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Conducting research in MMOGs

A new book has been released by MIT Press, Digital Culture, Play, and Identity A World of Warcraft® Reader.  I’m looking forward to getting a copy of this for two reasons. First, I’ve struggled with the balance of being a researcher and a gamer. Up until now, I’ve been unable to legitimate extensive game play as part of my agenda. With the introduction of this text, it should be easier to do so. Second, the notion of spending extensive time in WoW has been daunting, again, as I try to justify it as part of my responsibilities as a scholar. As with writing this blog, it has been a cautious effort, making sure that other responsibilities do not get delayed or sidelined in favor if this yet to be sanctioned activity.

2008 05 16 michael a evans Announcement Comments (0) Permalink

Rock Band: Learning to Drum

Since this is a blog, and thus by definition a bit informal, I’m going to indulge in touch of personal reflection. Don’t worry, I’ll be back on-topic by the end of the post.

Over the years I’ve flirted with trying to learn to play the drums. I’d always wanted to do something musical. Guitar didn’t appealed to me because in high school it seemed like everyone was trying to play the guitar (with varying levels of success). Oh and my younger brother is an incredibly talented jazz guitarist, and the thought of being compared with him isn’t exactly the most motivating thing in the world. My most serious musical attempts to date have mostly been focused on the drums. I’ve got a pretty nice MIDI drum unit as well as a djembe that I’ve played with some, but I’ve never been able to stick with them for very long. With the MIDI drum kit I had a catch-22: they were only really interesting when I was playing with other people, which made it difficult to get my skills up to where I could play with other people. I know that lots of drummers will play along with CDs to practice, but that leads me to my second problem: I wasn’t able to identify songs of an appropriate difficulty. The djembe was even worse because it was even harder to tell where to begin. I got to where I could keep a steady beat, but couldn’t really get beyond that.

Cut to last fall when I discovered Guitar Hero. Playing that game undeniably requires a good bit of skill; unfortunately that skill doesn’t transfer to a real guitar because the controller is so different and simplified. The game was fun though. It provided the feedback, scaffolding, and rewards that I needed to stick with it and improve my skills…
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2008 03 12 Marshall Chaney Learn
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Gary Gygax Passes Away

In 1974, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson wrote the original rules for Dungeons & Dragons. Until that point most tabletop games were about direct head-to-head competition between players. D&D instead cast the majority of the players as individual members of an adventuring group who collaborate to explore, fight monsters, and find treasure. One player takes the role of Dungeon Master (or Game Master for a more broadly-applicable term) and is in charge of creating and presenting the setting, obstacles, monsters, and other antagonists. Over the years Dungeons & Dragons has given rise to several new editions and hundreds of other roleplaying games enjoyed by groups of people all over the world. Some groups focus on the mathematical systems and defeating the challenge posed by the GM; some use the framework as a collaborative storytelling engine; most groups fall somewhere in-between.

Gygax’s legacy extends well beyond the modern day descendants of the fireside storyteller. Dungeons & Dragons had a strong influence on the development of video games. Games such as Rogue, Nethack, Ultima, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Knights of the Old Republic, Oblivion, and Mass Effect started as direct attempts to translate the D&D experience to the computer. MUD 1 similarly translated much of the multi-player aspects of D&D, and has given rise to such games as Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft.

This morning, March the 4th, 2008, Gary Gygax passed away in his home in Wisconsin. His legacy reaches far beyond the little game he created so long ago. Many of the qualities of video games that make them exciting for educators: immersion, exploration, collaboration, and characterization, are the ones that trace their lineage back to Dungeons & Dragons. This web site is but one among many dedicated to exploring the potential for teaching and learning with games. As we look to the future at the challenges and opportunities, it’s only right that we acknowledge the contributions and influences of those who set the stage.

2008 03 04 Marshall Chaney Learn
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Guitar Hero for Real Guitars?

I just stumbled across something called Guitar Rising. It’s basically the idea that everyone knew was coming sooner or later: an attempt to use a Guitar Hero-like game to teach real guitar.

I’m not sold on their approach though. They’ve got 6 lines, one for each of the strings. So far so good. Notes scroll along the neck of the guitar and you play then when they cross the marker line, just like Guitar Hero/generic random rhythm game. For the frets they’ve put a number in each dot.

I’ve got a number of issues with their approach. First of all, Guitar Hero works because the guitar controller has a 1-dimensional interface: 5 buttons all in a line. On the two-dimensional screen, GH uses the horizontal axis for the buttons and the vertical axis for time.

A real guitar on the other hand has a 2-dimensional interface: the six strings on one axis and the frets on the other. There’s also the issue of each hand interacting with the strings in a different way, but even if we just concentrate on the fret hand Guitar Rising still has some issues. For one thing, the visuals are counter-productive and actually work against effective instruction. On screen, the horizontal axis is used for time, but its orientation and the graphics used make it look like the frets on the guitar. The player/learner has to overcome the graphical cues to get at the actual information. That’s not how graphics are supposed to work; they’re supposed to help with understanding, not get in the way.

Another issue I’ve got is with the use of numbers to indicate the fret on the guitar. It might work, but my initial opinion is that reading the numbers on the fly is too much of a mental load on top of everything else. I wouldn’t be surprised if successful learners/players end up having to completely memorize the fingerings ahead of time. Guitar Hero works so well in part because it doesn’t demand much from the brain in the way of interpreting symbols. Position reinforced with color for button, dots are critical, dots with lines are important but less so, and the glowing dots mean something but you don’t have to deal with that until you’re ready. Reading the numbers and then mapping them to the fret on the guitar could be a problem.

I don’t think the color is used as well as it could be either. Right now it’s like Guitar Hero where the strings are represented by both on-screen position and by color. So we have the strings presented quite strongly, with the frets being left as a number that’s easy to lose among the rest of the visuals. Even if they made no other changes, they really ought to tie color to the fret. Position alone is probably strong enough for the strings; it’s good enough for me in Guitar Hero while Star Power is active. Using color for the frets could help their presentation quite a bit.

And how the heck are you supposed to activate Star Power on a real guitar?

2008 02 08 Marshall Chaney Design
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Multimodal interaction - touch & gesture

Just recently, our research group was notified that we had been awarded a grant to build a prototype tangible interaction interface for geometry instruction for early elementary learners. When I share this idea with others, it still raises eyebrows as to what I’m talking about. Well, now that the Apple iPhone and iTouch, and Microsoft Surface Computing, have increasingly become recognizable to larger audiences, it seems the time has come for this idea.

A recent article in ComputerWorld provides a satisfying overview of this new era of interaction with computers and digital information. An excerpt from the article illustrates a connection between work among our group and the larger research community:

Pradeep Khosla, professor of electrical and computer engineering and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says touch technology will proliferate, but not by itself. “When we talk face to face, I make eye gestures, face gestures, hand gestures, and somehow you interpret them all to understand what I am saying. I think that’s where we are headed,” he says. “There is room for all these things, and multimodal gestures will be the future.”

What makes our research distinct, then, is that we are also examining the integral role of gesture in problem solving and learning. Thus, our investigation attempts to analyze how talk, gesture, and interaction with physical and virtual devices differently mediate geometric sense making of young learners. Hopefully, this will provide insights into the design of future learning technologies for the classroom and elsewhere.

Full article: Give your computer the finger: Touch-screen tech comes of age

2008 02 03 michael a evans Announcement Comments (0) Permalink

Aesthetics & anthropology of games & virtual worlds

Two highly-regarded books on games and virtual worlds have been released into the public domain. If you are at all serious about research and development of educational games, then you should have these on your bookshelf (or at least a folder on your hard drive):

If you do begin to read these books, for leisure or scholarship, please share your impressions, comments, and critiques.

2008 01 22 michael a evans Design
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Game communities as communities of learning.

I was playing World of Warcraft with a group of friends and we decided to try and kill a difficult enemy that we had never managed to beat before. The Mac version has a built-in video capture function, so I started recording our attempts so we could have a “home video” of sorts if we actually managed to win. My roommate was in the group and he started capturing a feed on his machine. Since I had two camera angles I fired up Final Cut Pro and started cutting them together to make them look nice. While I was at it I started adding comments that explained what we were doing and why, so that other members of our guild could see how we’d done it. When I was about halfway through I had an epiphany. I remembered an assignment I had in Dr. Potter’s class last semester:

Using Camtasia or another video capture software, make a video that teaches the viewer how to perform a moderately complex skill with a computer program.

The video I made would have satisfied the requirements of that assignment. But that wasn’t what I had set out to do; I was just participating in the community and wasn’t thinking about school at all. These sorts of videos are actually fairly common in the WoW community (though I do think mine is one of the few that uses more than one angle, and I think I did a darn good job overall compared to a lot of them that are out there).

The video itself can be seen here:

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2008 01 21 Marshall Chaney Learn
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Can knowledge and skills from games be transferred?

One of the most pressing questions for educators who explore the possibilities of digital games for teaching and learning is whether knowledge and skills learned “in game” can be transferred to external contexts. A recent incident in North Carolina provides anecdotal evidence that the answer is, “Yes, knowledge and skills learned ‘in game’ are transferable.”

A recent post on the America’s Army community pages details an incident where a frequent player of the online game was able to apply his knowledge and skills to a real-life critical incident:

A longtime America’s Army player became a first responder at a tragic car accident last November by employing life saving techniques he learned by playing the America’s Army game. Twenty-eight year old Paxton Galvanek was able to evaluate and treat the victims at the scene. Paxton credited the combat medic training he completed in the popular America’s Army online PC game with teaching him the critical skills he needed to react appropriately in this crisis situation. This is the second time an America’s Army player has reported successfully using medical skills learned through playing the game to respond in a life-threatening situation.

The rest of the story can be found here.

Of course, this is a single, anecdotal incident that requires more thorough analysis from a learning science perspective. Nevertheless, it is an intriguing story that should provide impetus for further investigation.

2008 01 21 michael a evans Learn Comments (1) Permalink

The ReDistricting Game

One of the requirements for my class on digital game-based learning (DGBL) is to have teams of students storyboard a game design. Part of the analysis process involves scanning the environment to see what titles currently exist that either serve a similar purpose or achieve similar goals. The ReDistricting Game should definitely be one game for folks to examine.

What impresses me about the game (at least on face validity) is the content, design, and ancillary features to support creation and maintenance of a community through dialouge. The content focuses around the principles and effects of redistricting on the electoral process. By providing this content in a game format, it appears the designers have succeeded in balancing fun and learning - a very difficult task as we are discovering on class. The visual design appears appropriate given the game is delivered through the browser, which certainly placed restrictions on graphical elements. Finally, although this portion does not look to be as successful as it should, the game has a forum by which players and other interested parties can carry on conversations and discussions about the game. Overall, the game pulls together three important aspects critical in game design for education - content, interface/interaction design, and communication channels.

The ReDistricting Game was created by the USC Game Innovation Lab, what looks to be a very impressive operation.

2008 01 17 michael a evans Design Comments (0) Permalink

Rise of the Video Game

Though I’m a little late getting this out, the five-part series started in late November, there’s still time to catch the last two episodes of an informative and well-produced program on the Discovery Channel: Rise of the Video Game.

Episode 4 dealt with the move toward 3D graphics and the wide adoption of video games for training and recruitment, especially (and not surprising) by the U.S. Army. Episode 5, which examines the impact of the internet on gaming to allow for MUDs and MOOS, should be equally of interest to thoe taking my educational gaming course in the spring 2008.

There’s a real good chance I’m going to get a copy of the series to show in class. So, don’t get too disappointed if you can’t catch an episode before the semester ends.

2007 12 13 michael a evans Watch Comments (0) Permalink