Task Six!

Part One:
Find a game (either one you’ve played or a website for a game), a trailer for a game on YouTube, a game advertisement etc. It can be any type of game on any platform. Discuss the characters in the game; connect with our discussion about gender, race & ethnicity – and femininity and masculinity. What messages are the characters sending? What lifestyles, values and points of view are represented in the message? How might different people understand this message differently from you?
Have a look at this video transcript (PDF)for some additional information:
YouTube: Game Over: Gender, Race & Violence in Video Games (trailer)
YouTube: Racism in Games: Controversy Show

First off I would like to point out that this Lt. Col. David Grossman from the ‘Game Over’ video is out of his mind. That video was super hilarious.

Quote #1: “Video games give you the skill and the will to kill. 

They teach you to associate pleasure from human death and suffering, they 

reward you for killing people.  They take healthy play and turn it on its head.”
Quote #2: “Doom all by itself, even used with a keyboard is good enough that the Marine 

Corps uses it to script killing in their soldiers.”

I do believe that games like Doom are used mainly as a team building exercise. ?? 

My video-game artifact is Terminator Salvation. The characters in the game maintain a soldier ‘save the last of humanity’ kind of identity. There are 4 main characters, two male and two female with one of the male’s as the leader. John Connor is a heterosexual white male leading the resistance (kind of). Blair Williams is John’s long time friend, and is a white female. Barnes I’m assuming is a black male (straight) and Angie Salter is the other white female who suffers from stress trauma. Interestingly, from the way the characters are dressed I can guess that Blair is a more masculine female than Angie. Blair is dressed in all black, tight clothing but fairly concealed. Angie is wearing white, loose clothes, has wispy brown hair, and a very low cut top seeming much more feminine. Of the two males, Barnes seems the most masculine as he plays up his bravery as an independent survivor while John Connor I would argue even as the hero has a more feminine edge to him as he has lost confidence and is only urged to lead thanks to Blair’s nagging. Compared to other video-games, the characters seem fairly ‘realistic’ if I can say that. Yes the women are skinny with large breasts and tight clothing, but not enough to be over the top. Is this reality? No. But, it does very well in comparison to other highly sexualized female characters. Similarly, the men are minimally sexual, Barnes shows off his biceps but John Connor is zipped up to his chin and has a fairly slender build rather than being a macho terminator muscle house. Even so, these images are still highly idealized images of America’s “heros” in the Terminator narrative. Problem? The player can only play through John Connor. I understand the argument that they want to make the video-game true to the movie but it only makes a white male available as the hero. 

Race, gender, and class representation can be singled out in many video-games as a very problematic issue. It is a significant fact that the less identifiable a character may be as a specific race, class, or gender the more universally identifiable this character is for a multitude of users. It would definitely be in the game creators best interest to use this strategy, but it gets complicated for games like Terminator Salvation where they want to be true to the film. Then the question of race/class/gender is translated into an even more complex issue as it is present across multiple modes of media in our world.

Part Two:

Time to do some research for your final paper: find five (5) academic articles or book chapters that you will be able to use in your final paper, and provide a short synopsis of what the article is about and how you will use it in your paper/why it’s important.
List the five references in proper format on your blog.

1. Kurt Squire’s “Cultural Framing of Computer/Video Games”

This article sets up how video games must be utilized for an educational experience. Unfounded fear of gaming technology is restricting learning for students who have grown up gaming. Squire argues that much research providing correlations between violence in video games and violence in children is poorly conducted and very misleading. He cites Mitche’s experiment on families with Nintendo that actually brought families closer together in a way that was reminiscent of families orienting themselves around board-games or card games.

“Future study of gaming communities might focus specifically on the shared 

practices, language, resources, understandings, roles that emerge through game
play.”

Squire says there is a growing disconnect between generations teaching and learning. Stuends become bored easily during forced learning with dry content, and this is where video games can be taken advantage of. Incorporated with outside research and other activities, learning based games could be a key part of the classroom. 

This is a good article to use for my research paper as it argues in favour of educational gaming. It demonstrates the problems with current teaching methods and exposes the opportunity for games to evolve into teaching tools. These can also function outside the classroom as well, as Squire makes a case for the love to learn in general. Kids live learning outside of school and he explains in MMO’s they learn valuable skills.. for example learning how to play without being told. This makes for more independent, hands on, and capable learners with a healthy curiosity that is fueled by gaming specifically.

2. Willy C Kriz’s “Creating Effective Learning Environments and Learning Organizations Through Gaming Simulation Design”
Kriz explains that games allow for complex situations, to satisfy and develop complex problem solving. The most applicable part of the article is the discussion of theoretical knowledge versus practical experience. Games are able to simulate and enhance practical experience for problem solving and application. Kriz states that “passive reproduction of inert knowledge to active production of applicable knowledge” can be achieved through gaming. Kriz means by gaming, not video/virtual games but real life constructed games that can be either open or closed concept for varied situations (like a set narrative or a free one). I think that this is still a very useful article because it could apply to online games as well! The structure to enhance learning is very well thought out, and applicable to many situations. For example, he discusses how there is a gap between university student’s knowledge and practical skills. By applying simulated games to train or teach practical experience, this gap can be diminished. 

3. Marc Prensky’s “Computer Games and Learning: Digital Game Based Learning”

Marc Presnky is a clear supporter of incorporating pc/video games into classroom learning. This source is a book chapter that discusses the reasons why and how to incorporate games into learning. He argues that games already are a tool for teaching, and that stereotypes that have been created about gaming are false and ignorant. Prensky says that there is a large generational gap between kids who have grown up with technology and gaming as a part of their lives and the adult teachers. He names the young generation “digital natives” and the older generation “digital immigrants” and outlines major differences in learning styles between the two. For example, digital immigrants will read instructions, whereas digital natives play to learn. This is just one of the many examples Prensky illustrates in this chapter. 

This is a very useful resource because it attempts to answer the conundrum that I am explaining. Video games “teach” killing which is a bad thing, but video games can be used to teach in the classroom. Presnky offers that during video game play, gamers are constantly checking knowledge, rules, morals, in-game to that they they have learned from out of the game in society. He calls this “cross-checking” and suggests that this happens conscious and unconsciously. The message ‘do not kill’ is such a major part of our cultural context. Those who blame the Columbine shooting on Doom should read this quote:
“We have to be careful about buying into the rhetoric of people who blame Doom
for Columbine and ignore the fact that those guys were building pipe bombs in
their garage and their parents never noticed.” (Presnky, 108)

There are exceptions, who do not get the moral message from their parents or society but even still, video games cannot take the sole blame. Presnky adds that for a kid aware of societal repercussions, to learn to kill from playing a video game, would mean “overcome[ming] an awful lot of disconnects with the messages he or she hears in the rest of life.”

Prensky also offers suggestions on how to successfully combine gaming and learning from a game designer standpoint. Clearly, certain elements of a game encourage different way of learning. Theoretical learning is probably best in an open-ended virtual game that like a theory doesn’t provide one true answer. Climate Challenge which is about judgement, decisions, and process does a great job of incorporating management, ethics, feedback, strategy, balance, and practice into an easy to use strategy “sand-box” style game. Climate Challenge is a simplistic simulation game, as is very successful at being educational because of the amount of feedback you receive as a player. Reflection is a very critical part of the learning process. Also, because the game is turn-based which means the player can take as much time as needed to make a decision, it allows and prompts highly meaningful decisions from the user. Presnky adds that the animated character icons are universally identifiable rather than too specific to hinder player/avatar identification. 

4. Richard Van Eck, “Digital Game-Based Learning: It's Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless....” 

Van Eck is in favour of digital-game based learning (DGBL). Some say that it will ‘academize’ previously fun games, others cite that learning shouldn’t be fun. Van Eck says that there is a struggle between the two, and our goal should be to create a synergy between ‘pedagogy and engagement’ in DGBLs. Relevent cognition can be enhanced with DGBL because it can be designed to construct a meaningful and relevent context for the information taught. This is preferable to formal instruction because there is no easily definable context that the students can pick out and usually leads to loss of attention, motivation, and interest. Play theory states that humans are wired to play in order to learn, from birth. Assimilation & accommodation theory explains that we assimilate information from what we have experienced in the past, and we accommodate information that does not already fit into a category or experience. When we use these thought processes it creates a cognitive disequalibrium & resolution for the individual. In games this process comes with testing and re-testing hypothesis and revision to increase DGBL. 

Van Eck says the most affordable and realistic way to incorporate DGBLs in the classroom is to use commercial off-the-shelf games (COTS) like Civilization, SimCity 4, Age of Empire, and incorporate them into lessons. The use of these games in classrooms will further encourage big gaming companies to design class based DLGBs. These games are important because it is not only a teaching tool, but an artifact for teaching. Students can depict what is there, but also what is not, in what perspective was the game created?

Van Eck explains that there is a difference between media use and media integration in classrooms. Media use has no significant effect, whereas media integration into lesson plans and teaching strategies gives the opportunity to change the way students learn. This is useful of my paper because it takes ‘edu-tainment’ a step further where it can be extended to the classroom. It outlines why these games are so effective and how they can be utilized to be even more effective. The gaming industry needs to pick up the pace developing DLGBs for personal and class use because video games as a medium are finally being taken seriously.

5. Wells & Dudash "Examining Young Voters’ Political Information and Efficacy in the 2004 Election"

This article explores how young voters gathered information in the US for the 2004 election, and concludes that increasingly, young voters have used the internet as a popular resource for information. Fastforward to 2009 where internet use has increased exponentially, and young voters have been increasingly targeted in various ways including computer based games. In this case, Climate Challenge is targeted at young voters. As a game it is a policy based strategy style game that challenges young adults and teens to think about the environment in the context of political “solutions”. This article is useful to make a connection between voters and gamers, as the two go hand in hand at the age level targeted by the BBC’s Climate Challenge.