I find myself a bit torn when reading Delwiche. I love the idea of building a course centered around ethnographic studies in virtual worlds, but I am concerned with the steep learning curve that MMOs tend to have. I would imagine it would be difficult to build out salient research questions about a virtual world when one has only spent a five hours a week for a few weeks playing. To me, that feels like visiting a country for a week and then proposing a research project based on the culture you’ve observed; yeah, that’s probably enough time to pick up on a few surface features of that culture, but it takes considerably more immersion to get at research questions that aren’t grasping at surface-level stuff. But perhaps this isn’t as much of an issue as I’m anticipating?

I’m not a big fan of the idea of using Second Life or other sandbox games for game-creation, however. If you’re going to teach a course on virtual game design, and you’re asking your students to learn a new platform for creating games, why wouldn’t you instead teach something like GameSalad or Game Maker Studio? I just hate the idea of spending a whole class teaching students to create within a platform that likely won’t be used again outside of the course. Yes, there is the possibility of significant transfer of skills between game design in a sandbox game and actual game design, but I guess I just have a hard time justifying teaching how to use a set of tools if those tools are going to be largely useless outside of the confines of that specific class. Considering both game-maker programs and Second Life will likely have some learning curve involved, wouldn’t it be better to teach using the medium that affords students the best chance at continuing their work after the course has ended?