My final meeting with Yusuf for this, my second trip to CCS, was a great conclusion to an intense week of research: interviews, meetings, discussions, demos, reading, writing, interaction, visits, observation, and most importantly - creative reflection. 

Yusuf found my new research questions less biased and from the proper view-point that 'I am going into an area to discover something' rather than 'I am going into an area with predetermined viewpoints'. We spoke a lot about transfer. Yusuf gave the example that in education, whatever the methods, part of the goal is always about transfer and application. Will the pupil be able to recall and apply what was learned? Was the whole process useful for anything? While so many are looking into gaming as eduction, as therapy, as a way to keep an old mind sharp, etc. The underpinning quesiton would be the fungibility -  are the concepts retained? can they be recalled and transferred?

The amount of transfer, in quality and quantity will differ from case to case. This is probably a place to start with my methodology. How can I measure and compare these differences?

It was brought up that GTA4, in terms of RW transference might be said to have a narrow bandwidth. Other COTS games may suffer in the same way.

Furthermore - my methods may look into, what I hypothesize, that augmented reality/pervasive games have more RW agency than COTS games. But, the distinction will be difficult, because even in COTS games, there is amazing diversity. World of Warcraft, for instance, has a very dynamic social network. In could even be argued that this game exists in the RW even as it exists in its virtual space. (moving forward from the obvious distinction that everything is in the RW ultimately).

then we have games as apps on Facebook. And Alternate Reality games. 

I remarked how much I learned about gerrymandering from playing The ReDistricting Game - and principally due to its procedural rhetoric. Yusuf brought up the TSA game (by Bogost) and how it builds arguments and gives freedom over rules in this way. Building an argument, where the conclusion is based in rhetoric is quite different than simply a rule-based system with a final goal.