Garry pointed me to Metagame: the game debate game. This card game reminds me of Scruples – you debate issues triggered by cards and bystanders vote for the better argument. Unlike Scruples this game was designed to be played at a conference. Very neat idea that could be adapted to all sorts of fields.
You can support The Metagame on Kickstarter.
The Guardian has a story about the now familiar question fo whether games can be art, The game of art: a profile of digital artist Cory Arcangel. The story focuses on Corey Arcangel but links to an interesting article by Henry Jenkins on Games, the New Lively Art.
Today we got a demonstration of a neat project called PaSSAGE (Player-Specific Stories via Automatically Generated Events). The PaSSAGE team have built tools into Dragon Age that model the player and change the story as a result.
Thanks to David I found out about the University of Waterloo’s new MA in Experimental Digital Media. The MA looks like something you could do in 12 months, but it isn’t clear. The MA doesn’t have a thesis – instead it has project which can be a prototype with commentary:
The Project is the culminating point of the program, in which students demonstrate a mastery of critical theories and theoretical concepts by embodying them in digital artifacts, environments, or practice. Projects will entail the design, conception or production of objects-to-think-with, evocative objects that focus attention on key cultural and theoretical issues in the humanities.
In many cases the project will remain at a design or prototype stage, although the manufacture of the object is by no means ruled out in principle. The design or prototype itself will be accompanied by a commentary of 40 pages in which the student will describe the theoretical and cultural context of the project and its aims, analyse its feasibility and its functioning, describe its cultural and rhetorical significance, and indicate its possible lines of development.
Bookforum has a thoughtful review of Jane McGonigal’s book, Reality if Broken, titled What You Are Missing: The utopian visiion of one ardent proponent of gamification by Clay Risen (Feb/Mar 2011). Risen is critical of the view that we can transform learning by gamifying it.
Like a lot of hard-core gamers, McGonigal believes that game worlds offer something better than reality: “In today’s society, computer and video games are fulfilling genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy.” One could say the same about a drug high—indeed, McGonigal often mimics the chatter about marijuana’s world-altering potential common to freshman dorm rooms. Still, if she’s right, it’s only because, as real as some games look and as human as some of their characters appear, games are by design not real. Huge chunks of the human condition have been left out. Decisions have been simplified. Despair, anger, jealousy—emotions like these are engineered out of the gaming experience, not because game companies want to turn us into zombies, but because that’s what we demand: escape into a simplified existence from the messy disappointment of reality. Simply put, video games can’t help us change the world if they’re designed to divorce us from it.
I share the skepticism about the transformative power of gamifying things. Some of the issues we need think about are:
The New Yorker has a great story about Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s man behind Mario. Written by Nick Paumgarten the story is titled “Master of Play; The many worlds of a video-game artist.” (December 20, 2010.) The story nicely weaves an interview with Miyamoto into an introduction to game design.
Fishermen have a saying, in reference to the addictive sensation of a fish hitting your line: “The tug is the drug.” Gamers, as video-game players are known, thrill to “the pull,” that mysterious ability that good games have of making you want to play them, and keep playing them.
On a related note, Susan pointed me to a satirical about how Waiting for Godot for Wii breaks first week sales records.
Today I came across stories about game addiction. One is from the BBC that had an episode of Panorama titled Addicted to Games?. The web page has video clips and articles like Can video gaming cross from innocent fun to addiction? by Raphael Rowe. (BTW the web page will expire in 11 months – I guess the BBC pulls pages after a year.) Edge has an article reviewing this episode, Was Panorama’s Game Addiction Report Fair? where they conclude:
Videogames are a powerful form of entertainment. Last night’s Panorama report acknowledged this, and – despite an anxiously concerned tone throughout – also acknowledged that the vast majority of gamers have nothing to fear from their hobby. But beyond a superficial look at basic game mechanics, the report made little attempt to find out why, for the unlucky and unfortunate young men it interviewed, gaming had become such an all-encompassing force in their lives.
From the Los Angeles Times is an article about Video game addiction: Researchers identify risk factors which reports on a study just released by Pediatrics (Jan. 17 issue) that says,
“Greater amounts of gaming, lower social competence, and greater impulsivity seemed to act as risk factors for becoming pathological gamers, whereas depression, anxiety, social phobias, and lower school performance seemed to act as outcomes of pathological gaming.” (quote from original study in LAT article)
Edge again has an article ESA Refutes Pediatrics Videogame Studies commenting briefly on the research.
The CBC has an article by Amina Zafar on Video game addiction: Does it exist? which is longer, thoughtful, and has lots of useful links down the side. It is part of a “special video games feature package”, Pushing Buttons.
From Slashdot I came across a story in GamePron about how Australian R18+ games rating gets govt support. In Australia any game that isn’t classified MA 15+ or below is refused classification and thus can’t be sold. (The Australian system is law unlike the voluntary industry ESRB system.) The Australian government is now considering adding a new R 18+ designation based on government supported studies and consultations.
Of particular interest is a literature review on Literature review on the impact of playing violent video games on aggression (PDF). This excellent review concludes that “research into the effects of VVGs (Violent Video Games) on aggression is contested and inconclusive.” (p. 5) This 50 page review by the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department is a model of clarity and balance – it is worth quoting in greater detail,
There is some consensus in the research that some members of the community, such as people with psychotic personality traits, may be more affected by VVGs than others. However, there is mixed evidence as to whether VVGs have a greater impact on children.
A number of other findings of this review arguably reduce the policy relevance of VVG research.
- There is stronger evidence of short-term VVG effects than of long-term effects.
- The possibility that third variables (like aggressive personality, family and peer influence, socio-economic status) are behind the effect has not been well explored.
- Researchers who argue that VVGs cause aggression have not engaged with or disproved alternative theories propagated by their critics.
- There is little evidence that violent video games have a greater impact than other violent media. (p. 5)
I have recently come across a number of reflections on the ethics of game design prompted in part by a story about the closing down of an installation in 2008 of Virtual Jihadi by artist Wafaa Bilal. (GamePolitics has a number of stories on Bilal and the controversy and here is an interview with Waffaa Bilal about the controversy.)
What did Bilal do? Well, he modified a propaganda game called Night of Bush Hunting (or Quest for Bush) which in turn was a modification of a cheap game Quest for Saddam – a first-person shooter where you hunt Saddam – all to draw attention to the stereotypes of arabs in games.
What’s so special about these games? Gameology has a careful comparison of Quest for Bush and Quest for Saddam. Quest for Bush apparently was just a swap of resources in Quest for Saddam to change who you hunt. A skin of Bush exchanged for a skin of Saddam. The comparative review points out that,
the ease with which the Global Islamic Media Front transformed Quest for Saddam into Quest for Bush, a game that seems to portray jihad, should call attention to the problems with the content of the original. And these are problems which aren’t intrinsic to violent video games. Creating a game that repeatedly portrays the killing of a specific individual or ideology and then distributing that game in a context that sincerely advocates the killing of that individual or ideology precludes any claims about that game’s facetiousness. So whereas a hypothetical DOOM mod that replaced demon sprites with depictions of Arabs would insert xenophobic content where there previously was none, Quest for Bush simply switches the variables on an already political (and probably xenophobic) game’s content.
It seems to me there is now more reflection in the gaming community on games and ethics. A good example is in Gamasutra where Dean Takahashi wrote a longer essay on the Ethics Of Game Design. Some of the issues raised:
Some other useful essays include Frank Caro’s Osama bin Fragged: a review of terrorist propaganda games in Ars Technica, Andrew Webster’s Serious games: Ars looks at games that tackle big issues, also in Arts Technica.
Shannon pointed me to an animation on The Escapist about So You Want to be a Game Designer. The animation provides advice on what people should learn starting with “everything” (as in you need to learn everything.) More realistically the animation suggests that you develop these skills:
The animation goes on to discuss how important a knowledge of literature, philosophy and mythology.