GLSIG May 2013 – Huddersfield

For our latest face-to-face meeting of the Games and Learning Special Interest Group (GLSIG) we made our way north to the beautiful town of Huddersfield, to be welcomed by a very generous Andy Walsh as host at the town’s University.

With ten members present (and others joining in online through the live-blogging we debuted this year), we launched straight in over lunch to playtest a new card-and-description game I’m designing for the Engaging Visitors Through Play event at the end of May. That event is for museum professionals, and my aim was to teach them about simple contextual games through a simple contextual game involving curating a group of artefacts. The play test was incredibly helpful, simplifying my overly-complex rules and producing a much leaner game.

We then launched into the main session of the afternoon – new member Simon Grey (University of Hull) setting up four Raspberry Pi’s and launching Minecraft on each of them. Simon uses this set-up to teach basic programming skills to his students, and he took us through the method. Many of us had some background in programming in the dim and distant past, and we found ourselves learning loops, if-else statements and functions in Python, whilst seeing the results in technicolour lego blocks within Minecraft. It was a highly engaging way to learn (programme-see a reward) and we followed our practical test with a good discussion about this method and its potential, over some magnificent cake.

We finished the first afternoon with a deep delve into games and learning theory, Nic Whitton leading us through a structured set of themes to crowdsource our collective knowledge of work in the field. This proved to be a highly useful, thought provoking task for all, and neatly finished off our aim to mix theory and practice in all GLSIG activity.

One of the strange beasts overlooking our table

For the now-traditional evening games, drinks and deep conversations, Andy led us to a quite remarkable pub (The Grove – more real ales and mythological stuffed-creatures-on-shields than you could shake a jackalope at). We played some weird and wonderful independent card games (We Didn’t Playtest This At All, Zombie Dice and Diggity) – all interesting in their own way, with Diggity taking the most time to work out a strategic approach to – and shared our knowledge of (and played through a few too many) drinking games.

Friday morning saw us shake off any wooly heads with my and Nic’s Game Design Workshop (a 60-120 minute fast-paced game creation experience which we’ve now run successfully for a wide range of participants) – our two teams coming up with a pair of highly original games within the space of 50 minutes. We then merged with online GLSIG members to discuss potential ways to free up time and gain funds for research and practice in the field: whether small local practice, or bigger inter-institution projects. In the process, we resurrected the SIG’s parked Ninja Badges project and set it back in motion for the coming year. SIG business then rounded off the 24-hours, and we all set off happily back to our various corners of the UK.

Deep in game design mode

Another excellent event, and one which mixed theory and practice particularly well: giving us all tangible things to take away and implement, in addition to new theoretical avenues to explore. Special thanks go to Andy and the University of Huddersfield for being fine hosts, and to all the GLSIG members who played active and playful roles.

Experiential Education, Augsburg 2012

As part of an interesting collaborative research theme I’ve been exploring with experiential educator Jule Hildmann (Train the Trainer) around the links between ‘initiative games’ in experiential education, and the development of deep context in games for education, we co-authored a paper for the Internationaler Kongress für erleben und lernen (International conference for experiential learning), Augsburg, Germany, 28-29 September 2012.

Jule has developed an idea called ‘Simple Things’ which gives trainers simple tools to develop, structure, run and reflect on initiative games, in order to achieve learning objectives. Initiative games are often used in experiential education, and might be as simple as building the tallest tower with blocks – through to complex team challenges such as getting everyone safely across a fast-moving stream. Jule’s approach, and one which chimes with my own research, is to use metaphor around such activities, structuring them so that they reflect real situations, surroundings and challenges from participants’ own contexts. So crossing the river is not simply a group challenge: the river might be a strong weakness which the team are keen to overcome in real life, and the opposite shore the new direction they want to take.

We ran a 3-hour workshop around the exploration of these themes in Augsburg, in both German and English. By asking the participants to play a couple of short initiative games, and then apply metaphor to the games for their own context (which they visualised in some impressive plasticine and pipecleaner models), we encouraged participants to develop activities with the learning context in mind, rather than applying outcomes to preset activities.

The workshop was a great success, and encouraged us to continue our conjoined research in this area: look out for more work in the future. The remainder of the conference was interesting to me as something of an outsider to the field, and allowed space for a lot of reflection on how approaches and features might move from the predominantly outdoor/active space of experiential education, to the more formal classroom or online spaces in HE.

Augsburg, one of South Germany’s oldest towns

Brighton Peer group – ALTGLSIG Meeting 24-25th May

Twice a year, the Association for Learning Technology’s Special Interest Group on Games and Learning (ALTGLSIG) meet for 24 hours of planning, writing, playing, designing and socialisation. This year, our May meeting took place (fittingly, given the sudden blazing sunshine) at the beach, hosted at the University of Brighton by Katie Piatt.

To add to the fun, our designated hotel was the rather fabulous (if slightly scary) Hotel Pelirocco. Most of us escaped the more risqué rooms (I was in the fabulous Rough Trade room: a replica of my teenage bedroom, complete with record player and LPs) although Andy Walsh (the librarian of the group) came close with his Austin Powers-style Russian Vodka room and pink-cusion-laden bed.

The event itself was a thoroughly engaging range of activities. We were launched straight into a murder mystery game, devised by Katie for local police training, which culminated in a mad scramble for a ringing telephone somewhere in the large meeting room. Katie outlined the problems she’d encountered engaging the police with the task, yet she’d had much better success with other groups – we launched into a big discussion about contexts and suitability for different types of game with different audiences.

Simon teases out the secret cache as Katie and Sam provide a shield against passing eyes

After some rather tasty biscuits, it was time to try our hand at the world of geotagging/geocaching. Under remote instruction from Becka Colley (University of Bradford), we set out armed with smart phones into sunny Brighton to find (successfully) two secret caches; and ponder the application of geocaching, and particularly the ‘scavanger hunt’ approach of sending teams around several sites of interest to collect each new co-ordinate, in induction for first year undergraduates (sending students around the campus, library, or local town).

Our core aim for the meeting was to define and shape the key approach/structure of the white paper we are writing on Games for Adult Learning, and we spent several fruitful hours mapping this out. Our plan is to have this ready by September, and produce a number of easy-access formats (data sheets, short animations etc.) for those wanting a quick or easy overview.

The evening was spent on the seafront, playing the excellent and almost unique collaborative board game Forbidden Island and a couple of rounds of Bananagrams whilst munching fish’n'chips and planning other outreach events. Perfect.

The following morning we helped Sam Ingleson (University of Salford) playtest her clever student induction game, which combines a board, cards and discussion activites to help give students an overview of what their first term holds in store (both academically and in life).

A quick round-up of SIG business later, and the fellowship departed in various directions from Brighton station, brains still buzzing from almost 24 hours of fascinating and fun-filled activity.

HEA Arts & Humanities conference 2012: Pedagogies of Hope

The closure of the HEA Subject Centres last year left a yawning gap in discipline-level support for teachers in Higher Education, although the HEA have been working hard to rebuild support in a different way to match the new funding model they now work to. One positive piece of news which emerged earlier this year, though, was their plan to hold a number of larger conferences to cover the broad discipline bases. For Arts and Humanities, this was to take place in Glasgow over the (very sensible, as it allows easier transport there and back) 24-hour lunchtime to lunchtime model.

It’s the third time I’ve been to Glasgow, and I’m always impressed by its dark brooding grandieur and cultural buzz: the central train station embodying this in its massive newly-cleaned roofspace, dark-wood booths and cultural melieau. The conference took place in the equally impressive (in a new shiny way) Radisson Blu hotel, mere steps from the Central Station: which provided a comfortable, well-catered home for us over the 24 hours.

The conference was topped and tailed by two keynote speeches – with a number of parallel sessions and workshops in between. There were some discipline-focussed strands (eg. all papers dealing with English, or Psychology) and some interdisciplinary, but in practice all sessions had relevence for everyone, as they featured broad themes resonant to us all, regardless of discipline: employability, research skills, assessment, course design, the Key Information Set, and others. More useful still, throughout all the sessions I attended – and in the coffee and lunch breaks – there was a genuine collegiate feel across questions, discussions and conversations: regardless of discipline base, we were all keen to help each other come to terms with key issues and collectively arrive at possible solutions and models.

The two keynotes were each interesting in their own way. Opening, Giovanni Schiuma brought a colourful Italian flair to the proceedings, and made the case for creative arts within business. He exposed the current MBA programmes as focussing on neat systems and processes, which businesses need in calm times, but in turbulent times as now, creativity and humanistic aspects are required. Slightly disappointingly, Schiuma focussed on the creative arts almost exclusively, sidestepping the benefits of Humanities skill bases and approaches. As I asked in a question, many of the problems could be solved by returning to the case where students of any discipline could enter business and be trained on the job, rather than the MBA route taking precedence. As Schiuma answered wryly, sadly we have (powerful) business schools…
The second keynote was a beautifully presented history of art and design education by Linda Drew. Whilst also focussing on creative arts (it would have been nice to have one keynote on the literary or historical humanities), Linda provided a fascinating narrative, and urged us to focus on the needs of the future, where students should be allowed to think for themselves, teachers should become learners, and we all move forward together.

No right answers

This message carried on a fascinating theme from one of the parallel sessions earlier in the conference: allowing students to create work which cannot be wrong, or alternatively: freeing them from the pressure of wanting to be right. Lesley Coote, from the University of Hull, had asked her medieval literature students to create top trumps cards for the main characters in Chaucer: giving them numerical ratings on various ‘skills’, and then justifying them with a paragraph or two. Elizabeth English and Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway), with their literary theory students, had asked them to create journals – encouraging them to link their experiences on the (difficult) course topics to real life elements such as films or television. The journals were not marked, but encouraging or interested comments were added by the tutors. In a creative workshop on the final day with Nicholas Monk (University of Warwick) we were asked in teams to organise a set of images, quotes and statistics around capitol punishment in any way we felt meaningful: all three of the groups produced very different narratives within their layouts from the same materials.
In all of these cases, students were provided with an activity which had no right or wrong answers – each was allowed to choose and develop their own take on the activity. And in each case, the students were highly engaged, and appreciative, of the courses.

Employability and Effective Group Work

A number of sessions focussed on integrating employability skills within humanities disciplines, which produced a lengthy and interesting discussion around the benefits and difficulties of arranging large-scale placements (sparked by Jo Robinson’s ambitious work at the University of Nottingham). Rachel Carroll (Teeside University) provided an extremely well thought alternative to the problem however: asking her English Literature students both to create a proposal for a literary event, and to form the panel of judges awarding funding to the same events. She used some very clever devices to encourage effective (and highly transferrable) group work, avoiding many of the problems students usually complain about:

• all group-produced material was assessed formatively, by peers; only individual (reflective) material was assessed summatively – thus removing the usual complaints that some group members weren’t pulling their weight;
• students were given project development workshops, where key group working (and professional) skills were taught
• each group created their own group work contracts, which bound each member to particular requirements and avoided individuals letting down a team.

Julie Raby (York St. John) presented some very useful data on patterns of online and offline ‘attendence’ (/access). Contrary to the usual accepted belief, Julie found that exactly the same students who attended and engaged in face to face sessions were those who also engaged with the online materials/activities; conversely those who failed to attend face-to-face sessions also ignored the online resources. She also found that her students much preferred a flat, linear structure to the online materials on the institution’s VLE: organised by session, and including clearly labelled lists of readings, resources and activities in order of importance. Any use of folders or alternative organisation was rejected as more confusing.

For my own part, I enjoyed a thoroughly responsive and engaged audience for my workshop on the use of puzzles to set authentic contexts and teach research and other core skills/concepts.

Overall, this was an excellent first combined conference. Any disciplinary differences were laid aside for 24 hours of collegiate, engaged discussion and shared problem-solving. Helped by the vibrant Glasgow surroundings, we all went our separate ways at the end buzzing with new approaches and a sense of hope in an increasingly challenging environment.

ECGBL 2011: Athens

In the weeks leading up to the fifth European Conference for Games Based Learning, participants from around the globe were checking the news sites for updates on the situation in Athens. The organisers (Sue and Elaine from ACI) did a wonderful job keeping everyone up to date as the days approached, and set up a travel discussion for those wishing to share lifts from the airport on strike days.

I slowly watched many of the authors in my own mini-track on Games on  a Budget pull out due to cancelled flights (including Nic Whitton, the co-chair, although more due to safety/mobility issues given the imminent arrival of Little Whitton #2); but as I met up for conference drinks at the hotel reception on Wednesday eve, it was good to see that around 80 attendees had managed to avoid any strikes and help contribute to the local economy. Before that I’d spent the day with German experiential education expert Jule Hildmann and her partner, avoiding the police barricades and explosions from the central square; touring around the (closed) ancient sites before climbing a hill to hit a layer of tear gas and splutter back down again.

Konkkaronkka

The first day of the conference had been compressed to cover missing sessions, but I was pleased to chair a near-full mini-track. The focus was on low-cost or traditional-influenced games, and the track opened with a paper by Nic Whitton on the possibilities and affordances such games present to education, and the call for more studies into this timely area (given shrinking budgets across education and heightened by the local economic crisis). I presented my work on Of Course! - the course design board game and its ability to set up a detailed context using simple games-based tricks. A beautiful, cute board game for nursery-age children in Finland with learning difficulties, Konkkaronkka, was presented by Päivi Marjanen who described how the game encouraged peer learning amongst playtesting sessions. The key to this very successful game was the close work between tutors/carers and the game designers at the start; and the extensive playtesting with the target audience; a digital version was created, but in testing it was found that the children talked to the computer and not to each other, so this development was stopped.

The horse & fountain game

In the wider conference, other low cost/simple games were in evidence too: a fascinating activity presented by Ivar Männamaa (University of Tartu, Estonia) which distilled the complex and difficult issue of cultural integration into a metaphor of horses and watering holes. Using home-made, brightly coloured hexagons (fountains) and half-hexagons (horses) students have to position their horses to occupy a portion of the fountains; another team’s horses can then  choose to share or overtake some or all of the fountains. A simple but clever scoring system and rules mimic aspects of cultural integration, and initial tests have proved very effective in generating discussion around the issue which spirals out from the activity. A good example of the generation of complex contexts and ideas with simple game elements.

Other papers of interest included Io Iacovides (PhD student with the Open University) who presented her initial study of breakdowns and contradictions during gameplay: a breakdown being a short term problem or issue, with contradictions being wider problems which go against the context of the game or the needs of the player. Using special study rooms which could track player reactions, Io looked at eight game players and non-game-players in detail. In her paper and the ensuing discussion, the usefulness of these concepts in looking at engagement were considered: breakdowns (if accompanied with breakthroughs) might in fact be more engaging over time, whereas contradictions might cause a dramatic loss in engagement. Eleni Timplalexi (Athens University) described a live action roleplay for high school chemistry students, where groups ‘time travelled’ between two rooms: one a Renaissance alchemy lab where the source and properties of materials could be investigated; and the other a modern chemistry lab where the knowledge of materials could be put into practice to make useful compounds and products. Nikolaos Avouris gave an accomplished keynote on Friday morning overviewing the use of games within Museum education: highlighting the overuse of ‘games overlaid on a weak subject link’, but focussing on the growing use of pervasive games and games with a social connection such as Pheon and Ghost of a Chance at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

As usual for this conference, the long discussion time in and between papers, and the willingness to talk (and eat, and drink) long into the night, meant that I returned with many more ideas, links and new contacts than I could cope with. Athens itself provided contrasting memories: from the sublime remains on the Acropolis and surprising us whenever we turned a corner from tourist tat to stunning remains; to the hair-raising run through narrow streets to avoid protestors and police bombarding each other with water, gas and masonry. But the abiding memory will be of a set of wonderful international friends who took it all on board in a playful way, and ensured we all learned from the experience.

Gratuitous shot of the Parthenon

Meeple in the Pub: or The Games and Learning SIG is launched

At the last ALT-C conference, Nic Whitton and myself floated the idea of a Games and Learning special interest group (SIG) with the powers that be; to be greeted with much enthusiasm.

Fast forward three months, and a group of researchers and practitioners within higher and further education who all shared an interest in the use of games within learning (either directly, or indirectly through research) met together in a first SIG online meeting. And there was much rejoicing.

Between then and now, we’ve been working on a variety of projects to consolidate our approaches and develop new research and outreach; including creating a web site and membership scheme to allow anyone interested in the area (games for adult learning) to join in. We are pleased to announce that this is now open to all:

• About the GL-SIG (and how to join)

What about the pub?

The first challenge: open the Lego packets

Last week, the core members of the SIG met for the first of what we aim to be six-monthly ‘face to face’ events. I hosted at the University of Leicester, and we spent a fabulous 24-hours (including a sleep and university catering-supplied bacon butties) packing in a whole host of work including, but not limited to:

• competing in a lego-building ‘contextual’ challenge
  

  Make my day, punk

• setting out the aims and structure of a planned white paper on games and learning
• discussing Aaron Dignan’s Game Frame (see Nic’s thoughts here, which matched the discussion pretty well)
• pooling research ideas and opportunities
• playing and critiquing my course design board game (very useful feedback) and  decamping in the evening for beer and some highly competitive games of Carcassonne, Ruk Shuk and Pass the Pigs.

Playing the course design boardgame

Long live the GL-SIG!

iGBL 2011, Waterford

I was invited to speak at the inaugural Irish Symposium on Game-Based Learning by a colleague who has long shared my interest of games use in education, Patrick Felicia. Held in Waterford, Ireland, by the Institute of Technology’s Game-based Learning research group, the symposium aimed to generate discussion and forward planning around existing research and practice in the area.

Waterford street, by akahodag

Getting to Waterford was an interesting game in itself, myself and fellow speaker Nicola Whitton travelling the opposite way out to the eastern coast of Essex, for the daily flight from London Southend to Waterford. However, safely arriving in the Viking hotel (complete with Asgard bar) after a rather beautiful flight over lamp-lit coastal villages, we were prepared for the following action-packed day.

An opening keynote from Michael Hallissy of Dublin’s Digital Hub set the tone  of the event, with tales of ambitious games-design projects for young adults which led to further questions about the roles of technology, pedagogic design, and the benefits and pitfalls of games-based approaches. The symposium then split into two streams, allowing participants to cross streams after each paper via changeover periods (a good model which many other conferences could take note of).

The range of papers in the two streams was impressive in both breadth and depth. In the space of an hour, I heard a fascinating and detailed physiological discussion of the use of ‘sonic spaces’ to enhance student immersion and engagement from performer and researcher Flaithri Neff of Limerick Institute of Technology; and a case study in the use of a simple board game to introduce key concepts in genetics teaching to students and younger learners. The board game, presented by Eoin Gill of Waterford IoT, was produced as part of a European 2Ways funded project with the GENIE CETL centre at the University of Leicester (and, embarrassingly, was the first I’d heard of it, but I shall be off to see them this week!); and it was an excellent example of the use of a simple game to quickly set a complex context, through the use of simple targetted elements: players receive an alien body and a pen, and move around the board adding random mutations to their body whilst watching their population grow and shrink.

Eoin Gill and the genetics boardgame

The board game formed an excellent case study for my own paper, which centred around the use of simple games or game-based elements to set up authentic contexts – following up my earlier work (see Moseley, 2010 in publications) and focussing on their use in course design and delivery.

A few research postgraduates presented their work, which added some fresh and detailed studies to the mix – Karen Orr, graduating from Queen’s University Belfast, provided one of the most interesting with her psychometric tests and scale to determine people’s attitude to games use in education. She determined three factors: benefits (perceived usefulness), self-efficacy (not wanting to look stupid), and boastfulness/confidence (in own ability to play and learn from games). It will be interesting to see papers which result from this thesis in due course.

Patrick Felicia followed this with his own initial analysis of data gathered from a survey of Irish educators in Higher Education, on the use and attitudes to games-based learning in the classroom. There were some interesting early outcomes, including a lack of difference by gender, and a dip in effectiveness if games-based approaches are over-used.

Ryan Flynn, lecturer in games design at the University of Greenwich, presented a fascinating paper on the development of a ‘realistic’ simulation for Social Work training, and the decisions taken about levels of realism and immersion appropriate to the project. Ryan is developing a R.E.A.L. framework which considers the various factors influencing the level of realism required for any application – one to keep tabs on as it develops.

The day finished with an extremely positive round-table discussion about consolidating expertise and moving the games-based-learning agenda forward in Ireland. Some real strides were made through discussion in the room, and we could certainly do with these levels of energy and positive action in England.

Packed around these highlights were some interesting discussions over coffee and home-made cakes, demonstrations of games-based applications by IoT Masters students, and (to finish off the day perfectly) a fabulous meal in a cosy restaurant in Waterford centre. All in all, a fascinating, friendly and energising symposium – congratulations to Patrick and Waterford.

So Many Tales – The Story 2011

Hopping on the train down to London yesterday morning, I cleared my mind and left an expectant open plate (pate?) for what I hoped would be a varied, surprising, off-the-wall day of talks as part of The Story 2011: “a one-day conference about stories and story-telling”. Twelve hours later, the p(l)ate was certainly piled high.

Held in the evocatively peeling Conway Hall, and packing some seriously weighty speakers in 20-minute slots over the six hours, the day was hosted by Margaret Robertson, of Hide&Seek fame (they of the wonderful boardgame remix kit). Margaret held things together very playfully – noting, like many of the game designers in the varied audience, that she was leaving behind her rule-sets for a day and focussing on the storytelling side of games.

Part of the (fabulously affordable) fee was a donation towards the Ministry of Stories – who operate storytelling events for children behind their Monster-shop façade in Hoxton – and the Ministry started the proceedings with a crowd-scourced description of a monster we named Pedicureus – which had ‘eyes yellow and prickly like pickled onions’, and ‘ears flaky like the Windows operating system’ (oh, and my favourite: a ‘sordid tail like a… sword’). This proved to be the only interactive talk of the day, but (as could be seen from the relatively light tweet stream) most of us then settled back to simply listen, think and enjoy.

A can of escalating panic, from the Hoxton Monster Shop

Matt Adams outlined the varied work of Brighton-based artist collective Blast Theory, the most interesting being their collaboration with Channel 4 Education on Ivy4Evr – SMS text-based ‘short interactive fiction’ which used a combination of short story pieces with ‘stubs’ or nodes where players could respond to a message and receive follow-up messages for a mini conversation thread, before returning to the story pieces: a very effective mini story in only 40 SMS messages. Adam Curtis, the BBC archive-miner/documentary producer, then gave the most thought-provoking talk of the day (and was the one time the ‘no questions: move on’ policy of the day left us itching), effectively claiming that the internet/TV is stifling the development of new types of stories – only emotions or ‘moments of experience’. Adam kept nipping off on (interesting) red-herrings, and the irony was that he, and we, were creating our own new stories as we listened.

After coffee, Karl James - through excerpts and stories from his Dialogue Project – gave us some compelling (and moving) examples of why it’s good to listen. The thing which still resonates with me now was his description that “words disappear as you read them: only the change they caused remains with you”. Cornelia Parker was next, giving us some fascinating stories behind her scupltures: a feast of narrative and vision. Then Phil Gyford took us back to the 17th Century with his astounding Samuel Pepys blog, telling us about the community which has sprung up around it, the way they continue the stories, and the hilarious set of mysterious characters from his diary who have started to respond to Pepys’ daily tweets – and who are creating new narratives around the old story.

Quick refresh and reflect over lunch, then the day’s only disappointment: Tim Kring was held up stateside, and was unable to present. Collective sigh, but we soon perked up with the first of two on-stage interviews: Paul Bennun talking to Nick Ryan about the use of audio in games (the pair worked together on the clever audio-only Papa Sangre iPhone App); demonstrating how we all create our own personal stories when visuals are absent (the sound of a telephone played to the audience revealed that some of us thought it was blue, red, black etc. – although in fact, I didn’t hear a telephone at all: I heard a storm. Not sure what that says about me, but it proved the point perfectly). Mary Hamilton then brought hilarious chaos to the room, in the form of Zombie Live Roleplaying, and the firing of several high-powered foam projectiles into the room (the stories coming from shared tales of brain-mushing around the campfire at the end of a live event).

Two artists told their own stories about their work and the narratives surrounding it: Lucy Kimbell‘s ironic and slightly worrying project involving family and friends completing an ‘audit’ on various personal aspects of her character; and Martin Parr‘s fabulous little anecdotes surrounding the photographs from his early career in North Yorkshire and elsewhere: pictures with an accompanying 1000 words. The second interview of the day then left us spellbound – and in stitches – for what seemed like hours, as Graham Linehan (he of Father Ted and the IT Crowd) talked to Cory Doctorow (of Little Brother, Makers and other tech-fiction) about the processes he uses to create storylines for his programmes. There were some lovely ideas, and hilarious anecdotes – Graham revealed that he uses coloured cards with main plot ideas, then shuffles them around on the floor and matches cards together to create connected story-lines; but also that he’s recently been using Basecamp to share and develop ideas with a group of disparate writers. I’ve used Basecamp before (for the Operation: Sleeper Cell ARG) and found it as useful, and infuriating, as Graham.

Graham explains the cat-crazed world of Moss to Cory

Mark Stevenson closed the day with a frenetic (he had just stepped off the plane from Seattle, and seemed to still be travelling at Mach 2) whizz through his round-the-world trip to discover all the hope which exists for a brighter future for his forthcoming book. Hard to catch at times, but at moments fascinating, it was a good mirror to our thoughts as the event drew to a close: a story of hope and an interesting future, just waiting for new stories to emerge.

Many thanks to Matt Locke for organising such a fabulous variety of speakers and topics, and for a wonderful day. If the discussions and ideas flowing around the beer in the local pubs afterwards are anything to go by, The Story won’t stop here.

Clash of Realities 2010

Four weeks ago I received a lovely email from Krystian Majewski from the Cologne Games Lab (based in the Cologne University of Applies Sciences) asking if I could present a paper on ‘serious games’ at their third cross-media conference on computer games design and research: Clash of Realities.

A quick look at the (half-English, half-German, and extremely beautifully designed) programme piqued my interest, and as I had been thinking a lot about educational games and their embedding within courses after mine and Simon’s paper at GBL10, it was an ideal chance to present some of my forming ideas.

A quick look at the transport options fitted in nicely with my environmental aim to use trains in Europe where possible; and this proved to be a better move than expected when the ash cloud covered the skies a week later…

…the same cloud knocked a couple of US-participants out of the programme, but those speakers present covered the vacant slots admirably. One of these – and the first keynote I caught fresh in from a smooth and comfortable train ride – was Maic Masuch, who presented a fascinating paper on realism and immersion in games: a particularly salient point being that a good narrative can remove the need for high powered, realistic graphics in striving for an immersive experience.

Cologne itself is quite a 'clash' of different styles

Cologne is home to a burgeoning game development industry – both the big commercials (EA were benevolent and discrete co-sponsors of the conference along with the universtity; and their smart building stands alongside an oddly designed Microsoft edifice adjacent to the Rhine) and small independents: over a drinks reception on the first evening (fuelled by endless small glasses of the local Kölsh brew), I chatted to Max – an iPhone app programmer who had worked on the UK Premiership football team apps – and Tale of Tales, the innovative art-game developers from Belgium; as well as games researchers from the University.

The second, main, day was split into three streams – the most interesting being the game design theme, which merged art, film, education and design in a thoroughly inspiring clash of genres and cultures. Krystian opened the day with the case for independent games and how they fit into the commercial world – demonstrating his incredible looking independent game (Trauma); then Tale of Tales described the long design and realisation process of one of their unique games (The Path), suggesting that their games would not be as creative or true to their vision if they had given production over to a large team of programmers – and that the best way forward for them to merge creativity with quality/speed of production would be for programmers to develop easy tools for the designers to use themselves.

Krystian Majewski talks about Independent Games

The section on ‘serious games’ (or games in education as I much prefer to call it) saw Max join Fabricio de la Marques to describe a wonderfully conceived iPhone application which will use augmented reality to help 12-13 year olds to build up a picture of how Roman Cologne looked, working from the small sections of wall and gateways which are spread across the city. Their close work with teachers and with the local museum provided an excellent model for cross-sector development of an educative game. I followed with my argument that games in education need to been as ‘campaigns’ and not ‘side quests’ – that serious games which are produced as bolt-on/isolated skills courses disconnected from the subject context (or fail to create a cohesive context within the game) will result in short-term skill retention and low engagement, compared to the high levels of contextual engagement resulting in embedding games firmly within the subject context.

Sessions on the use of film within games followed (in German, although I managed to follow much of them), and then an entertaining and enlightening talk on a brief history of design and how it has affected games from Björn Bartholdy – given sharp relevance as the lectures were taking place in the Cologne Design School, and the fabulous conference graphics had all been produced by its students. Bernd Diemer, designer at major game developer Crytech then took us on a personal and entertaining journey through his love of maps – which re-ignited the debate on ‘realism’ and graphics quality within games: and how effective games can have the simplest of graphics approaches – and indeed encourage imagination flow more so than over-realistic commercial games.

The extended discussion in between each paper in the stream, and during the generous coffee breaks and evening event hosted in EA Games’s riverside sports bar, made for a thoroughly inspiring day – much in-depth deconstruction of the papers and high-level discussion around the main themes. The mix of educators, theorists, designers and artists from across Europe provided a hot bed for such discussions, and on this basis alone and the ideas I and others have come away with, the conference was a raging success.

Reflecting now as I travel back on the high-speed Thalys train (equipped with free wifi) – the only downsides to the conference, I think, were the lack of time/events to see something of Cologne (although I did manage brief visits to the Shokoladenmuseum and the Döm) and the slightly confused German/English language mix (although the organisers are actively looking at this, and I wouldn’t like to see it convert to English across the board as it was great to see large numbers of local students attending the German lectures). Oh, and Wifi would have been good – I missed out on the (resultingly quite small) backchannel until after the conference – but this is not unique to Cologne, of course.

In summary, a very successful blend of different disciplines and approaches, but all with a solid focus on theory, research and (most notably) evidence-based practice in games design, development and delivery – I’ve certainly left with my head buzzing with ideas (and my contacts list boosted) flowing from the heady mix of different viewpoints. Above all, thanks to Krystian, Fabricio, Max, Björn and everyone else for their wonderful hospitality and company throughout, too.

Game Based Learning 2010

I’ve waited a week to mull over the Games Based Learning 2010 conference I attended in the rather impressive surroundings of The Brewery last week.

The Main Hall, The Brewery

I was there to co-present a new approach to games based learning for higher education with Simon Brookes from Portsmouth University (more of which later), but approached it with more than a little trepidation. The conference (in its second year) is organised by a private promoter, and supported rather prominently by industry partners. This proved only slightly worrying/irritating, the main irritant being the central prominence of sponsor logos behind all of the keynotes (slides, and in the case of Jesse Schell, the speaker themselves demoted to smaller screens at either side). Otherwise, Graham the promotor and his team were enthusiastic and enabling.

The other worry was the broad spread of the conference: drawing talks/attendees from industry, politics, media, and education from all sectors (primary to higher ed). This proved both limiting and inspiring – limiting in that big questions pertinent to certain sectors moved no further on than age-old issues (for example, ‘what is a game’ and ‘games are not evil’ reared their heads repeatedly) whilst many discussions died before they could begin due to the audience spread. Inspiring, though, in that the papers and discussions which followed provided a number of different viewpoints/approaches from the various sectors, and helped spark ideas from left-field and possible collaborations.

Myself and Simon were speaking in a mini- ‘alternative reality’ section, preceded by Kris Rockwell (Hybrid Learning). Kris’s talk highlighted many of the aspects we hoped to pull together in our paper, giving the section a coherent feel. We had a few seconds to get into our white scientist coats (courtesy @jobadge) – and presented our approach to Alternate Reality Games in education as epistemic frameworks (after Schaffer, 2005) which I’ll write about here soon. The session as a whole went well, with good questions for Kris and ourselves.

I spent most of the conference in the separate strands – particularly the whole-day Research strand on the Tuesday. Not too much research in evidence, unfortunately, although there were some good case studies across a range of disciplines and sectors.

Of the keynotes I caught, a mini (friendly) political sparring between Tom Watson and Ed Vasey saw the former upstage the latter with his enthusiasm for games and education; Alice Taylor gave a comprehensive overview of the upcoming projects the innovative Channel 4 Interactive arm are working on (including pirates, explorers, image manipulation and a fabulous sex education game where one takes charge of a platoon of ‘privates’); and Derek Robertson and one of his primary school Heads Gillian Penny gave an energising account of off-the-shelf games use in Scottish schools.

Jesse Schell minimised

Two keynotes stood out though: the first from Matt Mason, author of The Pirate’s Dilemma was thought-provoking and engaging: Matt describes some simple ideas and facts, but they form a powerful and persuasive (though not, surprisingly, particularly subversive) message – feedback between piracy/copying and originators provides a creative loop – and a useful heuristic for approaching game- and course- design. The second, from Jesse Schell, was delivered by video link – but proved to be the most engaging of all. Jesse proposed that game/course design should follow the four aspects we most like in modern life: beauty, customisation, sharing and reality. Drawing on some themes from the opening keynote of the conference, Jesse proposed that designs come from a hybrid of skills – artists working closely with technicians, for example. It’s well worth catching (base of page).

Two quick final notes: the catering at the otherwise excellent Brewery was a bit sparse: small slightly odd portions at lunch, and a distinct lack of biscuits; but this was more than made up for with the free bar at the evening event, and some great food, beer and discussion as a result.

Shaffer, D. (2005). Epistemic games. Innovate 1 (6). Available: http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=79 (accessed April 8, 2010).