For my player profile, I was assigned to the Cannith server of Dungeons and Dragons Online where I was engaged by some players from outside of the United States, all of whom were European except one.  My strategy for recruiting interviewees was simply advertising in the global chat menu stating I was writing a college paper on transnational gamers. This approach was surprisingly successful, since in prior experiences with gaming chat, players have been less than accommodating to random questions.  However, after speaking with some players who were interested in providing insight on their gaming culture, I decided to interview a gamer from Denmark, aliased Baucker.

                Baucker is a 35 year old male living outside of Copenhagen, the capitol of Denmark, and works in the field of optics, which studies the properties of light. He claimed he’d been playing MMOs since he was 29 and originally started playing after a friend had introduced him to Lineage, a medieval based MORPG. He has been playing DDO on and off for the past year.  When I asked him what his interests were outside of gaming, Baucker said he enjoyed reading, playing football (soccer), and watching movies.  Or, as he claims, his hobbies are essentially “doing things normal people do.”  Although he responded eagerly to these biographical questions, Baucker questioned the topic of my paper.  After explaining further and providing him the course website. After, he understood our desire to explore transnational gaming and therefore agreed to further questioning. In contrast, from my perspective, I felt he was a good candidate to interview, not only since he was relatively chatty to begin with, but because he was old enough to have a good understanding of the real world and had a good amount of experience playing video games, specifically MMOs.

                Following these questions, I asked Baucker about his view on the social and political aspects of Denmark.  However, he was very brief in his description of the Danish government, only replying that liberals held power in parliament and that he supported them.   Denmark is a constitutional monarchy, with a queen as the figurehead but holds almost no power.  I then asked what he thought about the American government to which he was more responsive.  He said he and his friends liked Barack Obama as President of the United States and the fact we had elected a liberal congress.  He claimed “Bush’s foreign policy was absurd and I don’t think his wars were validated.”  Having family in England and Canada myself, I feel that this is reflective of many foreign opinions.  Steering away from further talk on American politics, I inquired about video game legislation in Denmark.  Baucker told me he wasn’t necessarily sure about laws on video games, but did say games could be expensive if you wanted to have them on American release dates.  Years ago, Danes would buy American games in small retail stores prior to their European releases for normal prices, but due to conformance to EU copyright laws, Danes now have to resort to ordering off sites such as Amazon, or wait weeks or months to procure a game.[1]   Although, I feel this has somewhat changed due to global release dates of games such as Halo, I continued to inquire about on the Danish attitude towards gaming.

                Baucker told me gamers were quite prolific in Denmark and that most of his real friends played some type of game but “not so much on consoles.”  Computers are the platform of choice because “everyone has one,” so instead of spending an extra 1599 DKR ($320) on an Xbox, most Danes choose to buy a game rather than a console.   Despite the fact he had gamer friends, he claimed, many of the people he knew played only casually after work on weeknights.  Eager to learn if there was a gaming scene in the city, I found that there are a decent amount of internet cafes in Copenhagen, most of which were advertised as gaming cafes.[2]  Although Baucker plays games at “home on [his] family’s computer,” based on the prevalence of internet cafes in Copenhagen, it’s clear that gaming is accepted in Denmark.  Denmark also recently held a World Cyber Gamers qualifying tournament for Counter-Strike and Warcraft 3, showcasing a professional side of gaming in Denmark that reinforces a Danish acceptance of gaming.[3]  After concluding the acceptance of gaming in Denmark, I turned away from a national examination, to Baucker’s personal interest in gaming.

                At first, Baucker didn’t understand what I wanted to know when I asked, “Why do you play DDO?”  His initial response could be summed up in a few short words, “because I like it.”  In order to coax him elaborate, I asked questions such as, how much do you play? What is the first thing you do when you log on?  Do you solely play player versus environment, or do you also play player versus player?  When following a quest are you attentive to the story line or do you finish as fast as possible?  By providing more specific questions, it was easy to make assumptions on Baucker’s motivations for playing by comparing his responses to Williams’ss article, Who plays, how much, and why?  Baucker’s responses to the aforementioned questions are as follows: he plays under the average of 26 hours a week, only plays PvP, tries to follow the storyline, and evaluates his avatars skills while finding quests when he logs on.  This coincides to Williams’s research that shows playtime has a negative correlation to immersion.[4]  Because he plays only casually, it’s understandable that Baucker tries to follow the storyline of the game, rather than rush through it in order to level up his character or kill other players.  Baucker also implied he played as a way to escape, which was another enumeration as a motivator for playing in Williams’s article.  Following a long day of work and responsibilities, Baucker finds it “relaxing to sit down and play alone” to get away from the drama of outside life.

                When asked about his experience playing with players from other countries, Baucker told me he often partied with Americans, and occasionally other Europeans.  When he registered his account, he “didn’t know there were European servers” to play on, so he started playing on US Turbine servers.  Overall, he’s had positive results from playing with American’s and other international players, even adding some to his friends lists to play with continuously.  However, he confirmed my view that there are some players who are unfriendly and quit parties in the middle of quests.  This is an unavoidable aspect of any game he said so he could not point out that any specific nations harbored players which he incessantly encountered negatively.  Furthermore, he was compelled by the fact American students were pursuing international players since gaming is a common ground that can help take down “language and ethnic barriers.” While he was supportive of the expansion of transnational game play, Baucker couldn’t provide suggestions for which players and developers could nurture its extension because “you can’t force gamers to interact with players from another country.”  Rather, he implied it is a natural or random occurrence for transnational gamers to meet and play online.

After exploring the PMOG and using it for two days, I've come to the conclusion that the game itself is totally pointless.  Being a high level beduin or destroyer is like being the best baseball player to take steroids.  In other words, who gives a shit?  I find this game totally irrelevant because it basically rewards you for wasting time repeatedly visiting sites, or finding other websites to view once and move on.  As well, some guy, alias cainunable, who has an incredibly high level started "Saint Nicking" me, nathan, and ryan, because we put mines on Google and Yahoo.  Once again, who cares if we mine Google, it's not very valuable to either party provided this game is not fun.

The way PMOG works, is by rewarding you with 2 or 3 datapoints per new website you visit each day, and with these data points you can buy supplies, such as mines and armor which can protect you or give you points when your mine is tripped.  You can also give away datapoints or take/make missions that take you to different informative websites, or create portals that will take you from one site to another.

Now, the mission part of PMOG seems to be the only asset which I like.  Missions provide good information on certain topics that lead you to sites which you likely had not previously known of, nor found while searching.  For example, I took this mission http://pmog.com/missions/hacking to explore different websites on hacking and learned things such as languuages to research and how to count using binary.  Although informative, I find myself clicking through missions as fast as possible to get points...so I can mine people and annoy them.  Most of the missions are as irrelevant as PMOG, as in there is only a limited amount of this you can be interested, while the rest of the missions just give you new websites to provide you with datapoints.  Overall, I like the fact that PMOG missions can be searched for to provide information on topics a player is interested in, however I feel the overall goal of the game, to allocate points by searching different websites is stupid since the pros/cons of having such points are the same whether you have 100 points or 1 million... nothing changes with regards to supply or what you can do to another's points.  Suggestion...institute a "nuke," if someone trips it on the wrong website, it crashes your browser for a day....that would make me not want to take dumb missions such as "Webcasts I Watch" or "Starbucks - an Entreprenurial case study."

Napping the Music Industry

                On June 1, 1999, Shawn Fanning created a controversial masterpiece that blew up the music industry and file sharing on the internet. His innovation allowed spread across the continent, and later the globe. Fanning’s brain child was an invention unlike any other before his – combining aspects like instant messaging and advanced searching capabilities into a reliable, fast file sharing network. Shawn Fanning’s creation to the music craved world was the now infamous, Napster.

                Napster trumped every other file sharing program to date. Unlike Kaazaa, Napster was used to download complete files instead of brining multiple, partial files together to make a whole. Unlike BitTorrent, multiple online seed users weren’t necessary for downloaders to access and own files in seconds. Whereas other person-to-person (P2P) file sharing programs were slow and dependent on the accessibility of multiple users, Napster employed the high-speed internet provided by prominent universities that allowed “users to swap music files directly without going through a centralized file server or database” (Meet the Napster). As a result of Fanning’s vast improvement on P2P file sharing, Napster’s servers quickly became flooded with activity and also became the most popular service on the internet. However, with Napster and Fanning’s successes came controversy, which swamped television sets and news channels with legal battles from record labels and artists, like that of Dr. Dre and Metallica.

                Though it’s what he is famous for, Shawn Fanning was not always the genius of Napster. Fanning was born on November 22, 1980 in Brockton, Massachusetts and was raised almost solely by his mother, Colleen Verrier. At times, Fanning and Verrier even lived in “housing projects,” a poor reality which drove Shawn, a shy introvert, “away from the urban turmoil around him” (Man who hijacked). This atmosphere resounds of that faced by stereotypical hackers who withdraw themselves from the outside world. Along with his mother, Shawn was also raised by Verrier’s brother and his uncle, John Fanning, who would play a major role in Shawn’s life and programming career. Although he spent much of his time inside as a child, Fanning ended up thriving in sports. He “focused his attention on baseball, basketball, and tennis,” even winning a state championship in baseball as a starting shortstop. Because of his success in sports, Fanning acquired the crucial skill of learning how to be taught.  This is a quality which most hackers do not possess because of their withdrawal from social society. However, this enabled Fanning to create such a successful program since he was able to take constructive criticism to come closer to perfecting his program.

                It was John Fanning who originally introduced Shawn to computers and programming. John owned a low level internet company named Chess.net, at which he employed Shawn at during the summers, and he even bought Shawn his first computer, an “Apple Macintosh” (Man who hijacked). Since the moment he received his uncle’s lavish gift, Shawn was immediately enamored. “I was pretty much on the Internet right away” Shawn claimed, “I think the first time I used it was to play chess. I was… completely sucked in like everybody” (Napster wounds). As a result, Shawn learned the basics of programming and computer languages through connections with his uncle, and he was also introduced to the file type which “would make him famous: MP3 digital music files” (Man who hijacked). 

                After a four year stint at Harwick High School, Shawn attended Northeastern University in Boston – the place at which his magnum opus would transpire. At Northeastern, Shawn intended to major in computer science; however his plans fell short after hearing his “roommate’s perpetual gripe… about the unreliability of internet sites such as MP3.lycos.com” (BBC). This gripe with sites such as “MP3.com, Lycos, and Scour.net” was only a minor proponent of Shawn’s motivation. His idea ultimately transcended above what contemporary file sharing was, he wanted to “create a music community” (Q&A). In order to accomplish this, Shawn began slaving over his new idea.  Imagine Shawn, locked up in his dark dorm room, “hunched over his Dell laptop,” spending endless hour upon endless hour writing code (Meet the Napster).   This was Shawn Fanning’s life in 1999. Shawn assume the qualities that we think hackers possess, having a self-absorbed, intense, withdrawn nerdy mindset that is obsessed with whatever project is flashing on the computer screen. However, Shawn’s concentration and diligence resulted in his accomplishment. After months of sleepless days and nights and sustenance on cereal and hot pockets, Shawn program was finished in its beta stage. He called it ‘Napster,’ his IRC alias and childhood nickname after his nappy hair. 

                With its first release, Napster was only available to hackers Shawn met through internet chat rooms but it quickly spread and it was eventually one of the fastest downloaded programs on the internet. Previously though, in order to successfully keep Napster running, Shawn left Northeastern and moved to the Silicon Valley with his friend and programmer Sean Parker. As Napster gained prominence, Shawn’s uncle John took over the business, claiming Shawn needed an experienced business man to sell to investors. Unfortunately for Shawn, his uncle swindled him, only entitling Shawn to 30 percent of the profits when John received 70 as investors began piling money into the company. Despite this, Shawn continued to make money and Napster continued to expand – maybe too far as Shawn’s music sharing phenomena was noticed by artists and music labels, bringing Shawn, a small time programmer from Massachusetts, into the limelight.

                Court cases, band upheavals, government probes – no other program was as widely controversial as Napster, but why would Shawn Fanning care? Napster’s legality was not a concern for Fanning. He achieved what he had intended to achieve by creating an online community that shares music. In Shawn’s eyes, he and his fellow programmers weren’t stealing music, they were simply sharing it. Under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, it was legal to copy music and distribute it, as long as the intent was for personal use, not profit (Meet the Napster).   Therefore, what Shawn was technically doing with his program legal – while still profiting from it. In other words, Shawn singlehandedly began to overthrow the entertainment industry, and be paid for it. Consequently, bands whose money Shawn ‘stole,’ like Metallica, entered into lengthy legal battles with Fanning. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich even publicly criticized Shawn and Napster, saying “Fuck you, it wasn’t about money… I’ll give away all my shit for free. But I’ll decide when where and how” (Lars). In response, Fanning presented an award at the MTV VMA’s sporting a Metallica shirt, claiming one of his friends ‘shared’ it with him, and to rally support behind him he claimed “Metallica is suing their fans” (Napster Wounds).

                After losing its battles with Metallica in court, the company Shawn no longer owned was essentially shut down by being forced to remove all copyrighted material. This didn’t hamper Fanning for long though. Shawn has since started another music based company called Snocap on which users can upload their own music, as in music they’ve created, and sell it for profit at their own prices. Also, Shawn is still living in the Silicon Valley, however under much less notoriety and popularity, while continuing to strive for further business ventures. In only a few years, wearing his worn out University of Michigan baseball cap, this 19 year old kid took over the distribution of music and changed it forever. The sale of music, videos, and games will never be the same – because of Shawn Fanning’s desire to create a music sharing community. Shawn Fanning not only brought the music industry to its knees, but he also turned a hardcore metal band into a bunch of bitches, and for his creation, his destruction of Metallica, and the amount of free music of which we all have our fair share. I thank him.

Information and technology took off during the 1960's, during the era of the Vietnman and Cold Wars, and resulted in the development of a skepticle, drug addled counter-culter.  The Space Race and the race for nuclear domination owned the governmental aspects of this time period, although they were heavily criticized by the youth counter-culture and popular musicians.  The government over emphasized control and propoganda by employing their technological advances on a youthful audiences advocating 'peace and love,' rather than war and a nuclear apocalypse.

Seeing as the Vietnam War was the first televised war in history, I'll refer to "Plastic Fantastic Lover" which I believe refers to the use of television to spread war propoganda.  By covering the Vietnam war, the media showed American audiences war, first hand.  The gruesome images of the dead, bombing runs, napalm fires, burn victims, and seiges were all now visible to the general public.  This is what I think was "draining" the Jefferson Airplane singer "On [his] plastic fantastic lover."  What I believe the singer was emphasizing was the abuse of technology to show the wrong things.  Instead of advocating hope through this medium, negativity was spread, leading the youth culture to even more fervently dissaprove of the government.

During the era, the internet was introduced by the US military, along with communication satellites.  These advances both seem to influence the government heavily by allowing them to control information flows through their product control.  Steve Jobs did create Apple computers during the sixties, but for the large part the government assumed "Data control" through government entities and large government funded corporations, such as IBM.

Looking back, those part of the 60's counter-culture could only see the government in a dim light, since they controlled the media and much of the technological advance were government based.  The neoconservative government exhibited too much control which create a far left view among youths, who, in turn, were influenced by music and psychadelic drugs which they hoped would expand their minds.  In the end, this psychadelic environment of California became the basis for the expansion of consumer technology, leading to the rise of hackers, and other liberals who wanted to limit government power.

                My experience with the ‘technocracy’ has spanned over 3 months and countless hours listening to regurgitated information and ‘red tape’ questions provided from the quality service employees at Dell Support. The initial reason I was forced to contact Dell was due to numerous ‘blue screen of death’ errors plaguing my notebook for no apparent reason. At first, I was congenial, calling Dell, informing them of these errors and I tried to be responsive to their questions and comments. However, my attitude for their technicians gradually began to decline. This first began after I was forced to wait 45 on the phone for someone who was qualified to assess my situation. I was transferred eight times numerous departments, none of which could help me, so I gave up and reasoned towards Dell’s online support which was as equally terrible. Their technicians asked for permission to take over my computer and run software tests.   I told them yes. “Not a software issue, you’ll need to run hardware tests” they said. I did, not a hardware issue. I was then told I needed to reset the machine to factory settings just in case. I did, and it continued to blue screen. Annoyed, I had my laptop from home mailed to me to use for the rest of the semester and I avoided confrontations with Dell. However, I had to send that laptop to California for a case repair. Great, I was back to this piece of shit. After more blue screenings, Dell accepted my inquiry to mail the machine back to them for replacement, for which they sent back the same screwy machine that they did not acknowledge they fixed on their assessment. So now, I sit here, on a machine that blue screens at the most important times, hampered by a corporation that won’t admit that there’s something wrong with their product, and who feeds me the same helpless, nonsensical information with regards to repairs.

                Today’s youths are the technocrats with domination at their fingertips. We are the ones who live on the computer and have let technology indulge us with video games, programming, and development. Anything we can imagine is no longer impossible to foresee as a result of this technologically advance generation. The older, retiring generations are the ones dependent on us. They ask us how computers work and we respond, but still they don’t completely understand. Computers and the internet were things we grew up with and made our own. They are our “hot rods,” our pet rocks, our Beatles of the new age. As our generation grows and evolves, our capabilities will expand further. Few adults truly understand the power of computers and technology, yet are dependent on what it provides to their everyday life. Technology provides the news, mail, information, art, and entertainment all at a moment’s notice. We grew up with technology, it is all we know, but our mastery of technology has left them unknowingly dependent on youthful, technocratic domination that will continue to thrive.