PANDEMIC 2020 VERSION
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Advanced Games for Learning
Spring 2024
Spring 2024
and The problem: find games that might spark an interest in learning - and possibly majoring in - Geography. A quick google search will illustrate that geography games are popular – and certainly plentiful. Many of these geogames may be considered overtly serious or educational, but some simply get players out into the world to enjoy place-based gameplay. There are countless map, capital, or flag quizzes that are aimed at young learners or trivia buffs. There are multiple National Geographic games in the NatGeo app that would seem to have a direct correlation with Geography studies, but might still be directed toward players in the pre-K to 12 range. Finding educational games that highlight the skills developed by Geography – and thus that might be inspiring to potential young adult Geography majors – is seemingly more challenging. At first, I tried to find serious games with a theme that goes beyond a geography theme and rather illustrates geography’s broad skillsets. While I did find two games (viewed in YouTube and described below) that fit this description, I actually spent much more time in the commercial sphere. I wanted to play a few games with the specific goal of figuring out how their unique mechanics or approaches might be adapted to spark an interest in a geography major at the university level. For this entry, I wanted to focus in on two areas, in particular:
Project Lily Pad and Project EOC ArcGIS games #1 Project Lily Pad #2 Project EOC *Discovered through a search for ArcGIS games *Dynamic: (1) exploration simulation; (2) real time strategy simulation Students at the Rochester Institute of Technology under an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates: GIS for Disaster Resilience Spatial Thinking designed two geogames that illustrate exciting and relevant skills that geography and geoscience can teach. Both games might be classified as serious/simulation games as they allow players to improve their disaster response skills through spatial thinking in a safe, realistically simulated environment. Using ArcGIS, Open Street Map, the US National Grid Coordinate System, and City Engine, the designers created a real-as-possible environment of two Texas cities affected by hurricanes. Players navigate the spaces, identify safe locations, and consider how best to allocate necessary resources through the different simulations. These geogames are particularly interesting to me, because they directly utilize mechanics made popular in commercial games, like the walk/run-through (Lily Pad) and strategic placement of resources on a map (EOC). The underlying dynamic, though, is the use and understanding of geographic skills with applied exploration and strategy. They take scientific geography skills and make them applicable to real world situations. I did not play these games, but have supplied the video descriptions. Plague Inc. by Ndemic Creations, 2012. Discovered (remembered) through search for discussions about Pandemic (board game). Dynamic: real time strategy simulation with a placement mechanic Plague Inc. is a real-time strategy simulation app that now can be played as a variation on Steam as Plague Inc: Evolved. For this post, I played the app. I’ve played Plague Inc. before in addition to playing games like Pandemic. These games are fundamentally territory acquisition games, but they are focused on the spread of a pathogen with the ultimate goal of destroying humanity. The pathogen – in early phases a simple bacterial infection – starts with the infection of Patient Zero on a particular continent. Soon, though, with the ease of global travel, airplanes spread the sickness worldwide. The player must stay steps ahead of the humans who are fighting back through science and politics. This game highlights the interconnectedness of the world through a rapidly changing map. While geography/cartographic setting seems to be simply the stage for the illness to spread, it is underpinning the concept of the places affected. Students interested in global climate, public health, urban studies and other forms of place-based data-driven professions might find a game of this type to be helpful in “big planet/big picture” thinking. It’s not clear to me the intended players, especially. While the theme is absolutely a mature one and was considered so realistic that they had to create a disclaimer during Covid 19, the mechanics of the app are relatively simple. Spirit Island
Discovered (Remembered) by playing recently and then again after this assignment. Dynamic: Cooperative "settler-destruction" strategy (as opposed to territory acquisition, the player/s push the invaders off the island) This critically acclaimed board game designed by R Eric Reuss and published by Greater than Games in 2017, is a cooperative 1-4 player game in which the players take on the role of nature spirits on a remote island. The scenario is a sort of alt-Catan, in which European colonists in the form of small conquistador pieces show up and start invading the land, causing the local inhabitants – your worshippers – to leave. The invaders can quickly populate your island, but you can work together with the other spirits and the NPC inhabitants to repel them. The mechanics are complicated; however, the game is massively fun once you figure them out. The game is Cooperative as your spirit works with others (each spirit has different abilities and affinities) and the NPC local inhabitants in pre-planned moves. You use Area Control to influence the land on the board that is associated with your spirit: Desert, Forest, Mountain, Wetlands, Ocean. You have card management mechanics, too, because each Spirit must choose which power to use at each phase. Once a power is used, the card is discarded – but you can choose to reacquire used cards at a certain point. This strategy game is very interesting from a cultural geography standpoint. There are several academic articles and even more social media critiques on the topic of colonialism and anti-colonialism in board games. Catan-type territory acquisition games that involve colonizing a foreign/alien land have received a negative reception from some post-Colonial scholars. But in both cases (Catan and Spirit Island), I’d argue, the fundamental mechanic provides a window into cultural geography. The spatial awareness of the board as you build/destroy on the various landscapes reflects a sort of reality-adjacent commentary. I have not played Spirit Island as a solo game. I’m not sure that a solo experience would inspire the kinds of conversations that I’ve had (as recently as this weekend) playing this game. In fairness, I tend to play board games with other college professors – or at least other Gen Xers, so we might be a bit of an insider team when it comes to discussing colonizing mechanics. Part II. It is incredibly difficult to consider how a single game might inspire a person to choose an educational path in life. I came across a website called College Fit Game, but the game described doesn't seem to apply. There were also numerous college major quizzes/surveys that introduced majors, typically on a university's website. However, Geography, in particular, is a field that is perhaps “hidden” for all that it is about the earth and the people who inhabit it. It’s hidden behind history, physics, data science, anthropology, climate science, etc. It’s fundamentally a field that needs to invite people to “find” it à la Carmen Sandiego. I chose the three types of games because each of them provides slightly different approaches to place-based games. I suspect that there’s a way to join some of the cultural anthropology elements of Spirit Island with the simulations made possible by ArcGIS to showcase the multiple paths possible for majors. I’m still working through this, but I found MANY games as part of this project and look forward to working my way through them.
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I'm happy to be back in Advanced Games for Learning. After three-ish years, getting back into games from a creative and intellectual perspective is thrilling. I'm very much looking forward to firming up and expanding my core knowledge of serious games and even more excited (and a bit apprehsive) to get creative through the collaborative design process.
I've decided to add on to my earlier blog rather than start over. It's been interesting to look back over my contributions from Fall 2020. That was a difficult time for everyone personally and professionally, but it's clear to me that I found solace and stimulation in the first half of this course. I'm looking forward to comparing new insights to old. I would like to start this blog by stating that I’m still slightly unclear about the distinction between these three types of learning approaches. I found Arch's assurance that this is an ongoing discussion in game studies unsurprising! Where the lines are clear, they’re actually quite clear: An FAA flight simulator is not the same as Microsoft’s highly realistic Flight Simulator, just as this game is not the same as the fictional flight and fight pseudo-game famously played (and won!) in the 1980s movie The Last Starfighter. Where they are less clear, they can be muddy. Still, when playing three farming simulation games, Third World Farmer, Cornucopia, and Red Planet Farmer, it is possible to note distinguishing characteristics that might lean certain games more toward a “serious” game designation. In ways, each game is a simulation game without being a real simulation. There are no specific skills being practiced; however, one game has the goal of encouraging empathy for hypothetically-real situations encountered by the world’s most poverty-stricken peoples, another educates about real-world water and climate concerns, and the third is (sort of) just fun. Motivation to play is inspired by desire to earn the particular goal: empathy, knowledge, and fun. Third World Farmer This game was originally designed by a student class at IT-University of Copenhagen. Its goal is to place the “fun” aspects of farm sims, popular as time and resource management games, into a very un-fun real-world context. This game site is rich with expository information, including links to foreign aid organizations. As a desperately poor farming family in Africa, you are responsible for making difficult choices about crops, implements, and structural developments to create a living, if not thriving, farm. Turn-based action provides quick feedback and allows a player to see how the vagary of real-world imbalance plays out. The player is confronted by disease, drought, economic downturns, thieves, and other natural and human-caused disasters. It’s impossible to plan for these disasters since they take place AFTER the turn is completed. The developers define for us how they view their work: “Third World Farmer is just a game, but it gives you a taste of what reality can be like in some parts of the world.” This is a not really “just a game,” but serious/simulation game with emotional impacts that are intended to influence future behaviors. While there is no particular skill being built or trained, empathy is being inspired. I did not play this game through to its natural conclusion – that being the death or removal of the family, I assume – in part because I found that the sense of impending disaster to be effective early in the game play. While my curiosity was piqued in a “what happens next?” way, my own desire to play the game was mitigated by the designed imbalance and sense that I couldn’t win. Cornucopia This game was designed as a reinforcement tool for the California Academy of Science’s Flipside Science pedagogy. Students in grades 5-12 are tasked with maintaining California’s water resources in the face of changing climate conditions and agricultural technologies. The game itself is relatively simplistic and like Third World Farmer is also a turn-based resource management game; however, teachers are meant to provide students with a guided lesson plan on different climate/water topics before students are encouraged to play as a reinforcement technique. There are specific learning objectives provided on the website: Students will “evaluate and compare the water and land resource needs of various crops and animal food sources,” will “identify how changing weather and climate conditions such as drought affect water availability and food production” and will “investigate how agricultural technologies impact water use.” I found this serious game, admittedly targeted to a much younger player, to be the least engaging of the three. The simulation aspect of the game reflects a similar mechanic to Third World Farmer but is somewhat less intuitive in that the feedback provided at the top of the screen requires a tutorial to understand. Having recently traveled to drought-stricken Southern California, I can imagine that this type of learning module is relevant especially to a California student body. There is no particular skill that is being taught; however, encouraging an understanding of decision-making as it relates to climate conditions seems both age-appropriate and effective. Red Planet Farmer
This game is the most “game” and least “serious” of the three farmer simulation games. It has a simple, friendly scenario – you’ve been hired as an agricultural specialist whose role is to keep the base inhabitants fed in adverse conditions. Another turn-based game, each turn provides the lapse of one year to see the result of your decisions. With the least to actually learn here, since there’s the fantastic element of life on Mars, the player is able to plan for vagaries of weather, radiation, etc, by following the forecast bar at the bottom of the screen. This planning element puts the win/lose in the hands of the player rather than facing the imbalance of unforeseen natural and human-based disasters. As crops and their supports (energy, water) become increasingly expensive and resources become more dear, it is possible to run out of money. In the ninth round I was unable to plan for enough food for the growing inhabitants and lost two people. It was unclear if I lost them to death or transfer, but it was the first moment when the simulation might dive more deeply into consequence. |