What I am here today to talk about is the beginning of a conversation I will have over the

next year with my data, and with you, the research community. It is a conversation about next year with my data, and with you, the research community. It is a conversation about

the sense-makings of men and women while engaging with four types of media products.

It will be a conversation to understand how these sense-makings relate to their evaluating

these media products as entertaining, and to their desire to further engage with them. It

will be a conversation told through stories.

Today, I am going to briefly talk about the intentions of this study, provide an overview of

the methods of data collection and analysis, and then talk about three stories from

Flemming and Nicolaj to begin this conversation.

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My conceptualization of entertainment is not that it is simply due to the assignment by the producers of the media product, nor wholly in the hands of the media user. My theoretical producers of the media product, nor wholly in the hands of the media user. My theoretical perspective is that the evaluation, and thus assignment, of entertainment is a complex, situated process of sense-makings by the individual as she regards:

*the media product, with structural features of engaging that may or may not have been intended to be entertaining

*her self and her lived experiences,

*and situational and sociocultural contextual factors.

What are the potential structural features depends on the nature of the media product. Over the course of human history, various media technologies have been developed that innovate upon what has come before in how content is delivered. Currently, the newest innovations can be found in digital games, both in stand-alone devices or associated with personal computers, and in non-gaming virtual worlds.

The question my study seeks to address is how do people make sense of these innovations to the structural features of media products to determine an evaluation of entertainment, with related outcomes such as desire to engage?

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My study was designed to delve into people’s experiences with four different media

products, three of which represent the most recent innovations in attempts to deliver products, three of which represent the most recent innovations in attempts to deliver

entertainment, and then to compare these experiences with each other. Structured as a

within-subjects repeated measure experimental framework, people were exposed to a

movie, a video game, an online role-playing game, and a social virtual world. Data

collection methods included quantiative and qualitative measurements; the analysis I am

discussing here focuses on the interviews that were conducted after all the sessions were

completed

Using Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology, the interviews asked participants to compare

the experiences with one another, and dig deeper into their sense-makings during the

process of engaging. While there is not time to explain SMM to clarify how these

interviews were composed, I will say the interview was based on a template that has been

developed over decades of research across disciplines. In next talking about the analytical

method used, I will discuss briefly this SMM approach, as the metaphor used to create

interviews can be used to analyze them.

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Sense-Making Methodology studies can be analyzed in a variety of ways, both qualitative

and quantitative. For this study, I have chosen a qualitative method that utilizes the central and quantitative. For this study, I have chosen a qualitative method that utilizes the central

metaphoric tool of this approach, as seen in this figure. As Dervin explains, the metaphor

shows a sense-maker moving through time-space, bridging gaps between here and there,

now and later. The discontinuity principle on which the methodology is based assumes

ever-present gaps sometimes bridged by habit (conscious or unconscious), sometimes by

invention, sometimes by deliberation, and sometimes by caprice. SMM assumes that

"hearing" how a sense-maker makes and unmakes sense involves understanding how they

see their material and interpretive conditions. In SMM, these conditions are called sense-

making elements and involve addressing life contexts, situations, gaps, bridges, and

outcomes.

My analysis commenced with the mapping of the interview responses to the SMM

Metaphor Triangle to locate the sense-making elements. This data analytic procedue has Metaphor Triangle to locate the sense-making elements. This data analytic procedue has

been used by others with SMM studies. My addtition to this procedure was not to

compare these elements across situations and across participants in attempting to convey

to you what the participant experienced.

Instead, I used this mapping procedure to provide a picture as to how the participant ”saw”

the engaging, as well as to provide me with the means by which to organize the interview

responses into narratives. I produced chronological narratives that attempt to reconstruct

the external and internal behaviors of the participant’s experience. The actual words used

to describe the experience were maintained in these narratives as much as possible, with

changes only used to refashion what was said into first person present perspective. These

narratives were then compared against video and text recordings from the sessions to

verify the chronological order.

What follows are the first three stories I have analyzed in this fashion. On the screen you

will see the pictorial representation of the participant’s experience while I read to you the

person’s story. These are the shorter versions of the stories, abridged for time

considerations today. Afterwards I will sum up with some observations about the

participants’ sense-makings and their evaluations of entertainment.

I'm trying not to expect too much with this movie because everyone that I talked to said that it was much better than the previous Hulk. I didn’t really pay that much attention because if you hear too much about better than the previous Hulk. I didn’t really pay that much attention because if you hear too much about how great a movie is, then your expectations are going to be way too high for the movie. If you have too high expectations, then you’re inevitably going to get disappointed anyway.

They just showed the guy who played the original Banner on a TV in the background. He's one of the previous guys to play Hulk. And, of course, there's Stan Lee. He pretty much cameos in all Marvel movies.

Now, finally, the first time we get to see the Hulk. He’s in the shadows and I don’t get to see much of him. However, as the scene goes on, I find myself sitting up in my chair watching the movie, greatly anticipating seeing more of these special effects that create the Hulk. This first scene looks great. I think the movie is doing a very good job building up my expectations. It's more fun to watch when you know that it’s gonna get better.

I have read a lot of comics, and that's helped me anticipate what's going to happen, what the bad guy is going to look like. Knowing who the bad guy is gonna be is adding to the anticipation of seeing him, because I can see the special effects are good. I'm getting more excited to see the villain.

As the movie goes on, the plotline is fairly straightforward, the characters are well created, well thought out. I'm finding it a good movie to watch, compared to a movie that only focuses on the special effects. There’s actually a storyline, and there’s actually full-fledged characters here, instead of just actors taking a ride on the special effects train.

And there is Lou Ferrigno, who played the original Hulk. So both the original Banner and Ferrigno appear in this movie. They didn’t do that in the other Hulk movie. This one is sort of a cameo fest.

I am increasingly disappointed in Liv Tyler's lousy acting. Her acting is so bad. Normally you can overlook it in a movie when a certain scene isn’t played out very well. But her acting has been bad throughout the entire movie. And since she is sort of the focus of the main character’s life, she’s in a lot of the movie. She just keeps kind dragging it down a bit. I would get rid of Liv Tyler. Otherwise, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I’m hoping they’re gonna make a number two. Because it’s a good movie, and from the comics I’ve read, Hulk has a lot more enemies. And it's sort of indicated at the end that there's going to be an Avengers sort of gathering, or whatever. And since they put that at the end of the Hulk, I’m assuming Hulk is going to be a part of that. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

In fact, while I have the DVD, I think I'll watch the movie again. And again. And again.

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I start out creating an avatar, and it strikes me as odd I get no information about how to move about. And you actually have a sheet of paper with instructions beside the computer. So the only about. And you actually have a sheet of paper with instructions beside the computer. So the only instructions I get for playing this thing are on this piece of paper? There are no instructions in the game itself? You are pretty much the only help I have. Without you I would be completely not able to figure out where to go.

There is no storyline in this at all. There is a tutorial, in the dojo, which apparently is dependent on other people in the game. One of the people that I am supposed to learn from shoots me all to hell and teleports me to another part of the world.

In this new place I see a few people talking and interacting with each other. Once I get close to them, I hear, or I see, their chat, their conversation. But these people don’t know each other. They are sitting in different countries, talking to each other. I know of much better ways of chatting with people from across the world. I don’t see the point of going into an online community like this that limits you to a single avatar at a single place in a virtual world, when in a chatroom I can just go into a page where people are talking in Alaska or Japan or wherever.

What's this guy's problem? This guy with a bat. He's following me around, hitting me, while the bat spews out blood. I mean, come on. This just confirms my low opinion of online communities like this.

The graphics and the gameplay are very bad, so it doesn’t really function as a computer game. It seems that it’s an online community that tries to be a computer game. Maybe my expectation of it being a computer game is destroying my opinion of it. In my mind an online community is not gonna top a computer game.

And now I can't find the off switch. I can't figure out how to leave. This is pretty much the last in a long line of disappointments about this experience. I don’t see the point in continuing it, because, in my mind, the whole purpose of an online community is to be able to talk to more people. I can actually interact with more people by walking down the street, because there are more people in the actual world than in Second Life. An online community should give me the opportunity to interact with more people than normally. An avatar reduces that to almost nothing.

It's not the program for me. It’s not something that I’ll be participating in, in the future. I don’t have to wonder if they might be making better ones. I’ll just stick to what I know. I have tried other online communities where people show just as much lack of social skill as in here. It just confirms that I won’t be trying it again.

From experiences with third person games, I know how to walk. What is not incredibly well implemented here are the mouse and keyboard controls. I think I can change them, but I don't want to right now. But the here are the mouse and keyboard controls. I think I can change them, but I don't want to right now. But the idea of having free mouselook and not free mouselook? Usually when you play these first person games where you see the character from behind, then you have always free mouselook. This confuses me a bit.

In the Costume Bazaar, when I try to wear this funky anime hair, it just floats on top of my skull! You say, "well, maybe it’s a bug." So I buy it again, attach it once more, and now it works. There are these small, unpolished things, that if they were removed, then it would be a much better overall experience.

But I'll just ignore it. I guess if I need help, I can just ask the other characters in the game how to do stuff. So I'm not too worried about this. It doesn’t affect me right now.

In my past experience in Second Life, a couple years ago, people had bought a lot of property, but they hadn’t built anything on it. I would be flying around and all of a sudden I would stop in mid-air. I couldn’t enter an area because someone had bought the property. That was really, really frustrating, crazy annoying. Now, wandering around, I feel like I can explore everything. It's cool!

And I can fly! And it's kind of superhero like! When you take off and you fly, it actually animates the avatar taking off. It’s not just lifting the character from the ground and moving it around, it’s actually like flying. And for some weird reason then I actually feel like I am flying in the game. And that is a wow idea. Hey, I can actually do stuff that I can’t normally do, which is an exceptionally well thought out idea in a virtual world. Nobody wants to play in a virtual world where he can do all the stuff that he does in the real world. That leads to asking why am I here?

I'm at the dojo, where I meet this Sensei Serenity character. I wonder, is this a non-player character or an actual person? It's actually very weird because I don't know if I should engage in dialog. Because if it is just a NPC or a bot, you can’t just type "well, I got up in the morning, had a piece of toast" and then expect the automated NPC to react to that. But we talk, and I think maybe this is a real character. Maybe he/she is copy pasting all this information into a chat and that could be why it is just speaking very fast. And now she reacts slowly to some of things I'm saying. So it is a real person.

We can actually play, fight and stuff, in the dojo. It's fun! And you can fly around in the dojo. That helps a lot -- makes it move a lot faster and gives people a superior advantage, which works very well. I'm having a blast fighting and shooting, and dying a lot. It's really fun to see that you can actually play minigames in the actual game. I like that. And I am surprised at how precise the actual fighting dojo is with the other players. It’s much the same as playing a first person shooter.

I'm also very aware that I'm engaging in dialog with other people. I can't just be an asshole. There’s a proper way of being towards other people. When you know it’s a non-player character you just click on something and "yeah, yeah, go away", but not here. I actually spend a lot more time talking. I want to end the conversation or the action with the other players in a proper manner. So I say "goodbye, this was fun, see you later". I wouldn't just log off, "bye-bye, I’ll never see you again".

I don’t know why, but I can see myself trying to explore the island and this world a little more. The amount of possibilities, the actual detail that is given to Metrotopia, this island, it is fascinating. I am very amazed. I could have probably spent an hour or two there to find out what was there.

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In comparing Nicolaj to Nicolaj, I note two things that separate these experiences, where the movie was ranked most entertaining, and Second Life least. In Second Life, Nicolaj the movie was ranked most entertaining, and Second Life least. In Second Life, Nicolaj faced many small problems and one big question, while he moved through the engaging with the Movie without any confusions. The Movie was more a journey of building interest without facing obstacles to such excitement. Additionally, Nicolaj was careful to go into the Movie experience without expectations, but he went into Second Life with a pre-existing negative opinion of online communities that this situation of engaging reinforced.

In comparing Nicolaj to Flemming, I note several things that separate these Second Life experiences, where Flemming found this experience as more entertaining than his own Movie experience, which for lack of time I could not read here. Both faced similar gaps in dealing with the interface and controls; while Nicolaj did not find ways, to his liking, to bridge the gaps, Flemming did, either with others or by not seeing these problems as insurmountable or as significant enough to obstruct his journey.

Both discussed as a major question the nature of Second Life: Nicolaj could not reconcile the purpose of world as being either an online community or a computer game, while Flemming considered it more a game with social interaction. Nicolaj went into the experience with more bias than did Flemming, who had a previous short experience two years back that was a mixture of positive and negative. Each faced situated events dealing with others, but for Nicolaj these were violent and not good encounters, while Flemming was helped by others into understanding how to do things inworld.

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These stories of Nicolaj and Flemming were three out of fifty-six experiences that will be analyzed and told in this manner. In continuing on the same analytic trajectory through the analyzed and told in this manner. In continuing on the same analytic trajectory through the remainder of my data corpus, I hope to (re)present more stories:

About gaps, what caused them, and where and why bridging or not bridging impacts outcome

About expectations, types and amount, and how they impact outcomes

About what helps, and how they relate to what outcomes, and perhaps why

In studying media engagings in this manner, I am hoping to demonstrate the utility of the interpretivist approach in reducing the tendency to dichotomize “old” versus “new” media engagings as involving very different processes due to the presence of physical interactivity in the latter versus the former. However, when comparing situations of engaging, we can see the complex ways in which physical interactivity, in handling the technology, intertwines with the interpretive interactivity of dealing with the content. In fact, the structures of the media product’s features may be seen, from the individual’s perspective, as less important before, during and after the engaging than it is considered by the academic observer, who is interested in how such structures impact the engaging. With an interpretivist approach, the question of interest moves from “what can this media product do?” to “what can this media product do for me?” where “me” is the individual making sense of the engaging. Using this approach, it may become possible in time to uncover the conditions under which the structure(s) of the media product do or do not matter in determining the course of the engaging.

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