Reflections on Games & Learning
The 3-2-1 on Gamer-Hate and the “Problem” of Women: Feminism in Games
Description
Female numbers are low and actually dropping, driven by the rising hostility, groping, misogyny, discomfort, and unsafe places prevalent in the game production work environment and the games themselves. The question central to this article is: What can education do to affect a shift in the culture away from this sad state of affairs? The authors go on to describe efforts in the past six years to construct a feminist-activist network through workshops across Canada that encourage girls and women to build skills to code and play, and to generally celebrate women in gaming.
Analysis
More of a history and reporting of the industry, this article could have offered more tools and strategies to empower readers and their students — tools for building a broader awareness and negotiating change. This article portrays a movement that, like many progressive movements, is crippled by the internal struggle such that people get disillusioned and energies are dissipated.
Question
What are the key moments of truth in education where we can engage and have the greatest impact, and like Paul Darvasi’s important work, doesn’t it have to include boys and men?
Reference
Jenson, J., & de Castell, S. (2017). Gamer-hate and the “problem” of women. Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming, 190-203.
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Board Game Reflection
Spirit Island is a strategy and conquest board game, or rather, an anti-colonialist “cooperative settler destruction strategy” game (thank you for including one of these in the mix!). The object of the game is to drive would-be colonists from the land. I imagine that, once getting started, there would be lots of collaboration, “us versus them” team building, and discussion of tactics for achieving the desired goal of overcoming the colonizing invaders to defend your home turf.
Callois would categorize Spirit Island as agôn, or competition on an artificially leveled playing field. I would say that many do find competitive games to be good fun, indeed. Even chess players, bent serious and intent over the game board, must find the game to be fun.
Huizinga writes of teasing out the “nature and significance of play,” and “its place in the scheme of life.” He asserts that play is characterized by activity that is purposeless, with no rules, no goals other than to have fun. Callois distinguishes games as formalized play. Games have fixed rules, and there is a win condition and a purpose to the game. But, there is a nature and significance to playing a strategy and conquest game, isn’t there? Perhaps it is that people like to “play at” real life. People generally like to win. Why is that? The biologist in me attributes this to evolution. Winning = survival of the fittest.
Is a strategy game unproductive? In a game like Spirit Island, a simple child’s game of “King of the Mountain,” or even a game of chess, doesn’t something productive come out of that play? It does the work of sharpening one’s mind and builds social capital by showing off to one’s peers or prospective mate.
So? Let’s play!
References
Huizinga, J. Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon. In K. Salen and E. Zimmerman (Eds.) The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (pp. 96-120). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Caillois, R. The Definition of Play and the Classification of Games. In K. Salen and E. Zimmerman (Eds.) The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (pp. 122-155). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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Dinosaurs Unearthed & Unleashed: Game Development Reflection
Groups were tasked with brainstorming, designing, and developing a game. My group was Scott, Julia, and Marshall. We settled on Scott’s a dinosaur game idea. It was feasible and sounded fun. Indeed, he had already vetted the idea with his wife, a kindergarten teacher.
We spent some time fleshing out the game idea, thinking about aspects to consider around the concept, rules, and a win condition. We were all feeling lukewarm about the limitations of both RPG Maker and Twine. I spent quite some effort racking my brains for a game platform that might be more engaging and dynamic. We settled on trying to use a web platform for the wrap around, visually rich experience, linking to the twine game in a different tab.
Then we settled on roles and attempted to move the various balls forward in parallel. I took on the task of learning the web platform. I also served as facilitator for our thoughts in development, drawing diagrams on the whiteboard then cleaning them up in a collaborative drawing program, Google Draw.
Prototype development planning map
The team was raring to go, and planning moved forward and backwards as the preliminary and iterative whiteboard diagrams took shape while the assets were simultaneously getting made (we only had a few days for the assignment, after all). The image assets, the twine story, and the game documentation activities were literally happening before the plan was baked!
I always look for opportunities and silver linings in these situations. I took this as an exercise in letting go and appreciating the creative efforts and practical let’s-get-this-thing-done stance of my teammates. I took care to make suggestions without putting down my I’m-the-design-process-expert-here card. For example, I suggested that we include pictures of each dinosaur whose footprints were being guessed at — it was only fair to the player that we scaffold this experience a bit, after all. But the Twine master was not having it. I was feeling that the team vibe was more important than being “right,” and what’s more, all of my energy was going into trying to wrangle the website to make it bend to my will (I am not a coder, so this was a stretch for me).
In hindsight? I would have milked the Twine tool for all it was worth. Each person would have been in charge of a different aspect — the storyline, the imagery, video, sound. It turns out Twine can do all that.
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Digital Games, Learning & Pedagogy — Course Concept Map
A semantic network representing the Digital Games, Learning & Pedagogy course, indicating its core thematic nodes and branching sub-themes.
