LITMIR.BIZ

      THE NARRATIVE AS A MEANS TO MAKE

      THE VIDEO GAME A PERSON-CENTERED LEARNING EXPERIENCE

      Clara Fernández-Vara

       New York University

      Let’s begin by unpacking the two main issues of using games as a locus for learning – first understanding games as narrative, and second learning focused on the human condition.

      The nature of narrative in videogames is still somewhat contentious. In my case, I resort to the term «narrative», in its width and ambiguity, rather than referring to it as «narratology», which is the study of narrative in general and across the media. «Narrative» gives us the room to talk about different aspects of what a story in a game may be. It can refer to the events that happened before the game starts; it can refer to the events that unfold as we play; or it can be how players retell their experience. This three-fold definition is based on Genette’s polysemic approach to the term narrative (Genett, 1980). The interactive nature of games makes it so that the story can be pre-determined or changed depending on the choices of the player, so stories also have a transformative nature. There are many kinds of stories and histories that can take place in and around videogames.

      As a narrative designer and a scholar, I prefer to talk about worlds in which the activities and events of the game take place. Not all games take place in worlds or can be narrative – think of abstract puzzle games, for example. But in order for there to be a narrative, we need a world first, then from that we can make a game, or a film or write a novel.

      In relation to games as learning locus to learn about the human condition, I find that games suffer from undue pressure to deliver positive change in ways that other media cannot. There are no expectations for film and television to only have educational purposes – while reading a book is supposed to be a symbol of learning and growth by default, playing videogames is regarded as frivolous or a waste of time. Although the prejudices about videogames are fading steadily over time, as they have become more and more normalized and part of everyday life, there is still a somewhat hostile attitude towards the discussion of games as a humanities subject outside the circles of game studies. As Marie-Laure Ryan argued (2003), the way immersive qualities of games and digital are thought to make their users not be able to distinguish fantasy from reality is the modern equivalent of how chivalry novels were supposed to have dried the brains of Don Quijote. Discussing the potential for positive influence of games on their players is the flipside of this attitude – believing that games can operate on people, who are «passive» and are modified by the influence of the media they engage with. But neither extreme is true – games do not change us, for good or bad, just through sheer exposure. How we engage with videogames and how they can transform us depends on our levels of literacy.

      Literacy is where the potential of games as a way to understand human nature and as a space for learning lies. We can gauge how much games can change us by knowing how they work and how to play them, as well as what their expressive possibilities alongside their socio-cultural implications. Games use different strategies to interpellate different kinds of audiences – videogames are stereotypically thought of as an activity for teenage boys, but every year we have audience studies that prove the heterogeneity of videogame players and the different platforms they use. There are games geared towards women over 35 years old, educational games for children, games for seniors, to name but a few. All these have different presentations – the covers or download icons allow players to make assumptions about what they may play, as Jesper Juul argues in the context of casual games ( Juul, 2009). The design of the games themselves also makes assumptions about who is going to play them and what they know beforehand; some games lack tutorials or are hard to get into without having played a similar game before. For example, first-person shooter games often assume that players know the difference between moving in the space and moving the camera point of view, which becomes a barrier for many new players to the genre. Some groups of people, often self-identified as «hardcore gamers», are proud of making playing videogames all about having specific skills and hand-eye coordination, which can seem inaccessible to others. The focus on skills and supposedly hard-to-access knowledge makes some groups of male gamers feel that they belong to a special club «in the know», at times fostering exclusionary practices. But the truth is that everyone can play games, digital or non-digital. Play is pervasive in culture, and there are games for everyone, whatever their gender, ethnicity, socio-economic class or sexual orientation.

      Games also reflect the beliefs and values of the people who make them (Flanagan and Nissenbaum, 2014)providing a compelling arena in which we play out beliefs and ideas. \»Big ideas\» such as justice, equity, honesty, and cooperation -- as well as other kinds of ideas, including violence, exploitation, and greed -- may emerge in games whether designers intend them or not. In this book, Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum present Values at Play, a theoretical and practical framework for identifying socially recognized moral and political values in digital games. Values at Play can also serve as a guide to designers who seek to implement values in the conception and design of their games. After developing a theoretical foundation for their proposal, Flanagan and Nissenbaum provide detailed examinations of selected games, demonstrating the many ways in which values are embedded in them. They introduce the Values at Play heuristic, a systematic approach for incorporating values into the game design process. Interspersed among the book’s chapters are texts by designers who have put Values at Play into practice by accepting values as a design constraint like any other, offering a real-world perspective on the design challenges involved.»,»ISBN»:»978-0-262-32445-8»,»language»:»en»,»number-of-pages»:»222»,»publisher»:»MIT

Скачать книгу