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. 

This weeks games forced me to confront my own ideas about what is and is not a worthwhile game to play (indeed these are the types of games that make sympathetic to the negative arguments about games discussed by Gee [1]). My reaction seeing the games listed in the Casual Games section was to roll my eyes a little and wonder whether I needed to waste my time with them. I'd played both Solitaire and Tetris before but mainly as a way to avoid homework or fill gaps between lectures when I was an undergraduate student so this week, with work and readings to more than fill my time, why would I want to fritter away minutes on such trivial games?

Solitaire more than lived up to my memories. It has some appeal as a procrastination tool but I quickly grew bored of the game play. The challenge of the game comes from the speed and strategy of completion but otherwise the game is fairly easy to complete. The cards are randomly dealt but once you have completed a game the challenge is significantly diminished for later rounds (unless you start altering difficulty levels or attempting to beat your time). Once I had played a few abortive rounds of Solitaire I completed a game and that was my interest peaked. In game play it reminds me of something I used to do for a job: sorting library books into their Shelfmark. There is strategy and speed at play but ultimately you are simply mechanically obeying the rules and the novelty is quickly lost.

Tetris on the other hand (and less so the derivative Columns) held my attention for far longer than I was expecting. Tetris is a very simple game with just 6 shapes all dropping at increasingly fast speeds which can be rotated and slotted together. However the random order in which blocks drop and combine, the ability to rotate blocks, and the altering speeds make a huge difference to how absorbing the game becomes. It feels much more like a game of skills although, like Solitaire, there is a basic element of recognition and pattern matching (albeit quite a different game in Tetris – rotating blocks offers new possibilities for strategy and alternative approaches) but, unlike Solitaire it actually gets the pulse racing a bit. Every failure feels like you've just missed success by a tiny error and that encourages you to go back and try again and again.

Although the educational content of Tetris is clearly rather dubious (hand eye coordination and pattern matching but little else) I think there is something very educationally useful about what makes the game so captivating. Clearly any game that attempts to engage learners needs to be compelling and involving in order for any of the learning bound up with the game to be successful. So I think what I find really useful from this week's games is the idea of the great game mechanic:

“I always think that the ideal game is the game where the winner thinks he's won because he's played it skillfully, and the losers feel that they've lost because they've had bad luck”

Steve Jackson, Games Designer (BBC 2009 [2])

So although this weeks games did not seem directly to the teaching and earning process I do feel that my dislike for Solitaire and my compulsion to continue with Tetris are both useful experiences for understanding learning games. I have previously sat in on web demonstrations from e-learning software companies and the stock learning games demo-ed by these sorts of software companies relate to matching images with phrases or pop quiz formats and, whilst some situations will suit these types of ideas I think the quick boredom that can occur in playing games that just make you go through the motions is important to note. I also have high hopes that some of the more sophisticated games coming up in the next few weeks will also start to include games that more educationally engage that simple but clever game mechanic that encourages you to go back again and again to perfect and prove your skill because you were just a few moves from getting it right... !

References

• [1] Gee, J. P. (2003). Chapter 2, 'Semiotic Domains: Is playing video games a "waste of time"?'. In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (core textbook)

• [2] BBC (2009). Episode 2: Monopolies and Mergers. In Games Britannia. Accessed and viewed (via iPlayer) on 5^th February 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pf0rr.

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. 

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.

References

Kane, P. (2005) Chapter 2, 'A General Theory of Play'. In The Play Ethic : a Manifesto for a Different Way of Living. London, Pan. p35-6

It was lovely to start this week with Dara O'Briain's [4] great overview on the problem of content from the point of view of a gamer forced through uninteresting but difficult entry levels before the main advertised action of a computer game commences.

Gee [1], almost as a second introduction to What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, starts addressing the core criticism of gaming in general – what is the point of playing them? I was quite taken by how Gee compared the cynicism over gaming to the attitude taken to visual content in academic contexts and the lack of acceptance of more transliterate approaches to scholarly practice communication – formal text is still king and any sort of game will therefore thus appear particularly alien.

Although I am not from a linguistic background I found Gee's concept of the semiotic domain of gaming to be quite helpful as, as a very occasional gamer, any interaction with gaming websites, magazines etc. feels like dipping into a wholly new domain. I recognise some of the symbols and their meaning but there others that entirely pass me by because I am not sufficiently versed into this domain to be able to decode even some quite basic features. In particular my unfamiliarity with the social as well as game play practices of current gaming platforms is a key gap in my understanding of current gaming culture and practices.

I was thus pleased that Gee had focused on Pikmin, a GameCube game from 2001 which I spent many weeks playing not long after release, to further explore the ways in which games could provide learning opportunities far more sophisticated than their basic narrative at first suggests. Pikmin amply illustrates the level of concentration, time and commitment needed to complete many apparently cute but daft games – every action in any vaguely creative, complex or involving game will involve some elements of problem solving, of sustained imagination, of efforts that far outweigh the actual reward of the game. Framed in this helpful context it becomes easy to see Gee's view that:

“The problem with the content view is that an academic discipline (or any other semiotic domain, for that matter) is not primarily content, in the sense of facts and principles. It is primarily a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices”

Gee (2003[1] p. 22)

Indeed during the same week that I was reading Gee a senior colleague was telling me the very same thing about my own studying process – reminding me to do well but also warning me that it was not the content per se, nor the grades, that makes the MSc but the communication and research skills and the understanding of the work process at the expected level that really counts.

If that disconnect between what is often assessed (the content) and what the actual focus of learning should be (skills, process, social practice) is accepted then there some interesting questions to ask about gaming. What, for instance, are the skills of first person shooter games and, if content is immaterial, is there any moral restriction on what might be reasonably played for learning? In some regards content can, in fact, be a driver for interest in learning a new skill but at the same time there are few literacy courses teaching adults to read English with violent thrillers or erotica and I think there would be some concern if learning games were to fully adopt some of the morally grey areas in which many of the most popular computer games sit.

However there is, as was briefly addressed on the boards this week, a gender element as well. Some content and playing styles will instantly be more appealing to female players, others to male players. In the commercial sector the choice of focus for games designers may be rather skewed but in the educational sector gender must be handled in a more balanced way and that may offer challenges in finding both game formats and content (as a driver rather than the focus of learning) that will motivate both learners sufficiently to progress and learn from a game.

But I digress...

Gee's concept of Semiotic Domains and the processes of active learning seem to have synergies with the ideas of Threshold Concepts (Meyer & Land 2006 [5]) and the transformation of a learners identity from distanced outsider to increasingly skilled novice to equipped insider to qualified practitioner. It is at this latter stage of working through threshold concepts that Gee's Affinity Groups also ring true. Once one can prove one's literacy in a semiotic domain then one becomes eligible for memberships of affinity groups. At the time of writing I find the World of Warcraft (WoW) conversations on the course discussion boards quite obscure and, if not excluding, then certainly detached from meaning for me as I am not versed in this quite specific semiotic domain and cannot thus be part of the course's own affinity group of WoW players. I do however know some of the external grammars of WoW as I have friends who are players so I am, at least, able to recognise and understand the broad tone of messages about the game.. I could not bluff more specific internal grammars but neither am I a total outsider. If I wanted to enter that domain more fully then I could call upon my own knowledge and that of my friends' and gradually blend these interrelated internal and external grammars to reflect my changing experience of the game.

Gee sees Critical learning as a natural add on to active learning. But whilst most games offer some sort of space for critical reflection I think the use of the word here is quite loaded. Analysis, critique and reflection are, of course, possible in computer games but I am not compelled that formulating a multitude of strategies for completing/succeeding at a game are born of entirely conscious intellectual reflection. Greenfield (1984 [2]) too examines in detail the clinical detail of a game (Pac Man in this case) establishing a very rational outline of the discoveries made by gamers. But Greenfield takes not the players of PacMan but a cheat guide as her source whilst Gee attributes complex thought processes to a six year old's game strategy – in neither case do the players articulately relate their experience of the game in a way that shows a particular understanding of the process of game design. In critical thinking around cinema there is one level at which one recognises and can articulate a cinematic trick, convention or feature but there is also a much more critical level at which one can stand back and analyse the way in which such a feature has been used, or subverted, or referenced, etc. and I am not convinced either Gee or Greenfield entirely convince me that the players they describe are equipped to properly critically evaluate the games they play from the perspective purely of insiders within those games.

Playing of related and/or competing games and the social aspects around gaming certainly provide greater possibility for critical learning and comparison but these forms of criticism and analysis are, perhaps, equivalent to affinity groups around genre novels: a group of murder mystery fans may be extremely well placed to compare genre novels, their use of references and conventions, the most successful and inventive plotting etc. but that same group may not be equipped to compare their book to a broader palate of literature sources and compare conventions and ideas from wider contexts.

For gaming to be taken seriously as a semiotic domain I think it is essential to ensure that gamers and learners are equipped with extended critical skills that inform not only their own learning but also allows for reflection on the selection and use of a given gaming-learning spaces as well as how these relate to other semiotic domains – both gaming and non gaming domains. This in turn brings us back to Gee's fifth learning principle of Metalevel Thinking About Semiotic Domains [1].

One of the more interesting aspects of Wood [3] is the fact that it seems to be a lack of public (and medical) acceptance of gaming as a legitimate leisure pursuit that drives the move to radicalise and classify heavy usage of games as a problem. Greenfield [2] raises the peculiar disparity between the acceptance of television versus video games. It seems that the wider the experience, the more acceptable the pursuit although some of both Greenfield and Wood's observations hint at some of the most subjective problems in dealing with the arguments over digital game addition. Greenfield was writing at a time where use of video games was more visibly centred around specific gaming venues – although much more gaming took place at home – and these spaces carry their own baggage. Wood points to the difficulty in measuring time spend on games and how this relates to other activities.

However both Wood and Greenfield do not address other cultural aspirations challenged by computer gaming. As far back as gladiatorial combat the idea that competition is based on physical prowess and achievement and one of the most complex aspects of attitudes to computer gaming is the idea that there is something unusual, perhaps even perverse, in a virtualised or screen based form of play and competition. Television competitions are all conducted via some sense of real physical achievement – whether quiz contestants or Olympic athletes we see a human embodiment rather than a pixellated or stylised avatar – and it may be that that feels inherantly less unsettling than the bigger imaginative leap required in most computer games (no matter how good the graphics). Perhaps this is the reason that puzzle games are never raised as the cause of addictive game playing whilst highly animated virtual worlds are most often highlighted by the media as potential causes for concern. Puzzles can relate to an offline play paradigm and this is reassuring no matter how peculiar or potentially disruptive to normal life 3 hours of Scrabble per night (say) may be. More alien spaces such as Virtual worlds, first person shooters, MMOPGS, etc. all look and feel more like the niche pursuit of battle re-enactment and are seen with similar disdain perhaps, in part, because of the confidence and imagination inherant in choosing to be an active part of a community in preference to fully inhabiting one's own (real) world space. Perhaps it is merely a sense of rejection or abandonment that fuels concerns about addiction – it is not the actual number of hours spent in a game space but, as Wood indicates, the potential flaws in real life a high level of usage may highlight. Personally I think it is interesting that most of the media and academic debate on games addiction revolves around the use of games by teenagers. This is an age group who are biologically programmed to exhibit boundary testing, provocative, experimental and independent behaviours no matter what form such activity may take. Their parents, as their long term carers, protectors, etc. are therefore equally naturally likely to be concerned about whatever form teenage distancing takes and to blame the form, not the function - from Rock and Roll in the 50s to games “addiction” at present. Teenage years also coincide, in most countries, with the taking of genuinely important academic milestones – exams, transitions to college, university, work etc. - thus heightening the anxious tone of any debate on the consequences of gaming. I have many friends who spend substantial time playing computer games but this (aside from virtual world shock pieces) is not an age whose possible gaming addition is scrutinised nearly as closely. I do not think this is a reflection of the fact that older individuals spend less time on games but that at the age of 30 most people have proved that, alongside whatever their leisure pursuits might be, they manage to hold down a job, and/or attract and retain a mate, and to conduct a socially recognised pattern in their life. Teenagers however must face a world of possibility and parental and societal fears that goals will not be achieved, distractions will prove damaging etc. I think that disparity in studied communities is as important to Wood's argument as are his own interviews with functioning games “addicts” whose problems reflect other issues.

References

• [1] Gee, J. P. (2003). Chapter 2, 'Semiotic Domains: Is playing video games a "waste of time"?'In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

• [2] Greenfield, P. M. (1984). Chapter 7, 'Video Games'. In Mind and media : the effects of television, video games, and computers. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

• [3] Wood, R. T. A. (2008). Problems with the Concept of Video Game “Addiction”: Some Case Study Examples. International Journal of Mental Health Addiction, 6, 169-178.

• [4] "Dara O Briain - Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe". YouTube clip retrieved from eightySeventh's channel 1^st February 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG3aHvPG6H8

• [5] Meyer, J. and Land, R. (2006). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. Overcoming barriers to student understanding: threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. J. Meyer and R. Land (Eds.). (London, Routledge): pp. 3-18.

So this is my first post about the course content directly. The reason I wanted to start, before, with posts about my background in gaming was that I think game aesthetics and expectations are based a great deal on what you already know. That's not just about the digital games you already know but the larger context of games and gameplay. I find very violent games quite disturbing but then I was also bullied at school so only find very physical tomboy play quite threatening. I know friends who have grown up with in boistrous families (with lots of brothers or lots of cousins or lots of sports played by the whole family) find physical games quite fun and playful so perhaps also have a different take on their digital equivelents. Anyway.... On with the more course content specific bit.

Week 1 has been all about platform games, the definition of which immediately clashed with my own idea of platform games. Although I knew that the early games with static or moving platform games fitted the label I've always seen games with a similar structure – lots of small hierarchical levels – as also being platform game. This appears to have been a little way off so it's interesting to think about how limiting/limitless classifying a game based on certain elements of screen layout and play in this way. I guess it is no better or worse from calling films “action” or “comedy” or “romance” in terms of how much it tells you about play. For me the games this week seem to be about beating the clock and perfecting simple speedy key combinations to progress. The fact that they feature platforms seems to be of lesser or equal importance to these playing features.

This week was all about game definitions and characteristics and it was an interesting starting point for looking at digital games. Whitton [1] approaches this by looking at what might be a game in general and what characteristics a game has in order to be classified as such. This sounds like an obvious thing to do but personally I think it is difficult to classify lots of forms of playful gamelike behaviour. When I attempted Whitton's activity to identify what I think of as a game all of my initial answers were sports and, specifically, games I had played with other people in the past (lacrosse, tennis, etc.) and as well as being fun, challenging, competitive and social I also thought that to work they must be easy to start, where enjoyment depends on play with well-matched competitors and where absorption in the game was crucial. Whitton's own 10 characteristics seem to capture some of the same criteria as well as some interesting additional characteristics but there are a few that I am not sure I agree with.

Whitton includes Fantasy, Safety, and Rules as being key characteristics and I think there are some problems there. Of course Whitton allows for games that have only one or several characteristics but I am not sure that Fantasy is a key game characteristic. Few games have truly fantastical possibilities - there are peripheral fantasy elements but most computer games follow conventions that are very much based on the real and traditional media world in terms of gender, aesthetics, behavioural options (there are few adventure games that are wholly non combative for instance), etc. I think Safety, in the sense of a lack of real world consequence, seems to have huge overlap with Fantasy as a characteristic since the benefit of fantastical elements is surely escapism both in terms of escaping broad constraints of reality (gravity, financial possibility etc.) as well as personal physical, social and cultural limitations and embodiments (gender, sexuality, race, physique, etc.). So I think I feel that Safety and Fantasy are really one characteristic in most game scenarios.

Rules is an odd one. I agree that it's important to the notion of a game – particularly the sports games I identified – but I'm not sure why they are important. The parts of the games I identified reading Whitton were neither the goals nor the limitations of rules but the game play itself. However much of that game play is dictated or shaped by the nature of the rules. For instance I was a keen Lacrosse player for many years and it was the social and analytical elements of the game that I found fun. I wouldn't have found the game fun if there had been aggressive tackling or if I'd been playing attacking roles in the game and those were perks of having rules to shape the game. The thing is that in digital games, especially those in which learning explicitly takes place, I find it less frustrating to be allowed to make mistakes (and learn why they are mistakes) than being restricted to completing a task one specific way and/or being able to make mistakes without any indication of why something has not worked. One of the great advantages of learning from other people rather than interactive games is that feedback can be paced to meet a learners need. Some learners are happier to try over and over again and learn the answer themselves whilst that will be incredibly demotivating for some learners who would rather be guided through after a few early attempts. The problem with any learning process based upon complex algorithms is tailoring educational elements of play to the learning style of the student. Rules, rightly or wrongly, is a phrase that brings back to my mind the inflexibility of many gaming spaces.

It was actually quite challenging for me to see de Freitas' definition of computer based learning (p. 22 in Whitton 2010) which, if I am reading it correctly, assumes that learning can only take place in environments where education is the intent. I am not sure I agree with that. Learning cane take place at any time regardless of the intent of a given space I think though knowing de Freitas' background at the Serious Gaming Institute I suspect that this may be quite a tailored perspective on a particular type of computer based learning.

I do agree, however, with Whitton's non-Game activities. I am perplexed when Second Life is defined as a game as, whilst there are game spaces within the space, it is a space and a mechanism to create new spaces and activities but not a game itself. The idea that role play is not a game is a little tricky. I largely agree but the difference between that hybrid Safety/Fantasy element and role-play seems extremely subtle to me. There is something innately playful and removed about role play and, since “fun” is not in the list of characteristics, I wonder how playful and “game” intersect as terms since in terms of learning the “play” part of both would seem to be the most crucial element.

Newman [2] baffled me at first by insisting on the term “videogame” which I'd long ago associated only with the earliest days of Pong type games so I think I am going to stick with “computer game” or “digital game” in my post here as that, to me, sums up a wider array of gaming options.

I also found Newman's discussion of why players engage in games quite interesting especially given the current trend for extremely performative forms of game play. Singstar, GuitarBand, RockBand, etc. are all games based around a Kareoke style mixture of participation and voyerism in a way few previous games have been focused. Whilst there was always an element of watch-ability to games that allowed them to be played in social settings these new music-focused games are about, to an extent, recreating both traditional notions of community and performance and modern concepts of reality television. With a microphone, console and a series of classic hits you too can be a legend in your own living room and even friends or family members who are not physically participating in game play are invested and participating as a real audience to augment the on-screen fans. Their passive role is, nonetheless, an active part of the game whilst game play is all about practice and performance and not (only) goals related to control (Livingstone 2002 quoted in Newman 2004), progress and completion of the game.

Indeed games that make use of internet capable consoles add a further aspect to the player/viewer balance in that saved games are not only shared with those physically near a console but also those further afield whilst additional game material is acquired through free or paid online shops directly form the gaming environment. This is quite a disruptive idea to the notion of what a game can be. If you play Singstar and upload your video to the Singstar community are you a player of the game or an internet performer? If you create a level on Little Big Planet and share it with other gamers is that act of level creation part of game play or something else?

Fig 1. Screenshot of the Singstar performance gallery

How can competitive notions of being a winner or a loser properly defined in networked expandable and viewable games? Frasca's (1999 quotes in Newman 2004) modifications Caillois' (2001) “paidea” and “ludus” only seem to go part of the way to addressing this. Paidea, a term to define enjoyable but not goal or rule orientated games does not, as Newman suggests, seem to adequately describe the activity in playing The Sims since that game, whilst not exhibiting hierarchical goals, is structured around a defined narrative and can be (easily) lost. You can not be defeated, perhaps, but you can certainly win or lose. The goals are even stated, albeit in fuzzy terms, by the desires of the created character at a given time and by their needs to be fed, cleaned, etc. in order to live. If it were just about pleasure and no achievement (as Paidea would seem to suggest) then surely game play would not include such sophisticated levels of skills or achievement.

Whilst Church (2000 quoted in Newman 2004) identifies that players exert their own Ludus rules on The Sims I dispute that these are the only goals or achievements that are set. What is more complex in The Sims is the fact that many of the goals which are both implicitly and explicitly stated are based on traditional social constructs that are subtley introduced into game play. It is a mundane goal to eat, sleep and shower each day but it is an explicit feature of playing The Sims and is as crucial to your avatar's survival as mission achievement may be in more adventure-based titles. I don't want to dwell too much on The Sims (though I note it's repeated mention as one of the very few games played by women across various readings) but I am merely wanting to highlight that to split gameplay into enjoyment (Peidea) and achievement (Ludus) is, to my mind a rather bizarre way to split up types of game. Surely achievement and goal orientated play is not enough to motivate players through a game they are not enjoying? And surely enjoyment without progression is not enough to keep a player entertained? One of the curious features of this week's Platform games was a version of Donkey Kong that restarted rather than progresing at the end of a successfully completed level. This led to confusion and frustration because even something playful and simple needs to move on and exhibit some sort of change to hold attention. Thus I am not sure Ludus and Peidea, as I understand them (through the lens of Newman) can ever actually be separated as mutually exclusive terms. Any good game should, surely, include both elements?

On another classification note it was interesting, especially after reading Whitton, to see the fantastically restrictive set of elements of a videogame from Howland (1998a in Newman 2004 [2]) to add a little perspective on just how tricky it is to identify, categorise and classify a computer game. I think, in some ways, this is a good sign of how culturally assimilated gaming is since I think many people could be presented with a game and know it as such but defining why it is a game seems, like the definition of “Life” used by biologists [3], to collect only symptomatic information not the character or essence of what is being examined. This is perhaps why both Whitton and Newman both refer back to definitions of what a game is not as part of their definition of what a game may be.

I think this week we have come to the course with our own expectations and ideas of what constitutes a game from our own past experience (or relative lack of experience) so it is a very challenging notion to start by reflecting on the meaning of what we are yet to more fully explore. But then for Whitton and Newman even a long period of study and reflection cannot prepare any characteristics or definition of a game that they might make automatically stand up to the future technological and societal changes that will follow. I think one of the reasons that both give a flexible range of characteristics and qualities is precisely to allow a little space for gaming to adapt and change as it will, inevitably do. Whether my own sense of what a game is moves a little faster I think we shall see over the next few weeks...

So, finally to comment on this week's games a little. I was astonished to find that all three games were games I had, at some point, encountered before. Donkey Kong was, when I was a child, my least favourite of this week's three and I was surprised to find that it was still tremendously frustrating and irritating for me. In part this was because I wasn't very good at the game – I (Mario) died quickly and repeatedly. However there were several aspects that I found interesting after several attempts. Firstly I was surprised by how quick gameplay was. In around 45 minutes of attempts to complete the level I had probably played 40 times. This is astonishingly fast though not massively out of step with the other platform games this week. In part I think this reflects the fact that I only really completed a level or two of any of the games but I think it also reflects some of the access and social constructs in which this games were expected to work. Arcades, as noted in one of the week 2 readings on addiction (see later blog post for reference) actually taxes inexperienced players most disproportionately since your coins buy you only a few seconds or minutes of play. Similarly early games consoles were expected to sell to families and be used as social devices with friends, siblings etc. Games could not usually be saved and you were, in all likelihood, playing in a group and each taking turns. Short and simple game play is a perk to both platform game scenerios.

Pattern matching was discussed during the week across coursemates and Donkey Kong was the game where I found predictable patterns most quickly as I became aware that certain moves would trigger specific barrel movements. This was quite exciting – it rewarded my observation and skill – but also irritating as it made waiting as crucial a move as running and jumping. In fact I came late to the jumping part of the game. My most recent gaming experiences have all relied on either mice or console controllers so the idea of keyboard controls had rather passed me by and, instinctively, I had failed to read the instructions to discover that the space bar had a crucial role in the game. It was only when I was failing to get anywhere in the level that I realised I must be missing something important and went back to check. I also found the (unstated) rules about where Mario could jump quite perplexing as there was no audio or visual cue to make sense of why jumping only worked at certain platform distances. Again my game playing style was conditioned by games with complex audio signals and I was rather missing this clues as I played. Finally the one thing I really found odd about Donkey Kong was the infantalised hysterical girl I was supposed to be rescuing. For a start I could not work out why she needed rescuing rather than being able to make progress herself (certainly she seemed to be in the very prime running away position) but secondly her screaming seemed, to me, highly counterintuitive. Were she really in danger of an angry violent mammal she would, surely, be looking to lie low rather than rocking back and forth screaming at the world. Honestly I felt she was just too unwilling to get her hands dirty. And I also felt like the particular gender stereotype that sees a plucky plumber David fend off a giant gorilla Goliath in order to save a hysterical infant woman just too clichéd. I was really not feeling any sort of interest in contining any further with the game.

Frogger was a much more enticing prospect. I liked the basic premise as it was simple but infuriatingly reliant on quick button taps and very very good timing. I found the movements very intuitive to control but was particularly impressed by the simple but highly disorientating effect of having a game road function almost but not quite like reality – the changes in direction were tremendously unsettling and the variant speeds of cars quite challenging. Once you knew the general rules of what happened where it was fairly easy to play but one of the interesting conceptual elements was the fact that the screen was the universe. Should your frog float on a log off screen he was a gonner. Which is in stark contrast to the conceptual space in most games that, as in most television and film constructs, encourages you to believe there is a whole world beyond that which can be seen.

Pacman, our final game this week, had an alternative but again novel approach to structuring it's 2D game play with a layout that provides a tunnel from one side of the screen to the other suggesting that the screen is your universe but that it is, at least, a fairly smart space with it's own peculiar rules of time and space. Pacman proved to be the most addictive game of the week for me. It was intensely fast, baffling, but fun. Audio clues were minimal but helpful and it was aesthetically the best game because it was built around clear engaging highly abstract visuals that worked in a low resolution context whereas Donkey Kong and Frogger both required big leaps of faith to believe that the pixellated detail on screen were worth becoming engaged with. I did not, sadly, find all the clever little patterns and twists (more on this next week) but I did feel, of all three games, that there was a noticable difference between playing at initial skill level and, after a few hours, playing at a more developed level. I completed level 1 of Pacman and found it a really compelling game to return to to see if I could again reach (and this time conquer) level 2. I think part of what made it so playable was the option to play vertically or horizontally. Working bottom to top in Frogger and Donkey Kong seemed peculiar especially as email, blogging and most internet sites order content to avoid scrolling making top to bottom as key a default reading style as left to right. Which makes me wonder how much the structuring of these games depends on other conventions of players. For instance are some games (particularly those with complex status information shown on screen) easier to play with those used to scripts that write from right to left rather than left to right? Is the vertical game play in puzzle and platform games easier for those used to vertical kanji rather than western scripts? I'm not sure but I have a feeling those expectations do definitely influence enjoyability and the success of the first few plays of a game.

References

• [1] Whitton, N. (2010). Chapter 2, “Recognising the characteristics of digital games”. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.

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

• [3] Wikipedia. (2010). Section 2.1, “Biology”. In Life. Accessed 31^st January 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Biology

By the time I reached university I had reached the point when I had not only access to networked computers but also a PC in my own room so I brought myself the Monty Pythons the Meaning of Life game as a way to expend spare time. It was all based around the film and included additional Terry Gilliam animation it looked incredibly slick. It ran off a CD Rom and included lots of clips of film between a progressive series of puzzles and daft trivia games. It appealed to me because I liked the Monty Python TV show and films but I returned to play it as it had several entry points and the games were fairly random and witty: it was entertaining even when you did badly.

At university I found myself trapped at a campus out of town for lots of lunch hours with little to do so joined my peers in playing Light Bikes and, when flash started powering lots of online games, things like Tetris and Solitaire but played online (wisely the university did not include the games in the standard Windows installs on computer lab machines). I was still on the whole more interesting in writing, blogging and starting to edit websites most of the time but remember reviewing films one festival with a team of video and flash producers. At the time flash games were starting to be used particularly on brand websites (as they still are) to create lively slick looking add ons to the site (rather than as the core style of presenting the whole website as is the case with lots of brand sites now). The process of creating them was, however, fairly complex and time-consuming (though, at the time, less taxing than trying to capture and deliver video to a good standard online) and the team I'd been working with went off to lucrative work in London as every company was starting to need a website and starting to want something slick and playful to draw people in.

A few other games started popping up as well. A friend lent me his copy of Incredible Machines, a rather geeky game based on building wonderful surreal gadgets and vehicles to solve peculiar puzzles on screen. Of the games I'd played this was one of the most educational feeling – although since I was studying engineering in between games I knew that this was more puzzle than study – and one of the most engaging as it was quite analytical, very creative and there were multiple ways to find a solution. 

I enjoyed Incredible Machines but, when I complained how much I wanted an even more freeform game – something where I could create and build and control what I wanted, I found myself receiving a box set of the Myst series for Christmas. I tried to fathom the game but whilst it was the most graphically glorious game I'd encountered it was also terribly frustrating. It did take creative skills to master but it seemed to need a psychic connection to the games developer to find the goals and solutions to progress. I gave up quite quickly as I grew tired of reading obtuse text introductions and then playing baron (but beautiful) game areas where only a few areas had any type of (obscure) functionality. It had the aesthetic I'd been hoping for but the “creative” game play aspect felt too regimented.

I started working part time in a computer lab and, since the job amounted to babysitting the room and filling the printer, I found myself with long shifts to fill with things that could be regularly interrupted. GemMine and various other deeply daft puzzle games kept me entertained as gameplay only took a few minutes on the whole.

 But it was when I moved into a shared flat with a console (and subsequently several consoles) that I really started to play computer games. I spent hours and hours playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 with my flatmates. There felt like a real progression of skill in the game and, as I perfected my grinds, I felt like I was really progressing through the game. Key to this sense was the fact that the flatmate I played with most often was of a similar skill level so a slight difference in skill or experience from playing individually made shared game play that much better. Both of us, however, were regularly shown tips and masterful play by two casual experts of the game who came round for parties and video nights and trounced our scores. One night we decided that we should play with the custom settings on game and decided to create players for our games that looked just like our real life experts. This new bizarre embodiment in the game actually made it much more fun to play – suddenly our skaters had a name, a look and a personality as well as some custom skill points to match our best playing skills. The game kept us entertained for months and months – and cleverly blended the ability to save long term progressive games with short unsaved party modes - and felt really sociable so I have very fond memories and reached probably the highest level of game skills of any game I've played before or since. I really felt like I knew what I was doing. And years later I was amazed to find that the realistic landscapes used in the San Francisco levels of the game had been so good that I was able to guide my partner (who grew up near the city and had often visited) round the areas she hadn't visited before. In fact Alcatraz was so like the game that I had flashbacks to specific favourite moves as I walked around and felt like I had been there before. It was wonderful and very bizarre.

Computer game sessions at the end of video nights become the standard end to the night in the flat with Bishi Bashi, Super Monkey Ball/Monkey Tennis, TimeSplitters 2, Grand Turismo, and Tekken Tag Tournament were all very popular.

My flatmate also brought a few more slow burn titles so we both attempted Pikmin - which was highly enjoyable if not wildly exciting and Mario Sunshine, a game we again traded off tips and progressive game play in. Luigi's Mansion didn't entertain for long but was silly and fun but The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker proved to be an even more compelling experience than Tony Hawks since it combined slick animation and a whole rich complex universe. It was, however, definitely a solitary game and the most social it ever reached was in the exchanging of tips or new level info between game play sessions.

My flatmate also acquired GTA: Vice City for his PC at about the same time as a whole raft of our (male) friends did. After hearing about some of the notorious features of the game – freeform gameplay was the most enticing element but the idea of a game where you scored points for killing, mugging and using prostitutes had a certain amoral charm – that I requested a wee play on the game. Again I was wowed with the graphics and I did enjoy the custom cars and their multiple radio stations. I didn't really get the goals (perhaps the point if Games Britannia [1] is to be believed) but I enjoyed the openness of the space – Tony Hawk's and GTA were the first two games where I could go in the wrong direction, do something purely for entertainment or craft my own narrative and they were both much more enticing for this. The animation and, most particularly, the soundtrack packed with great well known tracks that set the mood were key to the games' success. However the progressing goals and narrative scenes of GTA, though slick, seemed to interrupt more explorative play and I never quite got the hang of taking part in these missions and areas of the game where you were taken out of game play to view important information. I do know friends who wanted to progress through the game in a much faster more goal orientated way though and I think these sequences (longer but not unusual in any video game) felt less disruptive in this style of play.

The rather warped moral code in the GTA gameplay didn't bother me too much at the time but then I was an adult woman playing the game. As subsequent titles have come out in the franchise I've been interested to see how they are marketed as I think the same subversion that makes these edgy and witty games has some odd implications for who plays them and how really committed players may view other people. I am astonished, for instance, how few protagonists in any modern computer games are women. Lara Croft may have been designed to look great to male gamers but that at least meant that she was a tough and multi faceted character (and led to the hyper feminist and equally quite exploitative Bits[2], a female fronted answer to Games Master[3] ) and gamers of all genders played the game in the embodiment of a woman (although more often as voyeur than through her eyes). GTA had men cast as various characters – gang members and bosses, taxi drivers, irate by standers, police men radio shock jocks etc. - but women seemed only to appear very peripherally and as prostitutes and mob girlfriends (which may or may not effectively equate to the same thing in the game). That actually means the game had more women in it than more random aggressive games – such as Halo, a game I played only a few times but found fairly dull (though exquisitely rendered) - but is, nonetheless, quite an odd experiential landscape.

When I moved out of that flat a few years ago my partner and I sat down and talked about buying a games console. We'd both gotten used to playing a lot of games quite regularly and the Game Cube seemed the most enticing option. Indeed I still occasionally look into the windows of second hand gaming shops and ponder a discounted bundle of console and games to relive my gaming student days. At that time we decided to leave it for the time being. I lost track of what games were coming out and decided I was fine without a gaming console. However with several friends in the industry I do waver quite often and when the WII came out both my partner and I thought it looked like it could be a fun console to get. We haven't got one yet but that's mainly because we look at the price, we look at the amount of free time we have and we generally decide that we'd rather use the money on knitting, crochet, beading and cooking equipment – things that we tend to do together. Spare time is at more of a premium than money so my partner currently plays The Sims 2 on and off (very obsessively at times) when she has free time but, partly because of studying for this course, and partly because of other hobbies that tend to be my first choice of time filling activity, I've been pretty much off games for a few years.

Although I never think of it as a game I have flirted with Second Life both for this course and for general entertainment. As a space it ticks many of those boxes that Myst never did but it is really a social space and for that reason it tends only to capture my attention when I have a social use for it. The most compelling element of Second Life for me is the ability to create things but the tie to cash for importing and housing any items or textures in SL feels very alienating to me. I might be happy to pay a one off fee for software/a game but I don't use the space enough to subscribe (as I do to Flickr and PodBean) and really use it as an alternative space to be. What I would love it to be able to take out some of that SL experience and share it in other spaces.

OpenSim is interesting as a possibility and I also like the type of Machinima that comes out of SL as a way to share experience and creativity to those who do not want to register and take part in the same virtual world. I have also looked at World of Warcraft but have not been terribly tempted yet, in part because of the fantasy element of the game (not a style of game play in any format that has ever terribly inspired me) but mainly because the cost barrier is fairly high to get started and I'm just not sure I have the time to make the most of the game and thus get the value out of paying (even if I liked the game play). Those I know who do play a lot of WoW have existing groups of peers who already play in the space and this, in part, is a motivating factor as it allows them to play some fun challenging situations with old friends in areas near and far – as well as friendly strangers. And I cannot argue that WoW looks immeasurably more slick than Second Life.

Although I'm not gaming at the moment it seems that more and more of my friends do. Singing games show up at parties, WII Fit seems to be regularly mentioned as a modern alternative to the fitness videos and DVDs that used to be ubiquitous at this time of year. Given this upturn in gaming I'm surprised gaming doesn't appear in mainstream media and most particularly doesn't feature on TV outside of the adverts. When I started to take an interest in computers Knightmare (for a taster have a look at this (realplayer) clip) was on TV. By the time I had a PC and was wondering what I could eventually do with the technology Cyber Zone was on TV suggesting that we'd all be playing virtual reality games in the near future...

And by the time I actually played console games I was watching the excellent Bits and I felt like I had a connection to what was going on in gaming. But at that point gaming was gaming, as in a particular hobby with a fairly geeky connotation...

At the moment I see ads for gaming – more often than not featuring A list actresses or footballing dynasties. The emphasis is on games as a leisure pursuit for all – not just geeks but older players, women, and families – to play in sociable group contexts (the big screen TV acting like a roaring fire at the heart of a modern living room).

Particularly interesting are the brain training games ads – a particularly enthusiastic attempt to get older consumers to buy hand held gaming devices that seems, if the cafes and commuter routes of Edinburgh is anything to go by, to have had a fairly successful impact. Oddly this is marketing pitch claiming that games are educational but in such a way that the ads almost play like dietary supplement infomercials. It adds credibility to learning through games but only in the context of Sudoku style puzzles that are specifically labelled as learning games.

So, after looking back at all those gaming encounters a few things are highlighted for me. Firstly I am a hard gamer to capture. Although I seem to have played a lot of games and can be easily absorbed in many types of game it actually takes a great deal for me to become properly invested in playing a game. The long term games that allow the saving of positions and more freeform explorations work best for me and I learn skills in these. I like creative spaces but I get a little lost when there is no structure at all. Choice is good, infinite choice is quickly baffling. And finally I am quite price sensitive to games. I will happily try a free or inexpensive game but I am wary of entering a game that may prove expensive to continue. This is not because I could not afford to play (generally) but more to do with where value lies for me: virtual goods have limited value to me and regular payments must represent decent value for money. For educational games this last element would not, on the whole, be an issue but game play would. I have seen demos of “Serious Games” and these look fantastic but very much based on following a specific response. There are good reasons for this but the idea of free choice that traps you in a single level until you make the one approved move is a tricky one – it can feel like Groundhog Day.

Notes

[1] Games Brittania is a BBC 4 Series from late 2009 tracking the history of computer gaming. More information on the shows website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pddc6

[2] Bits was a games review and news show running in the late '90s and early 00's and hosted by three female games journalists/presenters. Websites about the show are sparse but Charlie Brooker gives the show mention in his own review of gaming shows on TV.

[3] Games Master was a Channel 4 computer gaming show which began in 1992. A detailed page about the series can be found here:http://www.gamesmasterlive.co.uk/gamesmaster/gamesmaster.php.

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:

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.

References

Gee, J. P. (2003) Chapter 2, 'Semiotic Domains: Is playing video games a "waste of time"?'In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (core textbook)

Greenfield, P. M. (1984) Chapter 7, 'Video Games'. In Mind and media : the effects of television, video games, and computers. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press

Kolb, D. (1993). The process of experiential learning. In Culture and processes of Adult Learning. M. Thorpe, R. Edwards, and A. Hanson (Eds.). (Buckingham, OUP): pp. 138-156

Things had started to get pretty sophisticated in the home console market pretty quickly as I got near to finishing primary school and although my mum certainly wasn't enthused by computer games we started to hear about them through friends and, I suppose, the media. The Sega Mega Drive came out and we started occasionally renting consoles and games when we went to the village shop to rent video cassettes. Sonic the Hedgehog became the first game my sister and I both got pretty good at playing and I remember spending hours and hours of the weekend with my sister and I lounging on my mum's big squishy bed playing Sonic on the second telly. We never plugged it into the big TV downstairs as it wasn't seen as appropriate to play games in the lounge as it would be visible, would interfere with visiting adults and, in our wee house, would have meant us getting under my mum's feet. Gaming was to be done in relative privacy.

There was all of one Sega console in the village shop so we'd also rent and play Super Mario Brothers on the NES. In fact I can't recall which we started out with but Sonic felt rather more energised and entertaining to play and certainly had the showier graphics of the two. However all of the visual shorthand and game play tactics learned in Super Mario would turn out to be handy in later Nintendo titles from Mario Party to Super Mario Sunshine and Luigi's Mansion. And no matter which console was available for hire, these occasional weekends of gaming felt like a pretty special and unusual activity.

All of the games played to date were fun but were marked by extreme frustration. Not just over understanding controls and goals of the game but mainly over getting a chance to play at all. Access to just about all the machines or gaming devices was rationed in the extreme because they weren't owned hugely widely and were expensive to buy.

For instance Frogger had been used as a (learning free) reward at school – a carrot for finishing work on time or doing well but even then maybe 5 people would be crammed into the (open) cupboard awaiting their turn the moment you killed your frog.

Having just replayed the game this week I can see why it was so frustrating – a very unsuccessful player can burn through froggy lives in about 2 minutes, controls are fiddly and reaction speed is a part of the challenge all of which, in a room full of enthusiastic 9 year olds, means it's very easy to kill your frog(s) with the smallest delay in reaction. Then one was left sitting there waiting the next turn exasperatedly for maybe half an hour.

I knew that arcade games existed out there in a sort of parallel urban universe but programme like Blue Peter, Press Gang and Grange Hill ran stories about how addictive and dangerous they were with little differentiation between One Armed Bandits and other types of arcade games. News Round highlighted people thieving money and bunking off school to support arcade playing habits. All of the above are surely the precursor to the current array of gaming scare stories though I'm sure there was a small kernel of truth there also. But, in any case, this was all very academic as we were living in a small village so an arcade seemed like a bizarre scary place. I think anything from sky diving clubs to film sets to strip bars probably all seem less bizarre and much more accessible to the average 10 year old growing up in the same place today. At the time though such establishments seemed very “There be dragons!” to us. Watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off I remember thinking how very mature and bad-ass the girl who is mistaken for Ferris in – gasp! - an arcade must have been. To this day I see arcade gaming machines as pricey, for other people, and pretty much equivalent to gambling thanks to all those media warnings about their addictiveness.

Some diversionary arcade-ish gaming was, however, permitted in the palace of tackiness that was the Laser-quest venue that opened up in Cardiff in the early 90s. Amongst my favourites here were the games that were hybrids of electronic and physical games – I particularly remember a basketball game where you threw real balls and the points were electronically totted up. It wasn't that clever but – like Laser-quest itself - it felt very high tech and gave you a very physical sense of feedback and sense of accomplishment – oddly the natural successors to these types of games are probably the WII and Project Natal (for Xbox). Indeed very few of the video/computer/digital games I encountered till the late '90s had anything to do with beating other people, most were about beating your own high score or a previously set high score. This was very different to the other types of games I was playing – from catch to bowling (bowling being the highlight of an 11 year olds life) or laser-quest (all very performed forms of play) to the many varieties of board games played with friends.

Next into my gaming life wandered the Nintendo Game Boy. It seemed like an excessively expensive treat and it was thus not me (busy with crafts) but my sister who asked for/part paid for a shiny new Game Boy to entertain her into her teens. Tetris was almost the only thing anyone in the house ever played on her Game Boy, in part because it had been bundled free but, in larger part, because it was a very simple and very addictive game to play. Although my sister also acquired such classics as Bill & Ted's Excellent Game Boy Adventure the gameplay rarely contended with Tetris. Indeed not only did I start poaching the Game Boy to play a few levels but so did my mum who became sufficiently addicted to get, if I recall correctly, the highest score in the house (when I mentioned this course the other week she commented on how addicted she had been to Tetris in fond but baffled terms).

I never got interested enough for my own GameBoy but I did become fascinated with making pretty shapes on screen and, having just gotten access to my dad's very old Amstrad, I was largely entertaining myself trying to find ways to draw random pictures with text (also fun, of course, on typewriters) and experimenting with watching his vast archive of old films. Other digital games and entertainment largely passed me by as I really wanted more freedom and creativity in my gaming and platform games and puzzle games of the time were fairly dictatorial about how you could play the game. It was great to get absorbed in beating the clock but wasn't terribly satisfying.

Having said this a few games offered some short term distractions. A leisure centre near us offered a very underused and cheap Tekken arcade game and that, on a pleasing visceral level, became a good way for my sister and I to beat each other up in an acceptable and entertaining manner.

 At school the one room of PCs also had but one exciting game available. Snake, in all it's basic glory, looked vaguely like it could be a bit mathematical and somehow slipped through the academic net. Thus the room was oft packed with school peers playing for extended periods. I enjoyed it but found the opportunity to write up and format actual pieces of work more exciting in terms of the hours I would spend on the computers. Snake was fun but writing let me express myself rather than fill time. This, as you may notice, is a bit of a theme with my enjoyment of computer games and some of my attitude about what makes good games and thus good learning games. Reflecting on my previous gaming experience feels like a useful part of a process of understanding what would and could have truly engaged me as a learning gaming process. Graphics and interactivity has moved on substantially but conceptual elements of what makes a good game seem important even in the lowest tech computer games experiences.

As PCs were getting more sophisticated they started to be the main space I encountered games (leaving consoles to others at this point) including Solitaire, MineSweeper, Hearts (which I never did or have understood), and the curious Mavis Beacon touch typing game. It's only in recent years that I realise what a handy primer the latter game was. It didn't teach me to touch type but it did focus me, after years of watching my mother type like lightening when working from home, on thinking about which keys should do which keys when I actually learned speedy touch typing some years later through enthusiastic use of chat rooms on AOL when we finally got a (modern) PC at home.

PCs also brought gaming to an older friend in my neighbourhood which also meant I started to see games that much more closely resemble what the term “computer game” means to most people these days. These were games like Doom, Civilisation, and Tomb Raider and, noticeably, these were adult games with gore or ridiculously proportioned stars or complex goals and game play. They were a world away from Mario or Tetris but, at the time, they looked both more life like and more disappointing – the bright garish animation of kids games suited the screens better and the power of the computers meant that Solitaire or minesweeper could move fast but games like Doom could move quite choppily with parts of the screen barely rendering in time for you to play them.

However by the time we had that first Windows machine at home the internet existed. Indeed we'd gotten the PC, in part, to allow my mum access to email for work. So my first experiments with the PC were about the enormous package of bundled CDs roms (including creative but random titles like an Alan Titchmarsh Gardening program), those included Windows 95 games and, most excitingly of all, very slow dial up internet explorations which would take me away from games for several years as I met new people across the world and read and wrote and chatted – all activities that seemed terribly exciting compared to gaming for hours to a teenager who was more than ready to move out of a small village and wanted to explore lots of things that school and friends weren't offering me about films, about my identity. It was a revelation and just couldn't compare with any other leisure pursuit for most of my late teens. But when I reached university the internet was plentiful, the real life opportunities greater and the call of games was thus a little stronger...