Agreed on all counts, Bart. You might find this earlier thread on anecdotalism specifically to be of interest. Ah ok... I had a vague memory of this. After rereading the old thread I am sorry to see that Doug Thomas' defense of the anecdote qua anecdote was not taken up with more vigor (i'd be up for this on a different thread) but leaving that aside I am curious about where Thomas' Maxwellianism is meant to take us. There's nothing wrong with the ecumenical plea for mutual respect in game studies... why we've just finished with the Charles Taylor report on 'reasonable accommodation' here in Quebec. Nothing wrong with making reasonable accommodation part of the charter of game/VW studies but I would suggest there are some sticky problems with this when it comes to carving out the institutional backbone for this new field we are in.

Epistemological tolerance is nice but the liberal "let 1000 flowers bloom" approach does tend to hide the fact that some folks hold the purse strings. This amounts to a situation in which some scholars say go ahead and do that arty farty Maxwellian stuff but not in my backyard (or vice versa). Well the history of Anthropology testifies to this form of institutional liberalism and the field is severely balkanized into cultural and physical anthropologies as a result (see #2 below). In this age of shrinking page numbers and quicky blog posts we are tending to wear our methodological presuppositions too far down under our shirts.

There is no room or time left, it seems, for casuists, anecdotalists (is Doug the last one?), naturalistic ethnographers, logical positivists, empiricists of all stripes and heaven knows who else to explain the terms of their engagement to audiences who do not share those terms.... such a crucial thing in this interdisciplinary melting pot. This 'need for speed' condition will probably lead to a kind methodological balkanization also and to the victor go the spoils.

So far the interpretivists (my label for the entire artsy fartsy anecdotalistic collective of which I am one) in game/VW studies have been the nicer ones; smiling politely if knowingly when the jabs come. Well I’m feeling plucky today... why plead tolerance when we should just fight back. Hey back in the day, I did a tour in the "science wars" and I got me a high level toon that can pick off ADDs from any direction. You pull Thomas I got your back :) I think numbers carries more weight. It seems like I am asserting myself, whereas letters just seem to be offering up suggestions. No. That just doesn't work at all.

Bart wrote: "The biggest problem arises, and I think Thomas will agree, is when anecdotalists try to make generalizable claims from their situated analyses. If you are a hard core anecdotalist nothing exists (in any meaningful way) beyond the situatedness of the phenomenon anyway. The fallacy appears when folks try to match up verbatim anecdotes (suddenly called evidence) with demographic data say in an effort to say that the anecdote is particular support for a generality (pattern, hypothesis tec...) or vice versa -- when anecdotalists do this they can be justly accused of making all sorts of validity errors IMO."

Last time, I wrote about why, after decades of enjoyment, I have come to hate fantasy role-playing games (RPGs for short). The kind people at popular web site Slashdot linked to it, and a lot of people read it. Many people left comments, most of which said in great detail what an idiot I am. I fed on their hate, and it made me strong. But single-player RPGs have plenty of this too. So many of them fall prey to what I call Long Corridor Syndrome. At a certain point, late in the game, you can tell that the developers ran out of time, money and ideas. Boy.

Many single-player RPGs, even excellent ones, fall into this trap. My favorite example is BioWare's classic, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Great game. Lots of fun, overall. But even it makes you play for many hours before it lets you even get your hands on a light saber. I am SO grateful that, at long last, a computer game let me live my lifelong dream of NOT being a Jedi. That is why I am enjoying playing Company of Heroes so much. It's a real-time strategy game set in World War II. For the very first mission, you get to attack Omaha Beach. How cool is that? If it was an RPG, I'd have to spend 30 hours killing Nazi rats before I got to do anything that interesting. But back to the ongoing mission, explaining what makes role-playing games uniquely terrible.

Multiplayer RPGs have tons of this. Before you can fight an exciting boss and collect treasure, you have to pay a time tax wading through a bunch of trash. And, while everyone hates it, it doesn't get better. For a while, the best World of Warcraft raid dungeons had very little trash, and it was all designed to be interesting and different. This is a thing of the past. Now, if you go to the forums to read discussion of the new expansion, you'll find endless reports of hours wasted in trash-clearing tedium. But single-player RPGs have plenty of this too. So many of them fall prey to what I call Long Corridor Syndrome.

Jonric: What is size of the player's party? What range of characters is available, and to what degree can they be customized? Jeff Vogel: Your group can have up to four characters, though if you go with less, I would suggest turning the difficulty level down. The game is completely skill-based. There are 10 basic builds you can start with - including the completely customized route - but after that, you can build your characters however you want. For extra customization, there are three races and 15 traits. You can mix and match these to make characters who are stronger wizards, archers and so on. There are hundreds of quests in Avernum 5, from minor hunting side tasks to huge arcs that span the entire game.

Combat is turn-based. It is designed to be fast-paced and fun, and to allow a lot of variety. We worked hard to make a ton of unusual special encounters... such as monsters that attack in waves or have unique abilities, and foes that require you to do special things to be able to damage them. There isn't a lot of trash monsters or repeated, cookie-cutter encounters in this game. You won't go very long at all before you find something new or different to fight. There are hundreds of different creature types, each with its own abilities, weaknesses and tactics. There are the chitrachs, an infestation of ravenous bugs that likes to attack in Starship Troopers-style waves. There are the sentinels of Tranquility, special statues that the archmage Solberg made to defend his area of Avernum. When they malfunction, however, they can be very dangerous to anyone nearby... including, of course, you.