Anti War Games?

There are great anti war films which leave you with the feeling „never again“. But how about games? In all ego shooters I know disabling enemies (by killing them) is the core element and therefore has to be fun. Otherwise the game would not be played and bought. So can anti war games (even ego shooter ones) work?

Yesterday I wrote about a leaked U.S. military video closely resembling the level „Death From Above“ from Call of Duty 4.

There is another game the leaked video reminded me of: It is the free flash game September 12th by newsgaming. In this game you can also bring death from above, in this case to „insurgent looking“ as well as unarmed inhabitants of a middle eastern town. But every time you kill a civilian, others gather to moan him and turn into insurgent themselves. The indirect controls are designed so you can’t only kill the gunners – so the longer you play the higher rises the rate of insurgents.

Coming back to the question „can anti war games work“? September 12th is anti war, but is it a game? You can’t win or loose. It is more an interactive caricature than a game.

September 12th is not fun to play – similar to an anti war movie which is usually not fun to watch. Big budged anti war movies can be commercially sucessfull in a free market, but I don’t see that happening for big budged anti war games.

I have heard a project to make an anti war (or a least war critic) ego shooter. I am thrilled to find out how it will achieve being anti war while being fun to play.

Virtual and real deaths

Wikileaks released a U.S. Military video showing the killing of 16 civilians including two Reuters Photographers. Please note that the video is very disturbing and graphic (link). Why I write on it here? It looks and sounds VERY similar to the Call of Duty level „Death From Above“ (game play video) which made it even more disturbing for me. I thought about why that might be the case.

I think the reason is that I felt guilty that I enjoyed playing the level. Back then I already had a bad feeling noticing the cold blooded commentaries and the unrealistic easy distinction between „good“ and „bad“ fighters as well as neutral civilians. But playing the level still was great fun. And that I felt that fun makes me feel sick now.

It might be interesting to use both videos when discussing media usage with young adults.

Interview on mobile storytelling

„Spielwiese“ is a new format on the German On-3-Radio on innovative digital media. For their second episode they interviewed me about the topic mobile storytelling.

During the interview we played a mission created by teenagers during my latest media education project at the Multikulturellen Jugendzentrum (more about the project).

You can listen to the episode online (its in German).
To play the file either use this direct link or do it the propper way by

clicking here
and then scrolling down to „Komm spiel mit uns“ and pressing „play“ there

The interview is between 29:20 and 35:40.

They also released filmed footage of the interview. But there is not much info in there. Just us playing GPS Mission and occasionally cracking bad jokes.

Mobile Storytelling

Did you ever stumble on the term „Mobile Storytelling“? It basically refers to storytelling technology that incorporates awareness of locative, spatial and contextual factors in mobile interactive environments. GPS Mission, which I use in my latest project, is an app you can use for mobile storytelling.

If you are interested in the topic www.mobilestorytelling.net offers a comprehensive resource for all things (apps, companies…) connected to it.

Mr. X Mobile

Have you played the classic boardgame Scotland Yard/Mr. X.

A mobile game version is in development by the University of Bonn.

For more info (mostly in German) check out: http://qeevee.com/projects/misterx

The game sounds promising, hope I can test it soon.

Update: I had the possibility in several settings with teenagers and it worked very well. For me the best „spontaneous“ game yet. And it works with Android and on the iPhone.

Creating geotainment with teenagers

At the moment I am working on a pretty exciting project which I got funded by the City of Munich. Based on free www.gps-mission.com. I am enabling educationally disadvantaged teenagers to create, review and play geotainment.

During the two day course two groups of teenagers first scout the area to come up with riddles based on their surroundings. With these each group creates a „GPS Mission“which the other group tests and reviews.

We also discuss basics of game design and storytelling. Goal is not to have bare riddles but to decide on a story which link the places and objectives together. Nice examples groups came up with till now are a suspense secret agent story and a voyage to Harry Potters Hogwarts (with a Bus Stop standing for Platform Nine and Three Quarters).

The kids love that they can use an iPhone to play the mission and are very motivated. The geotainment aspects makes it easier for the kids to be creative as we are working not only in virtual but also real space and they can basically „touch“ the riddles. One challenging aspect of the concept is that I only have a limited amount of iPhones and therefore don’t have a smart phone per kid. In a week I will try the project with 5 kids per iPhone which I think is the upper limit.

I would like to thank some people who helped to get the project to where it is now:

Mobile learning expert Chris Nash with whom I had an inspiring discussion in London
Marike Schlattmann from Lern-welten is working with me on the project.
and last but not least the City of Munich and Netzwerk Inter@ktiv which are open for innovative media education projects.

Update:

You can find a summary of the projekt results here:
https://tausend-medien.de/2012/gpsmission

Pädi 2009 winners announced

The winners of the 2009 „Pädi“ – the pedagogic interactive award – were announced. The Website www.kindernetz.de/minitz won the award in gold in the kids category, „Line Rider – Freestyle“ for teenagers.
Other winners include „Rhythm Paradise„, „Maus DS – Der mausgeflippte Denkspaß“ and „Professor Layton and the Curious Village„.

I was happy to be part of the „Pädi Expert Team“ which took part in the decision making process of the award. There will be an award ceremony on November 12th 14-16 in the Munich Gasteig/Carl-Orff-Saal with approx. 600 guests.

More info on the award (in German)

Der pädagogische Interaktiv-Preis – bundesweit einzigartig in seiner Konzeption – basiert im Unterschied zu vielen anderen Preisen, die entweder auf die künstlerische Komponente, die technischen Details oder die curricularen Lerninhalte Bezug nehmen, zu einem wesentlichen Teil auf praktischen Erfahrungen im Einsatz der multimedialen Produkte.

Mit dem Pädi werden Lern– und Spielprogramme pädagogisch bewertet, die Kinder und Jugendliche in ihrer Freizeit nutzen.

Der Pädi ist einerseits eine Orientierungshilfe im schier undurchdringlichen Dschungel der online- und offline-Angebote für die Heranwachsenden und andererseits eine Auszeichnung für die Hersteller von pädagogisch wertvollen Multimedia-Produkten. Er ist ein Ansporn für ihre Bemühungen, sinnvolle Produkte für Kinder und Jugendliche anzubieten und damit einen Beitrag zur Förderung der Medienkompetenz zu leisten.

You can find more infos on the Pädi and a full list of the winners of this 12th here:
www.sin-net.de/paedi.htm

Homework

I occasionally play games with the two nieces of my girlfriend. This got me thinking about how they are affected by playing them. In the case of the two little girls these were Wii Fitt, some horse game and Nintendogs.
I studied Sociology which helps me to self reflect on my gaming habits. But it is interesting how little we (who we design games) actually think what effect these games have on others. My diploma thesis showed that people have very different reasons why they play games and choose the games to play also depending on these reasons.
When I was a kid, I did not play games to learn. I also never played any specific learning game. But I think I still learned a lot from these games. In this post I don’t want to get into the question how the violence in these games might have affected me focus on two positive effects they might have had.
One of them was that I learned quite some English playing RPGs and Adventures. Playing them might also have been a great incentive for me to pay more attention to my English teacher.
Another type of game which aided my (basic) understanding about how the economy or society works were simulations like Railroad Tycoon or Civilization.

Today (as homework) I gave myself two topics I want to learn about in the future:

The two little girls are probably not old enough for all of the above games, but I will check out some games which they might like to play while additionally having a rather positive effect on them.
I want to learn more about how learning actually works.

In school the Math teacher told us that we would need this boring formulas our whole live and therefor should listen to him. He was right. While probably not everybody needs the formulas we all need the logical thinking we also learned on the way. Question is: Does a game like Crazy Machines help your logical ability in the same way as School Mathematic does. Neuropsychology should have something to say about it. What I know is that getting someone to play Crazy Machines is way easier than motivating him to attend a math class.

The million dollar question on learning programs and games is how much „learning“ these should be to actually being played.