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By The Gamer, January 20, 2010 1:24 pm

When Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain comes out in February I’m (hopefully) going to be doing a lot with it: journey analysis, journal, academic papers, oh my! There will be spoilers, and lots of them. I will be speaking frankly and (hopefully) intriguingly about the game, the experience I have playing it, and I will be discussing the more questionable content in terms of violence, adult themes, and whatever else I may come across.

I’m really, really looking forward to this. Keep watching.

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By The Gamer, September 17, 2009 1:47 pm

Violent games do not create violent children. There. I said it.

A good researcher reports findings that support his or her position, as well as those that fly in its face. The October 2009 issue of Issues in Mental Health Nursing contains an article titled “Young Children’s Video/Computer Game Use: Relations with School Performance and Behavior” by Erin Hastings at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL, and Tamra Karas, Adam Winsler, Erin Way, Amy Madigan and Shannon Tyler, all from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. As always, the abstract:

This study examined the amount and content of children’s video game playing in relation with behavioral and academic outcomes. Relationships among playing context, child gender, and parental monitoring were explored. Data were obtained through parent report of child’s game play, behavior, and school performance. Results revealed that time spent playing games was related positively to aggression and negatively to school competence. Violent content was correlated positively and educational content negatively with attention problems. Educational games were related to good academic achievement. Results suggest violent games, and a large amount of game play, are related to troublesome behavioral and academic outcomes, but educational games may be related to positive outcomes. Neither gender nor parental monitoring emerged as significant moderators of these effects.

There is a fairly sizable collection of research that supports the claim that violent video games (or television, for that matter) are related to higher levels of aggression, both in children and adults. However, speaking frankly, this is akin to saying that owning many books is directly, causally related to a high frequency of reading. There is very little support for a direct causal link between violent gaming and violent behavior. Reciprocation is more likely; a feedback loop. Violent is as violent does.

It’s important to remember–and I say this with all sincerity–that the most important aspect of a child’s development is the parents. No amount of video game or television curtailing by watchdog groups is ever, ever going to replace the effects of just one good parent. If a parent truly believes that violent video games will turn his or her child into a raving, homicidal maniac, then guess what: be an adult and say No to that child. Parental responsibility is nothing to be shrugged at. Television producers and game designers are not out to make upstanding paragons of civility out of your children; they’re out to make money by producing consumer-based materials that people buy. Two things sell, unequivocally: sex and violence. That math isn’t hard to do.

An interesting aspect of research like this is the number of variables involved. In just the article there are:

• Gender
• Age
• GPA
• School  competence
• Time playing games
• Violence level of games
• Parental monitoring of content
• Parental monitoring of time
• Social context
• Previous behavior of child
• Media type

Any researcher worth his or her salt, given that list of factors, would never try to make a causal link out of all that. This is not to say the authors did; I’m just pointing it out. The authors list a number of limitations on their study, as per usual in academic articles (all citations found on page 646 and are not found immediately following one another):

First is the fact that only parents reported on their child’s video/computer game playing habits.

In addition, parents may misreport the amount of monitoring that they actually do.

Finally, to obtain child grades, parents were permitted to either (a) submit a grade report from school, or (b) report their child’s grades. It is conceivable that the self-report option may have introduced some error, presumably due to parents inflating grades to enhance their child’s academic standing.

Also, our sample was limited to generally high-achieving children from relatively well-educated, mostly middle- to upper-class families,

Another limitation is the correlational and exploratory nature of the study. Although links among game playing and children’s aggression and academic achievement were found, the direction of the causality is unclear. It is likely that, as previously mentioned, the relationship between aggression and violent media is reinforcing.

When splitting the sample to analyze by gender, [the limitation of a small sample size] became clearer, as correlations that were significant overall with the enter sample only approached significance when the sample size was halved to look at boys and girls separately.

It is not my intent to rip apart this article and I apologize if it comes across that way. However, I feel it’s important to point out that when articles like this are published (that show a correlation between one thing and another) it’s all too easy for people to that correlation to causation and assume a causal link. We’ve all seen the Tipper Gores and Zackery Morazzinis and even the Hillary Clintons hell-bent on preventing violent video games from falling into the hands of impressionable, moldable youth.

It reminds me of an old George Carlin bit: “It’s a great country, but it’s a strange culture. This is a country where gun store owners are given a list of stolen credit cards, but not a list of criminals and maniacs! Where tobacco kills millions of people every year, so they ban artificial sweeteners! Because a rat died! And now they’re thinking about banning toy guns . . . AND THEY’RE GOING TO KEEP THE FUCKING REAL ONES!”

Coming up next: addiction.

Citation:

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By The Gamer, September 6, 2009 4:06 pm

May contain spoilers. Beware.

It’s pretty obvious that I’m a big Silent Hill fan. I’m hoping to do a lot with the series (along with the Fatal Frame series, Rule of Rose, the Final Fantasy series and Ico/Shadow of the Colossus/Unnamed New Game) academically. I’m thinking up topics for papers right now actually. Anyway, whenever I come across a scholarly look at a video game, I take note. Well, guess what I found.

The May issue of Camera Obscura contains an article called Masculinity in Video Games: The Gendered Gameplay of Silent Hill. Ewan Kirkland, a lecturer at Kingston University in the UK, has written a number of articles on video games and seems to focus on the Silent Hill series and survival horror in general. Here’s the abstract for the forthcoming (I say forthcoming because it’s not available to me yet) article:

The article looks at the concept of masculinity in the video game “Silent Hill 2,” created by Konami. It delves in the issues concerning the ending to “Silent Hill 2,” such as the player agency, the structuring of gameplay, and the gendering of the role that video-game players are invited to perform. It notes that the only way to finish the game is for the protagonist James to kill his wife Mary. The author points out that such portion in the game may be perceived as a video-game misogyny which features a male protagonist killing creatures of monstrous femininity, or presented a perverted world defining the psychological interior of a tortured man consumed by bitterness, resentment, and conflicting feelings of love and hatred toward a woman he had to kill at the end.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the author’s claim, or even what his opinion of it is. Unfortunately, right now, I can’t access the full article. Whenever I can, I’ll be sure to do a write-up. I suppose it could be seen as misogynistic if you look at the face value of James killing nurses, but it’s deeper than that, as the end of the abstract indicates. It’s complicated. That’s why it’s a good topic to study.

In the meantime, Ewan has written a very interested piece on Alessa Gillespie, the child/teenager/monster/driving force behind Silent Hill in the first and third releases in the series. It’s called Alessa Unbound: The Monstrous Daughter of Silent Hill and is the first piece in section two of Dark Reflections, Monstrous Reflections: Essays on the Monster in Culture. Click here for the PDF. There’s some other really interesting stuff in the ebook, so check it out. Here’s the abstract for Ewan’s piece on Alissa:

This paper explores the figure of Alessa, the ambiguous monster of the Silent Hill videogame series. Focusing on the game’s first and third installments, Alessa is discussed as revealing interconnected anxieties surrounding motherhood and childhood. Horrific images of birth, abortion and maternity pervade the games, together with unsettling signifiers of children and childhood. Firstly Barbra Creed’s psychoanalytic discussion of the monstrous feminine is used to examine Silent Hill in terms of maternity. Accordingly, Alessa embodies the abject mother, evident in pervading imagery of bodily fluids, particularly blood and excrement, across the series. Next I explore Alessa as monstrous child, employing Robin Wood’s discussion of children in horror cinema. Here Alessa’s monstrousness resides in her horrific childhood, communicated through Silent Hill’s dark and malignant alternative dimensions. This ambiguous disposition toward the arcane mother and parental authority is partially resolved through the games’ endings, involving the re-assertion of patriarchal power. Finally, I argue, Alessa symbolises cultural fears that adult/child distinctions may be disrupted as children transcend their infant or adolescent status, by becoming parents themselves.

I will say that Kirkland takes the right approach to studying these games, inasfar as he takes them seriously.  Case in point, he says the following things in the introduction (p.74) of Alessa Unbound:

• I will not be justifying the study of videogames.
• I shall not be relating figures concerning the revenues the industry accrues, nor drawing apologetic parallels between videogames [and other] media.
• I shall be exploring [the games] as narratives….
• I shall be taking these games seriously for the complex cultural texts I believe them to be.

Couldn’t agree more. I’m looking forward to reading more of his work, especially on Silent Hill. For anyone interested, a user by the name of  SilentPyramind (and a number of others) on GameFAQs have put together a rather extensive and deep look into the mythology and logic of the Silent Hill universe which, unfortunately, hasn’t been updated since 2007 and thus is not containing the newest additions to the series. Still, as far as Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 go, it’s worth a look.

Citations:

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By The Gamer, September 3, 2009 10:21 am

Speaking of exergaming, there’s good news for all those kids out there who suck at sports!

A brand new piece from the journal Computers & Education performs a literature review of recent scientific articles regarding computer games and their utility in physical education and health education. Marina Papastergiou from the University of Thessaly in Greece is the author. Here’s the abstract:

This study aims at critically reviewing recently published scientific literature on the use of computer and video games in Health Education (HE) and Physical Education (PE) with a view: (a) to identifying the potential contribution of the incorporation of electronic games as educational tools into HE and PE programs, (b) to present a synthesis of the available empirical evidence on the educational effectiveness of electronic games in HE and PE, and (c) to define future research perspectives concerning the educational use of electronic games in HE and PE. After systematically searching online bibliographic databases, 34 relevant articles were located and included in the study. Following the categorization scheme proposed by [Dempsey, J., Rasmussen, K., & Lucassen, B. (1996). The instructional gaming literature: Implications and 99 sources. University of South Alabama, College of Education, Technical Report No. 96-1], those articles were grouped into the following four categories: (a) research, (b) development, (c) discussion and (d) theory. The overviewed articles suggest that electronic games present many potential benefits as educational tools for HE and PE, and that those games may improve young people’s knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours in relation to health and physical exercise. Furthermore, the newly emerged physically interactive electronic games can potentially enhance young people’s physical fitness, motor skills and motivation for physical exercise. The empirical evidence to support the educational effectiveness of electronic games in HE and PE is still rather limited, but the findings present a positive picture overall. The outcomes of the literature review are discussed in terms of their implications for future research, and can provide useful guidance to educators, practitioners and researchers in the areas of HE and PE, and to electronic game designers. [Copyright 2009 Elsevier]

Literature reviews are always useful in that it a) provides a scholarly look at the research pertinent to one area, and b) someone else does all the work for you.

This review, for example, finds that:

1. Gaming can be of potential benefit to students in the realms of health and physical education
2. Proof of this is limited, but that is a function of how much research has been done, rather than a lack of positive evidence
3. The relatively new “exergaming” genre deserves special attention due to its potential

I don’t want to seem like I’m focusing on exergaming, it just happens to be what I’ve come across frequently as of late. What worries me is if some developer jumps on this and starts creating games specifically for exercising (don’t confuse that with Wii Fit, as that is specifically made to be a commercial money-maker; I’m talking about something like “e-Pilates” or “Virtual Weightlifting” or something). That tends to be the problem with well-intentioned serious or educational games: the message is the focus and the gameplay is secondary. Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Ernest Adams, author of Fundamentals of Game Design: the most common fatal mistake that befalls game designers is to put the message before the game.

So, while I would champion anything that gets kids off their butts and moving, I really, really hope the games are good. First impressions are so important, you know?

Citation:
Papastergiou, M. (2009). Exploring the potential of computer and video games for health and physical education: A literature review. Computers & Education, 53(3), 603-622.

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By The Gamer, August 29, 2009 11:09 am

The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics just published two new articles about gaming, exercise and the potential benefits for children. Though this isn’t obviously directly related to COTS games in the classroom, you could make an argument that a well-funded (or grant-funded) school could look at, for example, Wii Fit for Phys Ed classes.

The first, Playing Active Video Games Increases Energy Expenditure in Children, uses Dance Dance Revolution to measure whether or not actively-engaged video games (think games that make you get up and move) are tantamount to actual exercise. Turns out, yes, they are.

Energy expenditure during active video game play is comparable to moderate-intensity walking. Thus, for children who spend considerable time playing electronic screen games for entertainment, physically active games seem to be a safe, fun, and valuable means of promoting energy expenditure.

Similar results were seen between DDR Beginner level and Wii Bowling, and also between DDR Level 2 and Wii Boxing, which turns out to be about as strenuous as walking at nearly 6km/h.

Though, I will say that any child doing this is definitely burning some calories.

The second article, Can Exergaming Contribute to Improving Physical Activity Levels and Health Outcomes in Children?, found that exergaming is not really a substitute for real sports and physical activity because most “exergames” do not reach the same level of intensity as actual sports. The author does say, however, that there are a few games that provide sufficiently intense activity (like, I would imagine, half an hour of doing what that kid is doing). The author addresses previous studies and future suggestions:

Only 3 very small trials have considered the effects of exergaming on physical activity levels and/or other health outcomes in children. Evidence from these trials has been mixed; positive trends for improvements in some health outcomes in the intervention groups were noted in 2 trials. No adequately powered randomized, controlled trial has been published to date, and no trial has assessed the long-term impact of exergaming on children’s health. We now need high-quality randomized, controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness and sustainability of exergaming, as well as its clinical relevance; until such studies take place, we should remain cautious about its ability to positively affect children’s health.

So, as with most things, more research is needed. Imagine that. If nothing else, it has promise, right?

Citations:

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By The Gamer, August 27, 2009 2:30 pm

So this blog is more than just a place for me to push my own agenda (though there will be quite a bit of that, I would imagine). It’s also a place to condense and bring together all the information I can find on the topic of COTS games in the classroom. The most obvious place to start is the Teaching with Games project from the UK-based Futurelab non-profit. Of course, I’m not the first person to blog about this. It happened in 2005 and 2006, but it represents a wonderful step forward in marrying COTS games and the classroom.

Teaching with Games has essentially confirmed any suspicions that COTS games can and should be considered viable pedagogical tools. (All quotes in this post are from a Teaching with Games press release):

Teaching with Games also suggests that there are specific features of game play that could encourage student engagement, such as the opportunity to have autonomous control over a responsive environment, and the ability to use games familiar from home in which they can demonstrate expertise. In addition, findings from an Ipsos MORI survey into teachers’ attitudes to using mainstream computer games in the classroom, published in January 2006 as part of the Teaching with Games study, revealed that 59% of teachers want to use computer games for educational purposes and 53% say they would do so because they are an interactive way of motivating and engaging students.

It seems that whether or not the teacher is an avid gamer is not the key to successfully integrating COTS games into the classroom.

Teachers’ experience, teaching style, familiarity with the curriculum and the culture of the school, rather than gaming expertise, were identified as having the most impact on the successful integration of games into classroom learning. Furthermore, the study revealed that games used in the classroom environment do not have to be fully representative of reality to be useful in a lesson.

So what does that mean, exactly? It means that good teachers have a better chance of making this thing work than good gamers who work as teachers. Then again, good teachers can take just about anything and turn it into a worthwhile pedagogical instrument. While Xbox 360 achievements may be bragging rights, they don’t assume any ability to translate that game into a learning opportunity. It means that a teacher who’s really passionate about and knows how to convey art will be better at using Okami as lesson material than a person who’s gotten all 100 pebbles.

That being said, teachers have been responsive to the idea of using games in the classroom. Remember, these are not games intended specifically for education. Teaching with Games used games like Civilization and The Sims, entirely COTS. However, not all schools have the hardware needed to do this. In fact, one school had the computers but they lacked CD-ROM drives, rendering them essentially dead in the water as far as gaming goes (this was before Steam).

Claire Gemmell, a teacher at St John’s School & Community College in Marlborough, commented: “I can definitely see the potential of using games in the classroom. It proved to be a great tool for motivating students and engaging their interest. I would like to use games for teaching in the future if the technical problems could be addressed.”

Electronic Arts is aware of how useful these games can be to the classroom teacher. If other companies are not careful, they’ll miss out on this burgeoning venture. (coughcoughValveInfinityWardMicrosoftSquareEnixcoughcough) Valve does have an email address devoted to Academic Licensing, but I’ve yet to hear back from them.

“We have long recognised the potential of interactive computer games to stimulate the learning process”, said Gerhard Florin, Executive Vice President and General Manager, International Publishing, EA. “The Teaching with Games study in collaboration with Futurelab has shown that commercial computer games have the potential to support education, which has raised the bar for ongoing collaboration between the industry and education sectors. We look forward to continued initiatives to help pave the way for meaningful integration of computer games into school curriculum.”

So, yes, this was a few years ago, but it sets a wonderful groundwork for the future of this sort of collaboration.

If you can think of a US-based project like Teaching with Games, please let me know.