A Look Back at Being A Student of Video Games

Ever since I was young, I was fascinated with video games. I hated playing them, but I would watch my brothers for hours as they journeyed to far away mystical lands or deep into space to fight aliens. It didn't matter, as long as I could just sit and watch as the hard bosses killed them over and over again, until they were so frustrated they quit. It was then, in fourth grade, that I decided I would pursue a career in video game design. I really just wanted to tell stories to people, but felt that writing a book would take way too long for my own patience. Looking back on the decision now, I laugh, because creating a game can take years for teams of up to 200 people to create.

So I might not be the best at making decisions, but I have stuck to that decision since then. It's that decision that drew me to UNC Charlotte, which was local and actually had a Video Game Design certificate I could graduate with alongside my Computer Science Degree. For the first couple of years it was all about learning the basics, which in all honesty I had no interest in. I just wanted to start creating games.

So once day one of Intro to Game Design (ITCS 4230 for those who are curious) I could barely hold in my excitement. It was finally time to make games and get going. And then Dr. Micheal Youngblood entered the room. Within a week people started to drop. We didn't create video games right away, but rather created board games. I was almost heart broken, but I persevered.

An Image of a card from the board game I made

After one month, we were able to jump into code. And code we did. Every week a new assignment was due. Every week new techniques were learned. And every week someone else dropped the course. This sounds bad, but it is just the nature of game design. It's a lot of work. All of that ignorance and ambivalence to the basics came to bite me in the behind as we shifted from simple sprite animation to AI coding and collision detection. Some weeks I wanted to cry as I started aimlessly at two in the morning, coding as best as I could. I spent hours in his office learning new software and better ways of coding. It hurt, a lot. But it was a good hurt. The kind of burn you feel after a great work out.

Then our final month came: one month, a team of four, one game. After hitting the ground running and working tirelessly for three weeks with plenty of stumbling blocks (including one group member refusing to participate), the final week came. The final hurdle. I went to class in the morning, to work in the afternoon, and to the Video Game Lab, located in Woodward Hall, at night, usually until 4 am, and started all over again the next day. The day our project was due, we had stayed up all night, polishing bugs and refining our paperwork and preparing our presentation. With class at 9:30 am, we slept for an hour and a half before downing a cup of coffee and walking into class. We presented our game live, showing a quick 2-player run through. After the presentations, we were to sit down with Dr. Youngblood as he played our game, one on one. The nerves were unbearable as he tore through the game. He then sat down each student in our group, one at a time, and had us display the code we worked on as well as explain what it does. After being under his keen eye for five more minutes, we were free. And we recieved an A for our final project. All of that hard work. All those nights awake and weary days. All the caffeine and junk food and upset stomachs and headaches. All of it was worth it.

A sample image from the Final Project, named Tower Trouble. Check out the link above to play.

I have moved on since that semester to Advanced Game Design and finally Game Lab, but that first semester pretty much sums up my thoughts on game design and working towards becoming a game designer. I will never forget anything I learned in that class, both the lessons taught intentionally (I'm pretty sure I can animate a sprite in any coding language given enough time) to the ones that were not so blatant. In order to get far it requires work, a lot of work. There will be sleepless nights. There will be pain. But it's all worth it. It's worth it to see people enjoy playing your games.

So where to from here? After graduation I hope to gather a small group of close classmates and start creating games of our own to release. With the lift off of mobile gaming, the entire landscape has changed. Large triple-A companies are going bankrupt as the little guy makes small games for phones and computers and prospers. Larger corporations, such as Sony, are turning their large console lines over to the indie gamer as much as the triple-A. Now is the time, and I plan to take it. With a little bit of pain. And a little less sleep.

Brent Metcalfe

Virtual Communities Research at UNC Charlotte

I walked into Associate Professor of Psychology Anita Blanchard’s office at the Unviersity of North Carolina at Charlotte and immediately felt like I was talking to an old friend. She was warm, welcoming, and eager to talk with me about her research on virtual communities.

Blanchard's research includes the interaction and community functions of professional and virtual communities. In other words, Blanchard studies how members of these online "communities" interact, develop groups, socialize in these groups, and the technological features that contribute to the success and feelings among the group and group members. Blanchard also seeks to understand the role of identity in these groups and organizations for group functionality.

After analyzing and researching Blanchard's research I realized I'm pretty social online. I knew I was active but I never stopped to consider if I myself am an active community member in my online groups of interaction. So I began to analyze my own personal online activity.

Monday nights after the Bachelor (my guilty pleasure) I am online reading about what other viewers of the show think; Tuesdays are my Parenthood nights where I am actively engaging in discussion about my life as a parent and homemaker;  Wednesday I’m usually on Pinterest looking for new recipes to try during the week to please my husband’s picky appetite; Thursdays I’m usually scoping out the Carolina Parent magazine blogs for weekend adventures with the kids; Fridays I’m scoping out where my kids can eat free, and then religiously throughout the week I’m checking my Twitter feed and Facebook page. This doesn’t take into consideration my comments on parenting.com, my Moodle account here at school, or my church’s website.

So what do my online habits say about me besides the fact that I spend WAY too much time online socializing? Well, according to Blanchard’s research, I fit right into a couple virtual communities. Included in these are my Facebook community of high school friends where I post regularly about our upcoming class reunion and engage often about our small town of Salisbury, North Carolina; my Linked In account, where I interact on a professional level about social media, technology, and the aspects of being a professional communicator; my meet up account that I joined when I moved to the Huntersville area to interact with other moms who also have two small children; my Twitter community, where we share blogs we've recently read and intellectual conversation;  and my Google+ community group of colleagues and friends from UNC, my alma mater. When I left her office I was quite comforted knowing that I have a whole forum of people who are interested in similar things.

The term "virtual community" refers to several different types of computer-mediated communication groups on platforms such as Etsy, Facebook, newsgroups, and Google plus. Essentially, any online group we interact with on a regular basis has the potential to become a “community." It is important to note that while virtual groups can be communities not all virtual groups are virtual communities. For instance my husband and I started a meet up account in Chapel Hill when we lived there. We had 30 people in our virtual group however we never interacted online or formed the social aspects of a community. While our accounts existed on this platform the participation and interaction in our group didn't form the structure of a community.

According to Blanchard’s research people need to identify where virtual communities exist on a virtual platform. Facebook itself is the platform; my individual page can become my community. But, in order to identify as a community Blanchard refers to the argument of another researcher in the field named Quentin Jones regarding "virtual communities" and "virtual settlements" and states: “We can understand virtual communities by understanding the artifacts of its virtual settlement: its postings, structure and content.”

Blanchard cites Jones (1997) proposal that a virtual settlement exists when there are:
A.) a minimal level of interactivity
B.) public interactions in public space
C.) a variety of communicators
D.) there is a minimal level of sustained membership over a period of time

A "virtual settlement'?

Additionally, Jones adds that even though virtual communities and virtual settlements are conceptually different and separate (a virtual settlement is the place in cyberspace where the interaction happens; the virtual community is the people interacting), if someone finds a virtual settlement, then they have found a virtual community. The feelings and social relationships that are developed within a virtual settlement help to distinguish a "virtual community" from a "virtual group." For instance Salisbury, North Carolina was my town (settlement) and my neighborhood of Summerfield, with my friends and neighbors, was my community within that settlement.

Blanchard defines the psychological state virtual communities produce as "a sense of community" and delves deeper than Jones did, stating that a “sense of community is a key element in establishing a virtual community." Therefore, Blanchard poses that while virtual settlements are necessary for virtual communities they may not be sufficient for continuing to foster a virtual community.

Blanchard focuses her research on answering a specific question: Should blogs be considered virtual communities too and how can we analyze these blogs? Blanchard identifies these characteristics by posing why virtual communities are important, what exactly the characteristics of a virtual community entail, and how blogs fit into these definitions.

According to Blanchard, virtual communities are important for social reasons. Blanchard has looked at blogs ranging from those aimed at multisport athletes, cat lover groups, parenting groups, medical health groups, and several blogs in between. She used her personal experience in her research -- Blanchard found groups she identified with at and started there.

When social media first took off, many social activists argued that this platform of communication would replace face-to-face relationships because people would isolate themselves from their neighbors. In opposition to those claims, Blanchard found those who would argue virtual communities have the added potential to connect people with similar interests from around the world. Blanchard has also found that virtual communities can increase involvement in person-to-person activism as well. Blanchard’s research highlights several positive social effects of virtual communities and the participation they evoke.

Deeper than the study of social relationships, Blanchard also explores the emotional connection virtual communities foster. One of my favorite blogs 65 red roses really captures this notion that an emotional connection to a blog can be very rewarding.

I don’t have cystic fibrosis and I didn’t know anyone with the disease but I felt an emotional connection to the girl in this blog because she was my age at the time; she showed us how real the disease was, and what it felt like to lose a battle. I often referred back to blog posts on this blog when I lost my grandfather to cancer because I was able to connect to others who knew the pain of the loss from a disease. Blanchard explores the notion of a virtual emotional connection by studying how participants experience feelings within the community and their emotional attachment to that community.

“When participants experience feelings of community, they are more likely to increase or maintain their participation in the virtual communities,” Blanchard writes.

“Additionally, the lack of this feeling among participants may be the key to explaining the frequent demise of many content management community groups,” Blanchard adds. “A virtual community, therefore, is more likely to be self-sustaining than a regular virtual group, and sustainability is a goal important to both for the sponsors and the participants of any particular virtual group." Blanchard continues by stating the importance of virtual communities is both practical and social.

The most exciting thing about Blanchard's research is the growing prevalence of the internet and how we receive our information. I think my newest addiction is Pinterest because it introduces me to so many wonderful ideas, recipes, and crafts I would have never thought to explore. What connects you to an online community? What online communities are you actively involved in? What keeps you actively involved in these communities?

(Moderator's Note: Dr. Blanchard will be contributing her own post to this blog about her research activity in the near future. -- JH)

What IS Research?

Welcome to UNC Charlotte’s research communications blog! We’re just starting, and that means that the entries here are, well… a work in progress. As active readers on the web, we have noticed that blogs are like children, puppies and scientific research programs – they need to develop naturally and a little informally. Like a lab proceedure that needs to react to incoming data, sometimes blog projects fail if you expect them to follow a rigid plan. In other words, this is an experiment with no expected outcome except, um… to show you something cool that none of us knew about before.


Sometimes, discovery is messy.


I’m Jim Hathaway, and I’m a long-time science writer who happens to direct research communication at UNC Charlotte. You will be hearing from me from time to time on this blog, but, with any luck, you will be hearing more from people who are even deeper in the trenches of science and technology at UNC Charlotte than I am. Among these others, you will definitely be reading posts from Christina Kaemmerlen and Brent Metcalfe, student reporters who work in my office, ferreting out science and technology stories on campus. They are writers, but they are also simultaneously engaged in university research in their academic lives, which makes their voices probably more interesting than mine.

Black-footed ferrets, an endangered species. Brent and Christina are not endangered. Photo courtesy of the National Science Foundation.

Beyond the three of us, we also hope to have regular guest blogs from UNC Charlotte faculty and other students who are actively engaged in their fields. As a university, we are already blessed with several active bloggers (see the blog roll on this page) and there is certainly room for more. (Yes, UNC Charlotte community, this is an invitation! -- If you are a faculty or graduate student researcher and want to show off  your work, email me at jbhathaw@uncc.edu and we will get you on the schedule!)

Does this all sound too-too open, messy and freeform? Well, in case you’ve never thought about it this way, that’s exactly what university research really is: the active, on-going, opportunistic, creative and chaotic process of hunting new knowledge, whatever and wherever that might be. Frankly, the very nature of university research often disturbs people who don’t understand the process and expect something more staid and business-like. Reseach is exploration and no real researcher can tell you in advance exactly what they are going to find. One of our goals here is to help you experience and understand the sometimes wild and quirky world of academic research, in the hope that you will also see its glories and then be interested and, perhaps, as excited as we are.

If you pay attention to politics or editorial comments, you’ve heard the criticism: “Why are university researchers studying (insert peculiar/obscure/unintelligible topic here) and why should my tax dollars be supporting it?” This common comment especially embarrasses us science writers – not because the criticism is embarrassing, but because it clearly means that we haven’t effectively done our job in showing you why this seemingly odd/trivial/strange/silly piece of knowledge really matters. In the last presidential election, one of the candidates hit such a nerve of mine with a campaign joke. He heard about researchers gathering DNA from grizzly bears in our national parks, and he quipped that this was "CSI Yellowstone" -- obviously a silly  and wasteful use of federal money. A science writer should have been able to immediately explain to the public that the research was, in fact, very relevant to people living in Montana and Idaho, where there are populations of wild bears that need to be carefully monitored and managed. Grizzlies are dangerous animals who are not easily located and approached in the vast wilds of the Rockies. They breed secretly, producing new, untagged bears, and they can range over hundreds of miles. Just about the only way to keep track of them is by looking at their DNA through the hair they leave behind on trees. See? This is not as silly/pointless/wasteful as it first seemed. In fact, it's critical research if you are a rancher concerned that your range land may be harboring an overly dense population of bears.

A grizzly. You might want to know how many of these are in the woods.

Okay then, you might ask, but what about the effective use of our limited tax dollars? Research is expensive -- why can’t such a big expenditure be limited exclusively to practical research topics that are economically or socially important? Why study bears when what the public really wants is a better cell phone?

The charge of obscurity/triviality/frivolity might well have been leveled a several decades ago against some materials researchers who were fanatically engaged in using multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art research equipment to lay down ultra-thin layers of atoms on top of other materials. They were curious, among other things, about electrical properties on the atomic scale, a topic which was, while interesting to physicists and some visionary electrical engineers, hardly an area of concern in the average American household. If this had been federally-funded and a politician had objected to this obvious “boondoggle,” the research might have lost critical funding and the subsequent loss of that science is something that you probably wouldn’t expect anyone to miss… except perhaps in Silicon Valley – which actually didn’t exist yet, and never would without this foundational research. And so would have evaporated the multiple futures of the integrated circuit, the PC, the internet, the cell phone, the smartphone -- and all the industries and culture these technologies spawned.

The writer, working at this blog. Odd to think that none of this
 would be possible without the arcane experiments of
physicists working at Bell Labs in the 1950's.

My point, of course, is that new knowledge is what makes possible new advances in human civilization, and it is often impossible to know whether or not some new truth is going to be valuable/useful/important until it is discovered…or even long after. New knowledge is like that – you often don’t know it is important or valuable ... until you find that it is. Some of the infinitely varied university investigations you read about on this blog may still strike you as arcane or weird, but we hope you will join us in keeping an open and receptive mind to their potential value. If the stories provoke or inflame you, please let us know, though we hope you will hold your harshest boos until the future has spoken.

Perhaps on occasion, you’ll feel inclined to cheer – that would be nice too.