First of all if you are heading to Nerd Mecca AKA the San Diego Comic-Con in the coming weeks, please stop by room 26AB. In there you will find the Comic-Arts Conference, an academic space to discuss and share findings related to comics. Peter Carlson and I will be presenting findings from a forthcoming paper about academic literacy scaffolding and comics.
When not trolling 26AB, I will probably be waiting in lines at Comic-Con. It’s been a few years since I’ve been, but that’s what you still do there, right? Actually, I’ll probably be looking for folks running Pathfinder, D&Dnext, Savage Worlds, and 13th Age. If none of those sound familiar to you, welcome to the diverse fan-driven world of role playing games (RPGs). For the next year or so, I’ll be looking at role playing game spaces when it becomes (somewhat) untangled from the clicking and typing of online videogame play. I suspect the robust research in that space is sustaining educator interest in videogames, but the origins of games like World Of Warcraft are still very much alive as their own space. Though I plan to explore some of my ideas about aspects of RPGs on this blog in the future, for now I would point other would-be interested literacy folks to this lengthy tome. Jon Peterson’s exhaustively long book details the history of the nascent days of the first RPG: Dungeons and Dragons. Yep, RPGs are a staunchly American tradition and one that is based on non-digital remix and feedback loops in gaming communities. This history of remix is not only still alive and well, but in some ways even more encouraged due to the industry’s Open Game License (which I read as a Creative Commons-like license for expanding popular gaming systems). A lot more to say about this in the future, but for now if you’re interested in playing in person (in Fort Collins or at SDCC) or online (there are a lot of user-friendly VTTs – Virtual Tabletops) I’d be happy if you helped learn with me.
Last week Ally and I were at the American Library Association’s annual conference in Chicago. I appreciated the artist alley there. That no one was in line to meet folks like Paul Pope, Jeffrey Brown, or Matt Kindt was pretty interesting compared to the craziness those three industry stalwarts will face in San Diego. I was thrilled to get to pick Matt Kindt’s brain about his work. The top picture is Kindt showing a small group of conference-goers his pencil, ink, and painting process for his ongoing series Mind MGMT.
My browser is overcrowded with tabs of information I want to share here. Instead of focusing on a single example, I want to briefly reflect on three different aspects of the shifting nature of culture in participatory media: community, copyright, and civic engagement. By looking at all three of these, educators can get a quick & robust snapshot of what is on the horizon for pedagogical implications vis-à-vis all of this “new media stuff.” The examples below speak to three different ways that media and culture are changing the ways young people are learning, interacting, and acting upon the world. For teachers, all three of these bring up significant ways that pedagogy needs to shift. (I’ve called this, previously, Beautiful Dark Twisted Pedagogy.)
How to Have the Number One Book on Amazon Without Actually Finishing It
When it comes to YA literature, John Green’s works are not only a personal favorite, but also a consistent hit with my students. During the final days of June, John Green went live on YouTube to his legion of fans and (over the course of nearly two hours) announced the title of his new book, answered questions being sent in real time, and read a chapter from the unreleased work. He also announced he was going to sign every copy of the first edition of the book. As a result, The Fault in Our Stars shot to number one on Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites & Green’s work was profiled in the Wall Street Journal, and media sites are pointing to the phenomenon of the sudden sales. What’s important to notice here is specifically how this happened. Green didn’t go online overnight and simply announce the book title (as mainstream media like WSJ signals). Instead, this has been a sustained relationship with readers that has developed trust and identity. John announced that the title came from someone within his online community. Fans have created tons of covers for the book. John’s hosting an online book club that’s reading the Great Gatsby. He has a series of video exchanges with his brother. He interacts with readers through twitter constantly. If anything, part of the fun of being a “fan” of John Green is being able to interact & engage with other readers, the author, and other artifacts in varying degrees of intensity. Spending some time meandering across his official site, his tumblr, his various twitter accounts, and fan pages is a great way for educators to think about ways to collaborate and share the learning experience with young people.
The Good, the Bad, and the Bloop of Fair Use & Copyright
Do you like Kind of Blue? How many times have you heard a soloist riff on those opening bars of “So What”? And while the music is constantly pointed to as a vanguard album in the history of jazz, a recent reinterpretation of the music finds itself a useful case study in when art appropriation exceeds “Fair Use.” I’m regularly talking about the importance of discussing fair use, copyright, and Creative Commons with young people; I’m convinced that this is a space that students need to explicitly understand as we shift toward a cultural shift from merely consumption to production. This case study, “Kind of Screwed,” is a fantastic introduction into the challenges that are being faced across artistic mediums. Related to this, I regularly either include Free Culture or the film RIP: A Remix Manifesto in courses I teach to teachers about media and technology- both of these are great resources for further investigation on this topic.
The Fall of Eve – Commercial Interests & Citizen Dissent
Think of Eve Online as the geekier, way (way) more complex version of World of Warcraft. With political and corporate intrigue at the center of a game that takes place on ships and in fleets of aircrafts, Eve isn’t as widely played in the U.S. as other MMORPGs. However, that hasn’t stopped EVE’s distributor, CCP, from cashing in on game updates & expansions. In doing so, the company’s revealed a strategy that is more interested in a bottom line profit than in continued support of a long term player community. The result? Nearly 5,000 subscribed players walking away from the game and community. Digging through forum postings and news articles, a clear tension between creator and user emerges. And while teachers aren’t likely to utilize EVE Online in daily instruction (though the class that does has got to be an interesting one, no?), the way that these players are signaling dissent within the game, through canceled subscription and through collective organizing demonstrate how civic engagement is reshaped through participatory media. There are past examples of this kind of work described by researchers, particularly in America’s Army and the Sims, for those who want to look at other work in this area.
Summing Up
While all of the examples above have related precedents, they point to the fuzzy edges of socio-cultural interaction that most educators aren’t thinking about. They are all from within the past two weeks and are related to the kinds of practices our students are engaged in every day. When are we, as educators, going to formally sketch out a redefinition of pedagogy that addresses the paradigm shift that affects our classrooms?
[This post is shared, intended for, and written as a resource at the Digital Is site for the National Writing Project. If – for some silly reason – you haven’t been over there, please take a look.]
Reading the article, “Press X for Beer Bottle: On L.A. Noir,” by Tom Bissell I was left with several significant thoughts and questions about the role of video games on learning, media, and how we teach storytelling and writing.
Though quite lengthy, I encourage you to read through this resource – though the comments below can be read as a stand alone reflection on video games at large, the review is a useful case-study of how narrative shifts in storytelling affect player freedom and understanding of choice.
What’s at the heartof this inquiry is a tension that exists between video games and story. Specifically, can a video game act as a useful means to convey narrative? As an English teacher and as a writer, I question whether my intentions as a writer – to recount a specific narrative, to persuade and effectively defend a thesis – can be adequately represented in a video game. And even if these ideas are in a game, will it ultimately be a fun one?
A popular game series many of my students (and youth around the world play) is the Grand Theft Auto saga. In these, players may undertake specific missions driving around cities to meet various objectives sand move up the ranks in a city’s organized crime underbelly. At the same time, however, most of my students usually play the game with a more broad understanding of the game’s purpose: cause as much chaos as possible. Driving over pedestrians, getting into glorified shoot outs with law enforcement, creating spectacular crashes, explosions, and city-wide damage, most of my students appreciate the game platform as a space for exploration and play. It is a giant sandbox filled with digitalized violence. Your ethical concerns aside, I question how the developers (writers) of these games feel about this approach. Clearly, there is a loose narrative that students are supposed to adhere to. Clearly, most of them do not.
I should make it clear that I think this is okay. The freedom to resist narrative and to resist societal conventions (to specifically push against them) is exactly what makes these games so engaging for young people…and probably cause the kinds of fear mongering about violence and video games that are monthly headlines in grocery-store magazine displays.
However, the developers of the Grand Theft Auto series have recently released a new game. L.A. Noire (as detailed in the article). In it, opportunities for chaos still can be found. However, this game has a very specific narrative vision. It adheres to traditional storytelling narrative arches. There are things like denouement in its final moments. But with this narrative comes a much more limited scope of choice. The player, though posed with options and-at times a broad area to play and explore-ultimately must take specific paths, choices, and steps in order to proceed. In fact, the game doesn’t really provide much choice at all.
As creating games becomes easier and cheaper, it will become the kind of literacy practice that – I imagine – will be second nature in ELA classrooms in the near future. If this holds true, what kinds of lessons do we develop about teaching choice, agency, and power within video game design?
Similarly, in addition to looking at images of race and class and literary elements in video games, how do we get students to write and think critically about agency and power when they play these games? In essence, by playing a game, a player is essentially committed to a programmed contract that forces them to adhere to the rules, laws, and conventions of social behavior that are designed into the game’s architecture.
This may seem like a superficial discussion, but I caution us, as educators, to think specifically about what video games inculcate in students about power, authority and the way they understand & synthesize information. By garroting a game’s scope, its designer is afforded the freedom to closely “tell” a narrative. However, it will take more innovative game design for a video game to allow open ended exploration that can “show” a narrative based on player free will. This tension between choice and narrative is one that needs to be conveyed in our lesson plans and in our classrooms. How we design our classrooms, establish class rules, and set agendas are no different than digital walls and required button mashing in the stereotypical first person shooter our students play daily.
Hasbro, I want to tell you something: I grew up playing Monopoly with ever-evolving house rules that varied everything from the value of dice roles, to jail-breaking bribery, to lucrative Free Parking.
I’d imagine many educators would point to a concern about elementary math skills lost without the transaction of paper money. However, I think the main problem with this proposal is the lack to augment, challenge and reinvent when all of the rules and arbiters of those rules are hidden inside a speaking, electronic box.
Part of what is so important about the value of games is the way they make us challenge traditional thinking. Passing go, for instance, would be a relatively easy task without the rules that you must move in one direction and only on legitimate squares. Gambits of investing in trains, calculating income tax, and desperate negotiations to complete monopolies are part of the social interaction of playing games.
And while the importance of socialization of games is addressed, the value of “cheating” is just as important. Cheating – changing rules and exploring more creatively how to problem solve within a gaming environment are just as valid in learning to play, compete, and evaluate the structures of power placed within a game.
Games like Little Big Planet, level editors for popular first person shooters, and avid affinity spaces online for gaming strategy, guilds and lore are all extensions of why the creepy tower in the middle of the Monopoly tower thwarts creativity, fun, learning. Ultimately, limiting one’s freedom in authoring gaming components within Monopoly will reduce the success of garnering a newer, “digital” audience and transferring videogame components to board games.
So I picked this up a bit ago and I’m ready to put it to use. I’m not entirely sure for how long, but I’d like to try to eek out a postcard a day to kick off 2011. I think part of this process will be a game. I’m working it out as I go along. I’m going to call it “I Want to Tell You Somethng” and I want you to play along:
If you would like to get a postcard in the mail at some point next year, please email your address to anterobot asperand gmail dot com.
I wanted to share a couple of recent videos that I’ve been rewatching.
First, while I don’t agree with all of Jane McGonigal’s arguments, I’m genuinely excited by her recent TED talk. At this point, I am strongly aligned with the idea of connecting game play to real world change. You could do a lot worse than spend 20 minutes watching Margolis’ presentation.
I’ve been following Jane’s work since Greg Niemeyer showed me World Without Oil (A bit of trivia: Greg was also one of the members of Jane’s dissertation committee). Her article, “Why I Love Bees” fits directly into my research on the Black Cloud. Similarly, Evoke seems like an interesting premise. And while I understand what she’s doing with her argument by contrasting the time youth spends playing video games with the time they spend in schools, I think this is where a lot of researchers are missing a big opportunity. As a field, we continue to look at the informal environments for game play and research. It’s easier to do so – a select group of interested individuals, less controlled curriculum, easier access issues, etc. However, think about how the power of game play for change could be compounded within formal learning environments. I’m working on developing material around this within my classroom, and expect game play to fit somewhat prominently into my dissertation. So if it sounds like I’m grandstanding or being a bit presumptuous here, it’s more personal throat-clearing than anything else.
Second, I just saw We Live in Public and found it to be an absolutely compelling and terrifying documentary. I’m not clear about what disqualified it for an Oscar nomination, but think it could have given The Cove a run for its money. The foundational arguments about privacy, surveillance and our culture’s relationship with the media are extemely prescient. As I continue to think about how student-generate media products will be created, shared, and assessed within my classroom, these are the topics I am concerned about. Ownership of data, of our lives, and of conceptions of propriety is in flux and the experiments that Josh Harris challenges us to face this fact.
His next project sounds equally as preposterous as past efforts, and I’m interested (if not extremely wary) about what will transpire if he gets the funding for this. Though I encourage you to watch his pitch below, I highly recommend seeking out and viewing We Live In Public for a better sense of context.
I’m working on a new game. A poetic version of Scrabble or Bananagrams, perhaps. Not quite sure if anything will come of it or if it’s even anything other than a connect-the-dots, writing-exercise solitaire. As I work through more exercises like these, I’ll likely only post those that are somewhat playable. I will also be unveiling a new space for research & dissertation discussion in the next week or two.
I’m getting tired reading different understandings of what constitutes a “game” as both “play” and “competition” or what have you. As I think about applicability in the classroom, I wonder what makes a game “fun” for you?
