However, I was curious as to what games could offer education and I have not been disappointed.  I particularly liked Nicola Whitton’s approach – focusing on what educators can learn from good game design and also her concentration on higher education which is where my own teaching is located.  As a sociologist I am fascinated by the evolution of digital game play which somehow passed me by – from the very public context of arcade gaming, to early console games, to initially textual multi-player online games in MOOs and MUDs, to fully 3D immersive MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and Everquest, to ARGs and multi-modal games and mobile and wii games.  These developments have occurred in a relatively short time frame of about 30 years.  Being in my mid-fifties I can see how these developments have passed me by although I am not arguing strongly for a generational difference as I was never ‘into’ games that much. I can see someone of my generation who was a game enthusiast would have been enthralled by these developments.

I had a very simplistic notion of what is ‘play’ and what is a ‘game’.  The distinction between paedia (spontaneous, unstructured play) and ludic (structured play) (Caillois,2001) was illuminating particularly as I could apply it to my practice of qualitative analysis – where I can see a phase of ‘playing with the data’ in the paedia sense when experimenting with ideas, immersing oneself in the data and a more ‘ludic’ phase i.e a structured, methodical approach to managing and analysing data.  The problematic nature of ‘what is a game’ was brought home to me when we had to design in our own groups a game using Google Earth as the back drop.  After constructing our game, I was suddenly not sure whether it was a game or not (see blog).  I had to think hard about what differentiated a game from a learning activity.  This was not something I had expected – having read the literature on the characteristics of a game. It was in the practice of trying to design a game that the issues the literature discussed became meaningful.

My own experience with playing games during this course began with a lot of frustration.  I had never played arcade-style games so my attempts with PacMan (I had never even heard of PacMan!! – which seems amazing to me now), Donkey Kong etc. were fraught.  It was like entering a new world, learning a new language for me.  I did not enjoy the early weeks of game playing.  Ironically, I now play on my iPhone two arcade-style games – DoodleJump and Ragdoll 2.  I play them when I want some down time to relax and empty my mind – something I never thought possible during my first attempt at playing these games. And I get satisfaction in getting better – improving my score.  As I tried different types of games, I became more involved in them and started to look at them from a meta-level perspective – learning their design grammars or understanding their semiotic domain (Gee 2003).  This level of understanding was reinforced in searching for a game to review that would somehow be related to my practice.  At this point in the course, we had not looked at ARGs. I first looked at educational games but as most were aimed at the K-12 level, I did not find anything that I thought could be translated to post-graduates. I then looked at commercial games and the ones that I thought had relevance to qualitative analysis were detective games.  The one I ultimately chose (Missing: Since January AKA In Memoriam) I discovered retrospectively had elements of an ARG – playing as oneself, having an ongoing storyline, moving between the game and the real world (real fact-based sites, emails),  a ‘this is not a game’ attitude and a simulation of collaboration.  The blending of the real and game worlds I particularly liked as it engendered a sense of the uncanny (Bayne 2008) – an uncomfortable feeling, a disorientation which mirrors the ‘troublesome’ nature of the qualitative analysis process and links to Meyer and Land’s (2005) notion of students’ needing to grapple with troublesome areas before being able to assimilate the ‘threshold concepts’ relevant to their subject area.

Missing: Since January was the first ‘long’ game that I played and I had to grapple with the variety of puzzles, arcade-style games as well as internet searches in order to proceed. I also discovered a number of cheats on the internet and thus connected with the affinity group associated with this game. At this mid-point of the course, I felt that I was getting a deeper understanding of games.

My biggest surprise was how much I enjoyed the MMORPGs.  I was slightly apprehensive about playing these games and I welcomed the fact that we would be playing them as a group.  I doubt whether I would have ventured into them alone.  I enjoyed developing my avatar and learning about the role my type of character plays in the game.  I have blogged about the ethical issues I think these games raise but I like, in general, the notion of completing quests.  World of Warcraft and Everquest II reminded me a bit of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (with the idea of travelling through unknown lands to complete a quest).  Not surprisingly, I recently discovered that there is a Lord of the Rings MMORPG.  I enjoy the richness of inhabiting these simulated environments.

I am still absorbing how I can apply what I have learned about games to the way I design workshops supporting learning about the qualitative analysis process and the use of CAQDAS (Computer-Aided Qualitative Data AnalysiS).  I can see how each software package (such as ATLAS.ti,  MAXqda or NVivo) can be used as a platform for a game.  Using an existing software package as platform for a game (in the way we used Google Earth as a platform) has the benefits of being efficient in terms of cost (not having to design from scratch a game environment) and being authentic – playing in the environment that you are learning about.  However, I am reluctant to explore this route as these software packages are complex as it as and adding learning how to play a game on top of these packages would be adding an additional layer of complexity.  Students may feel they are wasting time learning how to play the game.  In addition, all these packages are in a phase of rabid development with new versions coming out every 18 months or so – any game I develop for a particular platform will be quickly out of date.

More importantly, I need to consider whether a game is an appropriate vehicle for the kind of teaching I do. I can see the relevance of the collaborative nature of games and the development of affinity groups to develop a researcher identity.  Many of the people who attend my courses are new not only to the software tools but to qualitative data analysis itself – so I see the potential of creating something that addresses that need.  Whether that something is a game or a series of learning activities is something I need to consider.  In fact, I should not think of my choice simply as an ‘either-or’ between a game or a learning activity. Jackson (2009) gives an example of game-based teaching where she used principles from gaming – levelling, “well-ordered problems”, immediate feedback, resubmission and discovery learning – in designing learning activities. What I need to steer clear of is what Papert (1998) calls – shavian reversals – combining the worst from the education and the gaming worlds. This is something I will be working out in my final assignment on designing a game.

References

Bayne, S. (2008) Uncanny spaces for higher education: teaching and learning in virtual worlds, ALT-J, 16:3, pp.197-205

Caillois, R. (2001) Chapter 2, 'The Classification of Games'. In Man, Play and Games. Illinois: University of illinois Press.

Gee, J.P. (2003) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave

Jackson, J. (2009) Game-based teaching: what educators learn from videogames, Teaching Education, vol. 20. No. 3, September 2009, pp. 291-304

Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R. (2006) Threshold concepts: An introduction in Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge, London:  RoutledgeFalmer.

Papert, S. (1998) Does easy do it? Children, games and learning, Game Developer, June: 88

Whitton, N. (2010) Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.

With my ‘flow’ interrupted, I had been finding it difficult to get back into the course. I had been thrown into what Czkiszentmihalyi describes as an anxiety state – I had too many challenges to handle at once.  However, I had been completely immersed in the course before my IT disaster.  I started trying to get back into the course by looking at some Alternative Reality Games.  I was particularly interested in this type of game as it seemed to be most suited to the kind of game which would be relevant to my work. In fact, I reviewed Missing: Since January for my first assignment because while it is not a true ARG it has elements of an ARG:  an ongoing storyline, moving between the game and the real world (real fact-based sites, emails),  a ‘this is not a game’ attitude and a simulation of collaboration among different people trying to solve the clues that the Phoenix gives as to the whereabouts of the journalist he kidnapped. (It is a single player game but collaboration is simulated by receiving real emails with ideas on how to interpret the Phoenix’s messages from what appears to be real people also looking for the journalist.) I enjoyed Missing: Since January despite being sometimes frustrated by the difficultness of some of the puzzles.

However, I was disappointed in the ARG games I first looked at – Darfur is Dying and the Viola Quest.  Darfur is Dying is simply depressing – it is incredibly difficult to get to the well to bring water back to the village without being picked up by the patrols.  One by one you watch your little avatars – representing villagers - disappear.  The link to the real world is made by asking you every time an avatar is picked up to contribute something for the people of the Darfur. I found it too simplistic and appealing only to the converted. I also felt uncomfortable of the situation in Darfur being represented by a cartoon-style game.  I also could not get engaged in the Viola Quest – the storyline did not appeal to me, and I did not have any need to be inducted in the Manchester Metropolitan University community.

My re-engagement in this course occurred when we explored MMOGs through playing World of Warcraft and Everquest II. It may have been a combination of the immersive nature of these games and re-connecting with my fellow students that re-generated my ‘flow’ in this course.  But it could also be something about how these games can generate flow in players.

Entering flow is largely a function of how attention has been focused in the past and how it is focused in the present by the activity’s structural conditions….Clear proximal goals, immediate feedback, and just-manageable levels of challenge orient the organism, in a unified and coordinated way, so that attention becomes completely absorbed into the stimulus field defined by the activity.” Nakamura, J. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002:92)

I found that I was able to develop my character, learn how my type of character fits into the wider frame of the game world and was able to successfully proceed through several levels.  I have blogged about my experiences of MMOGs and issues they raise – particularly about ethics.

Having successfully explored MMOGs I decided to revisit ARGs.  I read Kim et al.’s (2009) evolution of ARGs.  I found it interesting that the first ARG – The Beast (2001) – was designed as a promotional tool for the film – A.I.  This idea that ARGs can be used as a viral marketing tool was developed further by other games – I love Bees (2004) for the video game Halo 2, Last Call Poker (2005) for the video game – Gun, Year Zero (2007) for Nine Inch Nails’ CD of the same name, and Free Fall (2008) to promote the film – Eagle Eye.  All these games benefitted by a large marketing budget which is obvious by the quality of the various artefacts of the games.  (I explored in particular – I love Bees  and Year Zero.) While I don’t believe that top production values of videos, web-sites, posters etc alone make a game exciting, the combination of a good game design AND top production values are winners.

Kim et al. (2009) make the point that ARGs they discussed used participatory mechanisms ‘to build and strengthen affinity groups. A set of problems aligns the interest and attention of a group and pulls them into the story’s action’. This development and use of affinity groups is key attraction for educators. In my case, I think ARGs can be used to develop qualitative data analysts - creating a group environment where novice researchers can learn from each other, given an interesting area to research.  Kim et al. (2009) point to the decline of professional journalists and the domination of information by a few media sources.  They see ARGs as a way ‘to make sense of amateur data and provide structure and interactive experiences. The role of the storymaster will likely evolve to become more flexible and open...’ They seem to be promoting ARGs as a structure for everyday folk to make sense of the mass of information about the world.  This seems similar to the analysis process in research.  Of course, who frames the stories will have a lot of power in what they are proposing.

Jane McGonigal who was involved in designing some of the viral marketing ARGs (including I love Bees)  has now moved to using ARGs to promote social action.

 Also see the link below:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/mcgonigal

She designed World without Oil – a game where participants from all over the world had to imagine a real world potential problem – how would they manage when the oil ran out.  Her current game is Evoke which is focused on youth in Africa although anyone can play. It is described as a ‘crash course for changing the world’ – teaching you collaboration, creativity, entrepreneurship and sustainability. The World Bank is one of the sponsors. As can be seen from the promotional video, the production values are high but so is the design. (It cost $500,000 to design.)

However, even though at the time of writing this blog Evoke is live as a game, it has already inspired a parody game – called Invoke – a crash course in saving capitalism – inspired by the World Bank and their game Evoke.

Christy Dena (a game design consultant) has blogged about the implications of this parody.  The first point she makes is that the fact that Evoke has been parodied is evidence that the ARG genre (a game form that has confused many up until now) is a recognized form – particularly as the parody ARG was designed by people outside of the ARG community. 

It wouldn’t be a parody of form if there was no recognisable form to parody. This means the mechanics and missions have become somewhat standardised. They are not part of experimental fringe culture, but have moved into mainstream creative forms if you like. (Dena, 2010).

The second point Dena makes is that Invoke is also a parody of McGonigal’s claim that games can save or change the world.  Adrian Hon (a cross-media entertainment designer – a term he prefers to ARG designer) has blogged about the misleading claims that have been made for ARGs. He cites that while World without Oil had 2176 registered players over 32 weeks, only 276 were active (i.e. submitted at least one piece of work) and only 170 submitted more than one piece of work.  Superstruct is another ARG where players fast forward to 2019 and try to find solutions for multiple threats to human survival. Hon reports that of 8901 registered players only 554 superstuctures were created.   Hon’s point is that while these games may attract a large number of players initially, they are impacting on only a small percentage of them. He says it is overstating the case that games can change the world. However, he acknowledges that in its first week Evoke had over 8000 registered users and these users had submitted 3000 pieces of content. It is also truly international and has succeeded in attracting players from Africa.  Hon feels that games like Evoke and World without Oil can be inspirational but it is misleading to say that they can change the world.

My preference for the ARG game genre in relation to my own work is that the game is enmeshed within the real world rather than entering a fictional game world and that it uses multiple media and communication tools.  The players are playing as themselves but they are linked together to form a community of novice researchers. My goal is that they learn to be qualitative analysts. I notice that the game Evoke also has a role for mentors in the game which is an idea I can use when constructing my game. My concern is that while it is possible to construct an ARG with basic Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, emails etc. (as Whitton suggests), the ARGs that I found that worked were the commercial ones, the ones that had a lot of money to produce them.  Also even in these, they needed a critical mass of several thousand players in order to get enough interaction going among players. Despite this, I feel optimistic that it is possible to use as a model these successful ARGs to produce a scaled down version for educational purposes.

References

Dena, C. (2010) Parody and Design, blog post March 8 2010, from Christy’s Corner of the Universe, http://www.christydena.com/2010/03/parody-and-design/ accessed 8 April 2010

Hon, A. (2010) Can a game save the world?, blog post March 9 2010, from Mssv, http://mssv.net/2010/03/09/can-a-game-save-the-world/ accessed 8 Apritl 2010

McGonigal, J. (2008) Saving the world through game design, New Yorker conference video, Stories o f the Near Future. http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/mcgonigal#ixzz0kPkbB4Y8

Kim, J., Lee, E., Thomas, T. and Dombrowski, C. (2009) Storytelling in New Media: The case of alternative reality games – 2001-2009, New Monday, vol. 14, issue 6.

Nakamura, J. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002) (2002) Ch. 7 The concept of flow in Snyder, C.R. et al Handbook of Positive Psychology, Oxford University Press

Whitton, N. (2010) Learning with Digital Games, Routledge.