November 23, 2014 - This is my Game Studies presentation for the Metagame Book Club titled: "Game-Based Learning & Gamified Learning." Interested in joining fellow educators to learn more about gaming in education? Access the free book club here: Metagame Book Club http://bit.ly/metagamebookclub

1. #Metagame Book Club
Game Studies Week 3: “Game-Based Learning &
Gamified Learning”
Sherry Jones
Game Studies Facilitator
Fall 2014
@autnes
http://bit.ly/gamestudies8

2. Watch the Live Webcast To This Lecture!

3. Texts in Focus
1. "Making Right(s) Decision: Artificial Life and Rights
Reconsidered" by Juyun Kim (2005)
2. "Adolescent Thinking and Online Writing After the Use of
Commercial Games in the Classroom" by Pilar Lacasa et. al.
(2011)
3. "A Pedagogy of Play: Integrating Computer Games into the
Writing Classroom" by Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard
Coby (2011)
4. "The Ethics of Indigenous Storytelling: using the Torque
Game Engine to Support Australian Aboriginal Cultural
Heritage" by Theodor G. Wyeld et. al. (2007)

4. Guiding Questions
Q. As an educator, have you used any video game in your classroom? If so,
how did the video game support your lessons?
Q. If you have not used any video game in the classroom, what concerns did
you have that prevented you from employing games as learning tools?
Q. Given your student population, would your students readily accept
video games as part of their education? Do you anticipate resistance to
using video games as texts? Why?

5. A Close Reading of
"Making Right(s) Decision: Artificial Life and Rights
Reconsidered" by Juyun Kim (2005)
The Sims 4

6. Artificial Life, Gaming, and Education
Kim argues that digital games in the simulation genre, such as The
Sims, call on players to consider the relationship and
interconnectedness between humans and machines. He finds that
simulation-based digital games can help educators introduce moral
education into the classroom:
“Since students are already engaged with artificial life (A-life)
environments such as online and video games, educators can use
these interests to introduce issues of rights, responsibilities and
ethical dilemmas.”
-- Juyun Kim (2005)

7. Kim identifies certain ethical implications of the creation of A-life. The
term, “A-life,” generally refers to a human-made life. However, the
distinction between human-made life and nature-made life does
not free us from moral and ethical considerations for either forms
of life. There are several issues in A-life development to consider.
First, A-life development emphasizes autonomy. An autonomous
agent “means any self organizing ‘adaptive system which actively
behaves to achieve a certain goal while in continuous long term
interaction with its environment.’”
-- Juyun Kim (2005)
A-life and Autonomy

8. A-life, Sensations, and Materiality
“Sack present A-life as an example of ‘aesthetic critique of AI.’ The
aesthetic turn from essentialist objections toward neo-cybernetic
examination of the roles of the body, the senses and perception and
interactions with environment, however, produces ethical
implications, if we are interconnected with ‘enough similar to us.” . . .
By problematizing how the effects of machines-as agent are being
generated, Suchman warns us to keep an eye on historical
materialization of machines and consequences.”
-- Juyun Kim (2005)

9. A-life, Cyborgs, and Natural vs. Artificial
Kim references Haraway’s definition of cyborg to show the problem
of defining A-life through the natural vs. artificial binary.
According to Haraway: “A cyborg is a ‘cybernetic organism, a hybrid of
machines and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a
creation of fiction.’ Cyborgs blur the binary between human and
machine, science and social reality, natural and artificial and male
and female. . . . Haraway reminds us that ‘trope nature through a
relentless artifactualism means that nature for us is made as both
fiction and fact.”
-- Juyun Kim (2005)

10. Kim references Inayatullah’s argument that A-life, such as robots,
should be given rights. Inayatullah asserts:
“Humans may see robots in their own rights; not only as mechanical
slaves, produces, and buy and sell, but also entities in their own rights.
Denial of rights of robots - since they are considered other, as not
sentient, and thus not part of our consideration - becomes of an
exemplar of how we treat other humans, plants, animals and
civilizations. . . . Robot should have rights not because they are like
humans, but of what they are, as themselves.”
-- Qtd. in Kim (2005)
A-life and Rights

11. The Sims is a type of “God game” where the player can control their
character’s life. Kim argues that The Sims can simultaneously serve as
a simulation and examination of A-life and human life:
“By creating their own characters, players take up certain subject
positions and exercise certain options that animate The Sims with
stories from everyday contexts. The Sims leads players to examine
their own lives by simplifying a complex real world into a
microworld. This simulation game is an intriguing realization of A-life.”
-- Juyun Kim (2005)
A-life and The Sims

12. Killing of Simulated Life in The Sims
Although The Sims provide characters with emotional states, some
players feel little emotions or empathy for the life of their in-game
characters. In fact, a phenomenon exists where players enjoy
killing their Sim characters. Kim points to a post on The Sims
discussion forums as example:
“Sim killing is fun. Maybe you hate Britney, and you make a Sim like
Britney just so you can kill her. Fun. Anyway, because I am a Sim serial
killer, I don’t just kill my Sims one way. That would be so boring! So I’
ve made a list of original ways you can kill Sims.”
-- Qtd. in Kim (2005)

13. Empathy for Simulated Life in The Sims 2
“Due to the new features including reproduction, genetics and
aging in The Sims 2, more often than not, most of postings in the
thread, ‘Please, don’t kill them all’ recognized the moral dilemmas
created in The Sims 2”
-- Juyun Kim (2005)
A player posted: “I don’t think you should kill all of them, unless you
really want to do that. You have to think about the consequences….
Second: The remaining sim will have that memory as a bad one. Will
cry and you will end up with a ghost. Third: Poor Sim!!!”
-- Qtd. in Kim (2005)

14. Players’ Moral Dilemma and The Sims 2
“Most of The Sims 2 players face moral dilemmas of killing their
characters since feelings that sims are ‘real,’ are evoked. At the
same time as one player note the consequences of killing a Sim
weights on one’s conscience.”
-- Juyun Kim (2005)
A player posted: “I don’t kill Sims that represents my family members
and closest friends. No matter how much they make my life crazy or
how much they annoy me. I couldn’t do that. Especially not with Sims
2. That would just be wrong.”
-- Qtd. in Kim (2005)

15. A Close Reading of
"Adolescent Thinking and Online Writing After the Use of
Commercial Games in the Classroom” by Pilar Lacasa et. al. (2011)
Spore

16. Video Games, Literacy, and Cognitive
Development
Pilar Lacasa et. al. (2011) argue that video games can help students
learn new forms of literacy (and discourses) and develop complex
cognitive processes via game interactions.
The article builds on James Paul Gee’s Semiotic Domains theory, and
offers an insightful look of how to teach biology and evolution via
the game, Spore.

17. Lacasa et. al (2011) argues that educators can use video games to
help students further develop the learning skill of inquiry:
“Teacher: What do you think about this game?”
“Student: The game is cool, right? But I don’t think that when people
are playing at home they think about the theory of evolution. But if
you are playing in the classroom then yes, you start to think but when
you’re in another place you are more thinking, ah I will kill this stupid,
that. .. and not because I think that is the theory of Lamarck.”
-- Pilar Lacasa et. al. (2011)
Science Skill - Inquiry

18. “Teacher: Okay we start with group 3. What do you think that the
game has to do with the evolution theories?
Student: It shows, as Darwin said, that the strongest survive.
Teacher: The strongest survive. But does it always happen? Is it
the strongest who survives? Is it always the strongest? Is there
another way to survive?
Student: After there is the adaptation to the environment from
Lamarck and the cooperation ideas from Kimura.”
-- Pilar Lacasa et. al. (2011)
Science Skill - Analysis

19. Lacasa et. al. (2011) argue that video games offer contexts that can
contrast with the limited contexts offered in science class examples.
With video game context, students have to offer their own
answers, rather than stereotypical answers:
“Teacher: Why do you mention Lamarck's adaptation to the
environment?
Student: Because it has to improve with each generation, in that way
the best can survive ... like the giraffe, which increasingly has the
longest neck to eat higher things. Such as ours creature in Spore, [it]
has the biggest mouth to eat bigger and stronger enemies.”
-- Lacasa et. al. (2011)
Science Skill - Interpretation

20. A Close Reading of
"A Pedagogy of Play: Integrating Computer Games into
the Writing Classroom"
by Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard Coby (2011)
Mists of Pandaria from World of Warcraft

21. Video Games and Critical Thinking
“This research indicates that games are productive in helping
students apply, synthesize, and think critically about what they learn
through active and social participation. As a sophisticated and
immediate interactive and conditional space of branching possibilities
or what Jesper Juul (2005) argued is a “state machine” (p. 56),
computer games can offer teaching methods that help students
learn through embodied simulation. Because computers can
sustain simulated game worlds, they can be used to enhance
learning through application within this simulation.”
-- Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard Coby (2008)

22. Play and Meaning
“According to the historian and early game theorist Johan Huizinga
(1955), “Meaning originally ‘leisure,’ [school] has now acquired
precisely the opposite sense of systematic work and training, as
civilization restricted the free disposal of the young man's time more
and more” (p. 148). School was considered “leisure” when only the
upper classes could engage in it. After school became
universalized enough to admit more working-class students,
school became serious work. Historically, the playfulness of learning
for the upper class was readily apparent in ancient Greece, where
rhetoric has a history linked to play.”
-- Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard Coby (2008)

23. Work and Play
“Even though this history of rhetoric offers a basis from which
teachers and students can see the arbitrariness of the work/play
distinction, school and writing instruction have changed. Although
one positive development in college missions is providing
opportunities to the underprivileged, it has also been associated with
the implicit goal of “disciplining bourgeois subjectivity” (Crowley,
1998, p. 34), which in turn neglects activities not associated with
serious self-improvement. Although productive play can be
educational, this association causes skepticism. Nevertheless,
imagining the classroom as a type of gamespace can further erase
the work/play distinction.”
-- Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard Coby (2008)

24. Classroom as Gamespace
“Like a gamespace, a classroom is a magic circle, a space bounded
by terms and class periods and defined by its own set of classroom
rules and learning objectives. With grades come the classroom's
own rewards for reaching objectives in the form of arbitrary points
that have capital within the classroom space, but, at least to students,
often seem to signify very little outside that space. Both spaces seem
to be part of a magic circle that exists in a space clearly not a part of
what usually gets termed the “real world” but in a pure space.”
-- Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard Coby (2008)

25. WoW and Writing
“Julian Dibbell (2006) and Edward Castronova (2003) have shown
that the materiality of online gamespaces such as WoW are often
directly connected to the “real world” in the form of real goods and
services that can be purchased to improve gameplay, creating a “real
world” economic impact “of $20 billion each year” (Dibbell, 2006, p.
13). Similarly, in the writing course we are proposing, students
would actually participate in the WoW community, producing
textual goods and services for that community that would also
serve as academic assignments. . . . and that textual objectives
achieved in both spaces could [also] have “real world” significance.
-- Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard Coby (2008)

26. A Close Reading of
"The Ethics of Indigenous Storytelling: using the Torque Game
Engine to Support Australian Aboriginal Cultural Heritage" by
Theodor G. Wyeld et. al. (2007)
Water Simulation

27. Serious Game on Australian Aborigines
Theodor G. Wyeld et. al. (2007) developed a Digital Songlines game
engine (DSE) toolkit to simulate the way of life, environment, stories,
and cultural heritage of the Australian Aborigines.
The article details the designers’ extensive efforts to create and
implement a serious game that documents and simulates the life of
real subjects. The complex process of making this serious game is
worth our consideration and reevaluation of the value of creating
serious or epistemic games for education.

28. On Preserving/Simulating Stories
“Stories are a means by which knowledge and understanding is
passed from generation to generation. As they live with such a close
connection to the country and seasons, know it so intimately, the
stories, songs and culture are inextricably linked to the land.
Aboriginal culture is still alive today with older people from the
country still able to tell their stories.”
“The game-based virtual environments seek to explore the
spiritual, mythic, magic and superstitions of the landscape as a
traditional hunting ground and hallowed place of worship.”
-- Theodor G. Wyeld et. al. (2007)

29. On Preserving/Simulating the Environment
“The features of the landscape and the fauna and flora contained
must be faithfully reproduced in such a manner that the stories to be
told in this medium are closely linked visually and experientially with
their ‘country’ of origin.”
“As ostensibly an educational product, if we create inaccurate
environments then ‘inter-actors’ (not just users) with the product
may be misled about a particular story, or scene within a story.
This has implications not just for knowledge acquisition and cultural
maintenance for posterity but, in Australian Aboriginal culture, the
inaccurate telling of stories may affect the environments they refer to
with deleterious spiritual consequences.”
-- Theodor G. Wyeld et. al. (2007)

30. On Preserving/Simulating Cultural Objects
“Each individual plant and animal must be of the correct type or
subspecies, and the narratological information associated with them
has to be accurate and authentic. For example, a totem animal or
Yurdi (an animal of special significance) may have a recurring theme in
a story told by a particular community. Therefore, it must be included.
Different animals have differing significance in different country.”
-- Theodor G. Wyeld et. al. (2007)

31. On Preserving/Simulating Cultural Objects
“The Aboriginal children who participated in this exercise showed real
pride when they saw what the program represented. They were
surprised at the rich graphics and interaction. Some felt it was a
historical simulation. Others felt it related to a contemporary
environment. Thus, as a tool for empowering self-determination
and overcoming negative stereotyping by mainstream media, it
was instrumental in dismantling preconceived ideas of self-worth
and image – the normally held view that somehow indigenous
peoples ‘cannot do this kind of non-indigenous hi-tech work.’
-- Theodor G. Wyeld et. al. (2007)

32. Additional Discussion of
“Let's Play a Game - Learn Philosophy and Rhetoric via
Digital Game-Based Learning" by Sherry Jones (2014)

33. Lecture By:
Sherry Jones
Game Studies Facilitator
Philosophy, Rhetoric, Game Studies
@autnes
Writings & Webcasts
Access Slides: http://bit.ly/gamestudies8