The Art and Science of Teaching Using Games to Enhance Student Achievement

Games are not art — they're improve. It just depends on whom you ask.

In that location's this on-over again, off-again argument within the intelligentsia equally to whether games should be placed on the aforementioned pedestal as books, movies, music, and paintings. But even the newest of the accepted fine arts, movies, take had at least a century to develop.

Conventional videogames–and I'm taking Pong, the equivalent of cavern drawings, as my starting point here–commenced less than forty years agone. In that time, games have mimicked movies, electronically emulated books, and tried their manus at playing on some emotional heartstrings. The big difference is that nigh conventional art forms are passive and 2-dimensional experiences: You sit in forepart of and soak in whatever the artist presents you with. Videogames attempt to create an interactive experience that puts the viewer/ player in control of the palette.

Enter Shanghai-born Xinghan "Jenova" Chen, creative director of ThatGameCompany. Since earning his graduate degree from the University of Southern California Picture Schoolhouse'south Interactive Media program, he has helped craft several simple-but-surreal game projects that do more than cater to a twitch response. His thesis project, Cloud, floated along, accumulating a post-obit on the indie gaming scene. Flow cast players as an ever-evolving single-celled organism–and that, no doubt, inspired the starting time phase in Spore. The all-time way to describe Chen'due south latest game, Blossom: It's a kickoff-person gardener. And it's well-worth the $10 asking price at Sony's PlayStation Store.

The levels, if you choose to telephone call them that, are the dreams of flowers. You are the current of air, fulfilling flower fantasies–yep, it sounds kind of strange. But just try it. This is a Zen exercise with an occasional trophy for completing a task. A meditation pool with an endpoint. More of import, it passes my all-important "married woman examination": She was entranced as she watched me play, until finally she yanked the controller out of my hand to endeavor her luck with information technology. The last time I got that kind of response out of her was when BioShock came out.

But back to the quondam "games-versus-art" statement (I'm looking at you lot, Ebert). I spent some time chatting with Chen recently about the state of gaming and how (if at all) it's maturing. Hither'south what we came upward with:

A Male child and His Flower

PC World: How would you attempt describing Flower to someone? Is information technology a game, fine art, or something else entirely?

Jenova Chen: Flower is fabricated with a different mentality. It's a safe, warm experience. It's like a poem or dance that uses symbolism and scenery to give the player a comforting backdrop.

PCW: And I judge that this would brand yous the choreographer?

JC: [laughs] Yeah, we're not level designers. Nosotros provide all these moves, and because players are different, they will perform the moves differently. It's a game that is meant not simply to play, but to watch.

PCW: A game that you lookout–technically, that'd brand it art. Every bit for the person who grabs the controls, let's talk a little more near the game itself.

JC: The stop goal of the player is to make the globe a better place. The actor is the consciousness of nature. You're living through the dreams of flowers sitting in pots. Gamers call them levels, but each of the dreams for the different flowers has different goals. The Rose, for case, sees a desaturated, drab world of physical simply wants to add together color everywhere. As y'all complete the dream of one flower, the second flower sprouts and fills in a sure aspect of life. The gameplay is that you lot're this consciousness, this desire. Yous're bringing life into the world–non the guy killing aliens.

We thought of this like a motion-picture show feel. You could probably finish this in two and one-half hours, but yous actually get a lot more than out of the game after you've finished and come back to revisit each flower's dreams. You find more to explore and play more. It will be a skilful therapy–to heal yourself and reflect on things.

PCW: How did yous come up with the idea of making a game virtually flowers, anyhow?

JC: I grew up in a city, in Shanghai. I was surrounded by skyscrapers and people. I was never surrounded by nature. When I was on my way into Los Angeles, I saw this windmill farm. Grass fields, blue sky–I'd never seen these things before. Where I lived the heaven was royal. Then, as an urban man, I was attracted to these things I hadn't actually seen before. When yous actually get into nature and go hiking, you actually beginning missing the metropolis and the people. Then I wanted to create a space like a window from your living room, and you get surrounded by nature. Meanwhile, y'all notwithstanding experience safe and warm. It's a harmony betwixt nature and urban life.

PCW: Normally, games like this don't announced on store shelves…

JC: That's considering digital distribution allows for more than take a chance-taking. It allows pocket-size development houses to take a chance without having to score funding to publish the game on discs. That cost forces you lot to make sacrifices forth the way. It makes you lot cut costs, enforce deadlines and ship a game that you might non be as proud of. You only can't run that run a risk. For a game like Flow, it just cost betwixt 500 and 600k, not even a million. [Ed. note: And that's gone on to huge success.] Sony's been great to piece of work with in this respect and has been very supportive both with Flow and now Bloom.

Selling Games Curt

JC: I recall I'g pretty stupid to start a company. I left a lead designer task at Maxis working on Spore to found ThatGameCompany. I was trying to discover someplace that was doing what I wanted to do. Nobody was.

PCW: What was missing?

JC: I run into entertainment as something that feeds you–similar food or water, just for your emotions. Videogames used to be a software niche…but it isn't fully mature yet. The deviation between a new medium and a mature medium is based upon the diversity–more than but 1 or 2 emotions. There aren't just scary books or movies. Or sad songs. Games are still largely seen as a toy and not just by the mainstream audition, simply by some developers likewise.

PCW: Wouldn't yous say, though, that these days games are getting a picayune more sophisticated?

JC: Well, the people who accept a new engineering are the younger ones — the ones willing to adapt. That'south why the first games more often than not catered to kids. In order for the business to succeed, they've needed to focus on the kids. To a caste, it's notwithstanding that way. Kids like flashy imagery and colorful cartoons. And every bit they get older, they similar more competition and to exist more than powerful. Many games are based on this empowerment.

PCW: And I gauge that feeds into the stigma all the same attached to games…and existence a gamer.

JC: Aye, no one asks you if you lot're a film watcher or if yous're a reader, but when it always comes to games, you're a gamer. That's because nosotros've got a ways to go. People apply phrases similar "absurd" and "fun," only seeking a more sophisticated audience ways doing more. People read a book, for example, only in that location's this thought that they will blot something from it. Something mentally stimulating that they volition exist able to utilise elsewhere.

PCW: At least some games strive to do more than, but I'd accept to agree that at that place'south still a lopsided focus on something like graphics.

JC: If you lot think about it, most movies are divided by feelings. Games are divided past technologies–or the skills that they test. That often casts games as dismissible pastimes. Think of game design every bit a saucepan. Crytek created a beautiful engine and Crysis looks realistic and good. Simply if the story doesn't rise to the same level as those graphics, it feels like an uneven effort and things in the game spill over the sides. If the gameplay isn't as good, it doesn't feel right. Because [ThatGameCompany] is small, we don't have the luxury to pile upward 1 feature like, say, graphics or story and focus on the whole package. We need to continue things concise.

PCW: Concise is ane way to put it. Hither's how your games work: Tilt the PS3's Sixaxis controller to move and press a single button. No instructions, no tutorial, you just drop players into the world.

JC: We need to provide content outside the red zone then that adults and people that commonly wouldn't think to take hold of a controller, would. And when they exercise grab the controller, make it simple to understand. At first, we tried different gameplay with complex controls–fifty-fifty with wellness points–just that didn't experience right for the emotions we wanted to convey. The music and ambiance combined with the visuals and controls convey more. That's why there are no voices, no words, and no instructions.

Games, the New Movies

PCW: Since yous're coming from the perspective of a USC Flick School graduate, where would yous say games are now compared to, say, movies?

JC: When films first appeared, it was this brand-new medium that started as a engineering innovation. Sophisticated storytelling came later. It'south easier to sell a applied science if you evoke primal feelings. If you lot wait at some of the earliest films, like a French one that captured a train coming through a tunnel, it scared people out of their seats. Don't games sometimes get those same reactions?

PCW: No arguments about games borer fear and adrenaline. That, they've got down. But using that motion picture comparison, have we at least made it out of the "talkies" stage?

JC: The game manufacture started in the '70s and has grown very apace. The very first generation of filmmakers who grew upward with films equally kids–they went to universities and studied how to arts and crafts films. The George Lucases and Steven Spielbergs.

When George Lucas went to film schoolhouse, people were surprised that there actually was a school for film. Now, people are reacting that aforementioned way to game schools. In schoolhouse, we studied all these mediums–storytelling, psychology…and I retrieve, as a consequence, when I mention some ideas to current game designers, they'll say, "Oh, this sounds cool, merely is it fun?"

I guess my answer would exist that we're at the point where George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are coming out of pic school.

PCW: You heard it here first–THX1138 and The Duel, coming to a console near you soon! Seriously, though, there is this dismissive attitude toward gamers. Do you recollect this adjacent generation of designers will change people's minds about games?

JC: People coming out of game design schools are now thinking about games differently than those that've come earlier. We hope that games volition go more respected. In Nippon, everyone reads manga–information technology's a national art course. Successful businessmen and teenagers read them on the trains. In America, comic books are viewed as some nerdy action. Why so dissimilar? The content matured at a different pace–and I don't want to meet games go lumped into that same, immature category.

PCW: Sorry for the clichéd question, only can a videogame make yous weep yet? Likewise if the game is as well tough, that is….

JC: In that location are moments in gaming where y'all'll empathise with a character and possibly feel a lilliputian pitiful. Well, videogames have fabricated people cry. It's like shooting fish in a barrel to weep if you've experienced something deep and emotional. A role-playing game in China I played made me cry–fifty-fifty if it'south cliché–but as a kid, if you're exposed to something for the first time and conveys a story. If y'all've never read Shakespeare and someone slips Romeo and Juliet into a game, the first time you see information technology somewhere is bound to brand you cry. The medium improves by the kids who get moved and are motivated to make their ain games.

PCW: How many times has it backfired, though? That the game gets in the way of a good story?

JC: I force myself to play some games…like Final Fantasy XII. I had to struggle through because of all the [endless quests]. Even though I actually wanted to know how the story ended, after a couple weeks I had to just give up. The chore of making your character gain more experience to complete the game had no relevance to existent life. And that is where a lot of games lose people.

PCW: Thank you, Jenova.

Perchance part of the problem is that they are called "games." Snobs turn their nose upwards and think of Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 or something–and instantly file it in the category of mindless diversions. Their loss. Y'all got a better name for videogames? Permit me know!

Until next fourth dimension…

Need even more nerdity? Follow Coincidental Friday columnist and PC World Senior Writer Darren Gladstone on gizmogladstone on Twitter for more than fourth dimension-wasting tips.

arringtonposeept.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/533505/games_not_art.html

Share this post