Point of Departure:
What kinds of critiques are being advanced about traditional forms of school knowledge and related assessment forms (and how/why do the authors articulate new directions and alternative practices)?
This week’s readings detailed two infection-based games: Contagion (de Castell and Jenson) and Epidemic (Jenson, de Castell, Thumlert, and Muehrer). Both, also, discuss epistemological theories and concerns in both the modeling of the game(s) as well as the use. Within de Castell and Jenson’s piece, the authors argue that educational activities and knowledge building is assembled across various modalities of play, itself. Jenson et al., in distinction, argue for an implicit pedagogy within learning environments that is ‘post-print’; that is, that ludic pedagogy is taken seriously as a multi-modal approach to learning.
Passage One:
“As private and community health becomes, increasingly, not just a local public, but also global matter over which individuals have limited control, our focus on Epidemic began with helping users learn how to protect themselves and their communities from particularly prevalent viruses, from HIV to chicken pox to common influenza strains, and to enlarge the context for players’ understanding to include other historical and/or rare diseases such as Ebola, polio, and the hantavirus”
(Jenson, de Castell, Thumlert, and Muehrer, p. 24, 2016).
As this article points out, traditional models of knowledge acquisition and standardization does not exist in a vacuum. Digital gameplay as a pedagogical tool has long been myopic in its potential application(s). The above quote, specifically, details how, in a globalized world, knowledge, itself is subject to change and, as such, the attainment of knowledge must also adjust. To achieve a critical understanding and efficacy of knowledge dissemination, one cannot underestimate the medium through which this knowledge is offered. As further discussed in the article, participants in their study were able to apply their knowledge learned in-game to conversation: specifically, in terms of “medical discourse” (p. 34). This application procedure by participants is important, especially to the above quote, as it demonstrates an ability for communities to further ‘protect’ themselves from diseases by understanding them. Indeed, a familiar trope in ludology is the fear of violent video games. Liam Mitchell tackles this and claims, “[o]ur systemic, digital, totalizable assumptions about the world are a precondition for treating things and people so violently, but they are far from inevitable” (p. 51, 2018). As the assumption for violent video games rests on their ability to be ‘effectively’ navigated, one questions how players could critically understand a game if they are so easily corrupt. Of course, since the medium of games is complex, this argument of a player’s inability to rationalize falls flat. Further, the mention of ‘public vs. private’ health is of crucial concern, here, as information is, of course, never neutral. Indeed, in participants engaging in a new type of knowledge, there is, of course, a wider concern for what is even able to be articulated.
Passage Two:
“The goal of imparting information is not only mobilized within the game space but also becomes an orientation to action beyond the game”
(de Castell and Jenson, p. 117, 2007).
This quote demonstrates an explicit essentialism between the ‘game space’ and further ‘action’. Having established a connection between play and further action, this piece re-centers the ‘game’ as being able to be re-centered by the player, themselves. In participating in the game, the player tacitly learns the architecture, designs, and language of the game, itself. Through this, the authors posit that “[t]o change our thinking, we need sometimes to change the tools with which we do that thinking” (p. 118). As such, the very environment of the game is heavily imbued with the ability for exploration and boundary-pushing. Johan Huizinga, in his chapter on “Playing and Knowing” echoes these propositions of learning; he details the importance of ‘superiority’ and chance vs skill. For Huizinga, the act of competition is central to epistemology and pedagogy, here. Of course, competition bears many forms (as demonstrated in his chapter), and these forms exist together, intertwined. Bringing it back to the original passage, the skills and knowledge one brings from and to a game does not exist in isolation. Instead, the knowledge itself is always deeply rooted in one’s own ability to come to knowledge as well as how that knowledge is taken in the first place.
In Closing:
Both these pieces resonate, deeply, around notions of epistemic ludology. Games, themselves, are evidently more layered and entrenched within one another as well as broader cultural epistemes. Approaching games and learning myopically ignores the vast use-value that could be generated if not for the traditionalist models of learning. Indeed, the ability is already present; one’s own experience playing games is already necessarily intertwined with previously established pedagogy.
Works Cited
de Castell, Suzanne, and Jennifer Jenson. (2007). “Digital Games for Education: When Meanings Play.” Intermediality. Vol. 9. 11-132.
Huizinga, Johan. (1944). Homo Ludens: Study of the Play Element in Culture. Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. Boston: MA.
Jenson, Jennifer, Suzzane de Castell, Kurt Thumlert, and Rachel Muehrer. (2016). “Deep Assessment: An Exploratory Study of Game-Based, Multimodal Learning in Epidemic.” Digital Cutlure and Education (DCE). Vol. 8(1). 20 – 40.
Mitchell, Liam. (2018). Ludopolitics: Videogames Against Control. Zero Books. Hampshire: UK.
Games and Philosophy 