i dunno... i read it as, "of course i can't say that I condone it otherwise activision can use our name again". (remember) as for 'freeciv' i am not sure if he cares, given that there's little indication that they are competing with his ability to make a living.
it's that IP that allows him to keep doing what he does and not have to work for EA.
oh the irony.... did you read the article?
on
Games Better Than Books?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Because games keep things "pleasantly frustrating," Gee said, players have incentives to keep on improving their performance. That can lead to learning outside the game as well. After his son started playing Age of Mythology, he started reading more about real-world mythology, Gee said."
Note that the last part involved reading. The idea isn't one medium replaces the other; they coexist together. That's how media has always worked.
On the other hand, decades of research have shown that *textbooks* are actually for learning, if used on their own. They're not constructed in a way that's easy to understand unless you have sufficient first hand experience of the phenomena.
For what it's worth, a number of commercial game designers (i.e. Raph Koster, of Ultima Online / Star Wars Galaxies) use Bartle's ideas in developing commercial games. At the very least, it provides a language for thinking about different player types. I know that Richard is active in the MUD dev community, where his ideas are taken very seriously and held in generally high regard as well.
As for games as art, I'd also cite Rez, Ico, Frequency, GTA3... but why not go back to some oldies like guns n butter or hidden agenda as well.
Part of the problem is that art is going to look very different in this medium, IMHO.
wow, as luck would have it I'm reading. Yeah -- we took our first round of prototypes into schools this spring. We used supercharged! our simulation game to help teach electricity & magnetism physics in a high school and a middle school.
Initial results were quite positive. We found statistically significant differences between groups learning through games and those doing inquiry-based units. We found that most importantly, kids could tell you things like what field lines are and what they're used for in the experimental group -- whereas the controls could tell you the right answer but not really know why.
Still, the teacher played a really critical role in the environment, doing a lot of coaching and helping kids connect what they're seeing in the game back to the academic content. Interpreting game play is a tricky process, I'm finding.
I'd also admit though that Supercharged is a pretty mediocre game. It was our first shot at this -- and it came out ok but has a lot of issues. I'm excited about some of our other designs -- particularly revolution, which is designed to use the neverwinter nights modding tools. here's the initial design concept for revolution.
Our current plans are to begin working with a larger network of commercial game developers to really do this kind of thing right, now that we have some preliminary data to show that it's at least worth trying.
to promote communication at MIT. They hope that everyone will be able to quickly find out what other people are teaching, what textbooks they're using, what's being covered, and what's not being covered.
"open source" the resources that go into course production. Obviously, then, to make this same information available to scholars elsewhere, so that teachers at other places can see what MIT is doing and borrow resources, compare notes, make suggested changes.
Challenge typical lecture classes. I think that they're hoping to challenge MIT faculty to think of what the 'value added' is to classes, so that people realize that learning is about more than 'dumping content' into students' heads, and consider the pedagogical use of classes more carefully.
Provide resources for self-study. Sure-- there is a hope that someone out there in Alaska or something will take up some resources and teach themselves something.
Challenging notions of what is university IP or not. As many know, who owns what syllabi that is produced by faculty is hairy; if MIT puts it on the web, they hope that this will deflate the whole debate, and make everyone realize that a syllabus is not synonymous with learning.
Provide a model for the universities in online spaces. I think they're hoping that this will at least challenge people to think beyond 'how can we make a buck off putting courses online' and realize the role that universities could play in a networked age for contributing to the intellectual commons.
As I understand it, those are the purposes of open coursewear, roughly. They're really not thinking that people will train themselves so much, as they're thinking that it will help change the nature of discourse around universities in online education.
thanks...generally, we can handle getting slashdotted. what happened this time is our new "open discussion" service brought the site down. Live and learn.
On the other hand, games like Black & White and The Sims are a bit more advanced. With games like Thief or name-your-favorite-flying simulator, there's a lot more grey area between simulation and games than you're suggesting.
Before I get flamed, let me also say that I realize the irony of saying "Any time you talk about a game "teaching" something, you're opening up a can of worms because learning is a much more active process of interpreting experience and constructing understandings than it is passively receiving the values or biases of a game. " and working on a project called the games-to-teach project.
There's actually a long history of using games to support learning -- going back to things like Diplomacy, or Risk as a lot of people here have mentioned. And, of course, the military use games & simulations to support learning extensively. My favorite recent example may be the BridgeBuilder game. Every medium, from the novel to television has been used to support learning, and I don't think that digital games will be any different, although I think that as a young medium, digital games are only starting to develop to the point where they can really be used to support learning in robust ways.
I think a lot of the problems people have is that too often, proponents of educational digital games aren't really clear about what it means "to learn" or "to teach." We know that cross-words and other classic game types can be used for drill and practice. And, we know that people can develop skills from hi - fidelity simulations. And, a game like Carmen Sandiego did a nice job at getting kids to do learn some basic facts -- by using a context to get kids to look up information and then reinforcing it through game structures. Supply and demand is pretty easily done through games, as are other things like population dynamics. In general, I think that letting kids experiment with systems that are defined by known rules is something we can do. Basically, you're taking a system simulation -- and then wrapping it around a narrative context to let users' develop goals, but then constraining their actions through a game mechanic, such as limited resources, health, access to space etc.
I find the Civilization comments particularly interesting, as my dissertation is looking at how playing Civ3 affects players' and students' understanding of history. I agree that there are several excellent learning opportunities in the game -- particularly around geography -- but there are several other unanswered challenges as well. A game like SimCity or Civilization has all kinds of opportunities for players to learn misconceptions about history -- like that the Pyramids allow free government changes, or whatever the rule is. Having used SimCity in both schools and after-school settings, I've found that the whole thing is pretty complex. Most students realize pretty quickly that cranking up the taxes for a few months isn't really realistic -- or they start asking why that doesn't happen more often, creating a teachable moment for a teacher. Any time you talk about a game "teaching" something, you're opening up a can of worms because learning is a much more active process of interpreting experience and constructing understandings than it is passively receiving the values or biases of a game.
In fact, most educational research shows that when looking at games as an instructional strategy, the reflection, debriefing, and extension activities surrounding gameplay are at least as important as the gameplay itself. You can imagine the difference between playing Civilization just for fun, versus playing the game and comparing it to historical timelines, or deconstructing its simulation biases. Generally speaking, games can get factual knowledge relatively easy -- and I think playing Civilization on a realistic map provides interesting geographical lessons. However, I agree with the skeptics here that we shouldn't assume that people are necessarily developing valuable academic skills through playing the game. But, the same can be said for lectures and problem sets, as well.
For anyone that's curious, I'll be taking up this issue on an E3 panel this year with Doug Church (Looking Glass), Will Wright, Brenda Laurel, Henry Jenkins, and a few others.
On a related note, I'm working on the games-to-teach project at MIT, where we've been developing prototypes of what next-generation educational software might look like.
Truth be known,the original writer didn't mention in, and the editor (me) made him put it in there. We at js101.org are huge supporters of the Indrema.
The difference is largley in the responses that it's gotten from mainstream culture. TV is less frequently blamed to be the cause of a generation's malaise, and boomers can more easily relate to it.
Honestly, I'm not as surprised by this story as I am the responses it has generated. Anyone who has missed the impact games have had on American culture over the past 20 years has their head... nevermind. The game industry has been roughly as big as the film industry throughout most of the 1990s.
The up down up down example is a good one, and there many, many others out there like it. Gen Exers: How many of you can still hum the frogger theme? How many people can still recreate a PacMan pattern? These references are far from isolated; for those of you who are unaware of youth culture -- there's Pokemon now taking its place. As JC Herz pointed out in joystick nation, Games are huge part of our culture, thinking, and vocabulary. And I do agree that it's becoming increasingly so with each subsequent generation. In my discussions of games with game players, I've found that younger kids are much less bogged down by cultural baggage surrounding games than older people are --to many, computer games are not a 'waste of time', dangerous, or any more out of the ordinary than film or team sports.
The biggest problem I had with the article is that there is much legitimacy to the notion that "adult culture" doesn't have much to offer kids. Games may be training kids to have quicker reactions, and they may have knowledge of how to exist in virtual environments and negotiate virtual identities -- but knowledge is not necessarily wisdom, by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, it's a give and take -- every generation is in a dialogue with previous ones. In fact, this notion that every generation needs its revolution is hardly new -- Jefferson said the same thing in the 18th century.
The final thought -- that games may surplant other forms of entertainment is interesting -- but really not the issue. It's about media convergence. What is Pokemon? A toy? A game? A movie? Look at the list of products which port across media. Since Pac Man, games have been filtering across media, and it's happening with increasingly frequency with Pokemon and Final Fantasy movies coming out. The impending Star Wars Online (Starwarsgalaxies), could be the most interesting cross-over of them all.
What's the most striking to me is the place that videogames have in our culture. Common wisdom is that computer/ video games are more frivolous than Chess and, worse for you psychologically than traditional sports, even though many games demand a good deal of critical and creative thinking and traditional American games are extremely violent. Yet, because games are mostly the province of teen-age boys See Henry Jenkins work on the topic), they are marginalized in society and used as scapegoats for broader social ills.
Many of y'all had some good points about the release of PS2, including the lack of killer apps. I give a round - up of release stories as well as my own thoughts on it at:
Playsta tion2 Round-up, again, from Joystick101.org.
First, it's a moderated site, so the community can catch that, if it's deemend a problem. You'll notice that we don't have any advertising. So, it's not like we earned any money off of it.
Slashdot Mirror
i dunno... i read it as, "of course i can't say that I condone it otherwise activision can use our name again". (remember) as for 'freeciv' i am not sure if he cares, given that there's little indication that they are competing with his ability to make a living.
it's that IP that allows him to keep doing what he does and not have to work for EA.
"Because games keep things "pleasantly frustrating," Gee said, players have incentives to keep on improving their performance. That can lead to learning outside the game as well. After his son started playing Age of Mythology, he started reading more about real-world mythology, Gee said."
Note that the last part involved reading. The idea isn't one medium replaces the other; they coexist together. That's how media has always worked.
On the other hand, decades of research have shown that *textbooks* are actually for learning, if used on their own. They're not constructed in a way that's easy to understand unless you have sufficient first hand experience of the phenomena.
As for games as art, I'd also cite Rez, Ico, Frequency, GTA3... but why not go back to some oldies like guns n butter or hidden agenda as well.
Part of the problem is that art is going to look very different in this medium, IMHO.
Initial results were quite positive. We found statistically significant differences between groups learning through games and those doing inquiry-based units. We found that most importantly, kids could tell you things like what field lines are and what they're used for in the experimental group -- whereas the controls could tell you the right answer but not really know why.
Still, the teacher played a really critical role in the environment, doing a lot of coaching and helping kids connect what they're seeing in the game back to the academic content. Interpreting game play is a tricky process, I'm finding.
I'd also admit though that Supercharged is a pretty mediocre game. It was our first shot at this -- and it came out ok but has a lot of issues. I'm excited about some of our other designs -- particularly revolution, which is designed to use the neverwinter nights modding tools. here's the initial design concept for revolution.
Our current plans are to begin working with a larger network of commercial game developers to really do this kind of thing right, now that we have some preliminary data to show that it's at least worth trying.
- to promote communication at MIT. They hope that everyone will be able to quickly find out what other people are teaching, what textbooks they're using, what's being covered, and what's not being covered.
- "open source" the resources that go into course production. Obviously, then, to make this same information available to scholars elsewhere, so that teachers at other places can see what MIT is doing and borrow resources, compare notes, make suggested changes.
- Challenge typical lecture classes. I think that they're hoping to challenge MIT faculty to think of what the 'value added' is to classes, so that people realize that learning is about more than 'dumping content' into students' heads, and consider the pedagogical use of classes more carefully.
- Provide resources for self-study. Sure-- there is a hope that someone out there in Alaska or something will take up some resources and teach themselves something.
- Challenging notions of what is university IP or not. As many know, who owns what syllabi that is produced by faculty is hairy; if MIT puts it on the web, they hope that this will deflate the whole debate, and make everyone realize that a syllabus is not synonymous with learning.
- Provide a model for the universities in online spaces. I think they're hoping that this will at least challenge people to think beyond 'how can we make a buck off putting courses online' and realize the role that universities could play in a networked age for contributing to the intellectual commons.
As I understand it, those are the purposes of open coursewear, roughly. They're really not thinking that people will train themselves so much, as they're thinking that it will help change the nature of discourse around universities in online education.thanks...generally, we can handle getting slashdotted. what happened this time is our new "open discussion" service brought the site down. Live and learn.
On the other hand, games like Black & White and The Sims are a bit more advanced. With games like Thief or name-your-favorite-flying simulator, there's a lot more grey area between simulation and games than you're suggesting.
Before I get flamed, let me also say that I realize the irony of saying "Any time you talk about a game "teaching" something, you're opening up a can of worms because learning is a much more active process of interpreting experience and constructing understandings than it is passively receiving the values or biases of a game. " and working on a project called the games-to-teach project.
I think a lot of the problems people have is that too often, proponents of educational digital games aren't really clear about what it means "to learn" or "to teach." We know that cross-words and other classic game types can be used for drill and practice. And, we know that people can develop skills from hi - fidelity simulations. And, a game like Carmen Sandiego did a nice job at getting kids to do learn some basic facts -- by using a context to get kids to look up information and then reinforcing it through game structures. Supply and demand is pretty easily done through games, as are other things like population dynamics. In general, I think that letting kids experiment with systems that are defined by known rules is something we can do. Basically, you're taking a system simulation -- and then wrapping it around a narrative context to let users' develop goals, but then constraining their actions through a game mechanic, such as limited resources, health, access to space etc.
I find the Civilization comments particularly interesting, as my dissertation is looking at how playing Civ3 affects players' and students' understanding of history. I agree that there are several excellent learning opportunities in the game -- particularly around geography -- but there are several other unanswered challenges as well. A game like SimCity or Civilization has all kinds of opportunities for players to learn misconceptions about history -- like that the Pyramids allow free government changes, or whatever the rule is. Having used SimCity in both schools and after-school settings, I've found that the whole thing is pretty complex. Most students realize pretty quickly that cranking up the taxes for a few months isn't really realistic -- or they start asking why that doesn't happen more often, creating a teachable moment for a teacher. Any time you talk about a game "teaching" something, you're opening up a can of worms because learning is a much more active process of interpreting experience and constructing understandings than it is passively receiving the values or biases of a game.
In fact, most educational research shows that when looking at games as an instructional strategy, the reflection, debriefing, and extension activities surrounding gameplay are at least as important as the gameplay itself. You can imagine the difference between playing Civilization just for fun, versus playing the game and comparing it to historical timelines, or deconstructing its simulation biases. Generally speaking, games can get factual knowledge relatively easy -- and I think playing Civilization on a realistic map provides interesting geographical lessons. However, I agree with the skeptics here that we shouldn't assume that people are necessarily developing valuable academic skills through playing the game. But, the same can be said for lectures and problem sets, as well.
For anyone that's curious, I'll be taking up this issue on an E3 panel this year with Doug Church (Looking Glass), Will Wright, Brenda Laurel, Henry Jenkins, and a few others.
On a related note, I'm working on the games-to-teach project at MIT, where we've been developing prototypes of what next-generation educational software might look like.
Truth be known,the original writer didn't mention in, and the editor (me) made him put it in there. We at js101.org are huge supporters of the Indrema.
The difference is largley in the responses that it's gotten from mainstream culture. TV is less frequently blamed to be the cause of a generation's malaise, and boomers can more easily relate to it.
The up down up down example is a good one, and there many, many others out there like it. Gen Exers: How many of you can still hum the frogger theme? How many people can still recreate a PacMan pattern? These references are far from isolated; for those of you who are unaware of youth culture -- there's Pokemon now taking its place. As JC Herz pointed out in joystick nation, Games are huge part of our culture, thinking, and vocabulary. And I do agree that it's becoming increasingly so with each subsequent generation. In my discussions of games with game players, I've found that younger kids are much less bogged down by cultural baggage surrounding games than older people are --to many, computer games are not a 'waste of time', dangerous, or any more out of the ordinary than film or team sports.
The biggest problem I had with the article is that there is much legitimacy to the notion that "adult culture" doesn't have much to offer kids. Games may be training kids to have quicker reactions, and they may have knowledge of how to exist in virtual environments and negotiate virtual identities -- but knowledge is not necessarily wisdom, by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, it's a give and take -- every generation is in a dialogue with previous ones. In fact, this notion that every generation needs its revolution is hardly new -- Jefferson said the same thing in the 18th century.
The final thought -- that games may surplant other forms of entertainment is interesting -- but really not the issue. It's about media convergence. What is Pokemon? A toy? A game? A movie? Look at the list of products which port across media. Since Pac Man, games have been filtering across media, and it's happening with increasingly frequency with Pokemon and Final Fantasy movies coming out. The impending Star Wars Online (Starwarsgalaxies), could be the most interesting cross-over of them all.
What's the most striking to me is the place that videogames have in our culture. Common wisdom is that computer/ video games are more frivolous than Chess and, worse for you psychologically than traditional sports, even though many games demand a good deal of critical and creative thinking and traditional American games are extremely violent. Yet, because games are mostly the province of teen-age boys See Henry Jenkins work on the topic), they are marginalized in society and used as scapegoats for broader social ills.
Off my soapbox now...
Many of y'all had some good points about the release of PS2, including the lack of killer apps. I give a round - up of release stories as well as my own thoughts on it at: Playsta tion2 Round-up, again, from Joystick101.org.
Good point. It's all about the killer apps, of which, I haven't seen any yet. I posted my feelings on the matter in a new story on joystick.
First, it's a moderated site, so the community can catch that, if it's deemend a problem. You'll notice that we don't have any advertising. So, it's not like we earned any money off of it.
You got me. Thanks for the heads up. I mis-read the release dates. -ks