Humanities Unlocked: The Value of Liberal Arts for your Game Design Program

Humanities Unlocked:The Value of Liberal Artsfor your Game Design Program
Mia Consalvo
MIT
@miaC

first a word about advising...

TCOM Day Alumni Panel

CI-H/HASS-D lotteries

Humanities Grants

4 Case Studies
Literature, Foreign Languages, Philosophy and Classics
What game design programs can learn from the humanities
What game design can contribute to the humanities

Case Study 1: Philosophy

Ethical theories
Virtue Ethics
Developing good habits of character, such as benevolence
Utilitarianism
(consequentialism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable)
Utilitarianism adds “to everyone”

More theories
Duty Theory
Base morality on specific, foundational principles of obligation. Non-consequentialist—principles are obligatory, irrespective of consequences that might follow from our actions.

How do players play?
“I always seem to go good. I can go evil if I force myself to be evil—I really have to force myself to do it, it never comes naturally to me”
“I generally do good ‘cause it’s easier. ‘Cause that’s how I was raised. Like, for example, it’s easier to be good, ‘cause that’s how you’re trained. ... as a person, but you translate that into gamer world, almost innately.”

Evil or just selfish?
“I was trying to do kind of ‘evil-ish’ things, but when I went into ‘game autopilot’ mode, I would naturally make the good guy choices. And I started to get ‘renowned’ back—good guy points, essentially—and I was like ‘no, I don’t want to do this! Stop it!’”
“the good guy always wins, the bad guy never wins. It’s the rules. If it’s Batman versus Joker, Batman always wins.”

Breaking a contract

Philosophy

Case Study 2: Foreign Languages

Western otaku
Games lead to interest in culture, language
Leads to seeking new experiences
For some, getting past stereotypes

Encountering the ‘other’
Dani: “Cause she [friend Aiko] would, she wasn’t afraid to talk to us about things and she wanted to know about our culture too and it was really nice having really long conversations with her about… everything. So, that was invaluable to me, as far as learning about culture. Was actually talking to somebody, someone that was outgoing enough to not, you know, shy away from nitty gritty subjects like that.”

Traveling, Curiosity
Moti: “I’m not really done with Japan and I’d like to go back again at some point”
Dan: “…going over this summer in July to conduct fieldwork”

The Cosmopolitan Western Otaku
Spectrum of interests, from banal consumption to deeper engagements, levels of openness
Comfort with what is distant as well as the familiar
Potential for surface interest; reinforcing stereotypes; return of Orientalism

Languages
Games can inspire us to learn new languages, and about new cultures
Learning languages can help us appreciate more games, understand cultural differences, and can even lead to new hobbies, businesses, and the creation of new markets

Case Study 3: Classics

Procedural adaptation
Not a translation, but a purposive attempt to identify dominant themes and meanings in Sophocles and adapt those to a procedural system

Classics

Case Study 4: Literature

Edith Newbold Jones (Wharton)
1862-1937
Pulitzer Prize for Literature, 1921
Age of Innocence
House of Mirth
Custom of the Country

False Dawn, 1924
“Mr. Raycie was a monumental man. His extent in height, width and thickness was so nearly the same that whichever way he turned one had an almost equally broad view of him…”

The Old Maid, 1924
“Nothing had ever been changed in the room which, even as a bride, she had planned to modernize. …”

Jane Austen wrote about how society was a social game

Edith Wharton wrote instead about the weight of society on individuals, and our need to remain part of the tribe, despite our own ambitions.

Current social games
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Meaningful interactions
Must all interactions simply be positive?
How do tribal norms regulate us… how can we think about that relative to game design
Are we happiest when inside the group, at the cost of our own individuality or particular actions?
What are the benefits (as well as drawbacks) of sticking with the tribe

Revisiting value

Revisiting advising

Revisiting the Humanities

Thank you!
@miaC

Humanities Unlocked: The Value of Liberal Arts for your Game Design Program

by Mia Consalvo on Mar 04, 2011

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Humanities Unlocked: The Value of Liberal Arts for your Game Design Program — Presentation Transcript

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