Book and Game Reviews

The following are reviews of various books and games relating to learning or history.

The Meaning of Video Games (2008)

by Steven E. Jones

Review by Spencer Roberts

May 24, 2010

In Steven E. Jones’s 2008 book The Meaning of Video Games, he approaches the topic of video games by skirting the long debate between ludologists and narratologists, preferring to drive at the heart of video game culture through an analysis of various elements within the history of video games. Whether discussing the Nintendo Wii game console or Will Wright’s ultimate sandbox game Spore, Jones suggests an alternate way of understanding games through a process similar to textual analysis. For Jones, the meaning of video games is not based in the blueprints from which they are built, but in the experience of playing them in the world.

Jones begins his alternative exploration into the meaning of video games with a discussion of what some people might not consider a game: the hit television show Lost. He points out that the paratextual online marketing campaign used to draw people in and link to real-world products was more developed than that of any previous show. Viewers who explored the online content were drawn deeper into the narrative of the show (through the paratext) and the campaign adapted and responded to the users. Eventually, a real-world book was produced and thinly-veiled connections to companies like Jeep were found throughout the extended Lost story. For Jones, this marked a distinct shift in gaming; for the first time, a significant amount of effort was put into the extension of a television narrative and its paratext into a realm that is easily defined as a game. But Jones also sees that Lost reflects even more of video game elements than in its extended story. The similarities between games such as Myst or its sequel Riven and Lost are striking, which Jones argues is an indication that the producers of Lost intended the show to evoke the same style of gameplay immersion. For Jones, a television show that draws so heavily on video game elements marks a significant development in cross-genre narrative creation.

In his second chapter, Jones looks closely at the Nintendo game Katamari Damacy, in which players control a rolling ball of items, people, debris, vehicles, and the like. He highlights the main theme of the game, collecting, and says that this basic but compelling gameplay device tells us much about the mindset and culture of games. Katamari Damacy is different from other games mainly because it is so up-front about the nature of collecting. Whether a game allows us to collect things, points, kills, or coins, we are drawn inevitably to collect more and more. Jones says that Damacy “demonstrates the centrality to games and game culture of the act of collecting. Points, levels, scores, objects, paratextual paraphernalia—most of all knowledge about the gameworld—gaming is always on some level about collecting” (16).

Jones continues by comparing the hit game Halo to his previous examples, demonstrating that even a game based on fighting and killing aliens has strong ties to paratextual and collecting themes. The use of the online ARG “I Love Bees” extended the Halo universe into the real world, creating a massive paratext that involved characters from the game, characters unique to the ARG, and a storyline that shifted to reflect the involvement of thousands of players who found themselves immersed in the complex narrative that served to introduce the release of Halo 2. The meaning of Halo was thus altered by the players, says Jones, and so we must understand video games to possess meaning that is fluid and reactive.

A rather striking example that Jones provides is the game Facade, in which players interact with Non-player Characters to create a unique narrative. By typing responses and clicking on objects, the player alters the actions and responses of the game characters. Each time the game is played, a slightly different narrative is produced, which in turn alters the meaning of the game. Rather than possessing a meaning that is defined by the creator of the game, Facade is specifically designed to have only the meaning that the player incorporates in their playing. Jones relates this to improvisational acting, whether in comedy or drama. In each instance of the game (or play) the meaning is created through collaboration between the genre and the players.

A further exploration of this concept is seen in Jones’s discussion of the Nintendo Wii’s unique gameplay experience. The Wii, with its industry-changing interface and carefully-chosen position of neutrality toward gamer gender, has made gaming a social activity that can take place in the real world. The meaning of games played on the Wii are made through the collective experience of the people in the room, who compete, play, and laugh together over a video game. Within the realm of video games, says Jones, the Wii has allowed the refinition of the game platform.

In his final section, Jones takes on Will Wright’s newest game Spore, which was not released when he was writing. His opinion of the game is based on play demos, trailers, and information from the game developers, but he comes strikingly close to predicting the effect of the game. While many academics expected that Spore would attempt to replicate and simulate evolution from a scientific perspective, Jones has even loftier expectations that would eventually be realised. Though many were disappointed by the lack of scientifically accurate evolution, Jones’s argument that Spore’s “most significant feature is its planned content-generating system, allowing users to make creatures and other objects that will be procedurally animated and placed in the games of other players” (18) certainly proved accurate. When Spore was released, it was immediately apparent that content creation was a major focus for players, and the implications for the meaning of the game are as yet unknown. For Jones, Spore is the realisation of what he calls a “possibility space”, in which contributors interact and exchange an endless supply of ideas and creations.

Steven E. Jones has not tried to negotiate between the two main schools of thought when it comes to finding the meaning of video games. Narratologists may consider the meaning to come from the narratives that exist within the games; ludologists might find the meaning in the gameplay and experience of the game itself. Jones steps out of this two-step dance and wonders whether the meaning of video games might be found through an alternate access point. His examinations of culture, narrative, gameplay, experience, paratext and so on are all done through a lense of textual studies, which consider all the various influences and effects that a text (or in this case, game) might have. Analysis through deduction rather than induction may be labour intensive and time consuming, but as Jones has made clear, it is possible to better understand a video game’s meaning with even a small amount of textual study.

Digital: A Love Story

Review by Adam Christensen

April 26, 2010

Digital: A Love Story, by Christine Sarah Love, is a historical game. This remains true despite the author not explicitly stating that the game is historical and the subject matter not falling into the traditional realms of historical computer games. This a game about relationships, not war or politics; a far cry from Age of Empires or Civilization.  She accomplishes this feat by embedding her narrative in an incredibly well-realized virtual environment that recreates the heady days of  early computer networks. Set “five minutes into the future of 1988”, the player can only perceive this world as it can be seen through the simulated screen of an “Amie” Workbench (a convincing simulation of a 1985 Amiga Workbench operating system). The player has just received a new dial-up modem which she can use to connect to various Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) across the world.  The player can exchange messages with other game-controlled users to gain information, create relationships, solve puzzles and eventually uncover a retro-futuristic conspiracy plot inspired by the cyberpunk genre that was so popular amongst fans of science fiction during the 1980s.

At first glance, it all seems very limited and while that first impression never fully goes away, the minimalist feeling can be considered a strength. There is not much to the game mechanics.  Players type in phone numbers they learn from messages they receive to connect the various BBSs where they can browse the discussions or send private messages to users.

The sending of a message is the primary game mechanism used by the player.  Instead of typing out a personal message herself, the player is only able to click on the “send message” or “reply” button, which instantly sends a message to the non-player characters of the game.  The player never learns the content of the messages she sends, but can infer its meaning should the non-player character reply back to the player. This seems to be an alternative to not giving the player any choice in the content in the message (reducing the agency of the player), allowing the player to type the message herself (beyond the scope of a small project like this one) or offering multiple choice dialog options (which would reduce the realism of the game).  Love’s choice is perhaps the best available; the player is able to imagine what she says and thus she is not drawn out of the immersion by odd game mechanics. Consequently,  the players begins to develop relationships with the non-player characters.

These relationships and the plot that connects them lead the player to explore an incredibly well-realized world. For never leaving the desktop of an Amie workbench, players will truly feel like they are exploring a variety of environments.  Each BBS feels like a different place, and the ASCII art is perfectly executed. Reviewers across the board commented on the authenticity of the game. Those who were old enough to actually remember dialling into BBSs in the 1980s  commented on the strangely nostalgic experience of hearing a simulated dial-up modem each time they connected to a different location. Various commenters on reviews posted at websites such as Gamasutra and Boing Boing have expressed surprise that Christine Love, who was born in 1987, could have developed such an authentic experience without ever having experienced the phenomenon for herself in real life. It is obvious that Love put a great deal of research in to the game.

In the closing credits of the game, Christine Love cites the website www.textfiles.com as one of the main sources she drew upon for inspiration in creating the game. Anyone interested in the history of cyberculture could do worse than to spend some time exploring the website.  It is an immense collection of transcribed and converted text files from BBS boards from various sources in the 1980s and covering a wide range of topics. This reviewer was unable to find any direct quotations that Christine Love used from www.textfiles.com, but the language and content were clearly inspired by these text files. NPCs discuss current events, write short stories, share software and complain about Captain Picard not living up to the legacy of Captain Kirk.  All of this happens in the background, unessential to the actual plot of the game, but it never gets in the way of making progress. It only enhances the realism of the experience. Players will be reminded of browsing blog posts and message boards in the present day; absorbing the ideas that random users post as comments on so much of the landscape of the internet.

The comparison with normal, everyday internet use in the present is very interesting. One reviewer of the game called it a “a kind of one-player ARG in the prehistoric days of net-culture.”  Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are games that blend a fictional narrative through real devices, typically on the Internet, through web pages and blog posts. The gaming environment is the mundane world of the web which users experience every day; the “game” and excitement comes from the content, puzzle solving and collaboration. Likewise, users playing Digital will perform mundane tasks that take on aspects of excitement because of the narrative and perhaps even the  novelty of stepping into a time that is both familiar and strange. The sensation is akin to watching television from the 1950s; you can make sense of the world because things retain some semblance to their modern counterparts, but you are also puzzling out what is different and why things changed.

In Digital, cyberculture is in its infancy, but the communities and their concerns are something that continue in various forms up until today. For instance, intellectual property and piracy are still things those involved with cyberculture are concerned about. Though the types of files and method of transfer has differed, many of the ethical issues remain the same. The player is directly confronted with the issue when she is forced to download pirated software that is essential to complete a specific task. The game creates a narrative where these kind of illegal activities are essential and the moralities of such actions becomes blurred. Likewise, the player is exposed to the hacker culture which thrived on the BBSs of the 1980s. These shadowy activities both increase the drama and expose real parts of the history of the pre-Internet era. Those who were active in the online community were genuinely excited about the possibilities of BBS systems; it was a dangerous place where boundaries could be pushed; a new wild west that only existed in the wires of networked computers. It was this kind of attitude that inspired William Gibson to call the hackers in his cyberpunk novels “console cowboys”.

Digital teaches us history by immersing us in a very specific environment. By creating this group of BBS boards for the player to visit, Christine Love has given a series of static textfiles a genuine sense of space. We can observe how Love created this space by using Aarseth’s typology of games. Your perspective is vagrant – limited. These ancient machines and direct connections only allowed users to visit one board at a time. Your entire attention is focused on your current location as you scour lists of messages and files because you cannot have any knowledge of what is occurring in other parts of the world. Your movement is limited and topological. You are limited only to the BBS boards that you know exist, and your movement is restricted to constantly repeating the same ritual of dialling into the boards . Thankfully the once nostalgic but quickly annoying dial-up noise is skippable with a click. Finally, what truly makes the game immersive is that the environments are dynamic, sometimes spectacularly so. Your Amie workbench evolves as you upgrade your software, and download files and applications. The BBSs change as messages are exchanged between the NPCs, sometimes commenting on your actions as you progress through the game. At one point, the first BBS board you gain access to becomes unavailable due to the action of the game, and it provoked a genuine emotional reaction as your “home” is destroyed.

Digital: A Love Story is not perfect. The game is very linear and sometimes it feels like a mildly interactive piece of fiction, cleverly implemented. Players might have benefitted from having more control in the game. Thankfully, the narrative is excellent and very engaging; players will be motivated to play until the end. The puzzles were often too simple, but they often created a sense of exploration. Bypassing the security system of a BBS gives you a sense of accomplishment, regardless of how easy it was to do so. Ultimately, Digital: A Love Story is short and endearing; it creates an environment that immerses you in the cyberculture of the 1980s by allowing you to live within it.

Digital: A Love Story was released under a Creative Commons License in February, 2010, by Christine Love. It is available for free for Windows, Mac and Linux athttp://www.scoutshonour.com/digital/.

Nicola Whitton, “Learning With Digital Games.”

Synopsis by Spencer Roberts

March 2, 2010

Whitton’s book is largely a practical user’s guide for implementing video games in education. The main points of focus in the first part are defining games for learning, understanding the pedagogy behind learning through games, and identifying types of games that can be used for education. Throughout the book, Whitton works from the very basic elements of games to develop the reader’s understanding of their potential. In this section, she provides the following characteristics of digital games:
1. Competition – The goal is to achieve an outcome that is superior to others.
2. Challenge – Tasks require effort and are non-trivial.
3. Exploration – There is a context-sensitive environment that can be investigates.
4. Fantasy – Existence of a make-believe environment, characters or narrative.
5. Goals – There are explicit aims and objectives.
6. Interaction – An action will change the state of play and generate feedback.
7. Outcomes – There are measurable results from game play (eg. scoring).
8. People – Other individuals take part.
9. Rules – The activity is bound by artificial constraints.
10. Safety – The activity has no consequence in the real world.

From here, Whitton moves to the pedagogical approaches to digital games, touching on concepts such as constructivism, situated cognition, cognitive puzzlement, social collaboration, experiential learning, collaborative learning, and problem-based learning. She expands these concepts by describing their application and presence within education through games.
The third section of part one works to describe and discuss the various types of games available as learning tools. The genres include adventure, platform, puzzle, role-play, shooter, sports, and strategy games. Whitton then discusses types of learning that can be facilitated through gaming, such as applying skills, developing strategies, analysing information, evaluating situations, changing attitudes, and creating knowledge. She concludes the first part of her book by commenting on other types of games, such as mobile and alternate reality games.

The second part of Whitton’s book focuses on integrating digital games into the curriculum of education systems. She identifies four main factors to be considered when attempting to bring games into education: people, environment, organisation, and technology. She also discusses the following models of integration that she envisions as possible in a standard school setting:
1. Single-session game
2. Multiple-session game
3. Optional game
4. Embedded game (a course built around a game)
5. Online game
6. Mixed-reality game.

The second section of part two begins the lengthy discussion on designing games for learning by addressing pedagogical concerns, such as aligning game play and learning objectives and providing supportive collaboration. Whitton then describes the following possibilities for designing games:
1. Commercial entertainment games
2. Modifying existing games
3. Commercial educational games
4. Virtual worlds
5. Bespoke games

She also defines guidelines for those creating games to consider, which cover such topics as: learning objectives, genre, plot, activities, constraints, collaboration, and reflection.

Chapter Seven deals with assessment while using digital games for learning. In order to provide insight into the students’ experiences, Whitton suggests the use of reports, presentations, creation of artefacts, discussion, collaborative websites, narratives, reflective accounts, and portfolios. For gathering information about students’ perspective of the game, she recommends five categories of inquiry: perception of challenge, perception of control, immersion, interest, and purpose.

The third part of the book deals largely with the technology of digital games and includes recommendations and tips for those who desire to create or implement games within a classroom setting. In chapter 8, Whitton describes the steps necessary to adapt the existing games as defined above. In the subsequent chapter, she moves on to the creation of a new game for education, where she lays out roles that are required to create such a game. She also defines the areas that designers must consider when creating the game.

Roles
1. Subject expert
2. Educationalist
3. Game designer
4. Programmer
5. Interaction designer
6. Graphic designer
7. Writer

Areas of Focus
1. Environment
2. Navigation
3. Tasks
4. Characters
5. Objects
6. Object interaction
7. Player interaction
8. Status information

Furthermore, she defines six factors that create engagement in games: narrative, puzzle-solving, community, completion, competition, and creativity.

The final section of part three discusses methods of evaluating games created for learning. Whitton recommends the use of paper prototyping, Wizard of Oz prototyping, scenarios, expert walkthroughs, think-aloud walkthroughs, observations, interviews/focus groups, and piloting. Finally, she mentions that there are two main points of consideration when assessing a digital game for learning: accessibility and usability.

The book concludes with a chapter that looks at various case studies and draws conclusions from those situations.

In my opinion, Whitton’s book is useful for instructors or researchers who are attempting to design games for learning, but the whole text could be boiled down to the bare practical strategies and uses without much of the exposition. I would not be surprised if anyone who tries to use the book skipped through to the most useful parts and avoided the lengthy explanations or examples.

Jose P. Zagal and Amy Bruckman “Novices, Gamers, and Scholars: Exploring the Challenges of Teaching About Games.”

Article summary by Spencer Roberts

Feb. 13, 2010

Zagal and Bruckman’s article focuses on difficulties and possibilities present in courses that are devoted to teaching about games, whether in order to analyse, design, or development. They conducted a study in which they spoke to various instructors of game studies courses, hoping to find common issues and solutions.

In their study, they identified five main types of game studies courses:

• Game Design Analysis courses focus on the cultural history and impact of games, providing the students with a general idea of what games are, what impacts they can have, and how to analyse them.
• Game Design Practicum courses give students the tools to take apart previous games and design new games based on what they learn about game design.
• History and Culture of Game Design courses provide an overview of the history of computing and games in order to follow changes in game design and audiences.
• Theories of Games and Play courses direct students toward the theoretical side of game design and the social aspects of games, including how they are shaped by and shape our society.
• Nintendo Entertainment System courses deal solely with games produced on the NES, allowing students to critique the games from a contextual setting and design games using an emulator.

The study also found that student groups were often quite diverse, with many different disciplines being represented in single classrooms. This led to problems with common levels of discourse, but also allowed students to engage and perhaps adopt different perspectives. Students who have previous experience with games were found to be generally less open to the idea of critiquing and analysing video games, while those without previous experience were often found to struggle with playing games and learning the skills to achieve success in games. The instructors who were interviewed considered one of the hardest parts of their teaching to be helping students release their previous understandings of games, whether good or bad, in order to open themselves up to new ways of analysis.

Even when students were comfortable with the concept of critiquing games, instructors found that they had trouble expressing their views of games. Zagal and Bruckman suggest that this may be due to the lack of academic reviews and critiques on games, which prompts students to look to journalistic or gameplay-oriented reviews. Methods of addressing this issue include establishing a vocabulary of game ontology and game design patterns that students can use to voice their opinions.

Another major hindrance to studying video games is the amount of time and effort that is required to adequately accumulate experience and understanding of the game. Courses that intend to discuss a wide spectrum of games simply cannot require students to develop deep experience with each game because of the many hours that would be necessary. Thus, game studies courses usually either expect students to become the sole expert in one game within the class or establish a very shallow experience with a variety of games. This is a drawback for two reasons: option A does not provide enough breadth of experience, while option B provides not enough depth. Neither option is ideal.

The biggest issue that the study highlighted was the concern that the comparatively new field of game studies has no established canon, no understanding of the fundamentals of the field, and no sense of solidarity between the various departments or courses. Instructors may all use the same texts, but are often acting separately from all other game studies courses. This can be challenging, partly because instructors are isolated in their teaching, but also because students are accustomed to a certain level of certainty in their disciplines. While the lack of concrete answers for many questions can be unsettling for students, it also allows them to engage the primary issues of the field on a personal level, developing ideas and finding new methods of exploration.

Overall, Zagal and Bruckman have provided a valuable insight into the problematic nature of game studies, as well as offering various methods of teaching that attempt to address these problems. Unfortunately, they too are hindered by the lack of established doctrine within the field, and so leave the article asking many questions that have not yet been answered.