Books and Video Games

As someone who enjoys playing video games and enjoys reading, I'm a bit conflicted after reading the New York times article "Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers" by Motoko Rich. I think that there are different things to be learned and enjoyed when either reading a book or some other print artifact and when playing a video game. Sometimes, interesting and useful information is acquired when playing video games. Those of us who were in elementary school in the 90s remember playing Number Munchers, and we all know about the perils of cholera and dysentery not from experience in real-life but from losing random family members and friends to those ills while traveling along the Oregon Trail. Using video games to try to encourage students to read books, however, is quite different indeed though from what those video games were trying to do.

The joy of reading books comes from not only the ability to escape to other worlds, see the world through the eyes of other people or creatures, and perform feats that we have never nor will ever perform but also in the ability to see those worlds and experience those things in any way that we'd like. Even though books describe the characters and settings, there is still the freedom to fill in the details in any way the reader would like. So, for example, even if we all read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, we all will imagine Narnia differently. That’s definitely part of the fun of reading; you can, to some extent, augment and change the story as you see fit. That changes, however, when you move to visual mediums like games and movies. A big complaint over the Harry Potter movies was that things were left out or were changed in some way. The mediums simply afford different things. Movies and games have to define how things look and how characters speak and move. A little less is left up to the imagination.

One thing that is cool about video games that is not a part of most books or print material is the ability to affect how the story progresses and ends. Books have one ending. Someone wrote the story, someone edited it, it was copied and printed several times over, and we bought one or more of those copies to consume the story. A similar story could be told about movies. With video games, however, though there are programmed movements and programmed endings, one usually determines how the story progresses and which one of the pre-programmed endings is accomplished. So, it feels as if one has a bit more control over the process. There are some books that allow that though. I used to love reading the choose-your-own-ending Goosebumps books when I was a kid. You remember those books where if you made one decision you went to page x but if you made another decision you’d go to page y, right? Those were awesome, especially the Goosebumps books because it was always a crazy decision like jumping off a cliff and landing in some bushes below or stabbing a monster in the eye and trying to run away before he retaliated. I'd always die rather quickly, which I guess means that I'm a poor decision-maker under stressful situations, but after dying, I'd always go back and switch up my decision to see what would have happened otherwise. It was a lot of fun and sort of game-like in nature, but it was still a book. I could visualize what the monsters looked like in my mind in any way desired, and I could interpret the book’s events in any way that fit the images that I had created in my head using the author’s words. I'm not so certain that that is always the case with video games.

In addition to everything mentioned above, I think a bit of my hesitation in using video games to get more kids reading lies in the fact that video game tie-ins rarely seem to work well. The games seem to be things thrown together after successful books and movies and not something on which much thought has been given. There are some exceptions to this, as the Avatar movie and video game were both developed simultaneously. So, perhaps more thoughtful and enjoyable tie-ins are to be seen in the future, but I'm not a believer right now. Besides, kids seem to be reading these days, and not just short books, but bible-sized books like the books in the Harry Potter series. I'm not convinced that kids don't like to read these days; it just seems like they need good stories to read. If the story is good, regardless of length, they seem to be reading. Even stories that aren’t that great, e.g., the Twilight books, are still widely and voraciously read. Okay, maybe the Twilight books aren’t that bad! But they prove that kids really are interested in reading; we just have to make the effort to write and deliver stories worth reading. We don't have to trick or cajole them with games.

Both books and games are great teaching tools in their own right and can teach kids many things in different ways. As opposed to using one to convince kids to use the other, we should exploit their affordances to teach kids about information in the most natural way possible with the chosen medium.

Some Questions Around Media Concerns

The conversation around the Chatroulette web site (discussed in an early post and comments) and the Daily show’s satirical look at the media’s exaggeration of the web site as a “craze” tied into questions I have had relating to how discussions of fear around media are framed.

I have a particular interest in the debate about violence that surrounds video games. I’m not so much concerned here with the legitimacy of claims about the negative effects of video game violence, but more so interested in how much that debate has framed discussion around video games, to the exclusion of many other discussions.

I don’t dispute the fact that violence is a serious issue. I personally dislike watching violent movies (can’t handle Tarantino) and would definitely prefer not to have youth I work with be violent. However, I’m not quite sure what the long-running debate around video games and violence is supposed to accomplish. If it is conclusively proven that video games cause violence, is the aim to then restrict people from playing these games? To ban the industry from creating violent games? To restrict just young people? Or something else?

Whether or not we researchers, educators, parents come to the conclusion that video game violence is detrimental, video games are already deeply imbedded in our culture – and the video game industry is larger and more pervasive than perhaps even the movie industry in the United States. And it is the most violent video games that are also the top sellers, not necessarily just because they are violent but because they are often the most complex, largest in scope, open-ended and interactive, and generally the best-funded games. So what do we do? What discussions should we be having? And why is the violence debate so often the only discussion the mainstream media seems to be having?

Is the Media the Message?

After watching Scott McCloud’s talk at the TED conference in 2004, I can’t stop thinking about the ideas he talked about, and how they may apply to libraries. McCloud and other comic book artists are heavily invested in print media—and as he discusses in his talk, everything about a comic, from using panels to present time frame, to using left-right tracking to create storyline, exist because of adaptations creators made to allow comics to fit into the specific media of paper, newspaper, and eventually books.

Libraries, too, are heavily invested in print media. Librarians value print media, specifically books, but also newspapers and magazines, as privileged information sources with good reason. They are durable and portable, go through a vetting and editorial process to ensure their content quality, and have served as the cornerstone of thought and learning for generations. But as McCloud points out, with new media come new opportunities and challenges. For comic artists, this meant discovering that you couldn’t plop print-based comics directly into electronic screens, add sound & interactivity, and expect it to act in the intended ways. He discusses how the linear, time frame based panels start to lose cohesiveness if you take readers out of the in-text timeline by introducing outside media.

To me, this is a fabulous metaphor for what many people (and libraries) are struggling with in using and applying new media—oftentimes we want to plop existing content in its existing form into these new channels. But to really be meaningful, the content needs to be re-conceived in new ways that are specifically designed to exploit the benefits of that new media.

To clarify this a bit, I’d like to take a look at what McCloud says, then discuss some examples. And along the way, I will trace some questions that I had as I listened to his talk. McCloud talks about “a McLuhenesque mistake” that many people make when looking at new technology. This mistake is to appropriate the shape of a previous technology as the content of new technology. Not being super familiar with Marshall McLuhen , I decided to try to look up some of his thoughts to see if I could clarify this for myself a bit more. From Wikipedia, McLuhen, perhaps most famous for the ideas of “global village” and “the medium is the message,” was a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a communications theorist (interestingly, he was also a tutor and friend to Walter Ong, who wrote about the imperiousness of literacy in our of our class readings). In The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, he wrote about how communication technology (from alphabetic writing to printing press to electronic media) affects cognitive organization (a la Proust and the Squid maybe?) and hence social organization.

He wrote in the 1960s about how individualistic print culture would eventually be brought to an end by “electronic interdependence” where electronic media replaces visual culture with aural/oral culture, coming full circle from the much earlier movement form oral to print. I’m guessing that where McCloud differs from McLuhan is in McLuhan’s assertions in Understanding Media (1964), that media itself, and not the messages it carries, should be the focus of study (hence “the medium is the message”).

For McCloud, the medium seems to be only useful as a way by which to more clearly, fluidly, and naturally to pass the message in a way that it can be received by others. I tend to agree with McCloud on this, that it is the content that should be valued. However, I find that quite a few librarians and teachers disagree with me on this, as we heavily value the medium of books. Can the content gotten from a web site really be as valuable or confirmable as the information gotten from a book? What do we lose in a generation of kids that gets their primary information from the Web instead of from books?

These questions are of real concern to librarians and teachers, as I think they should be. Books are valuable, precisely because of the process by which they are created, vetted, edited, and scrutinized. These same processes have not necessarily built up around digital media and web sites. And in the places that they do exist, such as online journals, the information has become so guarded, locked down, difficult to access, and poorly manipulated , that it becomes extremely difficult to use. But I think this proves McCloud’s point. It really isn’t the specific media that necessarily defines the quality of the information, but rather it is the surrounding processes that ensure the quality. And since much of the web doesn’t have these processes built in, it is much more suspect and susceptible to inaccuracies. On the other hand, though, online databases suffer from the opposite problem, the one that McCloud points out. They have appropriated the shape of the previous media (bound print journals) that have to be subscribed to, are limited to libraries and academics, etc. and carried these ideas over as content. I’m not saying they haven’t had good reasons to do this, but it does lead to many problems, including: young people find these databases difficult, inscrutable, not helpful, and hence will go to media such as Google or Wikipedia instead, which have succeeded in making content accessible and usable.

McCloud talks about finding a “durable mutation” in comics to allow for staying power that will marry both form and content in usable, helpful ways. I wonder how this will play out in online representations of information.

These ideas crosses over to ways in which teens interact with media for pleasure as well. I am interested in researching video games, and for me they have really come to represent a new means by which rich storytelling goes on. Without comparing the quality or value of the stories in games versus books, I’d like to just look at some differences in the media. I think games are attractive to so many because they are immersive stories. A game player is not only receiving a story, but is acting within the story, making choices, manipulating the world, solving puzzles, and determining the course of the plotline. To me this is an example of a place where the content was valued, and the media was exploited to full extent in order to support and extend the content.

Now, I’m not saying that the quality of video game storytelling is necessarily as accomplished as that within books. I don’t think it is (yet), as it is a new and developing form that is currently more focused on profitability than artistic accomplishment. However, I do think it has the potential to be extremely high quality and an extremely valuable experience for people who interact with games. However, historically we as librarians have placed extreme value on books, and excluded other media, from TV to movies to games. I understand the range of reasons for this, and I have heard the arguments, and I even myself believe that the media of print and writing is extremely important for success in today’s society. However, I also wonder if we as librarians and educators shouldn’t be thinking about what our youth will need for the world of the future as well. Have we so privileged the “shape” or the “media” that we have started to forget about or neglect content, especially if it doesn’t come in the preferred form?

Another Reluctant Gamer Comes Around

Much of what Sarah posted (Reluctant Gamer, March 14) resonated with me. Video games have long seemed pointless to me. Shooting and avoiding being shot, or moving to the next level, just don’t hold much interest for me. The whole language of using up one or more of your given “lives” has no appeal. But, like Sarah, I am slowly but surely coming to see that there is more to gaming than shooting and fighting and that there might be some fun, and yes, even some value, in playing video games—at least some of them.

Part of my resistance to video games comes from my essential non-competitiveness. I really don’t much enjoy beating people, and because my exposure to video games has consisted almost entirely of listening to people (most often my sons) playing shoot-em-up and fighting games, my impression of video games has been one of violence and fierce competition.

Another source of resistance is that I’m just not physically quick enough to play many of these games. I can’t react fast enough with the little buttons or joystick, I’m vaguely embarrassed at how bad I am at it, and I don’t have the time to play them over and over until I can get good at them.

I am aware, of course, that there are games that aren’t violent and don’t require shooting, such as Oregon Trail, Sim City, The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Portal, and now Spore. And I can see where they might be more fun for me, but by the time I was aware of such games, I no longer had the time or inclination to learn and play them.

I also was fascinated by Will Wright’s demonstration of his game, and I can imagine I might enjoy playing it (again, if I could only find the time) and I can see where kids might learn from playing it, which has gotten me thinking about why and how video games could be viewed as educational tools, or at least as not being brain-draining, creativity-sapping, time-wasting traps, which is pretty much how I have viewed most video games in the past.

Why might learning about evolution and long-term thinking be more likely to happen from playing Spore than from studying those topics in school? Why would kids prefer to learn about the difficulties of opening the frontier by playing Oregon Trail than by hearing a lecture or reading a book? Because playing Spore or Oregon Trail is fun, of course. And what makes it fun? It’s fun because it’s play. The essence of play according to the Wikipedia article that we read, is that it is both voluntary and intrinsically motivated. I’m willing to accept that this is an excellent definition of play. Something that a young person does willingly will naturally be more successful than something he or she is required to do. I think this principle also explains, at least in part, why attempts to introduce games, whether video games, role-playing games or board games, into classrooms are sometimes not very successful. When a teacher requires students to play a game, it immediately stops being play; it is no longer voluntary or intrinsically motivated.

This concept of intrinsic motivation also underlies Maria Montessori’s method of teaching. She understood that children love to play and that they can and will learn from playing, especially if they are offered high-quality materials in a carefully prepared environment. The Montessori “method”, in my view, is not so much a method, which implies rules and certain steps to be taken, as an approach or way of thinking. She believed that children inherently want to learn and make sense of their world and are remarkably capable of doing that on their own if provided with the tools to do it and the freedom to do it at their own pace.

This belief about how children learn was echoed by John Holt, a teacher and school reform advocate who eventually became a radical advocate of unschooling. He wrote passionately about the ability of children to learn on their own. He believed that: “Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” In his view, education is more about allowing children to discover than about teaching them what we have decided they ought to know.

I believe that both Maria Montessori and John Holt would have liked Will Wright’s Spore. This game provides children with a chance to learn by engaging in an activity they choose simply because it is interesting to them.

I want to note, also, that I think it is significant that the definition of “play” that I am using here does not include the word “easy”. I can imagine someone reading what I have written so far and thinking that learning can’t always be easy, can’t be all fun and games, and that sometimes it takes good old-fashioned effort to learn something. I agree. My point has more to do with the voluntariness of learning and the motivation for learning. Although I don’t think I could advocate an immediate and complete abandonment of the public school system, I do think that the more that children are trusted to guide their own learning, and move at their own pace, and learn by the methods that they know work best for them, the more they will learn, and the more quickly they will learn. And for that reason, I would hope that parents and teachers alike might maintain an open mind about the possibility that children are not just wasting time when they play video games and about the possibility that they might be learning the skills they need to learn when they choose to play games.

Video Games and Literacy: More Than Meets the Eye

I've been doing a lot of thinking about video games and literacy, and I just want to put a couple of ideas and questions out to the group to both extend my own thinking, and maybe to frame the conversation a bit, moving it outside of the "video games are not as good as books" argument that I hear a lot.

First, I think that it's really important to define terms in a discussion like this one. One central term is literacy. Are we thinking of literacy as being able to decode symbols to create meaning (functional literacy) or are talking about literacy as the ability to understand, critique, and question text, media, or other things interacted with (critical literacy)? Or are we saying the ability to read and comprehend books (print literacy)? Another central term is video game. Is the discussion around "mini" games such as Tetris, MarioKart, BrainAge, or around "complex" games, games that require players to take on a new identity, play for more than 10-100 hours to complete the game, problem solve and face consequences for their decisions, such as Final Fantasy, Spore, Sims, DragonQuest, etc? (BTW, I borrowed these terms from Marc Prensky, who talks about them in his book Don't Bother Me Mom, I'm Learning.)

From the reading and studying that I have done, I think that complex games can probably improve critical and perhaps even functional literacy. James Paul Gee makes a case for this in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, in which he argues that educators can study games to observe extremely effective teaching techniques. (Whatever you think of the content of games, they are very good at both motivating people to keep playing them, and teaching them an internalized implicit set of rules so that they can understand and play the game.) One example of Gee's arguments about how games can support even print literacy (there are many, and I really encourage you to check out his book if you are interested!) is that games teach players "to learn about and come to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system, [which is] core to the learning experience." To paraphrase, learning to read at its most basic is really a process of learning how to decode and understand a symbol set. While games may be teaching players to understand a different kind of symbol set (not the English language), they are honing the same underlying skill.

In addition games provide a unique chance for players to immerse themselves within narrative structures, becoming part of the story creation itself. Some games have better stories than others, true, but they also do something that books can't (even Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books!): they give the "reader" / player agency and power over shaping the story line.

Finally, I'm borrowing from Steven Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good for You to make this little chart about the differences between books and video games. While books do many things very well, and we have invested them in Western culture for hundreds if not thousands of years because of the things they do well, video games do other things very well, and I don't know that it has to be an either/or dichotomy. Maybe print literacy is not the main benefit of video games, and maybe it shouldn't be. But perhaps there are other, just as valuable, skill sets that video games have to offer. Take a look and see what you think.