I do have several concerns about this article. My first is that it’s an unusually high-profile mention of serious games and their applications, and while it admits that the goals are laudable, it seems to find certain of the applications laughable. Or so it might seem to a casual reader, anyway, and this will likely be a first exposure to a lot of folks.

Second, I think that many of Heather Chaplin’s points are somewhat obtuse and can only be based on a very literal reading of McGonigal’s book. Her point early on about the ‘reality-based community’ is well taken, and I’ll admit that it appeals to my personal political inclinations. That said, I think that she is ignoring many of McGonigal’s actual goals in favor of a sort of straw man. McGonigal is addressing the fact that many people’s lives are unfulfilling and is not merely saying that we can incorporate gaming techniques to give us a simulacrum of enjoyment in our lives. Instead, she is saying we can use gaming techniques to be more fulfilled and achieve the things we actually want in life.

I’m reminded of Plato’s Republic, where the Great Philosopher bemoans the existence of art and artists, because the uneducated citizenry can not tell the difference between the image of a tool and the tool itself. Even though I’ve proved myself a Sophist since then– I used this point to bolster my essay for the GRE– I’ve always thought that it must be Plato who was confused if he was afraid that we would lose the ability to make wheelbarrows if we venerated people who could draw wheelbarrows. Today, I think that it’s Heather Chaplin who is a little mixed up about what is real.

That said, the article makes some salient points. Her statement about how companies can use gaming principles to get us to spend money on ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is completely true. I think that this means that people need to be more aware of and involved with gaming techniques, though, not less. Knowledge and experience are our best defenses. Yes, games can be distractions and diversions, things that separate us from our real lives and keep us from moving forward. This knowledge is no newer or more novel than the fact that some dreams are frightening. I’m more interested in discovering new possibilities than in revisiting old fears.

Even so, it’s a good article. I have a lot of issues with it, but it’s a good article. I’m glad that there are real discussions out there, and it’s a sign that both McGonigal and Chaplin are doing their jobs.

(Facebook actually does seem to be seriously confused about what dating sites it wants to force down my throat. It’s past the point of comedy.)

So with that in mind, it was really nice to hear my suspicions about a broken reality validated by a really spectacular interview. Jane McGonigal’s new book, <i>Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World</i> is clearly playing my song in some other ways as well. McGonigal is not just looking at “serious games,” though she does give them some serious consideration, but also at how the games format– which she describes as “unnecessary obstacles that we choose to overcome”– can be used to turn tedium into engagement and exhaustion into education. I need to grab a copy of the book, but the interview is fascinating.

Take a listen, or just read the transcript. Either way, this one looks like it’s worth reading.

Hope to see you there!

For me, the big events of this semester were the World View Symposium at the Friday Center, the coffee with Michael Angst, and of course the Games Night at the SILS Library. A lot of people lent me their advice and support, and I owe all of them a big thank you.  Doing my part in these events, I think I learned several things that can be applied to games, and more broadly to anything worth doing.

• Initiative counts. I didn’t feel like I had any automatic right to be in charge of a Games Night, or to contact someone like Michael Angst, or do give a lecture to North Carolina’s educators. Even though games are something I know a lot about and am passionate about… well, even though I know this isn’t true, this doesn’t feel unusual to me. Lots of other people could do these jobs, and probably better than me. The thing is… if no one does the work, then it doesn’t matter if someone else could have done it better. There’s always more to be done, but I’m glad I reached out to people with ideas, and I’m exceptionally grateful for the way everyone responded.
• People like games. There are a few topics that everyone is interested in, on some level. Games are one of them. If I was preaching the benefits of stinging nettles, I’d be in for a hard time. Games are something that people want to talk about though. Don’t be afraid to bring it up.
• Build it and they’ll come. I don’t think this is as true as we might wish it was, but it’s definitely true that more people will come to an event that does happen than to an event that never happens.
• Even a small success is a success.
• Finally, don’t let it end here. There’s always a next step that’s worth completing.

I’ll admit I haven’t really always been sure of what to do with this space. That said, I’ve always been grateful to have it. It’s been a good semester. I don’t think I’ll be retiring from this blog as of now– if they’ll have me, that is. Serious Games– and Games 4 Learning– have a future in this country. I look forward to continuing the discussion, here and elsewhere.

See you in the Spring!

This should be just before that evening’s lovely Happy Hour, so a good preamble to a nice weekend, I should think.

For those of you unfamiliar with Scott Pilgrim, let me go ahead and let you in on the relevance. Relative relevance, anyway. Scott Pilgrim is a successful comic book series from Oni Press, detailing the adventures of Canadian 20-something congenitally awesome slacker Scott Pilgrim. Scott is given an unexpected mission in life when his new girlfriend announces that he must fight/defeat her Seven Evil Exes if she wants to date him. What follows is a series of video game style battles, full of super powers and sometimes robots, as Scott tries move towards both having a real life and not just winning the fights but also Ramona’s heart.

It’s good stuff. The movie, released just this year, is similarly good stuff and did a nice job of translating the story, characters, and game-ish atmosphere to the screen. Which is good, because Scott lives in a video game full of cheat codes, special moves, and secret doors and I’d be remiss in not pointing out this motif.

It’s highly entertaining. And it’s being used for learning.

Now, before I give too exagerrated an idea of the comic/movie’s educational content, what’s being taught is essentially complex lessons in social morality. Subjective stuff, not differential calculus or great literature. OH WAIT, I’M TOTALLY LYING ABOUT THAT LAST THING!

Scott Pilgrim, you see, is using the black and white morality of old-school console games as an allegory. And yes, I know his name comes from a song by Plumtree, but the allegory is a familiar one: Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Only this time, the hero isn’t trying to be a good Christian, exactly. He’s trying to be an adult, and finding that the kind of morality you learn from fight games? Yeah,it’s not exactly getting the job done, as by book five he’s winning the fight and losing Ramona at exactly the same time.

This deconstructed/reconstructed version of Bunyan’s allegorical work comes complete with a highly simplified but still familiar cast of allegorical characters: The Seven Deadly Sins.

The Evil Exes fit into this mold very well. On top of this, their difficulty increases as they represent sins that Scott really has trouble defeating. Like the Nega-Scott (no, really!) that Scott grapples with in an effort to learn nothing from his past– because sometimes LEARNING HURTS!– the Evil Exes are kind of a part of Scott. And Ramona. Especially that sarcastibastard Gideon.

Here’s the breakdown as I see it. Since this is “original research” (also known as opinion) feel free to tell me I’m wrong.

1) Matthew Patel=Wrath. Matthew comes breaking through the wall, throwing fireballs and wanting nothing more than to incinerate Scott. He’s a pure engine of rage, and for all of his magic powers, can’t do much against Scott. Why? Scott just doesn’t have a lot of anger in him to exploit. Not this early in the story, anyway…

2) Lucas Lee=Pride. The full-of-himself Hollywood actor and pro-skater is almost too much for Scott to handle. However, he’s easily manipulated into his suicidal run down the stair rails on his skateboard. Why does Scott have so much trouble fighting him head on, when Scott has so little to be proud of at this stage? Maybe there are some sins we can’t challenge head on without falling victim to them. That does seem to fit pride’s bill pretty well.

3) Todd Ingram=Envy. Since Todd is Scott’s ex’s boyfriend, and said ex is named Envy, this one is kind of a gimme. Thinking about it, though, Todd has everything Scott thinks he wants. He’s a bass player in a successful band. He has actual musical skills, and a beautiful rock star girlfriend who just happens to have broken Scott’s heart. Incredible psychic powers somehow based in Veganism. Too bad Todd also envies us carnivores our gelato…

4) Roxie Richter=Lust. Yes, even her name kind of makes me think of sex, the kind that makes the earth shake… Roxie’s Romona’s only female ex, which Scott thinks of as her “sexy phase.” In his immaturity, Scott has the same thing about lesbians that a lot of young dudes have. Need I go on? I’d rather not.

5) and 6) Kyle and Ken Katayanagi=Gluttony and Sloth. These two gave me the most trouble, but when thinking about pairing sins as twins, I couldn’t help but think of these two. They so often go hand in hand, don’t they? One is ebb and the other flow, consumption followed by laziness. I’ll go ahead and add that they won’t even fight Scott themselves for most of the story, throwing egregious robot after robot at him to do their work for him. It’s an interesting combination of the two sins in one.

Since Scott has a fair portion of both of these sins, no wonder they’re so hard for him to beat. Also, they cheat a lot.

7) Gideon Graves=Greed. Yeah, no way around this one. If it exists, Gideon wants to own it. Not just Ramona, not just Ramona and Envy (who he enjoys showing his ownership of by dressing her up like a doll). He puts his logo on everything he can, even Scott. He wants to own music, he wants to own the world… oh yeah, and he has all of those frozen Future Girlfriends in storage. He really does want to have it all!

And so does Scott. Or at the very least, he wants all of Ramona, and wants her for himself. Gideon’s the king of self-loathing, the self-defeating thing inside us that we hate. For Scott, his resentment of Ramona keeping any part of herself hidden from him almost sends her away forever, to a place that not even Gideon knew about or could follow. Well, for a while, anyway. His “GGG” logo is a modified “666,” after all. You should recognize the devil when you see him. Especially if he’s wearing red.

Bringing it back to games: this is more than a handy way of learning the Seven Deadlies, though I think it does function that way. Stories often help with that, and stories that are centered in some way around a game can be very powerful. That said, Scott Pilgrim’s narrative is questioning the usefulness of simple video game morality at dealing with real world problems. It makes video games into its allegory, and then blatantly states that this isn’t going to cut it. Either that, or the games get a lot more complicated, and just punching and solving puzzles isn’t going to win the day for Scott. As games do, and are doing, they get more complicated, become games within games, and it gets harder to tell the difference between the allegory and the reality. Not a bad model for games in the postmodern world, where things keep getting fractal on us. Even here, we still have a lot to learn.

First off, last week was terrific. I got to do my first presentation on behalf of Games 4 Learning, at World View’s Fall Symposium. It went really well, and I had a full house (of forty or so NC educators) for both sessions. They seemed really receptive to our mission, and interested both in the concept of learning games and of Games 4 Learning itself. I got a lot of nice questions afterwards.

So you know, I would have given a heads up in advance, but this was a “pay for admission” event, and was already sold out.

Michael Angst, founder of E-Line Media and one of the founders of Games for Change, attended the session. He’ll be speaking again in November at World View’s Community College Symposium, another worthwhile event that I’m not sure if any outsiders can get into. Not to worry, though! I have his business card, and he volunteered to come talk to SILS/Games 4 Learning while he’s in town on November 9/10! We should have him all to our lonesome for an hour or so. I’ll let you know once the details are hashed out.

Also, November 12 will be the date of our first SILS/Games 4 Learning game night! It will be that evening, in the SILS Library, from 3:30pm to 6pm when the library closes. Bring your favorite game and hang with the coolest of the cool– game geeks and librarians! We’ll also be discussing the learning elements of games while we’re at it. I think this will be a blast, so I really hope to see you… person that’s reading this. Yes you!

It’s a nice and lengthy write-up on using video games in the classroom, and on the innovative “Quest to Learn” program, which is funded by both the MacArthur Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Good signs for the future!

I’m Matt Z. Wood, and I’m in the last semester of my MLS at UNC. I write comics, I read everything, and I play games. I’m also lucky enough to be doing field experience with Games 4 Learning this semester. That’s why I’m writing stuff here now, and why you’re reading it.

I love games, and I’m really looking forward to talking about them with all y’all. I’m also looking forward to organizing some Games 4 Learning events this semester. I’m looking into one speaker, and would be really glad to take suggestions on others. I’m also looking into doing some games nights for SILS, starting with more standard games and talking about how we learn from them, and then moving into some officially “serious” games, and maybe comparing the two.

Next up: Scott Pilgrim: the comic/movie that wants to be a video game. What happens when the line between games and literature gets blurry? Does it cause serious cognitive dissonance over in Roger Ebert’s world?

In order to find out, I’ve done some research…  Leading me to a little project called BrainHex.  BrainHex is a free survey that identifies what aspects of games people like, and why.  It also stores all of those results, which is why it’s relevant to this conversation.  According to those statistics, men are most likely (in 28.5% of cases) to enjoy playing games in a competitive manner, whereas women tend (28.1%) to try to like strategizing and solving puzzles in games.  More importantly, they’ve also listed aggregate results for expected results in a population with a 50-50 split between men and women, with some interesting results…  In such a population, interest would be fairly evenly split between the puzzle-solving mindset, an exploration-oriented one, and the competitive one…  Those three categories cover over two-thirds of this hypothetical 50-50 gamer population.  Most classroom populations aren’t gamer-only, but we’ll deal with that in the next part of this series.

So, readers, how about you?  What are your BrainHex classes?  The BrainHex quiz can be found at the following page: www.brainhex.com