Walking Party

There’s something really delighful about the premise of The Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands game, namely that one is trying to manipulate the composition of a party of people in order to be alone with the woman of one’s dreams. But the author’s take on gender makes me fairly uncomfortable. Making Lady Ashley and the other women voiceless, agency-less characters is somehow subversive, because of a highly fragmented backstory written entirely by male characters and authors? No, actually, it isn’t.

I’ve got no problem with the game’s basic premise; I’m quite aware of the rules of propriety (though admittedly I think they’re referencing a slightly earlier period) and I love the notion that these rules constrain the characters’ behavior. It’s true that these rules were far more constraining of women than of men, although both genders subverted the rules at times and they certainly only applied to a certain class of people. So why not just admit that the game replicates a sexist power structure and conception of the world? I’ve got no problem with looking at historical elements and playing with them! Or, if that’s too close to the “YOU ARE A BAD BAD SEXIST” line, why not allow the players to decide at the beginning of the game whether they will play gentlemen courteously pursuing ladies, ladies courteously pursuing gentlemen, gentlemen pursuing gentlemen or ladies pursuing ladies?

I see where the designer is going with this, and I like the extensive fictional world he’s created around the gameplay. I definitely want to play the game, read the booklet and participate in the larger fiction of the game. But I don’t buy his argument that his creation of unreliable narrator-designers somehow undermines the basic structure of gender relations the game puts forward. Maybe every player is going to read the character booklet and think carefully about it – but I’d guess a lot of people are just going to play the game, and his argument about gender doesn’t really account for that.

Headlamp and Online Data

When I was thinking about Advance, I decided that I wanted to automate a lot of my data collection. I made this decision for a variety of reasons, some theoretical (if I keep the data collection low-key, it won’t interfere with player behavior) and some practical (more time spent on R&D, less on entering and coding data). Most important, I wanted to be able to distribute my game online and reach a broad population, but still be able to collect sophisticated and subtle data.

Turns out this is actually hard. Who knew?

I’m not surprised that automated online data collection has its own set of challenges, but I’m a bit surprised by what some of those challenges have been. I keep running into fairly simple things I want to do that aren’t well-supported by existing tools. Counterbalancing presentation of tasks. Randomizing subject assignment to research condition. Conditional pre- and post-test support. Complex tasks combined with surveys. Some tools have some of these features, but I haven’t found any that have all of them.

Enter Headlamp Research, which is designing tools for people to do research online. They haven’t released their toolset yet, but I just took their “What do we need to be doing?” survey and was really impressed. If nothing else, they’re asking all the right questions.

They’re not relevant for the work I’m doing on Advance, because I’m rolling my own tools into the game itself – but by the time I’m ready to begin a new study, it seems like they’ll have some really powerful tools available, plus a user population already in place. Self-selection effects could be problematic (after all, you’re only testing the kinds of people who sign up to do research online!) but I find their approach really inspiring.

Take Our Surveys!

As part of our design research for Lit, we’re exploring what game features make people feel “rushed” (excited/stimulated) and relaxed.  We’ve put together two brief surveys, one for each emotional state.

Take the rush survey.

Take the relax survey.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Advance Interface Sketches

Advance! Main Screen

Advance! Job Detail

Advance! Character Detail

We’re at GLS

Come by and see our talk at 11am today, or check out our twitter feed (games4research) where we’ll be answering questions live!

Why use games as a tool for prejudice reduction?

Assumption: we have insufficient capacity of understanding to be able to act in a complex and global environment. We must count on skilled teams that are committed and self-organized to react at a local level in a global strategy. Strategic positioning requires people free of prejudice and a positive attitude committed to change. So, the ability to learn dynamically at both individual and organizational levels is essential with a focus on being able to apply the changes to facilitate adaptation to this environment. Games and simulations are capable of permitting this type of learning through an experiential form, which facilitates the understanding and integration of complex systems. 

A system is defined as a set of interdependent and interrelated elements. Systemic thinking provides us a way to visualize these relationships. Games help us understand complex dynamics and are ideal for learning systemic skills. It permits an environment that breaks the social forms of organization, and provides a safe zone for players to explore a replica of a real-time environment. This is because a game can be used as a representation or an abstraction of a much larger system.

How can a game change our mental models to create a shared model that goes beyond our individual value systems and ideas?  Some features of games that enable behavioral change:

1. Voluntary learning
2. Creating conflict (by leading players to question the validity of their existing biases)
3. Risk-free environment
4. Compression of time and space (allowing players to know the outcomes of their decisions in a short while of play)

Gaming for the Next Billion

Check this article out!

It’s an interesting, if brief, piece about getting gaming experiences to the BRIC countries (that’s Brazil, Russia, India and China for those who don’t read The Economist regularly).  I’m particularly curious about the development of serious games for this audience.  That’s an unspoken part of why I’m committed to exploring the casual and mobile genres for serious games – because high-end PC games, virtual worlds and console games just aren’t going to reach this audience anytime soon.

Advance! publications and conference presentations

   

 As we are developing the Advance! game and research study, we are also getting busy with writing and presenting papers, posters and creative game design workshops. In such events we are happy to meet interested people, receive constructive feedback and form strategic relationships. Following are some of the recent and upcoming presentation engagement:

* Jessica Hammer, the lead designer and founder of the Advance! project presented at Dr. John Black’s practicum for the second time this year. Faculty and fellow students were pleased with the progress, with the game and the research design. Jessica, expecting to be shredded to pieces was delighted with the supportive reaction to the two-hour presentation.

* Nisha created a colorful poster for the Advance! project, which was presented by Jessica Hammer at the Teachers College, Columbia University’s Dean’s Grant event.

* On May 11th at 10:30am the team will present (and publish the paper in the proceeding) at the Teachers College Educational Technology Conference at Columbia University.

* We just received notification that on June 10-12 our submission entitled “Reaching Racists: Discrimination Education Through Play” was accepted for inclusion in the Games, Learning and Society Conference 5.0 (in Madison, Wisconsin) as a micro presentation session.  We are thrilled to be included in such a relevant conference and interact with esteemed experts from the fields of game design, emerging technology, education, culture and new media.  I can’t wait to finally meet James Paul Gee!

Emergent Entity

In his paper Emergent Entities and Emergent Processes: Constructing Emergence through Multi-Agent Programming, Uri Wilensky gives the following definition for an emerging entity: “As the components of a system interact, they can form a pattern that is stable over time. We call such patterns emergent objects or entities… They emerge from the interactions of objects at a lower level or scale” (pp. 3). According to Wilensky an emergent entity has the following characteristics:

- Stable for some period of time (pp 3)

-  Composite-  “… almost all entities can be see as emergent, it is a matter of adopting the emergent perspective and seeing the entity as a composite-an ensemble of interacting components. From this perspective, all entities can be seen as special cases of process- processes that are maintained in a dynamic equilibrium” (pp 3).

- Dynamic (pp 3)

- Parallel- “[emergent entities] arise out of the interactions of many components all moving at the same time- that is, they act in parallel” (pp3). Wilendky also explains that “in order to make sense of the systems of interactions that comprise a complex system, we need to better understand how multiple processes executing simultaneously can coordinate and result is a composite pattern” (pp 3-4)

- Random- “…randomness can be quite constructive – generating many of the beautiful patterns we see in nature” (pp 4) “All of these patterns emerge fro the interactions of many tiny components governed by the laws of chance” (pp 4)

Further, Wilensky explains that research shows that people have difficulties in thinking about the details of how parallel processes can interact (pp 3) and reasoning about randomness and probability (pp 4). And, he proposes that such accumulated difficulties result in an emergent entity which he calls the “deterministic/centralized mindset” (pp 4) “This mindset causes people to see worldly phenomena as orchestrated and determined instead of as emergent. It focuses our attention at a single level of description rather than pointing us to the connections amongst levels” (pp 4)

Wilensky also points out that “because of our experiences as agents and our inability to attend to large numbers of factors for long periods of time, we do not have significant opportunities to develop robust intuitions about how emergent phenomena arise and maintain themselves” (pp 4)

Although in his paper Wilensky is more concerned about the emergenet entities in nature, we can use the same line of argument about the patterns and systems that emerge from interactions of human agents. Examples of such emergent systems are traffic, revolution, or systemic bias. Can Advance bring the opportunity for the players to develop an understanding about how systemic bias as an emergent phenomena arise?

Playing Advance, the player could have a broad perspective of the system (company) and reason in terms of the macrobehavior of the system and no longer focus only on the microbehavior of its agents. The player is not concerned about the bias of a specific agent, whereas she/he is concerned about the systemic bias (bias that emerge from the whole system). At the same time, the player experiences the perspective of single agents during the face off of the game, and realizes how the systemic bias could emerge from the enactment of these independent parallel processes. Each hiring process is independent and may occur simultaneously and hence in parallel, however, systemic bias emerges as the result of these parallel processes. Therefore, the game rules and mechanism forces the player to step back and think in system, the player is in charge of dealing with a bias system in order to succeed in the game.

Moreover, playing Advance player also have the opporunity to think about random processes and rules of chance. If the system is bias aganst a specific trait or gender it does not mean that no character with such gender or trait can be hired, but the chances are lower comparing to rest. It is more probable that somebody with a different trait or gender be more successful in earning the job. Also, the bias could be random even if the agents of the sysytem are rational. Each time the player tries to put a character in a job, during the face off the character may or may not earn the job and the bias factor could be randomly distibuted for these hiring processes.

Game Interface Usability Heuristics

1. Controls should be customizable. (Always let players remap controller buttons to suit their preferences)

2. Controls should be intuitive.

3. Minimize control options (Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers have 17 depressible buttons including direction pads and analog sticks. That’s more than 65% of the 26-letter English alphabet!).

4. The interface should be as non-intrusive as possible. (Don’t ask whether the player wants to save  their game. Just save).

5. For PC games, consider hiding the main computer interface during game play.

6. A player should always be able to identify their score/status in the game.

7. Interfaces should be consistent in control, color, typography, and dialog design.

8. Minimize the menu layers of an interface.

9. Use sound to provide meaningful feedback.

10. Do not expect the user to read a manual.

11. Prevent error and and provide ways to recover game through the use of warning messages.

12. Players should be able to save games in different states.