Posted: May 26th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Education, Games for Good, game-based learning, nonsense | Tags: Alternate reality game, art games, documentary video games, Education, failures, game design, game-based learning, Games for Change, Mass Effect, video games | No Comments »
Ushahidi – Crisis Mapping
Interested in using games to improve crisis mapping
So far the mapping has been massive manual information. Trains tons of people to use the platform, received info from texts from haitians and then crowdsourced translations.
Interested in how services can be microtasked, turned into Human Intelligence Tasks manageable through Mechanical Turk or WoW.
Wants to develop altruism scores, re-vision labs and going from crowdsourcing to playsourcing.
Richard Lemarchand lead designer for Uncharted 2
Charles Dickens knew first hand how crappy 19th Century London was. He wove comedy and tragedy, chifhangers, but he didn’t sermonize or offer solutions. As Orwell said, “He managed to attack everybvody and antagonize nobody”
Max and the Magic Marker
Good game story telling is very challenging-all the challenges of normal narrative plus the unique structure of games
Challenge is to align the peaks and troughs of gameplay experience with narrative peaks and troughs
Dickens of games is probobly not a single person but a collaboration
Jessica Hammer – game designer/reseracher
People tend to lie about who they are. Really, people lie about everything, like all the time. “Social desirability bias” We want to look appealing to others.
As a designer, you must take SDB into acount. With games for change we want games to be processing deeply. With SDB, though, people are often doing what they think they should be doing, behaving how they think they should be behaving, and so they will be less likely to really think about what your trying to communicate. If your game is about telling people what they should be doing, it will not be received.
Give people legit choices, make them balance one social good against another, give them challenges about how much, when, etc.
Ntiedo Etuk – Dimension U – a portal to educational games
“Student -Centric Learning”
Trying to make learning a lifestyle
Games are good for learning. Kids are not
African Americans and Latinos actually play games more than white kids
Games designed so kids need academic skills in game, but can access resources in real time to help their problem solving.
Brian Reich – Managing Director some media company
Why is what we’re doing not working? –good question
Expectations for what people have for games is determined by everything out there–shoe commercials, music etc.
We don’t understand our audience well enough
We need to understand why people play other games? Why do they like them?
We need to work with people of various skills.
We need to stop typing what we’re hearing because it seems inconsequential.
Too many words on powerpoint slides.
Jane Pickard–Foundation 9
Designing for the total limbic games
We used to ask what does the player do, now we ask what does the player feel while doing it?
Games are good at stimulating reptilian and neo cortex, but less good at stimulating limbic system (love, emotion)
In most games, if there’s love, it’s like discovering a love story written for you
Dragon Age is complex enough that it feels legit
Designing for love/What to do on a first date:
Make player smile
Adreniline-filled moments
Let the player express herself
Allow for vulnerability
Love is a battlefield and there’s a lot of room for conflict
Rob Dubbin – writer the Colbert Report
robdubbin@talkingpet.org
Aphorism = a constraint on reality
Game design is a constraint on reality
Any aphorism can suggest a game design.
Elegance can yield complexity if you poke it enough
Games 4 Change Korea
Running out of battery! Emergency Incomplete Post!
Posted: January 26th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Education, game-based learning, games in the news | Tags: game design, game-based learning, Games for Change, Mass Effect, science fiction, STEM | No Comments »
Science
With Games For Change’s recent inclusion in the White House’s
STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) initiative, this seems like a good time to talk about games and science.
Scientific American has a short article today on the use of dark matter as a plot element and weapon in the Mass Effect video game series. According to Casey Hudson, the project director for Mass Effect 2, it was important to the developers to incorporate science into the game in a way that “that didn’t offend people who know about science.” While the designers didn’t consult any scientists, they did read all they could about dark matter, and intentionally chose it because it remains such a mysterious phenomenon. There was room to fudge the science in the name of fun gameplay because there is still so little known about dark matter.
Science fiction writers have always taken liberties with their use of science but for serious game developers, or those using games in education it’s not always clear how to strike a proper balance between science and fiction. As an article from the sci fi blog I09 points out, so called hard science fiction that focuses on scientific accuracy, often presents unrealistic social situations because authors neglect their character development. The result can be glorified science textbooks with lackluster casts. Science games that aren’t fun won’t get played, and then they can’t help anyone learn.
Science Fiction
Even worse, as another I09
article discusses, sci fi that plays fast and loose with its facts while focusing on a strong plot can actually contribute to misconceptions about science. One geologist quoted in the article laments that the TV show CSI is science fiction disguised as cop drama and when viewers of the show sit on real juries they have unrealistic expectations for the prosecution to produce magical evidence discovered by imaginary technology. In this case, educational materials too focused on being fun or engaging can end up ingraining misconceptions. For game designers working on STEM education projects, then, there are a few important constraints that can lead to engaging, educational games.
First, STEM games must use solid science. A game can have one main subject, core principle, or idea it’s trying to explain or explore, and it must be presented accurately. It’s neat the Mass Effect uses dark matter in the plot, but (without having played it) I’m pretty certain it doesn’t teach anything. This doesn’t detract from the game because it’s only meant for fun, but educational games can’t be so cavalier.
While being totally accurate, the material also needs to be age appropriate. I found a free game online that seems to be aimed at middle schoolers, but is teaching a random collection of concepts from Einstein’s theory of relativity, to teleportation (admitting this may be impossible) to the Higgs-Boson particle. Why a ten year-old should be learning about relativity is beyond me, and I highly doubt that any substantive information can be delivered by a wacky platformer-shooter game.
Second, games teaching STEM can’t become so mired in factuality that they neglect to be compelling, engaging or fun. Granted, there is an audience for hard core simulations, but it is limited. Any game that’s going to be used in-class, out of class as an assignment, or as part of an informal learning environment needs to have mass appeal. That means less Eve Online and more Auditorium or Flow. Yes, Eve Online is a highly developed economic simulator set in a sci fi world, and my latter two examples aren’t STEM focused at all, but they could be easily tweaked to educate and engage (instead of just engage) while Eve is simply too intimidating for most people.
Finally, STEM games have a constraint that applies to no other educational medium: the mechanic must be the message. In the relativity game I referred to earlier, the site in which the game is embedded has a list of scientific concepts that are referenced in the game, but the game itself doesn’t involve science exploration at all. I played a different game about geology that could be described as Galaga + rock collecting + rock-related quiz questions. The gameplay was completely disconnected from the the subject matter.
For an educational game to really be successful, what the player does in the game must connect to the subject matter. In the geology game, learning the geological processes that cause different rocks should be the key to progressing in the game. It should feel relevant. I think Crayon Physics Deluxe and World of Goo are good learning games that could be great if they integrated metacognition into the gameplay. If Goo were a learning game, it could encourage players to reflect on their design process (how was the solution developed?) or consider tensile strength, cohesion and adhesion, etc. as they build.
Designing a good educational game is enormously challenging. I can think of very few that effectively integrate factuality and fun into meaningful gameplay. Most educational games lapse into rehashing tired tropes and painting science themes onto old mechanics. Developing effective, engaging STEM games is an exciting challenge though, and I look forward to working on this problem more in the future.
