Educational Technology

When I signed up for EDT791, Video Games, Literacy, and Learning, I was cautiously optimistic. I had heard James Gee speak about literacy in gaming at ASU before he became a professor, and he really caught my attention with his discussion of the language skills being used and gained in everything from World of Warcraft to Yu-Gi-Oh!, so I knew both he and this semester's professor, Betty Hayes, were serious about learning concepts present in games. In spite of this, I was still skeptical about the course's relevance to me.

To say that I have a passion for gaming would be correct, but it understates the fanaticism with which I follow the entire industry. Gaming, and video gaming in particular, is core to my identity. I start every day with the delicious combo of of Nutty Nuggets and the latest gaming news from the likes of 1Up and Giant Bomb, and I end each day with a cup of yogurt and commentary from places like Penny Arcade and Level Up. My day is peppered with visits to Gamers With Jobs to read and participate in the latest discussions and articles. I wasn't sure if that passion would be matched by educational researchers; and my biggest concern was that I strongly felt that a course like this could only be delivered successfully by someone who took gaming seriously as both a hobby and an industry in addition to studying it academically.

During the first session of the course, Dr. Hayes talked about having recently played Oblivion, World of Warcraft and other titles with such enthusiasm that this concern was quickly alleviated and I was able to focus on the basic hypothesis of the course: Vital to the success of popular games is that they effectively teach and motivate players within the game space. From understanding and communicating within semiotic domains, to sympathizing with identities through role-play, to navigating the complex social networks that surround particular games and gaming in general, successful games establish an environment in which effective learning becomes not only enjoyable, but essential.

But, so what? What does it mean and how does it matter? I believe that it means that educators, and at a larger level, society, are now challenged to adapt to an environment where students, parents, and citizens not only expect, but will soon demand compelling educational experiences. Learning materials, regardless of the media in which they are presented, need to acknowledge complex systems and the situated meanings in their presentation. Cultural models need to be recognized and analyzed. The rote memorization of facts, and the reliance on standardized testing need to be abandoned, as both concepts are crutches upon which we support incredibly outdated theories of learning and assessment. In fact, our basic ideas about what assessment is and how it should be used need to change fundamentally. It's time for some navel gazing.

For traditional educators and, particularly, the entire bureaucratic system built to "support" them, this much-needed introspective analysis and resulting evolution can be incredibly frightening and daunting. It essentially means that years of (very outdated) materials may need to be abandoned and, therefore, millions of dollars "thrown away" as a result. But, I believe strongly that past costs should not be a factor in any important decision, especially those regarding education. I'm not entirely optimistic that these sorts of sweeping changes will happen any time soon - and they probably shouldn't. But it's certainly time to get a bunch of smart people on the task of spending a lot of time figuring out how it all should work.

Through the past several months in EDT791, I've seen a room full of skeptics, including myself, come to really understand the sorts of valuable lessons to be gleaned from games. As educators, we now see places to using gaming where we didn't before. As gamers, we now see bits of learning sprinkled throughout out games. It's all become so much more than "educational gaming" - a phrase marred by connotations that evoke memories of amateur, low-budget video combined with multiple choice quizzes and presented by poorly animated characters. I'm excited to see where this emerging field goes - and I want desperately to be a part of it all. So, while class is now officially "over," you can be sure you'll continue hearing from me about learning and games.

In my mind, gaming has historically been social in nature. Chess, soccer, Chinese checkers, poker, basketball, hide-and-seek, horseshoes and Dungeons and Dragons all exist as activities that enable and facilitate social interaction. As games, they nearly cease to exist without the presence of others.

In their infancy, video games were similarly social. Computers and developers weren't far enough along in the establishment of artificial intelligence, to do much more than allow a few players to duke it out. Single player experiences were incredibly limited, so video games were inherently social out of necessity. Sure, there were plenty of single-player experiences to be had, but even those were successful because they became social. Due to their limited ability to present complex character interactions to the player, games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Galaga became more about skill, showmanship and competition. Arcades became incredibly popular as locations for gamers to gather, lining up quarters for who had "next" in Street Fighter II and setting up high-score tournaments for 1942. Electronic gaming was "classic" gaming in that it was still an inherently social activity.

Video games evolved in many ways over the following few decades, and as processors got more powerful and developers became more experienced, AI was used to alter how we fundamentally experienced electronic entertainment. While this evolution brought us Baldur's Gate, Grand Theft Auto III, Final Fantasy XII and countless other unforgettable single-player experiences, it also slowly, but very successfully, removed social interaction from a large segment of mainstream gaming culture. Social games did continue to exist and flourish (see Counter-Strike, Everquest, etc.), but we quickly had a significant number of completely non-social experiences. Nothing about my hundreds of hours (literally) spent leveling up my characters in Baldur's Gate was communicated to my friends unless I went out of my way to tell them. Unless I brought them over to my house, my friends had to take my word for it that I'd defeated a particular rare or epic monster in Final Fantasy XII. Instead of facilitating or demanding interaction with other gamers, many titles from the past decade could be played and fully enjoyed in complete isolation. I'm not sure that was the direction anyone really wanted it to go.

Things seem to be changing, though, as the market transitions hardware generations...

First, broadband has truly become ubiquitous enough that console manufacturers can assume everyone will have internet access. As a result, services like XBOX Live Arcade and Steam Community have recreated the physical arcade experience in a virtual space. With both services, players can quickly and easily chat with friends, setup and invite each other to games, check out the "leader boards" of games they play and more. Both services have even brought single player games into the social experience with achievements - points or "badges of honor" for individual games.

Second, party games have truly come into the mainstream. Wii Sports and Rock Band are the runaway successes in this realm. Both games are enjoyable as a solo player, but become unique, indescribable experiences as more players are added to the mix. The sense of accomplishment when four players, in cooperation, beat an incredibly difficult song in Rock Band, and the sheer joy and child-like fun of four player tennis in Wii Sports has yet to be matched.

Finally, World of Warcraft, while debatably "next-gen" and certainly not the first of its kind, has brought massively-social gaming into the mainstream. It did so in such a nearly-perfect way that, as a result, gamers now have high expectations and demands for future games of its kind.

As the "next-gen" gaming platforms rapidly become the "current-gen," I can't help but recognize that gaming culture is rapidly returning, in many ways, to its roots. I couldn't be happier.

Dear Persona 3,

I want to like you. I did like you... and maybe I still do. I just don't think you want me to like you any more.

Throughout our first ten hours together, you guided me through experiences I never dreamed I would enjoy. You showed me how to have a relationship, and even how to make my relationships with others stronger. We would sit in my living room and talk until the early morning about everything from love to death to psychology. I felt like I barely had to do a thing and you would shower your affection upon me through gifts and attention. It was a special time I'll not soon forget.

But, somehow, things have changed. It happened slowly and without notice, but now, twenty-five hours into it, I suddenly realize that somehow we've fallen into an inescapable rut. Our relationship feels like work; like a routine. You take me to the same places again and again, and we haven't done anything new in weeks. I feel like the only time I ever have any fun with you is when we're in school. Even then we're just doing the same things we've always done.

All you ever want to do at night is take me to that boring tower with its monotonous gray corridors, and there's nothing to do there but walk around and ride the elevator. Does that sound like something I want to do? Worse yet is that you don't ever reciprocate for the effort I put into our relationship. I work for hours to do something nice for you, only to have you shun me and ask me to work twice as long. Then, when I've finally made you happy, my only reward is an hour of fun followed by a relapse into our routine again.

Maybe one day we'll run into each other again, and we can hang out for a while as friends. I might even enjoy going back to the tower occasionally, for old time's sake. But I just can't commit to this relationship any more. I will never look at another game in the same way again, and I thank you for that. There are a lot of other gamers out there who will love you for what you are - but I'm just not one of them.

Note: For those of you coming to this article outside of the context of the Video Games, Literacy and Learning course (EDT791), I reference topics discussed by James Paul Gee in his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. If you have even the slightest interest in the topic of gaming in the context of education, I highly recommend the book, even as a casual read.

I met Shawn Andrich in July of last year (2007), when I made the mistake of asking him if he needed help with the popular gaming website he co-founded, Gamers With Jobs. The site runs on an application-, content-, and community-building platform called Drupal, and I spend pretty much the bulk of every day building websites that use it, so I figured I could use my knowledge to give back in some small way to the site that had given me, week after week, free content in the form of amazing front page articles, intelligent gaming discussion, and a wonderful podcast. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Shawn, being the discerning community manager he is, knows pretty quickly when there's a sucker he can take in and abuse for the good of the site. Within a couple of days, I was rolling forward on getting the site upgraded to a new version of Drupal, completely blind to what was coming. Shawn sent me an email one day, introducing Eric Carl, another member of the community and a fantastic web designer. Now, over half a year later, what would have been a small project has turned into a complete overhaul of the site's look-and-feel and the addition of some great functionality, which we should be rolling out sometime early this year. And despite the countless hours of work, I couldn't be happier with how the whole thing ended up going. It's secretly what I wanted to see happen anyway.

Shawn was and continues to be a fast friend. When it came time to decide on a gamer to interview for an assignment in my Video Games, Literacy and Learning master's class, I immediately thought of him and the unique perspective he would offer on the topic. In our interview, I talked to Shawn about his general gaming interests, what sorts of influences he feels gaming has on his life, why he plays what he plays, and dug a bit into his thoughts on learning and games. I'll say before I start that, because I've known Shawn for a bit of time, there are many things I already know about him. He's well-informed on what's happening in the gaming world, has some connections to relatively prominent figures in the industry, and can talk intelligently at length about games, game design, and the industry as a whole.

Shawn is the kind of guy that sort of feels like Michael Keaton in Multiplicity - except he manages to get by without the clones. (I guess that effectively makes the Multiplicity reference irrelevant... but you get the idea.) At only 27, he has a full time job as a Tech Director for a security and video monitoring technology company and runs, moderates and writes for Gamers With Jobs. He does all this while also keeping a healthy and happy marriage and what he considers a well-balanced life.

Due to his fairly time-consuming involvement with running Gamers With Jobs, full-time employment and maintaining a real life, Shawn keeps a pretty tight reign on his gaming schedule and doesn't play an excessive amount. Shawn was self-employed from the time he was 18, which caused him to adopt rules and habits that would allow him to be successful. Even now, as an employee working for someone else, he has trouble playing during normal work hours on a day off. As a result, he never plays before 5 PM, and usually waits until between 7 PM and midnight when he does. He ends up playing several times a week, around five sessions depending on his schedule. While Shawn doesn't feel like gaming ever takes away from his time with his friends or family, he does feel that the inverse of that can be true. As someone who runs a gaming community, online games such as Team Fortress 2 are frequently the place where relationships are built and maintained. At times, he feels that if he doesn't connect with the staff or community in all the ways possible he runs the risk of becoming completely disconnected from the site and, therefore, his friends. It's little surprise then, that he enjoys social gaming just as much as gaming alone.

Gaming time for Shawn is generally spent playing a variety of genres on a variety of systems. He tends to prefer first person shooters, third person action-adventures, platformers, RPGs and sports games, but essentially enjoys "anything good." This is typical among the Gamers With Jobs staff, and fairly common within the community as well, and is most likely the reason he can talk intelligently and at length about the industry. While he has played MMOGs in the past, and can talk at length about the time he has sunk into Everquest, he doesn't play them any more as he feels they require too much time for the little reward they offer, and, "I don't have a particular need to have my social itch scratched, so there's not a lot to draw me in from a purely "gameplay" level. I get that camaraderie and community feel of a shared experience across a spectrum of games, rather than pouring all of my time and attention into one."

In an effort to start drawing some parallels to some of the psychology behind how and why we play games identified by Gee, I tried to dig a bit deeper into why it is that Shawn plays games. "I play games because I enjoy them, primarily. Why we enjoy something is tough to qualify, but I'll try. It's because when playing you're mentally engaged, you often experience it with others, as an industry it's constantly evolving in both design and technical achievement. There's basically a lot of different aspects that make the whole very appealing as a hobby."

His interest in gaming comes from several directions. The act of playing games is fun for him, and more engaging then other forms of entertainment (as he unsurprisingly said to me, "it's not like I'm running a book fan-club"). He finds gaming to be a way to connect socially with friends and a community, and following the industry is interesting to him. Yet, despite an obvious interest in and dedication to gaming, Shawn does not think of gaming as an important part of his identity. He considers it to be something that he happens to do with his time, and thinks of it pimarily as a means to interact with people, whether that be playing or just talking about games. "It's no more a part of my identity than a hammer is a part of a carpenter's."

While Gee's writing tends to indicate that over time players develop an understanding of systems at play and how games are designed at a macro-level, there's an implication that the great part about this is that the players don't usually realize that it's happening. In the couple of days since our interview, I've thought about this idea of games teaching intangible concepts, such as the incredibly broad and difficult to describe notions of cause-and-effect or economies. I tried to see what Shawn thought about this by asking if he paid attention to these sorts of things while he played. While he feels like he has a "broad, conceptual level" understanding the systems that are working behind the scenes of a game, he tries not to think about them much until he looks back critically on a game as a whole, saying, "Trying to see past the curtain while you play makes for a tedious experience." I found this quite interesting, and I have an inkling that most gamers would respond in a similar fashion. While he doesn't like to pry too hard into a game's design as he plays it, he does appreciate it when developers include features like Half Life 2's commentary mode that allows the player to get a sense for how the game was created. However, features like world editors aren't as valuable to him, as he doesn't have a huge interest in modding games ("My enjoyment is in the playing, not the creating"). While we didn't have time to get into it in the interview, I know from listening to countless Gamers With Jobs podcasts that in spite of his desire to not peek behind the curtain of game design while playing, Shawn can discuss critically and at length the various merits or flaws of a given game's design and clearly enjoys discussing topics of game design with developers.

When it comes to game difficulty, if a game gets too hard or frustrating, Shawn will generally stop playing for a while. If it happens often enough in a game, though, he'll usually stop playing the game altogether. When he encounters extreme difficulty like this, he considers it to be more of a flaw in the game's design than a challenge presented by the designers. Before giving up on it, though, he will generally use the Gamers With Jobs community or a website like GameFAQs as a resource, "so long as it's something preventing forward progress rather than an overall difficulty like poor camera controls, cheap A.I. tactics, etc." While difficulty can be frustrating, Shawn does enjoy mastering a game when possible. However, he doesn't go out of his way to do so, citing time as the main factor that keeps him from attempting to master a game. For example, in Team Fortress 2, he tends to pick the class that his team needs in a given moment, over picking the class that he wants to get better at playing.

I asked Shawn if he felt like his years of past experiences with games influenced his ability to enjoy particular games now. He cited times when he's watched inexperienced players attempt to grapple with a 3D space using a controller and their inability to connect the use of the controller with movement on screen as a primary indicator that "experiencing the organic ramp-up in design through the years absolutely informs your ability to understand a game quickly and enjoy something that would otherwise be unapproachable." He does feel, however, that platforms like the Nintendo Wii and DS are, to a certain degree, making 3D worlds and games in general more accessible to new players and cites Mario Galaxy as an example of a game that does a good job of simplifying the experience. When learning to play a new game, he appreciates a well-designed and presented tutorial, and feels that the best games integrate the teaching directly into the game play. He mentions how Zelda games do this subtly by introducing new features while the player is accomplishing tasks within the game proper.

Shawn and I spend the bulk of our time communicating with each other over IM, whether it's discussing work that needs to be done on the site, the games we're playing, car buying or conducting an interview for my master's class. Clearly the session for conducting this interview was a long one. (Praise be to the inventor of the chat log!) The interview covered a smorgasbord of topics, and I thank Shawn for his patience while I fumbled through it like some amateur gaming blogger. Err, wait a sec... I was intrigued and surprised by many of his answers, and while I've tried to give my thoughts on some of them here, there's simply too much to cover in a reasonable number of words. Needless to say, I'll probably be coming back to this interview over and over throughout the semester for reference, and Shawn will have to put up with random late-night instant messages about semiotic domains and projective identity. I'm sure he'd appreciate, instead, news that I just fixed a nasty bug on the website but, well... let's just consider this payback.

Here's what I learned from the intro to Persona 3 (see the first two videos in the playlist above): a blue-haired, headphone wearing teenager is on his way somewhere; a teenage girl is about to commit suicide; wherever the guy was going is a messed up place with bloody (literally) streets, creepy contract-bearing, blue-eyed kids, and teenagers that carry guns when they're not in school.

Blue-haired teenager? Check. Close-ups on shaky-eyed crying? Check. Creepy looking kid with discolored eyes? Check. Teenage girl wearing a short skirt? Check. Yep, I'm definitely playing a Japanese role-playing game.

While the introduction animation to P3 is jarring and - let's face - strange, it does a great job of giving me a taste of the world I'll be experiencing. It also leaves no question as to the content and theme of the game's story and presentation. It tells me that the game is going to be weird, dark, mature and complex. There's no chance I'm going to get a couple hours into the game and suddenly be put off or surprised by mature content. In stark contrast to the intro animation, the first few minutes of gameplay (the second video above) are incredibly friendly and lighthearted. I'm eased into the world through verbal and textual explanations of what I'll be doing. But, it's all contextual and doesn't feel out of place. These first few minutes of gameplay also tell me that the game is going to be story- and dialog-heavy, and that it will have a unique and strong focus on school and relationships.

Relationships and butt-kicking

As shown in the third video in the playlist, I'm playing as the blue-haired guy (I called him Doogie Mac), a transfer student attending Gekkoukan High School, in modern day Japan. I start school the next day, and am directed to find my way around. I end up learning more about my identity by talking to various students and teachers, and I establish my relationship with these students by selecting responses during conversations that have various contextual meanings but essentially boil down to, "I like you," "I kinda like you," and, "I don't like you." The emotion of the person I'm speaking with it shown in portraits as I talk to them. For example, notice Yukari's reactions and expressions as her mood changes while she talks.

Following a conversation, I'll occasionally be told that I made someone happy, or impressed or charmed them. When I do this enough with people, I form relationships with them. Talking to another student about the crush he has on a teacher strengthened my relationship with him. Helping out a fellow student in class by giving him the answer when the teacher called on him caused other students in the class to comment on how much I pay attention and raised my popularity. At this point, it's was clear that relationships are important in the game.

I proceed through a few more school days, making friends and getting accustomed to the interface of the game and how school "works" as a game mechanic. Then, the "Dark Hour" is introduced (see the sixth video in the playlist). The Dark Hour is an extra, "hidden" hour between midnight and 1 AM when only a select few people are conscious of their surroundings, and it's a time when the world fills with evil creatures called "Shadows." It turns out I'm one of the people that can stay awake through the Dark Hour which means, in short, it's the time when I get to kick butt.

Learning to play

Through all of this introductory material, which has now lasted for quite some time, I've been engaged in discovering the game world, learning about my surroundings, and figuring out just what the heck is going on. While I don't know it yet, I've also been learning about key game mechanics. I've learned how to use the game's interface by walking around in the consequence free zone of school. I've learned how to build relationships with characters, and that those relationships are important. I've learned that the Dark Hour is a time for fighting and that crazy stuff happens while I'm in it, and I've learned how to fight, shop, equip and use items and more.

During this time, I've realized that the designers of Persona 3 have streamlined the traditional role-playing game experience into something that's very easily digestible for new players. While I have experience playing role-playing games such as Final Fantasy, the simplified approach of P3's presentation is much appreciated. There's very little wandering around, and the game takes control over what's happening at just the right times, so you don't feel like you're wasting time getting from place to place or doing things you don't need to do. The game is also chock-full of just-in-time learning, whether it's learning how to use battle skills just as you need them or learning how to save my game right at the time I'm presented with the tools to do so, new material is presented in just enough detail to help me accomplish the task.

Personas

I'm now about 10 hours into the game. A lot of stuff has happened since the videos you see above, but most of what has happened is repeating and ramping up the difficulty on the things you see in those videos. Me and all my friends have started to get pretty good at fighting Shadows during the Dark Hour, and I've built up some strong relationships with quite a few characters. As I played through the first few hours, I learned that my relationships with other characters influenced the skills and abilities of my Personas, which are summoned beings that help me fight the Shadows. I even got a new Persona by having a strong enough relationship with the kid who's in love with his teacher.

Personas are all based on certain character types, such as leadership, love, solitude, humor, etc. For example, I joined student council, which raised my leadership skills and, therefore, my ability to use Personas based on leadership. I tried to join the track team, which I'm guessing would raise something related to athletics, but I didn't have time for it due to my other school and social obligations. I can also "fuse" Personas, which allows me to create new Personas that are a melding of two or three existing ones. The strength of these fused Personas is based on my social relationships, and the ones I can and should use are based on those relationships as well.

The Persona system is pretty complex, but it's introduced in phases, and only then when the information is needed to proceed. In fact, once I was eight hours into the game, I was given the ability to "store" existing Personas for retrieval later - kind of like a bank. Many games don't even last eight hours, let alone try to teach you new things eight hours after you started. Yet it wasn't painful or awkward. It was just what I needed at the time, too - I had run out of room for my existing Personas.

So much more...

There's quite a bit more to mention about regarding the game's mechanics and how they're presented, but I could go on for hundreds of more words about traveling around the city, shopping, participating in various social activities, building relationships with shop keepers, learning how battles are initiated and much more. For the rest of entries in my EDT791 journal, I'll be focusing more on the various educational implications of the game, and I'll explain these sub-systems when necessary. Overall, I'm incredibly impressed by the game's tactful presentation of complex systems and rules, and I'm excited to explore them in more depth over the coming weeks.

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It took me over a week to do so, but I think I've finally chosen a game to play for class. Picking a game was actually more difficult than you might imagine. The requirements are pretty open-ended - the game needs to be something I've never played, and should (hopefully) last me fifty hours or more. The hard part? I have this tendency, due to what I like to call "Gamer ADD," to buy, borrow or rent a game I'm interested in, play it for anywhere from an hour to several or countless hours, and then stop when the next must-play game comes along. The effect of this has ended up being that I've me played a good portion of the games I'm interested in, while having not really played them.

I certainly thought about quite a few games during the process: RPGs such as Rogue Galaxy or Neverwinter Nights 2; MMOs like Hellgate: London or Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO); or completely non-RPG games such as The Sims 2 or Starcraft. I played a bit of the original Neverwinter Nights several years ago, so it's sequel would have been pretty familiar. I played a demo of Hellgate: London, and reviews have been so mixed that I tossed it off the list quickly. LOTRO was definitely an option... but my countless hours with World of Wacraft (which is why it wasn't an option) spoiled me on MMOs, and would certainly taint my view of the experience. The Sims 2 would probably be really interesting, but it seemed so... obvious; and Starcraft may have been cool, too, but something tells me it could be a bit... scary. So, none of these games would work. Rather, they would work, but none of them felt right, and if I'm going to be given the opportunity to play a game for school, it's got to be perfect.

I decided to make the decision a bit easier on myself. I'd pick a couple of role-playing games that have been on my wish list, and I made sure they came out within the last year. There were two games that had been calling to me for months and, I've got to be honest, they were each at the front of my mind as I went through the exercise of weeding out the other games. But I had to be sure, so I went through the others anyway. I'll preface these two by saying that once I decided they were contenders for my list, I tried to essentially ignore any media coverage about them. They've both been out for months, so I obviously couldn't do so retroactively, but I have a a fairly short term memory, so I was able to approach both games with pretty fresh eyes. I say that to essentially buy myself the ability to be completely wrong about my impressions of the games and have no accountability for it.

The Witcher intrigues me to no end. Everything I've heard about it says that it's one of the few mature-rated games that really takes its rating seriously. From the ground up, it's a game built for adults. It's dark, gloomy, curse-filled and violent. The narrative is complex, deep, full of moral ambiguity and tough decisions. It has sex. Gamers I trust recommend it whole-heartedly. As a late-twenties gamer, it's pretty much everything I want in a game, with the veritable cherry on top. As the industry grows, we're starting to see more experimentations and risks with genres and audiences like this. Much in the way the massive size of the film industry allows incredibly niche indie films to find success, the explosive growth of the gaming industry opens up room for games like The Witcher, which is really one of the reasons I'm so interested in the game.

In spite of how badly I wanted (and still want) to play The Witcher, there's a game that ended up calling to me even more: Persona 3 (P3), mostly because of its convenient relevance to the topics of the class. P3 is the latest entry in the Shin Megami Tensei (SMT) series of games, of which I've played (and not yet finished) Digital Devil Saga (DDS). The SMT games all have the same general premise: demons (or "devils") are trying to do something bad, and you're there to try and stop them. The stories are generally fantastic, if occasionally quirky or melodramatic.

Yet, however similar the background is, P3 seems to be quite a departure from the DDS-style of presentation. DDS was a hardcore RPG with a story that took itself pretty seriously - occasionally too seriously. P3 seems to embrace the quirky nature of its premise, while also blending role-playing, adventure and simulation genres in a way not really seen yet in the western marketplace. The same "terrible creatures lurk[ing] in the dark" premise exists, along with the fairly standard (yet also innovative in its own way, from what I gather) console-style RPG battle system. Yet, what pulls me to the game, is the emphasis on what happens when you're not battling demons and trying to save the world.

P3 bases a large amount of its game play on the relationships you establish with other characters in the game. During the daytime hours, you play a student (or group of students? not sure yet...) who has to do all the normal things a kid does in at school - attend class, make and keep friends, study, etc. Ideas like this have been explored before to pretty good effect in games like the very misunderstood Bully, but in this case P3 seems to take the general idea of throwing the player into a school environment one step further. I can't say it much better than is written on the back of the game's box, "Tap into the power of Social Links: as your friendships grow stronger, so will your mastery over Persona." Relationships in the Persona universe become vital to the game play. I can infer from this that if I choose to ignore my friends, I will be worse at the game; and, to flip that around, as I strengthen my relationships with my school mates, I will succeed in the game. The implications of this concept are pretty powerful, when abstracted from the game world that it exists in.

So, I've chosen Persona 3 as the game I'll be spending my time playing, analyzing and critiquing for the next few months of class. Throughout the process, I'll cover a bunch of topics, including whether or not my impressions of the game are realized once I start playing it (an interesting study unto itself). One of the incredible things about the process of picking the game - which is not one I generally spend much time thinking about - is the sheer number of things I now realize I subconsciously consider every time I decide what to play next. A lot of this has to do with my identities as a gamer, as a real-world person (who happens to be a gamer) and as the person I want to become (notice how sports, racing and war games weren't even in my list of considerations). But I'll save that discussion for the next post...

This past Wednesday, I started my second semester of the Educational Technology (EDT) master's degree at ASU. Last semester, I realized just how difficult having a demanding job and going to school could be, so I decided to cut back this semester to just one class. That one class is Video Games, Literacy and Learning, and if the first class is any indication, it should be a real blast.

I've had a hard time explaining the course to my wife, friends and colleagues without getting eyes rolled skyward and sarcastic mumbles about how "hard" my homework will be. In spite of that, I do believe the class will be more difficult, and much more work, than they think. Our main assignment for the semester is to play at least 50 hours of a game (or multiple games, if we beat one before 50 hours is up), keeping a weekly journal of writings about our experience as it relates to the material we're learning in our readings and course discussions. These readings will be fun, but based on educational theory, concepts of learning, and won't exactly be "easy." However, if know my enthusiasm for gaming, you'll know right away how exciting this is for me. If you don't, well, continue reading...

I've been playing games for as far back as I can remember. I literally cannot remember a time when we didn't have some sort of gaming system in the house growing up. At some point when I was no older than 5, my dad brought home an Atari 2600. I can't remember every game we had at the time, but I have remarkably clear memories of sitting in the living room on beach towels with my brother - both of us in wet swimsuits and eating Peter Piper Pizza - and playing Pitfall, Missile Command, Pac-Man, or the absolutely terrible game that for some unholy reason we loved at the time: E.T.

Around this time, both my dad and my grandfather were getting into computers, and I was able to get exposed to quite a few cool PC games. On our old XT, I had the good fortune of playing text adventures like Zork, whiz-bang games like Mean 18 and a few fun educational games that I can't remember the titles of now ([something] Castle, sounds familiar...). These games were my initiation into the world of the personal computer. I give large credit to my dad and grandpa's interest in computers, and their encouragement and desire for me to explore them, to my passion and success as a web developer today.

Eventually, we got a Nintendo for Christmas, along with Super Mario Bros., Metroid and Kid Icarus. We played, rented and bought games for it until one summer, when we got a Super Nintendo, for good grades. The Super Nintendo was my introduction to "real" role-playing games, with Final Fantasy II and III (now known as IV and VI, respectively), Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana and similar games. It was also the home of Super Street Fighter, Super Mario World, and countless other games that truly made me fall in love with gaming. During this time, we also got a 386 PC, which I used to play King's Quest VI, Doom, Tie Fighter, Civilization, SimCity and dozens of other fantastic games.

From there, the rest isn't entirely worth relating in detail, as it's really just more of the same, albeit on different systems and with different games. I can't emphasize enough, though, the importance of the fact that throughout our childhood our parents never tried to prevent our gaming - in fact they frequently encouraged it. When I was broke in college, my mom threw me a bone for Christmas and bought me a PlayStation 2 with Final Fantasy X and Grand Theft Auto III. Both my mom and dad put up with literally hours upon hours of my brother and his friends obnoxiously playing Goldeneye 007, calling each other names and arguing over whether the "computer was cheating." It probably seems like no big deal, but as a grownup who now witnesses, on a daily basis, other grownups look down their noses at gamers as though their entertainment is somehow less valid than theirs, I now realize how lucky I was to have parents who were so open to gaming as a hobby.

This post is just the first of many for EDT791. We'll be exploring topics such as Games as complex systems: Domains of meaning and practice; Fish tanks and sandboxes: Entering the game; Identity and learning in games: Motivation and commitment; Complex and specialist language learning through games; Playing and learning: Failure, practice and mastery; and much, much more. So, if you're interested in following my work in the course, I'll be tagging all everything for it as EDT791 and Gaming, so you can follow along with the posts on those pages, or just by following the feed for my front-page posts.

I'm wrapping up my first semester of classes in ASU's Educational Technology Master's program, and the final project for my EDT502 (Design and Development of Instruction) class was to design a program of instruction. It was strongly recommended to us to keep the program length to one hour, and to choose something we were familiar with. So, of course, I chose Drupal!

This one hour training program was designed to be a focused and quick introduction to Drupal's node system. The target audience is potential Drupal developers who have experience administering Drupal, and its major focus is on presenting nodes as objects that can be modified by modules. It has three main objectives:

• present an overview of Drupal's node structure in easy to understand terms;
• provide attendees with useful tools for inspecting the structure of a node; and
• give attendees the knowledge required to identify where and when nodes are modified.

I envision this being just one unit in a much larger set of materials that provide a solid introduction to Drupal development. I'm pretty excited about what I was able to come up with, and have started sketching out plans for other units. I've decided to post this unit up here to see if I can get any feedback, and to see if anyone is interested in helping me make the full program of instruction a reality. Please see the attachments below for the full final project. I've included everything. Please feel free to let me know what you think!

Some development notes

This is probably just about the most obvious observation to anyone who has written a technical training program or book before... but, man it's a lot of work! But, it's also incredibly rewarding and satisfying. At the same time, I'm not sure I see myself doing it for anything but material I'm passionate about and I certainly have no desire to be a full time instructional designer. I'm a little worried this could cause... issues... with the rest of my time in the Ed Tech program, but I'm optimistic that it won't.

Apple's Pages '08 is an incredible application and I credit using it with giving my project a level of polish I never would have been able to achieve on my own. I have nothing but praise for the way that Apple has solved issues that have plagued Microsoft Word for years. The UI is incredibly simple and straightforward, and accomplishing fairly complex tasks is a snap. I'm very excited to continue using it in my work.

Google Docs is great for just about every word processing task I have in my daily work. Most of my text heavy documents are written in Google Docs and never leave Google Docs. The framework there provides an awesome solution for taking notes, planning projects and collaborating. However, it is not good for writing materials that you intend to be well designed and printable with reasonably predictable results. I spent quite a few hours porting material from the Google Docs in which I drafted the project to Pages, and the process was not smooth. Next time, I'll plan ahead and start something like this in Pages right off the bat - and I'll just use Subversion as my change management tool.

Update:
I've added the project retrospective, called the Program Development Report, which I just finished up today. See the attachments for the PDF.

If you're coming from the front page or an RSS reader, follow the "read more" link below for the attachments.read more...