"What do games teach us about creative culture?" By Andrew Phelps- Serious Play Conference

School of Interactive Games & MediaB. Thomas Golisano College of Computing & Information SciencesRochester Institute of Technologyigm.rit.edu | www.rit.edu

What do games teach us about creative culture?

Andrew PhelpsProfessor & Founding DirectorSchool of Interactive Games & MediaCollege of Computing & Information SciencesRochester Institute of Technology


Hi, I’m Andy, and I Make Games.

Andy approximately 1978-1981.


RIT HISTORY of GAMES EDUCATION DEVELOPMENTWinner XNA GS Innovation Award 2007HONORED REPEATEDLY BY MSR and othersNATIONAL REPUTATION of EXCELLENCEINCREDIBLE RESEARCH RECORDNEW EXCITING NATIONAL PROJECTS EVERY YEAR

Picture the ImpossibleJust Press PlayPreserving Virtual WorldsIGDA GameSauce Challenge Top 10PAX 10 Challenge Top 10

NETWORK OF ALUMNI MAKING THE GAMES YOU PLAY

HaloTransformersGuitar HeroSpongebobSeveral Kinect® Titles…


OUR GRADUATES ARE CURRENTLY CREATING THINGS AT:Microsoft X-BOX & MGS

Electronic Arts

Vicarious Visions

Red Eye Studios

SquareEnix

Sony Computer Entertainment

High Moon

Volition

Blizzard Entertainment

Edios

Activision

Big Huge Games

Zynga Valve

Artificial Life

Northrup Grumman Undersea Systems

United States Military and the CIA

Booz Allen Hamilton

IBM Odopod

Lockheed Martin

Public Broadcasting Station (PBS)

Nickelodeon MTV

Cynergy Systems Inc.

Google

mySpace / Fox Interactive

…and many more!


Alumni Example: Katie LinendollKatie Linendoll is an Emmy award-winning TV personality and technology expert, appearing on CNN and the CBS Early Show and regularly contributing her expertise to magazines like People, People Style Watch, Marie Claire, Shape and Fitness. Prior to working on-air, Linendoll gained behind-the-scenes experience with ESPN and won an Emmy as Associate Producer for SportsCenter. Knowing what a producer wants and what it takes to create a show helped her transition to her new role in front of the camera, where she develops and creates all her own segments. Linendoll also co-hosted the Emmy nominated series, 'We Mean Business' on A&E and has blogged for Dell and Oprah.com. She has also worked on projects with AOL, Gizmodo and HP. She recently agreed to a one year deal with Lincoln and signed as a spokesperson for Polaroid, and just started her own show on SPIKE TV.

CLASS OF ‘05


Alumni Example: Josh Gilpatrick

Josh was a GDD student who went to work at Microsoft Games Studios.Built the ‘monkey see, monkey do’ mechanic for Kinect now in Sports & KinectimalsCLASS OF ‘09


First, are gamers creative?

• ‘Learning’ the game?• Training a response? / Cultivating a response?• Isn’t it just ‘discovery of a rule-set’?• Optimization?


“Take for example the basic notion of a quest. Within a typical MMOG, a quest provides a description of a task to be performed, basic information about what resources are needed, and a reward to be received when the task is completed. One of the key traits of a questing disposition is the willingness to find, analyze, and evaluate resources needed to complete a task. One’s disposition toward the world is characterized by the belief that if you try hard enough you will find what you need along the way, that the world itself will afford the resources that are needed to solve it. Accordingly, a quest disposition is one which is tied to resources and which focuses on the contingency and possibility, but also which demands a high level of situational awareness.” – Doug Thomas and Seely Brown USC


How do we explain

• Rocket Jumping?• Corpse writing?• Wall Hacking?• Gnome Scouting?• …and several other forms of emergent play?

_What seems obvious in hindsight_ _is not predictable_


Engagement

• Obviously, a lot has now been written about engagement, flow, motivation, etc.


Flow as Game Addiction

• In an irony of ironies, the element that is often misrepresented as “responsible for game addiction” is the very same element that makes games a powerful catalyst for learning, and which forms the basis for scientific inquiry

• Human beings are “happy” solving challenges and feeling rewarded.


Creativity

• “enjoyability replaces usability” – M. Gough, Adobe Systems

• Directed replaces dictated• Our “10,000 hours” doesn’t necessarily

produce anything out of the ordinary, but “playing around” often does


What we used to say about computers

• Once you’ve unlocked the power of the desk-top computer, you’ll be using Apple in ways you never dreamed of. You don’t want to be limited by the availability of pre-programmed cartridges. You’ll want a computer, like Apple, that you can also program yourself. … The more you and your students learn about computers, the more your imagination will demand. So you’ll want a computer that can grow with you as your skills and experience grow. – original Apple ][ literature, courtesy of Ian Bogost, GaTech


The Assessment Trap• One of the biggest challenges is assessment. A lot of times

we are asked to prove the ‘effectiveness’ of a given title or experience by comparing it to a more traditional measure using a standardized instrument. Educational games are a prime example here. And if you aren’t careful, you fall victim to organizing everything around the assessment mechanism – you start off designing a game to teach a mathematical concept, and produce a game that makes someone very adept at taking a standardized test about that concept, but not necessarily better at actually employing that concept in their own work or study.


The Sheeple Trap

• And… the continual challenge of allowing for creativity and gameful solutions: players are smart, motivated, and engaged (if you built a good game). That means they will do things you didn’t expect or design for: often times I see folks trying to account for all possible actions or paths, when a more flexible and less-detailed approach might be the better way to go in addressing the content.


10 years of Games@RIT


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Thank You & Questions

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www.seriousplayconference.comwww.seriousgamesdirectory.comwww.seriousgamesassociation.com

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"What do games teach us about creative culture?" By Andrew Phelps- Serious Play Conference

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