Week 3 reflections
From CTIN482
Week 3 Reflections
Re: Gee/Brown and Thomas articles: What is it about the learning in virtual worlds that makes it different? Is it that the learning can generally be immediately applicable to choices/actions, even if they're just in-game? Gee claims that we interface with good video games through the goals we create for ourselves and the goals imposed upon us by the game. Although more of a virtual world than a "game," SL has the subtlest of goals: to explore, inhabit. How defined must the goals in our interactive space be in order to promote learning? Brown and Thomas hold WoW as their primary example of a virtual learning space--a space where the "blending" and blurring creates an imaginative world. Perhaps for the space we create, we can reconcile the expansive, relative goal-lessness of SL with the more goal-motivated appeal of WoW. Sometimes WoW frustrates me in that there is a certain lack of customizability, at least in a way that is visible to other players. What if we create a room in the space that somehow motivates participants to collectively create--to some end? Outsider art project? Manipulating found or created footage to create surrealist montages (automatic film making, if you will)? /ramble --Melissa
I've also been thinking about ways to collectively create. I think having a free form tablet of some sort where visitors could add to an on-going art/note space might be a nice way to connect. As far as the reading, I was interested in what Gee had to say about styles of learning where children are 'immersed in a rich variety' of activities. It would be awesome if we could immerse our visitors in the experience as well, perhaps giving them something to temporarily change their avatars or avatar's clothing? Gee talks about how games make the player accept the world view of the protagonist, and the game's protagonist's goals become the player's goals. I think playing with that idea also offers some interesting opportunities. Do games actually teach players this world view? I think this connects with people who claim video games promote violence. Do we get too immersed in the game world and learn behaviors unconsciously? --Claire
Brown and Thomas reading/IML island:
What I found most compelling in the "Play of Imagination" reading was the authors' discussion of the potential for convergence and divergence in MMOGs. MMOGs allow players not only to forge relationships through gameplay that transcend just the game environment, but to take their in-game learning (not skills, but rather methodologies and processes) and translate that into meaningful physical world knowledge. It got me thinking about how this unique potential of MMOGs could be applied to our SCA digital learning environment.
We've discussed in-class how the goal is to avoid making an exact model of the cinema school. We won't be creating a replica of the Cinematic Arts campus in Second Life. Rather, our purpose is to design innovative learning spaces and resources for the School of Cinematic Arts. How do we do this? Well, we'll be trying to figure that out this semester, but one place to start would be to think about how our goals (creating this digital learning environment for SCA) can be accomplished through MMOGs' potential for divergence and convergence. Networking, project ideation, and crew building are just a few of SCA's core elements that we can infuse into our island. We can create a project board where students looking for help can post open crew positions, or a gallery where students can house their film and game projects for other users to access, just to name a few. Again, these are just rough ideas, but if we look at take into consideration how Second Life can uniquely address the needs of our project (as a tool for the Cinema School), we'll have a good place to start. How can we create networking/project sharing communities like this [1] or this [2] on our island?
-Jeffrey Pfingsten
Brown and Thomas reading: While both articles explored the educational value/opportunities of 'real' video games such as Castlevania and WoW, neither touched on educational games, where the opposite holds true: educational experiences presented in video game form. This got me thinking, is it because educational games are not considered 'games' and therefore lack entertainment value/popularity so they're not brought up in the articles? What is it about 'real' video games that make them so addictive, the knowledge so tested and transferable; where players effortlessly memorize character abilities, numbers, stats, history, lore and hard to pronounce names in virtual worlds like WoW without ever feeling like they're 'studying', while most people probably couldn't even name all 50 capitals in the United States. The articles do provide some explanations for that. Both Brown and Thomas emphasize the importance of virtual worlds, their context, the available skill set for the player and the theory of players' imagination which shapes the game as much as the game shapes them. They also bring up, although not in the exact same words, performance over competence. In video games, players are given a context and a set of skills in which they can immediately use, put to test and obtain results of which they can reflect upon. I.E. Manual says you must stand still while shooting or you'll miss, player ignores or forgets, moves, misses, gets shot in the head. Game over. Immediate feedback. When the player then learns to utilize the skill (manual instructions) and passes a level, there's a great sense of accomplishment.
When was the last time we utilized something we learned in class and obtained immediate results/sense of accomplishment from it? Is there someway we can make an educational experience feel like an... un-educational experience and give the player a sense of control towards an established goal while transferring knowledge effortlessly? Also, just as certain gamers prefer one genre over another, can we analyze our audience (in this case students) and create an educational experience that will appeal to them? Since SL is an environment geared towards accurately reproducing real life, hence the name second life, it is up to us to figure out how to utilize our capabilities in SL and create an environment that caters to our audience.
-Maria
>> Ben Chang >>
When it comes to my own gaming preferences, my tastes tend to waver between games that do and do not make use of a projective stance. A music-based game that gives this projective stance is Eternal Sonata. It is extremely unconventional and offers a unique POV based the historical person of Chopin.
While Eternal Sonata innovates through its clever story-telling and beautiful art direction, I believe that my Second Life project will involve a more immersive approach. Due to the Avatar-based nature of Second Life, I believe it's difficult to dictate an projective stance for players any ways. Unless there is a method to force players into wearing musician's outfits and accessories, the players of our musical environment will end up trying to play out their musical aspirations using their avatars as their virtual extensions. I most people, at some point or another, have imagined being a world-class musician.
Playing on this fantasy, I think it's difficult (to say the least) to combat our innate desires to be seen and to be heard. If we give these wanna-be musicians a place to thrive, their collective efforts should lead to some dynamic, emergent behaviors and rhythms as they experiment with different instruments and tempos. It won't teach much about the professional world of music and theory, but with any luck, it should be a lot of fun.
>> Ben Chang >>
