How Old Is Your Brain?
How Old Is Your Brain?
How Old Is Your Brain?
your brain?
In this presentation
1. Overview of games and gamers. 2. Some learning using digital games. 3. 12 areas of interest to the wider library community. 4. Online games: World of Warcraft and Second Life.
Awareness
Gamers do things really quickly pick up objects aggregate objects manipulate objects.
If you dont play digital games, you are less likely to discuss games with your peers.
Often complex, difficult, involving, thought-provoking, interactive (as opposed to reactive), graphically intense, instantaneously responsive, multi-threaded, multiinterface, social multiplayer games.
Video games have been around for ~30 years. Old enough to be considered no longer a fad, more a mainstream entertainment culture.
Things have moved on a bit in those 30 years. Take tennis, for example:
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Nintendogs You own a dog Teach it through voice commands Take it for walks, play with it, feed it
Sony PSP
718 video games have sold over 1 million copies each Super Mario Bros (NES): 41 million copies sold
A lot of research into this, especially learning psychology. Two (related) oft-said questions: 1. Why does someone voluntarily do the same repetitive task in a game over and over?
2. How can this enthusiasm / keenness / determination / focus be transferred to learning situations?
Learning
using digital games
Interest
JISC Strategy 2004-2006: In the home, set-top boxes together with digital television and games consoles are increasing the proportion of the population with access to online interactive services and may offer new opportunities for learning to reach more people.
Zoo Tycoon
Build a zoo and populate it with animals Stay on budget Pay for feed, staff, animals, vets bills Used in schools for: Maths Economics and finance Biome Ethics (should animals be caged?) Planning and design
www.gamesforhealth.org
Both models require: communication-based participation by all participants. the teacher and game being the axis on which the lesson runs.
1. Teacher as guide
The teacher has control of the game, and leads the class through appropriate scenarios. The class have to tackle the appropriate scenario before moving on.
Game control is passed around, or the teacher retains it for the duration of the exercise. Usually uses one computer and a projector.
2. Teacher as referee
The class is split into different teams. The teams collaborate internally, and use the game to compete against each other e.g. which team can develop the most economically stable city using an urban planning simulator.
The teacher sets the task, answers queries, helps the teams to an appropriate extent, adjudicates, and leads the class debriefing.
Impact
1. Preservation
Here at the Bibliothque Nationale de France we deal with legal deposits of video games. Since 1992, video games are part of patrimonial collections. Every video game distributed in France must send in two copies to the French national library. Our missions are based on exhaustively collecting these kinds of documents as we do with others, cataloguing, and preserving in order to ensure long term access for researchers. We work closely to the game community to defend the game as a document and an object for scientific research. Relatively problematic; needs a lot of resources.
Allison Angell, Head Youth Services Librarian Benicia (California) Public Library
4. Circulating games
A small but growing number of public libraries loan out games. Issues include: budget age ratings formats identifying the best games to stock
John Scalzo, librarian, ran a game loan scheme for a year: at the end of the first year, having games in a library has been a complete success. They are popular with adults, children and teens and I've only heard the faintest of grumblings (mostly from older patrons) questioning why a library would carry, scoff, games. They are an accepted part of the collection now and it's hard to ask for anything more than that.
CERLIM providing the digital library infrastructure for the game data.
Online Gaming
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). You explore, and team up with people to complete quests, elavating your status. June 2006: 6.6 million subscribers worldwide (Netherlands = 16.3 million residents, the Randstad = 7 million residents) 2 million in the USA, 1 million in Europe Most of the rest in China At any given time over 500,000 subscribers are online. (Rotterdam = 588,000 residents)
11. Compare
three interfaces
Clues are often recursive: Do A to find B to give to C who will give you D etc
Gamer can thus mentally keep track of: several things that need to be done status of current objectives people places information items
Under construction
Several libraries built / under construction
There is also Info Island, home to the Second Life Library 2.0, a collaboration between the Alliance Library System and Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL).
"More and more educators see Second Life as a way to engage students," says ALS director of innovation Lori Bell. "We wanted to see what role a library could play."
More
A group of about 35 librarians have volunteered their time to build structures and stock the collection, which includes searchable indexes, audio and video clips, and books, many of which are public domain and available to own. The library also offers live help at certain hours of the day, for the typical real-life reference questions that inevitably come up, and it will hold live events like authors' chats and tours.
More
The library is also exploring ways to offer learning experiences that simply would not be possible in real life. It is working with the Library of Congress to build a Declaration of Independence room, where a larger-than-life-size copy of the document will be on display along with additional readings, audio les, and period furniture. There's also a library in the works on Caledon, the exclusively 19th-century island where avatars wear period dress.
Librarians congregate in OPAL and in SL to listen to Michael Stephen's presentation on blogging for the Alliance Library System, thursday June 15 2006.
10 attributes of a gameplayer
1. Expects instant, relevant results. 2. Able to multi-task (e-juggling). 3. Interrogates a wide array of information source and media (see circulating support material) 4. consequently, is beyond Google in terms of information retrieval tools. 5. Is usually a net-user; many game players often blog.
10 attributes of a gameplayer
6. Can find information/knowledge that is not in obvious places. 7. Comfortable with complex online systems; does not differentiate between online and offline. 8. Comfortable with peripherals and unconventional data entry hardware. 9. Comfortable with online talk/chat systems.
10. No problem with spending colossal amounts of time online so long as it is rewarding.