GAMEiT Handbook
The GAMEiT EU-project is nearly over, we’ve had a conference and the GAMEiT handbook has been available in a limited print edition for about a month, and now it’s also online as well. I’ve written several chapters, and as always, I’d be happy to hear your comments, critique, questions.
Read or download below:
Fuck Transmedia
Fuck games.
That’s what games researcher Miguel Sicart said in his really entertaining and thoughtful talk at the Play All! seminar on Wednesday:
Moving along the same lines:
Fuck Transmedia
Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.
But why this seemingly confrontational attitude towards a phenomenon, which so many people currently eagerly embrace?
Because it’s nothing but bloody confusing and misleading, that’s why.
People keep talking about transmedia as the holy grail of contomporary storytelling.
Many initiatives stress the importance of “adding value” by distributing content across media.
“If it’s transmedia, it’s great”.
What if all this leads to is a disappointing feeling of “butter scraped over too much bread”?
Let me make it clear, that I’m obviously not opposed to the application of several different media platforms in building stories, universes, experiences, whatever. I’m just blatantly opposed to the notion, that transmedia is as universally good, as current discourses would have you believe.
It is not.
Transmedia ought never be a success criterion by itself. Transmedia is never the goal.
In many cases, it doesn’t make any sense at all, and the hype seems to turn proper decision processes on its head.
Too often the first decision in the creative process is to build transmedia.
That’s the wrong approach.
Forget media. Transmedia, any media.
Stop.
Think.
What do you want to achieve?
Entertainment? Reflection? Learning? Provocation? Change?
How do you want to achieve this? What’s the creative idea?
Those are important questions, whereas the choice of media is a trival one. Consider media mere tools, which you apply in well thought out ways and doses whenever relevant.
Transmedia holds potential, but the potential is not in “transmedia”. The potential is in carefully selecting relevant tools/media, designing a framework for your users/community to interact with in order to facilitate desired experiences (as a side note, I think the most interesting examples of transmedia are build around the notion of “interactivity”, allowing users to play with the content). ”Transmedia” might be a perfectly fine choice in many situations, but why even think about what you do as “transmedia”? Why not think about it as a “fan-fuckin’-tastic project creating a unique and engaging user experience”? It’s not transmedia that creates such an experience; it’s a team of creative content developers.
Here’s my second major gripe with transmedia; it mirrors an all-too-common tendency to uncritically embrace and believe technology, hailing it as humanity’s only hope.
Humanity’s only hope is humanity. Not technology. Technology does neither good nor bad.
Humans does.
Fuck technology.
Fuck transmedia.
Fuck.
The current infatuation with transmedia only reminds me of this:
Let’s please be a little more critical with transmedia; if it means anything, it just describes a toolbox.
Use it wisely.
NFF, Oslo, November 2011
Here’s my presentation from the talk I gave at the NFF-conference in Oslo recently:
I was asked to talk about “gaming theory” and how games can inspire us to design better contexts for students’ learning.
Break down the walls
When looking at the way we structure educational systems, I’m always immediately struck by all the artificial borders we have created in and around schools, effectively walling off education from surrounding society.
When children enter primary school, they’re grouped by the somewhat arbitrary parameter “age”, and remains in most cases divided in this way.
Once organised into these age-homogenous groups, education is again further divided into subjects, which are predominantly taught isolated from other subjects and in bite-size chunks, making most schedules look something like this timetable from Töyrynummi Primary School:
Those are borders within education. That’s important issues, yet what’s probably even more problematic is the borders we’ve been building around education.
In most occassions, students are being taught or working on assignments, which has nothing to do with…anything, really. Anything beyond the classroom & curriculum, that is. Students might comment on contemporary events, yet they do so mostly in the closed ecosystem of the classroom.
Is education caught in industrial society?
These characteristics remind me of industrial society, which we so often claim to have left behind years ago. Society as a whole may have moved on, yet education seems to be helplessly stuck in the past. All the distinctions and borders are (to the best of my knowledge) not established for creating optimal learning conditions, but for convenience’ sake. We do what we do because it’s a nice, easy and comfortable way of organising and structuring education, providing us with an illusory sense of order and control.
In my book, that’s not an acceptable argumentation.
This situation worries me for numerous reasons, the common denominator being the increasing gap between education and the surrounding society, in which education is situated.
From the student perspective, there is no obvious link between “school skills and competences” and the actual application of said skills and competences. This frequently leads to a feeling that education holds no relevance, as it is very hard to decipher the future use of what they are expected to learn.
From the perspective of society, we see an enormous resource left almost entirely untapped. Whereas students could potentially influence society, they are rarely allowed to work on anything but assignments limited to unfold within the confines of the classroom.
We should change our perception of students from someone merely preparing to participate in society to someone who are actually able to actively contribute to creating a better world. In general, we should stop thinking about education as something seperated from society, and allow for education at all levels to much more closely resemble and interact with society. Besides adressing substantial contemporary issues, this would also require us to reconsider the internal boundaries. Where in society do you meet problems confined to the domain of one school subject? The world does not respect subjects or disciplines, and learning how to navigate in chaotic interdisciplinarity becomes pivotal. Also, almost exclusively working with similarly aged peers does not exactly promote the ability to interact in heterogeneous group, which is labelled as a “key competence” by OECD.
Could we imagine an educational system, which is much more integrated with society? Where no rigid time tables exist, but where students of heterogenous age groups are collaborating to solve substantial contemporary problems and thus influencing society in a wide array of positive ways? Where learning is not directed by abstract curriculums divided into subjects, but by the actual problems?
Who would have the courage to radically break away from the current paradigm of education?
Anything less than that is not enough.
Serious(ly) good games?
Interested as I am in the application of games in education, I often remain relatively disappointed with most games developed specifically for education.
At the same time, I maintain a firm belief in the potential of games to help us facilitate better learning.
Why this dichotomy?
On one hand, I see clear patterns across research and experiences from practice, my own as well as those of others, all indicating that games are great learning tools.
On the other hand, there’s almost always a too wide discrepancy between good games in general on one side and even the best serious/learning games on the other.
No need to be polite here; most serious/educational games are just way too serious…and boring. Not that a good games must always be fun (though it doesn’t hurt), but good games (almost) always boast characteristics, which encourage or even compel the player to actually play the game. Many (if not most) educational games sadly don’t possess this pivotal quality. They simply don’t succeed in establishing the kind of fascination, engagement and hold on its players, as do the most successful commercial entertainment games.
Every gamer, hardcore as well as casual (to maintain these rapidly dying distinctions for just a wee bit longer), knows the feeling of not being able to quit a game. Just one more level/round/checkpoint/kill/boss, right? How frequently do you get this feeling when playing serious games? I know I very rarely do.
At least in principle serious games should be good games just as much as so many entertainment games are good games. Now why is that not the case? First of all, it is important to maintain, that it has nothing to do with the fact that serious games want you to learn. All games share the premise that you learn in order to play, as argued by many game designers and researchers, most notably perhaps Raph Koster:
Where, then, is it that most learning games fail?
Many suggestions have been put forth, and I’ve stumbled upon many valuable sources of inspiration in this direction, among others the PhD-thesis’ by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, “Beyond Edutainment“, and Jacob Habgood’s “The effective integration of digital games and learning content“. Habgood succintly states that “historically, educational titles have often used gaming elements as an entirely separate reward for completing learning content”. Simon elaborates on this in an article titled “What Makes A Good Learning Game? Going Beyond Edutainment“:
When “learning goals” and “play” are not well integrated, you feel no need to learn, as the games doesn’t provide a relevant context for learning. We don’t need to learn in order to do things, to solve problems, and that is when learning becomes tedious, boring, annoying – when we don’t see the purpose.
At this years Games 4 Change Festival, the legendary Gabe Newell, CEO at equally legendary game developer Valve, talked about the link between games and education:
Several extremely important arguments made by Newell in the above video. Newell’s talk is also covered in this very recommendable article, where he’s quoted for saying:
Newell also states there should be no gap in our perception of a good game and a good learning game:
Towards the end, he, rather provocatively, argues that developers of educational software are simply not ambitious enough:
I don’t know if this is true, yet I do feel, that most developers of educational applications operate with a level of ambitiousness regarding the games-as-games, so to speak, which is considerably lower than that of developers oriented towards the entertainment market. This may be due to lack of resources combined with less fierce competition in that particular market, but no matter the reason, the lower quality of games remains a barrier in many ways. For one thing, it is not uncommon for practitioners to lament the lack of “good learning games” and even apply this shortcoming as explanation for the limited use of games in education. Another issue caused by this widespread opinion is, that many game developers don’t even want to be associated with “learning games”, and most of the best developers would never move into this domain, causing a downward spiral of too few talented people ever supporting the a shift toward better learning games.
Newell concludes his tirade with a call to arms:
Let’s take this last request very seriously. Let’s explore much more extensively the possibilities of breaking down the walls between those who work with just “games” and those who dare to delve into the realm of “serious games”.
It is clear, that Newell and Valve is in a relatively unique and privileged position to put forward these arguments. To be blunt, they’re so commercially successful and financially secured (as seen from a very distanced position), that they can probably do and say just about anything. Some would probably argue, that it is therefore impossible to mount his ideas on a global scale. Few developers have the same freedom and possibilities as Valve, sure, yet the basic logic in Newells statements remain quite interesting:
After all, we see a slew of marvelous indiegames, which are developed by few people at modest budgets.
In an ideal world, could you imagine if game developers as part of, say, their CSR programme always thought about the educational/learning dimension just as Valve seems to do? What if every relevant game was accompagnied by authoring tools, alternative scenarios, mods or whatever makes sense regarding that particular game? What if we could in this way bridge the gap between those developing entertainment games and those developing educational games? And what if this could, in turn, make it not only legitimate, but perhaps even attractive, to make these games?
I radioen
For en sjælden gangs skyld et dansk indlæg blot for at fortælle, at jeg i onsdags var med i radioprogrammet Harddisken på P1, hvor jeg sammen med André Chercka & Derek Robertson taler om muligheder og udfordringer forbundet med spil i undervisningen.