Soapy Games’s Blog

I’ve been reading some exciting statistics lately about the growth of the game industry. In March, sales grew 57 percent over the year before. That’s before the release of Grand Theft Auto IV which broke sales records. But sales of a game like Grand Theft Auto IV don’t excite me in a good way. Just like I get dismayed that so many people would pay to see the latest violent sexed up blockbuster movie, I also get dismayed about some of the other “entertainment” that our society consumes. This doesn’t mean that video games “bad”, it just means that I don’t choose to play/watch some titles and I don’t want my kids playing or watching either.

When I was 10 or 11, I begged my mother to allow me to go see the movie “Billy Jack.” All the kids at school were talking about it and I wanted so desperately to fit in. So, my mother finally caved and took my sister and I to the thin theater at the corner of 26th Street and Washington. Just a few years before, it had been a bowling alley. I missed the bowling alley, but it was nice to have a movie theater just a few blocks from home. My mother never allowed us to have popcorn or snacks at the movie. Too expensive, I think. It was a dead give-away that she wanted to get you out of the theater if during the movie she started saying “Do you want to get a drink of water?” Or if that didn’t work “Would you like to go get some popcorn?” I honestly don’t remember “Billy Jack”, but I do remember my mother pulled out all the stops. I think she was offering Junior Mints by the time she finally gave up and insisted that we leave. I was mortified. I suspect most of the inappropriate content had just gone sailing over my head. As a parent, I now believe that she did the right thing. But at the time I hated her.

The purpose of this blog is to help parents find the games that they can feel comfortable playing with their kids or allowing their kids to play without fear that they will be exposed to scantily clad women characters with breast enhancements or male characters who look like they are on steroids. My kids aren’t stupid. My 13 year old daughter has asked “Why do computer games always make the women look like that?” More on that later, but for now, here’s what we are playing in our house this week…

The current favorite is Free Rice. In this fun little vocabulary game, for every word correct, 20 grains of rice is donated through the UN World Food Program. There is a little rice bowl that fills up with a few more grains of rice every time a word is correct. (insert screen shot) Game play lasts just a few minutes (that’s how long our attention span is) and that’s just fine. It’s fun to have just a little something to pop in and out of. It’s a hit with my 10 year old son, me, and the brother of my friend the English teacher who will play while on the phone asking “Alan, what does ‘expurgate’ mean?”

A colleague sent me a link to a news story today about the dangers of Second Life http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-online-predator-alert-06-may06,0,894825.story

Certainly there is horrifying stuff going on in Second Life that offends my morals. But the same could be said for movies. And how many people haven’t snuck into an R rated movie before they were legal? I live in a major city and every night on the news I see stories of horrifying stuff going on in my city. Would I allow my children to roam the streets? Not on your life. Neither would I allow them to roam in Second Life.

Having said that, there is a lot of good that is going on in Second Life. to disregard that it exists would be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Congress recently held hearings on Virtual Worlds. You may have seen Susan Tenby, from Tech Soup, and Jon Stewart’s spoof of her presentation. Here is a link to a “video” that was prepared for the CEO of Linden Lab’s presentation to the hearings. Note how the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois is using Second Life. http://www.silverandgoldie.com/linden_congress.htm

We need to exploit the technology tools we have for good. There is so much good that can come from virtual worlds.

I found this article very compelling http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18434  It’s true that titles like Grand Theft Auto IV are blockbusters, but there are many gamers just like me who like different games.  When I go to the movie theater, I am not going to see the latest smash ‘em up blockbuster.  In my games, I am not going to play the games with the scantily clad females and the steroid-induced males.  In the media, I frequently hear “video games” lumped under one destructive category.  But that’s like lumping all movies in the same category.  ”A Inconvenient Truth” is the same as “Transformers” is the same as “Atonement”.  I don’t think anyone would agree that is true.  Mainstream media needs to get smarter about their treatment of games as an industry.

They got a few of the facts mixed up, but here are my 45 seconds of fame:

Click on Friday, March 7th

http://www.azcentral.com/12news/rak/rak_index.html

Many people have trouble understanding what gaming is.  When I say “I work with games.” some people instantly think of slot machines.  The world of gaming is very big and I confine my work to video games and real life games.  Here are some terms and examples of the things you might hear your kids talking about: 

Platforms and Devices

There are many different hardware devices that can be used for playing video games.  These devices are generally called “platforms” and they can be divided into several broad categories.

            Consoles:        A console is a device used only for gaming.  Some examples are the Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, GameBoy Advance, and so on.  While I use the term “gaming”, you may have also recently read of the Banner Health study that used the Wii to increase surgeon effectiveness and you may have seen the Johnny Chung Lee video on YouTube that makes a low cost Smart Board out of a Wiimote.  (The Wii controller is called a “Wiimote”.)  So, while these are gaming devices, it is useful to understand that they are used for more than just having fun.

            PC Games:     These are games that are played just on the PC.  You can buy them at a store like Best Buy or EB Games, or they can be downloaded off the internet from sites like Big Fish www.bigfish.com

            Massively Multiplayer Online Games:        These are games you play online, but with a bunch of other people, potentially from all over the world, who are also logged in at the same time interacting with you.  You may hear people also use terms such as MMO, MMOG, MMORPG, MUVE, and others to describe this category, but the bottom line is that no matter what the variant, it is potentially a lot of people logged in at the same time.  Some examples include Club Penguin, Second Life, and Webkins.com.

Game Genres

As with the many different hardware devices, there are many game genres.  There are myriad types of games, which is why people in the industry get so upset when people publicly paint with a broad brush and say “Games are bad.”

            Casual Games:          These are games that can take 10 to 20 minutes, or even less time.  Examples are the games you might find at Addicting Games www.addictinggames.com  (Note:  I would be careful about letting my child have free access to this site.  Some of the games are fantastically amusing: my favorite is the parking game.  But others have mature themes.)

            Serious Games:         These are games with a purpose, not entertainment as the ultimate objective.  Examples are ReMission, the first person shooter (FPS) game that has the heroine in the game attacking cancer cells.  Studies have shown that kids with cancer who play ReMission do better during treatment than those who don’t.  Other examples are The Redistricting Game www.redistrictinggame.com that teaches players the complexity and nuances of gerrymandering.

            Advergaming:           These are games that are designed to sell something.  A great example is the Burger King game.  Other examples are the Folger’s Word Puzzle ads that you have seen on web pages.

            Persuasive Games:    Like advergaming, these games set out to sell an idea.  Frequently used for social consciousness raising and the like.  See www.games4change.org

            First Person Shooter:            The player is the protagonist who goes through the game shooting at things.  These are the types of games that tend to get the public upset.

            Augmented Reality Games:             These are games that have a computer-based gameplay component, but also have the players complete missions in real life.  The TV show “Numbers” had an episode on ARGs that did a good job highlighting this type of game.  (Of course, ARGs rarely lead to death and mayhem in real life like they do on tv.)

            Real Time Strategy:  RTS games have players competing against one another by making strategic moves to accomplish game objectives, such as secure more resources or stabilize currency.

Many modern simulations are simply serious games.  America’s Army is a simulation, but it is also an MMORPG, and Advergame, and a First Person Shooter.  The Redistricting Game is a simulation.  ReMission is a simulation.  There are other more technical simulations that our students might work on after employment that involve more precise application of physics and so forth, but the lines between games and simulations are very blurry.

Today I began playing “Destroy All Developers”.  So far, I have completed nine out of 20 missions and am in second place on the coders team.  The coders are in second place overall.  I am addicted to this game!  The mother lode at GDC is the care and feeding of the network. 

I met Lane Merrifield today (co-founder of Club Penguin).  In a case of total fandom, I stood in line to shake his hand so I can tell my kids that I shook his hand.  I thanked him for making Club Penguin and I told him how much, as a parent, I appreciated his work.  I told him I trusted him to keep my kids safe.  He was incredibly gracious.  Wow.  What a neat guy.  Perhaps I should have asked for his autograph.

While on a mission in the Destroy game, I “re-met” Dreamy Intel.  We met at Austin and it was fun to catch up with her.  She was responsible for managing Intel events in Second Life and she told me that they just didn’t get the ROI they needed to continue expending that level of effort.  Interesting.  She gave me lots of information on their game contest for 2008.  I look forward to getting digital copies that I can share across the system.

In the Serious Games Summit, eric zimmerman from gamelab led a panel on how to measure what we are learning from games.  He said that the NSF (I think - it could have been the McArthur foundation or another big funding source) said that this year is going to be all about measuring results.  Here were the things I heard that I felt were worth thinking about:

• Do games increase self-worth?
• How do we measure learning from a game?
• Extraneous info in game content can harm learning (humans do best keeping 5 to 9 things in short term memory at one time).
• Was the Destroy All Developers game good for me?  It feels a bit like Speed Dating.

Numbers I found interesting today:  Neopets has 22 MILLION user created shops; 750,000 transactions per day; 30,000 new users per day; 18% of their active users have been on site for more than 4 years; 45 million registered accounts.  Club Penguin has over 12 million active users; 500 to 1000 DAILY safety filter updates per day; more than 75 people in the company are dedicated to safety; 100,000 simultaneous users.

Tonight I attened a Sony Online Entertainmentparty in which they announced an initiative to encourage women to get into the gaming industry.  They showcased a game that is being built by women.  The trailer showed the same steroid-filled male characters and barely clothed female characters in a first person shooter that looks alarmingly similar to every other FPS…  Still, diversity is good.  Yeah SOE!

Rhonda Gaines and I topped off the night at the IGDAparty.  That woman knows how to work a room!  What a gift to be working with her.  I am glad she’s here.  I got to meet Nathan Lindloff.  After all the emails and phone calls, it was nice to finally meet him in person!

Today I was reading several articles about the way learners have changed.  One article appropriately called the current crop of learners The Net Generation.  People complain about the lack of attention span among The Net Generation.  But doesn’t everyone have a short attention span when they find something boring?  One of my colleagues once said to me, in a rant “They are here to LEARN, not have FUN!”  As if “fun” were a four letter word.  I don’t think learning and fun are mutually exclusive.  To the contrary.  I think people learn best when they are having fun.  Technology is part of The Net Generation’s culture.  In most of America’s classrooms, we are asking this generation to check their culture at the door and step back into the world of sage on the stage unilaterally dispensing what is true.

Reflecting on the movies about great teachers I have seen “Stand and Deliver”, “Freedom Writers” and others, the one constant is that the teacher worked to the point of exhaustion.  Teaching is not easy.  It’s a shame that our professional ball players are paid more in a day than teachers make for a whole year.  But that’s another issue.  What if teachers started to make small efforts towards reaching out to the digital learner?  What might that effort look like? How can teachers reach across the digital divide without becoming overwhelmed?