CHIPLAY 2015: London, UK

At the beginning of the month CHI Play took place in London, and I think I've just about recovered :-) The papers should be accessible to the public for a whole year from here so make sure to check them out. Anna Cox and Paul Cairns chaired the conference, while I served as local arrangements chair - while there were probably a few challenging moments along the way, it was all worth it in the end. I also learnt an awful lot and promise to never take conference organisation for granted again!

The conference kicked off the workshops on Sunday, where I helped run "The false dichotomy between positive and negative affect in gameplay", co-organised with Max Birk, Regan Mandryk and Dan Johnson. The workshop came out a discussion we had earlier in the year at CHI2015 about the lack of nuance around the concept of negative affect within gameplay experiences. We had a great mix of participants and some intense discussions about why we engage in gameplay we don't always enjoy and how the gameplay experience is often about a mix of emotion - whether this results from engaging in darker themes and/or overcoming failure and frustration. And we got through an awful lot of post-its (below) :-) We're hoping to continue developing ideas around this theme but in the meantime you can find the submissions to the workshop here - thanks to Sharon Steinemann, Elisa Mekler, Stefan Rank, Carina Westling and Fraser Allison for their thoughtful contributions!

At the main conference, in the pretty impressive venue "The Light at Euston", I presented our paper Removing the HUD: The impact of non-diegetic game elements and expertise on player involvement (Iacovides, I., Cox, A., Kennedy, R., Cairns, P., and Jennett, C.). There has been some previous work on looking at game interfaces and diegesis but not a lot of empirical work examining exactly how different types of elements actually influence the player experience. If you're not sure about the distinction between diegetic/non-diegetic check out this very helpful video :-) Our findings suggest that the removal of non-diegetic elements, such as the heads-up display (which usually isn't part of the game world), was able to influence immersion in expert players through increasing their cognitive involvement i.e. attention and sense of control.We only looked a single-player FPS game though so there is lots of scope to extend work in this area to look at particular types of non-diegetic/diegetic game elements and how they influence involvement across a whole whole range of contexts.

(photo from @elisamekler)

 

The session I was in at the start of the conference had really interesting talks from Dan about how different types of social play relate to wellbeing, Max on how self-esteem relates to gameplay experiences, while Alena Denisova presented work which found that the placebo effect also applies to games - if you tell people that the game they are playing has adaptive AI (even though it doesn't), they find the game more immersive as a result...  There were so many great talks over the course of the conference, some of the others I particularly enjoyed included Tom Cole making a distinction between functional and emotional challenge in games, David Zendle presenting research which suggested - despite media concerns - that higher graphical fidelity actually decreases players access to aggressive concepts while amore abstract version of the same game increased access; Peta Wyeth discussing flow during individual and cooperative gameplay (when playing the very cute Droppit - see below); Vero Vanden Abeele reminding us that not all games are equal and quality matters in game-based assessment; Jason Bowey talk about the ways in which leaderboards can be manipulated to influence the player experience (positively and negatively); Mike Sheinin discussabout fatigue and skill development in the rather fun small based exertion game Jelly Pollo; while I think Alexandra Samper-Martinez and colleagues at the University of Lincoln have carried out the longest social network game ethnography (3 years) that I'm aware of! I was also impressed by Pryce Davis who was presenting a paper he wasn't actually an author on because his colleagues couldn't make it - the research led to some interesting insights on games that teach programming to young students and employing gender oriented cultural forms. 

In addition, I was intrigued by the work Fraser presented on how players respond to different types of voice interaction - the fact that some uses of voice command in games are more diegetic e.g. shouting "charge!" when playing Ryse: Son of Rome and others less so e.g. shouting "show map" at the screen in Tomb Raider, may be one way to explain why players preferred some forms of voice interaction over others. Admittedly this doesn't apply to all the examples mentioned e.g. Fifa14, but there could be scope here to think more about what roles players take on - and perhaps jump between - in each of these games in relation to how they interpret the commands they are giving. 

Another particular highlight for me was Sharon's talk on increasing donating behaviour through a game for change.The work focused on Darfur is Dying and looked at how presentation mode (text, text with pictures, game) and level of interactivity (no-interaction e.g. reading or recording, interaction e.g. text with choices, gameplay) influenced donating behaviour. They found that while there were no differences for presentation mode, the interactive gameplay version was most likely to increase donations. I liked this work partly because it provides evidence that can games for change can make a difference compared to other media but also because the authors found that appreciation (rather than enjoyment) mediated donation behaviour. So while participants did enjoy the interactive conditions more, the increased donations were due to how thought-provoking or meaningful they found they experience. This seems to build on a growing area of serious experience in games, something which we contributed to earlier in the year. It's a direction I'm keen to explore more so I'll be making sure to look at the scales they used and keep an eye out for future work!

(photo from @MattWood)

In addition, we had a great mix of excellent keynote speakers who covered a range of topics. The conference started with Mark Barlet from AbleGamers who provided lots of insight into the experiences of disablied gamers and how games can help improve quality of life. He also pointed a the Includification site as a useful resource for game designers. On the second day, Yvonne Rogers from UCLIC  gave a great overview of the work she has been involved in which adopts a playful approach, often involving physical computing systems such as the VoxBox questionnaire system (above), to engage people and communities in different ways. Jo Twist from Ukie then ended the conference with an overview of the state of the UK games industry - it's great to know someone who is as passionate as she is about games is a champion for the industry. Speaking of which, we also had some really good industry talks and I particularly appreciated how Heather Stark from Kinran who not only engaged with the conference throughout by asking thoughtful questions but in her presentation reflected on the relationship between academia and industry, as well on the liminal zone between experience design and product management.

 (photo from @Spotless)

On top of all that, it wouldn't have been right if we didn't have some actual games to play at the conference and this year we were spoilt for choice! At the Light, one of our sponsors, Spotless ran a game competition where people needed to achieve the highest score in the Super MarioWorld on an old school NES (above) for different prizes, while Microsoft set up a comfortable play area for attendees to play a range of Xbox One titles during the breaks. We also had further games as part of the Come out and play track, including Sacred Harvest, where you use the Playstation Move controller to appease the gods in various rituals, and Taphobos, which is described as "an immersive coffin experience" i.e. it's a two player games that involves one of you putting on an Occulus Rift and getting in an actual coffin...

(photo from @pingualoty)

There was also the evening reception at Senate House (above), which hosted both the work-in-progress posters and the student game design competition entries. Charlene and I managed to get around most of the games, which were just as impressive as last year :-) CHI Plague ran throughout the conference where, through QR code scans, teams of "earthlings" and "aliens" competed to protect their ranks by forming social connections at the conference. Some of the other entries I particularly enjoyed were Matsya (a simple yet beautiful game inspired by the Hindu Flood Myth) who won runner-up, Alaska Steve (where you use the Occulus Rift to look ahead and neutralise obstacles in the environment before the main character gets to them) and Talk about Sex (a multiplayer mobile phone game that encourages young people - and quite a few academics! - to engage in discussions around sex and intimacy). The very entertaining Beam Me 'Round Scottie won first place, as well as the people's choice award (below) - it's a two player game where one of you controls the main character, a captain on a Star Trek style away mission and the second is the engineer helps you out by supporting you (e.g. providing a shield wall to protect from attacks).  In terms of the posters, I wish I'd had more time to go round and see more of them but I did have particularly good discussion with Carlos Mauricio Castaño Diaz about his work on how hypothetico-deductive reasoning skills develops in MOBAs. I think there are some potential parallels here with previous studies we've done on player strategies, while in general it's great to see more research that looks at how people learn through play. 

All in all, the conference and the reception were a lot of fun and it was great to find out about so much interesting work that is going on in the area. Thanks to Anna, Paul and all the organisers for making it a fantastic conference - I'm already looking forward to CHIPLAY 2016 in Austin next year :-)

Serious experience in games

This post has been in my draft folder for ages - I actually forgot it was there for a while but I finally came back and finished it off.

 

So, I've been thinking more and more lately about game-play that is engaging but not exactly your traditional idea of "fun". Tim Marsh calls this sort of thing "serious experience" and points out it can be quite a good way of raising awareness and getting people to think about various topics. In terms of the recent competition that I organised for CHI+MED, I was hoping that some of the entries would go in this direction, and it was something I think the winner - Nurse's Dilemma - managed to achieve. I'm probably going to say a bit more about the competition and the judging process at some point but for now I want to focus more on the commercial games I've been playing and how they've been able to provide compelling game-play that deals with serious topics in different ways.

Possibly the first example I came across, quite a while ago now, was Hush (below). Hush was created back in 2007 by USC game design students Jamie Antonisse and Devon Johnson. Set 1994 Rwanda, during a Hutu raid on a Tutsi community but instead of being a soldier, the player takes on the role of "Liliane", a mother trying to hush her child to sleep. If the lullaby falters, the baby begins to cry, and the Hutu soldiers will discover their hiding place. This is a short but tense rhythm game that is effective in conveying a sense of dread - playing it not only affected me on an emotional level but made me want to find out more about the context it was set in. Hush has been described by Jonathan Belman and Mary Flannagan as providing "a viscerally engaging experience of the value of empathy" and critiqued as a vignette by Ian Bogost.

More recently, I played Papers, Please, after downloading in on Steam. This is a rather different sort of game, set in a fictional eastern European country where you play a border control officer. Game-play consists of checking an increasing number of documents and making sure there are no inconsistencies between the information they provide and what people say. It's a difficult game but after you get the hang of the initial mechanics, it's strangely compulsive. At the end of each day you get a summary screen where you realise your wages don't exactly go very far (see below). So before you know it, you start to appreciate the "I was only following orders’ defence” as you struggle to provide for your family. There is humour here but the intriguing narrative and game mechanics create an experience that got me thinking about another controversial subject matter - immigration, on the side of both the immigrants and border guards!

The last game I'm going to mention is Gone Home. There has been some debate over whether this is an actual game or not, but it felt like a game experience to me and one I was definitely engrossed by. You play Kaitlin Greenbriar who returns home one stormy night in the summer of 1995, after a year abroad to find there is no one home. Apart from a cryptic note from her sister Samantha, it's not clear what's happened so all you can do is explore the big old spooky mansion your family moved in while you were away to find out what's been going on. Note: spoiler alert below!

The strength of Gone Home is in it's narrative and I'm a sucker for a mystery that needs solving... Plus, I knew enough about the game to know zombies weren't going to jump out at you or anything. That said, the Fullbright team did a great job of creating a sense that something was about to happen...  I have never come across a game that even attempted to deal with a direct LGBT storyline, let alone one that managed to do it in such a sensitive way. Perhaps I'm biased, but the narrative resonated with me in a personal way that's just not happened when I've been playing a  game before. Playing it made me very glad that there are people out there who are experimenting with games as a medium and tapping into a broad range of human experience.

"In The Game? Embodied Subjectivity in Gaming Environments"

It really has been ages since I last used this blog. Good news is I have finished the thesis! Viva passed, minor corrections and the final submission due at the start of Sept :-) I will make sure to post a link to it once the final version has been approved.

The last few months have been stupidly busy - I also started a new job at UCLIC - but I have managed to get some game-playing in. There are some thoughts I'd like to get down about those soon but for now I just wanted to post a video of my friend Rob Farrow presenting a paper we wrote together at the Philosophy and Computer Games conference earlier this year. There's some points he makes about meaning and choice that I'd like to think about more - particularly in relation to Skyrim and Mass Effect 3.

But for now, here's "In The Game'? Embodied Subjectivity in Gaming Environments". Thanks Rob :-)

UPDATE: We also had a longer journal article published in Philosophy & Technology, which you can find here.

DiGRA 2011: Hilversum (Part 2)

The next day started just as well as the first with a keynote from Suzanne de Castell and Jen Jenson titled "Playing with fire: Libertarian ludolgies" (see below). They have done a lot of work over the years investigating technology and gender issues in terms of access, equity and design, with their latest research indicating that many of the "facts" we take for granted about gender e.g. girls dislike competitive play, are actually artefacts of novice play. In fact they were able to alter play styles by setting up conditions for girls to become experts and replicate these across different sites. Suzanne and Jen went on to highlight issues such as neoliberal tolerance for misogyny and violence (e.g. where expert female player try to hide their gender instead of having to deal with a barrage of abuse from other players - see Fat, Ugly or Slutty for examples and an attempt to deal with this sort of thing), the need for researchers to go beyond describing how things are and think about how to change them for the better and considering games within a wider media landscape. They suggested that we need better theories of ludic epistemology that recognise the intrinsic value of games and play; to develop innovative methods and interventions by also considering the role of the researcher plays in the process of investigation; to engage in more accountable design so we're not just producing better goods and reflecting society but using games to persuade and foster identity building; and finally they stressed the importance of critical intellectual discussion within the area. I think they said a lot of things that needed to be said, and I particularly liked the point made about shoddy research which claims to make predictions but really just describes the status quo, hence the need for critical debate and more rigorous research. Also, their perspective is hugely important in an area which often sees games and technology as "boys' toys" and I'm pretty sure their plea for researchers to think about change was at least one of the fires they wanted to set. 

After that I went along to an interesting match on identity in massively multiplier games which reflected some of the issues mentioned in the earlier keynote. Arne Schröder talked about how game spaces tended to be predominantly white, straight and male, and while there was some experimentation with gender and sexuality it was more a kind of "identity tourism" than a genuine attempt at role-playing. He also gave examples of female and gay players who had left guilds due to sexist and homophobic remarks. Nick Taylor echoed some of this when he talked about "sex-swapping" as opposed to real attempts to "gender-swap" within games. He also made some interesting points about how identity shouldn't be seen as a singular construct with a one-to-one mapping between player and avatar, especially given the fact that players often have more than one avatar they use. Further, it seems that adopting different genders and/or sexualities tended not to be seen as transgressive play but as part of expert behaviour where the player was seeking to explore as much of the game as possible.

I also went to a match on values between Rilla Khaled and Jonathan Belman. Rilla talked about work carried out with Pippin Barr, where they examined the cultural values expressed in the Sims 3 and Fallout 3. They wanted to see whether these games embodied individualistic or collectivist value systems and found that while they expressed a mix of both, they tended to be more individualistic. I thought this might have something to do with the culture the designers came from, and would be quite interested to see how it would differ if looking at games directed and non-western audiences. Jonathan is doing his PhD on empathy in games and he spoke specifically about the http://www.valuesatplay.org/ project which developed a card system to guide the design process. Students were asked to pick different Grow-a-game cards (link also leads to free online version) consisting of a game verb (e.g. singing), a value (e.g. liberty), and a social issue (e.g. homelessness) and given the task of creating a game within these constraints. I hadn't realised it but one of the games to come from this project was Hush, where you play a Tutsi mother who must try and calm her baby during a Hutu raid. Apart from introducing an approach to value conscious design, the match also indicated how games are not value neutral, regardless of whether designers realise it or not.

During the day there was a also keynote from Antanas Mockus Šivickas, who is served as mayor of Bogota, Columbia. Now this seems pretty random, and it is because he's carried out all sorts of wacky and wonderful stunts whilst elected in order to promote change and improve the lives of day to day people. For instance, he hired hundreds of mimes in order to reduce traffic violations, dressed up as "Supercivico" to serve as a role model for civic behaviour and using a symbolic vaccine to reduce intra-familial violence. His talk highlighted the importance of considering legal, moral and social concerns when it comes to improving citizenship and harmonising the law (see below) and indicated how playful activities really can make a difference. All very inspiring!

After this I attended a roundtable on gamification, which was helpful in part as it provided an overview of the CHI gamification workshop. Despite the fact that many of the applications seemed directed at promoting "good" behaviours e.g. reducing environmental impact, gamification worries me because it reminds of badly designed edutainment - as it seems to involve slapping on a game-layer in order to get you to do something. Surely we've been trying to get away from this sort of extrinsic motivation? Also, as was raised during the session, some of these things might change behaviour in the short term but what about long term impact? The panel were pretty good and pointed out that there are HCI researchers who are interested in intrinsic motivation and a more phenomenological perspective. Plus, Dan Dixon suggested that we should move away from the term gamification (and its negative connotations) and use gameful design as an alternative (see pic below). It's clear this is a growing area of interest so it's something worth keeping an eye on, as I have a feeling we're going to have to sift through a lot of bad examples before finding out how to successfully use "game design elements in non-gaming contexts" in a way that doesn't feel like manipulation. Also, when it comes to things we have real trouble with, maybe we need all the help we can get, whatever form it's in. 

My match was on learning was next, with Pilar Lacasa who was speaking about the use of machinima based on Spore that students produced in biology classrooms. It seems the curriculum is more flexible in Spain so teachers could focus on supporting the development of digital literacies rather than having to assess whether playing Spore and creating machinima led to a greater understanding of biology. It was interesting to see some how different students approached the project, especially when they blended game-play footage with that of the real world. My talk seemed to go ok, though I had an awful lot to explain in about 10 minutes. The paper I submitted was more concerned with introducing the method I developed for my main case study approach, rather than on presenting findings, so most of the questions were about the set-up. Though I did like the fact that when I mentioned Sharples work on breakdowns and breakthroughs a lot of people seemed to write it down! So what games did I use? (I allowed participants to choose during the first session, but then asked them to play something they usually didn't in the second). I seemed to adopt quite an experimental setup, didn't that conflict with trying to tap into the wider context of game-play? (While I did use a lab - because I couldn't sit around people's houses! - I did not carry out a controlled experiment and tried to make sure it was as comfortable as possible). Were there any differences between what I observed in the lab and what was recorded in the diaries? (The diary reports on game-play were much less detailed, and the lab sessions probably did "prompt" game-play). I also got asked about my research questions (which revolve around the role of breakdowns and breakthroughs and identifying learning beyond learning how to play) and about how I identified involvement and did I try to measure it? Short answer, no I didn't try and measure involvement. Though we did try and use physiological data in order to do identify it, this turned out to be much harder than we originally thought and not something that could be done during observation, as originally hoped. So most of the breaks were identified from the post-play interview transcript and now we're trying to figure out how to triangulate that with the physiological data.

After this there was a bit of rant from game scholars about various things - Mary Flanagan spoke about how few women there are in the games industry (see below); Frans Mäyrä complained about the media constantly asking about the detrimental effects of games (suggesting games are actually not dangerous enough!); Maggie Greene had a go at established academics for not using the power they have to improve the situation for grad students (e.g. by getting involved as public intellectuals to promote the area), especially in a climate of reduced employment funding; Espen Aarseth stressed the importance of rigorous reviews and constructive criticism; which was echoed by Suzanne de Castell who also ranted about the fact that we tend to think of gender as a binary construct and we should be careful to avoid "hostile research" which makes assumptions based on bad theory and backs them up with bad methods e.g. all RPG players are depressed and anti-social. Mary Flanagan then followed this up with a keynote on critical play and designing games from a social justice perspective (see below). She was PI of the Values@Play project so there was mention of using games to promote specific values and with respect the holy grail of educational research - transfer. I really liked that she mentioned that a lot of game design produces extrinsic motivation and referenced a study where children were found to spend less time drawing when they were given rewards for the activity. She also suggested systems thinking reveals that big shifts come from small incremental ones, and concluded with a quote from Jane Goodall: "The greatest danger to our future is apathy".

I think that just about covers it! I did also catch the last half of the session on Minecraft where some children were being interviewed on stage whilst they showed us round the game they had set up along with one of their parents (who I think also taught at the University). It was really interesting to hear them talk about the game and what they had built - an impressive replica of Helm's Deep. At one point they were asked whether they thought they could "win" the game, to which one of them responded that perhaps you could if you mined everything! Given all the talk about values of the conference I couldn't help but wonder what that meant about in terms of what they were taking from the game... There was also some talk about how they would often look at YouTube videos for inspiration about what to create in the game, but I think only one of the older ones posted videos himself. They definitely seemed to get a lot of of the experience and their own Minecraft community too.  

So all in all it was quite an inspiring couple of days and I'm very glad I went. Thanks to the organisers for putting on a great conference and to everyone else who took part; including the students of the Utrecht School of Arts who had their exhibits on display during the event. Below is a photo of me and Jantina playing a student developed game called Fingle - if you have an iPad I recommend you check it out!

Oh and for further impressions of the conference, check out those videos:

Opening Party

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

DiGRA 2011: Hilversum (Part 1)

I recently got back from the 5th DiGRA conference - it was held at the Utrecht School of Arts in Hilversum, and has seriously given me a lot to think about! So much so that I think I'm going to have to split the post into two parts.

The conference opened on the Wednesday night at club De Vorstin setting up a playful atmosphere with Chick n' Run races (where you have to rock back and forth on adult-sized play garden chickens against an opponent), B.U.T.T.O.N. (encouraging Brutally Unfair Tactics are Totally OK Now as you physically do all you can to win or stop your opponents from winning - one of many there from the Copehagen Game Collective), and a Do It Yourself DJ installation (with which you can mix audio samples using old school cassette tapes) to name just a few of the attractions on offer. Plus Kid Koala performed the opening "keynote" - gotta love a conference that's opened by a guy in a koala suit!

The next day, Eric Zimmerman's keynote gave the audience plenty of food for thought when he used quotes from Art in Theory and replacing the word art with games to show how there really are quite a few parallels between the two. Further, no one seems to feel the need to justify art or discusses how to make it "educational"! He stressed that games are an important cultural and aesthetic form in their own right and had a go at educators who see games as instruments for transmitting content efficiently (or not, as the case may be). He argued that though developing gaming literacies such as problem solving, systems thinking and community building we should be able to understand and fix the systemic problems that affect the world we live, in what he termed the "ludic century". This wasn't suggesting that we should gamify everything but that we should recognise the value games have in their own right, with game researchers leading the way!

All the presentation sessions took places in cabins outside (see below), where speakers were matched together on topics in order to promote discussion. This worked well when the topics were similar enough but sometimes it felt like a bit of a stretch, and though powerpoint was technically banned, it didn't stop most people from presenting slides in some form or another. Most of the presentations were short though, which did allow for more interaction, especially with plenty of time planned between matches.

 It was clear the presenters of the first session I went to afterwards were still thinking about the opening keynote. Marcelo de Vasconcellos started the match (each presenter was matched on topics for the conference sessions) with a discussion of how games might be used for promoting public health communication in Brazil, while Mary Flanagan and Jonathan Belman introduced their Save the People! Pox boardgame which was developed as part of the Science literacy curriculum in order to teach how immunisation and viruses work. The session also led to an interesting discussion on transfer and how you might test for it. I think there was a concern that this was the sort of thing Eric Zimmerman was attacking but I think that the problem lies with this idea of using games to deliver course content. If we do use art as a parallel, while you might not make art to be educational in the formal sense, there is often a desire to use it as a way to change thinking and broaden perspectives. Education should be more than about whether you can transmit information efficiently, but it doesn't mean you games can't be designed in order to foster understanding and the development of different skills. Going back to the talks though, it was interesting to hear that players of the iPad version of Pox tended to play the game a lot faster - it would seem that a physical board (or mat) and hand held game pieces encourage people to take their time, which seems like something worth investigating.

Speaking of board games, they aren't something I've ever really thought to much about before to be honest. But one of the keynotes was by Reiner Knizia a board game designer who is responsible for selling over 15 million games - I really had no idea how big the industry was! He spoke about the design of games in terms of how games relate to real life, considering intuitive input/outputs, creating an appealing game system, using highly visible hooks and engaging game communities. There was a panel afterwards (below) which also included Andrew Sheerin and James Wallis which discussed board games trends, academic perspectives, and subversion in games. Turns out James was at the Hide & Seek session I went to introducing the special edition of his "not-quite" role-play game The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but it was great to meet him at the conference and talk about games of all sorts. I also met Andrew after the panel, whose company Terror Bull games developed "War on Terror: The Boardgame". It's not a game I had heard of before but hearing about it, and the fact that it comes with a balaclava, made me think it's something I'm curious to try out. It was interesting to talk to him later on about the potential educational uses of such games, especially in terms of how they might act as catalysts for discussion. 

Other highlights of the first day include Valentina Rao who discussed how we might be able to interpret games as a form of experiential discourse, and considering the design of serious games with specific communicative purposes. During this match on critical thinking Daniel Joseph spoke about ludotopian and ludocapitalist rhetoric surrounding games, in terms of how people see games in terms of "the sublime" e.g. recreating the Starship Enterprise in Minecraft and Jane McGonigal talking about how games can save the world, and in terms gamification and making money from it e.g. Gabe Zickermann. Dan suggested that the truth is probably somewhere in between and we won't really know it until games have become prosaic, commonplace and cheap i.e. until we don't notice them so much! 

I also went to a match on engagement, where I met Gordon Calleja, who was talking about incorporation and the framework on player involvement I have been using within my research, and Henrik Schoenau-Fog who is looking at the continuation desires of players with respect to creating a player engagement framework. The fact that incorporation is not an experience that all games lead too was discussed, since it combines a feeling of intense involvement with a sense of inhabiting a virtual world. So you'd have to control an avatar, most likely in 3D space in order to achieve it. However, I do think Calleja's model and the frames within it can still be applied to most games, and that learning occurs when player's internalise each of the relevant frames. I did like the fact that Henrik distinguished between motivation (the carrot) and engagement (the hook) when he talked about continuation desires, as I don't think it's something that a lot of research considers. I was also intrigued by his introduction of First Person Victim (see below) in terms of thinking about how you can engage people to go through certain experiences which may not be that pleasant, in order to help them consider the plight of others and take part in discussion. 

Earlier in the day, I went along to a live book review on Garry Crawford's book Video Gamers where Frans Mäyrä interviewed him about it on stage (below). Coming from a cultural sociological background, Garry was interested in how games fit into wider cultures and gamers lives. It's a book about players rather than games that aims to provide a fresh perspective to the area through including ideas about Bourdieu's notion of habitus, Goffman's frame analysis and through questioning concepts such as the magic circle. It was an interesting session and I think I'm going to have to get hold of the book to find out more. Specifically, I'd like to find out whether he makes any distinction between different types of gamers and players (or are just all people who play games gamers) and while I appreciate he was focusing on people rather than games, I'd like to know if there was a consideration of how different games might relate to different gaming cultures and practices. 

Ok, I think that's enough for now - more later! 

Mass Effect 2 (PS3)

I want to talk about Mass Effect 2 because it's the first seriously long game in ages that I've been thoroughly engrossed in and wanted to play non-stop. Heavy Rain was probably the last title that had that effect on me, but it really didn't take too long to get through, and according to my save game files I've spent over 40 hours playing Mass Effect during the last three weeks... There's another post I'm thinking of writing about my gaming habits and how game-play fits into my life but first I want to reflect on why this game sucked me in as much as it did.

I was interested in the first Mass Effect when it came out but I didn't have an Xbox 360, and my laptop wouldn't have been able to cope with it. I'd also heard a lot about it from my friend Paul, who went on to enthuse about the second installment. So when I heard it was coming out on PS3, I was already excited. An action-RPG set in the future where I get to command a space ship and my choices affect the way the narrative progresses? I was definitely intrigued. I've not seriously played an RPG since Baldur's Gate years ago (and no, I don't think the tongue-in-cheek Deathspank really counts...), but I guess that was the last time I got this involved in a game story. Incidentally, Baldur's Gate was also created by Bioware. Mass Effect is the kind of game where narrative really does count, but I think it's the relationships you have with the rest of your team that make the narrative matter. I was utterly engrossed in Heavy Rain but it didn't take long to play through (plus there is some debate on whether it actually is a game or not). And while Deathspank was engaging in an amusing sort of way, I didn't really care about what was going on, not enough to try and finish it or even to spend that much time playing it on my own. But in Mass Effect 2, I had to make all sorts of choices along the way in terms of how I interact with people and what I do next which I knew would affect how the development of the plot.

So I finished it last weekend, and even now I'm still wondering whether I made the right decisions. Obligatory SPOILER ALERT as I'm going to go on discuss some of the plot and how it panned out. I think one of the moments that surprised me was how I ended up interacting with a character called Grunt (see below). Grunt is a member of the Krogan species who was genetically engineered in a vat by a scientist who was trying to create the "perfect" Krogran.

Soon after awaking/recruiting him, it's clear he's having some sort of difficulty dealing with his rage (hardly surprising since, despite being fully grown, he's only been out of the vat for a short while - experiencing the Krogan version of teenage angst perhaps?) so off we go to his homeworld to figure out if there is anything wrong with him and he ends up having to go on some sort of rite of passage. Now the Krogans are a pretty aggressive race (I guess sort of like Klingons but more animal like) and even though I've played most of the game so far by choosing the paragon (i.e. good guy) options, I start to play it differently now. Because Grunt is Krogan, and I want the others to respect him (and his choice to be part of my team) - in fact I want to encourage Grunt to be the best Krogan he could possibly be. It's odd, but he sort of felt like my adopted child and I wanted him to connect with his culture... I know the plot is a little bit ridiculous (but it did start with me being resurrected from being dead), and I know that is an odd feeling to have about a character I regularly took into battle but I'm really not sure how else to explain why I started acting all tough and aggressive all of a sudden. The only other thing I can say in my defence is that behaving how I did just sort of made sense, it just seemed like the best way to communicate with the Krogans. When in Rome...

So that's one team member. There are several others, and after a while you start to realise you like some of them more than others. I would find myself going to visit people, after missions just to hear what they had to say, some more than others. For instance, I enjoyed both serious and hilarious conversations with Mordin (the Salarian scientist who sings Gilbert and Sullivan). You can even have pursue a romantic relationships with one of them, though this part of the game impressed me less. Partly because while you are allowed to have inter-species relationships with alien team members, you can't pursue same sex relationships (except perhaps with the Asari who, though they look female, do not have a gender). If you choose to play a female Shepard, you can still flirt with human Yeoman Kelly Chambers (but there is definitely no man-on-man action), even have dinner with her (after which she will feed your fish and so stop them from dying when you are off ship, lol) but it's not considered pursuing a relationship - so it's all sort of implicit (until perhaps the end of the game, where it just gets weird). What I mean by it's not "considered a relationship" is that don't get the paramour achievement for pursuing this, but you will if you get together with one of your team mates. The problem I have with this side of the game, isn't that you can engage in this sort of things or even that it's reduced to an achievement (pretty much all of the game is tbh). It's that after a certain period of time, it's the only way for you to interact with your team mates. If you are female, the women just keep saying they are busy, and if you don't pursue the romantic options the men start to do the same. I guess the only way to continue to talk to someone is to become physically intimate with them.

The other aspect of the relationship system is that certain options are only available if you have received enough paragon or renegade points. You get these points based on how you act within the game, and on how you interact with people. This seems to presume we either want to be "good" or "bad" but  sometimses situations are more complex than that and seem to call different kinds of behaviour, regardless of what you might actually believe. I know the game usually allows you to choose different responses but in order to unlock different options later on, it forces you to generally pick one mode over the other. At one stage, I sided with one character over another in an argument and I just didn't have enough points to resolve the issue. I kept trying to get more paragon points, just so I could try and sort things out, but that felt like a strange thing to be thinking during the game - I realised that I was considering my choices on the basis of whether it would give me enough points to convince Miranda to talk to me again. Perhaps the real problem here is that there were consequences to me not managing to get those points. You see, after the argument, Miranda was no longer loyal to the team, I guess she stopped trusting me. And so after the final mission, Miranda was the only person who didn't make it back alive... I really ended up feeling like I had failed her. Seriously, when did games start getting me to feel guilty about the choices I make within them?!

Even now I'm thinking about the decisions I made. Maybe I shouldn't have decided to kill the heretic Geth (an AI race, but some of members had sided with the bad guys in the first game). To me it seemed like the more ethical option - the other was to reprogram them i.e. brainwash them, but I figured they should be free to make a choice about what they believe, just as I made a choice about defending myself  and the galaxy against their beliefs. The game didn't agree with my logic, so I got renegade points instead of paragon ones, and so I still couldn't resolve the argument. Maybe I should have taken Miranda with me on the final battle, at least that way I could have protected her, instead of her dying with the other team. Or maybe I should have sided with her in the first place, instead of Jack - who honestly started to irritate me after a while.

So that's one of things I was going over after I played it - the other was about the decision I made to pass on the Reaper technology to Cerberus. The Reapers are the big bad in the game - they are a threat to the entire galaxy and it is clear I will have to face them again in the third game (the decisions I have made will also influence the story of Mass Effect 3). Cerberus is the organisation I work for and who resurrected me, led by the Illusive Man (voiced by Martin Sheen) but it is clear they are a bit dodgy and perhaps worryingly pro-human. I decided to pass on the technology because I thought it would give me an advantage next time, but now I'm wondering whether I've really just given Cerberus the tools to make humans the dominant force in the galaxy... Lol, I'm still debating whether to play the final level again so I can save Miranda and destroy the technology!

There were other moments in the game that got me thinking about moral issues - the genophage the Salarians created in order to try and restrict the Krogan birth rate, the decision by a human scientist to use his autistic brother as a subject for an experiment etc - and I think this is the sort of thing that had me hooked. I wanted to get to the next cut scene and find out what was going to happen next, but I also had to seriously think about the issues the game raised and what sort of character I wanted the Shepard I was playing to be. I guess this was the first game in a while where I thought I might be doing some of that projective identity thinking that Gee talks about. 

The actual combat was fine, not as hard as I thought it might be, and helped by the fact that I could essentially pause it whilst I picked my team's next attack/weapon. I actually started the game on the easiest option because I thought my lack of experience with shooters would stop me from progressing - but I changed this back to normal after the first couple of fights. Ultimately, it was the story and the choices I was presented with that I really cared about. And it is these things that will ensure I play the next installment. It wasn't all done perfectly, I actually kind of wish I hadn't chosen to go back to my ship and talk to people after the final mission. I was disappointed nobody had anything to say about Miranda's death (all there that happened was a little cut scene, showing a solitary coffin - her office being empty actually seemed more poignant). I also got annoyed with Grunt because he contradicted himself by telling me I shouldn't have given the tech to Cerberus, despite the fact that he encouraged me to take it at the time. Hmm, in fact they pretty much all seemed to think I had made the wrong decision, is that why I want to re-play it? And then there was Kelly. She was really visibly shaken after having been rescued from the Collector ship so her showing up in my cabin later in a revealing outfit to do a bit of "sexy" dance just seemed bizarre and out of character... Like a reward for horny teenage boys for having finished the game, rather than a genuine part of the story.

Despite a few small niggles, I seriously did enjoy playing Mass Effect 2. It was mostly very well put together, and there is something about knowing your actions will have meaningful consequences that makes makes the experiences all the more powerful. Will I replay it? Probably, but I haven't decided whether I'll redo the last level with my current character or try it again with a new one where I'll act completely different to how I did.  I also have the option of playing it again with the same character but now I'm all levelled up. All I know for sure is that I'm looking forward to Mass Effect 3 :-)

GameCity 5 and Jonathan Blow's commentary on Braid

So like I said I was in Nottingham last week for a couple of things, as well as the ITAG conference there was the GameCity 5. I went along last year too, so had a better idea what to expect this time. The festival had the usual marquee in Market Square though one half of the arena was devoted to EA and the Nottingham Primary Care Trust who partnered up to "bring you the Best Health club in the WORLD" (according to the GameCity website anyway). That was a bit weird to be honest - games promoting fitness... still not sure I've got my head around all that though that doesn't mean I think it's a bad thing, just different. The other side was much closer to home though, as it was full of couches and TVs so people could comfortably try out different games:

Like the new Lego Universe - a massively multiplayer experience that has just been launched. It looked cute and funny, though I got the impression it's being aimed at younger players.

And Confetti Carnival, developed by Spiky Snail which was a lot of fun. The designers were kind enough to answer my questions about the platform and release date - apparently while they would like it to be multi-platform, that really depends on what deal they get, and it should be ready for release by the second half of 2011. 

The main highlight of the festival for me though was hearing Jonathan Blow do a sort of directors commentary on Braid:

It was seriously interesting, not just because it made me want to give Braid another go but because of what he said about game design. He first demoed the original prototype which he threw together in about 8 days to show his friends. The final game took about three years and looks a lot better, but it was quite interesting to see a lot of the main concepts (including the time reversal mechanic) in what was essentially a retro Marioesque platformer with crude graphics. Jonathan pretty much played through most of the game, explaining each world, though it was clear he wasn't going to say very much about the story. I think in some ways what the story means came across as something he didn't know how to verbalise, rather than something he was just refusing to talk about.  And like most things, you can't control how people respond to what you've created.

But anyway, what really struck me about his talk was what he said about designing the puzzles and wanting to make them intrinsically motivating (a phrase he actually used, though he did admit only coming across it after the game was finished). The idea was to try and create an intriguing universe of simple rules that players could figure out one step and a time. He would often try and achieve this by giving the player the clues they needed within the single screen they were occupying. He even talked about trying to encourage "incubation" (though that's not what he called it - it's another psychological mechanism, which occurs when you get stuck on a problem and only seem to be able to solve it by leaving it alone for a while and doing something else). So he would try and get players to store a symbolic representation of the salient puzzle pieces, by keeping the levels as simple as possible. He also talked about wanting the game to be non-linear, I think in the sense that you were meant to come back to different puzzles, but after a play-test he ended up changing it so people could play it all the way through if they wanted (though he didn't seem sure that was the best decision). During the Q&A session, he also mentioned Skinner in the sense that variable rewards are always a better design mechanic than a consistent one. This linked to the pattern-breaking concept he'd mentioned too - while he made a lot about introducing the rules to the player of each world in a scaffolded way, he also pointed out that it was good to break those rules as it gives the game greater depth. As the game progresses, there are even more pattern breaking incidents, signaling to the player that the end is drawing near.

All of what I've just said is about the puzzle solving elements of the game. Braid also has a narrative which is ostensibly about a boy called Tim who wants to find the Princess, but it seems to really be about being about relationships and making mistakes and whether you can ever take those back. Again, this is is a reference there to the early Mario platformers, except with Braid you actually start to consider why the hero is looking for the Princess in the first place. There is a lot of text in the game, but Jonathan made a choice to make it irrelevant to the game-play since you can go through the whole thing without paying attention to any of it. I'd argue that doing so means you would lose out on a richer game-play experience but I think the decision was based on an awareness that not all game-players like sitting through lots of text. I think the reason I enjoyed his talk so much was that he made me appreciate all the time, energy and love that was put into this game. I'm not a designer, and I've never really tried to make my own game, but hearing him made me think that this is what people who want to design educational games should listen too. There is a very particular kind of learning going on here - mostly in the form of cognitive problem solving - and I'm not sure how well that maps on to different curricula objectives but there is no way you could deny that players aren't learning as they progress through the game. Even Jonathan admitted that he found out new ways to solve certain puzzles, after he had finished it! Maybe the key is to think about how to create a universe  who's rules you want the student to learn, rather than to consider how to lots of educational content into a game? The thing is, I also think you could get a lot of out studying how something like Braid was put together, not so much in terms of the coding underneath but mainly in terms of the ideas behind it and how they are reflected in the game-play mechanisms and design rhetoric. I think I'm starting to see a place for the study of games alongside the study of films or books - something that involves a lot more than chocolate covered broccoli and a bit more imagination than trying to simulate real world activity as closely as you possibly can. Something which Michael Abbott, is trying to do at Wabash College with Portal. Which reminds me, Portal actually has a developer's commentary you can access after you finish the game - it might be quite useful to see more of this sort of thing.

I'll admit though, when I first tried Braid, I didn't quite get the time mechanic and while I had been meaning to get back to it, it wasn't until after hearing Jonathan speak and seeing the game in action that I decided to give it another go. And if I'm really honest, though I did complete it, I did resort to using YouTube walkthroughs. As with playing Portal, sometimes it was more about confirming I had the right solution - and needing to know whether I should keep trying what I was doing until I got it right - than having absolutely no idea what to do. I had also real trouble with the shadow mechanic so needed to see it action. I know I get impatient sometimes, but I really do think it's better that I get a little help than get put off the game entirely and stop playing. So I still  got to enjoy exploring and learning about the Braid universe, while figuring out (most of) the puzzles on my own. I'm not saying the game was perfect but it did a lot more right for me than it did wrong, though I know there are other opinions out there. Also, I have to admit that hearing Jonathan talk made me go back to it and appreciate the game differently - if I hadn't, I wonder whether I would have bothered?

Jane McGonigal's sermon on Productivity

On Sunday I went to a talk organised by the School of Life. They called it a sermon, it also took place in a what I think what used to be a church hall, and there were hymns. One of the hymns was Video killed the Radio Star, but we did actually have to stand up and sing along. It was all a bit random really in quite an enjoyable way and the reason I went was so I could hear Jane McGonigal talk about Productivity and games. 

She started off by talking about how a lot of our ideas about what it means to be a productive member of society are based on a combination of protestant work ethic (God wants us to be busy) and the rise of capitalism. Which seems to ultilmately lead to a lot of guilt when we end up doing things that don't seem to produce anything. So in this light, playing games for hours on end is really just a colossal waste of time, right?

Well, maybe not. After getting to write down a to-do list and then make it into a paper plane to throw into the audience, she went on to talk about the research she's done and how four things seemed to keep coming up in relation to question what do games produce; whole hearted engagement, hope for success, opportunities to develop social bonds and a sense we can be part of something bigger than ourselves. But if that's not enough for you, her findings actual map on quite well to research being carried out that focuses on positive psychology - the sort of psychology that focuses on how we can be happy rather than on all the things that can go wrong. According to research that will be published next spring (in Dr.Seligman's new book Flourish) we need the following:

1) Positive emotion (Pe)

2) Relationships (R)

3) Meaning (M)

4) Achievement  (A)

And just to make it easier for us to remember, Jane got some audiences members to spell out that acronym for us (thanks to GrahamBM for the Twitpic):

We all then engaged in a round of massively-multiplayer thumb wrestling to illustrate how playing games can achieve all four of those things. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of playing massively-multiplayer thumb wrestling, you're missing out ;-) Basically, though her argument is that by games can actually help solve wider social problems by increasing PeRMA. Through productive engagement in activities we find meaningful and that make us feel good, we can cement our social ties and feel part of something bigger. For those interested in these ideas more and about games how you could designe games that explictly address social issues keep an eye out for her book "Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World" which is out early next year.

There was a short Q&A session after the sermon, where one person asked how games were different to drugs. I thought this was a pretty good question as you do hear about how games are "addictive" and I guess, like drug taking, the activity is often be seen as completely unproductive. Jane responded by pointing out that drugs tend to be quick fixes, that take a toll on our bodies and end up leaving people feeling lower than before. In contrast, research has shown that the positive emotions received from playing games tend to spill over into other parts of our lives. Also, apparently there is some sort of gamer tipping point, where after 21 hours of play a week, most players realise that they aren't getting any more from the activity. (Note to self: I really should find what research she is referring to). Somebody also asked something about using games in education and Jane was keen to point out that she wasn't trying to gamify every activity but that even so, understanding how and why games appeal could influence certain underlying educational principles - which effectively sums up my own research. All in all it was a really enjoyable morning, and what better way to end than by drinking tea and eating space invader biscuits :-) (thanks to Katy Lindemann for the putting up the Flickr photo)

how much do I agree with all this? Well, quite a lot really but maybe not entirely. I really do think Jane McGonigal is doing an awesome job getting inspiring games out there and in talking positively about games. I think that games can definitely increase PeRMA and like that there is actual research backing this up. I'm not sure how much that will convince people who don't play games though, and I don't think it will convince them to play games. Especially, for those who start talking about how they heard about players in China or Korea who died because they didn't leave their computer for days, and about how it would still be much better for children to go outside and play. I'm not denying that for some people at least, games can become a problem, but like any activity you enjoy doing, surely there's nothing wrong with them being part of a balanced well-rounded life? I also think that for a lot of people who take games seriously, probably for a lot of people who call themselves gamers and see games as a social activity to share with friends, gaming is a major source of PeRMA and that's why they like it. I think what people don't realise is that even when you're playing something on your own, this can still feed into your social relationships if you have friends who are interested in what you're doing.

I suppose what I'm not sure about, is whether everyone who plays games gets the same benefits? So the aunt you get to play Wii Sports at Christmas, I can see how she would enjoy having a go, how it's a shared family experience and how the activity makes sense in that context even but will she really feel like she's achieving anything? Maybe that has more to say about how we much we value our experiences but when Jane said something along the lines that she has never met a pessimistic gamer, who didn't think they could succeed, I'm not sure I'd agree they don't exist. I mean maybe they would call themselves a gamer, but I've seen plenty of people put off from even trying something because they don't think they are good enough. And, I have given up on games myself when it's just gotten too hard... I definitely haven't finished all the games I have - what does that say about my ability to achieve things? Jane mentioned signature strenghts, but what if I'm noticing weaknesses instead?!

Maybe I'm taking it a bit too far, I do finish some games at least, I suppose the ones I get the most pleasure out of, so perhaps that's enough. But I am still curious about different types of players and how often people actually finish their games. The two main things I want to take with me from the sermon though, are to rethink my ideas about productivity and the fact that there is research out there about the positive effects of game-playing. Plus, I don't have to feel guilty about not writing my thesis yet, as there are plenty of activties I need to do first, including (though obviously not limited to) playing games, cos they increase my PeRMA quotient and make me flourish ;-)

Update: I forgot to add a link to the Gameful site - after thanking her for the talk and telling her a bit about my research, Jane suggested that I check it out once it launches. It seems to be a resource for anyone interested in making and using games that have a positive impact on people's live. You can find out a bit more about it on her blog here.