I wanted to do my game review on a game that would be relevant to my professional work – supporting the analysis of qualitative data. Initially, I looked at what educational games existed in that area.  Most of the educational games I found were aimed at K-12 students.  The people I teach are post-graduates and professional researchers.  I explored what was available for higher education. I did not find any games about analyzing text or visual media. I did consider ‘Revolution’ which is MIT’s Education Arcade’s multi-player role-playing game set on the eve of the American revolution.   http://www.educationarcade.org/node/357 It is a conversion mod of the pc game Neverwinter Nights. It is aimed at high school students but I thought it offered interesting possibilities of exploring multiple realities and perspectives on a social phenomenon.  However, the player is not acting as an analyst, so the game was not really what I was looking for.

 

 

 

I then decided to look at entertainment games – to see if any of them could be adapted for my purpose.  I felt that detective games would be the closest to the analysis of unstructured data. It puts the player in the role of an analyst.  I played Sleuth. http://www.playsleuth.com/ While I enjoyed playing it, I felt it was not what I was looking for. While the detective is in the role of analyst, he/she does not analyse material. It is more of a strategy game. You choose your character and design your avatar.  Each character has different skills so you need to devise a strategy that take advantage of your given skills and allows you to build skills in other areas.  The game automatically analyses the information you are able to collect.

 

 

 

I also looked at And then there was none – based on an Agatha Christie novel.  http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/andthentherewerenone/index (My hard drive became corrupted after I played this game – I have no idea if this was just a coincidence.)  Again, it was not quite what I was looking for.  It was more about searching and collecting clues rather than analysis.

 

 

 

However, In Memoriam, released in the States as Missing: Since January was more of what I was looking for. http://www.inmemoriam-thegame.com/gb/gam1.htm  It is an adventure game mystery that mixes the game world with real world internet searches.  It also involves the analysis of textual (including emails) and video material.  The player is themself in this game.  I like the mixture of game world and real world and I think this game is the closest to what I think can be used to help in developing skills in analysing qualitative or unstructured data.

 

 

I woke up the morning after I posted Team Sonic’s game and suddenly wondered – but is it a game?  We were so focused on getting it done within the time constraints and our own limited time that not only did we not work out our learning objectives in advance but we did not think through what elements of a game we were using. We just assumed it was a game.

It is only now, having tried to construct a game, that the reading we did early on as to what constitutes play and what constitutes a game is starting to come together for me.  Initially, before this course, I never thought what constituted a game was problematic.  After I did the initial reading, I started to realise the multi-faceted nature of games and the different cultural, historical, and theoretical perspectives on play.  But my understanding was in the abstract.  Having now tried to construct a game, I realise how slippery the whole idea of a game as – especially when trying to use it in education.  What is the difference between a learning activity and a game? Was it a game we constructed or a learning activity?

During my chat session with Anna and Fiona, I started to rattle through Whitton’s characteristics of games, listing the characteristics that I felt was lacking in our climate change game.

·         It is not competitive (but I added that I thought competition was not necessary in a game)

·         There is no winner – linked to their being no competition above

·         There is no indicator of progress during the game (no scoring etc.)

On the positive side I said:

·         The fantasy element made it game-like

·         And collaboration was done outside of Google Earth in the reflection piece which was to consolidate the learning that was achieved during exploring climate change on Earth – the fantasy element was carried over into the reflection piece to keep the continuity with Google Earth; in fact, while the reflection piece was outside of Google Earth and in a wiki, it was part of the game – as the reflection is the goal – the ‘report’ to be given to the Mission Chief

Anna asked if there was an element of challenge – and yes, there is a challenge in working out the clues which start easy but get progressively harder (to be honest we did not deliberately design it that way – it just worked out that way) but I think the reflection at the end is the most challenging piece.

There was a goal, as mentioned above, the report to the Mission Chief on evidence of climate change on Earth.

The game allowed exploration – players could explore and read the other Met Office reports which we did not specifically direct them to – they could play with the timeline – to see how climate change will impact some parts of the Earth before other parts, etc.

There is no interaction with other players during the Google Earth part of the game. However, the reflection piece was designed so there would be interaction in that a) players could see each other’s reports and b) each team, in the end, would have to compile a final report collaboratively.

The reactions to playing the game have been very positive. Everyone said they enjoyed it. And some people have been writing reflective reports on their experience.

So it does have characteristics of a game – despite my initial doubts.  I think the cohesiveness of the fantasy is what holds it together as a game. Nicola, in her report, said the anagram, while cute, should have been more meaningfully tied to the narrative we constructed in Google Earth.  I agree but given the time we had, we had to make a quick decision on the anagram.

  

I like Whitton’s view that games can be seen as a constructivist learning environment  - probably because a constructivist approach to learning fits well with the kind of teaching I am involved in – teaching and facilitating the qualitative data analysis process.  In fact, Whitton feels that games have greatest relevance to higher education learning in the development of high level transferable skills.  She defines these as:

·         Analysis

·         Critical evaluation

·         Autonomy

·         Team working

All the above are relevant to the research process and I hope to develop a game that can demystify the qualitative data analysis process. 

Whitton places a high value on collaborative learning. She quotes Wilson:

"a place where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their guided pursuit of learning goals and problem-solving activities" Wilson 1996:5

However, she stresses that the collaboration does not have to be part of the game but can be incorporated as part of the learning package for a particular set of learning outcomes.

Last year I took the Effective Course Design module and constructed a 10 week online course on qualitative analysis aimed at doctoral students or researchers new to qualitative analysis.  While each student on the course would come with their own research project, I constructed an initial collaboration activity where they were working together on the same material which was followed by individual AND cooperative work. They were developing analysis on their own individual project but the activities were structured so that on a regular basis they would report back their analysis-in-process to the small group they were assigned to.  And they would comment on each other’s work –as well as learn from each other.  I am thinking of designing a game for the collaborative activity part of this course where they are all working on the same material which either could replace the current collaborative activity in this course or could form part of new course aimed at those people who do not have a research project yet but who would like to learn about analyzing qualitative data. 

Whitton points out that while games are good at providing experiences and applying theories, they are not very good at providing meaningful reflection and abstract conceptualization.  For the kind of analysis game I would want to construct, reflection and conceptualization are very important.  Whitton specifies a number of additional activities that can support reflection and abstract conceptualization.  The ones I can see supporting developing an analysis include reflective diaries, small group work and production of artefacts such as presentations. 

Of course, I am jumping the gun here.  Whitton recommends starting with the learning objectives of a course and consider how you would normally meet them.  As I have already created an online course specifying my learning objectives, I intend to start with that.  At the moment, I think I can see how a game could fulfil the initial collaborative element of my learning objectives.  But I need to reflect on this further.  Then I can move into developing what Whitton calls a game concept specification:

·         Learning objectives

·         Genre

·         Brief description

·         Plot

·         Gaming activities

·         Constraints

·         Collaboration

·         Reflection

 

I feel we have gone into constructing our learning activity rather back to front.  We were given Google Earth as a platform to design a game and my initial response was - ??? – what kind of a game can we construct using Google Earth? This was a bit exasperated by the fact that I had already a long weekend away booked so I knew I would have less time to think about this. Luckily the deadline was extended – thank you Fiona and Anna.

I already had Google Earth on my computer and I have played with it before – mainly exploring different parts of the world – tracking my daughter when she went to Chile, last year – that sort of thing. But I have never created anything in Google Earth – although I have read placeholders and information that other people had put on it.

Before going away I was quite focussed on the reading for the week (see previous blogs) and doing some preliminary research to find out a) what games have been developed using Google Earth, b) educational resources using Google Earth and c) technical information, online tutorials etc on creating placemarks etc.

I was surprised by the number of educational resources (as well as other types of resources) that has been created with Google Earth.  One of them was a resource created by the UK Met Office on the effect of climate change on the Earth – with a timeline from 1999-2099.  Helen had mentioned climate change as a possible theme for our game and this Met Office climate change ‘skin’ seemed a good platform to build a game.  My Sonic Group team members liked the idea.  I immediately focussed on learning the technical aspects of creating placemarks etc and so did my team members.  I wasn’t focussed on what the learning objectives of the game were. I had a hazy idea that the players would learn about climate change from traversing the information the Met Office had already put in the climate change Google Earth ‘skin’.  I started to think about how game players could interact by taking on different roles in different parts of the world – with the idea that problems in one part of the world would also have impacts on other parts of the world – but quickly realised that was too ambitious.  Wesley showed us how we could create a quiz in Google Earth and that seemed a more realistic approach. So we have divided up the work in constructing the quiz but haven’t set out our learning objectives yet – although I can see we can do that retrospectively.  Given the time constraints and the skills we had to learn, we had to do this backwards.

However, I think we needed to first understand the affordances of Google Earth and what was possible before we could think of what kind of learning outcome would be best achieved within Google Earth. And I think the process I described above was doing that. So maybe it was not really so backwards.  This game is a first exploratory attempt to see what is possible using Google Earth. And our climate change topic is something that does uses the affordances that Google Earth offers.

Malone makes a distinction between toys and tools. He says that: A good game should be easy to learn but difficult to master.

 

Whereas: A good tool should be both easy to learn and easy to master. 

tool users should be able to focus most of their attention on the uncertain goal, not on the use of the tool itself p. 66

 

This distinction is relevant for my work – training and consulting in CAQDAS – tools that support the analysis of qualitative data (such as ATLAS.ti, NVivo, MAXqda etc.)  All these tools are difficult to learn – and many people who start to use these tools are new to analyzing qualitative data – so they are learning two new big areas at once.  But even those people who are experienced qualitative analysts need to learn what the new affordances a software package can offer qualitative analysis.  These tools are both difficult to learn AND difficult to master – which could explain why they have been slow to be adopted, even though they have been around since the 1980s. 

 Malone rightly identifies that one issue facing the designers of these packages is:conflict between desire to have the system to be easy to learn for beginners and the desire to have it be powerful and flexible for experienced users To overcome the above dilemma, Malone suggests that designers build in a logical progression of increasingly complex microworlds for users of different levels of expertise. The trouble with applying this principle to CAQDAS tools is that you need to understand most of the features as they work together in an integrated way to support an analysis.  However, I can see that in designing a game to teach qualitative analysis (as opposed to tool use), you could build in levels that correspond to the analysis process and you could use the CAQDAS software tools as an environment to play the game. And in an indirect way you would be teaching the tool use at the same time.Need to think more on this

I just spent a couple of hours yesterday in Quest Atlantis (in the plague village - which is teaching about persuasive writing). I was totally immersed in this world and didn't notice the time go by. Barab et al talk about their learning engagement theory which they developed in QA - integrating learning, playing and helping in the context of social issues in an aesthetically-rich dramatic play. The plague story does this with students taking on the role of an investigative journalist trying to find evidence to persuade the community to either support or not Dr Frank(instein)'s experiment to find a cure for the plague. The story line is engaging (satisfying Malone's idea of fantasy and curiosity and uncertain outcome). QA seems to emphasize social responsibility as well - so there are moral issues interwoven in the story. I haven't finished all the activities but I think the storyline will let you argue both sides of the argument although there are nudges to re-consider your argument as you gather more evidence - but you only are suppose to use evidence that supports your argument (but I haven't finished it yet - so I don't know if there is scope to address counter-evidence in a way that supports your argument.)

Week 3 – Update on game experience

While I did not enjoy the arcade games, I have enjoyed Solitaire, Tetris and Columns and this week Mahjong and Bookworm. I haven’t had a chance to play Scrabble yet but that is a game I have played since I was a child.  I also have always played Solitaire as well as puzzle games such as crosswords and sudoku.  I like to look for patterns and also having some time to reflect, although all the games had a timed element but I didn’t find them as frantic as the arcade games.

I didn’t realise how complex Mahjong was – I was concentrating on clearing all the tiles. I did notice the scoring but didn’t understand it. It wasn’t until Anna directed us to the link explaining the rules and the different suits you could make that I realised the complexity. But I am quite happy to play it on a simple level. I think I could get into it, and slowly learn the different suits you could make and think more strategically.

I never gave much thought before this course about defining what is ‘play’.  I think I just thought of it as a negative – the opposite of work. But I enjoyed the Kane and Sutton-Smith readings. I liked the focus on the different rhetorics of ‘play’ and situating them within their historical and/or scholarly context.  In particular, I find interesting the tension Kane points out between ancient (fate, chance and community) and modern rhetorics (freedom, progress and imagination).  As Kane says, there is a paradox:

To be a player is to try to live and thrive between freedom and determinism, chance and necessity. P. 40

vs.

I am not sure, though, how much the modern rhetorics are free of fate and determinism.  Progress can be seen as deterministic – particularly following Piaget - that there are stages of development that a child must go through.  Intertwining this developmental approach with play, turns play as something inherent in our genetic makeup, something we do not have control over.  Rather than being the ‘playthings’ of the gods, the child is a ‘plaything’ of his/her genetic make-up. Kane does touch upon this in saying that there is a tension between the modern rhetoric of play as progress –something that is hard-wired in our make-up and the modern rhetoric of play as imagination.  But Kane talks about our biological urge fusing with our creative imagination.  But where does our creative imagination come from? It comes back to the age old debate of nature vs. nurture.  But instead of posing fate and freedom or nature and nurture as oppositions, shouldn’t they be seem as a kind of continuum – in some areas we have more control than others. Or should they be visualized as concentric circles with freedom within fate/ or nature.  That we have certain ‘room for manoeuvre’ within a certain context.  Hence, our genetic composition or social circumstances at birth are fate or beyond our control.  But within that context, we have some freedom in the ‘raw material’ we have to start with.  And isn’t that what happens within game?  There are rules that are given but within the context of rules, we have some control over how we play the game.

Kane brings an interesting dimension into the discussion of play – considering what is ethical play. 

by dignifying our play with an ethical force, we can begin to create and act, rather than simply consume and spectate p. 62 

I think his choice of the term dignifying is revealing.  It seems he is countering the interpretation of play as being frivolous.  But there is also a moral dimension in his argument which is a critique of what he sees as the dominance of Western consumer-oriented society.

  

Last week I was frustrated by the arcade games I was playing.  I realized that they weren’t just random and that there were patterns but I couldn’t quite make out the patterns. At one point, I stopped the Pacman to see if I could discern a pattern in the behaviour of the ghosts (without any success!). Having read Greenfield now, I realise that was the wrong strategy. The strategy is not in identifying a pattern in just one element of the game e.g. the ghosts – but the pattern depends on the interaction between the ghosts, the pacman and the board itself.

I was starting to ‘feel’ that some parts of the board were more dangerous than others.  But I did not have the patience to pursue and investigate that feeling. I think it does have to do with learning styles – as Emma mentioned on the Discussion Board.  Thinking of Kolb’s learning cycle, I think arcade games would favour those who prefer an active experimentation style.  I, on the other hand, have a more reflective learning style and the sheer speed of the games does not allow any time for reflection. 

James Paul Gee’s account of the view that videogames are a waste of time as they have no content has resonance with the views expressed by my friends including my husband.  I never held that view myself mainly because I have no experience of those games.  Gee argues elegantly that a semiotic domain is not just content but...

”a  lived and historically changing set of social practices. It is in these social practices that 'content' is generated, debated and transformed via certain distinctive was of thinking, talking, valuing, acting, and often, writing and reading. “p.21

For people who have never engaged in playing videogames, the ‘silliness’ of the content is an easy target.  But Gee demonstrates that a lot of learning can be acquired in well-designed games. If a game is actively and critically played the player:

·         Learns to experience in a new way

·         Gains the potential to join and work with a new affinity group

·         Develops resources for future learning and problem solving in related semiotic domains

·         Learns to think of semiotic domains as design spaces that engage and manipulate people in certain ways and help create certain relationships in society among people which could have social justice implications

The key to critical learning is the ability of the player to be able to reflect on, to critique and manipulate the design grammar of a game at the meta level.  This requires looking well beyond the content of a game – but how it is structured, what elements it has, the characteristics of these elements, how it is similar and different to other games of this type. 

Gee sees the value of videogames in that they:

“...situate meaning in a multimodal space through embodied experiences to solve problems and reflect on the intricacies of the design of imagined worlds and the design of both real and imagined social relationships and identities in the modern world.” p. 48

The player learns to think critically about the simulation and thus gain literacy of multimodal spaces.

Gee points out that the key is not questioning the ‘content’ of games per se but whether it is worth spending time pursuing the semiotic domain of a particular game.  And the questions he poses are ones of value judgements:

·         Is this a good way to experience the world?

·         Is this a good and valuable affinity group to join?

·         Are these resources for future learning applicable to other good and valued semiotic domains?

• is this domain leading the learner to reflect on design spaces and their intricate relationships to each other in ways that could lead to critique, innovation and good and valued thinking and acting in society? 

In the beginning of the book, Gee argues that even violent video games can be valuable. And I can see that he is thinking beyond the actual content.  But in terms of the value questions he poses, I feel there is a contradiction here. I have not read yet what he says in particular about violent games but Greenfield indicates that it is action rather than violence which children find attractive. 

This is a reflection on this week’s reading, my experience of playing the platform games of this week, and how I am relating it to my own work on supporting qualitative analysis through the use of software tools such as CAQDAS e.g. ATLAS.ti, NVivo, MAXqda etc.

I found Whitton’s thesis that good learning activities share similar characteristics to games as illuminating.  While a game may have more or less of the characteristics she defines – competition, challenge, exploration, fantasy, goals, interaction, outcomes, people, rules and safety, so too, can learning activities share some of these characteristics.  She acknowledges that some of these characteristics need to be understood with caution when applied to education e.g. safety is not usually relevant as the outcome of a course will have real-life consequences – however, safe activities can be constructed to aid learning e.g. in this module, our contribution to the discussion board is not graded but people use it as a way to test their ideas.  Her premise is that we as educators can learn from good game design and I look forward to reading more of her book.

Newman’s discussion about the context of where games are played helped me understand my frustration with the platform games we played with this week – Pacman, Donkey Kong and Frogger.  They were originally arcade games, designed to be played on coin-operated machines to generate money for the arcade owners.  Given this function they can’t last that long.  But also playing them was a public performance and observers could learn about patterns and tricks by observing how others played.  The noise, which I found irritating when I played (I turned off the sound), was an essential attraction of the games. Newman reminded me of the arcade halls in British piers – Brighton is the one I know.  And the sound of the games and the flashing lights was a way to attract kids – it made the pier an ‘exciting place’.  There are quite a few Youtube videos on arcade games and there is a big nostalgia for them.  The comments on the Youtube videos below support that. I am of a different generation so missed out on playing games in arcades.  My step-children did (and my daughter is of another generation yet again).

A more polished tribute to arcade games.

In relation to my own work, Newman’s discussion around paedia and ludus is pertinent.  I do consulting and training on supporting people who are analyzing qualitative data (i.e. unstructured data, such as indepth interviews, videos, graphics etc.)  I have always talked about ‘playing’ with the data when starting an analysis.  The CAQDAS software platforms I support can be seen as ‘playgrounds’ where the data is located and can be played with.  Although I am currently exploring (and have recently published an article) on how Web 2.0 tools have the potential to do the same.  There is a tension though, particularly with new students, between wanting and needing rules and the freedom to play.  But this tension is also apparent in different epistemological stances towards data analysis. In particular, those of a post-modern turn have been turned off these software tools because of a belief that they impose some rigid structure – are rule-bound in some way – whereas in fact they are flexible generic tools that the analyst decides how to use – much the same way Newman argues that the player has control over moving between paedia and ludus.  While I have always thought of qualitative data analysis as about playing with the data, I never thought of the platforms as similar to games before.   This week has given me a lot to think about!

 

I experienced a combination of compulsion and frustration playing Pacman, Donkey Kong, and Frogger.  The compulsion was that I kept going – replaying the game, thinking this time I will get through to the next level.  Frustration was when I nearly made it but not quite.  I also experienced a kind of recklessness when I was close to completing a level – just rushing in to finish it instead of calming down and taking my time to finish.  There is definitely a physiological response – I found myself holding my breath, feeling slightly anxious and the adrenalin pumping around my body.  It was totally immersive but I partly resented this immersiveness.  The resentment is due to feeling that I was ‘wasting my time’ playing these games – although having to experience them for the course did give them a legitimacy for me. 

Newman looks at why do players play. He  cites Rouse’s key motivations: challenge, immersion and the fact that players expect to do, not watch.  Certainly, I have experienced the immersion.  It is interesting what Newman (2004) says about ‘challenge’ – that players expect to lose.  Maybe that is why I find them so frustrating – I don’t expect to lose (but I keep losing).  The pleasure he claims is through replaying and practicing until the performance gets better.  For me these platform games are too simple – in that I find the repetition too boring. Maybe I would enjoy it more if the rewards were more ‘real’ – rather than just getting to the next level.  Although I expect I would get elated if I ever make it to the next level.

 Newman, J. (2004) Chapter 2, 'What is a video game? Rules, Puzzles and Simulation'. In Videogames, London: Routledge.