Game Narratives and Critical Thinking

 

Knowledge is not limited to the acquisition of facts, but is also an exercise of critical thinking and experience. I believe that in the world of teaching and education, we understand that our students must absorb the information we teach them, but we must also encourage them to question. When we assign a book above the elementary school level, we assign essays and projects that encourage students to not just read a book, but to also propose discussion regarding the nature of the book: What themes prevail in the book? What were the messages left in the book? Who were the characters of the book truly representing?

When we ask our students these questions, we ask them to create their own perspectives and narratives defining what they read from the book. Despite all of the students having read the exact same book, their own personal narratives that they develop will never have the same content (well, short of cheating, of course).

I integrate video gaming as a valuable source of literacy because video games are inherently problem-solving exercises. I feel that a large deliberation regarding whether or not video games can also double as literacy exercises is truly dependent on the content of the choice of video game. If a video game is developed to be focused on problem-solving puzzles without much thought about developing a story, then I concede that the video game is not a useful academic tool. When a video game is developed to be focused more on developed literary themes rather than the problem-solving exercises, then I believe that we can consider the resource a useful academic tool.

Literary Themes in a Video Game Example: Gabriel Knight

Less than a month ago, I finished playing a video game named Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, a point-and-click adventure game published by Sierra Games in 1993. The game was directed and written by Jane Jensen, a writer for Sierra Entertainment. Rather than having the focus of problem-solving exercises in the game, Jensen says in an article:

“I work on the plotline first,” she says of her methodology. “I find the puzzles fall very naturally into the story structure and I am somewhat cognizant of where and how the puzzles will fit when I write the story, but at that point the story is my focus. After I have the story down, I break it down into a game design where you add in structure for locations, puzzles, inventory items, dialogue topics, etc.” [1]

The focus of the game is less about solving puzzles than it is to immerse the player into the story as a protagonist. The tone of the game is dark and might be best described as a graphic detective novel focused on a voodoo murder mystery in the medium of a video game. Below are the first three minutes of the game’s introduction, including all of the scenes and dialogue included until the player can control the character of Gabriel:

http://youtu.be/UD4YF1qbdKE

When I first played the beginning of the game, there were a lot of literary elements that I noticed. The first thing I saw in the opening cinematic is the old man shedding a tear while he watches the woman in the flames. Does he know this woman? Is that him hanged at the tree? These are questions that are left a mystery as the camera shifts past a sign that says Bourbon Street, establishing that the setting here is in New Orleans. The camera finally pushes in on Gabriel waking up from a nightmare; the implication here is that the opening of the cinematic was a nightmare of his.

I notice a lot about Gabriel’s character during the cutscene that plays after the cinematic. Gabriel is a shiftless bachelor who sleeps in his own bookshop. He is an aspiring novelist, though Grace (the woman speaking to Gabriel) does not seem to think much of his ability to write. Furthermore, Gabriel is a womanizer and a pervert; how will be grow as a character to overcome those shortcomings of his character? Otherwise, I do know from the introduction that he is determined to find the answers to his nightmares even if he has to make violations to get them. I also notice that the soundtrack and lighting in the bookshop are warm and inviting compared to the rest of the introduction; the dichotomy tells me from the soundtrack and lightning that the bookshop is a safe haven compared to what lies outside of it. As the game progresses, that warmth in the bookshop gradually goes away after certain events in the future.

After that cutscene ends, you take control of Gabriel, and can opt to read books from the bookshop, read the paper, ask Grace about herself and her take on matters, or leave and explore the French Quarter. You are free to learn about Gabriel as you please. I feel that this freedom of researching about the characters, story, and settings are part of the critical thinking process for the player.

The story drives the player to progress and not the problem-solving puzzles. I believe that video games that primarily focus on developing a storyline before weaving problem-solving puzzles in later has a good chance of becoming an academic video game source.

Learning Simulations

As James Paul Gee and Michael H. Levine discuss in “Welcome to Our Virtual Worlds,” teachers “regularly witness a disconnect between the real world outside their classrooms and the contrived, dated world that exists within” when engaging students [2]. As the progression of classroom technology stagnates and social media technology advances, students will continue to feel as if the classroom is a foreign learning tool. Students can quickly find forums, blogs or even scientific journals at their whim on subjects that interest them. Students can, on their own time, being “Pro-ams”-professional amateurs- who can create their own non-academic projects at their leisure using technology outside of the classroom. In the case of this article, Gee and Levine discuss building simulators such as SimCity and Civilization.

Simulation games like SimCity and Civilization are remarkable for their ability to allow a player to create choices to solve problems. Players who are interested in the games will learn about processes that they may not learn in school (in the article, the example of “zone, commercial, industrial, tax rate, power grid, and transportation” are SimCity terms that would help students understand the way city management works). The article doesn’t mention such features from Civilization, but in the case of those games, students also learn about how technologies develop during time, how foreign nations may treat your nation, and how to deal with diplomacy and war.

In the empire-building simulation game Civilization V, players begin a game with a randomized map and must use their knowledge and experiences to create their own narratives for how to develop the best empire based on their surroundings. Strategies of how to build your empire is largely based on economics: What is the most cost-effective path to succeed in my game? The options are nearly limitless. In the following link here, you will see that a host has created a Civilization V game, has developed its rules and players are free to discuss their plans to how they will play the game. In this game as the Roman Empire, the unit with the flag is a settler; it can be expended to create a city, your first city being your capital city. The unit that looks like it has a hammer over its head is a warrior, which is a unit that can help to explore lands, attack enemy units and cities, or defend your own units and cities. In the below comments, players discuss their plans that will ultimately change the nature of the way the empire works. 

In the very first turn of the game, the player can choose to settle the capital city where it is, or move it. The location has a lot of hills and fresh water to support production and a good economy, but does not have a lot of farmable land, and a capital city without food to grow it is generally a very weak capital. If the settler is moved away to the east, there may be more land that's farmable, but the capital would be unable to build a watermill which would help alleviate the problem with the lack of food. However, researching the technology to build a watermill would detract from being able to build world wonders such as Stonehenge, which would be a very necessary world wonder to build for this particular game. However, if the player decides to research toward Stonehenge, the player is not researching the technology for finding iron and building Roman Legions and Ballistas, which are very powerful for declaring war on other civilizations in the early BCE years. In that manner, players who play simulation games like this must learn what strategy is most cost-effective for playing the game comfortably. All of the strategy discussed by looking at the screenshot in the above link is amounted by only two things on the first turn: Where will the settler create the capital city and where will be warrior go? In the above link, you notice players already discussing differentiating plans for their empire despite that they all are looking at the same map. Exercise in visual rhetoric plays into these differentiating strategies by having different people look at the same map and come to different conclusions. As a result, the narrative of their game changes drastically from any other player's game.

Despite the fact that I do believe that students would learn a lot about infrastructure from SimCity and history from Civilization, I think that a good caveat that is lacking in the article is that a simulation game is created based on whatever the game developers feel is a good balance. Learning the terms and basic concepts from a simulation game is good for students, but I would encourage students to remember that those simulations do not necessarily display the best understanding of the real world's systems.

Massively Multiplayer Online Play

In Jonathan Alexander’s article “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation,” Alexander follows on my belief that video games offer several forms of literacy (at least 36, according to Paul Gee) and relates to World of Warcraft to develop his point (39) [3].

His most concise and interesting feature from the article is a table that lists five different types of literacies (Literary reflectivity, trans-literacies, collaborative writing, multicultural literacy, and critical literacy) found in World of Warcraft and then, later in the article, discusses how those five literacies can be used as tools for teachers to teach students using digital technology. Overall, I feel that it is a good article that shows how video games can develop various types of literacy.

Two types of literacies from Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games that I thought about when reading the article that were not mentioned would be political literacy and financial literacy. Financial literacy though the use of trades in any MMO is effective in teaching students basic supply and demand economics.

In the MMO Dark Age of Camelot, the most distinct feature of the game is the focus on a three-way war and its political literacy. King Constantine of Albion (England, essentially) has died and after his death, three eternal warring realms would fight each other over land and game bonuses. One side of the war is Albion (England). Another is Hibernia (essentially Ireland) and the third is Midgard (essentially an amalgamation of Scandinavian nations). With three warring realms, each realm is (theoretically) only 33% of the server’s population. In practice, the three-realm war concept often would provide one realm that was slightly more overpopulated than the other two, and sometimes the two lesser realms would put their differences aside and fight against the larger realm. Informal peace treaties, alliances, backstabbing, and other such politically ploys play out as an interesting part of the game and certainly offers an amateur idea of political literacy for a player.

I do believe that MMOs offer a lot of potential for students to develop literacies that they likely could not develop in a real-life situation. The basic structure is similar to simulation games.

Book versus Video Game

Ultimately, a book is not a video game. A video game is not a substitute for a book on most literary aspects, though I believe that a video game offers more potential literacies than a book can offer. Paul Gee’s blog post, “10 Truths About Books and What They Have to Do With Video Games,” sums up ten points that books and video games can have in common, but he also lists four points that distinguish the two mediums [4].

While I don’t agree wholly of his four distinguished points (most games are not multiplayer), he does sum up what video games do that books do not. Books are not problem-solving exercises. A book can challenge a reader intellectually but nothing in a book prevents a reader from progressing to any part of the book. One notable point he makes is that what video games do and books do not is that problems presented in a video game are solved based on the choices of the player and not entirely by an author.

Concluding Thoughts

I do not intend to have written anything that definitively says that a book or a video game is the better medium. In a vacuum though, I will concede that a book is more likely to offer an intellectual challenge than a video game. The exceptions are frankly dependent on the medium of content. A video game, if driven by content over problem-solving, can not only offer an effective story, but can deliver visuals exactly as the developer intended, and can offer an audio soundtrack as well. Video games can develop many forms of literacies by allowing students to physically manipulate, which simulation games and MMOs support. 

Students can develop their own stories through video games to help develop critical thinking skills and can offer new experiences. It’s not expected for a teacher developing literacy in students to know more about video game literacies over book literacies, but teachers should be encouraged to connect with their students through digital means, and video games certainly offer an option for that objective.

Sources
[1] Wallis, Alistair. "Playing Catch up: Gabriel Knight's Jane Jensen" Gamasutra. 17 May 2007. <http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/104930/Playing_Catch_Up_Gabriel_Knights_Jane_Jensen.php>. 1 April 2012.

[2] Gee, James Paul and Levine, Michael H. "Welcome to our Virtual Worlds." Educational Leadership Volume 66, No. 6. March 2009. <http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el200903_gee.pdf>. 1 April 2012.

[3] Alexander, Jonathan. "Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation." CCC 61:1. September 2009. <http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~tamoriarty/compresearch/alexander/CCC0611Gaming.pdf>. 1 April 2012.

[4] Gee, James Paul. "10 Truths About Books and What They Have to Do With Video Games." "James Paul Gee." 15 May 2011. <http://www.jamespaulgee.com/>. 1 April 2012.

A Look Into Digital Fluency

Pervasive Culture

"The more I grasp the pervasive influence of media on our children, the more I worry
about the media literacy gap in our nation’s educational curriculum.  We need a sustained K-12 media literacy program—something to teach kids not only how to use the media but how the media uses them.  Kids need to know how particular messages get crafted and why, what devices are used to hold their attention and what ideas are left out.  In a culture where media is pervasive and invasive, kids need to think critically about what they see, hear and read.  No child’s education can be complete without this." Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, 2006

In the above quote, Copps touches on the aspect that students are not learning to use the digital mediums that are effective and enveloping in their own culture. As we live in 2012 there are many forms of media that educate us in our lives that did not exist as early as 10 years ago. Students are as able to learn at their own fingertips at the computer as they are in a classroom. A large number of literary pieces exist on the Internet; the internet also has the inclusion of critical reviews, discussion boards, summaries, and analyses. The students can read all of these digital media at their own leisure and can absorb opinions of the media in the above sentence. Students should be encouraged to find these resources outside of the classroom by teachers.

I feel that I have written a lot for this class on the topic of students being encouraged to seek for sources outside of the classroom, but I really do believe that the classroom does not offer all of the opportunities for critical thinking that the digital world offers. As Copps notes in the quote I listed at the top paragraph, we live in a culture where avoiding media in our everyday lives is not entirely feasibly. Students need to discover through critical thinking what media is valuable, what is not valuable, and one thing that teachers can help students with is to direct them toward valuable media.


Crafting a Digital Piece

In Chapter 4 of The Digital Writing Workshop, Hicks produces discussion that narrows down points that I have felt are necessary for both literary and digital literacy. He does a fantastic job of bundling points down to "mode, audience, purpose, and situation" (MAPS) and examines how the craft of a digital piece of media can be as effective as literary media, though different rules apply to make the two media effective; MAPS for digital pieces are not crafted the way MAPS are crafted, but MAPS as a concept is important for both.

In our first discussion post threads, I made a short discussion about how digital media has rules. Anyone who has ever presented or watched a Powerpoint presentation knows that an effective presentation is clear and concise. A presentation that meanders around its message and fails to show its importance to the audience will lose the attention of the audience. An effective presentation attracts the viewer's attention. Powerpoint presentations also require a certain degree of simplicity. If a reader does not understand a piece of information in a book, the reader can take the time to research and understand the information. In a live presentation, if the viewer does not understand a premise in the presentation, then the viewer will not gain much insight from the rest of the presentation.


Understanding key concepts of making digital media engaging is as much a talent as understanding the key concepts of making literary media engaging.

My Speak & Read

 ***NOTE: I've realized that my entry for Feb. 22 never got published on here. I'll be writing another entry early this week as a result but I don't expect you to read/comment for both instead of just one***

A recurring theme I like to add this blog is that developing literacy through reading books is only one particular method of literacy. I myself was a late bloomer for both reading and speaking, and I did not understand how to write connect words with letters until I was four years old: a notably old age to understand how to read and to speak. The device for which my parents attribute my ability to read was a learning product from the 1980s called “Speak & Read.” It was a device that, among other features, had a mechanical voice that would say words and children would type out the words (which would say aloud the letters as they were written) that were being said by the machine.

You can find a limited simulation version of this device by following this link: http://www.speaknspell.co.uk/speaknspell.html

After using this device every day as a toddler, I began speaking and reading so much that I more than made up for the years that I didn’t speak nor read. My parents have said that everything just “clicked” once I was able master that device.

Students cannot be expected to all achieve at their highest abilities by only asking them to develop literacy in one style. Teaching exclusively with lectures helps many students, but not all will absorb the material equally. The same will be true with book discussion. Even in the digital world, teaching only with Powerpoint slides would capture the attention of a good portion of students, but not all. Variety in your teaching style will always be the best method of capturing the attention of the majority of students. Separate ways of approaching literacy will help to push them all to understanding more about a text.

In the spirit of discussing the use of digital information as a separate entity from books to develop literacy, I would like to focus an article called “The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling” by Bernard R. Robin that can be found here: http://digitalliteracyintheclassroom.pbworks.com/f/Educ-Uses-DS.pdf . In this article, Robin discusses how digital storytelling has “rules” not too unlike how book storytelling has “rules.”

As an introduction to his article, have you ever had to endure a painfully-presented Powerpoint presentation? There are “rules” to what makes a Powerpoint work and what makes them not work. In college I saw many Powerpoints that had the entire script of what the student or teacher wanted to say and then they would read off of the slides, leaving the audience to have to read along on the small text of the Powerpoint. Other Powerpoints I endured had scarcely any content and so the student did not recall the main points in which s/he intended to make in the Powerpoint; these particular Powerpoints were filled with ramblings that did not show insights that the student intended to show. Then there the Powerpoints that were aesthetically good but took so much time that the student did not have the audience in mind and added so many points that it became impossible to sort them in the brain.

When Robin discusses the educational uses of digital storytelling, I believe that he would agree to those “rules” of Powerpoint that I mention. In his Table 1, he lists seven elements of digital storytelling which include several applications to Powerpoints (I use Powerpoint as an example in this article because I believe that we all have watched or presented them before). One of his elements is the “Gift of your Voice.” One of the reasons that Powerpoints that only include text that the presenter reads off the slides are weak is because the speaker’s voice is not involved in the presentation. A speaker can provide a voice that transcends the presentation. The speaker’s voice can strengthen when discussing the main points. The speaker’s voice can help to relate the content of an educational Powerpoint to a personal anecdote to provide a stronger effect of the narrative. The speaker can even weave a joke into the presentation to help brighten the mood of the audience and to ease boredom or tension. “Pacing” is also one of the elements of digital storytelling that Robin writes in his article. The reason we give a time limit to presentations (or are provided them as presenters) is that—just like a book—a presentation must pace itself to be both informative and accessible. The presentation must provide the necessary content that it deserves, but the presentation cannot “overstay its welcome” either, so to speak. A presentation that is too long will have its audience mostly shut its brains downs waiting for the presentation to end rather and absorb the information that could have been useful.

I understand Robin’s article in the sense that teaching literacy through books and reading has rules and that teaching literacy through digital technology also has rules. My Speak & Read was not a book, but it had an electronic interface that made me understand how to read and write for the future. When we use technology in our classes, we should understand what sorts of teaching technologies work and question why they do work.

Gaming As the New Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Book

Video games. Over the years, we've heard them labeled as mindless activities. We've heard them labeled as a mind-rotting leisure. We've heard them labeled as toys for children. Lately, researchers have found that video games can have less of a negative effective on players than naysayers might think; video games can indeed be claimed to be a good way to develop literacy for young students as well.

In Immaculee Harushimana's August 2008 article in the Journal of Literacy and Technology, Literacy through Gaming: The Influence of Videogames on the Writings of High School Freshman Males (found here on the internet: http://www.literacyandtechnology.org/volume10/harushimana.pdf ), Harushimana discusses how several games go to great lengths to include a story that works as well as any book does, writing that "video games which involve intense reading activity [are] serious games, such as history-based and classical literature-based games" (41). He continues to discuss how games such as these do not just involve looking at a character and moving around, but also writes that the text and story in the game are also necessary bits of information to understand how to play these games. On page 50 of his article, Harushimana discusses how many video game characters are based off of classical heroes, which helps to explain to me why on page 44 male students were able to write stories based off of these characters and settings.

Many games-- not all games-- can manage to draft up a game with well-developed characters and a believable story. I think that one of the games that drove the idea of mixing video game elements and into a game that would have made a good novel would be Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight, an adventure game from 1993 that that was lauded for its focus on creating believable and real characters in a fantastical Gothic world in which players freely traverse in. If a video game can maintain believable characters and a story that has a natural and well-paced arc, how is the game any better or worse than a novel or film? Since video game characters have the option of moving or interacting with their environments as the player pleases, do you not feel as if games are a sort of "choose your own adventure" version of a novel or film?

In discussing how I feel that games work well as "choose your own adventure" media, I want to discuss this gaming article I ran across the other day which can be found online at http://elder-geek.com/2012/02/non-violent-skyrim-playthrough-results/ . Essentially, this article is about a gamer who chose to play a game that highly focuses largely on fighting monsters to advance the storyline. This player instead chose to take the exact same game and attempt to win it as a "pacifist," taking the time and effort to try not attack anything at all and still managed to beat the game which has a large emphasis on combating monsters and people in the game. I argue that this player's game narrative and experience can be viewed as a novel in itself. Is the story about this character who refused to get involved in combat when the game "tells" the character he must live a life of combat not as interesting and unique as the story of a character who plays the game with the intent to engage in combat?


I think that gamers are also creative and able to weave stories in a medium in which a story need not necessarily be told. A unique and creative story can be built from a strategy game such as Civilization V, a game about choosing a world leader and creating a civilization that will stand the test of time against adversity of other civilizations on a randomly-generated map. In this forum thread, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=397739 , a player writes a story that is written as a diary to show how Ramesses II began his own adventure. The diary is written on the forum as he plays the game and he shows screenshots of his progress so that readers can follow along with his choices in the game while reading his narrative.

I believe that we as teachers and writers would do a disservice to students to not consider video games as a form of weaving stories and learning literacy, grammar, characterization, and storytelling. In a world in which the Internet has helped to provide a plethora of sources for any sort of person to develop literacy through any means of media—be it books, films, video games, or anything else—we teachers need to at least consider jumping into the stories and narratives that students present to their teachers before dismissing certain mediums such as video games.