Jane McGonigal no fan of lonely girl

[jhamer]

In her blog, Jane McGonigal, an academic who just finished an obscenely long dissertation on ARG (600+pages) and immersive/ persuasive play, has come out against Lonelygirl 15:

avantgame.blogspot.com/

She starts out by saying:

As someone who designs participatory experiences, often games with a serial narrative component, I think it's really important that we stop and look at the kind of participation and engagement actually engendered by projects that purport to solicit the collaboration of the audience.

She goes on to note that she has "spent a lot of time reading through pretty much every single comment left on the lonelygirl videos, the space where the audience was purportedly invited to help decide and direct the course of the narrative." After going through nearly all of she has this to say:

the level of hate, mean-spiritendess, crudeness and often downright misogeny of the majority of them is impossible to ignore.
As we talk about the “new art form” or “participatory culture” aspects of this project, I want to be very careful that we don’t fetishize the participation aspects of this experience that was had by a very few who may have intelligently, passionately and seriously investigated and responded to the texts and the media objects. I want instead to think about the mainstream experience of and participation in this project and the success of the platform provided for engagement.

She concludes by asking: "Is this really the birth of a new art form? Is this a kind of social participation that we like or find interesting?" To which she answers, a limited no, since the interaction with the audience is not, in her estimation, meaningful.

But, that doesn't seem to be her real promblem with Lonelygirl, her real issues rest with the fact that she doesn't like the fact that they didn't say, upfront, that they were all actors, reading from a script:

"So I'll come out and say it: I don't personally like entertainment in the form of credible hoaxes."

[curiousgeorge]

Before she naysays so strongly, I would think it would behoove her to come to this site and set anchor for a while. She might find the kids here ones that she would want to eat lunch with. I know I do

[VanillaFlava]

Well, I would agree. Also for an academic who would actually consider a sentence like this ...

[...] I think it's really important we stop and look at the kind of participation and engagement actually engendered by projects that purport to solicit the collaboration of the audience.

I would challenge her for not stopping and looking long enough. YouTube is a bad environment for collaborative content, one for its simplistic communication tools, and also for it's rather vindictive and immature audience and etiquette.

The evidence in the comments on YouTube have no bearing on the meaningfulness of audience participation narratives, beyond the clear indication that moderation is obviously necessary.

I believe, she let her personal outrage cloud her academic reflection here. Poor form. Think with a mind casting a wider net, please.

[noasinger]

This fascinating blog entry isn't anti-lonelygirl15 at all. She is commenting about the behavioral patterns of its fan interaction to date and and also dispelling some of the distoted media hype.

It seems to more offer advice than to criticize. Most of the comments on the entry are in the same vein. The tone is that of more-experienced colleagues discussing the journeyman project of a newcomer to the field.

[sunbean]

I think she made some valid points. And, yes, this forum is by far the most civil, organized, fun, and thoughtful place to discuss lonelygirl et al, but it's not endorsed by the creators, and therefore not the obvious place to interact with them. Anyone new to the "game" won't know about this forum unless they look for it. And currently the official site isn't much of a clue to the supposed interactivity either. Maybe it will all get better with a bit of time. Overall though, the youtube comments I have read are fairly hateful/completey inane/exceedingly stupid and I have given up on looking at them. Kudos to the creators if they don't mind wasting a bunch of time reading about the numerous crimes people would like to commit against Bree/Jessica. It's a big turn off for me, I know that.

[piscin]

I've just added comments to her blog to explain how you tube comments aren't necessarily the ones to go by in terms of the "interactivity" element of this series. Of course, I gave major props to this site.

[jhamer]

noasinger said:

This fascinating blog entry isn't anti-lonelygirl15 at all. She is commenting about the behavioral patterns of its fan interaction to date and and also dispelling some of the distoted media hype.
It seems to more offer advice than to criticize. Most of the comments on the entry are in the same vein. The tone is that of more-experienced colleagues discussing the journeyman project of a newcomer to the field.

I would agree, if it were not for her hostility to the 'hoax' element, which many would cite as the singal most important factor in pushing LG15 into the mainstream. The game, for the mainstream media at leasted, focused of trying to determine whether she was really a home schooled tennager.

Moreover,

vanillaflava said:

I would challenge her for not stopping and looking long enough. YouTube is a bad environment for collaborative content, one for its simplistic communication tools, and also for it's rather vindictive and immature audience and etiquette.

I really don't think it would matter if the dialgue was more civilized, beause I don't think that is her primary objection to LG15: its, as stated above the 'Hoax' element. I would also go out on a limb and state that her dislike is not so much academic, but rather professional (http://www.42entertainment.com/jane.html).

To understand this point it is necessary to carefully read her article, "A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play" (I'm 90% though it as I write this).
avantgame.com/MCGONIGAL%20A%20Real%20Little%20Game%20DiGRA%202003.pdf

but let me start out by saying she constantly has to defend the position that there is a clear bight line distinction between reality and 'the game.' This defense, is a response to question about the mental affects playing may have:

Among many media critics and scholars, there is a growing suspicion of the unruliness of unbounded games and a wariness of their seemingly addictive and life-consuming scenarios. One of my colleagues, after hearing me out on the subject for several hours, dubbed immersive games “schizophrenia machines,” ostensibly designed in their sprawling and allencompassing
format for the sole purpose of turning previously sane players into
paranoid, obsessive maniacs. Over the past year, I have encountered some variation of this cynicism and apprehension at every digital culture and gaming conference I have attended and each talk I have given. “There are actual mental illnesses with exactly the same behaviors and thinking patterns as the players you describe,” was the first comment I fielded after one public lecture2. Another audience member asked me later, concerned for the players apparently lost in a play trance, “Do they ever wake up from these immersive games?” The words “delusional” and “scary” have come up in my post-talk conversations too many
times to count...

She also has legal issues when either the game gets to real, or the players view the game as "too" real:

Most recently, and much to my dismay, my research on immersive games was cited in a legal paper as evidence of the potential liabilities of massively-multiplayer games whose aesthetic is “too real.” The
paper’s authors warn, “Some players become so 'immersed' in the games […] that they forget that it is a game,” and speculate about a variety of public policies that might become necessary to protect such overzealous gamers from their own misguided belief

.

[VanillaFlava]

I would also say that the piece in general is very interesting and certainly urge you all to read it. I just think, that she made the mistake of not moving beyond YouTube in her (mainly) qualitative reserach.

I also pointed out that the focus on the 'real' vs. 'fake' is a particular element inherent in the YT userbase, because of their current growing and identity crisis.

I have also just commented. Oops, we both plug www.anchor-cove.net piscin. I hope they don't think we're spamming

Is the stats link already mentioned anywhere else? I think this is highly valuable:

stats.agentidea.com/

[jhamer]

I think her objection was more professional than academic because she shouldn’t feel that strongly about the actual reality of actor (Ironically she spends most of her professional time immersed in the study and execution of immersive plays and games.)

What annoyed be about the her post was that it dealt with the Bree in ontological terms, while one of the main points I took from reading Jane’s dissertation this morning was that referent ought to be viewed from a phenomenological perspective.
www.avantgame.com/mcgonigal_dissertation_chapter_1.pdf
www.avantgame.com/dissertation.htm

“He does not ask how real the image of a pipe is versus how real a material pipe is. Instead, he asks, what can we experience of an actual pipe that we cannot experience of its perceptually persuasive image?” Applied to our lonely Bree, the question becomes:
how would our “encounter” with Bree change if we knew that she was “merely an actress playing a part?” Put another way, what would we (the audience) experience differently if she did, in fact, exist outside of YT. Our encounters with her would have been the same prior to her media blitz.
I am not exactly sure it is fair to call the LG15 project a hoax. The producers never ‘really’ lied to anyone. Jessica never came out and said she wasn’t Bree, nor did Bree say she wasn’t Jessica. When an outside person ask Bree a question, Bree responded in character.


[still reading the second chapter of her dissertation as I post, finish thought when finish reading.]