gamer identity issues

Last week in my videogame class I raised a question toward the end that made sense only to the teacher.  So now I’ve thought it through, and I think I can raise it better.  To understand the games I played for this check out http://www.filamentgames.com/projects

ok, i had a whole week to think through my question from the end of class and i think i can better phrase it  now, especially given the games we played for this week.  when we truly play games for fun we learn as a consequence of playing, but the focus of our game play is on the playing experience.  in some cases we develop a specialized Discourse (i.e. pwnd) that accompanies our play, we begin to play games that are very similar (my husband plays sports games and shooter games, that's about it).  'serious' gamers develop a gamer personality surrounding their game play.  casual gamers play slightly differently, but still play for the experience, i farm for experience.  they also develop specialized languages and Discourses assigning in-game meaning to seemingly useless things (like farmville and fuel).  the home game experience of casual gamers and serious gamers is all about experience.  casual gamers more interested in wii games, and other console games of a similar nature again play for the experience.  it is fun to wii bowl with family and friends who otherwise wouldn't play games.





in educational games we're asking students (but not actually asking) to put aside the fun experience of game they're used to and actually learn through the game.  this is where i have my issue and where my question stems from.  we never discuss the importance of explaining the purpose of using a game to students, we never discuss how the home gamer identity may impact the school based learning we're expecting, we never contemplate the school based gamer identity students must develop to be successful in school games.  we're so focused on the good learning that can come from games, that we never consider how the home gamer experience may impact school game play.  this is a key point that needs to be addressed.
thinking about this as i played the Filament Games this week i began to see the issue.  first i played Argument Wars.  this game was fairly interactive, and pretty easy to figure out the right answers for Miranda v. Arizona.  what i did notice is i did not retain any of the content i didn't already know.  i was able to read various potential arguments, and i can't remember any of them now.  i just wanted to win.  so content became meaningless to my retention, and only important to my game winning.  i set my goal of winning, and succeeded (the miranda rights are pretty obvious).  so, to successfully use this game in the classroom would the teacher need to be setting the goals of game play to ensure content is more important than play and winning?  if yes, why aren't we talking about how to teach students to play games, how to meld home gamer identity, what is school based gamer identity, what exactly are we expecting out of these games?  are these even games?  i'll return to that question in a minute.



next in argument wars, being an English Rhetoric and Composition student i immediately noticed the 5 paragraph essay design of the game (bonus points to your English 101 and high school English teachers if you noticed this as well!!).  was i supposed to also learn how to select an argument, provide support and counter the opposing views argument, like a traditional essay?  was i supposed to learn the laywer/judicial Discourse being used in the court cases, or just feel slightly left out of the Discourse being used around me in the game?  am i supposed to now understand argument, the five paragraph essay, argument support, judicial discourse, academic discourse, and some of the ammendement content?  what was the point of playing this game.  again, if the teacher needs to step in and direct students whose expectations are being met, and do we have gamer identity issues here?


obviously i'm saying yes to all this, that's why i asked the question last week about home gamer identity not necessarily melding with school gamer identity.  the 17 year old government high school student playing Argument Wars instead of Halo may want to scream pwnd when he/she wins miranda rights over the state of arizona, but it's not fitting at school, but it's fitting at home.  how does he/she celebrate this victory?  how does he/she even know if winning is a victory?


next i played EcoDefenders.  the little creaters are pretty cute, so it was pretty fun.  i LOVED that this was considered and called a simulation.  i created a creature to destroy another creature, then was told to "run it through the simulation" to gather data and see what happened.  this was perfectly fitting for testing my knowledge of ecosystems.  my creature totally destroyed the one i was competing against, but i do have a biology degree, so i'm sure that helped me.  it was the fact that this was not a game, but a simulation that made it easier to understand my in game objectives, and behave in more 'school mode' than 'gamer mode.'  however, the rest of the games i saw were called games, not simulations.  so maybe we need to move toward school games being considered simulations, and think about them as ways of implementing knowledge.  this may help alleviate the gamer identity issues i'm noticing.  i did see identity issues with this game, i was asked to create my creature, and probably spent 5-10 minutes deciding.  i had to weigh the skills, colors, sleeping habits against my counter part.  again, having a biology degree i knew to look at these factors, and if preceeded by a lecture students should know this, so again, it seems like teachers are setting objectives for how games are played in school, influencing this yet undiscussed 'school gamer identity.'
my only problem with EcoDefenders is that as soon as my creature destroyed its opponent, i was given a test.  so what was the purpose here? was this a simulation in skill and drill, did the test make it educational?  did the test have real life consequences?  should i have been so excited for getting 100% (i'm a nerd)?  how does the successful defeat of my opponent creature and my success on the test matter to my class?  who sets these goals, and again, how do they affect my 'play'?  am i even playing anymore?


hopefully this helps explain my issue with gamer identity posed last week in class.  i think when used correctly games can be helpful, but we really need to understand what we expect them to do, and what they do on accident (was the 5 paragraph essay format an accident?).  if we don't recognize the home gamer identity, and the difference we're expecting in schools, and address what we're expecting in schools games/simulations (i'm really leaning towards overhauling word choice and going with simulations in school settings) may never move beyond rewards for good students.