Learning task 3
Play at least one different game every week during the course, totalling 5 games.
Document your gaming experiences as a blog post on the course blog and discuss the game focusing on the following issues:
- What things did the game make you consider and what did the game allow you to learn?
- What was the game experience? What was aim of the game?
- How could the game or its elements be used in the context of teaching?
Game One: Duet (iPad, Kumobius, 2013)
The game actually contains slices of profound monologue and oblique questions and bits of stories at the beginning of each level, though that's not exactly what I thought about when playing the game. One of the key attractions of the game is the mesmerizing soundtrack by Tim Shiel, which works with the visuals and mechanics to induce a kind of trance state, which actually allows the player to explore at the back of their brain whatever thoughts come to mind in that state of flow.
In terms of learning, the game teaches you to navigate through a flowing obstacle landscape by controlling two balls, red and blue. Every time you move one, the other follows in the opposite direction, so you have to be constantly aware of where each ball is going. If you slip up even a bit, a ball will splash into an obstacle and leave a beautiful stain there as a reminder of how far you reached, a warning to your future self. The game is fast paced and punishingly challenging.
In terms of the aim of the game, I think it is designed to give a surreal sensory experience, so that the player falls into a semi-hypnotic state. The game aesthetics are beautifully simple and cohesive, so the player can escape into another reality that is abstract, far away from the real world.
Considering how the game or elements of it could be used in teaching, I would say that the music is something that I would use. The rhythm and tempo of the music keeps you concentrated and it has a trance-like and almost addictive quality. When that music is playing, time passes at a different speed. Interestingly, the game even suggests you play it with headphones on.
When I'm working with students who are writing by themselves, working on scripts, I would like to do an experiment when I ask them to bring with them some music that they can listen to that would help them concentrate and be productive.
It's a tricky one though, as many people maybe wouldn't like to listen to music when writing as they find it distracting, so I'd like to expand the experience to other senses. Ask people what kinds of environments they would like to write in. Ask the students to consider the lights around them, the sound world, the smells, room temperature, what they wear, how they sit, etc. I fell that this might be useful in terms of creating a productive feeling.
Game Two: Passage (iPad, Jason Rohner, 2007)
[SPOILER ALERT: This writing contains spoilers, so I recommend you play the game yourself first]
Passage is a short experimental art game designed by Jason Rohner. In the game you play as a man who starts off at the left hand of a narrow corridor. Your options are fairly limited in terms of moement and what you can do. You can basically walk forward and sideways, but there's nothing to pick up or really interact with. At the start you can walk up to a girl and if you do, she becomes your companion as you make your way through the game. If you bypass her, that's it, you go alone. As you walk along you get visibly older (though it's pixel art, it's quite evocative) and move more towards the right hand of the corridor.
The game makes you think about choices you make in life and the consequences of those choices. It is about the meaning of life, the futility of life, the beauty of life, the simplicity of life. It makes you consider companionship and chance and fate. It's a brutally simple but arresting five minute game experience, especially if you meet the girls at the start and then have to carry on at the end when she dies.
What elements of this game could be used in teaching? I'm not sure. I've used this game in my own teaching to show how something very simple can work well and also to show game design students how games can treat the player with respect and remain very open to interpretation.
I think one element of this game which is useful for scriptwriting students it how the game works in very tight frames. The game world is incredibly restricted and that's liberating. I always feel that the best kind of creativity comes from tight frames.
Game Three: Football Manager Handheld 2015 (iPad, Sega, 2014)
Football Manager Handheld 2015 is a football management simulator game on mobile platforms (hence the "handheld" bit) for the 2014-15 season. As a player, you can do roughly all the same kinds of things a manager or coach of a football team would do, including buying and selling players, keeping players happy, developing a playing style, trying to win matches, leagues, cups, dealing with the press, some finances, training and eventually being sacked or offered jobs by other teams, depending on how well you do. I have played this kind of game almost as far back as I can remember.
In terms of what the game makes you consider, there's nothing particularly profound in it. I would say it possibly sheds some light on some of the challenges faced by an actual manager of a football team, such as internal politics in a team, that maybe doesn't get much press attention. The game does try to be realistic, so it's very possible to make mistakes and be severely punished for them, as in real life.
There's an addictive quality to the game. The core loop of the game involves playing games, so that when you play one game, you can always reason with yourself that you'll just play the next game, or just until the half-way point of the season or just until you get knocked out of this cup.
The game I played was in career mode and I started out at the lowest point of the English football league system, or the 6th tier. I only managed half way through the season with Hyde FC before they sacked me for not producing results and flirting with relegation. I hung around in the game for a bit applying for jobs before I was offered the post of manager of Gloucester in the same division. I saved them from relegation and promptly took them through the league system, all the way to the top half of the Premiere league and winning the FA cup in the following nine seasons. I had build a very good strong young side on a relatively low budget and managed as the same time to boost the stadium and training facilities whist taking them into European competition for three successive seasons. A remarkable feat indeed.
Then I was offered the Liverpool job, which allows significantly more spending money, and I accepted that job. I immediately regretted the decision as I found myself in a team that I wasn't attached to and that didn't make sense in terms of the style of play I was used to. If I continue playing with Liverpool, I imagine it would take another two or three years of middling results before I have a team I like, but I may get sacked before then.
This adventure makes me think about the nature of loyalty, ambition and greed.
The aim of the game is up to the player. At the start of the season your club board of directors tell you what they think you should be able to do that season. But you can also suggest yourself what your aims are and if they are higher than what the board thinks, they'll give you extra money for that. As well as having these kinds of end-of-season goals, you can also just have your own personal goals, like to eventually become a national team manager, or to win a certain cup, or to unearth a brilliant young player and make them into a star. You decide what you want to do.
I think that this aspect of the game I would want to develop in my teaching. I would like students to engage with the idea that there are multiple goals open to them in any course and they should be aware of what they want to get out of it. Having this knowledge should mean we can come back to it and ask, "are we getting there?" what's stopping us, do we need to re-evaluate our goals, do we have enough short-term goals to go with the long-term goals? I think that deciding on, understanding and acting on your own personal short and medium term goals in education is important and helps keep focus.
Plants Vs Zombies is game based on the idea that there are zombies intent on crossing your garden and invading your house to eat our brains and you have to stop them using various plants which each have different attacking or slowing down abilities. There are dozens of different plants to choose from and also many different kinds of zombies to defeat. You play through levels from the most basic up to a chaotic and challenging finale.
The game doesn't attempt to make the player think of anything in particular, it's just fun and challenging. You have to be strategic in terms of which plants you need and where you put them, as well as quick acting to get them down in time. The game rewards calmness under pressure and forward thinking.
The game allows you to learn by providing information and tips along the way as well as having access to an almanac which describes in details the properties of all the plants and zombies. Each time a new level is reached, there's also a kind of tutorial introduction that allows you to get used to the new elements before they start to become more challenging.
In terms of what lessons can be learned from the game which are applicable to teaching, there are a couple of things which come to mind.
The first thing is the tone of the game. As you can see from the images, the style of the game is fun and cartoon-like, which means that though it can be frantic and stressful, it's never scary. Aside form this, there are very well written humouristic elements to the game, such as the notes the zombies leave you and also the advice and non-advice you get from your neighbour, Crazy Dave. His dialogues are genuinely well written. I would take from this the value of keeping things light, not getting too serious. It has always been my experience in teaching that students are more motivated to attend and learn when they are having fun.
The second thing is putting emphasis on design, so that students are able to find information clearly. The way this game is laid out means you can always find information and navigating your way easily through the menu options. I have now begun the practice of blogging courses that I teach, so that all information such as course timetables, description, outcomes, lecture contents, links and even student works are available to the students at any time. That this information is clearly laid out and the students are aware of it and have practice using it is very important.
Game Five: Pursuit of Light (iPad, Zhipeng Wang, 2015)
Pursuit of Light is a simple independent game where you play as a princess who is experiencing a dream where the light of the sun has gone out and you use the guiding lights of the stars and the moon to move through short dreamscape obstacle courses.
The game itself is incredibly simple and the gameplay is easy to master as the only moving parts are whether to press the star icon (to move onto the next platform if it has a star on it) or the moon icon (if the next platform has a moon), and other than that it's a question of speed and timing as various obstacles come from different directions to prevent you from making progress.
Like some of the other games I have played for this course, I would say that Pursuit of Light doesn't really attempt to get the player to think of anything in particular. There's so little exposition that there may as well be none. The basic idea that you are playing through dreams also adds to a sense of other-worldly non-space that gives licence for the game to be fairly esoteric in design and tone.
The thing to take from this game into education is the way the game doesn't punish mistakes. If you fail at any point during each level, you vanish in a puff of smoke and promptly reappear at the start of the level to begin again. Each level is so short that you are already almost finished it, so you may as well try again and finish it.
There's no punishment for messing up, you get a clean try. To incorporate into teaching a feeling of being able to make mistakes without nasty consequences is a great thing. The world of education is exactly the place where a student should feel free to try things and challenge themselves, even if it means failure. That way, you grow and get better. In the real world, mistakes can be punished to the extent that you lose your job (Game over!) but in the school, there should be no fear of that.
The game doesn't attempt to make the player think of anything in particular, it's just fun and challenging. You have to be strategic in terms of which plants you need and where you put them, as well as quick acting to get them down in time. The game rewards calmness under pressure and forward thinking.
The game allows you to learn by providing information and tips along the way as well as having access to an almanac which describes in details the properties of all the plants and zombies. Each time a new level is reached, there's also a kind of tutorial introduction that allows you to get used to the new elements before they start to become more challenging.
In terms of what lessons can be learned from the game which are applicable to teaching, there are a couple of things which come to mind.
The first thing is the tone of the game. As you can see from the images, the style of the game is fun and cartoon-like, which means that though it can be frantic and stressful, it's never scary. Aside form this, there are very well written humouristic elements to the game, such as the notes the zombies leave you and also the advice and non-advice you get from your neighbour, Crazy Dave. His dialogues are genuinely well written. I would take from this the value of keeping things light, not getting too serious. It has always been my experience in teaching that students are more motivated to attend and learn when they are having fun.
The second thing is putting emphasis on design, so that students are able to find information clearly. The way this game is laid out means you can always find information and navigating your way easily through the menu options. I have now begun the practice of blogging courses that I teach, so that all information such as course timetables, description, outcomes, lecture contents, links and even student works are available to the students at any time. That this information is clearly laid out and the students are aware of it and have practice using it is very important.
Game Five: Pursuit of Light (iPad, Zhipeng Wang, 2015)
Pursuit of Light is a simple independent game where you play as a princess who is experiencing a dream where the light of the sun has gone out and you use the guiding lights of the stars and the moon to move through short dreamscape obstacle courses.
The game itself is incredibly simple and the gameplay is easy to master as the only moving parts are whether to press the star icon (to move onto the next platform if it has a star on it) or the moon icon (if the next platform has a moon), and other than that it's a question of speed and timing as various obstacles come from different directions to prevent you from making progress.
Like some of the other games I have played for this course, I would say that Pursuit of Light doesn't really attempt to get the player to think of anything in particular. There's so little exposition that there may as well be none. The basic idea that you are playing through dreams also adds to a sense of other-worldly non-space that gives licence for the game to be fairly esoteric in design and tone.
The thing to take from this game into education is the way the game doesn't punish mistakes. If you fail at any point during each level, you vanish in a puff of smoke and promptly reappear at the start of the level to begin again. Each level is so short that you are already almost finished it, so you may as well try again and finish it.
There's no punishment for messing up, you get a clean try. To incorporate into teaching a feeling of being able to make mistakes without nasty consequences is a great thing. The world of education is exactly the place where a student should feel free to try things and challenge themselves, even if it means failure. That way, you grow and get better. In the real world, mistakes can be punished to the extent that you lose your job (Game over!) but in the school, there should be no fear of that.