It has to have been 4 or 5 years since I’ve seen a recent Simpsons episode. After catching up on the last few episodes, I can really appreciate how “with it” the Simpsons have been. After all, it’s gotta be relevant if being parodied by the Simpsons. Particularly relevant is episode 21, where Bart’s teacher is replaced with a younger, hipper instructor, Zack– who turns what all the students consider to be “fashionable” into something functional.
Bart: “Then Zack skyped us, live blogged our spelling bee, and friended us on facebook!”
…
Zack: “Are you telling me you memorized that fact, when anyone with a cell phone can find it out in 30 seconds?
Martin: “I I…I’ve crammed my head full of garbage!”
The need for accessible procedural literacy is not a new idea. Just like opportunities afforded by traditional literacy, it is obvious that a divide will occur between the advantaged, procedurally literate and the rest. Right now, it is the case that a clear advantage goes to those who understand how computers work, how to use web 2.0, and own mobile technologies (as parodied by the Simpsons.) Eventually, those with really really good memories may stay ahead in the race, but for the average person, not fully using our extended cognition will leave us in the dust.
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- Pet Society, Tamagotchi, Milo
Over winter break this past year, I went to a conference in Chicago for Graduate and Faculty Christians. I found myself having to choose between the Engineering track and the Math track (I went with Engineering). At the conference were some well known researchers, such as Fred Brooks and Francis Collins. It seemed, to me (at least), that this conference would be quite the unique experience (…and I can now say that I’ve sung hymns with a room full of engineers). I mean, how often do we encounter a large gathering of the intersection between Christians and Professors? … I digress; however, within the community of Christian “intellectuals,” there were some interesting presentations on non-religious research. In particular, was a talk titled, “Discerning Technology or Hippocratic Engineering.”
In his introduction, the speaker uses Spore as an example to demonstrate how we’ve managed to take recreate life within technology. He quotes, “SPORE isn’t a game for re-educating the intelligent design proponents of the present; it’s a game for inspiring the intelligent designers of the future.” At such an unusual conference, I gladly found myself at a session where 5 of the first 7 slides were celebrating video games. This leads the speaker into a discussion of “Technology Assessment, an implicit mandate.” He asks the question, should we be creating technologies just because we can?, giving quite a number of interesting cases and scenarios to consider (and concludes with a few under-explained tables and figures– “Base vectors of technological progress” and the “Environmentally Responsible Product Assessment Matrix” for example.) Overall, there was one point that remained unsettling for me….
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First, if you haven’t heard about it, come tomorrow (9-9-09), The Beatles: Rock Band is released. In preparation for its receptions, the game has instigated a lively inter-generational debate. The lines are not so clearly drawn as to which communities or generations rest on which side, which makes it quite a unique situation.
Many people, including Seth Scheisel from the New York Times, find that in the sense of cultural influence and pervasiveness, The Beatles game is perhaps “the most important video game yet made.” On the other hand, Ian Bogost can less-than agree with Scheisel’s radical opinions on what seems to be yet another rhythm game. The discussion, mostly followed on Ian’s blog (but also on the initial review itself), crosses from game to culture to history and back. People of different generations and sub-cultures are intermixed and allied in atypical ways. The Beatles fans are excited. The Beatles fans who are also gamers are ecstatic. Musicians are insulted. Game researchers are unimpressed. Anthropologists are interested. Indifference permeates all across the board!
Join the discussion while you still can. Chris Lewis, Mark Nelson, and I, from EIS, have already contributed our few cents.
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What is “the mark of the narrative”? In chapter 1 of her book, Marie-Laure Ryan, discusses the transmedial nature of narrative and gives a broad definition provided by H. Porter Abbott: Narrative is the combination of story and discourse. I believe the distinction of story and discourse is quite novel and under-appreciated in the area of interactive storytelling. For the purposes of this discussion, I’d like to deconstruct the nonlinear in narrative to give deeper insight into what this relationship between story and discourse actually entails. The term nonlinear takes many meanings depending on context, which is a result of the complexity in the meaning of both story and discourse.
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In my experiences, many girls don’t seem eager to try new things if they cannot predict the consequences and are without someone to explain how the new thing is done. This is especially true of things that they don’t see other girls doing. In particular, I rarely see girls playing games such as first person shooters and real time strategy, nor do I see them using circular saws and nail guns. Now, I’m sure that studies show many reasons for this, but I’d like to speak of my own experiences with how little effort it takes to break the stereotype when the opportunity presents itself. I just have a hard time believing that most girls would really rather watch their guy friends play Halo, than trying it out for themselves (if given the right circumstances).
This morning, I was driving with a friend in Delaware. She’s a few years younger than I, but hangs out with a group of post-grad, guy friends of mine. On the way from Home Depot, she mentioned that she’s tried playing multiplayer Halo at a friend’s bachelor pad and “couldn’t get what was going on.” She said she kept getting killed before she could figure out what to do. Now, most, if not all, people experience this when playing their first FPS, but why does my female friend sound so much more discouraged than my male friends would in similar situations? It appears that often, the guys I know find motivation or determination in being sub-par inplace of discouragement.
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“Jazz Band Revolution” …. Trust me, this is a great idea. A fellow EIS labmate recently gave a class presentation about the “Edutainment Fail.” To its credit, edutainment is responsible for my first interactions with desktop computers. Games such as Oregon Train, Logo Writer, some lemonade stand game, and that typing game were widely used in my early primary school years. I suppose as games became more commercially available, the novelty of games in education were upstaged. Still, it’s apparent that there is a great deal of learning that goes into playing some of the most popular games today, so it begs the question… Why aren’t games used for educational purposes more? Many bridges are in process being built to overcome the gap between the motivation to be entertained and the motivation to learn. Similarly, there are many educational avenues from the experiencing to building of interactive experiences– whether it is to learn about the technology itself or to be engaged by the technology to learn. Let’s be honest, everyone knows that games are more than just entertainment, yet why are they mostly seen as entertainment– If I am willing to learn for the sake of being entertained, surely, I am willing to learn USEFUL things for the sake of being entertained (if nothing else). Being entertained should be assumed for all games; asking for a game that can entertain is like asking for a drink that will quench thirst. Albeit, not all drinks will quench thirst, but we have more options than just water to quench our thirsts. So listen up Activision, Harmonix, and Konami: Games are for more than just quenching my thirst for entertainment.
The main point I’d like to discuss is that games could be far more useful than they currently are. Now, I can believe that it’s tough for games with non-lucrative purposes to catch up to the popularity of top commercial games today, but is it really that hard to have popular games today with a little more educationally purposed content? I don’t think so… In fact, it wouldn’t take much to impact or enrich the gaming experience, if only we’d be more intentional about it.
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Posted in Academics, Deconstructions, Gaming Culture | Tagged dance dance revolution, ddr, education, edutainment, final fantasy 10, guitar hero, jazz, rhythm games, rock band |
