Portal On the Booklist At Wabash College

jamie passes along this quote from a post by Michael Abbott at The Brainy Gamer: "This year, for the first time, a video game will appear on the syllabus of a course required for all students at Wabash College, where I teach. For me — and for a traditional liberal arts college founded in 1832 — this is a big deal. Alongside Gilgamesh, Aristotle's Politics, John Donne's poetry, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the Tao Te Ching, freshmen at Wabash will also encounter a video game called Portal. "

Comments

Coordination?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Some people have never been exposed to WASD, but everyone knows how to read a book. Will people be expected to game to be culturally literate these days?

I'm not sure if that would be a bad thing, but it would be different.

Re:Coordination?

[dingen]

I think there would be more freshmen unfamiliar with reading a play or a novel than playing a mouse & keyboard controlled first person game.

Re:Coordination?

[cappp]

Yeah requiring manual dexterity introduces some new and interesting challenges. I wonder how they'll ensure every student is able to finish the games, or if that is even important enough to consider. The stats suggest that most of the upcoming generations have access to gaming systems, and play games of one kind or another, so they shouldn't be too out of their element.

As for cultural literacy...perhaps. You're expected to be able to engage with literature, academic text, cinema, the visual; performance; and oral arts, and so on at college - video games are just going to get added to the list. Entertainment has always been political and fundamentally positioned to reflect social and cultural attitudes, the more tools we develop to analyse what play means, the better.

Re:Coordination?

[Darkness404]

Portal, at least for the PC has cheats to make it really, really easy to finish.

Re:Coordination?

[T Murphy]

FTA:

I pitched the idea to my colleagues on the committee (decidedly not a collection of gamers), and they agreed to try Portal and read selections from Goffman's book. After plowing through some installation issues ("What does this Steam do? Will it expose me to viruses?"), we enjoyed the first meaningful discussion about a video game I've ever had with a group of colleagues across disciplines. They got it. They made the connections, and they enjoyed the game.

If non-gamer professors liked it, I am sure the students will be fine.

Re:Coordination?

[morari]

Portal was a pretty easy game by any standards. You don't really fight anything and most of the puzzles are pretty straight forward. Some of the portals require a quick turn of jump, but nothing a little practice couldn't quickly solve. The plot was humorous, but the gameplay was exceedingly simple considering the possibilities. There was a challenge mode to help balance that, I suppose.

Re:Coordination?

[SleepyHappyDoc]

I always thought cheats were frowned upon in the academic world.

Re:Coordination?

[bersl2]

The class isn't testing your ability to play Portal. This would be a valid concern if grades depended on the time, step, or portal trials, but they clearly aren't. It would cheapen the experience, but there are already other ways of doing that for other sources.

Re:Coordination?

[pspahn]

too lazy; downed ritalin?

Re:Coordination?

[flyingsquid]

It seems to me that Portal could be read as a metaphor for existence:

When you start out, you're confused about everything. Where am I? Who am I? Why am I here? How do I get through this maze? As you go along, you start to piece things together, you start to figure out a few tricks and it doesn't actually seem that hard. But as you go further and further, things get harder, more challenging, it's more and more difficult to find your way through the maze. The stakes are higher, and you start to suspect that things may be conspiring against you. Supposedly if you apply yourself and try hard, you'll get rewarded, but you start to wonder. Maybe they aren't being honest with you, maybe the whole thing is just a big lie... you just run around through a huge labyrinth, toyed with by forces more powerful than you, but never get what you were promised. And then you die. Is that it?

Man, it sure would have been fun to take a whole class studying video games. I can just picture the titles of the essays: "The Hero's Journey: Odysseus and the Master Chief", "Idealization of Society Perfected: Plato's _Republic_, Thomas More's _Utopia_, and Sim City", and "Envisioning the Underworld: Dante's Inferno and 'Doom III' "

Re:Coordination?

[kkwst2]

With all due respect, then your classmates probably shouldn't be in college. I don't think kids are getting that much dumber. There have always been dumb or more often just unmotivated kids, but in the past fewer of them went to college. Some institutions have lowered the bar because undergraduate education is profitable for them.

As someone who teaches at a top institution, the kids I see there are coming in at least as prepared in all subjects as 20 years ago. Maybe some differences in independence and work ethic, but not in overall literacy, math skills, etc. There are still plenty of smart US kids out there.

Re:Coordination?

[gman003]

I will concede that I'm not attending a prestigious or even selective college, but literally half my class wouldn't have made it through my (prestigious and selective) high school.

Most of them aren't all that dumb or ignorant, but, once they start typing, the intelligence starts dropping. Of course, there's the one guy who turns everything into a "legalize-marijuana" argument, or the people who thought "A Modest Proposal" was serious, or the one who thinks a chain email counts as a reputable statistic, or the one who let out a yell during a discussion because she discovered Facebook had been blocked, or the one who literally started smoking during class...

OK, you're right. These kids shouldn't have made it through secondary school. I can only hope the actual tech classes have more qualified students. Then again, I rather enjoyed being able to code circles around my high-school programming teachers...

Not quite

[cappp]

The most obvious problem is addressed near the end of the article

Deploying a game for an entire cohort to play at the same time requires more problem-solving than you might expect. We ultimately decided that hardware, installation, and licensing issues were complex enough to dissuade us from teaching Portal in all sections of the course this year; so I and a group of eager colleagues will play the game in our sections to work out the kinks. I don't want our first college-wide experience with a game to be plagued with problems.

So not quite as advertised, but certainly pretty cool nonetheless.

Re:Not quite

[Moddington]

I myself have gotten it working under Ubuntu 9.04 and 10.04 with minimal hassle. Worked straight out of the box aside from sound, but I honestly just experimented with audio output selections in Wine config for a few minutes, and it worked after that. Performance was comparable to that on my Windows machine, to boot. And I'm confident that any students using Linux on their school laptop are comfortable enough with it to figure out most issues they may come across.

now i miss college even more

[scapermoya]

Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death.

Cliff's Notes

[lyinhart]

Buying into how absurd this is since Portal isn't a book, I guess Cliff's Notes should publish a Youtube runthrough of the game with annotations.

Re:Cliff's Notes

[RobertLTux]

its already been done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31uWFlBn-IM

Re:Cliff's Notes

[MachDelta]

I can't tell if this is a somewhat subtle troll, or someone with a VERY large stick in their posterior.

Sounds Easy

[sokoban]

I bet that course is a total piece of cake

Re:Sounds Easy

[xMilkmanDanx]

I bet that course is a total piece of cake

That's a lie

Re:Sounds Easy

[geekoid]

And you've killed your companion cube for it.

convenient but useless

[Dr. Hellno]

I like the idea of having a game on the syllabus, definitely very forward thinking. My problem is with the choice of game.
Portal was short, and as the author states it's multi-platform and fairly cheap, which goes a long way toward making this kind of project feasible. But reading portal as a game of ideas is a real stretch. The comparison to Goffman's Presentation of Self is baffling when the game allows no genuine self-expression (it's completely linear) or self-portrayal (no dialogue options), the subjects of Goffman's book. It's a fun game with a single intriguing character, but it's as deep as a kiddie pool.
It would have made a lot more sense to start with interactive fiction- essentially, text-adventure games. IFArchive.org is a great place to start, and in no time you can find lots of innovative contest winners and other pieces expanding the genre. These are easy to play on any computer, they are of variable length and complexity, and they allow for an easier transition for students- the tools they use to analyze literature will be largely applicable.
All in all, this is a cool effort. But look into interactive fiction! It might surprise you how well the genre is suited to your project.

Re:convenient but useless

[Sycraft-fu]

Well that's what you get from English majors over analyzing everything. They want to find meaning where there isn't.

Portal, of course, was never created to be some deep statement. It was a puzzle game using a neat game mechanic. The story was put in to be funny, and to help guide the player through the puzzles. You can hear the developers themselves comment on it, in game, if you wish. There isn't much to analyze because there isn't intended to be. It isn't some commentary on society, it is just a fun and goofy puzzle game. Many of the choices made were just for entertainment value. Others, like the companion cube, were to help the player. That was created because testers had trouble understanding they needed to carry the box through the whole level. So they made it a special "companion cube" which did the trick nicely, and ended up being amusing.

However, something I discovered taking English classes in university, is that English majors can shoehorn new meaning in to anything. They read in to everything, even when there's nothing there.

Re:convenient but useless

[wickerprints]

There's no shame in reading into something and finding meaning where none was intended. That is how humans discover new ideas and relationships. Granted, sometimes the whole critical analysis thing can go really overboard and get tiresome to listen to, but if every creative effort had to explicitly include every possible interpretation of its meaning, and if its creator had to intentionally express it, we wouldn't have art or literature.

Sure, the design decisions that went into making Portal may have been superficial, or subconscious--but the result is a game that can be understood and enjoyed within a much larger context than what it was intended for. If it helps to serve as a vehicle for introspection and stimulate interest in philosophy and the humanities, then all the better.

Re:convenient but useless

[Omestes]

Well that's what you get from English majors over analyzing everything. They want to find meaning where there isn't.

As a past philosophy major (we make English majors look downright practical): where is there any innate meaning that exists previous to analysis? Meaning is largely a cultural thing, and a deep a priori property of things (like, say, mass, or charge).

  Portal, of course, was never created to be some deep statement.

A lot of things we take as "deep" weren't created as such. Often the meaning we ascribe to things exist completely independent of its creator's wishes. This isn't an "English major" thing, this is a general attribute of humanity. Its something we do naturally, and constantly.

They read in to everything, even when there's nothing there.

Actually the whole "deconstruction" thing has a some validity (not as much as English majors and sociologists think, but still some). Authors, for example, don't write in a vacuum, they are informed by the society they exist in. Some social context is bound to be fossilized in the work, whether the author intended it or not. We read Homer to understand Greek culture, even if Homer (probably) never intended this. Why not play Portal to understand modern culture, then?

Mind, I picked up most of this out of osmosis, I was doing the "harder" bits of philosophy, philosophy of science and epistemology, most of this "post-modern" brouhaha strikes me as silly, but that isn't saying that there isn't a little, tiny, bit to it.

Re:convenient but useless

[nine-times]

First, even if we posit that Portal has no depth, it's a class for freshman. Sometimes it's better to start people off with something simple so things are a bit more clear. For example, in a linear game with a strict narrative, everyone will have similar/comparable experiences with the game and so there will be common experiences to talk about.

However, I don't agree that Portal has no depth to talk about. Valve is a solid developer and their games have a lot of refinement and details. You might point at something like the lack of dialog with the main character and say, "obviously this is because Valve isn't taking the story seriously enough to bother to write dialog." On the other hand, they've claimed that they never game Gordon Freeman any lines because they wanted the player to be able to imagine himself in the role. When a game character speaks, he speaks with a voice that is not the player's. He says things the player wouldn't really say. But in the game, Freeman's (or Chell's) only response is the player's response.

In some ways, art isn't just in the brushstrokes a painter makes, but in the brushstrokes the painter does not make. As a writer, what you don't say can be just as important as what you do say. One of the things that I found amazing about Portal was how much of a story it has given that there's almost no exposition. You have a strange-sounding computerized voice prodding you through an obstacle course. Meanwhile you notice an empty observation room with an overturned chair. The voice makes some promise of cake when you complete the course, but then you find a small compartment "behind the scenes" of the course with writing scrawled on the wall, "The cake is a lie." You realize the AI is psychotic. You realized the AI is probably intending to kill you at some point. You realize that the AI has already killed others who have attempted the obstacle course before you, and has also killed the people who created these tests and created the AI. From very little explanation, an entire backstory emerges:

Aperture Science is company pushing forward with new and dangerous technologies in order to compete with Black Mesa. An AI charged with running a testing facility begins to take its role too seriously, killing anyone who gets in the way of scientific progress. Something has happened to the world outside (the events depicted in Half Life?), so no one comes in to reclaim the facility. Eventually everyone is dead, except for a lone test subject (which may be a clone created by the AI for the purpose of testing).

Now if you play the game again, pay attention to what it is that you're explicitly told. Think about how much you know and how much you can guess at, relative to how little you're told. I think you'll have to admit that Portal's narrative is brilliantly constructed.

Other "smart" games?

[Phayder]

Any other candidates for a course like this? I thought Braid had some pretty deep storytelling.

Re:Other "smart" games?

[Colonel Korn]

Any other candidates for a course like this? I thought Braid had some pretty deep storytelling.

And I thought Braid's storytelling wasn't up to the par seen in my age 13 creative writing class.

Ooh, change...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Oxford: AD1610:

"In addition to ye Greeke and Latin Classics and learned tomes of divinity and medicine, freshmen shall this year encounter Hamlet the work of a vulgar modern playwrite..."

Re:Ooh, change...

[UnknownSoldier]

> Hamlet the work of a vulgar modern playwrite..."

I didn't know Francis Bacon was vulgar... ;-)

Re:Ooh, change...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I wasn't actually making a comparative artistic judgement at all, just noting that "The Canon of Serious Culture" has been evolving for approximately as long as it existed.

At the time Shakespeare was writing, he was basically a commercial hacking ripping off such classical plots as seemed bloody enough to fill the house(and thus his theatre company's stomachs), adding some sex jokes, and running the play until he came up with something else. The only college students "studying" Shakespeare would have been the rowdy ones hanging out on the wrong side of the river with the theatres, the bear-pits, and the whores.

Because, as it happens, Shakespeare was so much better than his peers among the commercial hacks it is hardly even fair(Elizabethan revenge tragedies, for instance, are typically utter dreck) he has earned a place among Real Serious Literature.

My point was just that the canon of stuff considered worth studying changes all the time(even if you don't hang out with the too-cool-for-dead-white-guys culture critic types) and that the idea of adding a video game to the curriculum is really no more radical than adding a popular play, which has happened repeatedly(even the hardcore classicists who were sneering at Shakespeare were probably reading Aristophanes, who had higher cultural value pretty much because his fart jokes were in classical greek...)

Re:Proprietary

[larry bagina]

Windows, OS X, Linux/wine, BSD/wine, XBox 360, or PS3.

Re:Proprietary

[Chaos Incarnate]

TFA implies (though admittedly doesn't seem to outright state) that it's being deployed on the school's hardware, not students'.

Americans with Disabilities Act?

[pz]

How will they deal with students who have physical disabilities? I'm thinking oh, paralysis, cerebral palsy, or anything else that leaves manual dexterity impaired. Or what about visually impaired or blind students? Remember this is a required course for all incoming students. Sounds like a half-baked idea from this distance, and yes, I did read the article.

Let's hope Wabash doesn't get into a heapload of trouble for not complying with the ADA, like losing any Federal grants they might have.

Welcome to real life

[Sycraft-fu]

If you go with the "You can't require any non-proprietary software," attitude you'll find you don't go very far. In the business world this is particularly true, they'll tell you precisely what you are going to use and you'll do so or get out. However university is the same way. I work at an engineering college they teach students on what is used in industry. Students use Cadence, Matlab, Solidworks, Office, and so on. We have labs, of course, since much of that software isn't licensed for use on non-university equipment. However you WILL use it to do your homework or you WILL fail. That is life. We aren't interested in philosophical debates about if information wants to be free, we are interested in teaching the tools companies want to help students get jobs.

Now I understand Portal is rather stupid as part of a curriculum, the whole thing sounds like what happens when you get a bunch of English majors together and they start overanalyzing everything. However it being proprietary is not a problem, not unusual.

If you go to university they will tell you what you have to get, and it often requires spending hundreds of dollars on particular books, using certain software packages and OSes and so on. That is life. You do what you like at home on your own time, but you don't get to tell your professor how to teach class, or your boss how to run a business.

Re:Proprietary

[Ihmhi]

Besides, even if it didn't, you're going to encounter one of two situations:

a) The student's computer is either Windows or Mac, and Portal runs on both.

b) The student's computer is Linux, BSD, etc.. Any student sufficiently knowledgeable about a more complex (to install), niche operating system can easily get Windows/Mac running, or WINE in Linux, etc. etc.

It's a moot point either way.

This is a travesty.

[bistromath007]

The first game to be included in an academic curriculum should've been Deus Ex. I'm disappointed with you, America. :|

ITT Technical Institute or University of Phoenix?

[jeko]

We aren't interested in philosophical debates about if information wants to be free, we are interested in teaching the tools companies want to help students get jobs.

Yeah, Education for the Future!

Actually, real colleges are EXACTLY the place where you want to have philosophical debates about EVERYTHING so you don't become one of those idiots who think the University system exists to service Industry instead of building developed minds capable of critical thinking...

Re:ITT Technical Institute or University of Phoeni

[Sycraft-fu]

I won't name my employer, for various reasons, but it is a Tier 1 research institution. We bring in some big research dollars and we grant PhDs. A diploma mill this is not.

If you want to have philosophical debates that's fine, then go take some philosophy courses, we have a pretty good philosophy department too. Though I'll warn you even there as an undergrad you are expected to learn what they choose to teach you. You will be reading philosophers who's opinions you don't agree with and if all you do is argue, your grades will be poor. You aren't expected to agree, but you are expected to understand and analyze their point of view, something that many who claim to want a "philosophical debate" seem to be bad at.

However the engineering college is for training engineers. In particular, undergraduate work is largely based around getting people jobs. Most people only come for undergraduate degrees and they want to be employable. That means teaching them the theory of whatever kind of engineering they've chosen, and teaching them skills on the tools they'll use in the real world. If you don't like it, well then too bad.

You want more self directed research? Fine, come get a masters degree and then a PhD. Then you get the freedom to work more on what you are interested in, then you get more choice in the tools you use. However undergraduate degrees are for laying basic theoretical groundwork. To do that you are going to have to use tools. You cannot teach someone how to use an oscilloscope without actually giving them one to use. You can't teach how to so a Spice circuit simulation without actually running simulation software. We choose to use the tools that industry wants. Why? Because it helps our students get jobs and that's what most of them are there for.

If you want a liberal arts degree, fine get one. The university offers a great many. However don't try and demand that all program should be that way. Some are very practical in their orientation of teaching, and research. Those are also some of the large ones. It brings in the big research dollars, and many people want to leave university with a degree with practical applications. Philosophy is fine but don't expect it to help you get a job, you'll need skills outside of that. Engineering will go a long way to getting you employed in the same field.

Oh and PS, I DID do liberal arts in university (an interdisciplinary degree in cognitive science) I'm just very aware of how useless that is. My skills, and work history, in computer support got me my job here, not what I learned in university. It was interesting and I don't regret it at all, but then I didn't need training for my career, I had it already.

Re:ITT Technical Institute or University of Phoeni

[PeterBrett]

I won't name my employer, for various reasons, but it is a Tier 1 research institution. We bring in some big research dollars and we grant PhDs. A diploma mill this is not.

...

However the engineering college is for training engineers. In particular, undergraduate work is largely based around getting people jobs. Most people only come for undergraduate degrees and they want to be employable. That means teaching them the theory of whatever kind of engineering they've chosen, and teaching them skills on the tools they'll use in the real world. If you don't like it, well then too bad.

At Cambridge University Engineering Department, which is probably a Tier 0 research institution, almost all teaching is carried out on OpenSuSE workstations; the mandatory programming labs are taught using Emacs/GCC and Octave, rather than Visual Studio and MATLAB; and coursework is accepted on paper (I wrote much of mine longhand) or in PDF format, and LaTeX is encouraged. They even used to hand out live DVDs with the department's standard Linux setup on them, but that seems to have stopped nowadays.

This seems to have no impact whatsoever on the ability of graduates to find jobs. My hypothesis is that because the course focuses on teaching people to think, to solve problems, and a large amount of theory, it really doesn't matter what piece of software is eventually used to generate or present the results.