Back from Kingdom Hearts

I’ve recently been doing a lot of work on a specific project on the game franchise Kingdom Hearts with William Huber. We’ve been blogging some of it at Gummi Ship, presented some at DiGRA ’09 and I will be continuing to do some work on it, possibly for DAC ’09. The project is quite expansive, but for me it is a means of looking at ideas of translation, transference, flow and interaction between Square-Enix and Disney, Japan and the United States, and the game world of Kingdom Hearts.

The work has consisted of playing through the games and analyzing them as texts, which has resulted in certain problems (other successes) and a definite greater knowledge of what I can and cannot, should and should not say from our analysis. It has also led to a greater understanding of what my work needs in other ares.

Mainly this is currently related to a need for ethnographic work of some sort. Most of my work seems to need the inclusion of user voice, but other parts don’t Really, the question is how to bracket things and yet have the ability to say things. To get to allegorithm must I interview to see if the obvious is there for other people? How much must one play between the field’s factions that stem from disciplinary difference as much as theoretical difference? And such.

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