JPG: the con­text in which we work now is rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent because we live in a world of com­plex sys­tems that are bit­ing us pretty badly
eg, oil prices –> wheat prices up –> no water, no food –> failed state –> enough failed states = no global econ­omy (from the book “Plan B” — can game every­thing in the book, which he highly rec­om­mends)
the amount of corn needed to fill up your tank once feeds a human being for an entire year — not effi­cient
this is one dis­as­ter of about 400 that are all hit­ting right now

in the future, all gov­ern­ment costs will go to pay­ing med­ical costs (sil­ver lin­ing is no money will be left for war — or social ser­vices)
largely dri­ven by the baby boom
plus global warming

inter­est­ing prob­lems to give some­one in the form of a game
let’s builda solu­tion where you have to solve all three things
that’s some­thing we have to game sooner or later, have to think about these things now

EZ: if we think of the 19th cen­tury as indus­trial and 20th cen­tury as infor­ma­tion, the com­ing cen­tury will require new media lit­era­cies
the abstrac­tion of infor­ma­tion
so many aspects of our lives are medi­ated by dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions now (social, finan­cial, work, engage­ment with gov­ern­ments, etc.)
if being lit­er­ate is giv­ing and receiv­ing infor­ma­tion, today requires extend­ing read­ing to mov­ing images, etc.
“pro­ce­dural” or “com­pu­ta­tional” lit­era­cies
another way of think­ing of these things is as gam­ing lit­era­cies
games are sys­tems (parts that form a whole)
what games do so won­der­fully is focus on the sys­temic aspect of what’s hap­pen­ing
to make a good move in chess is not just play­ing out a nar­ra­tive — what does it mean to act boldly in a game of chess?
it means under­stand­ing all of the rela­tion­ships between the pieces and what hap­pens when you move one
that’s pre­cisely the sense of what Jim talked about for under­stand­ing outcomes

games are well-suited to think­ing about prob­lems in this way
the 20th cen­tury is an age of sys­tems (a ludic century)

JPG: let’s get into what the lit­er­acy of gam­ing is
some peo­ple talk about games as an alter­na­tive way to deliver ver­bal infor­ma­tion, which school already does
doesn’t think games are par­tic­u­larly good at this, though
games give you a novel expe­ri­ence (talked about Chibi-Robo); can make you see the world in a new way
the com­mer­cial indus­try has done some fan­tas­tic stuff to make the world see things in new ways, but not with socially mean­ing­ful goals
they are arch-problem-solving spaces
games are really just a con­tin­u­ous assess­ment and you’re enjoy­ing the hell out of it (because the test­ing indus­try never got hold of it)
they give you lan­guage just-in-time and as you need it

EZ: it’s a dichotomy; when we say this is a game on a social issue, what do we mean?
what are the strate­gies that we take within a game con­text or within a larger con­text? which ones seem bet­ter or worse?
one strat­egy is this is a new way to inject infor­ma­tion into play­ers
agrees that games are about process, not infor­ma­tion; play­ing with infor­ma­tion, not ingest­ing facts

Sim­C­ity isn’t an accu­rate sim­u­la­tion, but on the other hand, the thing about sim­u­la­tion (a sec­ond strat­egy, like infor­ma­tion) is that it’s a rep­re­sen­ta­tion
sim­u­la­tion as a pro­ce­dural rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a big­ger part

JPG: what makes a game like Sim­C­ity inter­est­ing is once you see this model, you can ask where is this good or bad?
just like you can with Civ­i­liza­tion
they make you rec­og­nize the models

EZ: would like to dis­pel the idea that games aren’t mean­ing­ful, but they do a rad­i­cal dis­ser­vice to a sub­ject because you have to dis­till them down to num­bers
because we’re tack­ling real world issues and how we can rep­re­sent them, we have to acknowl­edge the lim­its of games

JPG: what you have in games is also a mod­ding rela­tion­ship; you can real­ize it’s good for some things and bad for oth­ers but you can start build­ing on that
play­ing and design­ing are get­ting to be the same thing

talked about Boom Blox
play­ing the game at some point to learn how to design; can redesign any level
thinks this is the wave of the future
give peo­ple the tools to design it themselves

EZ: we have the infor­ma­tion as one approach
we have sim­u­la­tion
one of the ways our rela­tion­ship to infor­ma­tion is chang­ing is that infor­ma­tion used to be more closed, not cus­tomiz­able
now we have phe­nom­ena like Wikipedia, where it’s also about a com­mu­nity of users who are also cre­at­ing that infor­ma­tion, play­ing with it, chang­ing the rules over time

BUT

maybe Sim­C­ity is also use­ful if we have this set of strate­gies
just get­ting peo­ple inter­ested in a topic
it inspired a whole gen­er­a­tion of urban plan­ners and archi­tects
spark­ing an inter­est in something

JPG: a model of assess­ing what a game does for learn­ing
“prepa­ra­tion for future learn­ing” — games are par­tic­u­larly good at this
don’t have to learn every­thing from the game (Dan Schwartz at Har­vard)
in a world where facts and infor­ma­tion go out of date, being pre­pared for future infor­ma­tion is really some­thing we should define and look at it

the most mys­te­ri­ous thing is that games cre­ate moti­va­tion
we can’t give peo­ple moti­va­tion; we can give them inter­est­ing tools to chan­nel that moti­va­tion, but games have been a good source for a life­long inter­est in some­thing
don’t want to kill that with a test

EZ: there’s also the rela­tion­ship between the player and the game and how the game changes their behav­ior
we can look at the for­mal sys­tem, the play­ers play­ing together, there’s a his­tory over time (friend­ship or ene­my­ship), and there’s the con­text
we want to remem­ber that games are never just sets of rules — there’s always a larger con­text
that’s so impor­tant because the empha­sis isn’t on the game itself but on the larger world

the chal­lenge in har­ness­ing what a game can do
get­ting inno­v­a­tive about the rela­tion­ship between games and the out­side world

JPG: most games with legs have an expert com­mu­nity that builds up around them
game design­ers are also going to be com­mu­nity design­ers in the future
most of the stuff we’re see­ing with kids today, kids want to join a com­mu­nity and become an expert

EZ: the games that existed for cen­turies before com­puter games were always social
only recently were games sin­gle player
not just more mul­ti­player, but more social
return­ing to the roots of games and social practices

JPG: games are a con­ver­gent media
take Poke­mon or Yu-Gi-Oh, which are fic­tion, movies, cards, videogames, etc. to a kid
it’s a baby boomer to take the videogame out and view it as a sep­a­rate thing
more and more, kids see it all as one pack­age and they want to par­tic­i­pate at every level

EZ: a chal­lenge for peo­ple want­ing to do games that break the frame of play­ers’ rela­tion­ship to the world
games that do become estab­lished are great, but it’s dif­fi­cult to design that backwards

JPG: these games leave open things for fans to build back in
by the time is 6, a kid can draw a poke­mon that isn’t actu­ally there
Nin­tendo made it so you have to trade them and can’t just get them all at once
have to put into your game the poten­tial for community

EZ: what is play and how does it relate to every­thing we’re talk­ing about?
a dan­ger of seri­ous games is that they’re usu­ally very heavy and pedan­tic because they want to get a mes­sage across no mat­ter what

at the same time, under­stand­ing play and how it works
play always takes place within some larger struc­ture
when we say there is “play” within a sys­tem, there is some free move­ment within it

play always plays with exist­ing struc­tures with nar­ra­tive; per­son­i­fi­ca­tion
there’s always some struc­tures that we play against
one of the won­der­ful things about games is that play doesn’t always have to be oppo­si­tional, it can also be trans­for­ma­tional
maybe these social and culu­tural struc­tures are things we can play with and against to under­stand them bet­ter and open up possibilities

JPG: that’s why we shouldn’t worry if sim­u­la­tions are accu­rate or not, because it’s about open­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties
loves the game Por­tal (great for prepa­ra­tion of learn­ing) — learned this from the game — what it looked like and felt like (expe­ri­ence of what words mean before you know what they mean)
“the game is designed to change the way play­ers approach, manip­u­late, and sur­mise the pos­si­bil­i­ties in a given envi­ron­ment“
you got a new tool that lets you manip­u­late the world in new ways, new pos­si­bil­i­ties that you never thought of before
that’s fun­da­men­tally what we’re try­ing to do –give peo­ple tools in games that let them sur­mise new possibilities

EZ: this exam­ple of Por­tal points out the para­dox­i­cal prob­lem with these games
Por­tal suc­ceeds because it’s an arti­fi­cial world that they could manip­u­late and it’s not real
we have to fig­ure out how to get all of this good stuff that’s hap­pen­ing in Por­tal and how the world works, that teaches you to solve prob­lems
bring this to real world issues
the meth­ods all have pit­falls, though

JPG: Por­tal is a good exam­ple of an inno­v­a­tive game
gives you expe­ri­ence before you have to go to a physics lec­ture
the tests are all in the game

Q: can you address crit­i­cal think­ing?
JPG: Por­tal is very good at giv­ing you tacit knowl­edge, expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing
but that can’t be the whole pack­age
but what doesn’t it do?
it doesn’t give you a lan­guage, but there are now wikis and web­sites that give you a tech­ni­cal lan­guage (the lan­guage of physics) for it, built by the community

crit­i­cal also requires you to get to a level of reflec­tion
where you get strate­gic and crit­i­cal about it is when you com­pare dif­fer­ent ver­sions
once you have enough expe­ri­ence, you see Civ­i­liza­tion as a sys­tem
you’re engi­neer­ing lan­guage and knowledge

EZ: when you saw Por­tal is about physics, you’re stretch­ing it
the peo­ple in this room want every­one who plays the game to get the mes­sage or change their behav­ior
there’s a gap between what we’ve done well.…

JPG: if you look at the social sys­tems we’re evolv­ing, what peo­ple have dis­cov­ered is that these com­mu­ni­ties are good for learn­ing — the 80/20 rule
this is turn­ing out to be a near law in these pas­sion­ate com­mu­ni­ties
it’s not 100% — the moral of this is that no one thing is going to be suc­cess­ful
that means we have to find many exam­ples so that every kid has the chance to be in that 20%
that law will be true in many of the com­mu­ni­ties we create

Q: one of the things we know about games is we have to make them fun, but then we’re using fun to accom­plish some­thing else. what about fun as a value on its own

JPG: as an old gamer, doesn’t find them fun so much as engag­ing
even when he’s pissed at the game, he’s engaged
there’s no learn­ing with­out engage­ment
there’s no fun with­out engage­ment
can be frus­trat­ing but still fun and engage­ment
have to cre­ate stuff with that engage­ment
oth­er­wise it’s school learn­ing, which is recita­tion of facts
“learn­ing requires that you stay in the box and engage over the long haul“
time on task engage­ment is where the com­mer­cial gam­ing indus­try has been successful

EZ: plea­sure and desire aspects of games are very under­the­o­rized
when his com­pany made Lego games, looked at their play val­ues (con­struc­tion, imag­i­na­tion, open ended, etc.)
how do you embody these things in a game expe­ri­ence that is engag­ing and fun, time on task
how do you merge learn­ing and fun

JPG: research shows you have to trig­ger someone’s emo­tions when you’re teach­ing them
you have to attach cog­ni­tion to emo­tion to get deep pro­cess­ing (“Hush” game)

Q: ideas on sit­u­ated learning

JPG: we store our expe­ri­ences and mod them
the mind is a sim­lu­a­tion engine that works best when peo­ple use their expe­ri­ence to solve prob­lems
it’s con­struc­tion­ist because peo­ple learn best when they’re solv­ing prob­lems
“sit­u­ated mean­ing” — made the stu­pid mis­take of read­ing the man­ual the first time he played a game
thought he couldn’t under­stand the game from the book, but once he played it, he under­stood the book
now every word in the book had a mean­ing attached to it
can then actu­ally use it for prob­lem solv­ing
con­struc­tion­ism, but also a damn good the­ory of how learn­ing can work
it’s like being handed the biol­ogy text­book with­out every get­ting to play biology

Q: view games like movies and ani­ma­tion; when games are abstracted, they’re eas­ier to under­stand, but there are higher expec­ta­tions the more real they get; could games ever become reality?

JPG: World of War­craft is prob­a­bly close to that
there’s a limit to real­ism in games and we’ve reached it
japan­ese manga and animé is more expres­sive
the power isn’t in the real­ism but in the gameplay

EZ: GTA reflects movies, not real life
many lev­els of metaphor going on there so can’t talk about it as real­is­tic
because you’re always play­ing in a sys­tem, you’re mul­ti­ple con­scious­nesses at once
real­ity already is a game
it’s about the whole sys­tem — is a box­ing match real or not real?
com­po­nents of aes­thetic rep­re­sen­ta­tions
so many metaphors are already involved

GTA is a pulp/genre story

thinks the game indus­try is chas­ing cin­ema — “cin­ema envy” — try­ing to repli­cate cin­ema in games
that’s a mis­take — want to find what’s unique about games, not repli­cate cin­e­matic experiences

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David Thomas, Justin Hollander

David:
Urban plan­ning as a cur­ricu­lum
city sys­tems, regional sys­tems
wanted to teach young archi­tects to learn to build using games
tend to think of urban plan­ning as a design prob­lem — if this then that
but cities don’t work that way
con­flict hap­pens in games, sim­i­lar to how con­flict hap­pens in cities

look­ing for ways to empower the pow­er­less, to pro­vide access to peo­ple who have none
social jus­tice com­po­nent
eth­i­cally and morally try as hard as you can to look to the peo­ple who don’t have power and make deci­sions that affect them first (that’s how they train urban planners)

“oh, you teach Sim­C­ity” but it’s the worst game ever for teach­ing urban plan­ning
games are about the themes for how con­flicts are resolved in the real world
“let’s use some games”

Justin:
For­est Hills Neigh­bor­hood in Boston
they built a ver­sion of FH in Sec­ond Life where they can inter­act and experiment

David:
urban plan­ning is the public’s inter­est in pri­vate prop­erty
what’s miss­ing in Sim­C­ity? there’s no pri­vate prop­erty — nobody com­plains when you tear some­thing down
it’s a weird model for how cities are designed
“the best you get out of Sim­C­ity is Stal­in­ism” — David Thomas
teach them that’s not how cities work, but what games can you use next?
“dice wars” — what if the shapes are neigh­bor­hoods? shift­ing bound­aries that are con­tested and con­stantly mov­ing
there’s some­thing com­pet­i­tive about cities

TransAmer­ica — most nego­ti­a­tion in cities is like this, in the open, even though there are secret motives that you won’t know about until it’s too late; might ben­e­fit you or hurt you
play the game for a lit­tle while and then talk about it

Car­cas­sonne — it’s like chess; every­thing is out and every­one can see what is hap­pen­ing; con­stant nego­ti­a­tion to build the map, and the map for every game is dif­fer­ent; this is how cities work — they’re all try­ing to max­i­mize the map for themselves

nobody designed the neigh­bor­hood we’re in, designed how high the build­ings are, etc.
envi­ron­men­tal maps of the con­flict that occurred to create

Fluxx — get the stu­dents play­ing tac­ti­cally because the rules are always chang­ing; a mov­ing tar­get where the goals and rules keep chang­ing and you have influ­ence over the rules, like when groups come together in cities to wield power to rewrite rules
even rules them­selves and their sys­tems are very fluid

Justin:
peo­ple in the area couldn’t actu­ally get in to access Sec­ond Life (challenge)

David:
do games triv­i­al­ize the sub­ject mat­ter?
it’s hard to get a com­mu­nity to care about issues until you can show them the effects

needs games he can teach in 5 min­utes and that can be played in a short time
is now think­ing about design­ing a plan­ning card game to help fill this gap, cur­rently shoe­horn­ing content

next year, plans to imple­ment the “value of play” work­shop into the class
tries to bring plan­ning to life for students

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