Can Portal Lead To Better Educational Games?
Are educational games broken? Can Portal help fix them?
Speaking during a Rants session at the Games for Change conference in New York today, educators Scott Kirk (CEO, GameGurus) and Jodi Asbell-Clarke (Director, EdGE ) said perspectives like Valve's could help shed a light on the best way to make educational games more fun. Asbell-Clarke pointed to Portal's developer commentary as one of the most useful lessons she's found.
"It's magic," Asbell-Clarke said. "They're telling you why they built the pedagogy they did, what happened in the play-testing that gives you their level of learning... I've been an educator for 20 years, and I learned so much from that game."
Kirk talked about attending a UNICEF conference on education, noting that he was disappointed by the results.
"It was clear to me that the people trying to make fun games just weren't fun people," he said.
Although the pair didn't dish out any solutions to the longrunning dilemma of how to balance fun and education, they did tout the values of play-testing and other Portal-esque ideas.
Their final words of wisdom? "Make games that just don't suck."
(http://kotaku.com/5919745/can-portal-lead-to-better-educational-games)

'Valve has revealed Steam for Schools, a cool initiative that brings the joys of learning with Portal 2 to America's classrooms, at the Games For Change Festival. Steam For Schools, launching in a limited beta, will provide a limited Steam Client and a tailored version of Portal 2, along with the level editor and a workshop for hosting and organizing user-created levels. It will be free to teachers, who will have administrator access so that they can control what levels get shared.'
(http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/06/20/valve-reveals-portal-2-educational-program#.VSrCTvnF8g8)




The educational game I have chosen is the BBC Bitesize game 'State of Debate'. This is the description of the game:

State of Debate
It's the year 2020 and Just-Co have banned hoodies, and you've just been spotted wearing one. Can you talk your way out of trouble using your English Language skills?

This game is all about arguing your way out of problems using English skills. To me this doesn't seem either educational or fun. 
It's also filled with horrible acting and that is the whole game with just watching these clips then clicking the right choice then watching some other horrible scene
Political Game:

My task for the Political game is this
  • Play a political game.
  • Is it deliberately political Or TANGENTIALLY political? 
  • Is it fun? If not, why not. If it is fun, how does it achieve that engagement for the player? Does the game emphasise player agency?
  • What are the rules of the system? - what does the game allow you to do
  • Does it employ procedural rhetoric?
  • What do the rules mean in relation to the real world? - are the themes relateable
  • How do I feel in response to the rules of the game? Manipulated? Happy to engage? Why?
The game I have chosen to look at is one of my favorite 'Bioshock Infinte' as I feel there are alot of themes revolving around this subject such as racial segregation, religion and power.

 Breif synopsis of the game:
Set in 1912, the game has the protagonist, former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the floating air city of Columbia to find a young woman, Elizabeth, who has been held captive there for most of her life. Though Booker rescues Elizabeth, the two become involved with the city's warring factions: the nativist and elite Founders that rule Columbia and strive to keep its privileges for White Americans, and the Vox Populi, underground rebels representing the underclass of the city. During this conflict, Booker learns that Elizabeth possesses strange powers to manipulate "Tears" in the space-time continuum that ravage Columbia, and soon discovers her to be central to the city's dark secrets.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite)

Here are a few articles on Bioshock's political agenda:

Interview: Ken Levine on American history, racism in BioShock Infinite: "I've always believed that gamers were underestimated."

Evan Lahti

Dec 13, 2012


In between gathering good and ungood impressions of BioShock Infinite during my hands-on last week, I had a chance to talk with creative director Ken Levine about the game's interesting expression of American history and social issues like racism.
Along those lines, how do you think the experience of someone that isn't a US citizen playing BioShock Infinite will differ?
Levine: At the end of the day… It's hard for me to talk about where all that element is going in the game. Not the element of “the foreign element,” but the thematic elements you're talking about, where they're going. Because they may not be going where you think they're going. This may not be about, necessarily, what you think it's about. In the same way I really think BioShock wasn't truly about a critique of Objectivism. I think it was about something else....Then, when we sort of exposed the Vox Populi people, I saw a lot more left-leaning websites being like, “This is trying to tear down the labor movement!” I remember that I saw postings, unfortunately, on a white supremacist website, Stormfront, where people literally said, “The Jew Ken Levine is making a white-person-killing simulator.”
 In some ways it feels like Columbia , as a setting, lays bare the worst of American history. Do you or does BioShock have a cynical or a negative view of American history?
Ken Levine: As a student of American history, it is a much broader story than what's shown in Columbia, but I don't feel that it's the purpose of the game or the responsibility of the game to be a survey of American history. Certainly there are many things that are in Columbia that were very prevalent at the time, whether it's charismatic religious movements, whether it's a sense of growing nationalism—which was very present at the time...I realized, in BioShock, that we didn't have any minority characters. Well, we had a lot of Jewish, Eastern European Jewish characters, which probably comes from my background. Whether it's Ryan or Tenenbaum. And that game was suffused with the immigrant experience to some degree. But we didn't have African-American characters. We didn't have Chinese characters. It's very important to us that we diversify. Not because… I'm not like, “Oh, we have to have diversity because it was unrepresentative of reality, and I want to be representative of reality.” I wanted to be representative of reality, but that reality was a particular reality to a level that most people don't even understand. Most people don't know how Catholics were viewed in this country, or how the Irish were viewed in this country. They were viewed as… I use this term obviously not from myself, but at the time they were viewed as subhuman by some people. When we had our first Catholic president in 1960, many people thought he was going to be an operative of the Pope. He had to publicly proclaim that he wasn't. We're fortunate to grow up in a time where a lot of that is behind us. But this game wouldn't be honest if we didn't have that.
(http://www.pcgamer.com/bioshock-infinite-interview-ken-levine-racism-history/)
These are some of the in-game posters which show off the political topics and themes in the game which help set this environment in a believable world and somewhat grounded (although Columbia is a floating city) these small touches help push the story forward and are not in your face to the point of look at how racism and religion was perceived back then, the game gives you the option to absorb the harsh realities if you wanted too, or you could just run through the game shooting. 


-Player agency is where the player feels like they are making a difference and having an impact on the game -

  • Is it deliberately political Or TANGENTIALLY political? :
Bioshock infinite at it's core is about a game about the 2 characters Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth and how their relationship develops and grows going through these extreme circumstances, the racial themes are mainly in the background and help set the game in a time period and enrich the world and ground it yet it also shows the player the harsh realities of America back then,  these small touches help push the story forward and are not in your face to the point of look at how racism and religion was perceived back then, the game gives you the option to absorb the harsh realities if you wanted too, or you could just run through the game shooting. The main political reference that is deliberate is the main antagonist called Comstock who is worshipped as a messiah and he thinks of himself as a god, and the game touches on how power can corrupt and influence people's decisions, 'Shawn Robertson, the game's lead artist, stated that, despite the several themes the game would explore, the story in the end was not about them. Robertson explained that the themes were there to serve as a backdrop and to frame a "more human-sized" and emotionally resonant story about individuals. He went on to say that, while the "opera-sized story" and "the political turmoil" would serve as the background, the story was ultimately about Booker and Elizabeth.' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite)
  •  Is it fun? If not, why not. If it is fun, how does it achieve that engagement for the player? Does the game emphasise player agency?
The game is extremely fun the shooting mechanics are fluid and responsive and the guns feel great to shoot, on top of that the augmentations you gain throughout the game called 'Vigors' which give you supernatural powers which are extremely gratifying to use and have some amazing animations, the player agency comes in the terms of deciding how you want to fight whether it be just using your weapon or implementing combos with the vigors, or summoning defensive and offensive objects through 'tears' or being mobile and using the sky rails to your advantage. There are sections in the game which give the player an option but to my knowledge they don't have an impact on anything a part from the necklace Elizabeth would be wearing.
  • What are the rules of the system?
(Need to ask tutor about this question)
  • Does it employ procedural rhetoric?
Bioshock Infinite doesn't really employ this as the game is a first person shooter so you are placed in scenarios in which you must fight back or else you die and won't be able to progress through the game, yet there are sections in the game where you have the option to steal items and if you do alarms go off and you must fight a large number of enemies are you generally don't get anything worthwhile out of it. As well as one section where you can either ask for a ticket again or pull your gun on the woman, if you are polite and ask again the person (who is actually an enemy) stabs you in the hand and at the end of the section you have a cosmetic change for the rest of the game in the form of a bandage, whereas the other option means you wouldn't. I don't feel that this game forces you to do anything morally wrong as by playing the game you are progressing the narrative which in many ways is the core component of the game.
  • What do the rules mean in relation to the real world?
(Again need to ask my tutor about this question)
  • How do I feel in response to the rules of the game? Manipulated? Happy to engage? Why?
(Again need to ask my tutor about this question)


 TASK for Wednesday May 13th 
• Decide on a subject area: Educational, Political, or Artistic games 
• Research a reading list 
• Write an essay proposal of 250 - 500 words based around a specific question that your research so far suggests 
• Make reference to: what research resources you will use and why they are relevant 

 First I'm going to look into political games, It's going to be about a contrast with games that are attempting to put forward a viewpoint and I will look at the rules of the game and analysis the situations they put the player in as well how the mechanics of the game emphasis that. I will contrast these games with those that weren't deliberately meant to be polemic. I will then be able to explore the persuasive power of games.

 Political:

 Games attemping to put forward a viewpoint that I will look at

 Bioshock and Big Pharma (not released yet. but the idea and mechanics behind it are still valid and there a numerous videos showing the gameplay and developer diaries.)

 I will contrast those games against:

 Papers Please in which it was not designed to be a political and social commentary yet the situation the game puts the player shows how having to actual partake in the actions of the game suddenly bring to light the themes, And Civilisation 5 as it is not meant to be a political statement yet the acts you have to commit and the various ways in which you win could be seen as one.

 Reading list and research:
An interesting video which I will be using as reference for my essay as it has some compelling points about some of the games I chose and about politics in videos games in general.

Excerpts from the article: 
Tim Wicksteed is a British game-maker currently working on Big Pharma, a simulation game in the vein of Sim City, that challenges players to build and maintain a multinational pharmaceutical company. By basing the game on research, rather than his own opinion, Wicksteed hopes to provide an insight into this notoriously problematic industry.
“The more I read about pharmaceuticals, the more interesting stuff I have to work with,” says Wicksteed. “The real-life industry presents so many ideas that make good gameplay mechanics – it’s doing a lot of the design work for me.
As well as inspiring the mechanics of Big Pharma, Wicksteed’s research has made him mindful of bias. Rather than make sweeping judgments, his goal is to present the pharmaceutical trade as objectively as possible.
“When you put together the capitalist ideal – this is a business, businesses have to make money – with something as personal as creating drugs that save lives, there’s bound to be friction,” Wicksteed explains. “So decisions aren’t black and white. The pressure to make profit forces people into them.
(http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/10/computer-games-swap-shoot-em-ups-halo) - accessed 10/05/2015 - 
Excerpts from the article:
Wicksteed and team didn't set out expressly to "inform, empower and change" -- the idea was for a Tycoon style game, just an addition to the popular simulation genre. "I started out thinking 'a game about making drugs sounds cool!' But the more research I conduct and the more I learn about the industry, the more I feel a duty to make this game right," says Wicksteed, "to fairly portray both the people who work in this industry as well as those who are hurt by it."

According to Wicksteed, at the heart of Big Pharma, is the question, "are the goals of running a profitable business ethically compatible with the goal of making people healthy -- We don't try to answer the question, just ask it."
"Then you have the moral grey areas which result when you try to align the goals of running a profitable business with those of making people healthy," Wicksteed explains. "Life-saving drugs are shunned in favor of ones which treat (but importantly do not cure) chronic illnesses; companies are incentivized to simply copy their competitors and tweak the formulas rather than create new cures; and treatments for rich Westerners are prioritized over those sorely needed by the poorest communities around the world."
Wicksteed hopes the game gets people educated and thinking about the issues. "I'm trying to keep the game as neutral as possible. I want to make certain things possible and I want to represent the consequences of these things as realistically as I can," he says. "That way, players can explore the issues and make up their own mind about how one might ethically navigate this landscape."
(http://gamasutra.com/view/news/228463/New_social_issue_games_tackle_education_big_pharma.php) - accessed 10/05/2015 - 
Excerpts from the article:
Through all of the chaos of a collapsing city, Ryan’s assuring voice guides you along. Games have conditioned us to automatically trust what is being told, so long as it advances us toward the end. Like Ryan, we’re blind to outside influence. When it’s finally revealed by Ryan that we’re brainwashed, it’s too late to react. He has a hold on us; only then do we regret the habits that decades of video games have instilled in us. In this way, we’re lumped in with Rand; we accepted something without consideration. 

Bioshock asks the player to question the game, rather than follow it blindly out of habit. Like Rand, both the player and Ryan are guilty of the latter. Through the use of an interactive narrative, Bioshock made us examine the rules of video games much like people have questioned the ideas of Rand.

“I started to wonder, what happens when you start questioning yourself?” Levine said. “It becomes a set of accepted truths, instead of something you’re constantly using in the lab of reality.

Bioshock’s antagonist, Andrew Ryan, is known for his soothing voice and unpredictable nature. But past his surface features, allusions both obvious and subtle connect him to famed author Ayn Rand, creator of the objectivist philosophy.

Aside from the fact that Andrew Ryan’s name is a partial anagram of Ayn Rand, the duo’s beliefs mirror each other’s as well. Ryan’s looming bust gazes down on you as you arrive in Rapture. A banner sports the slogan, “No Gods Or Kings. Only Man.” As the story of Bioshock progresses, it becomes painstakingly clear that much of what happened to Rapture was due to the chaos resulting from Ryan’s ideals.  

(http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/12/06/social-commentary-in-bioshock.aspx) - accessed 10/05/2015 - 
Excerpts from the article:

VIDEO GAMES: THE NEW LITERATURE
When BioShock hit, it was met with both high game review scores and a level of intellectual fascination that surprised even Levine.
“We joke that everyone should have known that a game about a pseudo-objectivist dystopia would be a huge hit,” he said. “My initial goal for BioShock was to create an environment that people could buy into and to have a level of detail that you just don’t see in games now. We have an opportunity to have players pull content out of the game rather than to push it at them.”
But in wrapping their world around questions of morality and philosophy, Levine and his team managed to do something else, they managed to spark in some players the desire to, like Levine, step back from their beliefs, their ideologies and study them from afar.
“I like that people walk away with different interpretations,” he said. “We weren’t creating a polemic, we were creating a piece of art that has different meanings to different people.
“We were trying to ask questions more than answer them.”
While the game can certainly be viewed as an attack on objectivism, despite Levine’s intent, Brook says he really doesn’t have a problem with it, or with the idea of the medium of video games taking on the challenge of dealing with an issue as complex as Rand’s philosophy.
“I don’t see a problem with the medium,” he said. “I think it is potentially a very exciting medium with which to introduce people to ideas. I think video games replaces much of literature’s impact. The literature today is dull and boring and video games allow kids to experience the heroism that the books don’t provide them.
“Who knows where the medium is going I think that’s one of the exciting things about video games and technology. I think it will be interesting to see what kind of issues they take on.”
(http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/02/no_gods_or_kings_objectivism_in_bioshock-2/) - accessed 10/05/2015 - 
Excerpts from the article:
Naturally, people who complain about not wanting politics in their games are probably not genocidal racist maniacs, but they probably are boring. It’s indicative of a fear of being challenged, and a desire to impose your own worldview. Without politics, Bioshock is pretty much just an underwater shooter. Papers, Please is just a paperwork simulator. I don't quite subscribe to the notion that all art is political by default - it's fun to theorise about the political situation of the Mario universe, but it's also nonsense. But the extremely obvious fact is that political themes often greatly enrich a story, and sometimes give it thought-provoking real-world context that gives it an intellectual life and vibrancy outside the confines of the game (or book, or painting) itself.
(http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/03/23/why-everyone-should-want-politics-in-their-video-games) - accessed 10/05/2015 - 
I will use some books as well to further my research
The Art of Videogames by Grant Tavinor
Quotes from the book:
‘Videogames are also increasingly morally aware. Having often been the subject of ethical criticism, gaming is now showing signs of taking itself seriously as an art form with moral implications.’

‘A position where they cannot help but ponder the morality of their actions.’

‘In a long list of games such as Bioshock….though narrative is scripted, the player has an important role in discovering the facts of the narrative through their interaction.’

‘Sometimes, untrustworthy sources of information are integrated into these narratives of disclosure, further complicating the player’s ability to reconstruct a coherent game narrative, and indeed making their contribution to the narrative more robust by allowing them to resist the narrative that is being fed to them.’

‘The view of the world that is disclosed to the player, is eventually revealed to be a dissemblance.’

‘The game’s narrative is about freewill and morality: how we control our own actions and those of others, and how we resist the control of other people with our own (hopefully, better) judgement.’

‘The Little Sisters are moral locus of Bioshock.’

‘The little girls most effectively and sentimentally manipulate our emotions of sympathy and care.’

‘Videogames hope to express a morally serious point of view.’

‘Morally reflexive in a way fitting with the arguments of cognitive moralism.’ 

Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames by Ian Bogost
Quotes from the book:
‘Procedural rhetoric, then is a practice of using processes persuasively. More specifically, procedural rhetoric is the practice of persuading through processes in general and computational processes in particular…so procedural rhetoric is useful for both the programmer and the user, the game designer and the player.’

‘Procedural rhetoric is a technique for making arguments with computational systems and for unpacking computational arguments others have created.’

‘Just as photography, motion graphics, moving images, illustrations have become persuasive in contemporary society, so have computer hardware, software, and videogames.’

‘Procedural rhetorics afford a new and promising way to make claims about how things work.’

‘Videogames are often interactive…as such they provide particularly promising opportunities for the procedural translation of rhetorical devices like enthymeme.’

‘Interactivity guarantees neither meaningful expression nor meaningful persuasion, but it sets the stage for both. Sid Meier, designer of Civilisation, has argued that gameplay is “a series of interesting choices.”

‘Procedural rhetoric might be deployed in such games, but more often persuasion is accomplished through more basic appeals to addiction and reinforcement.’

‘If persuasive games are videogames that mount meaningful procedural rhetorics, and if procedural rhetorics facilitate dialectical interrogation of process-based claims about how real-world processes do, could, or should work, then persuasive games can also make claims that speak past or against the fixed worldviews of institutions like governments or corporations.’

‘Using procedural rhetoric to support or challenge our understanding of the way things in the world do or should work. Such games can be produced for a variety of purposes, be they entertainment, education, activism, or a combination of these and others.’

‘Many games carry messages, make arguments, and attempt meaningful expression.’

‘When we interrogate political issues as procedural systems – as emergent outcomes of interconnected, independent rules of cultural behaviour – we can gain a unique perspective on such problems.’

‘Procedural representations of political processes also engender expression rather than prediction or validation. Procedural rhetorics in political videogames make claims about the particular interrelations between political processes, why they work, why they don’t work, or how society might benefit by changing the rules.’

‘One popular genre of commercial videogames offers procedural representations of history, a field grounded in similar material and social conditions as politics. These games create representations of casual factors that shaped either particular historical events or the general progression of human history. Some of those games serve as explicit political commentaries while others do so implicitly.’

‘In Civilisation, material and technological innovation enables civic and military dominance, which the player must exercise to progress through history effectively.’


How to do things with Videogames by Ian Bogost
Quotes from the book:
‘We can understand the relevance of a medium by looking at the variety of things it does.’

‘Understanding the properties of a medium does help us better comprehend their nature and their implications.’

‘Games are models of experiences rather than textual descriptions or visual depictions of them. When we play games, we operate those models, our actions constrained by their rules.’

‘Videogames are a medium that lets us play a role within the constraints of a model world. And unlike playground games or board games, videogames are computational, so the model worlds and sets of rules the produce can be far more complex.’

‘Serious games claim to offer an alternative: games that can be used “outside entertainment” in education, health care, or corporate training.’