Topological Metaphors for Structuring Games (II): Rulespaces

This is a short summary on „Storyspaces and Rulespaces“ from the MA in ePedagogy Design I’m currently working on.
Wey-Han Tan (April 2008)

Rulespaces

Rules define the boundaries of the player’s actions and give them direction and jurisdiction. As shown in the ambivalence of games and toys (Sutton-Smith), they provide both limits and freedom, but also usually require unquestioned acceptance (Caillois) for the player to play a game.
As well as the method of teaching (see the learning paradigms) has repercussions on what is learned beyond the overt content, so does the use of certain types of rules affect the playing experience and the situating of skills and knowledge learned in-game. Weiterlesen

Creating cognitive tension – and then what?

I stumbled upon this entry in the great BoingBoing-blog, an excerpt from a longer Smithonian article: Steve Martin explaining a special method of eliciting laughter from the audience, in comparision to the usual comedian’s technique of creating tension and releasing laughter via a punchline.

Martin’s approach is different: Creating tension – and not to relieve it. Giving an unexpected anticlimax, not the expected ‚unexpected‘ exit. And then let the audience choose a point where to relieve the upbuilt tension. Steve Martin:

„What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.“

This seems to be a good approach, too, for educational gaming. In a usual, moderate constructivistic setting, you have the path of

[exploration] – [encounter of a task/test] – [correct solving of the task/test] – [reward].

What will happen if you constantly deny the learner the ‚punchline‘ as confirmation that he learned something he was meant to learn?

Three learning theories mini games

For my seminar „Games, Play and Education“ I’ve scraped together (via skinning, modding, recontextualisation) three minigames. These should serve as an intro to the three learning paradigms of Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Constructivism and their possible realisation in games via their very different gaming mechanisms.

The 32 cards and the rules can be downloaded as printable PDF (three pages) via this link: ThreeLearningTheoriesMinigames.

ThreeLearningTheoriesMiniGames

Weiterlesen

Gaming: A cheat mode for reality

I’ve noticed that rubberbanding (aka levelled gameplay or dynamic game balancing) is a good metaphor to describe what Lev Vygotsky, a russian educational scientist, described as keeping a learner in the ‚zone of proximal development‚. This means that the environment – parent, teacher, virtual learning environment – keeps up a certain level of difficulty in its tasks, to further emerging abilities in the learner. Coincidentally – or not so – this goes quite well with theories (for example Brian Sutton-Smith) that play and game are the most fulfilling when experienced in a state of internal insecurity of the outcome.

Thus rubberbanding is a game designer’s meta cheat to keep the player in the game and the learner hooked to the knowledge.

It could be discussed whether any game, by artificially creating rules facilitating a fair, inherent meaningful and fulfilling gaming experience is a cheat mode for the game we call ‚reality‘ and a tutorial mode (or editor) for the game we call ’society‘.

A path unwanted: Impossibly realistic games

One of the distinctive criteria of games compared to ‚reality‘ is their loose connection to the latter, a worksafe simplification of rules and goals. This doesn’t mean that these games are simple to play, but that rules and metarules are stated or can at least be relied upon as unchanging background as long as we play the game.

The same two mechanisms, simplification and a stated stable background, are the cornerstones of politics, especially in times of war. Knowing the enemy, recognizing the enemy, destroying the enemy, all executed in an unerring, straightforward mode.

Weiterlesen

A path less trodden: Realistic impossible games

There’s a category of games which deals with ‚the impossible‘ as main theme. This is an approach which takes an entirely different direction than the quest for more realism in gaming. Most mainstream games usually strive for physical, contextual or emotional realism: Realistically behaving objects and environments, relatable everyday settings, involving and intriguing characters.

Each of this categories has a counterpart, be it an M.C.Escher-like warped universe or a Black-White-Shift of invertible negative space of the same ilk, a Lewis Carroll-like twisted conception of reality’s relationships or the Oliver Sacks‚-like madnesses of people both strange and affectionate.

The german expression ‚verrückt‘ would fit well, meaning both ‚crazy‘ and ‚pushed out of place‘. It’s a radical change of view, both forced on the player and also a necessary precondition to understand and play the game.

Weiterlesen

In search of a game’s True Meaning ™…

As with the ongoing ‚Killerspiel‘ debate in Germany, public and politicians are in search of The Meaning of a game. Though it’s understandable that there’s concern over violent, pornographic or propagandistic content, few seem to understand that games can also be created as toys.
To quote Marvin Minsky in his ‚Society of Mind‘,

„A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all.“

Games can take the form of paths, labyrinths, and landscapes, and the latter ones are difficult or even impossible to fathom. If seen from a literary point of view, I’d even deny a linear game to be ‚understood‘ in its ‚entirety‘, just by being played from a narrow social, temporal and mental vantage point.

I’m often asking myself, whether this is political actionism, populism, wishful thinking, technological and medial ignorance, or a mix of all these.

There seems to be a strong urge for a world which is deterministic, monocausal, where any one thing has one discrete meaning. Which fits nicely on the description of ‚digital‘, without the analog fuzz surrounding it.
Thus this drive is both very compatible with an information society, but also somehow incompatible with social, cultural, individual reality, diversity, and most of all ambiguity.

Weiterlesen

Levels of gaming

Where’s the actual interpretation and acting taking place when you’re ‚playing‘?
Games can be used to understand, and to intuitively act upon, the inner workings of a set of rules (e.g. simulation games), or they can show the inner or hidden conflict of a game and reality (e.g. serious newsgaming or ironic gamifications of real events), even criticize the still common notion of a tangible difference between gaming – accepting a set of rules as given by a benevolent gamedesigner – and ‚real life‘ – accepting a set of rules as given by political, social, business, educational ‚reality‘.

Weiterlesen