Serious Games Summit '06

Is Manifesto “Serious?”
A “Gamer’s” View of the Serious Games Summit

By Johnny L. Wilson

HOT NEWS from the Serious Games Summit: At last week’s Serious Games Summit, Don Gilman (developer/programmer on all of the PC versions of Harpoon and current CEO of Advanced Gaming Systems) revealed that Larry Bond and Chris Carlson have been updating their database to allow future versions of Harpoon to mix and match vessels from different eras. Going back in time to pit modern platforms against WWI and WWII ships is only part of the future fun. [More on Harpoon will appear in Part II of this report.]

Although the Serious Games Summit is more about educational, health consciousness-raising, and training games (both for corporate use and the defense/intelligence establishment), its “manifesto” is important to Manifesto Games. First, the “Serious Games” movement is important because it keeps gaming from being marginalized. In spite of mounting evidence that gaming facilitates education and training, there is still a large majority in our country that identifies games as, at best, trivial and, at worst, harmful. The success of “serious games” provides breathing room for all of us involved in the games business (table-top, PC, and console). Second, many of our developer partners are involved in the making of “Serious Games.” For some, these special projects allow them to stay alive. For others, entertainment and the accomplishment of serious aims are intertwined. Third, yours truly and many like me have liked games that touch on serious subjects from the earliest days of Jim Zuber’s Millionaire and Chris Crawford’s Balance of Power through the era of Will Wright’s SimCity, Sid Meier’s Civilization and Larry Bond’s (as well as Don Gilman’s, Gordon Walton’s, and Chris Carlson’s) Harpoon.

Manifesto in the Keynote Address

Although our recent IRC chat with Henry Jenkins treated him to the kind of anarchy you’d expect from both IRC and from any group named “Manifesto,” we’re delighted to share that Henry understands what we’re trying to do. He’s a believer and comrade!

His keynote, “Serious Games in the Age of Media Convergence and Collective Intelligence,” was just the right touch for opening the conference. Though we were excited to see Manifesto Games (and our own Greg Costikyan) as the poster child for his slide on the independent games movement, Jenkins’ address was considerably more significant than many Serious Games Summit attendees would have realized. Here are some salient points that I noted.

First, convergence is more cultural than technological. Convergence is much more concerned with the metagame, the culture around the game than the game itself, the platforms on which the game is played, or the carrier/distributor of the game. According to Jenkins, this is rapidly becoming true of all media. The web is making a participatory culture possible which Jenkins argues is analogous to the 19th century folk culture. He suggested the modding community and machinema (sometimes spelled “machinima”) community are both forms of participatory culture.

This leads to the second point. Participation, for Jenkins, is a product of culture—particularly reworking the content to serve personal and collective interests—technology designed to enable our interactions. The modern era is an intriguing period when the mass market is being transformed by participatory culture and, in a kind of biofeedback mechanism, the mass market picks up the products of the participatory culture. He specifically cited a trend I had noticed—the battle replays on History Channel using simulation machinema (or “machinima”).

Third, this phase in the evolution of games and culture should protect against the unsophisticated and naïve assessment of Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, a federal judge who ruled on a St. Louis, Missouri ordinance restricting the sale or rental of video games to minors. In his infamous decision (May 6, 2002), Judge Limbaugh asserted that video games were not entitled to any form of constitutional protection as free expression because they conveyed no ideas similar to speech. As Henry Jenkins responded in a 2003 editorial, it seems strange that if video games conveyed no ideas (as Limbaugh suggested) that anyone would want to outlaw them. The very law attempting to restrict them indicated that there was something being communicated—for good or ill.

Jenkins suggests four very good reasons why the “Serious Games Movement,” games that teach, inform, and inspire, is happening at this juncture in our cultural history.

Why is there a Serious Games Movement?

1. Super Mario Generation Comes of Age (reaching positions of power)
This gives us a critical mass of potential supporters, patrons, and consumers.
2. Growing Research on the Pedagogical Value of Play
This gives us an ideological basis for claiming that there is authentic expression in games.
3. Rise of Games Studies Programs (provide alternatives to mainstream)
As both a viable art and industry, there is now a growing demand for instruction,
training, and recruiting for the future of the art and industry.
4. The Push Towards Indie Games (Manifesto Games headlined)
There is now a recognition that just as many different forms of entertainment are
well-served by boutique producers, so also are games likely to benefit from producers who pursue a “different” vision.

After establishing his justification for such convergence, Jenkins gave some concrete examples of what he meant by this participatory culture, this gaming convergence that deals more with the metagame than technology. He made an interesting comparison between spelling bees and the classic board game, Scrabble. In a spelling bee, participants learn a lot of words they are not likely to use in real life. Further, if they make a mistake, there’s no feedback about why it is wrong or how it could have been used in speech. In Scrabble, on the other hand, the entire structure is one where challenge and risk is welcome. Part of the interaction is likely to be arguing/debating about what you’re playing with very little penalty for being wrong.

He elaborated upon this principle of feedback, interaction, and structure by noting that Will Wright wishes there could be a Game 2.0 where games are marked up with little tabs that could bring up additional pages and pop-ups of additional information whenever the gamers desire it. As Web 2.0 forces us to think of handling media differently, such a procedure would help us consider the game as the beginning point of the process. We would be free to enjoy the game, but not be locked into the game designer’s concept.

Other illustrations of this approach included Second Life and Whyville. According to Jenkins, Second Life is not a serious game, but is a serious space built around gaming. In Whyville, the economy within the site drives the science experiments.

A Strange Lesson

PEDAGOGICAL CONSPIRACY?: Some “educators” felt this logo (that appears at the start for the Neverwinter Nights engine so resembled an occult symbol that they refused to use the Revolution mod in their classrooms— even after school.

As powerful as modding is, Henry Jenkins shared a sad anecdote about Revolution, a mod about the War for American Independence using the Neverwinter Nights. The game worked remarkably well and was rated highly by students. Teachers, however, refused to use it because the logo that appears as part of the Neverwinter Nights splash screen looked too occultic.

In summary, Jenkins’ “manifesto” is that the important concept in gaming is not just delivering culture, but delivering a culture that can be participated in. Modding, creating new background stories for familiar intellectual properties, and augmenting reality (through games that use real-world data for gaming uses like the GPS games that use real space to solve fictional problems).

World of YourCraft

Do massively multiplayer online games assist learning or detract from the educational enterprise? In what seemed the most stimulating session of all, Constance Steinkuehler, an assistant professor in the Educational Communication & Technology program at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), touched base with some of the pedagogical legends concerning games and debunked them with evidence from her ongoing research on World of Warcraft and Lineage 2 players.

Speaking about the charge that electronic games in general and MMOGs in specific are responsible for reducing literacy by somehow seducing teenagers away from books and school, she pointed out how these social games create inducements for reading and writing. She told a marvelous anecdotal story of a young man who was “suspended” from his WoW account because of his poor grades. This gave him incentive to improve his grades so that he could get back online. When he got back online, he wrote a short story for everyone to explain his absence. Asked if he liked to write, he answered that he didn’t. But, for his character and his guild, writing was a vital means of expression.

Another factor in terms of pedagogical legend is the idea that people just play games. They don’t learn anything from them unless they are reality-based simulations. Ms. Steinkuehler shared how gamers not only work with the game materials they are given, but how they customize user interfaces and build elaborate code to provide reporting tools. The latter is definitely a real-world tool. Learning to aggregate, filter, and analyze data is becoming ever more important in many workplaces. It is particularly important for those trying to use authentic science. As Steinkuehler remarked, science is often taught in very unscientific ways in modern classrooms. Authentic science requires continual collection of data, analysis, and reconfiguring of hypotheses. These user-developed tools serve a similar function on a lesser scale.

On the social level, she offered details on the way cognitive apprenticeship took place such that gamers who had already accomplished certain rites of passage or mastered certain skills within the game are ready to teach others. Since we all know that you always learn more by teaching than you originally learn as a student, this seems to be a beneficial lifestyle that is being affirmed in this style of gaming.

Perhaps, the most salient point in this presentation was identifying social capital. Players in massively multiplayer online games are discovering that information, skills and strategies are valuable social capital. Virtual cultures are being established that follow established sociological guidelines concerning the “third place,” the Cheers style neighborhood bar or barber/beauty shop where old-style neighborhood patrons would hang out. Now, online is becoming a third place. It is the place where much social acculturation is taking place and, as such, may be where modern cultures learn to find alternate solutions to human problems. [This presentation was so full of information, insight, and inspiration that it received my vote for “Best of Show.”]

What’s a Control Group?

Before I share some of Nick deKanter’s presentation (Nick is a principal in Muzzy Lane Software, developers of Making History: The Calm and the Storm.), I need to share one of my pet peeves. I really dislike people who think that there is a valid “scientific” method of studying human behavior. Let’s be honest. I don’t care how big your sample is, how carefully you attempt to set up your control (the group that we are supposed to be able to measure more precisely because we aren’t changing any variables on them), or how thoroughly you’ve analyzed your methodology, it will always be imperfect. We cannot control all the variables surrounding human behavior. Even if we could create a sterile, protected environment where experimentation would be reliable, we wouldn’t be modeling authentic human behavior. All social scientific studies (which, to paraphrase the old canard, are neither social nor scientific), including psychological studies, are suspect.

That’s my bias and I’d be willing to debate it with anyone--if it were relevant. So, I was tremendously amused that Nick deKanter shared about his WWII game where diplomacy, economics, and military strategy combine in a marvelous educational experience. As an anecdotal reference, he shared data from one high school teacher who taught seven simultaneous sections of a unit on WWII. He initiated that portion of the presentation by stating that the sample size was too small to be meaningful and redundantly suggested that the data was unscientific. In the sample, four sections used the game as part of the unit study and three sections studied the unit in the traditional way.

The teacher used both a pre-test and a post-test for the unit. Understanding of historical causes and effects of WWII increased significantly among those who used the game while staying flat between pre- and post-test for those in the traditional class. Geographical knowledge increased significantly (particularly among females) in the four sections that used the game, staying flat for the traditional method. The improved understanding increased across the board for all students—D and F students, as well as A and B students.

But no sooner had the presentation ended than “professional educators” began to challenge the data. Sure, maybe all three of the non-gaming classes were made up of remedial students? Maybe the non-gaming classes deliberately sabotaged the post-tests because they wanted to play next time? Maybe the teacher subconsciously tried to help the gaming classes? But yet, in spite of the sample size being too small and the possibilities of contamination described here, we have seven classes taught by the same teacher in the same local school, drawing (presumably) from the same basic neighborhoods and demographics. It isn’t like some studies where Palos Verdes High School in a wealthy middle class neighborhood had a computer lab and the students in lower middle to lower class Compton High School didn’t. The data isn’t perfect, but it should make people think—and think about more than challenging the data.

Based on Muzzy Lane’s experience with Making History, a template for educational games was suggested. A game for education should have all of the following characteristics: Accuracy, transparency, multiplayer, always-on capability, reporting capacity (e.g. letting students export to Excel for slicing and dicing, as well as teachers exporting for evaluation), customization options (allows one to meet standards across educational systems), consumer quality (don’t want the “this is lame” capacity), and classroom integration materials.

In terms of budget, note that game production costs must be in line with market size and its ability to pay. In terms of scope, note that the game must be a complement to what the teacher is doing.

In terms of accuracy, deKanter observed that absolute accuracy of historical detail is both unrealistic and costly. For example, uniform details and vehicle details, while interesting for the military hobbyist, are not that useful for the Making History design. [NOTE: While this is generally correct, I believe this depends on the scale and purpose of the game. Since Making History is more concerned with the causes and general flow of the events than the actual tactical fighting of the war or individual battles, it may not be that relevant. But the minutiae can be very valuable when drilling down to the individual unit in a specific battle. Not showing different vehicles or attack platforms in a given situation may be a missed opportunity for learning. You can learn a lot about the morale of a Napoleonic Era army by looking at the historical uniforms, for example.]

The efficacy of the game as an educational tool is dependent upon two important roles. The teacher’s role is to set the context, facilitate participation, induce critical thinking, and lead discussion. If the teacher is involved with the learning process, you’re going to have a successfully learning experience. The student’s role is to learn the issues faced by countries in a given historical period.

One common question from educators about using games as educational tools is what happens when counter-factual and alternate histories emerge because the game diverges from history? The simple answer is that the teacher can fix that. Classroom discussions are a significant part of the experiment and, in early tests in actual schools, students who had not performed well on traditional assessments did very well in leading the class in discussions afterward.

Those who are worried about students getting a warped perspective because of the open-ended nature of gaming should take heart from this datum. At Salem State College, students recognized that they did better in the game if they went back and read the textbooks.

In fact, since decisions about the future are usually based on weighing up the potential consequences of alternative courses of actions, the game prepares students for an active future better than linear media. Further, this works against the hindsight bias, the assumption that what has already happened is relatively inevitable and obvious. It forces players/students to consider reasons why the results might have turn out differently.

[Check back with “The Word” for Part II of the Serious Games Summit report to find out more about Harpoon’s present and future, as well as about the future of military use of games for training.]