Godzilla Play
I find urban planning and architecture difficult subjects for the layman to engage with, with their complex maths, etc. However if it were a question of how Godzilla could best destroy a model of Tokyo, then key questions of architecture and urban design become problems I’m keen to solve. In exploring the environment and processing the knowledge of Tokyo city structures and design as ‘Godzilla’ I am absorbed by questions of the design and value of buildings, how to negotiate the city-scape in a way that yields best results, etc.
As I imagine a model of Tokyo and picture Godzilla smashing through this building, or stomping on this car and picking up that train carriage to discard over a group of fleeing people below I’m thinking my way through issues of architecture and design (what buildings have a symbolic value that will deliver the highest impact to Godzilla’s destruction), but as well as learning about other areas of knowledge I am also enjoying the process of ‘playing Godzilla’. Of drawing upon my knowledge of watching tons of Godzilla films, reflecting on their conventions and textual aspects to then put in motion here.
If it were only about learning the history and value of Tokyo architecture I would probably be less engaged with this model. But if it’s foremost about ‘playing Godzilla’ and through an ’Affinity Space’ (Gee) needing to process knowledge through exploring the environment and practices of ‘Godzilla play’ then I think we have a very deep and engaged learning space which can generate a type of creativity and engagement textbooks struggle to achieve. Or at least an engaging way to think about cities, architecture and buildings. A quick search through youtube yielded a number of hits showing how architecture students ‘play Godzilla’ on their own models. The first one from Melbourne even asks “why study architecture?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWJHWHCHDI4
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Tags: Godzilla, play
Playing a video game
What happens when I play a game? What mode of practice do I switch into as I try to play through a game like Rock Band or Civ IV? When I get home from work and choose to play a video game I am going to have to engage and think my way through the game to win, or progress in it. Clearly spending an hour or so a night playing a game means I have some deep motivation in doing this. I’m willing to learn the rules, grind through aspects of the game play because there’s a purpose or goal in the game which matters to me. I am fully engaged in the moment of the game in ways that only playing something you like can really deliver. The game is testing and challenging my problem-solving, I’m exploring the environment of the game and processing the knowledge that it present me so I can figure out how the game works and how I can progress through it. Jenkins (et al) argues that there is a type of scientific process in the act of gaming:
“Games follow something akin to the scientific process. Players are asked to make their own discoveries and then apply what they learn to new contexts. No sooner does a player enter a game than he or she begins by identifying core conditions and looking for problems that must be addressed. On the basis of the available information, the player poses a certain hypothesis about how the world works and the best ways of bringing its properties under their control. The player tests and refines that hypothesis through actions in the game, which either fail or succeed. The player refines the model of the world as he or she goes. More sophisticated games allow the person to do something more, to experiment with the properties of the world, framing new possibilities, which involves manipulating relevant variables and seeing what happens. Meta-gaming, the discourse that surrounds games, provides a context for players to reflect on and articulate what they have learned through the game.” (Jenkins etal 24)
I think this is a great overview of the value of looking at the practice which happens as people game. Seeing it as having a real value, rather than justifying games through using them as a tool to learn about something else. Here the process of gaming itself has value and significance.
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Tags: play, video game
Affinity spaces and pop culture
I’ve enjoyed investigating moments where fans have sidesteped the official tourist book or school textbook and instead turned to pop culture to understand the spaces and practices around them.
The concept of play to experiment and explore the spaces around you. Maybe an enthusiasm for popular culture may be a very effective way to foster deep knowledge and practice in an area (history, geography etc). I’m thinking here about the significance of Godzilla in giving fans a knowledge about Japanese geography and archetecture, or Japanese anime giving Japanese tourists a way of creating engagement with foreign locations they visit.
These pop culture texts create very engaging worlds that fans can feel an emotional connection to. Gee (2004) uses the term Affinity Spaces to describe the commitment and engagement fans can have through a shared interest in pop culture. He outlines the following advantages of an affinity space for learning over more traditional spaces of learning:
- it’s sustained by a common endevour that bridges boundaries
- people can participate how little or much they wish
- limited barrier to entry
- can constantly learn new skills or refine existing
An interest in Japanese anime and manga, Godzilla films, samurai TV shows, may foster better participation and engagement in geogrpah, history, cultural difference, etc. Recognising the importance of this pop culture and how it is used will show some of the benefits pop culture can give – it may show the platforms that exist for voices to be heard that are useually marginalised – non-English speaking tourists, children, etc and a way to understand how they perceive the world around them.
Of course it is important to explore these pop culture texts more deeply and ask what commercial, historical, social and cultural forces frame the product we engage with, and what is left out of these texts as much as what is present.
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Digital immigrant
Mark Prensky’s article ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants‘ makes some interesting points about generational shifts around thinking and practice caused by digital technology.
He refers to the impact of digital tech as a singularity which has produced today’s digital native generation. A gernation born into the internet, video games, mobile phones and social networks.
One of the key challenges Prensky identifies is that facing teachers today in bridging their pre-digital knolwedge and practices with that of the students they teach. He emphasises the advantages of video games as a perfect teaching tool today. He sees video games as a great way to teach old things in a new way.
Presky argues there are two types of content that can be taught today – ‘legacy’ and ‘future’ content. Legacy content is the classic education elements of reading, writing, arithmatic etc of a traditional education. the future content covers issues of ethics, politics, sociology, language and semiotics, etc. Presky argues there must be a way to teach both legacy and future content in an engaging way to today’s students. This is where Presky sees video games being an invaluable tool. He refers to Pokemon monster memorisation and its possibilities for geography and learning countries, etc and other egs.
This has me thinking about how the games I play may provide a practice/knowledge framework for understanding legacy and future content. Eg: music games and celebrity culture/recording industry dynamics. What about first person shooters like Far Cry or Bioshock? I like the idea of Pokemon and geography. The Resident Evil 5 controversy around racism, Modern Warfare 2 and queer culture?
Or alternatively, looking at how fans or commentators on games are using them in ways that already intersect with legacy and future content. As other theorists have pointed out, fans can make theory themselves – it is not the exclusive domain of academics. A more parallel, horizontal type of teaching/research can yield amazing insights and data. So, what examples are there that show some of these Digital Immigrant/Digital Native crossover, or Legacy/future content emerging from game play (not explecitly designed to be edutainment)?
It may be in this space of parallel, horizontal relationship between generations, researcher-participant, parent and child that Jenkins ideal of a digital multiculturalism could replace the more devisive assumptions of the native/immigrant binary.
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Tags: digital, video game, youth
Fan Practice
Do fans of a TV show or any other type of pop culture interest have a particular set of practices that define them? What skills could we say they have? Is there a general type of fan practice out there today?
One place to start is Henry Jenkins, drawing upon Levy’s Collective Intelligence idea Jenkins points out three trends in new media useage which might have some overlap with the idea of fan practice today. These trends are:
1. new media tools enable users to archive, annotate, appropriate, and rearticulate media content
2. DIY subcultures promote a particular culture of using new media
3. Media industries actively engage with media audiences/users and encourage the flow of ideas, images, and narrative across multiple media channels and platforms (link to transmedia).
I think fans do the following: archive, annotate, appropriate, and rearticulate media content. And there may be a DIY practice here – tutoring others in knowledge, non-professionals, etc.
I wonder if there is a particular type of fan practice that is able to re-imagine locations around them based on their favourite pop culture texts. For example seeing their city as an exciting city centre through Grand Theft Auto, or imagining giant monsters lurking in the local river or bay ala ”The Host”? What types of collision would these appropriations create between the local history and fan practices?
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I’ve become an enormous fan of CivIV after getting back into the Civ game through playing it on PS3 (then DSlite). Now I’m playing on PC and have worked my way through the game to play the Beyond the Sword addition. I’m loving it, after being a huge fan of it way back in the early 90s when I played the very first Civ game on PC. Apart from enjoying the scope and depth of the game as you build your empire and negotiate the other civs I’ve found many overlaps with the theories and ideas I’m working through in Media and Communications studies. I’m currently reading Benkler’s ‘wealth of networks’ and finding that I can get my head around some of his more complex categories of market and nonmarket knowledge production through drawing upon my fascination with CivIV’s game mechanics.
For instance the ideal-type information production strategies Benkler identifies (from Romantic Maximizers , Michey’s to Joe Einstein’s) reminds me of the civics and leader traits, both define how actions, agendas, and benefits are organised around certain preferences and traits. If you understand how these work, you’ll be able to ‘game’ the systems – eg: look for exploits, look for winning strategies, appreciate context, etc.
I’ve also got to admit that being a scholar whose always been more interested in cultural studies, audience theory and reception issues I’ve always felt a little bit prejudiced against the empirical social science methods such as Political Economy. But I’m beginning to see that my enjoyment of getting into the deeper mechanics of CivIV (exploring FAQs and guides for successful city maintenance, warmongerring, great people produciton, etc) is based on a similar empirical scrutinty that lies within Pol Eco. What further insights that benefit both work and pleasure await?
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Tags: CivIV, political economy, video gaming
A google search
One of the aspects of searching online I’m fascinated by is the ability to drill down deep into a variety of perspectives around a topic or idea through the results I get. I’m always surprised at the variety of sources which appear and the different agendas and biases they have. Benkler nicely articulates this point here:
“One needs only to run a Google search on any subject of interest to see how the “information good” that is the response to one’s query is produced by the coordinate effects of the uncoordinated actions of a wide and diverse range of individuals and organizations acting on a wide range of motivations – both market and nonmarket, state-based and nonstate.”
Google’s ‘information good’ is helped by the efforts of a large enough ciritical mass of content and coordinators – and I am reminded of this by the “image labeler” game in google. In this game you label images on the internet with a fellow labeller to create a type of peer-review system of accuracy. It’s worth checking out if you’re not aware of it.
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How the world might be
Benkler, in his book The Wealth of Networks, talks about a battle occuring today over how we make information, knowledge and culture betwen nonmarket interests vs the established industrial information economy. The consequence of this battle may be dramatic and long lasting. As Benkler says,
“How these battles turn out over the next decade or so will likely have a significant effect on how we come to know what is going on in the world we occupy, and to what extent and in what forms we will be able – as autonomous individuals, as citizens, and as participants in cultures and communities – to affect how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be.”
I think this quote nicely captures some of the key aspects of symblic power being contested today through issues like copyright, domain name cybersquatting, etc. That is, the new stakeholders (prosumers, produsers, pro-ams, user-generated content, etc) are challenging the current hierarchy of media production and distribution. One of the implications is that it may give voice to Couldry’s concerns about making explicit the self-appointed power of mainstream commercial media players (the newspapers, current affairs TV shows, etc) the right to frame and define issues and the world around us (particularly that which we don’t have any first-hand knowledge of).
I particularly like the last part of the quote: “how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be.” As it is, and how it might be. Realistic, but still optimistic and maybe a little idealistic.
Are there recent examples of this battle and how it shows the world as it is and might be? The favourite I’ve found recently was the manga/steam punk/state library mash-up I was involved with last year, check out the great photos posted here, and further research to follow.
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Who?
Here are some basic Journalistic questions about my approach to video games that could do with further understanding:
Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? So What?
If we take as the beginning of this analysis of video games an interest to draw upon local strengths (that is, things close to my physical location in Tas or Australia – so that it is reasonaly easy to secure interviews, data, etc), and communities and networks one is already tapped into (academic, social, etc) then what are some of the frameworks that we can set up?
If we just take the first of these, ‘Who,’ what can we begind to say?
The initial question cuold be “Who are active participants in the local Tasmanian video game community?” Is there a regional aspect here that this addresses, or can one still make extensions from the Hobart scene that could be extrapolated to any urban, developed setting?
There are game consumers, produsers, and producers (eg: Adam Walker Productions – Indie production based in Hobart?). There are good projects to consider around audiences and producers.
There are MMORPG gamers such as WoW players, there are gamers of ’shrink-wraped’ games for consoles such PS3, XBox, Wii, etc, as well as those playing on mobile phones and other mobile devices.
There are also ways of breaking this down by gender, age, ethnicity, etc.
Who plays video games in Hobart? And is there something significant about identifying oneself as a gamer? There are terms such as hardcore and casual which have become increasingly popular ways of polarising the gamer in todays post-Wii game space. Some people reject this gamer identity saying that it is inaccurate and simplistic (just as calling some a reader or TV watcher is a simplistic and narrow way of defning smoeone.) And maybe that has something to it in this transmedia, cross-platform media space where in, when often ones media consumption/production spills into many mediums, or mediums are converged within one platform (the internet etc). Others however would strongly identify with the gamer identity and even take a political position regarding anti-censorship, anti-nanny state, etc in their language towards the governments stand on games classification, etc.
There are aspects of theory around subculture-identity, audience studies, fan-culture theory, which may be useful in unpacking this question of gamer identity.
Was there an issue/event from which this gamer identity began to crystalize? Was it the Wii and the alienation of the hard-core gamer? This seems to be an anchor that many gamers give when they are trying to order there definitions of being a gamer today, or when the issue of the gamer comes into play. But is this purely a sub-culture issue that is the realm of blogs and podcasts within the community. Are there mainstream media reports reinforcing this, picking up on this ordering of the term, gamer?
And we still have: What? Where? When? Why? How? So What? to consider.
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Tags: video
Tas Book Prize
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Tas Book Prize with Sarah Howell and Therese Fingleton. I was asked two very interesting questions about New media and publishing, and I wanted to highlight here what I thought were some of the main issues:
What new expectations do readers have of stories these days? Are they expecting to be able to engage directly with authors through websites, blogs, and so on? In other words, are audiences seeking greater ‘interactivity’ with authors?
• Hybrid media spaces
• Different interest groups
• Conflict and negotiation between different forms of power
• Embrace this or try and control (or fear it)
• Ursula LeGuin vs J.K.Rowling
• Other positive egs: Jon Birgmingham (also Joss Whedon)
• Transmedia environment of the book (multiple entry points)
• Pro-Am possibilities
• Alternative spaces of success: Web Comics (Social Networks, participant cultures)
Do you think that this is a sign that the promise of new technologies in publishing has been over-hyped?
- Utopia and dystopia
- Black box fallacy
- Technological determinism
- Not magical wands
- Positives and negatives
- Participant spaces BUT also polarising of views
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