Tag: education

Games Studies and The Sociology of Video Games

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Having started upon a path towards advanced degrees with an emphasis in interactive media and online communities, it has increasingly become evident to me that there is no singular route to studying the emerging field of video games. As I have mentioned in the past, video games uniquely fall at the cross section of multiple disciplines, each with varying ways to analyze and interpret the social significance going on in these digital worlds.

Anthropology, Media Studies, Psychology, and, of course, Sociology, all offer valuable insights for researchers setting out upon this path towards the academia of video games, but the road isn’t probably the neatly paved one you hope it be. Academia, for all it affords and fails to be, is still a regimented system of bureaucracies and categories; those seeking to study video games in any of the aforementioned fields will undoubtedly come across hurdles and pitfalls. Despite this, we push on: we make concessions and we work at expanding the field inches at a time. A triumph has arisen in the developing field of  Game Studies, an interdisciplinary field for all of these traditional academic interests and more.

What is Game Studies?

Wikipedia (The student in me is rebelling) defines Game Studies as

The study of games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. It is a discipline of cultural studies that deals with all types of games throughout history. This field of research utilizes the tactics of, at least, anthropology, sociology and psychology, while examining aspects of the design of the game, the players in the game, and finally, the role the game plays in its society or culture. Game studies is oftentimes confused with the study of video games, but this is only one area of focus; in reality game studies encompasses all types of gaming, including sports, board games, etc.

That all sounds great! But what does that all encompass? This really is a large umbrella term that captures multidisciplinary research across the vast subject matter of gaming. This isn’t to be confused with game design, which of course is a vastly different discipline centered around the creation of games themselves. The best place to start to understand Game Studies would be with the theory behind it. A foundational theory connecting these discipline comes from Dutch theorist Johan Huizinga in his extensive exploration into how play connects society and culture. To summarize in the most simplistic way, Huizinga believes that play is an essential part of the cultural membrane that connects, one that brings people together and sets rules and boundaries to define the rules of play.  This theory of play, originally formulated in the 1938  book Homo Ludens, has been expanded, reevaluated, and used to understand the cultural significance of gaming, even as it has evolved to to reach highly technological heights.

What role play holds in our life is an incredibly open and complex question, with endless angles for it to be tackled. Authors like Jesper Juul, Ian Bogost, Tracy Fullerton,and Jane McGonigal  have taken upon this question in vastly different ways and they are just the start. My current research has led me to tackle this issue from a different take as well: evaluating what role deviance and punishment play in virtual worlds. Still, there is much to be explored and much to understand. Game Studies sounds to be a haven for all these inquiries and more.

What’s the Issues?

You may be thinking “Well, that sounds all great. Why aren’t we [academics interested in video games] all just flocking to Game Studies then?” .  Unfortunately it’s not as easy as just that.  Academia  is slow to move and currently there are no programs that offer advanced degrees in game studies. Fortunately, Bonnie “Bo” Ruberg of The University of Southern California has been nice enough to put together a guide to obtaining a PhD in Game Studies. Their advice? Get in where you can. Find universities that have academics and professors who work and write in Game Studies, applying to their departments or related ones.  Graduate programs are often about who you know, so such a recommendation is definitely valuable; find individuals you want to work with, not schools that you want to go to on name alone.

Of course graduate programs aren’t for everyone, and one is certainly able to contribute to the field without an advanced degree. For those not wishing to  go back to school, the best thing I think one can do is create work and submit it to the appropriate sources. For all of you lovely game enthusiasts, an online journal for game studies has  been created: Game Studies.

The Journal’s mission statement is:

To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming.

Sounds perfect…Now to just produce something worthwhile.

All of this is to say that we, gaming academics, have options and avenues available to us. It won’t be an easy route, but perhaps will prove to be a fruitful one.  I am of course not in any way a Game Studies expert, so any oversights or generalizations can be attributed to ignorance. Of course I’m always willing to learn more, so if you have any insight or information that you feel I am leaving out, please let me know.

I hope this post was helpful. For any regulars (the few of you), I apologize for the lack of posts. Graduate school has a way of making you not feel like writing in your free time. I’m hoping to write and share more in the coming weeks.  And now it’s time for me to bury myself in piles of graduate assignments and research.

Block’Hood: Can a Video Game Change How We Design a City?

Releasing tomorrow as an early access title on Steam is Block’hood,  an isometric neighborhood-building simulator. The game gives players more than 80 types of blocks to create unique and ecological neighborhoods and promotes players to find the optimum solution to creating cost efficient, sustainable communities.

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“Block”, the project’s first incarnation, was developed inside The University of Southern California’s School of Architecture as a open-source game that thought to plan the Los Angeles of tomorrow. Now, as Block’Hood, the game is open to the public and  has expanded its reach to designing the communities of tomorrow using cost efficient and resource smart practices. The game offers various ways of play including a “research mode”, a mode that requires players to play with real world values in mind, and a challenge mode that gives player specific scenarios and resource allocation to solve a building dilemma. With a message of conservation and  forethought towards building communities, resources management in the game is key to building a healthy city, for cities and buildings that don’t receive proper resource allocation and design will begin to decay and crumble.

The game will also be a tool of research, as the developers will share player creation and findings with academic communities and publications to further develop a better understanding towards how we can create better communities. With Block’hood being used as a tool for the academic community to use and discuss, the game has the potential to be much more than just a simulator.

This probably sounds like a advertisement for a game that isn’t even out. I haven’t had the chance to give it a try, but it sounds like a unique tool for those who are interested in architecture and community planning. Video games have developed to a point in which they have the potential to serve similar practical implementations in specific industry as more specialized complex programs. I’m not suggesting games like Block’hood replace programs like AutoCad or any advanced programs, but it’s great to see video games being developed to give the general public a taste of what goes into an industry they may not be apart of. It sounds trivial, but the designers and creators of the communities of tomorrow are the gamers building vast worlds in games like Minecraft. If a game can harness that curiosity and give the player the educational tools to make smart and practical decisions, then our future may be all the more brighter for it.  Even for those of us who won’t be the next generation of designers or architects, games like Block’Hood promote a better understanding of how we as a community use valuable resources and the cost our creations take on our environment and homes.

For us sociologist, we can observe Block’hood as another facet of society that video games have built their way into. This augmentation of society through video games is what is at the heart of the sociology of video games, as the more ingrained the medium becomes in our society the more we need to evaluate video games as a social institution. How we use video games and let them evoke change in our society has remained to be seen it is full extent, but games like Block’Hood point towards the medium being used for the betterment of society.

At the very least, the game looks like a fun lego-like creator for adults…So it has that going for it.

You can read a piece about Block’hood’s development from an academic tool to video game here!

 

 

 

UC Davis Creates an Interactive Game To Discuss Its Future

Tomorrow at 11am  UC Davis is launching Envision, an interactive video game designed to allow students, faculty, and associated members to come together to discuss and chart the university’s future. The game will be live for 36 hours, during which users can log in and meet with others in a virtual space.

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UC Davis has created this game with the intent purpose of opening up the discussion of the university’s future to a wider population of students, giving them a virtual space to connect like never before. When it goes live for computers and mobiles, users will be able to share “micro-contributions” about their vision of the future of UC Davis, as well as add onto the visions of others. From their brief description, it sounds like the game will function akin to something like Reddit, where users can respond or add to specific threads of thought. A leaderboard system will be put into place to chart the contribution of users and winners will be awarded prizes, further promoting the “game” aspect of Envision.

This is a pretty neat concept for a major University to attempt; it shows their dedication to gaming as a tool for social interaction and advancement. Online spaces have the ability to make for more neutral and accessible grounds for discussion, so hopefully UC Davis’ community will come out in force to chart its future. It is only open to those associated to UC Davis, but it will be interesting to see if this method of discussion proves to be a worthwhile method for Universities and organizations to consider in the future.

Check out UC Davis’ Press Release about the event

FBI Releases Anti-ISIS Propaganda Video Game

There’s been a lot of strange games released for all sorts of peculiar reasons: PETA’s anti-Animal Abuse Pokemon game and Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015 come to mind as two particularly strange games with questionable motives. However, these games  fail in comparison to a new game released by the FBI. That’s right, the FBI. Allow yourself to take that in for a second: The United States Federal Bureau of Investigations has created a game and it’s just terrible.

I present to you: Slippery Slope, an anti-ISIS propaganda flash game meant to dissuade youths from falling into the trap of logic leading to violent extremism.

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The game is apart of the FBI’s “Don’t Be a Puppet” initiative, which is an online effort to educate impressionable youths about the dangers of extremism and warn them about the potential realities of such beliefs, including perpetrating hateful attacks based on race or religion. The program is meant to encourage teens to think for themselves and deploy skepticism and  practicality when coming across extremist ideas and rhetoric.

Let’s pretend for a second that this game is necessary and not a vapid attempt from an out of touch agency trying to  reach kids through patronizing means, how does the FBI intend to convey such a delicate and difficult message to kids? With Goats and explosions of course!

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Minecraft is popular right? Just put a goat and radical text in there. Boom!

Included in the Don’t Be A Puppet’s interactive basement, the game is meant to be a original gameboy game entitled “The Adventures of Poonikins” starring the titular Poonikins, a goat who is apparently struggling with extremist beliefs. Design wise, it has a relatively simple  gameplay design: players control  Poonikins  while avoiding green walls as he traverses a vast green pasture attempting to make it to each of the game’s 6 finish lines. If Poonikins is to run into one of the green walls, he explodes instantaneously into various small blocks; a horrifying death for a confused goat. Upon passing a finish line and completing a level, the game displays “distorted logic text”, giving impressionable teens examples of harmful rhetoric.  Just on a purely  analysis of the game as a video game, Slippery Slope’s biggest problem lies in its horrendously touchy controls and it’s almost laughable difficulty; a tap of either arrow will send Poonikins flying faster than you can say, well, Poonikins. It’s just simply not well designed, featuring gameplay elements that feel like they would  fee stale even on  something like the Magnovx Odyssey.

Of course the greatest question is: What the hell does a goat avoiding walls and exploding have to do with radical extremism?  This game doesn’t convey any meaningful message in any way, if anything it just distracts from the initiatives overall message by being strange and absurd. Why is the goat’s name Poonikins? Does the FBI think Goats explode when touching green walls?  The Goat is a terrorist, is that whats going on? There are so many baffling questions unanswered by this one’s Goat dangerous descent into extremism.

So why am I bringing this up? What could this terrible game with questionable motives have to with sociology? On this blog I like to point out new ways video games are being implemented in our society, from usages in medical rehabilitation to being used as a means to weed out job candidates. These new implementations speak to how ingrained video games have become in our society; they are permeating into all aspects of society, giving us new ways to interact and carry about our regular lives. The FBI creating a video game with the intent purpose of educating youths is a pretty remarkable action, exemplifying society’s gradual shift towards an acceptance of the medium as a powerful tool in education. We’ve come to the point where video games, for better or worse, are transcending the the typical gaming conventions and being used for new and unique way every week. The FBI’s Slippery Slope may be an example of a poor harnessing of the power of the mediums ability to do more, but  it’s a novel one at the very least.

Still, it’s hard not come away from playing this game without feeling dirty.  If this game is the latest tool in counter terroism that the FBI can offer, maybe we need to rethink some things.

Play the Game For Yourself Here!

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Developers Adapting Educational Games to New U.S Standards

New U. S standards in education are changing the way developers create educational games. GET YOUR EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS CORRECT, MATHBLASTER.

Common Core, a set of K-12 educational standards in math and language arts, has been adopted by 45 states across the United States, leading to new standards and guidelines in teaching. These new standards are an issue of hot debate right now, as many states are receiving push back and negative feedback to these newly adopted standards. According to multiple sources, including Education World and The Hechinger Report, game developers are racing to develop games that meet the standards laid out in common core.

This isn’t surprising for anyone tracking the development and implementation of video games in the  classroom. Recent research estimates that the market growth of educational games will increase substantially in the coming years; the industry of educational game is   a big and profitable one. The goal for these companies is to see their games be implemented into the classroom, which isn’t a lofty goal considering that over 70% of classrooms were found to incorporate video games in someway.

New on IOS: “Putt-Putt Reforms Education”

The number is only likely to rise in the coming years as more and more schools implement new technology into their classrooms, possibly fundamentally changing how children retain and learn new information. This is really interesting stuff, as just in the last decade we’ve seen how video games can be used as positive tools for educational reinforcement. From personal experience, educational games were used as a positive reinforcement tool in certain classes I took in elementary school. They worked, as students eagerly wanted to get their work done to be able to have more time playing games like “Sticky Bear” and “The Electric Chalkboard”. That was nearly 20 years ago, so I can’t imagine how complex and useful the games are now and days.  If this is to become a norm in education, we’ll have to track and evaluate the potential changes it has on both education and socialization.

Was there an educational game that really made a difference for you or a family member? Let me know, I’m interested to know how games shaped different learning habits.

Games That Make A Difference: Zoo U

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Wow, what a smart and creative title! – No one

It’s time to talk about games, but we’re not going to talk about any ol’ ordinary games; we’re going to talk about games that make a difference. These posts are going to be about games that have some sort of sociological significance; be it in the way they change the industry or in the way they change those that play them. So let’s dive in with our first game:

ZOO U

Zoo me? Zoo U.  Developed by 3C institute, Zoo U is an interactive game that seeks to help kids develop social and emotional skills. It does this by tracking and accessing players  skills as they play through the game. Players are given common day social situations that a child may come across in class, and then gives them options as to how to progress in those situation, all in a simulated virtual school setting. In doing so, it assess initial social skills and then assesses them as they progress to help instructors and parents gauge their child’s development.  The game focuses on six core social skills to : impulse control, empathy, initiation, communication, cooperation, and emotion regulation.

Warning: Your child may come out of the experience with expectations of wild animals living and playing inside schools.

Why does Zoo U make a difference? I haven’t played the game myself, but the game is reported to have positive effects on the social and emotional well being of the kids that play it. Developing social skills at a young age is important to a child’s  emotional well being,  their academic development, and their success in making friends.. Games like Zoo U can give a leg up to children that may be having a difficult time developing these skills by making the learning process fun and engaging. Likewise, at an early age repetition is important in the development of skills (It’s why they have you do your times tables so many times) but in social situations you may not always get that repetition that often need. Video games bridge that gap, as it gives the child unlimited opportunities to interact communicate with their in game peers.

Games like Zoo U certainly aren’t the first wave of educational games, but they’re some of the first to be targeted at specific skills. We can think back to our own youths and the educational games we may have played. Games like Zoo U are building off their the first wave of educational games in meaningful and focused ways. We’ll have to see how this efforts effect their participants in the long run.

Check out Zoo U’s website

That sound a bit like an advertisement, but I do think that games that are directed at developing social skills can be huge help in assisting kids who may have problems developing social or emotional skills. This stuff is important, as they really are the building blocks to being a emotional and socially healthy adult. We can all use some help sometimes, so why not make it a bit more fun with some Vidja Guymmeessssss

Now excuse me while I pitch Bioware a dark and gritty version of the game that gives you branching paths that all lead to the same silly ending.

Can Video Games Create Empathy and Awareness for Real World Issues?

NPR recently reported on a experimental Virtual reality game that attempts to create a connection between participants and a conflict happening thousands of miles away. “Project Syria”  is a project coming out of University Southern California (USC) that is utilizing virtual reality hardware to make an intimate experience that generates awareness and empathy for the civil war in Syria.  You may be saying to yourself “Hey, wait. I don’t want to play a game that puts me into a depressing scenario! I just wanna play  Animal Crossing and electronically prune trees!” but let’s open our mind up alittle, WILL YA.

You can watch a non-virtual reality demo of the game here. For those not willing to watch, the demo puts you in the middle of a town with people walking around conversing. Over the sounds of street hustle and bustle you can hear a young girl singing. Then, without warning, a bomb goes off and all sounds are immediately replaced with ringing. The town then becomes full of dust and the scene is one of tragedy and disaster.

Project Syria is one of the first virtual reality demos to be used to gain awareness for real world issues, but it certainly isn’t the first game to be designed to create awareness for an issue. In fact organizations like Games for Change  and TAKE ACTION GAMES have creating games to bring awareness to social issues for over a decade.  The game to create the biggest waves was arguably MTV’s “Darfur is Dying” released online in 2006, in which players took up the role of a family displaced by conflict in Darfur.

As they discuss in the NPR piece, Video games have the unique place in media as having the ability for more immersion than other forms. Movie goers can watch a film, create a connection to the movies character and plot, and then immediately disconnect. Video games expand those connections by giving the player choices and decisions that directly effect the character and plot, thus creating a stronger and longer lasting connection. Naturally then, video games have the ability to create great levels of empathy and awareness than other forms of media because the ties are that much stronger.

As Nonny de la Peña says in her interview with NPR “”I sometimes call Virtual reality an empathy generator….It’s astonishing to me. People all of a sudden connect to the characters in a way that they don’t when they’ve read about it in the newspaper or watched it on TV.”

Now obviously we’re probably not going to see most mainstream games take on social issues (Super Mario Syrian Crisis isn’t a title we’ll see anytime soon), but as game technology develop more and more we’ll definitely see video games used as social teaching devices, which is something we’re already seeing in schools. The question then becomes how and when we should use video games as tools for social change effectively, and that answer isn’t exactly clear yet.

Let me know what you think: Are video games good tools for social change? What experiences have you had? Are the tools of the future for creating empathy? Do you want to crowdfund “Super Mario Syrian Crisis”?

Study Shows Video Games May Help with Dyslexia

Study Shows Video Games May Help with Dyslexia

Today in The Biology of Video Game news (Wait, that’s not what this blog is…)

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Jokes aside, a recent study suggests that there may be benefits of video games on those with dyslexia. This is important news to those with children struggling with dyslexia or those themselves who struggle with it, which is about 5%-10% of the population. I won’t go into the study all too much, but essentially the study found that children with dyslexia were able to  match those without dyslexia when it came to reacting to a visual cue followed by a sound cue, as opposed to being asked to reacting to cues broadly.

Hey, what does that have to do with video games you may be asking. First of all, I don’t know why you’re asking a computer screen, and secondly, this finding would suggest that video games may be able to assist with dyslexia because video games may be able to get children with dyslexia more accustomed to switching between audio and visual cues.  As one of the researchers behind the study suggest:

“The idea is to train with some kind of video game that trains the eye movements to different locations to add in that multisensory component,

Maybe in the future we’ll see games developed specifically for kids with dyslexia to help alleviate the problem. It certainly wouldn’t be far fetched, as we already have plenty of video games meant to teach kids basic reading and writing.

I don’t know what this game is, but it looks like so many of my nightmares.

So at this point you may be asking (as we’ve already established you’re a curious one) what does this all have to do with sociology. Well, if video games can help alleviate dyslexia or train your brain in other ways, then certainly they will become a more important part of our social world. The more evidence of the benefits of video games, the more they become a social norm in our society. That’s not too bad for us gamers, right?

Check out more classic video games re-imagined as children’s stories Here!

Check out the original study Here!

Telltale’s The Walking Dead Being Used To Teach Ethics in Norwegian School

A highschool in Norway is using Telltale’s acclaimed “The Walking Dead”  series to teach their students about ethics. Will these kids learn actual ethical insight, or will they only learn that Zombies = bad news?

The school was brought to attention by NRK, a media outlet in Norway that reported on the class. A video of the report can be seen here (Warning, it’s in Norweigin, but you can hit the translate button if you don’t speak the language).

According to the report, the game is being used to give student ethical dilemmas that they may not otherwise be given. Before you assume these ethical decisions are “Be a zombie murder or not?”, bear in mind that the series has been acclaimed for making players actually feel for their characters and feel the weight of their decisions. Unfortunately I personally have not had a chance to play the series, but I’ve heard they’re very well respected and well developed in character design and progression.

The report also claims that students have had positive results using the game to teach students ethics, as the game has spawned lively discussion of many of the ethical dilemmas that are presented in the game. Likewise, the students are reported to be much more engaged in this form of teaching than in traditional forms of teaching ethics.

Such a report begs the question: should video games be incorporated into more classrooms? Certainly there has been evidence to suggest that video games help engage students in school, but are they more successful in teaching than traditional means? That remains to be seen, and anecdotal evidence like this can only be applied to the situation. Certainly The Walking Dead wouldn’t be appropriate outside ethics and philosophy classes, but perhaps other games can help bridge the gap between education and video games. Similarly, one must ask: are using video games in the classroom any different than using television or movies?

New Study Suggest Violent Video Games May Have Benefits for Children

New Study Suggest Violent Video Games Have Benefits for Children

Ru Roh. After numerous studies that have tried to link violent video games to bad behavior in children, the American Psychological Association has conducted a study that has found positive benefits to children playing violent video games. Is this just hear say, or should we sit our kids down in front of Grand Theft Auto instead of going to school?

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I don’t go into the study too thoroughly, but basically it discusses the positive and negatives that video games have for children. Specifically, the research discusses how video games in general help form cognitive and problem solving skills in young children. While these effects are not limited to violent video games, they too have these same type of positive effects. After years of researchers trying to find evidence that Video Games have negative effects on children’s development, it’s only recently that researchers have begun to study the positive effects that video games may hold.

“Important research has already been conducted for decades on the negative effects of gaming, including addiction, depression and aggression, and we are certainly not suggesting that this should be ignored,” said lead author Isabela Granic, PhD, of Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands. “However, to understand the impact of video games on children’s and adolescents’ development, a more balanced perspective is needed.”

Hey, that’s pretty much what I said, right? The article then goes on to talk about how new perspectives on video games are being used to educate children. Classrooms and educational plans are being designed with video games incorporated, and these new types of learning tools are revolutionizing the way we teach children.  Hopefully these lesson plans and games are better than the first generation of educational games, which the majority of which were….creepy.

Terror is your teacher in Sonic Schoolhouse for the PC.
Terror is your teacher in Sonic Schoolhouse for the PC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who knows if we are at the dawn of video games being used in education, or a mere passing trend. Regardless, kids will play video games with or without the positive or negative effects researchers are suggesting. Likewise, researchers will continue to disagree about the effects of video games, especially violent ones.