The first video for the week notes that “colour” is frequently used as a way of showing race, even when it is two armies — one red, one blue. As you go through the next four videos, it is expanded to show how race is used to indicate “the other” — an opponent, for example. Some examples for the week include:
Choices may often reflect external racism i.e. “black dwarves” are more evil than light dwarves, often as proxies for more complex situations;
Race serves as the basis for conflict, and conflict can serve as the basis for a narrative arc;
What is present is as important as what is absent;
Default characteristics can serve as “indicator” of what a “normal” character should be;
Character race representations look at cultures and roles within games, including options around protagonist or antagonist roles;
Fighting games often include game mechanics framed through a racial lens to control player attributes (strength, intelligence, etc.);
It was an interesting summary, and I can see in many cases the detailed internal mechanics and choices that are presented as a basis for racial conversation. However, the initial premise — red vs. blue, or even white vs. black in chess — is a bit too stretched.
Week 9 of the MOOC introduces the theme of sexuality and how it is explored in video games.
In video 1, they focus on the first games that introduced sexuality — adventure games like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork. Or how most of the text adventure games were relatively straightforward, yet Japan started introducing some sexual role-playing content with Night Life while America was still playing Kings Quest by Sierra. But mostly the video is about the development history of text games from basic parsers to added parsing, added exploration, added audio, added graphics, and expanded narrative arcs. It’s an okay start, but mostly it is just to give you the background so they can then talk about:
The history of sex in gaming
Five ways to imagine sex in gaming
Role of women in the industry
The second video talks about the examples of how it is introduced:
marketers using sex to “sell” to generally single heterosexual males;
designers including sex content (Sierra’s Soft Porn Adventure and eventually Leisure Suit Larry);
exploration of gender through cyber-sex roles; and,
creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) as reactions to games with sex and/or violence.
Interestingly, while some of the big FPS games like Doom do have strong male markets, other games with bigger audiences — Myst, Sims, Farmvilles — have much bigger female markets. But those markets are often dismissed as not “real video games”.
The third, fourth and fifth videos introduce five ways sex and sexuality can appear in games:
a. Sex as an abstraction — namely as a simplified representation, to reduce explicitness, and to add rationality and linear logic for game play, with similar approaches to how it is done in film, literature and advertising;
b. Sex as a game goal — using lust as a motivation (such as an early strip poker game), and with little diversity in the target market (where the gamer objectifies and identifies with sexualized game characters, namely white men pursuing women);
c. Sex as a mechanic (part of design) — some games make the character’s sex irrelevant while others make it explicit, but not necessarily obviously (such as Super Mario Brothers 2 where the male characters are stronger and faster than Princess Peach who can float), but there are some other still who use sex and gender to create a sense of agency;
d. Sex as an aesthetic (part of gamer experience) — some games are heteronormative (with assumptions of inherent differences matching societal perceptions) in their gamer experience, and while important, there’s also the risk of objectification, such as is argued by Lara Croft’s outfits and proportion in the Tomb Raider series; and,
e. Sex as emergent gameplay — some players have imported outside constructions like online weddings into an MMO game, but this pales in comparison to Second Life (with sold services, toys and club memberships).
For the role of women in the industry, they note that women not only play games, they also critique and make games. And while 45% of gamers are female (although that stat includes a bunch of games that some gamers don’t really consider games at all), only 11% of production crew are women, which goes even lower when you exclude HR, admin, etc. and focus on engineering or designers.
Overall, it was a solid week, just not with much depth. In most places, it just lightly touches on the concepts. Which was disappointing. For example, I expected them to talk about Tomb Raider, and they did; however, they could use TR as an entire study in and of itself, with some pretty complex elements. They don’t even mention the agency aspect that you have a strong female character as the protagonist, smart, attractive, strong…a bad ass who makes Indiana Jones look wimpy. They only cover the superficial controversy, without much attention paid to the counter-argument (although they do mention the puzzle-solving aspects). Grumble, grumble.
I’m also disappointed with the timing of the original recording. But they recorded all their stuff (I think) before #GamerGate started (2014), and so there is no mention of it at all. They mention in passing that there are those who face some harassment online, but it is a throwaway line at most. Obviously if they were doing the same pieces now, GamerGate would likely figure prominently in a discussion of women in the industry.
I’m still plugging away on this MOOC. Week 8 of “Understanding Video Games” (hosted by Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas through Coursera) starts off talking about violence in early games and begins with the old platform games (i.e. jumping to or swinging from platforms), ranging from Donkey Kong (static screens) through to Super Mario Brothers (scrolling), and on further into cinematic platform games. Even the cartoonish games attracted concerns of parental groups who wanted to limit ages or locations for arcades.
In the second video, the pair talk about blood and gore, and it’s long artistic roots in art as an aesthetic. They then move on to flagging the different interpretations — gory violence as nothing more than a video game “horror movie” experience; gory violence as a murder simulator; or merely a source of catharsis. Yet it is the same questions that have been posed of art, comic books and television too. In the end, violence can be seen as either gratuitous or as an ingredient to drive a narrative story arc (such as the need to resolve conflict or overcome strategic or tactical challenges).
The third and fourth videos focus on consequences and morality. As a starting point, they assume that there is feedback to all actions in a game, including violent ones, and then look at the cost or reward for committing violent acts, including:
Punishment for attacking “non-player characters” (NPCs) such as Ultima III;
Rewards for attacking NPCs (Crusaders);
Mixed punishments and rewards with competing mechanics (Grand Theft Auto 3);
Mixed mechanics where emergent play (setting your own goals) decides the reward or punishments; or,
Complex mechanics of moral choices (such as avoid, talk their way out, bribe the NPCs, or fight) with differing narrative outcomes, or rewards (the “clean hands” achievement for finding a non-violent solution).
However, some games use “gating” techniques — i.e. you can’t get to the next area until you satisfy the previous area’s requirements in a specific way. In many of these games, there are no “pacifist” solutions. Usually, this is the default option for any game that has a boss.
Watching the video, I was reminded of my first time playing Syphon Filter…there are two levels that are “gated”. In one, you have to kill terrorists to rescue hostages. And no matter what you try to do to stop the one bad guy, he would always end up killing the hostage and the level would reset. Unless you did one very specific thing — killed him with a sniper rifle shot to the head. No headshot, no advancement. A short while later in the game, another level required you to go through the whole level without setting off any alarms. But there were so many guards, the only way to get close to your objective was to repeatedly use headshots to eliminate bad guys. No headshots, no advancement.
The fifth video delves into the idea of the degree of photo-realism to the violence. I found it interesting the example of Mortal Kombat 2 — it was initially viewed as gratuitous violence, yet is now viewed as relatively over-the-top cartoonish violence. However, with increasingly realistic physics mechanics (destructible buildings, bullet trajectories, etc.), the immersive experience increases.
This leads to the final video for the week, dealing with how academia has studied video game violence. It identifies three common threads in the discussion:
Playing video games can cause desensitization to real violence;
Playing causes players to act aggressively;
The more graphic, the more likely they are to be aggressive.
The focus though is on two research questions — does it increase the likelihood of violence and/or decrease empathetic behaviour? The main approach in academia is to rely on social learning theory aka mimicry. The humanities may also look at the political, moral, and cultural aspects of violence and video games. However, some academics identify multiple methodological problems with the research, such as:
Ethical design issues;
Choice of undergraduates as the sample guinea pig;
Lax and flexible definitions of what actually constitutes violent and non-violent mechanics, and how to separate/isolate the violent parameter;
Impossibility to test for real-life violent behaviour in an experiment; and,
Journals have systemic biases towards publishing negative results.
Overall for the week’s videos, I expected more direct reference to situations like Columbine in the U.S. as one of the “hot button” examples that media pundits like to reference. I was also disappointed that they didn’t explore a bit more of the argument by some psychologists that video gameplay was not causal of aggression but more likely symptomatic of aggressive tendencies. In other words, aggressive people were likely to play violent games and commit violent acts, not as cause and effect but as a series of symptoms of their aggression.
In recent years, many educators have ratcheted up their attacks on the idea of people having “learning styles”. While it was in vogue for awhile, more and more research is suggesting it isn’t as compelling a theory as it once was thought to be. To me, it is more about a theory that resonates instinctively with people, and more a metaphor for approaches to learning – a descriptive paradigm, if you will – then a hard and fast “rule” or law, let alone a theory. So when I saw an Atlantic article aiming to debunk it further, I couldn’t help but click.
In the early ‘90s, a New Zealand man named Neil Fleming decided to sort through something that had puzzled him during his time monitoring classrooms as a school inspector. In the course of watching 9,000 different classes, he noticed that only some teachers were able to reach each and every one of their students. What were they doing differently? Fleming zeroed in on how it is that people like to be presented information. For example, when asking for directions, do you prefer to be told where to go or to have a map sketched for you?
Today, 16 questions like this comprise the VARK questionnaire that Fleming developed to determine someone’s “learning style.” VARK, which stands for “Visual, Auditory, Reading, and Kinesthetic,” sorts students into those who learn best visually, through aural or heard information, through reading, or through “kinesthetic” experiences.
Basically the idea that everyone is relatively unique, but if you break them into sub-types for learning, you can reach them better by using techniques that target that sub-type. Yet the scientific evidence, i.e. the “testing” of the sub-types is less indicative:
…a lot of evidence suggests that people aren’t really one certain kind of learner or another. In a study published last month in the journal Anatomical Sciences Education, Husmann and her colleagues had hundreds of students take the VARK questionnaire to determine what kind of learner they supposedly were. The survey then gave them some study strategies that seem like they would correlate with that learning style. Husmann found that not only did students not study in ways that seemed to reflect their learning style, those who did tailor their studying to suit their style didn’t do any better on their tests.
[…]
Another study published last year in the British Journal of Psychology found that students who preferred learning visually thought they would remember pictures better, and those who preferred learning verbally thought they’d remember words better. But those preferences had no correlation to which they actually remembered better later on—words or pictures. Essentially, all the “learning style” meant, in this case, was that the subjects liked words or pictures better, not that words or pictures worked better for their memories.
However, in the same article, it basically says it isn’t about “styles”, it is about skills. Some people are better at certain tasks than others, so they may think they’re a visual learner because they happen to be good at things that are visual. My problem though is that I’m not sold the idea fails with their “tests”.
All of them have the same methodological problem that the studies about “digital reading” vs. “paper-based reading” exercises and measures of retention. Basically, the studies conclude that if two students read the same text, one on paper and one electronically, the one who read paper will remember better. Which I can practically guarantee will happen with the test they’re running…they’re taking a text that was designed for paper reading, converted it to e-format, and then ran the test.
But what is the more appropriate test? Well, how about optimizing the text electronically first? Taking advantage of the e-format to embed other info or even use a font that looks better on e-format? There’s a reason why so much money and attention is paid to web design — layout and format matter, and it isn’t simply a matter of converting from paper to electronic. And did they first gauge how comfortable the person is with reading an e-text? The assumption is that the texts are the same, so the reader experiences no difference. Yet we all know modern-day Luddites who might be adept at email, surfing, or texting, but they find the idea of e-readers abhorrent. They just don’t want them. Almost NONE of the tests asked what the student preferred to use. If you start off blocked and negative, would you expect the outcome to be different? People are used to paper, they don’t often “balk” at a paper text (except in purchase decisions).
To use the VARK idea, and downgrading it from a learning style to a communications style, we all know that personality types are generally accurate in groups but not so much individuals (all stereotypes, negative or positive, break down when you go from a group to an individual — the standard of deviation is enormous). So let’s look at the personality-type model that resonates the most with me — the axis of introverts/extroverts vs. analytical/intuitive.
Analytical introverts (the blues) have a very clear preferred communications style — they want details. They analyze, they nuance, they want to get their fingers dirty poking the content so they understand it. Preferably, they get paper and read it on their own and they have it before they discuss it together.
Reds, i.e. analytical extroverts, are action-oriented and while they want details, what they really want are the KEY details — they prefer high-level summaries and overviews with minimal background noise. Be brief, be bright, be gone. Don’t waste their time.
Yellows, i.e. intuitive extroverts, want interaction, team work, FUN. They want to discuss the information. Sitting quietly and reading the book by themself is tantamount to torture.
Greens, i.e. intuitive introverts, also want to be “involved” in small-group discussions. A bit quieter than the yellows, and preferably with some say in how they decide what to study or how to proceed.
Those personality studies have been studied to death and for about 60% of the population, they have pretty strong validity. Another 20% end up straddling types. Which leaves 20% where, in my view, they suffer from two measurement problems — about half don’t know themselves well enough to answer the questions reliably (they’re following scripts of what they THINK they should say, not describing what they actually do) and half who are balanced across multiple categories. It doesn’t mean the theory of personality types is wrong, it just means it isn’t universal when you apply to individuals. Quelle surprise.
So what might that look like in terms of learning styles? Well, if the four groups have differences in their preferred communications styles, would it be surprising that they have a different way of learning? Not really, it should be expected. So the test would have to be optimized first for EACH learning style.
But even then, it’s not going to be 1:1 for every person on every item for every subject. Not unlike the phrase that talking about love is like dancing about architecture, reading about art isn’t very useful without pictures of the actual artwork. Equally, if a picture is worth a thousand words, historical video footage of events is far more compelling and easy to “understand” as the students witness.
Is that true for everyone? Nope. Some are going to respond to the text more than the pictures, pictures over video, and video over text, or the reverse such as text over video.
Ultimately the benefit of the theory is not in saying everyone has a different style and targeting the individual, although someday we may be able to do that better. Instead, the benefit of the theory is recognizing what everyone has already known. Mixed teaching techniques, judiciously applied, work better than a single technique of one-size fits all.
But that’s just my view. What do YOU think? Do you learn differently from a friend or sibling? Or do you believe one can find a perfect way to deliver info for a topic or subject area that is applicable to all?
Chapter 10 is interesting in that it goes in an entirely different direction — not the use of a Walmart by another big retailer, or a completely different business, or a community group even. Instead, it focuses on the reuse in Kentucky to open a mini-mall of second-hand stores. Micro-businesses, in the parlance, or in this case, flea markets.
But with an innovative twist — a central check-out. All the vendors sell their wares just as Walmart has little divisions. Yet they are no competition for Walmart, so Walmart loves them. How many individual vendors? One store had over 300. The central checkout handles all the finances for them, along with most of the transactional paperwork. I think it is brilliant. Ripe for disruption, of course, but brilliant.
And the store renovation is as minimal as they can make it…splash some paint and they are good to go. Nobody cares, they just want an indoor space to sell their goods. The lower the overhead, the better. Even some of the original signage is still in place.
In the long run, however, the mini-malls are doomed to fail…once the main lease runs out, and the lease restrictions ease, larger retailers can come in, take the space, and increase the revenue for the site owner, just as it did with the race track in an earlier chapter. Yet, in the meantime, it’s a very different way to take over the space.
