[pause] 

Interviewer: [0:10] Thanks for sitting down with me. Could you just give us a little bit of background. Where are you from, how old you are, what you are doing now, things like that.

Patrick: [0:20] Dudas: OK. Well, I am 27 years old. I am originally from Edenburg, Pennsylvania which is actually small village up in the New Castle area of Pennsylvania. What I am currently doing now is actually I am a PhD student over the Information Science Department. I just finished my first year. I did my Masters here in information science as well. My original background was at Westminster College where I did physics. I am living in Pittsburgh now for about three and half years now.

Interviewer: [0:47] And you are doing your graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh, correct?

Patrick: [0:51] Yes, that's correct.

Interviewer: [0:51] OK. What do you do now for work?

Patrick: [0:57] I am actually at two locations. I am here at the Engineering Department doing just various projects for the Civil Engineering Department here. And I am also working over at the Clinical Pharmacology Department where I do genome research and do genome sequencing. Computational analysis on the genome sequences. And I've been at that position for about two years and in the engineering position for about four months now.

Interviewer: [1:23] And what kind of work did you do before that?

Patrick: [1:25] Prior to that I did a lot of, when I was in college going up until when I started back in grad school, I did a lot of helpdesk work, technical sort of troubleshooting issues. I also worked at our network operations center where I did a lot of networking work for the University of Pittsburgh.

[1:41] Once I got into graduate school I actually became a full time graduate student and for a very short time I was actually working at the Information Science library just as a typical librarian just to make a little bit of extra money but then I moved over to this position.

Interviewer: [2:03] Can you tell me a little bit about your hobbies? What kinds of things you enjoy outside of work?

Patrick: [2:10] When I have time I actually recently started bicycling throughout Pittsburgh, riding trails and anytime as I try to search Pittsburgh little bit from the point of view of a bicyclist. Outside of that I like to read, I do play the occasional video game. And if it's anything it's nothing usually new school stuff. It's usually some old school Nintendo thing or something just to kind of occupy my time.

[2:38] Very dedicated to my Penguins and my Steelers here at Pittsburgh. So whenever those guys are on I'd watch them pretty religiously. But outside of that I try to read as much as possible pertaining to my work or just for anything I'd like to enjoy as well.

Interviewer: [2:55] What kind of gamer would you consider yourself?

Patrick: [3:00] I am not a hardcore gamer as I've seen around the stuff like that. I was raised, I got my first Nintendo when I was probably around the eight or nine years old. Even now I still break that out and play that. The only games I usually do get around to playing are platform site games. Recently the only thing I played that's anything new school would be a Little Big Planet which is a sort of PS3. Again platformer type game.

[3:32] I like any kind of, I've played role playing games as well when I was younger. And I still do every once in a while. Enjoy the Final Fantasy series, Zelda was always big. Zelda was always a big fan. I was as well a big fan of that. And any of those types of games. It's either platform or any kind of role-playing games I get into.

Interviewer: [3:50] Can you describe what you mean when you say platform game?

Patrick: [3:54] Platform, anything that's usually two-dimensional. Something if I am good I'd be playing anything that's usually only have 15, 20 minutes of free time or so. So that's usually why I migrate myself over back to the Nintendo because you can pick that up and play and then kind of just put it down, forget about it.

[4:14] Anything that's usually a two-dimensional platform, it's usually something where the common goal is to get from point A to point B. Usually nothing more involved in that. You have a goal to reach at the end after all these sort of situations occur. And usually it's a single player game. So it's just sort of worrying about myself and what's available on the screen that I have to destroy.

Interviewer: [4:44] OK. Yes, so the kind of Mario, Super Mario.

Patrick: [4:50] It's sort of like where you are very linear, very...you have to go from, start the video and then you go to the very end kind of.

Interviewer: [4:55] This kind of side stall, right OK. Have these always been the types of games you've been attracted to?

Patrick: [5:02] For the most part, yes. I tried when I was growing up, I was very atypical guy when it came to sports games, I played the mad ends of the world, the NHL, hockey, manifold sort of typed games as well growing up. But just they never stuck. It was always, seems for some reason, either I headed back to the platform games or get back to the RKG games.

[5:27] The only series that I actually keep up with is the Final Fantasy series. I've always enjoyed their storyline, plot lines and always the enjoyed the fact that you kind of give a new story every time you get a new game.

Patrick: [5:44] And you also get these character development that which is, it is an interesting concept that I was trying to have as their common goal but at the same time build your character up to a certain level so you can make ease of the game as you continue on. But it has always been sort of like that.

[6:06] I've always had sort of had the mentality of kind of going back to the 8-bit and 16-bit world just simply because it's something where I don't feel like I have to invest a lot of time into it. And it's something where I can, it's nostalgia. It's finest and something that I really enjoyed the stay every once in a while.

[6:24] And it is something where I can sit down and just, like I said play for like 20 minutes and kill up the 20 minutes and get back to what I need to back to.

Interviewer: [6:32] Did you keep up with the kind of evolution of the game consoles or was Nintendo pretty much.

Patrick: [6:40] Actually I was pretty, I actually stayed with the trend for a while. I had a Nintendo, moved on from there, went to the Second Genesis. Moved on from there, I actually had a Sega Saturn. And then eventually that's the point I had the handheld ones as well like the Gameboy, the Gameboy Advances, the DS at one point. And I moved over to Playstation two and then Playstation three when it became available.

[7:10] Actually at one point, I originally bought an Xbox 360, sold that. Bought a Wii, sold that. and then I bought a PS3 and PS3 sort of stuck for. I found games that were more in tune to what I was looking to do, like the Little Big Planet is a wonderful example, as a platform game. But also just the functionality having a blu-ray player with my HDTV was sort of big selling point for me.

[7:37] So that's sort of the evolution of how I actually purchased the kind of consoles and how my thought went into that whole process.

Interviewer: [7:52] Do you play online role?

Patrick: [7:53] No I do not. I have never really been interested in that, never even tried. And to be quite honest with you it was just no other big reason rather than the fact that it just was never seen too appealing to me. I have not much more to add rather than the fact I just never really got into it. I have had friends that have done that kind of gaming before. And I've been with them when they are playing online, and I kind of miss the novelty of it. It just wasn't something that was too appealing to me.

Interviewer: [8:28] Did you play other games like non-computer games; board games, tabletop games, sports, things like that?

Patrick: [8:37] The extent of Monopoly, Risk. There was a game called Axis & Allies, which is a Risk-type game. So it was those kind of games, where you had to... it wasn't a short game. It was like a game of Sorry, or a game of cards or something like that. It was something where you had to get some friends together, focus on a task at hand and continue on for hours, if not days, playing these types of games.

[9:10] But actually, Risk was probably one of my favorite ones growing up. And I still play it every once in a while; call friends up, get together, pick a side and keep going. Play the game for a little while, and then if we have to, we put it aside and come back to it. So it's always been one of my favorites.

Interviewer: [9:32] What are your early memories about initial experiences, learning to read? I know this is kind of a different train of questions, but.

Patrick: [9:43] Growing up, I'm actually... it's the learning to read. My parents used to read to me a lot. It was always something where they always promoted that. They always tried to get me into reading anything that they thought was appropriate; early, early on like the "Sesame Street" books, the "Berenstain Bears."

[10:04] I had a pretty hard time with grasping, reading and spelling and the grammar English, which deterred me a lot when I was younger. And then to be quite honest with you, a lot of the reading that I got involved with was via some of these games. The RPGs, eventually you get some point where you're reading context and dialogue between two or three individuals. And a lot of my reading actually came from that.

[10:39] I never really was into reading. And it even got more deterred as I got into college because of the fact that when I was doing physics, physics was not a good read. The text books, they're exactly what you think they are. They are complicated, there's no real fun pictures to look at. And I never learned, throughout my education, to read for pleasure, read for fun, read for my own time and stuff like that.

[11:09] Only recently, over the last two or three years, have I been able to find books that had nothing to do with what I was doing and found some interesting, actually reading those a little bit more.

Interviewer: [11:17] Did these books seem to fall along similar lines to the kind of genres of the games you like to play? Are they similarly situated or themed?

Patrick: [11:26] They're always types of books that, I think, the best connection is through the RPGs or the role-playing game where you are a character, usually involving your first person, sort of, you are talked to as a person. Books that I usually read follow this outline of you are taking into a character as first person perspective, and you involve in their lives.

[11:54] That's only the relationship I can see between the two. Those seem to mirror themselves a little bit between the two, the game playing and also my reading habits as well.

Interviewer: [12:09] It seems there is a continuum there of interest between the subject matter and types of personification in the games and also in the types of fiction you like to read.

Patrick: [12:21] Like I mentioned before, it's only been recent that I've gotten into reading a little bit more just for my own fun. So I'm still kind of feeling out what I like and what I don't like.

[12:33] Things that I do read are fiction-type books. They've usually tough sort of a science fiction type feel to them. Actually the "Hunger Games" is actually the last book I read very recently.

[12:59] Again, it's a developing story; it's not too outlandish. They involved characters that could be brought to life in this day and age. I guess, it's something where I can see that parallel between that and some of the games I do play.

[13:23] When it comes to for science fiction, the "Star Trek, " the "Star Wars" of the world, I've never gotten into that at all. Because that really, really high science-fiction part of it, I've never been able to get my mind into that world.

[13:38] The mirror between the two that I can actually really pinpoint is something that I don't like that science-fiction type of reading. And so that's kind of hard. There are one or two little things. But for the most part it's, not exactly the same, but there are some similarities.

Interviewer: [14:01] Is there anything that sticks out as early memories about writing and learning to write?

Patrick: [14:10] Let's see. Again, even when I was younger having a little bit of difficulty with trying to get a grasp of the concept of phonics and the reading aspect of things. I didn't do a lot of creative writing growing up.

Interviewer: [14:26] I mean, just writing in general.

Patrick: [14:28] Oh.

Interviewer: [14:30] So those kinds of formative elementary-school years and early junior high school years where you're learning the processes and mechanics of writing generally. Not necessarily just writing, say, fiction or creative fiction or something like that.

Patrick: [14:48] OK. For the most part, if anything, when it comes to writing, I've always been really good at... when it comes to any kind of scientific literature, I am a logic-based human very much in every way, shape or form.

[15:06] I have a great ability to design things in a very special way in my head, almost like a complete flowchart that I know how to start from one subject and move through the next subject. So when it came to any kind of writing aspects, I usually did better in the sciences than I did with the English creative writing aspects.

[15:30] And for the most part, it's always been... for me, it's always been something where if it came down to trying to just explain a situation to somebody, I was always very good in articulating it in a way that I could say, "Well, you need this first. Then this happens, then this happens, then this happens." And then sort of preparation that goes with it.

[15:53] And for the most part, if anything, when it comes to my writing or even my ability to teach aspects of things, I've always been sort of praised for having the ability to slow down... take something simplistic to a point where I can explain things from top to bottom in a way that generates that understanding than more than just "You do this to do this, and you get this because you did this, " sort of idea.

[16:19] So it's always been like that idea of breaking down things to its simplest components and just presenting them in a way that not only makes sense to me, but something where it makes sense to... I'd like to believe that I can give it anybody and they can understand it to a higher degree just by learning the basics of it and getting to the point where I understand it.

Interviewer: [16:39] I liked the way you described that, kind of the procedural aspect of it. Do you find yourself writing in this way or thinking through writing problems this way when you've written, say, your other disciplines? So in, say, a required humanities course or something like that that falls outside of your core curriculum but still involves a type of analytical writing.

Patrick: [17:09] In those types of situations, when it comes to that sort of, like you mentioned, analytical approach, I falter a lot of times simply because usually there's not a lot of substance to it. Usually it's something that's so watered down it's to a point where you can almost read it as a manual, but it's not a good read as in people wouldn't pick it up and say there's a lot of depth here, there's not only interesting facts, but I can almost picture myself in that situation.

[17:43] I don't put a lot of descriptive words into that sort of situation. I try to slim it down to a point where I eliminate words. I like to keep things as simple as possible. If I can remove a word from a sentence simply because I can make it a little bit easier to understand, I'll do it. And for the most part, when it came to things that were outside of the scientific realm, sometimes it didn't stack up to what the professor or the teacher was looking for simply because there wasn't a lot of depth to it.

Interviewer: [18:16] To your own writing?

Patrick: [18:17] To my own writing, yes.

Interviewer: [18:18] That's interesting. I wonder what the criteria then is for depth.

Patrick: [18:22] Obviously if I would have understood it better, I probably would have done a little better.

Interviewer: [18:29] Right, right. [laughs]

Patrick: [18:30] It's just as simple as descriptive terms, trying to put yourself in a moment of I'm not just sitting in a room currently right now, I'm sitting in a room that's lit by the sunlight of the Pittsburgh area. There's so much more atmospheric things that could be brought into that sort of writing to give you more of an understanding of the atmosphere, the substance, the context, all those things, and a lot of times, I didn't care to write about those things. To me, it was always about "I am a little dot in a room right now, and I need to get to another room". Well, dot moves out door, out through a hallway to location. Problem solved. So I think that's where I was sort of meaning with depth, more of a context sort of atmosphere or form.

[19:19] I write a good manual. Let's put it that way. It may be very boring but, to me, it's sort of fascinating the teaching aspect of trying to say, "There are very, very complex things in this world. If you can explain it to Joe Smith on the side of the street, isn't that all you're trying to do in the long run anyway?" Why would I care so much about presenting them that sort of context that brings them to where I'm thinking kind of idea? I don't care. It's something where if I'm trying to teach something to somebody, I want to start at the beginning, and I want to progress and get to a point where I can lead them from point A to point B.

Interviewer: [20:07] Do you see a natural connection between the types of skills and practices that you've developed playing games and the approaches you take or the way you conceive of reading and writing?

Patrick: [20:35] I think there's a great parallel between the two, especially when I was talking about platform games. It's very goal-oriented. You start at the position. You move from point A to one part of the screen to another point on the other side of the screen from the beginning of world one to the flagpole in Mario kind of scenario.

[20:56] In other types of games, you might have this large world map and your available ability to just get onto a horse and ride through this valley and see these dimensions that are provided to you. They're interesting to me but, to me, I'm point A to point B kind of guy. And I think a lot of times it was just the simple nature of "I have a task, and I need to complete it" and how I go about doing it is just without dying as much as possible in the games. And you do that by keeping things simple and getting from point A to point B to point C on to your destination.

[21:34] And another thing, it's a little off topic, it's the fact that growing up playing games and things like that, a lot of the texts that were involved, just back in the 8-bit and 16-bit, it wasn't as descriptive as you would find in most great novels if you will or poetries or anything like that. A lot of it was visualizations. You were never described the ending boss. You were shown the ending boss as this form or picture which is something I do incorporate into when I do these flowcharts in my head.

[22:07] I try to picture what I would want to picture to make what I'm saying here, even though it's a few lines, how to visualize that in a more complex... In a sense of it's simplistic but, at the same time, it sort of adds that dimension of visualization that people need sometimes. A simple picture is worth a thousand words sort of analogy. Even just looking back and thinking about the games I used to play, it makes sense to kind of see text wasn't really developed by that point. It was meant to get you from point A to point B, but a lot of times you're left up to the visual aspects of the game, and those types of things have kind of rubbed off on me to a point where I try to include those as well into my own works and things of that nature.

Interviewer: [23:04] It's interesting the way you describe these things in common terms or in overlapping terms. So, as a recovering physicist [laughs] or as somebody who's done work in a lot of technical and scientific fields and who's developed a very economical style that's goal-oriented, do you see connections between the types of skills and things that you developed playing games early on and then that you described in your development of writing practices and these other fields, your work with information systems, your work with physics? What are the connections there?

Patrick: [23:56] I'm assuming you mean in terms of actual game play itself.

Interviewer: [24:01] Well, I mean that kind of approach. So the way you describe your approach to games, what attracts you about games, things like the goal-orientation and the quantifiable outcomes, things like that that created an incentive structure, say, to keep playing the game. Do you see similar kinds of things in information science and these fields that you're working in that maybe gave you more of an affinity for the material? That maybe these fields were amenable to your approach.

Patrick: [24:39] There are probably some overlaps in some regards. I'm trying to think off the top of my head. To me, it's always been an aspect of trying to explain a complex situation by breaking it down to its simplest components. Maybe that's even why I do find myself going back to the Nintendo's, the Super Nintendo's of the world simply because of that simplistic nature that I like to uphold in my own research, in my own work style when it comes to creating papers and creating designs of projects and things like that.

[25:24] It's like baby steps kind of approach where you have an ultimate goal somewhere in this realm of things and trying to get from that point to that grand point immediately is never going to get you anywhere. It's always about saying, "How do I break this up into sub-problems? How do I solve these sub-problems?" Because I know ultimately I'm going to get myself to a point where I'm solving that ultimate goal.

[25:52] Actually, while talking here, I thought of something else, sort of going back to a couple... Am I allowed to ramble back?

Interviewer: [25:58] Sure, certainly.

Patrick: [26:00] All right, awesome. Growing up playing the role-playing games of the world, it's about character development. It's about trying to get yourself to higher levels so you can do more things kind of approach, but it's always the more you do, the better you become. It's this simple approach of there are certain things you have to do to get that next level kind of idea. There's a lot of parallels in my life when it comes to the work that I do, the person that I am even in general.

[26:31] I like to think of myself as somebody who you have to create personal goals when it comes to things but not too far ahead or not too close that you put yourself into a box that you cannot get out of. I do have goals that I'd like to achieve someday and even that I see down the road but, at the same time, I know I need to break that up into smaller goals that I can achieve because if I don't, I find myself, I think like everyone else in the world, becoming overpowered by this feeling of "How am I supposed to get this done? It's this huge project or this huge design that I need to get accomplished or I need to make this application do this sort of thing."

[27:17] It's that creative mentality of saying, "I need to design something no one else has ever thought of or done, so how do I get there?" And having smaller goals prior to that always has been sort of my motto for getting to that final destination if you will.

Interviewer: [27:40] Not that you would ever want to go back to undergrad to try to do it again better [laughs] , but you keep going back to these Nintendo games and replaying them. I wonder, when you go back, is there a drive to complete it more efficiently or complete it in a different way?

Patrick: [27:58] Oh, yes. If it's all up to me, I will go back to "Super Mario Brothers III". I have played that and beaten it probably 60 or 70 times by now. Why? Sometimes it's simply because I want to do it a little bit quicker this time [laughs] or even just a different path, trying just different avenues of accomplishing that goal. But I will wear that game out until it does not work anymore if at all possible. Like I mentioned before, I do sometimes sit down just to entertain myself for 20 minutes, but there are some times where I want to be like, "I've done this before. How can I do this better?" kind of mentality.

Interviewer: [28:48] From our conversations. I know that you're interested in teaching, and you've done some tutoring work, some teaching. Do you find these practices inform the way you teach? And I don't just mean the way you approach a problem as a teacher but the way you impart, say, problem solving skills or the way you discuss a complex problem with somebody you're trying to work with.

Patrick: [29:22] Very much so. Even going back to what I said earlier about trying to dissect a larger problem into something smaller so you can explain it a little bit better to somebody and taking the approach of handholding them to get them to a certain point where they kind of understand where you're talking about.

[29:42] It's always been something where, when I've had friends that would come to me for any kind of help or any kind of work when it comes to math, calculus, geometry, physics, anything like that, a lot of times they would get so convoluted by the ideas of taking a simple derivative because it didn't have any kind of meaning to them. Providing them the context via saying, "Here, let me show you. This is a line, and what we care about is finding the slope of that line. Why? Because we want to find out where this line is heading. If we have a simple trend here, let's see, can we describe this line using various variables?" and things like that, and providing that context to them has always been sort of beneficial to them.

[30:29] And the way I get to that point is by drawing a simple X-Y coordinate system, showing them a line, and saying, "OK, let's start here. Understand this. Let's see where we apply it." Going from there to saying, "OK, can we derive a function for this? Can you interpolate or extrapolate information from this?" Then they start grasping that this is not just a method. It's a tool. It's a way to accomplish a goal that might not be looked for in the book or by the teacher but giving them something that they can apply for themselves. And it's always about going back to that simplistic nature of two-dimensional plot and eventually getting to a point where they can more complexity that comes from that, that 2D formation of a line on a X-Y coordinate system.

Interviewer: [31:22] So a very complex system described in very two-dimensional ways. It's interesting.

Patrick: [31:27] Yeah, it's the spatial realm of things. It's the spatial cognition. I was blessed with having the ability to picture objects and picture numbers and to do things with them internally, inside my head, and write down answers in that sort of realm, but I know a lot of people just don't think in that sort of way, in that sort of context. A lot.

[31:52] Of the games I actually grew up playing helped provide that in some way. It provided me an extension of myself and a two-dimensional plot, a two-dimensional platform.

[32:04] So having just some of that ability to absorb a situation that's going on a screen internally and trying to figure out the best pathway that's the shortest or the most efficient pathway has sort of been a blessing. So I think that's why I always find myself going back to the simplistic 8-bit, 16-bit world just simply because, A, it's elementary, B, it's not lost in the button mashing, 3D graphic, multiplayer, online sort of experience. It's something you can actually think about and interpret yourself.

Interviewer: [32:52] That's really interesting. It's a finite set of problems.Patrick: Yeah, it's the problems that you can solve. To me, the other types of games are very entertaining, I'm sure I could pick one up and play and have a good time with them. But I don't know. It might look prettier, it might look better, it might have more texts that are involved that provides more of a depth to the problem or something like that. But you get lost in that very quickly, and you become immersed into a world that's not feasible, nothing that you can pull away from that outside of "I beat a game". To me, it's always about going back to the simplistic natures of things and breaking them down to their components and seeing what you can learn from that because, ultimately, that's where everything comes from anyway.

Interviewer: [33:43] That's really interesting.

Patrick: [33:44] It's all about string theory.