’t fix it, what then? How long are we willing to go without one?
For the moment, we’ve opted to neglect the box, finish painting the upstairs, and spend the boys gaming time in Warhammer Online.  But once the paint is dry, we’ll need to try and get it fixed. This silly box is a big draw for my son’s highschool buddies and we’ve really got a nice selection of games for the things.
Sigh, I suppose I should just get in line behind all the Microsoft Vista support requests and wait and see?
Posted by dkidwell on March 31st, 2008 — Posted in parenting
Just arrived home from Seoul - and since I haven’t had time to actually blog about it I’ll post a quick teaser…
I found the most wonderful toy store - Kinki Robot- built for geeks and collectors. Here you can find small plastic figures that are the 2008 equivalent of the “Smurf” figurines in the 80s. Fascinated with the Simpsons? Irresitably attracted to Ugly Dolls? Any form of anime is likely to have a figurine set to match.
Ah - and how does a little store like this make any money? The attraction of collections - every figurine is sold in a randomized box, complete with rare items. A figurine runs $5-10 dollars, so to finish off a collection of a dozen you are likely to drop a hefty amount of won.
I expect I’ll be back - the 3 figures I brought home were a huge hit!
Earlier today, 240 characters in the massively multi-player online game World of Warcraft gathered together for a rally that spanned continents in their virtual world. Even as I type that, I realize just how foreign most of what I’ve just said must sound. But yes - 240 players in a video game gathered to rally for Ron Paul.
This is likely to be the first time my 14 year old son hears of a candidate for U.S. President outside of the usual droning of adults, teachers and news pundits. Which means - this is likely to be the first he hears from his peers - his constituency.
That’s a mighty powerful thing.
Not too many 14 year olds are politically aware, and those that are likely to have parents that talk about it. I’ve got no research to back that up, but I doubt it would take me long to find some. I’m just going to rattle off some of the things I find really striking about this - bear with me, or go look at something cool instead:
Gathering 240 characters together takes considerable management and planning. You’re asking 240 accounts (keeping in mind that some folks have more than one account) to gather and hop online for a coordinated activity. Most activities in game require 5 people, and for larger events 40 may get together. Rarely would you need to gather this many. There’s a whole chain of logistics involved in actually making this happen, and it’s every bit as impressive as real life rallies.
Players are considering moving their characters to play in this particular group even if that means changing servers. That may not sound like a big deal, but some of these players have years of work built up in their primary character, and uprooting him to move to a new server is not trivial (it costs about $25 but the real costs are in leaving your community in the old neighborhood.)
Over the years, communities of players ebb and flow. Factions within groups crop up and guilds rise and fall. But what if guilds congregated to join in something deeper and rooted in the real world - say an ideology of freedom and limited government? If I were Blizzard (or a community manager in any game) I’d be proactively looking for ways to foster that. As a mom, I’m planning to ask my son about the guild tonite and see if he’s heard of it. From there I expect we’ll wander into a dialogue about the monetary policy, Ron Paul thoughts on the gold standard and the relevance of that for gold in World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft has 9 Million + players and as such, 240 characters isn’t that many. But, considering the subscription costs of those characters, just that group is paying ~ $3,600 a month to play. Some of those may be 10 day trial accounts, but I’d be willing to bet most of them are not. Not sure where I was going with that thought, but if I was managing a political campaigns internet efforts, I’d be looking at that kind of thing.
Gamers as a constituency are an interesting lot. Tech savvy and engaged (on their terms) in participating in online activities, I’d be wanting to reach out to that group to rock the vote.
The activity in game echoes in forums and blog postings where the players hang out. Not only are they talking about the candidate in game, but they are expounding on it, linking and, most likely, verbally abusing one another on any number of related sites.
I think this is the beginning of a very interesting avenue for public discourse and activity. I absolutely love the idea that a group of gamers is participating in our political process and bringing that discourse into their virtual world.
If there is one thing I’d hope for the political inclinations of my kids, it’s that they are knowledgeable and participate in the political process. Rallies in World of Warcraft bode very well for that.
Posted by dkidwell on December 15th, 2007 — Posted in parenting
If 15 years ago someone told me how I was going to spend the morning of December 15th, 2007, I would dismissed them in a haughty fashion:
“Donna, in 15 years you will wake up at 5:45am on a Saturday morning to stand in line with a bunch of tired parents waiting patiently for concert tickets for the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus.
Not only that, but you will have arrived late to work the morning before so that you could get a wristband that guaranteed you a chance to stand in line the next morning.
You’ll wait in line for over 4 hours, only to leave with an Achy Breaky Heart and no tickets.”
Remember Mousetrap? The crazy contraption game that never quite stayed together like you expected it to?
This is a photo from the Life Size Mouse Trap at the Makerfaire in Austin. The Faire is science fair run by carnies - complete with catapulting pumpkins, brain hacking devices and bobbin lace. Really, tremendous fun. More photos are up at our flickr site - just click on the photo and off you’ll go. Or you can just click here.
