Episode 22: Freezing Rain and Dysentery on the Voter Suppression Trail
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Welcome back to season two!
We’re slightly shifting focus to social impact games: games that explore social issues like elections, climate change, homelessness, and immigration.
Each episode will evaluate the effectiveness of a different game. What was it trying to accomplish? Did it work? Our goal isn’t to take a stance on the issues or evaluate the accuracy of the games, but to examine how effective their design is at achieving their goals.
We’ll draw on the theories and ideas we talked about in past episodes, plus bring in new perspectives whenever we can.
We’re also going bi-weekly.
Since the 2017 Inauguration is a major event this week, our season premiere is on topic with Voter Suppression Trail. Released shortly before the 2016 Presidential election, this was the New York Times’ first stab at a video game editorial.
Borrowing liberally from Oregon Trail’s design style, Voter Suppression Trail puts you in the shoes of three potential voters: A white programmer from California, a Latina nurse from Texas, and a Black salesman from Wisconsin. Each of them has varying obstacles to overcome as they wait in line to vote.
What impact did it have on players? We think it was only partially successful in drawing attention to real electoral issues. Listen to the episode to find out why.
Episode 21: Agents and Avatars in Final Fantasy XV
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Many games put you in the role of someone else. It’s right in the name of at least one genre: Role-Playing Game.
We identify with each of these avatars to varying degrees. It’s hard to feel much of a connection with Pac-Man, but Link and Chrono were much easier to map onto ourselves.
What did we take away from that mapping? What does current research say about how we relate to our avatars?
This week Brandon introduces theories about how we connect with games’ avatars, then we look at Final Fantasy XV as an example. What opportunities does it take or miss to link us with Prince Noctis?
And what does this all have to do with Clippy, anyway?
That study went on to be cited in policy documents and the news, but there’s just one problem: some of the data may have been falsified or manipulated.
What does this mean for academic gaming research? Can or should we trust a single published study?
Episode 18: The Power of Not Believing in Yourself: Part 2 (Self-efficacy and Bloodborne)
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Last week we talked about self-efficacy, particularly how it relates to the high difficulty of the Dark Souls series. But Dark Souls actually goes against lots of advice about the relationship between self-efficacy and performance.
It turns out there’s also controversy about giving rewards just to build self confidence or self-efficacy. Should we all get trophies for participation? Is that really helpful in the long run? Bloodborne give us another example to look at.
This week we talk about some other models of how self-efficacy and performance might relate to each other. For example, induced failure can be useful in building longer-term confidence.
Games like the Zelda series tend to give you a difficult challenge, then introduce a tool that makes the task much easier. You use it to solve that challenge, and then you’re presented with an even more difficult challenge that requires the same tool. But now you’ve had time to build your confidence with it.
Lastly, we pull all this together into a theory of why Dark Souls might actually be fun after all. You’re not as great a gamer as you think you are, but you can get there.
Episode 17: The Power of Not Believing in Yourself - Part 1 (Self-efficacy and Dark Souls)
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How good are you at Dark Souls? Or put another way: What’s your perception of your related self-efficacy?
The Dark Souls series is hard. Really, really hard.
We’re just preparing you: You’ll die often, in new and interesting ways.
So why do players stick with it?
In the 1970s, psychologist Albert Bandura developed four factors important to achieving high levels of self-efficacy:
Performance Accomplishment: doing something well once means you’ll feel ready to do it well again in the future.
Vicarious Experiences: Seeing someone you identify with perform a task successfully is encouraging.
Verbal Persuasion: Maybe not effective as the others, but think of an inspiring football coach speech.
Emotional Arousal: High levels of stress aren’t so good for self confidence.
Dark Souls does the exact opposite of all four of these factors, yet gamers keep coming back for more. How does this make sense? Check back next week for the conclusion.
Ben Heck’s clever customization of an Xbox One controller for one-handed use.[/caption]The word “Accessibility†might bring to mind ramps, braille, and other physical world accommodations. Those are important, but the concepts extends to games and other digital media too.
Sometimes it might even be a practical market share consideration: By some measurements 20% of gamers have a disability, and 8% of all men are colorblind.
Making something more accessible has side benefits too – I know I’m glad to see automatic opening doors when my hands are full.
Often an accessibility standard isn’t only the ethical thing to do, it’s also just good practice. Wouldn’t you like to be able to play your favorite game if you broke an arm or your vision degrades with age?
But what does it mean for a game to be accessible? Games don’t usually have a legal mandate to meet accessibility standards, yet can still benefit from thinking critically about other areas’ standards might be applied.
Looking mostly through the lens of accessible web standards, this episode starts with a discussion of various requirements like the ADA, WCAG 2.0, and Section 508. Then we move into applications of the standards, specifically times we’ve seen accessibility features applied well (PS4’s button mapping options) and less so (Dead Rising’s tiny text).
When have you benefitted from a game being made more accessible? When have you wished developers kept that kind of thing more in mind?
Episode 15 - Synthesizing and Salvaging Discovery Learning
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Happy Thanksgiving! If you’re looking for an escape from the post-turkey awkward conversations, check out the conclusion of our series on Discovery Learning.
In our previoustwo episodes, we examined the positives and negatives of discovery learning.
But what’s the takeaway – is it a good or bad idea? Of course it’s more complicated than that: A combination of discovery learning and expository learning is the way to go. By providing feedback and scaffolding as students work through problems, instructors will end up with better results.
Discovery learning also survives today as problem-centered learning. By opening with a description a relevant problem to frame the training, you can immediately show the relevance of what you’re talking about. Demonstrate how to solve that problem, and then have students practice responding while you give feedback. Lastly, give them their own problems to work on and provide feedback as they go.
Hearthstone’s introduction of the Taunt mechanic is a great example of this blended approach. Players are presented with a situation that seems unwinnable, with almost no other option than to play the Taunt card and see what it does. We also found examples in Ethan Carter, Myst, and other games.
“A Theoretical Foundation for Discovery Learningâ€, By Marilla D. Svinicki, 1998, Advances in Physiology Education
I misremembered the talk I saw about the use of heatmaps in Halo’s level design. It was actually about Destiny, not Halo. See Jennifer Ash’s presentation UX Lessons Learned on Destiny.
Episode 14 - Adventure Games and Discovery Learning Gone Crazy
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Discovery learning remains very popular today, BUT! All is not well in the land of self-guided education.
Every time the research catches up to discovery learning and starts to question how well it works, the name changes to aliases like problem-based learning, experiential learning, constructivist learning, etc.
Pure discovery learning leads to frustration and misconceptions. Often all the effort of learners gets devoted to surface-level trappings instead of deeper mastery. Lots of the literature points to expository instruction as a much better alternative.
Adventure games like the King’s Quest series make for perfect examples of discovery learning gone rampant. There’s unwinnable situations all over the place, and far too often they boil down to grinds of trial & error that don’t actually teach any gameplay skills.
One of the articles we talk about this week concludes that “adventure games committed suicide.†Will discovery learning share that same fate? Check back next week as we tie all this together.
We also have a fancy new Facebook page, where we’d love to hear about your experiences (good and bad) with discovery learning.
Episode 13 - Discovery Learning in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a 2014 all-around spooky game that doesn’t hold your hand. There’s even a note at the beginning stating that you’re on your own. You’re expected to learn as you go, figuring out not only how complex puzzles work but also sometimes the fact that you’re being confronted with a puzzle at all.
That approach matches up quite nicely with the theory of discovery learning. In that framework, learners are expected to figure out underlying concepts on their own, through experimentation and inductive reasoning.
This week’s episode opens with a discussion of expository vs discovery learning, has a mention of J.S. Bruner’s wonderful term “intellectual potency,” and explores the motivation provided to players in Ethan Carter.
But all is not well in the world of discovery learning – check back next week for a look at the dark side of this kind of instruction.
Welcome back to season two! 
It’s not often there’s breaking news in the world of academic articles on gaming, but a potential retraction of an article is worth talking about. 
Last week we talked about self-efficacy, particularly how it relates to the high difficulty of the Dark Souls series. But Dark Souls actually goes against lots of advice about the relationship between self-efficacy and performance.
How good are you at Dark Souls? Or put another way: What’s your perception of your related self-efficacy?
Ben Heck’s clever customization of an Xbox One controller for one-handed use.[/caption]The word “Accessibility†might bring to mind ramps, braille, and other physical world accommodations. Those are important, but the concepts extends to games and other digital media too.
Happy Thanksgiving! If you’re looking for an escape from the post-turkey awkward conversations, check out the conclusion of our series on Discovery Learning.
Discovery learning remains very popular today, BUT! All is not well in the land of self-guided education.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a 2014 all-around spooky game that doesn’t hold your hand. There’s even a note at the beginning stating that you’re on your own. You’re expected to learn as you go, figuring out not only how complex puzzles work but also sometimes the fact that you’re being confronted with a puzzle at all.