Takiri's Game

In this post I thought I'd talk a little bit about some of the other activity I've been engaged in with ATC.

Computer games have become very popular in recent years, as forms of entertainment but also for more serious applications. Geoff's investigating how video games or simulations can be used as training tools. Over on his blog I posted several comments that I'd like to reiterate here as they're relevant to my work on Second Life too. One of the principle areas I identified as being compelling for getting blind users online is the great interest educational establishments have in using virtual worlds as learning tools. This becomes especially important when students are physically unable to attend class as in distance learning or if the student has physical mobility issues.

The question Geoff starts with is "What is a game?" This actually turns out to be important for SL too. A lot of people might mistake it for a game due to the way it looks, but paying a bit more attention suggests the differences that make SL a Multi User Virtual Environment (MUVE) rather than a game.

I start by pointing out some of the discussions that have been important within the game studies community,

Interesting post!

I did my MA on computer games, and in the field of game studies / ludology there are a number of definitions that might be of interest to you. Juul [2003] would be a good place to start. He’s a widely acclaimed ‘ludologist’ (theorist of game studies), and he also includes definitions from other significant scholars. Pay particular attention to Roger Caillois (for an in-depth analysis of the relationships between play and games), Sutton Smith (life-long scholar of play), and Johan Huizinga (classic analysis of the relationships between play and culture more broadly). Finally two that I haven’t read myself but which are also highly recommended, Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman (widely cited video game designers and scholars), and John Paul Gee (video games and learning).

All of these are top-notch reads, but they’re also all quite involved books so might be far too much information! On the off chance that you are interested in taking this further, I think you might be able to find some of them in the university library.

You might also find something relevant in The Journal of Simulation and Gaming (http://sag.sagepub.com/) to which I think the university provides an electronic subscription.

References:

Caillois, Roger. “Man, play, and games”. The Free Press, Glencoe, New York, 1961 (1958)

Gee, J. P. (2003). “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”. Palgrave Macmillan.

Huizinga, Johan. “Homo Ludens - a study of the play element in culture”. The Beacon Press, Boston, 1950 (1944).

Juul, Jesper. “The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness”
http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/gameplayerworld/

Salen, Katie & Zimmerman, Eric. “Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals”. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003.

Sutton-Smith, Brian. “The Ambiguity of Play”. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

I then followed up with some further information,

I just came across a reference for Gee in the ACM which you can access from university. It looks like a 4 page summary of his book! I’m going to read it myself now, but it does sound like it might be useful for you too,

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/950566.950595

@article{950595,
author = {James Paul Gee},
title = {What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy},
journal = {Comput. Entertain.},
volume = {1},
number = {1},
year = {2003},
issn = {1544-3574},
pages = {20–20},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/950566.950595},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

In addition to these references I made some further comments about additional reading, and a conference that he might be interested in too, where I expect there will be several speakers discussing SL,

2nd European Conference on Games Based Learning
The Hotel Silken Diagonal Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
16-17 October 2008

One of the most exciting things for me as a student is being able to meet other people who have similar interests. As computer games (and simulations / MUVEs) become more mainstream the potential for the kind of cross-disciplinary collaboration increases exponentially.

At the HCT Postgrad Workshop last year I was amazed at the number of people studying computer games. It's a really exciting time to be involved in this area. I wonder how my experience differs from students in other fields though. Perhaps as this area is so young it's a lot easier to find a place to innovate in. Alternatively maybe we as researchers are more likely to follow dead-ends as there have been so few trailblazers.

My conclusion to this post is to emphasise community collaboration. I was very happy to be able to help Geoff with his research, and to meet and learn from other games researchers at the workshop last year. The spirit of open discussion on forums, blogs and mailing lists, manifest by the increase in conferences and journals, is probably the single most important feature of our burgeoning community. In other words: advanced technical communication.