Serious Games
Jan. 31st, 2007 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauA Scholar Who Brings Philosophy to Video Games
By ANDREA L. FOSTER
Chronicle of Higher Education Volume 51, Issue 10, Page A33
Video-game developers can be visionaries, not just technicians, says Ian Bogost. His own career reflects that view.
Before his current appointment at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is an assistant professor in the university's School of Literature, Communication and Culture, Mr. Bogost worked in various digital-media studios as chief technology officer, interactive media developer, and digital-media consultant. His ideas on video-game rhetoric and criticism draw on his longtime interest in playing video games and his academic training in literature and philosophy.
He is writing a book on video-game criticism that seeks to encourage more discussion and cooperation between literary critics and computer experts. And he talks of translating poetry into a video game that might somehow convey metaphor and imagery.
"The idea is, what would a game version of an Ezra Pound poem look like?" says Mr. Bogost, who holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy and comparative literature from the University of Southern California, and earned a doctorate in June on comparative literature from the University of California at Los Angeles.
In some of his discussions about video games Mr. Bogost refers to the late Jacques Derrida, the founder of a field of inquiry known as deconstruction, which holds that language is full of contradictions. He has studied with Derrida followers.
Mr. Bogost says he was attracted to Georgia Tech because the institution is interested not just in turning out technically proficient students who can get jobs at game companies, but also in students who can evaluate the underlying meaning of video games and "challenge current principles and understandings."
Some game-development programs at other universities, he says, are focused on teaching students the "tricks and techniques" necessary to survive in business.
Mr. Bogost says the game industry pushes people to work long hours, and is too focused on meeting the earnings expectations of investors. He wants the industry to show more interest in game developers who are "visionaries and artists."
In an essay he wrote in April 2004 for the International Game Developers Association, called "The Muse of the Video Game," he coaxes game developers to look beyond the short-term goal of supporting "vocationally focused university programs and trade schools," and "nurture students who are inspired and who are capable of inspiring others with their vision."
In this way, says Mr. Bogost, the industry can take risks on games that explore such themes as "heartbreak, betrayal, anticipation, jealousy, despair, eternal hope, grief, and so many others."
***
He had me up until he invoked Derrida.
Related article about Bogost, in the same issue with the same author:
Video Games With a Political Message
Georgia Tech professor devises interactive ways to look at campaigns and policy debates
By ANDREA L. FOSTER
Playing video games can persuade voters to change their minds on important political issues.
Startling but true, says Ian Bogost, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His passion for analyzing and designing video games has made him a hot commodity for political campaigns bent on creating interactive games that drive home a political message.
Video-game designers have been creating a plethora of interactive games this campaign season for or about political candidates. Many simply let players vent their frustrations. There's a game called John Kerry: Tax Invaders, which has President Bush's head firing at targets meant to represent taxes that would be imposed by Senator Kerry if he were president, and another game that allows a player to control a donkey that kicks an image of Mr. Bush.
But Mr. Bogost is one of the leading designers working to make such games more sophisticated and informative.
A video game on the issue of health care that Mr. Bogost designed for the Illinois House Republican Organization, for example, shows a colorful map of a small town, dotted with icons representing hospitals and other buildings. A bustle of animated characters roam the map, with indicators of how healthy they are displayed above their heads. Players must decide which characters to move to which hospitals. They also have to adjust the amount of money spent on medical research and adjust the cap on damages paid to victims of medical malpractice. The virtual medical system collapses if the cap is too high -- driving home the value and importance of limiting malpractice claims, an argument made by Republican candidates in the state.
Mr. Bogost argues that games like this, that espouse a policy or political agenda, have the potential to influence voters far more than television advertisements or political debates. In five years, video games will be a staple of political campaigns, he says. Interactive games distributed on the Internet will let politicians "get their message out in a much more effective and engaging and cost-effective way."
He says the involvement of players is what makes the games so powerful.
"You've got a player who is learning to understand principles by performing them himself rather than hearing someone talk about them idly in casual conversation," says Mr. Bogost.
At Georgia Tech, Mr. Bogost is teaching classes in computing and digital media, and designing courses and doing research in the field he calls "video game rhetoric and criticism," as a member of the university's School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. Political games, he says, can be seen as "cultural artifacts, akin to film, art, and literature," and can be analyzed to see how they influence people's opinions.
To foster more discussion on the impact of games with a political or social agenda, he maintains a blog, called Watercoolergames.com, with a friend and fellow designer, Gonzalo Frasca, who recently joined the Center for Computer Games Research at IT University of Copenhagen. Several times a week the two critique games on such far-flung topics as saving whales, pedophilia, and fitness.
In a September posting to his blog, Mr. Bogost suggests a change to the game Tax Invaders. He says the game's message might be stronger if players controlled Senator Kerry, who would shoot tax increases at Americans. "The citizens, strained under the tax burdens, would shrivel up and disappear," Mr. Bogost writes.
"Putting players in the shoes of the intended enemy can sometimes be more effective than putting them in the shoes of the hero," he adds.
Mr. Bogost moved into his office at Georgia Tech this fall, and four weeks into the semester the bookshelves are still empty, there are no photographs, and the main feature is a Macintosh computer with a 23-inch monitor. His other office is at Persuasive Games LLC, a video-game company in Atlanta that he established a year ago, where he attempts to put his theories on video-game rhetoric into practice.
Since he and Mr. Frasca created a game for Howard Dean's primary campaign earlier this year, Mr. Bogost has been sought after by politicians and parties. He and Mr. Frasca say that game was the first ever commissioned by a presidential candidate.
Called Howard Dean for Iowa, the game tried to educate volunteers for Mr. Dean on what to expect when canvassing for the candidate. It required players to go door to door while dodging barking dogs, wave Dean placards on sidewalks, and chase down pedestrians to distribute Dean literature.The game kept track of all players' results on a map of the state, with Iowa counties that had a lot of supporters shaded a darker blue.
"It blew me away that someone was having a substantive discussion, a substantive narrative on politics online with a game," says T. Jacobe Parrillo, special assistant to Tom Cross, the Illinois House Republican leader. After Mr. Parrillo saw the game, he asked Mr. Bogost's company to create one for the Web site of the Illinois House Republican Organization (http://www.ilhro.com). The group is working to get eight Republicans elected to the House, an effort that, if successful, would guarantee a Republican majority in that body.
That led to the creation of Take Back Illinois, a series of four small interactive games, which focus on medical malpractice, education, economic development, and civic participation. The game is highlighted on the group's Web site above the caption, "Help us 'Take Back Illinois' from the Liberal Chicago Democrats and their Special Interests. Play the Game Now!"
Reviews of the health-care-policy game, the first of the four to be released, have been mixed.
"The policy got lost on me," remarked someone on Watercoolergames, who identified himself or herself as Zombiegluesniffer.
One task for players is to keep sick characters apart from well ones, but the figures are so closely bunched that it is difficult to separate them with a computer mouse. And hospitals can suddenly go gray and shut down -- ostensibly because malpractice damages are too high and doctors no longer want to practice -- but it is not always clear how this is tied to actions the players have taken.
Mr. Parrillo, of Representative Cross's office, says the game is hard, but he also faults players who he says often don't read all the directions before playing the game.
Some video-game aficionados have been harshly critical, accusing Mr. Bogost of oversimplifying a complex issue and aligning himself with Republicans while simultaneously denying an allegiance to the party.
The game has at least one fan. Clive Thompson, a widely published technology writer who often writes about video games, called the game "incredibly cool, and possibly one of the best political games I've ever seen," in his blog, Collision Detection (http://www.collisiondetection.net).
Mr. Bogost says he is pleased the game provoked a heated discussion. He says he agrees with the game's message that health care would improve if malpractice damages were capped. But he notes that this is not the game's sole message since its outcome also depends on the level of support players give to medical research.
Some veterans of political campaigns, such as Michael P. McDonald, an assistant professor of government and politics at George Mason University, are skeptical that video games, like those created by Mr. Bogost, can influence voters' minds on issues. "I haven't seen any scholarly research on this topic," Mr. McDonald says.
Mr. Bogost is mostly quiet about his own political leanings and labels himself an independent.
"I do generally lament the continued black-and white line we draw, in terms of party politics in this country," says Mr. Bogost. "I think things are much more complex than red or blue."
Janet H. Murray, the director of graduate studies and a professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Tech and the author of Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Free Press, 1997), says Mr. Bogost's work "gets people to think concretely about the relationship between policy choices and individual experiences."
His malpractice game, she says, shows the tension between providing health care to everyone who needs it and a community's limited health-care resources.
Like other video-game experts, Ms. Murray often talks about Mr. Bogost's work together with Mr. Frasca's since both are scholars of video-game rhetoric. Like Mr. Bogost, Mr. Frasca has a video-game company and is a university researcher. Mr. Frasca's company, Powerful Robot Games, is based in Uruguay, and he is an adviser at Persuasive Games.
Henry Lowood, curator for history of science and technology collections at Stanford University, says the scholars' games are unusual because they have layers of meaning, unlike games in which players bash a candidate by shooting at targets.
"What you see Gonzalo and Ian do is something you would see more on the editorial page," he says. Mr. Lowood is working at Stanford's Humanities Laboratory on a project that explores the history and cultural impact of interactive simulations and video games. It is called "How They Got Game: The History and Culture of Interactive Simulations and Videogames."
Take, for example, a game Mr. Bogost, with advice from Mr. Frasca, recently designed for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Called Activism: The Public Policy Game, it lets players decide how to allocate 10,000 virtual campaigners among six interactive scenes that represent different policy areas: education, economy, corporate policy, security, the military, and international affairs. Players who neglect any one policy area end up losing the game. The game coincides with the committee's real-world efforts to recruit 10,000 canvassers for Democratic candidates.
Players, who must give their demographic information, can set their own policy priorities, or play the game from the point of view of someone of another gender, age, or geographic area. The game keeps track of players' demographics and their political views. "I wouldn't claim that the game does scientific political polling, but I'm eager to see what happens," says Mr. Bogost on his blog.
By ANDREA L. FOSTER
Chronicle of Higher Education Volume 51, Issue 10, Page A33
Video-game developers can be visionaries, not just technicians, says Ian Bogost. His own career reflects that view.
Before his current appointment at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is an assistant professor in the university's School of Literature, Communication and Culture, Mr. Bogost worked in various digital-media studios as chief technology officer, interactive media developer, and digital-media consultant. His ideas on video-game rhetoric and criticism draw on his longtime interest in playing video games and his academic training in literature and philosophy.
He is writing a book on video-game criticism that seeks to encourage more discussion and cooperation between literary critics and computer experts. And he talks of translating poetry into a video game that might somehow convey metaphor and imagery.
"The idea is, what would a game version of an Ezra Pound poem look like?" says Mr. Bogost, who holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy and comparative literature from the University of Southern California, and earned a doctorate in June on comparative literature from the University of California at Los Angeles.
In some of his discussions about video games Mr. Bogost refers to the late Jacques Derrida, the founder of a field of inquiry known as deconstruction, which holds that language is full of contradictions. He has studied with Derrida followers.
Mr. Bogost says he was attracted to Georgia Tech because the institution is interested not just in turning out technically proficient students who can get jobs at game companies, but also in students who can evaluate the underlying meaning of video games and "challenge current principles and understandings."
Some game-development programs at other universities, he says, are focused on teaching students the "tricks and techniques" necessary to survive in business.
Mr. Bogost says the game industry pushes people to work long hours, and is too focused on meeting the earnings expectations of investors. He wants the industry to show more interest in game developers who are "visionaries and artists."
In an essay he wrote in April 2004 for the International Game Developers Association, called "The Muse of the Video Game," he coaxes game developers to look beyond the short-term goal of supporting "vocationally focused university programs and trade schools," and "nurture students who are inspired and who are capable of inspiring others with their vision."
In this way, says Mr. Bogost, the industry can take risks on games that explore such themes as "heartbreak, betrayal, anticipation, jealousy, despair, eternal hope, grief, and so many others."
***
He had me up until he invoked Derrida.
Related article about Bogost, in the same issue with the same author:
Video Games With a Political Message
Georgia Tech professor devises interactive ways to look at campaigns and policy debates
By ANDREA L. FOSTER
Playing video games can persuade voters to change their minds on important political issues.
Startling but true, says Ian Bogost, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His passion for analyzing and designing video games has made him a hot commodity for political campaigns bent on creating interactive games that drive home a political message.
Video-game designers have been creating a plethora of interactive games this campaign season for or about political candidates. Many simply let players vent their frustrations. There's a game called John Kerry: Tax Invaders, which has President Bush's head firing at targets meant to represent taxes that would be imposed by Senator Kerry if he were president, and another game that allows a player to control a donkey that kicks an image of Mr. Bush.
But Mr. Bogost is one of the leading designers working to make such games more sophisticated and informative.
A video game on the issue of health care that Mr. Bogost designed for the Illinois House Republican Organization, for example, shows a colorful map of a small town, dotted with icons representing hospitals and other buildings. A bustle of animated characters roam the map, with indicators of how healthy they are displayed above their heads. Players must decide which characters to move to which hospitals. They also have to adjust the amount of money spent on medical research and adjust the cap on damages paid to victims of medical malpractice. The virtual medical system collapses if the cap is too high -- driving home the value and importance of limiting malpractice claims, an argument made by Republican candidates in the state.
Mr. Bogost argues that games like this, that espouse a policy or political agenda, have the potential to influence voters far more than television advertisements or political debates. In five years, video games will be a staple of political campaigns, he says. Interactive games distributed on the Internet will let politicians "get their message out in a much more effective and engaging and cost-effective way."
He says the involvement of players is what makes the games so powerful.
"You've got a player who is learning to understand principles by performing them himself rather than hearing someone talk about them idly in casual conversation," says Mr. Bogost.
At Georgia Tech, Mr. Bogost is teaching classes in computing and digital media, and designing courses and doing research in the field he calls "video game rhetoric and criticism," as a member of the university's School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. Political games, he says, can be seen as "cultural artifacts, akin to film, art, and literature," and can be analyzed to see how they influence people's opinions.
To foster more discussion on the impact of games with a political or social agenda, he maintains a blog, called Watercoolergames.com, with a friend and fellow designer, Gonzalo Frasca, who recently joined the Center for Computer Games Research at IT University of Copenhagen. Several times a week the two critique games on such far-flung topics as saving whales, pedophilia, and fitness.
In a September posting to his blog, Mr. Bogost suggests a change to the game Tax Invaders. He says the game's message might be stronger if players controlled Senator Kerry, who would shoot tax increases at Americans. "The citizens, strained under the tax burdens, would shrivel up and disappear," Mr. Bogost writes.
"Putting players in the shoes of the intended enemy can sometimes be more effective than putting them in the shoes of the hero," he adds.
Mr. Bogost moved into his office at Georgia Tech this fall, and four weeks into the semester the bookshelves are still empty, there are no photographs, and the main feature is a Macintosh computer with a 23-inch monitor. His other office is at Persuasive Games LLC, a video-game company in Atlanta that he established a year ago, where he attempts to put his theories on video-game rhetoric into practice.
Since he and Mr. Frasca created a game for Howard Dean's primary campaign earlier this year, Mr. Bogost has been sought after by politicians and parties. He and Mr. Frasca say that game was the first ever commissioned by a presidential candidate.
Called Howard Dean for Iowa, the game tried to educate volunteers for Mr. Dean on what to expect when canvassing for the candidate. It required players to go door to door while dodging barking dogs, wave Dean placards on sidewalks, and chase down pedestrians to distribute Dean literature.The game kept track of all players' results on a map of the state, with Iowa counties that had a lot of supporters shaded a darker blue.
"It blew me away that someone was having a substantive discussion, a substantive narrative on politics online with a game," says T. Jacobe Parrillo, special assistant to Tom Cross, the Illinois House Republican leader. After Mr. Parrillo saw the game, he asked Mr. Bogost's company to create one for the Web site of the Illinois House Republican Organization (http://www.ilhro.com). The group is working to get eight Republicans elected to the House, an effort that, if successful, would guarantee a Republican majority in that body.
That led to the creation of Take Back Illinois, a series of four small interactive games, which focus on medical malpractice, education, economic development, and civic participation. The game is highlighted on the group's Web site above the caption, "Help us 'Take Back Illinois' from the Liberal Chicago Democrats and their Special Interests. Play the Game Now!"
Reviews of the health-care-policy game, the first of the four to be released, have been mixed.
"The policy got lost on me," remarked someone on Watercoolergames, who identified himself or herself as Zombiegluesniffer.
One task for players is to keep sick characters apart from well ones, but the figures are so closely bunched that it is difficult to separate them with a computer mouse. And hospitals can suddenly go gray and shut down -- ostensibly because malpractice damages are too high and doctors no longer want to practice -- but it is not always clear how this is tied to actions the players have taken.
Mr. Parrillo, of Representative Cross's office, says the game is hard, but he also faults players who he says often don't read all the directions before playing the game.
Some video-game aficionados have been harshly critical, accusing Mr. Bogost of oversimplifying a complex issue and aligning himself with Republicans while simultaneously denying an allegiance to the party.
The game has at least one fan. Clive Thompson, a widely published technology writer who often writes about video games, called the game "incredibly cool, and possibly one of the best political games I've ever seen," in his blog, Collision Detection (http://www.collisiondetection.net).
Mr. Bogost says he is pleased the game provoked a heated discussion. He says he agrees with the game's message that health care would improve if malpractice damages were capped. But he notes that this is not the game's sole message since its outcome also depends on the level of support players give to medical research.
Some veterans of political campaigns, such as Michael P. McDonald, an assistant professor of government and politics at George Mason University, are skeptical that video games, like those created by Mr. Bogost, can influence voters' minds on issues. "I haven't seen any scholarly research on this topic," Mr. McDonald says.
Mr. Bogost is mostly quiet about his own political leanings and labels himself an independent.
"I do generally lament the continued black-and white line we draw, in terms of party politics in this country," says Mr. Bogost. "I think things are much more complex than red or blue."
Janet H. Murray, the director of graduate studies and a professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Tech and the author of Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Free Press, 1997), says Mr. Bogost's work "gets people to think concretely about the relationship between policy choices and individual experiences."
His malpractice game, she says, shows the tension between providing health care to everyone who needs it and a community's limited health-care resources.
Like other video-game experts, Ms. Murray often talks about Mr. Bogost's work together with Mr. Frasca's since both are scholars of video-game rhetoric. Like Mr. Bogost, Mr. Frasca has a video-game company and is a university researcher. Mr. Frasca's company, Powerful Robot Games, is based in Uruguay, and he is an adviser at Persuasive Games.
Henry Lowood, curator for history of science and technology collections at Stanford University, says the scholars' games are unusual because they have layers of meaning, unlike games in which players bash a candidate by shooting at targets.
"What you see Gonzalo and Ian do is something you would see more on the editorial page," he says. Mr. Lowood is working at Stanford's Humanities Laboratory on a project that explores the history and cultural impact of interactive simulations and video games. It is called "How They Got Game: The History and Culture of Interactive Simulations and Videogames."
Take, for example, a game Mr. Bogost, with advice from Mr. Frasca, recently designed for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Called Activism: The Public Policy Game, it lets players decide how to allocate 10,000 virtual campaigners among six interactive scenes that represent different policy areas: education, economy, corporate policy, security, the military, and international affairs. Players who neglect any one policy area end up losing the game. The game coincides with the committee's real-world efforts to recruit 10,000 canvassers for Democratic candidates.
Players, who must give their demographic information, can set their own policy priorities, or play the game from the point of view of someone of another gender, age, or geographic area. The game keeps track of players' demographics and their political views. "I wouldn't claim that the game does scientific political polling, but I'm eager to see what happens," says Mr. Bogost on his blog.
