The Breaking of the CirclePlaying with, through, against medial boundaries

wey-han.tan@uni-hamburg.dehttp://blogs.epb.uni-hamburg.de/metagames

Narratives | „Why?“

„Doom“ (Id 1993)

„Ultima Underworld II - Labyrinth of Worlds“ (Origin 1993)

Text

[Juha Keinänen (DoeL 2011): „Good guys are handsome, bad guys are ugly. Is there an application in education?“]

[Paul Lowe (DoeL 2011): „The more you know the more you see.“]

[Stephanie Rothenburg (DoeL 2011): WoW embodies the capitalistic dream.]

Rules | „How?“

Start(Ignorance) Finish

(Knowledge)

„Crossing the fairy woods“

„Climbing the mountain of knowledge“

or just „School“ ?

„Spelunking thecave of wisdom“

? ??

?

Learning games created by teachers-to-be

„In elementary school kids learn about the actions of the Continental Army that won our freedoms under George Washington and the Army's role in ending Hitler's oppression. Today they need to know that the Army is engaged around the world to defeat terrorist forces bent on the destruction of America and our freedoms.“„America's Army. FAQ – Parentʼs Info“, United States Army (2003-2004)

Narratives | cultural inscription

„Americaʻs Army“, US Army (2002, 2003, 2009)

"In (...) World War II games, where is the liberation of the concentration camps? I am looking for the motivation rather than just shooting a bunch of human figures."David Franzoni, Screenwriter, on the DICE-Convention 2006

[Lauri Tammi: Is there historical accuracy in „Medal of Honor“?]

Rules | explicitly implicit

„Ayiti - The Cost of Life“, Global Kids (2006)

„Three-Learning-Theories-Mini-Games“, Tan (2009)

[Salvatore Iaconesi: How to patent rules to

create 20 Millionen Chairs?What is the product?

The rules or the chairs?]

Magic Circles | receding borderlines

Gamification

Beyond Usability

Ludic Design

Serious GamesGame Based AssessmentPlaysuasion

“(…) the interference is drawn that any contamination by ordinary life runs the risk of corrupting and destroying its very nature.”- Caillois (2001): “Men, Play and Games”

Educational Alternate Reality Games

decontex-tualisation ‚gaming‘

toying, ‚playing‘, setting rules and

narratives

‚Game‘ | authored environments

• Liberating, non-serious virtuality

• Meaningful, expressive choices

• Experiment, repetition and variation

First order gaming within the game

toying, ‚playing‘, setting rules and

narratives

decontex-tualisation ‚gaming‘

‚Play‘ | re-interpreted givens

• Liberating, non-serious virtuality

• Meaningful, expressive choices

• Experiment, repetition and variation

Second order gaming targeting the game

Metagaming | rules & narratives

Skinning / Modding Emergent Gameplay

"(2) The form of the culture of the next society isn't balance anymore, but the system. Identities can't be gained from letting disruptions fade out, but that deviancies will be amplified and will be upgraded to niches. Equilibrations are empty states; they wait for the next disturbance. (…)""(7) The art of the next society is light and smart, loud and unbearable. It evades and binds with wit; it hassles and tempts. Its images, stories and sounds attack and deny having done so."„Futurecapability: 15 theses for a coming society“, Dirk Baecker (2011) (translated)

The hijacked thread - „digital borderliners“

http://www.thorstena.de/?p=4143„May I ask what's happening here?“ - ThorstenA

Ben Jammin vs. Ben Zol17 Posts in 6 days13.000 letters / 2000 words / 4 pages

transmediality/pervasivity | abduction

„Hardliner - Keine Zeit für Helden?!“, Jens Wiemken (2000)

„Cruel 2 B Kind“,McGonigal & Bogost (2006)

“When the three expansions of pervasive games are taken to extremes, the magic circle starts to lose its meaning as a contractual boundary between ludic and ordinary. Extreme temporal expansion leads to ordinary life becoming a pervasive game. The same happens with space if the ordinary world is seen primarily as a game world: There cannot be a game world without the ordinary world. And, finally, a game where everyone is only an unaware participant is no longer a game.” Montola et al. (2010) „Pervasive Games“

transmediality/pervasivity | abduction

Unusability | wrong interface

„September  12th  -­‐  A  toy  world“,  Gonzalo  Frasca  (2003)  

Unusability | unbearable ‚realism‘

„The Ultimate War Simulation Game“,David Wong (2007)

„Violence. The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive

Bloodshed“, Greg Costikyan (1999),

Unusability | wrong narrative or rules

„The University of Hamburg Game“, Tan (2011)

„Starpower“,Gary Shirts (1969)

“Suppose we could admit that most of us act as we do because of our places in the system. Suppose we turned our energy from blaming each other to blaming the structure of the games we play.”Meadows (2004): “Why would anyone want to play Starpower?”

Patent drawing for „The Landlordʻs

Game“, Elizabeth Magie

(1905)

[Ben Betts: going against functional fixedness]

• The more ubiquitious the gameworlds become, the stronger the desire to appropriate the actual possibility space for interpretation and action.

• The richer the range of alternative medial modes of representation, the more tempting to transfer content.

• The more familiar and meaningful the gameworlds appear, the stronger is the potential for irritation, sabotage, or perturabtion.

Thus (educational) game design may follow two roads. Deliver the content as challenging and balanced as can be, to draw the player smoothly into the confines and safety of the magic circle. Or hint on the magic circle, given rules and narratives as something expandable, mobile, artificial, modifiable, where the decision to take the game serious 'as is' is up to the player - and at oneʻs own ‚riskʻ.

2nd order gaming | some assumptions

• How can one encode the failing of the code into a medium, in this case into a game?

• How can one encode the challenge to change the code by the user?

• How can one motivate the user to endure the irritation and the consequential strenous re-generation, testing and tuning of a new code?

• Is it possible at all to turn the above into an educational method? Is this desirable?

Paradoxes and questions