Gamepaddle. Video Games, Education, Empowerment.

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Gamepaddle

Gamepaddle

Video Games. Education.

Empowerment.

Michaela Anderle & Sebastian Ring (Ed.)

Gamepaddle Ledizioni Srl

Gamepaddle Ledizioni Srl

The Innovative LediPublishing company

Via Alamanni 11 – 20141 Milano Italy

Tel. 00390245071824

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info@ledizioni.it

www.ledizioni.it

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

ISBN Print Version: 978-88-6705-409-1

ISBN ePub Version: 978-88-6705-410-7

With the support of the Youth in Action programme of the European Union. Supported by the National Agencies of Austria and Germany.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Gamepaddle Table of Contents

Gamepaddle Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Game and Video Game.

Reflections between Education and Entertainment.

Massimiliano Andreoletti

Video Games in Real Life

Annalisa Castronovo & Marcello Marinisi

Social Media and Digital Gaming Worlds – far more than Playing Games

Sebastian Ring

Potentials of Video Games

Anu Pöyskö

What Makes a Game Attractive?

Anna Ragosta

Rating Video Games

Anna Ragosta

Media/Digital Competence. The European and Italian Definition

Gianna Cappello

Chapter 2

The Gamepaddle Project – Games. Education. Empowerment.

Tobias Härnvi, Ida Pöttinger

Cooperation in Minecraft

Tobias Härnvi

SIMaging the City. The Educational Use of Video Games in a Youth Club of Palermo

Massimiliano Andreoletti, Gianna Cappello, Annalisa Castronovo, Marcello Marinisi & Anna Ragosta

EMPOWER*play

Michaela Anderle

Card Game Design. Designing a Card Game about Video Games

Sebastian Ring

Tools

Chapter 3

About the Authors

Gamepaddle Introduction

Gamepaddle Introduction

In April 2011 video game scholars, researchers, teachers and media educators from Austria, Germany, Italy and Sweden found their way to a springlike Munich to share their knowledge on video games, young disadvantaged gamers, excessive gaming and educational potentials of video games. The Munich meeting marked the beginning of a two year long partnership that involved knowledge transfer, development of educational concepts, their realisation in schools and youth clubs in the partner countries, as well as the evaluation, discussion and presentation of the projects’ outcomes in a final meeting in autumnally Vienna. The diverse backgrounds of the participants, the insights in their countries’ culture of discourse on video games, as well as research and practical educational activities has been a great enrichment for the conceptual works.

In the educational discourse of the participants’ countries, video games, one of the favourite leisure activities of many young people, are often regarded as a vital risk for young people. Especially excessive gaming or playing violent video games among children and adolescents troubles teachers, educators and parents. The lack of knowledge about digital gaming worlds, as well as the lack of own gaming experience can lead to misjudgement and overseeing the resources acquired by young gamers. The Gamepaddle project is starting at that point: identifying young people’s game-related resources and help them to benefit from them in other primarily non-game-related contexts as school, intergenerational dialogue, creative activity or civic commitment. In Gamepaddle’s practical educational activities video games were used to train project-management skills, encourage reflection on the urban neighbourhood, create a card game about video games that facilitates discourse on video games or teach adults how to play.

What will you find in this Publication?

This publication has the aim to document and share the experiences that were made in Gamepaddle’s educational activities, so that teachers, youth workers and media educators find inspiration and practical advice for own projects dealing with empowerment of young people by using video games.

The first part of the publication with articles by Massimiliano Andreoletti, Annalisa Castronovo, Marcello Marinisi and Sebastian Ring gives insight into digital gaming worlds, their development and peripheral media landscapes. Educational background knowledge like description of potentials of video games and definition of (digital) media competences are described in the articles by Gianna Cappello, Anu Pöyskö and Anna Ragosta.

The second part contains the conceptual basis for the Gamepaddle projects in schools, youth clubs and labour market actions as well as detailed information on their process and outcome. The project descriptions also involve educational goals, methods, as well as lessons learned, practical advice.

The third part introduces the participating scholars, researchers, teachers and media educators. They also give advice on where to turn to for useful literature in their native language as well as cooperation partners in their countries.

The Gamepaddle website www.gamepaddle.eu contains further material, tools and products of the projects. We are curious about your feedback, your ideas and inspirations, so feel free to contact us.

Michaela Anderle, Sebastian Ring

Vienna and Munich, October 2015

Chapter 1 - 1: Game and Video Game. Reflections between Education and Entertainment.

Gamepaddle

Chapter 1 - 1

Game and Video Game.

Reflections between Education and Entertainment.

by Massimiliano Andreoletti

Anyone who tries to make a distinction

between education and entertainment

doesn’t know the first thing about either.

Marshal McLuhan

The educational and training potentials of video games – which have been debated in the teaching context over the last years – have seen a slow but progressive shift of the attitude of the institutions and people in training agencies of every order and degree towards the acknowledgement of the many training and educational potentials of the medium, although it has not yet been possible to define the dimensions through which video game should be observed from a teaching point of view.

It is possible to divide the attempts that have been made so far into two categories of contributions:

1. Those that focus on video game activities considering the risk-benefit dualism in the use of such media, they highlight the former quoting researches often lacking scientific value and will not go any further than showing the latter;

2. Those that exalt video games as a powerful learning media, especially on a disciplinary level, though not justifying this process with theoretical references and not identifying the modality in which the video game can be introduced into daily didactic activities.

The teaching research on video games should start from a reflection upon the issues concerning man in relation to video game and technology. Then it should identify the characteristics that video games could and should present in order to be considered as educational media.

Starting from this consideration, the central issues related to video games will be analysed first beginning with a general talk that stresses both the meaning of electronic media in the relationship to man and the role that digital technology is gradually playing in contemporary society and culture; after that there will be the description of three meaning pairs that are supposed to characterize a preliminary reflection upon the medium from an educational-training point of view - interaction and participation, simulation and immersion, exploration and mastery.

Questions

Man vs. Machine?

In order to reflect upon the meaning that video games have within the teaching research it is necessary to first of all understand the role that such media play in modern society and which can be the sense horizons that it has in its relationship with man. For centuries each culture has expressed games that were different from the ones of previous and following cultures, therefore creating new ones and eliminating the superfluous (Staccioli, 2004) ones. It is thus natural to ask why video games have appeared now. You could at first reply very superficially that technology has only now allowed developing such an entertainment mode. To understand the meaning that technology, or rather digital technology, has in our culture, it is essential to consider that over the centuries technology has increasingly affected man’s operational dimensions. From the industrial productive fields, technology has gradually entered those environments connected to knowledge objects, passing from economy and science to art and culture until it has filled spaces and times which make man different from any other living being: leisure time. In games an evolutional process began centuries ago with the introduction of small mechanic devices that were hand operated or used electric power (analogue technology) has led to video games (digital technology).

Analogue vs. Digital?

Thus, the starting point focuses on the relationship between man and machine in the moment the latter becomes the intermediary of the gaming activity. If any human activity can be considered in the form of a game, we must not make the mistake of thinking that technology, especially the digital one, can convey any kind of game.

Currently the completely analogue game culture – which has developed over 3.000 years – is at risk of not finding a way to be “digitized” (Jenkins, 2010). The term digitization as it is used here does is not mean the process of converting phenomena and behaviour into discrete representations through mathematical algorithms. It is instead considered as the meaning that such process is having for mankind – the impossibility to simulate the deepest and intimate dimensions of the human being (emotions, feelings, affections) and the reduction of some experiential aspects which present a mediate and simplified use in digital technology (relationships, society, world).

Still the digital game must not be considered as opposing or eliminating the analogue game, it must be seen as a new way of conceiving the game since its presence enriches the general game scene. Video games present new game situations that led the classic game model to a crisis as its space-time-dimensions and goals must be clear and set in advance. Endless simulation games – such as SimCity and The Sims – present the typical situation in which a player might theoretically play an endless game without ever reaching a clear goal but prolonging the game itself endlessly (Juul, 2005).

Digital games with such characteristics lead to another fundamental question: Should they still be considered as video games or should they be called video toys ?

Video Game vs. Video Toy?

Distinguishing between game and toy may look simple, but defining the toy characteristics is complex since there is no univocal game definition. In our perspective, the game is peculiar to the person who is acting as player, therefore it is an inward-pointing action. On the other hand, the toy is connected to the object – whether material or immaterial – that undergoes the action of playing. In this sense, the relationship between game and toy is the relationship that is established between a person and the surrounding environment, and playing can be seen as a person’s ability to interact with the environment and the elements it contains. Thus, the wide range of playing does not depend on the quantity and the economic value of the materials within the environment but on their variety and quality, they must always be considered as a support to the game activity. The game is not an action that is directed inwards from outwards, from the environment to man, on the contrary it is directed outwards and on the outside because the person is the drive of the game activity – without a player there is no game and the toy is an inert matter.

Over the last years, the reflection (Goldschmied & Jackson, 1996; Bondioli, 1986; Bondioli, 1996; Guerra, 2008) on the characteristics of the game setting has highlighted the quantity and the variety of the game materials – regarded as objects within a given space and with the function of supporting people’s game activity. In the simplification process carried out by adults such materials are named with the term toy , but this definition tends to be reductive and misleading. Since it usually refers to those commercial products whose game characteristics are: high specialization (they can only do one thing), little flexibility (they are not adaptable to other game situations) and little freedom of action (they reduce the game possibilities to a limited sphere of situations).

The material supporting the game activity is generally divided into two categories: structured material and non-structured material. The objects that belong to the first category are those products, mostly industrially manufactured, specifically designed for playing and usually made of plastic. The second category includes all the materials that present the following characteristics:

• low specialization level: they can adapt to game contexts which are very diversified;

• high flexibility level: their roles and functions in the game activities are always new and different;

• high freedom of action: they allow to act with a small space-time limitation;

• infinite use: their function is not limited to a restricted sphere of space-time situations;

• no pre-established goals: they do not have any special meaning within the game, thus becoming part of the process.

This category includes natural materials (wood, stones, sand, fabric, water, vegetables, fruit and so on), those who were originally produced for the many different purposes of human activities (recyclable materials, industrial materials, home items, food items) and those designed for a creative game activity (small bricks, crayons, modelling clays, glue and so on).

The wide range of video game types on the market can be divided into two categories of games:

1. Those that have a specific objective to reach (constrain the victory to reach the highest score; defeat of the opponent; conclusion of options and/or gaming opportunities; obtaining the predetermined goal etc.) or allow a maximum time for the playful activity can be approached with the term games as they enable the player to act within an environment well defined in time and space. In these cases the rules define the boundaries within which the subject is free to act.

2. Those that do not have a specific goal to reach or a time limit within which the game concludes (they are formally infinite) can be compared to unstructured toys , since they allow the player to manipulate the game to his liking, bend it also for purposes which are external and extraneous to the objectives of the game. Machinima 1 is the most typical example of this concept. The game is meant here as a non-structured to support the free and personal playful activity: the player uses the potential and the resources of the world simulated to set the scene ludic forms different and alternative.

Learning vs. Fun?

In recent years, the institutions and training agencies ascertained the strong interest of parts of younger generations towards gaming entertainment and have tried to find the philosopher’s stone that transformed their commitment to video games into training and disciplinary activities. The tools identified do not always have achieved an acceptable result, because if the objectives have been achieved on the content/school matter level, on the interest/fun level they rarely managed to get to say “I’m playing” to the end-user.

These failures certainly are to the delay of the research in social sciences and humanities and to the deficiency inherent in many educational environments, accompanied by a reflection on the human activity that sees positive and educational dimensions only in work, understood as “effort” and “duty”, in opposition to playing games, understood as “loss of time” and “pleasure”. The expression “duty comes first!” belongs to a popular pedagogy still dominant, which finds its roots in the protestant ethic (Himanen, 2003) and doesn’t see a valuable opportunity for learning, discovery, comparison and experimentation in playing games. In addition to this, the difficulty of integrating playful methods into school-educational activities – that occurs already at the beginning of the second cycle of the primary school – does certainly not make the task easier for those who believe that the game stimulates the learning person to approach problems and issues the world and culture.

The fundamental mistake is to think that learning is always played off against fun, that there is opposition between gaining knowledge and play, as if the pleasure of discovering new things and the satisfaction to find appropriate solutions to a problem can belong only to the educational-disciplinary area and the nature of playing games is only amusement, carelessness and fun. In reality, the great effort during the playful activity takes the player to concentrate, to find the best strategies to achieve the result, not to underestimate any variable for understanding the problem as a whole, to commit oneself to playmates that collaboratively help him to achieve the goal. In this sense, the game becomes a serious activity and loses all those negative meanings that relegate the game to a practice with no formative and educational purpose, to take place only after productive occupations and understood as a filler for a “vacuum” time.

Video Games vs. Serious Games?

It appears that video games – described as reality mediated by digital technologies in which spontaneous, free, voluntary acts take place, purely for fun and detached from the urgencies and the boundaries of the ordinary life – must be folded and labelled as serious games , so that they might be considered as appropriate tools for the needs and culture of the educational institution in general – although something like a non-serious game might not exist (Andreoletti, 2010).

The debate about serious games, however, is not free from ambiguity and confusion: at a macro level it is likely to lose sight of the meaning that a video game should have into the wider world of the game, while at a micro level it tends to have an unclear idea about what the boundaries are that differentiate serious games from commercial bookshelf games (Rockwell & Kee, 2011). In some cases the latter acquire connotations of the first as they reveal educational purposes. In other cases commercial games seem to more or less concentrate on fun.

Serious games differ from commercial games in terms of an “educational purpose explicit and carefully weighted” (Abt, 1987), although other authors point out that the term “ ’serious’ in ‘serious games’ is intended to reflect the purpose of the game, why it was created, and has no bearing on the content of the game itself ” (Michael & Chen, 2006). According to this concept the difference is only given by the intentions of the game designer, not by the product actually made.

Characteristics

The difficulty of defining what a game is also implicates the complexity of achieving a clear definition of video games. Omitting a cursory definition that refers to the video game as “ a game whose rules are automatically managed by an electronic device that uses a man-machine interface based on the display as an output system ” (Andreoletti, 2010), it is necessary to analyse the elements and dimensions of similarity and dissimilarity of video games and games. This examination is vital for the use of video games within training and educational courses.

Interaction and Participation

It’s a common opinion that the main feature of the video game is its ability to respond in an appropriate manner (output) to the stimuli offered by the player (input). In reality, this process must be seen as a reciprocal one, as even the player responds to situations presented by the game: the interactivity can then be defined as the ability “ to test the environment, explore it and, finally, interact with it and change it” (Aukstakalnis & Blatner, 1995). The process of two-way interaction creates a strong bond between man and the machine and the reciprocal influence generated between the two systems creates dependency up to the point that the first completely immerses into the second and isolates himself from the real world, while the second cannot exist without the first, in the sense that man is the true engine of the playful activity.

The lived experience within a virtual world is defined by the David Zeltzer’s model (Zeltzer, 1992) and is represented by three dimensions:

• autonomy: “ quantifies the ability of a computer model to react to an event or to a stimulus ”;

• interaction: “ defines the access to computer parameters, the ability to alter them and get an immediate reply ”;

• presence: “ quantifies the number and type of stimuli exchanged between the operator and the virtual world ”.

Interaction described in this way only shows the existence of a reciprocal influence between the two systems without defining time, mode, purpose and quality of this relationship. “ The interaction competes to technology, the participation competes to culture ” as Henry Jenkins says (Jenkins, 2010). In Seymour Papert’s words, it “ is not the computer that dominates the man but it is the man to dominate the computer ” (Papert, 1994) and in consequence it can be argued that the interaction must be understood as the action that a person conducts within a given system.

The active dimension involves primarily that the subject has the awareness that he is the starting point and the end of the relation to technology and that the relation to it should be understood as a process of enrichment for him and the other players that can participate in the relation to and through technology itself. The participation must be understood as the way in which people interact within a given system.

The participation involves the knowledge of the nature of the relation to technology (video game) in the final dimension (because there is this relation?), in the modal dimension (in which way is this relation situated?), in the temporal dimension (when does it start, when does it stop and how many time does this relation take?), in the spatial dimension (where does this relation take place?) and in the relational dimension (who are the agents within this relation?).

Simulation and Immersion

The simulative function of the videogame results from a reconstructive process which reduces a world, a reality or a fantasy. This process is done by the game designer, which carries out an analysis of a phenomenon, of a process or of a system achieved through the construction of a mathematical model, which can be explained on two levels:

1. Macro : the inability to fully reproduce any existing system, by considering:

• the complexity of the real world in its dimensions;

• the ignorance of the real in its entirety;

2. Micro : the choices made by game designer that within a range of technological and playful constraints creates:

• a closed system without any link to other systems;

• a system adapted to the gameplay (Andreoletti, 2010).

The simulation element is already present in traditional games and appears to be meant as the detachment from the reality in which you live and to immerse into a new playful reality: on the one hand playing games means a close relation to reality and on the other hand to be separated radically. The player is aware of this situation because when he plays while remaining in the real world (we cannot be separated from it), he or she is found in another world, the fantastic one (re-) created in the game, which is closely tied to the real world (you cannot imagine anything outside of the existing).

The way of immersion in the reality of the game of each subject, can be explained following two axis:

1. Type of immersion : When a player plays, he or she immerses physically into a new reality, separated only formally from the world, and in it he or she interacts with the elements of the playful world. Interaction and immersion differ between the classic game and the video game. In the latter the immersive process moves from the sensory-motor axis (in the game the immersion is predominantly physical) to a logical-formal axis (in the game world the immersion is predominantly mental). The intellectual component of video games has a greater weight and role respect to the traditional game, as the playful activity takes place in a world reproduced within a machine, through algorithms, designed by a game designer. The courses of participation are mediated by a machine;

2. Level of immersion : While playing the subject participates freely and voluntarily in the playful activity with diversified degrees of involvement on the basis of personal (physical and psychic condition, humor, interest, etc.) and environmental factors (degree of definition of the setting, quality of the present materials, freedom of action etc.) factors. Being inside of the magic circle (Huizinga, 2002) created by the game does not imply the existence of an optimal level of involvement in the playful activity (immersion), but depending on the intention with which players decide to play may vary from time to time, going from a minimum level, where he plays a marginal role – in respect to the center of the action – to a maximum level, on which he is the engine (or one of them) of the playful activity.

Exploration and Mastery

The game is governed by rules that define nature and borders without predetermining the strategies and behaviours that players could put into action. In fact, “ the rules of a game should not be confused with the strategies of the players. Each player chooses his strategies freely (i.e., the general principles that govern his choices). While every single strategy can be right or wrong (a condition that these concepts can be interpreted as exact), is at the discretion of the player use it or discard it. The rules of the game, however, are absolute commands ” (Von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1953).

All types of game are brought together by two characteristics: the simplicity and the reduced number of rules. Due to commercial conditions, a game cannot be too complex and have too many rules. It then might fail in business and not disseminate enough at the popular level. The approach to the game that every subject 2 comprises two consecutive phases:

1. Exploration can be defined as the process of knowledge and understanding of the rules that govern a playful action.

2. Mastery can be defined as the path on which the same subject can steer these rules in order to acquire a level of expertise and develop strategies that enable him or her to play in an effective manner.

These two steps have their own characteristics which determine time, space, and completion procedures:

1. Exploration:

• precedes the mastery;

• doesn’t cost the subject much time and much effort 3 ;

• involves objects, tangible or intangible, which become media for action;

• is conveyed by a person or a text;

• necessarily is completed before the beginning of the playful activity;

2. Mastery:

• following the exploration;

• depending on the circumstances it may be short or long, simple or tiring;

• the maintenance of an appropriate level of mastery in some cases may require a frequent activity;

• the identification of appropriate strategies for some games may require a lot of commitment and concentration.

From these characteristics we understood that games respond to a classic formula: It’s easy to know them, it’s difficult to master them . However, the emergence of digital games has led to a crisis of this model, as the exploration and mastery processes can also vary considerably according to the types of games:

1. Exploration:

• does not come to an end before the activity of mastery, but can go hand in hand with it;

• the rules are acquired through a process of direct experimentation, in a small part can be shared with or disseminated by other people and are not known by reading a text (absence of in-depth manuals on the operation of the game);

• the process of knowledge of the rules is long, complex and varied especially for those video games born from the process of hybridization of genres and consisting of different types of games and in the so called “emergent video games”, i.e. those titles that “ contain a high number of interactions between different parts of the system ” (Juul, 2005);

2. Mastery:

• in the video game the mastery process is not subsequent but contemporary to the exploration phase;

• in some video games (simulations, strategic, role playing games) the complexity of the game does not allow the player to approach the playful activity in its entirety from its initial moments, but he or she needs a playful training phase where the player is gradually introduced to all of the features (configurations, menus, facilities etc.) and he or she is encouraged to immediately try out the knowledge just acquired;

• unlike the non-digital game, in which the difficulty and complexity produced by the combination of the rules are present at the beginning (the player adapts to the game) and vary depending on the skill of the opponent, some video games gradually increase the level of difficulty and complexity as the game goes on, adapting these two dimensions to the skills of the player (the game adapts to the player).

Definition

The search for a video game definition suffers from the same difficulty that we encounter when we talk about games in general. We can’t say that there is a lack of literature on games, but the complexity of the medium in constant evolution makes it almost impossible to give a definition (Mäyrä, 2008).

Over the years, many researchers working in the fields of game studies 4 have tried to define what video games are, what their meaning and their context is, which functions they have in today’s society, which may be the effects arising from their use etc.

In most of the texts, the existence of the video game derive from technology that becomes the central element. In this sense, it is meant as “ a game whose rules are automatically managed by an electronic device that uses a man-machine interface based on the display as an output system. […] It has become an out-and-out mass cultural phenomenon, a medium or even a visual art in itself, the video game can live in reason of computer technology and electronics (for both software and hardware) ” 5 . The anthropological dimension is not considered, as if man had no relationship with the existence of the game itself. “ The key to better express the potentials of the videogame as a tool lies in its technological matrix, or better in being the product of the digital manipulation caused by computers (Alinovi, 2004). “ The video game derives from the manner in which it performs this playful activity: in front of a screen, a monitor a player interacts with the actions within the fictional world of the video game with the joystick or other instruments of man-machine dialog ” (Nardone, 2007).