The Human/Computer Interaction Design group at Indiana University seems interesting -- they're apparently working on the connections between the Human/Computer interface, both studying what's already being done between humans and technology and thinking of new ways for the two to interact. And they're concerned with abstracts, not specifics -- they look not at which buttons are being pressed, but why and how the software informs you what to do next.

One of the students in a class there has written up a cognitive account of what it's like to play World of Warcraft, which is a look at the game strictly through sense perception. Even if you're an experienced player, it's interesting to see the game in a new light like this -- rather than talk about the lore or the mechanics of gameplay, the writeup is all about the sights and sounds of the game, and how Blizzard's overall design clues you in to what can and can't be done in Azeroth.

There's probably lots more work that could be done on this as well -- lots of games, including World of Warcraft, use design elements like colors and lighting to nonverbally clue you in on the next door to go through or where to send your attention during a scene or fight. Most of their other cognitive accounts are about actual UI design, but there are many, many things left for those studying user interfaces to mine out of the way videogames express themselves to the user.

Metroblogging Azeroth put up a link to this very strange site called the "Synthetic World Initiative" out of Indiana University. I have to say, it looks pretty academic and obscure, but the base idea here is that they're organizing "expeditions" into uncharted territory of the modern world-- namely, virtual, online worlds just like the one we spend most of our time in, Azeroth.

The reason why they're doing this, however, isn't really clear. Their about page quotes Shakespeare a lot-- the end result is that they seem to be attempting to quantify these new online, virtual worlds in the same way unknown worlds were quantified back in the Age of Exploration. But here's the really interesting part: it seems like they're going to discover these online game worlds by playing a game of their own. They're going to research virtual worlds by creating and interacting in their own virtual world. They say they're "test[ing] the possibility that professionals engaged in a properly designed game would generate both entertainment and productivity at the same time."

Which is a fancy way of saying, I guess, that they're going to play their own roleplaying game, while playing online games and studying them (sweet gig if you're a social sciences college student). For their first "Kuriaan Expedition" (named after, I gather, something from their created game), they're meeting in World of Warcraft, over on the Alliance side of the Silver Hand server (on Sunday, they're leading an expedition into the Deadmines). At any rate, it should be interesting to see what analysis comes out of it-- odds are they won't find much we don't know about, but maybe their work will help to correct public perception of online gaming. And hey, if you're over on Silver Hand, go give 'em a /wave for us.

Academic weblog Terra Nova has a furiously raging debate going on with one of its recent posts, "The Horde is Evil". The original poster, Edward Castronova, claims that the Horde races are inherently evil -- "One element of this is the fact that the words 'troll' and 'orc' and 'undead' have implied evil creatures for as long as those words have been in use in the English language (since the 9th century in the case of 'orc'). No one, not even mighty Blizzard, can un-do the meaning of a word in a matter of a few years." -- and that we should consciously be aware of the evil inherent in a "bad" character when we play it.

The comments thread is filled with denials, mainly from Horde players, citing examples such as Shrek the ogre and the Tauren race's inherent nobility as refutations of this hypothesis. It's an interesting point to think about. If you play Horde, do you do so because you like the power-driven, warmongering, "evilness" of the races? Or as an antidote to the Alliance's sickly-sweet blathering about the Light? Or perhaps just as an experiment, to explore the whole game?