Gamestorming

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http://www.gogamestorm.com/

Greenpeace release ship simulator game

More on the Greenpeace ship sim

James Paul Gee on Serious Games (Video)

Google Earth as a Serious Games Engine?

Well, not quite a game is it? More of a simulation really. But the potential may be there.



Hat-tip to Wonderland

Serious Games and Flu Pandemics

Going through my feedreader last night, I came across this post from Future Making Serious Games:

As the Netherlands’ most multifaceted university medical center, the Erasmus Medical Center creates special opportunities for patient care, training and research - every day, over 12,000 employees are working hard towards this objective.

The Erasmus Medical Center is an innovative UMC in which high-quality knowledge is being developed, passed on to future professionals and applied in patient care. It covers covers a broad field of interests that stretches from illness to health, and from individual to community healthcare.

Let's hope they're not too late, eh?

More at the www.thegreatflu.com/

A Google Earth Game?

In 2007 I was asked, as part of an assignment for my MsC. in e-Learning to create a 'game' using Google Earth. This is what I wrote afterwards...

How would a Google Earth game work?. The strength of a Google Earth (GE) game lays in GE's superb ability to give dramatic, location-based hyperlinking. Exportable .kmz files (also know as 'Placemarkers') can be saved, extracted and embedded into blog posts, e-mailed to gamers and used as a device to send learners to specific locations. The problem, however, rests with what they do when they get there.

Assuming that you have successfully landed at a GE location, the question remains as to what to do. Are you there to identify a place? That isn't that challenging - GE layers for roads, historical monuments and other locations of note will allow a gamer to gather his location pretty quickly. Not to mention the fact that you fly there.

Beyond using each location as a means to help identify this person, GE seems almost redundant. Which is a shame. Such a powerful linking function could have done much more. For example, why not send gamers to obscure locations across the earth, embed clues nearby (using tags) which lead the gamer to search other forms of media for clues - not just the blog and GE?

For example, Flickr.com, (despite the best efforts of Yahoo to screw it up) remains one of the quintessential social media services. In addition to the great networking and RSS capabilities, Flickr also presents users with a fiendishly clever (and simple) means of interaction: notes.

Notes are, as the name suggests, small packets of information placed on top of an image with text files. Click on the image above for an example (from my account) of some notes that I left on some photos of the Geffrye Museum, London. As you can see from the notes I left on the image, in addition to text you can also leave hyperlinks to other locations: images, blogs, wikis, Google Earth placemarkers, Youtube videos.

You can export a Flickr image to a blog as I've done here, but, dissapointingly, you can't export the notes with it. Which is a damned shame.

What makes them powerful for a gaming application, is that the notes can be placed over specific places in photos - this means that a visual clue (something in the image) can be associated with a piece of text for a far more meaningful prompt to participate in a game than a simple question asked on a blog page.

Using Blogs as a 'launch pad' is good, but constantly directing the gamer back to the blog could be slightly repetitive. Rather than that, why not send them to a Flickr page? Which has a note? That note can require you to search a wikipedia entry for an answer with the connected area of the original Flickr image as a clue? That Wikipedia entry could lead to a Youtube video, which leads to a Twitter page, which leads to another blog, which leads to another Flickr page, which leads to...

Well, you get the idea. Rather than focusing on just two media streams (Blogs and GE) a proper linking game ('cos that's what it should be!) should drag you around the web, connectingseemingly disparate ideas, images and locations - allowing users to explore a range of media and enabling different learning styles and information acquisition styles to flourish. Furthermore, the simple sense of adventure (of being slightly lost) would be far more tangible. Running 'home' to a blog at each turn feels somewhat tedious and un-inventive for me.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Ian Bogost's 'Persuasive Games'

Found via a Guardian Tech blog I came across this book which I'm gonna be sure to get my paws on.

'In Persuasive Games, I advance a theory of how videogames make arguments and influence players. Games represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. Drawing on the history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive expression, I analyze rhetoric's unique function in software in general and videogames in particular. The field of media studies already studies visual rhetoric, the art of using imagery and visual representation persuasively. Here I argue that videogames, thanks to their basic representational mode of procedurality (rule-based representations and interactions), open a new domain for persuasion; they realize a new form of rhetoric.'

More about the book here.

Read the Water Cooler Games blog

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love: BBC's Wonderland Documentary on Second Life

Hmm. Edgy and important documentary making or scare-mongering nonsense? I'm not sure. I can't help but suspect that the makers of this show didn't do that much research into virtual spaces and their impact on relationships. To give just one example, the documentary states that SL has 4 million users - it doesn't. It has 4 million registered members - that's not the same as users. Anyway...

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4

Games, Learning Objectives and 'Telescoping'

If you should find yourself doing a course on game design, it's likely that you'll be asked to read James Paul Gee's book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003). It's a brilliant book, but, perhaps not that easy a way into the subject.

But, for a good introduction to some of the themes involved in applying computer games to learning you could do no worse than to take a look at the Steven Johnson book 'Everything Bad Is Good For You' . It's possible that Johnson does an even better job of explaining Gee's theories than perhaps Gee does himself. However, in addition to nicely summarising Gee, he also draws your attention to an aspect of modern video games which has immediately obvious educational applications - what Johnson calls 'Telescoping'.

This is when a gamer is forced to hold multiple objectives in his or her head in order to achieve a final objective. I immediately thought of 'Terminal' and 'Enabling' learning objectives, which are a staple of the Instructional Design Framework which NCALT e-learning staff work to. What's crucial here is the manner in which these objectives are 'nested' inside one and other, encouraging gamers and learners to cultivate the mental skills required to keep short-term goals in sight whilst never losing sight of 'the bigger picture'.

From 'Everything Bad Is Good For You':

"I call the mental labour of managing all these simoultaneous objectives 'telescoping' because of the way that the objectives nest inside each other like a collapsed telescope. I like the term aswell because part of this skill lies in focusing on immediate problems whilsy maintaining a long-distance view. You can't progress far in a game if you simply deal with the puzzles you stumble across: you have to co-ordinate them with the ultimte objectives on the horizon. Talented gamers have mastered the ability to kep all these varied objectives alive in their head."

Grim Fandango

As part of the game design course I recently took, I asked to do a study of the classic Lucas Arts game 'Grim Fandango' (pictured above) recently which gave me some classic examples.

Designed in 1998 by Lucasarts and widely held as the best 'adventure game' of all time, Fandango was a critical success but commercial flop. It still carries a large, cult following and has be held up as an exemplar of the genre of games.

Set in a universe inspired by Mexican day of the Dead mythology, the game is a tricky adventure game with a plot every bit as intricate as a Philip Marlowe novel. The clever story is complimented by an Art Deco look and feel, bonkers Bandito/Bee-Bop/Jazz score and excellent voice talent. Oh and it's very funny.

The game was the brainchild of Tim Schafer, previously responsible for the celebrated Monkey Island and Full Throttle. From Wikipedia:

'The story unfolds in four episodes, each set a year apart on the Day of the Dead. It is from this festival that much of the game's imagery is drawn — most of the game's characters look like skeletal calaca figures (based on the work of Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada). Various flowers are also used as tools of murder, in the form of a substance known as "Sproutella", which reacts with bone, destroying it by causing flowers to grow in it extremely rapidly. Characters refer to this manner of death as "sprouting". There is also unique fauna scattered throughout the game, such as bone-eating fire beavers and gigantic race cats.

The game combines this mythical underworld with 1930s Art Deco design motifs and a dark plot reminiscent of the film noir genre.[1] The design and early plot are reminiscent of films such as Chinatown and Glengarry Glen Ross.[2] Manny, whose job combines the roles of Grim Reaper and travel agent, turns detective when he discovers that deserving souls are being denied their rightful post-mortem reward of direct travel to Mictlan on the Number Nine train, bypassing the four-year trip that other souls must take. Manny's investigations draw him into a tangled web of corruption, deceit, and murder.'

Telescoping

The first sequence of 'Grim' involves Manny (the hero) attempts to get to the scene of a mass poisoning in the 'Land of the Living', so that he can reap a premium soul.

In order to get to the Land of the Living, you have to complete the following objectives:

To get to the Land of the Living, you need a car and a driver ('Terminal' objective)
To get a car and driver you have to go to the garage.
To get to the garage you have to find the lift down.
To get a driver you have to convince Glotiss to drive for you.
To convince Glotis to drive you have to have a signed form.
To get a signed form you have to go up to the boss's office.
To get into the Boss's office you have to climb the drainpipe and switch his PC's auto-prompt to tell his secretary to 'sign it' herself.
To get her to sign it you have to...

And so on. This dizzyingly complex set of objectives represents only half of the first level of the game - which overall comprises about 20 'Terminal' objectives.

The next step is to find an example from police work of obvious telescoping and see how the nested objectives could be broken down into a logical learning and activity path.

What next?

So, how could we use 'telescoping' in e-learning? Are there any obvious applications that spring to mind?

[Virtual Worlds] IBM, Virtual Battles and Roy Keane's Mountain Bike Madness

Note: This a blog entry from my MsC in e-learning 'Introduction to Game Design' module.

Reading over the IBM Global Innovation Outlook 2.0 Report, 'Virtual World, Virtual Leaders' I was struck - not by the gee-whizz factoids and structural study of what good leadership entails (the Sloan model of Leadership, apparently) but rather how virtual worlds (and their games) provide opportunities for gamers not normally associated with roles of leadership to have a crack at leading in a safe guided environment:

'Using massively multiplayer online games as a template, it can be argued that leadership is as much a by-product of environment as it is intrinsic. Leadership happens quickly and easily in online games, often undertaken by otherwise reserved players, who surprise even themselves with their capabilities'.

Now, normally speaking, I would launch into my usual banter about obvious applications in the world of Policing and enabling officers to make critical command decisions in a safe, guided environment, but instead I instantly found myself thinking about one Roy Maurice Keane.

Keane's meteoric rise as a football manager (taking Sunderland from the bottom of the Championship to the Premiership in just 8 months) has seen him become the darling of the British red-tops. With Jose Mourinho now off pouting on a beach somewhere, the press have turned to Keane as their rent-a-quote supplier. His down-to-earth manner, self-deprecating wit and willingness to fashion an articulate statement when all around him are awash in a sea of egomania and mobile phone advert contracts, ensures that Keane's every word gets parroted by the media. He has, as one friend of mine observed, a certain undeniable mystique.

But what has all this got to do with virtual worlds? Well, without knowing it, Roy Keane has become an unwitting spokesman for the efficacy of 'Virtual Worlds' and their opportunities for providing just the kind of leadership opportunities which the IBM report cited above describes.

Last season, several newspapers ran the story that Keane had taken to sending his players up the side of mountains, white-water rafting and cross-country biking in what most reported as a simple example of Roy the 'hard man' sorting the men from the boys in increasingly macho team events. What most journos failed to notice was that Keane, through the creation of 'games' ("split into four groups of ten and race up the top of that mountain and back down again") was providing the circumstances for otherwise quiet players to exercise their nascent leadership skills in a (relatively) safe, guided environment.

From a Guardian article of April 19th 2007:

'I gave the lads a challenge yesterday and it was a very difficult challenge - four hours on a mountain bike is not easy," the Irishman said. "We were in four teams of 10 and every team wanted to win."

Rather more importantly, Keane was able to assess how individuals adjusted to being removed from cosily familiar habitats. "I find out who the leaders are, who likes to be in control, who the real winners are," he said. "We've done a lot of this stuff over the last seven months and you find out a lot about your players through different challenges. The lads are comfortable with a football at their feet but throw them on a mountain bike or into a white-water raft and you see another side of them, some good, some maybe not so good. We like to keep them guessing and give them surprises. Yesterday, for instance, they only knew we were going to Swaledale two minutes before we left.

"You'd be surprised who comes to the fore, there were one or two I thought wouldn't enjoy it but did. And it means they look forward to getting
back training here and getting a feel for the ball again."'

So, if a Premiership manager can do it...

[Games] U.S. Spies Use Custom Videogames to Learn How to Think

Interesting piece from Wired magazine on how the U.S. government is using serious gaming in training it's intelligence staff in critical decision making:

'In the wake of the intelligence bungles that propelled the United States into the Iraq war, it's no secret that the nation's spies have been working to improve the quality of their analysis. Now the top U.S. military intelligence agency has come up with a new tool for teaching recruits critical thinking skills: videogames.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has just taken delivery of three PC-based games, developed by simulation studio Visual Purple under a $2.6 million contract between the DIA and defense contractor Concurrent Technologies. The goal is to quickly train the next generation of spies to analyze complex issues like Islamic fundamentalism. '

More here

Battlefield 2: A Policing Game?

Note: this entry was originally submitted to the MsC in E-learning 'Game Design' Module in November 2007 to Hamish MacCleod (tutor) as a mid-term paper.

This review will examine the game 'Battlefield 2' with a view towards an educational adaptation for Police training - an adaptation which seeks to create what J. P. Gee calls 'distributed authentic professionalism'.

BF2's strengths lie in its collaborative real-time gaming. Players enter one of twelve maps, choose a 32-member team to play on (usually USA or Middle Eastern Coalition- MEC), join a six-member squad and pick one of six standard 'classes'. These classes are: Special Forces, Assault, Sniper, Engineer, Medic and Anti-tank. Players can also create custom squads, invite other players to that squad, and act as a conduit for communications between squad members and the commander.

Depending on the rank you have achieved, with promotions and weapon-unlocks given based on your performance, you can apply to be commander of the whole team. It's these last two functionalities of command and communication, in addition to the novel usage of vehicles for collaborative transport and combat, that lend themselves most readily to an educational adaptation of BF2.

A brief look at the functional options for squad members, squad leaders and commanders respectively, allows us to discuss potential adaptation to a Policing scenario.Taking a quick look at some standard BF2 gameplay might help visualise some of these ideas. You can do so by watching this video. (Please note that the banging techno was not my choice).



Player classes have a range of weapons and kit - easily accessed either by using the keyboard's 1-5 buttons or the scroll-wheel on the mouse. The basic 'Assault class' soldier, for example, has a knife (1), side-arm (2), machine-gun (3), and grenade launcher (4). The medic or engineer has further options with a medical kit (5) and shock paddles (6) or, in the case of the engineer, a wrench to fix damaged vehicles and artillery guns or radar stations. These could be replaced with the four or five pieces of standard kit which a Police Officer carries - notebook, handcuffs, torch, Airwaves radio set etc. Each one could be activated in the same way as a weapon or piece of kit in BF2.

Such selection could enable simulations of arrest scenarios, interview and statement taking procedures, surveillance operations and radio communications -using VoIP which the BF2 engine exploits wonderfully. Since Police Officers are required to report their movements and to be accountable for their actions (constantly carrying out dynamic risk assessments), VoIP communication provides a rich means to practice communication protocols.

Additionally, as noted by Manninen and Kujappaa, the Battlefield game allows for additional 'perceivable and holistic manifestations of interaction that enable players to fully collaborate and cooperate in networked game settings'.

So, what would a policing-based adaptation of the BF2 engine look and feel like? The game would begin with a clear statement about the value systems of the game, encouraging gamers to behave, think and communicate like a Police Officer. It would offer a fish-tank and sand-box; emphasise the impact of decisions; allow for customisation of kit; elaborate on your role; provide well-ordered problems; be pleasantly frustrating; give cycles of expertise which challenge gamers' evolving skills, within the regime of the gamers' competence; give just-in-time information; and ties sets of skills together into larger contexts of activity. All done within legislative and procedural guidance.

The 'downtown Baghdad' location (perhaps based on the 'Strike at Karkand' map) is replaced with a 'downtown Newcastle' setting and the simulation replicates a busy Saturday night. The map could have three or four pubs, nightspots, take-away food locations (known flash-points for public disorder) and transport systems, such as bus depots and taxi-ranks, which need to be vigilantly policed.

A commander can receive real-time intelligence from his IBO centre (Integrated Borough Operations) on incidents that are breaking out. A challenging, but realistic, game might involve a commander receiving intelligence on two or three incidents of public disorder, a traffic collision, a domestic violence incident, a stolen vehicle, perhaps involved in joy-riding, or a missing persons report.

The commander then dispatches vehicles containing squads of six to each location, with specific orders. At the scene, the squad leaders are required to communicate with the commander - reporting on the scene, requesting resources and back-up - with individual officers expected to interact with avatars at the scene. The avatars themselves (which could be programmed bots, or better still real players acting as inebriates, violent spouses or whatever) allow for real-time, on the scene policing simulations with officers making dynamic decisions - reported via VoIP.

In BF2, squad members access a series of communication short-cuts by pressing the Q key and using the mouse to choose from a menu. Standard requests include 'Need ammo', 'Need medic' and 'Need backup'. In addition, a central menu interface gives an 'Enemy spotted' option which, with a right-click, allows you to specify the threat e.g. 'Enemy tank spotted'. These could be adapted to code-specific Police communications and the 'enemy spotted' option changed to communicate specific incidents such as 'traffic collision', 'domestic violence incident' etc.

Squad leaders gain access to a higher level of functionality in the game's standard map (accessed by pressing the M key) where they are able to request a range of services from the commander. Specifically they can request artillery strikes, vehicle drops, supply drops, reinforcements and unmanned aerial vehicles to act as radar for spotting mobile enemy. The adaptations for a policing scenario are obvious enough: the UAV request easily translates to a request for helicopter assistance, the back-up request to a ambulance or medical services support, and the requests for artillery and supplies to intelligence requests such as a standard Police National Computer (PNC) check.

Commanders receive access to a third level of functionality (from the Caps Lock key) which enables them to meet the requests of squad leaders e.g. 'artillery strike on this location'. Crucially, commanders have the ability to issue specific orders at specific locations on the map. There is the standard 'attack/defend this position' order, but you can also order demolition or repairs at a location. This ability allows a commander to tackle multiple tasks at the same time. This readily maps to the range of choices which a BCU (Basic Command Unit) Commander faces when dealing with a busy Saturday night in a town or village.

BF2 has an array of vehicle options including quad bikes, hummers, tanks, APVs, fighter jets, helicopters and boats. Their value lies in the gamers' ability to enter vehicles with team mates. Each vehicle allows up to eight players to driven to a location. Given that the commander can issue location and situation specific orders, e.g. 'place demolitions at this co-ordinate', a Policing simulation could enable commanders to order mobile response units to proceed to a location and deal with an incident there. In-vehicle time could be used to send field-briefings to officers as well as for officers to speak to and learn from each other.

Given the continued threat of terrorism, and the need for robust police training in dealing with that threat, a similar design solution could simulate management of assets and resources during a terrorist incident, enabling differing ranks of players to learn counter-terrorist, critical incident and emergency procedures collaboratively.

References

Manninen T. and Kujanpää T. The Hunt for Collaborative War Gaming - CASE: Battlefield 1942 [accessed November 11, 2007]

Gee, J. P. What would a state of the art instructional video game look like?. Innovate 1 (6). [accessed November 11, 2007]

Gee, J. P. (2004). Learning by design: Games as learning machines. Interactive Educational Multimedia, 8, 15 - 23. [pdf - accessed November 11, 2007]