1	Video Games Changing the Day, One World at a Time
2	Session One Welcome! Who are you? Who am I? Impetus...
3	In This Session Gamer Myths Gamer Facts How Games Teach What Games Teach Addiction If not MotS, then What? Open Q&A Ask Questions! Session overlap = 50%
4	Romans 12 : 1 & 2 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Body, Spirit, and Mind Judging Worldviews is Good Pleasing God Requires a Transformed Mind
5	Gamer Myths “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in the place of exercise. Children now are tyrants...”
6	Gamer Myths The Stereotype A Dissociated Male Teen A Social Misfit A Shallow View of Women A Predilection for Violence
7	Gamer Facts 92% of American kids ages 2-17 have regular access to video games Sony Playstation is in 25% of US homes Americans spend more $ on video games than movies each year Americans spend more time playing video games than watching rented videos 50% of Americans play video games in one form or another 4 out of 10 PC gamers are women The largest single gamer demographic is middle-aged women playing online puzzle games. Half of all gamers play with other family members
8	Gamer Facts It’s true: male teens play video games. So does everyone else Gaming is cross-gender Gaming is cross-generational Just as likely to happen in a social setting as not What about the other claims?
9	Gamer Myths The Stereotype A Dissociated Male Teen A Social Misfit A Shallow View of Women A Predilection for Violence
10	Gamer Myths Are video games responsible for the rise in juvenile crime?
11	Gamer Myths “I’ve played Pac-Man all my life, and I don’t feel the need to eat little balls and listen to disco music.” - David Lang The most self-defeating rallying cry in all of history: “It’s just a game.”
12	Gamer Facts Studies Inconclusive Focus on short-term behavior effects Assessment problem But...
13	Gamer Facts There is no rise in juvenile crime. “Just as video games were pouring into American homes on the crest of the personal computer wave, juvenile violence began to plummet. Juvenile murder charges dropped by about two-thirds from 1993 to the end of the decade and shows no signs of going back up. The rate of violence in schools hasn’t increased either – it just gets more media coverage.” Lawrence Sherman Criminologist, U of PA
14	Gamer Facts Beck & Wade Gamers are Irritable Perfectionist? More honest? In any case, irritable != Columbine
15	Gamer Facts Do video games objectify women? Some do, some don’t Lack of alternatives = Temporary Problem not unique to this medium More in the next session
16	Gamer Myths Do video games turn gamers into social misfits? Opportunity Cost Heart of the Worry
17	Gamer Facts To honestly answer the opportunity cost question we need to: Understand what games teach Understand how games teach First “How?” then “What?”
18	How Games Teach Three Levels of Thought Frontal Lobe: Conscious A layer of intuitive, indirect, slower thought The Autonomic Nervous System Point: A good deal of our thought process doesn’t involve what we’d typically call “thought.”
19	How Games Teach Brains filter data They do it through pattern matching Point: A good deal of our thought process doesn’t involve the part of us we’d typically call “Me.”
20	How Games Teach Pattern Recognition Machines Running all the time Within and beneath conscious thought Endorphin pump association
21	How Games Teach Is the Biological Component of Learning Unsettling?
22	How Games Teach Pattern Matching...to what? Patterns come from two places: Hardwired (capacity for language) Embodied Experiences (Gee’s Bedroom)
23	How Games Teach Thinking rooted in embodied experiences implies: Thinking isn’t only mental Thinking isn’t even primarily mental
24	How Games Teach Thinking is Primarily Social Embodied experiences Rooted in a given culture Rooted in a set of affinity groups Interpretation of experience is guided
25	How Games Teach This model of cognition is in direct opposition to traditional Western thought. Knowledge is a set of Facts Facts are pure and disembodied Knowledge and the Knower are Independent
26	How Games Teach Every semiotic domain is literally embodied in a group of people who function together to define what fits and doesn’t fit in the domain. Fashion Physics Computer Science
27	How Games Teach The net result: Learning involves messing with your identity. We can be attracted to or repulsed by content based solely on our opinion of the dominant affinity group. Projective Identity flavors the content.
28	How Games Teach Projective Identity also imparts purpose (meaning) to a domain. Example: Tutoring inner-city kids.
29	How Games Teach Affinity Groups shape projective identity Affinity Groups also establish Appreciative Systems Can be wielded with evil intent Purpose is to educate new members
30	How Games Teach Weren’t we supposed to be talking about games? Games have discovered and affirmed all of this through: Improving Teaching Methods via ‘Successive Approximation’ Darwinian Survival of the Fittest in a Capitalist Market
31	How Games Teach Games are good teachers because: They provide a ‘psychosocial moratorium’ A space free from social pressure to perform A space with reduced consequences for failure This space is critical to some types of learning. Schools aren’t practice. If for no other reason, games are valuable because they provide this space in a world where it is otherwise unavailable.
32	How Games Teach Games are good teachers because: They keep players operating at the edge of their ‘regime of competence.’ In a classroom, usually: The advantaged are bored. The disadvantaged are frustrated. Games are good at adapting on-the-fly to skill level differences.
33	How Games Teach Games are good teachers because: They are fundamentally creative processes. Players must analyze a situation and formulate their own response. Their can be several ‘correct’ responses. Creative response is required. Creative interactivity encourages deep learning It requires active and critical thought about the domain space It leads to meta level thought about the domain as a whole and in relation to other domains “Encourage” is a key word. You can still choose to be a sponge. The point of this whole conference is to encourage you not to be a sponge.
34	How Games Teach Games are good teachers because: They reward tacit knowledge. Riding a bike versus listing its parts. Tacit knowledge can’t be learned apart from the experience. Tacit knowledge can’t be assessed apart from the experience. Schools, at best, ignore tacit knowledge. Schools, at worst, recognize but devalue it.
35	How Games Teach Games are good teachers because: They encourage ‘transfer’ This cross-domain thinking is usually considered a remarkable achievement. It happens in games all the time because: The space is safe to experiment in Designers know that players want their favorite solution styles to work Good designers know when they want a new solution response and solicit it intentionally
36	How Games Teach Games are good teachers because: They recognize the importance of projective identity. There are always three identities at play: The human player The game character The melding of the player and the character If I care about the character, I can be made to care about the things she cares about, and I can come to care about those things myself as well.
37	How Games Teach Games are good teachers because: They provide embodied experiences. Example: Civilization The ‘reality’ of life online
38	What Games Teach Being a good teacher doesn’t mean what you’re teaching is “Good.” There is assessable content in the traditional sense: Iron is better for bomb making than copper Elves are characterized by pointed ears and hubris It takes 3.5 travel from Stormwind to Ironforge by gryphon Some games still make the cut: Civilization SimCity Reader Rabbit But that’s an outdated way of thinking about knowledge.
39	What Games Teach James Paul Gee states the problem like this: “We always learn in connection with some semiotic domain. If we want to know if something is worth learning or if it’s a waste of time, we need to know what semiotic domain is being entered through this learning and if that domain is valuable.” Further: Is the learner [just] gaining the ability to read the domain or also to produce meaning in that domain? Are these good an valuable ways to experience the world? Is this a good or valuable affinity group to join? Is this domain connected to other valuable domains and groups? Is this domain encouraging critical learning – reflection on design spaces and their relationship to each other?
40	What Games Teach To answer these questions, let’s look at Beck & Wade’s survey: How gamers differ from non-gamers How these differences impact outlook and behavior in business Whether or not these differences are valuable to the domain
41	What Games Teach You are a hero. There’s something wrong with the world, but it can fixed. The world presents clear goals. Achieving those goals will benefit you personally and fix whatever is wrong with the world. You are guaranteed to be able to achieve those goals and you can do so through trial and error. Other people in the game are either in direct competition with you or can help you in some specific, structured way to meet your goals. You’ll have access to the resources you need when you need them unless you’ve squandered them. An opportunity without a quantifiable reward is a distraction. Unnecessary risk will hurt your chances of success. Repeated failure is expected. But if you get bored or frustrated beyond a level you feel is reasonable, you can blame the designers and abandon the mission.
42	What Games Teach Sounds like Fun! It’s Representational, not Descriptive Obviously not the real world This is only a bad thing if you: Presuppose being more real would be better Project what you want from other media Games and Novels e.g. have different goals Games simplify and provide embodied experiences.
43	What Games Teach Beck & Wade found out some interesting things about people who’ve spent a lot of time in worlds like that. Here are some: People who grew up gaming are 50% more likely to say “I am considered a deep expert in my work.” The more experience respondents had with games, the less likely they are to describe themselves as hard workers, but they still believe their performance will be better than average. Gamers believe that performing well matters. Gamers believe that winning matters. Every group in the game generation is more likely to believe that competition is the law of nature. But they care more about the organizations they work for than other groups do...not less. Odds are, the more you played games growing up, the more you care about the company you work for, no matter what your present age.
44	What Games Teach Gamers want to be skilled, they want to win, and they want to be real contributors to a team as they do so. Gamers are more likely to say “I prefer pay and bonuses based on actual performance rather than a set salary. Gamers understand intuitively that their personal success depends on adding value to the enterprise. The more time young professionals have spent playing video games, the more sociable they report themselves to be. The average member of the game generation is more likely to acknowledge that “I strive to be in control of the group.” Gamers tend to solve problems by successive approximation. The more time you spend playing games, the more likely you believe that things can be made better.
45	What Games Teach Got Game: by babyboomers in business for babyboomers in business In the final analysis: Game generation can come off arrogant, but: Our willingness to be judged based on our performance, And our ability to function well on teams... And our ability to function well on teams, Doesn’t jive with simple conceit. We: Believe in ourselves and are willing to bet real money on that belief. If it sounds like we don’t understand risk, they point out that we’ve had “thousands of hours of risk awareness training.”
46	What Games Teach On the game generation and teamwork: “...with teamwork as with other professional attitudes, the game generation seems to have somehow accumulated experience beyond their years...gamers come into the workforce already preferring leadership styles that corporations often spend years training for.” Why? “[They’ve had] hundreds of chances to work together in a structured setting, as opposed to just hanging our of talking about work. The art of working together is social, but it is far different from the unstructured sociability of interacting without a defined goal.”
47	What Games Teach But the most insightful comments I found involved the concept of heroism: “Boomer managers in typical organizations devote enormous energy to fine-tuning incentives, policies and management metrics. In large organizations, managers automatically assume that employees are profit maximizers; they will compete and cooperate in response to the incentives that managers provide. But heroes see incentives differently. It's not about money, it's not even really about being a hero. It’s about the experience of being a hero: of facing a challenge with real teeth, where the reward is partly service to some larger cause. Gamers will pursue incentives, but won’t be led by them."
48	What Games Teach Two more paraphrased asides on heroism from Beck & Wade: The idea that your performance matters to others is a fundamentally heroic belief. The hunger for challenge that requires your full attention is a hero’s desire.
49	What Games Teach This describes the power of: Identity play with Embodied experiences In a semiotic domain As a contributing member of an associated affinity group The game generation has this advanced knowledge because: Games are very effective at shaping our worldviews and cultural models They can do so without us being fully conscious that they’re doing it. I call this: Cool, and scary.
50	What Games Teach Worldviews and Cultural Models They’re Patterns of associations Built on embodied experiences Shaped by affinity groups They guide our behavior Beggar example
51	What Games Teach Games operate where these models are formed We enjoy seeing our cultural models reaffirmed, but games can do more: They can expose models we weren’t fully aware that we held They can challenge existing models (Sonic vs. Shadow) More on this line of thinking in the next session
52	What Games Teach A key place where our generation differs is in our view of Escape Is Escape: A sign of weakness or lack of ambition? A guilty pleasure? A survival need so ubiquitous that it seems odd to even question.
53	What Games Teach We’re getting used to having our endorphin fixes when and where we want them. Is that bad? Not necessarily. Can it be? Addiction...
54	What Games Teach What we’re not getting: Boredom training. Not a result of games themselves but of their availability. And the world isn’t keeping up: It can be dull and repetitive It can be seemingly purposeless It can be too hard and inflexible in its difficulty It can be seemingly patternless and unsolvable
55	What Games Teach Games can help us understand the world and the human condition. But they won’t make the world’s problems go away. They make as poor a savior as any other idol: They can addict you They can consume you They can blind you to the truth
56	What Games Teach Two powerful attractors: The ‘patternizing’ of the world The endorphin pump Like casting down any idol, the solution requires: A new understanding of who you are. And a social group that will support that. More on addiction privately
57	Conclusion Games shape you. Games availability and popularity shapes our whole generation. 4 out of 5 of us had significant game experience growing up Non-gamers will pick up attitudes and outlook from us. (Second-hand gaming?) The size of our generation will make this impact societal very soon. We already outnumber the babyboomers by 20%
58	Conclusion If played with your eyes and ears open, games can provide: Critical soul work at the cultural model level Transformational power at least as strong as other media Knowledge about a given semiotic domain that classroom work provides poorly if at all Masturbation of the soul?
59	Conclusion Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world The cultural models, the patterns of behavior, the appreciative systems that are not of Christ Be transformed by the renewing of your mind This isn’t just a mental transformation, but a social and behavioral one as well. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is Games are a tool, that in the hands of the right people, can help us understand God’s will.