Games As Cool New Media

Evolution of Game Genre for Educational Games

Carolyn Watters

DalhousieUniversity

Halifax, Nova Scotia.Canada.

Abstract

In this paper we examine the evolution of digital games from the perspective of genre. As in other media, digital game genres have experienced and continue to experience transformations, evolutions, and spontaneous novel varieties. In this work we concentrate on the evolution of game genre as the purpose of games blurs the distinction of entertainment and education.

1. Introduction

Mass media, such as radio and television, are complex combinations of channel and genre. Genres allow us to make distinctions and choices within a given medium largely on the basis of content and form, for example, talk shows, dramas, or sitcoms. Modern digital games have gained the status of mass medium [23], a cool medium in the McLuhan [10] sense of highly interactive, and genre are very evident.

From the McLuhan perspective [10], the personal and social consequences of a medium result from the new functionalities that the medium affords the user, for example the visual input that movies adds to radio, the control that television adds to movies, and the interactivity afforded by the Internet. Like other media, digital games have developed to the point of having classes of well described genre [23]. Digital games adopt and transform characteristics of previous media; storylines, fast scene and time shifts, direct interaction, and audio and visual feedback.

Hot media leave little information to the imagination and typically demand little attention and participation from the user while the information content of cool media provides more opportunity for interpretation and participation by the recipient. McLuhan [10] made the observation that hot media exclude the user from the interpretation and control of the information while cool ones require an engagement of the user in the interpretation of the information. A digital game requires immediate interaction from the user. Digital games are by this definition verycool.

This work is part of a three year project, Simulations and Advanced Game Environments (SAGE) [13], to examine this new medium and to explore how games and simulations can be used to develop new genres that enhance learning. We can learn much from games about how to build interfaces that are more transparent, more engaging, and foster community building. Our goal is to develop game architectures that support the development of new games that leverage the engagement of entertainment games into educational opportunities. That is, we can generate new game genres that move us beyond the edu-entertainment we currently see. These would provide non-trivial environments with significant content and challenge as well as support engagement and collaboration. There is a similarity in the goals of learning objects and digital games that includes engagement, persistence, skill improvement, strategy, community, and collaboration. Can we create new genres of games that are engaging and can be shown to improve learning outcomes?

Like in other media, digital game genres have experienced and continue to experience transformations, evolutions, and spontaneous novel varieties.

2. Digital Game Genre

In this paper, we describe game genre from the perspective of digital or cybergenre [22] using the triple (content, form, functionality). The content of digital games includes the narrative, scenario, challenge, and characters as well as the rules for engagement. The form of games varies widely from game boards and card decks to 2D and 3D worlds. Game functionality includes player and game interactions, player-to-player interactions, and team interactions, and control of game and player features. Digital games provide an extension for the player that removes many of the restriction of physical games and provides access to new cognitive immersive scenarios and worlds.

Figure 1. Sample Evolution Across Media: StarTrek [17] television, role playing, and video game

Game Genre Evolution

Within the context of some common purpose, such as entertainment or education, genres evolve in the new media by changing content, form, and/or functionality to exploit the new medium. Often entirely novel genres appears that have no counterpart in any previous medium, like the recent rash of “reality” shows on television. Often, however, evolution is more iterative and continues within a media, whether it is television shows or games. In addition to providing a shortcut to understanding, genre has a social role in providing common experiences and landmarks for our role as members of one or more communities, what Miller [11] describes as genre participation.

In a recent survey of 110 MBA students at DalhousieUniversity, we asked the students to report on their game playing and game playing preferences. While we were interested primarily in gender differences in the choice of game and playing patterns, we noticed that the games formed almost predictable clusters into six genres; replications of board and card games like solitaire or checkers, replicated arcade games like Tetris or ping-pong, virtual sports games like soccer or hockey, novel variations of strategy games like SimCity, novel quest games in imaginary worlds, and shooter games.

It is the content that is most likely to spill over from one media to the next. For example, the Star Trek theme, shown in Figure 1, has been successful where the characterization and narrative has spilled both across media and across genre as it moves from the television drama through role playing to 3D video game.

Digital games have wide popular appeal, well articulated genres, and have become integrated into the social fabric of many cultures. Furthermore, digital games have an impact on personal and social uses of information, particularly networked and collaborative games. Internet enabled games, in particular, support the emergence of new social structures, both virtual and personal, that engage the participant very directly and often very intensely.

Break Boundaries in Game Genre Evolution

Games have been a part of human culture for as long as anyone can tell, following a path from early stone games to modern digital games. A break boundary [10] is a development in a medium or its use from which there is no return, a development that results in a new level of use of a medium. Just as we can no longer imagine an Internet without email and web sites, the evolution of digital games, from the first computer game in a 1958 science display [1], includes good examples of break boundaries in the media that result in a sharp evolution or use of genres in that medium.

Arcade games, for example, are a genre of games with an interesting evolutionary path. Early players required a new set of game skills to play with the then new game machine, with its new reward system and, perhaps as importantly, added new social dimensions. The development of the video game was a break boundary that extended the form and functionality of the genre by transforming the balls in the video arcade games to bits rather than metal and allowing the laws of the universe, such as gravity and time, to be altered in novel ways. Early Internet games (i.e., games that are played on the Internet, rather than downloaded) were not substantially different from the same game loaded on the user’s machine.

A significant break boundary has recently occurred with the introduction of distributed and collaborative Internet games, such as Capture the Flag. Burnstein and Kline [2] predicted that the most exciting opportunity for game owners lay in sharing the experience and playing against other players. Now we see that whole communities of practice and a generation of game players have emerged for whom no other version of games is as compelling. A recent visitor to our lab reported that “the other games are just running around shooting.” The emergence of distributed and collaborative games is a compelling recent example of a break boundary. Once games were adapted to the networking capabilities of the Internet, they took a quantum leap from replications of PC based games to a new social dimension where collaboration and community interaction dominate.

New opportunities for the development of novel game genres now exist in these collaborative and distributed environments. While the content and form may be reminiscent of other multiplayer games, the functionality has been greatly enhanced. Games in this new environment rely on advanced cognitive skills, critical thinking, collaborative strategy, partnership development, and community building. We suggest that these games can be used to support learning and skill building in a wide range of non-entertainment situations, such as science, health care, crisis management, and real time simulations.

4. Exploring New Game Genres

The functionality provided by distributed and collaborative games presents an opportunity to develop the content and form of new genres of digital games that combine entertainment and social relevance. Understanding what factors make digital games so engaging has potential impact on the design of other applications where motivation and engagement are important, notably interface design for complex applications such as educational software. That is, can we combine the ludic nature of game playing with the goal satisfaction nature of applications in new genres where the purpose has shifted from entertainment to a goal-oriented application. Games generate a high degree of motivation and engagement in the players. There is an intensity of the interaction and often a remarkable devotion (compulsion) to the game. If these attributes can be kept in tact throughout a transformation of the purpose of games from entertainment to an application area, such as education, then new genres of digital games would emerge that are strikingly familiar to the user but distinctly different in impact.

Like games, the success of educational software depends not only on the content but also on the engagement of the user in meaningful cognitive ways to learn new concepts, ways of thinking, and master new skills. A previous study [21] used a metalevel analysis of the psychological literature to propose a framework of motivational constructs that are directly related to the design of interactive educational software. This framework includes four dimensions that have been shown across multiple theories to affect user motivation and persistence; competence, context, communication, and autonomy. Games are designed to build competence in the user with, for example, the scaffolding of tasks within levels of the game, open ended challenges, informative and timely feedback, and consistent and transparent accounting of the player’s progress towards the goal. Most games provide meaningful context for the user by allowing role playing, narrative themes, rationales within the context of distal goals, and opportunities for personalization. Games, especially Internet games, provide ways to ease communication to other players. Multiplayer games, for example, provide an effortless way for players to join chat groups or ongoing collaborative games, with other players who may or may not be known to the user. Games give the player considerable control over his or her experience using techniques like multiple views, advanced navigational schema, easy access to help, and sequences of attainable goals.

Evolution of Genre for Educational Games

Educational games differ from entertainment games largely only in purpose. That is, there is a shift from playing the game for social and personal entertainment goals to learning and educational goals. We can expect that there will follow an evolution of genres to reflect this difference in purpose. The challenge then is to develop game genres that, like SimCity [20] “even though it is not a video game, plays like one.” The latest version of Internet games, provide players with the autonomy to play against the computer, human players, or form teams of collaborators; basic functionality one expects from an interactive learning environment.

While the current focus of game players is largely on entertainment, a move to provide games with a focus on education will require the transformation of game structures and game design patterns into genres that support the values of collaboration, community building, distance learning, skill practice, and complex challenges. Chapman [3] suggests that there should be increasing emphasis on the learner “situating” themselves in the world of study, to explore the possibilities in other worlds, and the view concepts and constructs from other perspectives, even take on multiple roles. Games do this. Early genre of educational games have been largely replications of traditional games genre with learning variations, such as Tic-tac-toe games with question answering interjected into turn taking and more recently quest style games where progress is dependent on progress through the course material. To make real progress educational game genres needs to benefit and leverage on the evolution of entertainment game genres.

In the SAGE project we propose initially to work on two such genres using design patterns templates [14]; the single player challenge genre and the collaborative quest genre. Design patterns provide an opportunity to build modular game instances from classes of general components. We have recently developed with the IWK Children’s hospital a game for 6-10 year olds to reinforce a psycho-social intervention for children diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD) [8]. This intervention helps the children learn how to manage the symptoms of their own condition. Our goal was to design a short game with content relevant to IBD but with the form and functionality of a video game. We are in the pilot testing stage of this project and will examine changes in behavior (outcomes) within the group of children who play the game compared to those who only have access to the handbook.

5. Conclusion

Digital games are an important medium that supports a high degree of interactivity and collaboration. Game genres have evolved and continue to evolve from replications of games in other media, to novel games only found in digital form, and now to complex social and collaborative games. Much can be learned from entertainment games and game genre that can be used in the development of genre for games and applications used for educational rather than strictly entertainment goals. These games would need to present significant and clear educational challenges without losing the immersive appeal of other games.

Digital games have an appeal that goes across a broad demographic and this leads to speculation that understanding games, game genres, and game interaction can be used to our advantage in other contexts. For example, supporting high levels of motivation by providing support in the interface design for just-in-time instruction, choice, feedback, communication, reward structures, and autonomy should be as useful in word processing or educational contexts as it is in game contexts.

Acknowledgements. Funding for this work has been provided by SSHRC and NSERC of Canada.

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