Unlocking Games Chad Haefele and Brandon Carper

First, an important note: This will be our last episode for a while. Brandon and I have both developed outside commitments that keep us from spending the time to do more episodes right. We might be back someday! But please enjoy this and each of our past episodes - we're proud of each one, and I think they'll still be relevant down the line.

To anybody who has ever listened to an episode: I sincerely thank you.

We're also releasing this episode outside of our normal schedule, because there's a natural connection to an event coming up on this Tuesday, 4/4/17:

Over 190 movie theaters will run special screenings of 1984.

You should find one!

This connection will make sense if you even glance at the PC game Orwell. While not an official tie-in to 1984, it's obviously heavily inspired by that book.

You play a government employee who monitors the web and private communications for evidence of terrorism. You have frequent choices about whether or not to report chunks of information. You might wrongly imprison someone, but you might also fail to prevent a bombing.

Orwell is fun and compelling to play, mostly avoids getting preachy, and provides a unique way to think about current events. It's $9.99 on Steam, and has a free demo available.

Games Mentioned in this Episode

Mr. Robot (featured in episode 3)

Papers, Please (featured in episodes 7-9)


Show Notes & Links

Killscreen's coverage of Orwell

More info on the upcoming 1984 movie screenings

Released in early February, We Are Chicago is a serious game with serious goals: to put players in the shoes of a teenager amid the problems of Chicago's South Side. As Aaron you navigate the landscape of gangs, high school, family dynamics, and a part-time job.

Structured almost identically to a Telltale game, you are presented with dialog choices in sometimes difficult situations.

But for us, the game didn't live up to its lofty goals.

Bugs, strange narrative choices, and some fundamental structural issues distracted and took away from what might otherwise have been a real chance to put ourselves in a world we'd never otherwise encounter. While we salute what the game was trying to do, hopefully future games will be able to execute just a little bit better.

We Are Chicago is $14.99 on Steam.

Games Mentioned in this Episode

Oregon Trail

Organ Trail

Papers, Please

Life is Strange

Space Quest 4

Persona 4

The Darkness

Telltale's Batman

Mr. Robot (featured back in episode 3)




Show Notes & Links

Polygon's 2014 feature on We Are Chicago

The YouTube playthrough of We Are Chicago that Chad watched

The game is more than two years old and based on an event from the 90s, but This War of Mine still feels fresh and relevant.

This War of Mine drops you in the middle of a city under siege. But you're not a well-equipped well-trained super-soldier packing the latest gadgets.

You're a civilian, just trying to make it to the next morning. This is more Survivalist Sims than Call of Duty.

Developers 11 Bit Studios set out to re-create the experience of the '92-'96 siege of Sarajevo, but it's just as applicable to today's Syrian civil war.

Resources are scarce and violence is sudden and swift. You can steal from or murder others to get by, but that decision has significant mental consequences for your characters.

We found lots to appreciate in the message and basic mechanics of This War of Mine. But unfortunately the extreme difficulty, lack of a tutorial, and opaque goals hamper what might otherwise be a successful effort to raise awareness about the consequences of war on civilians and refugees.

Games Mentioned in this Episode

Call of Duty

The Sims

Papers, Please

Minecraft




Show Notes & Links

This War of Mine's launch trailer

Al Jazeera's recent summary of Syria's Civil War

NPR's annotations of Trump's Executive Order on Immigration

Survive the horrors of war as a civilian in This War of Mine, PC Gamer

A war game that actually feels like being in a war, Polygon

A psychologically “embedded” approach to designing games for prosocial causes, by Geoff Kaufman & Mary Flanagan, Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 2015

With immigration and a border wall in the news this week, it's a good time to look at 2013's The Migrant Trail.

Released as a tie-in for Marco Williams' documentary The Undocumented, The Migrant Trail is a browser-based game where you're in the shoes of either an undocumented immigrant attempting to cross the Arizona border, or a border patrol agent on the lookout for border crossers.

If you've played Oregon Trail, you know how the basic mechanics work. You select a person to attempt crossing as, and purchase supplies within a budget. Along the way you consume supplies to keep stats above zero and make decisions about the rest of your party.

As a border patrol agent, you drive through the desert looking for signs of life or any illegal crossings in progress.

The Migrant Trail is a more well-rounded attempt to tackle an issue than Voter Suppression Trail was last time, but some interface difficulties and game design choices keep it from being a complete success.
Games Mentioned in this episode

The Migrant Trail (click on the game's title at the bottom of the page)
Oregon Trail
Voter Suppression Trail

Show Notes & Links

The Undocumented isn't currently available to stream anywhere, but PBS has a trailer.

Special thanks to Todd Haefele for our new intro music!

Welcome back to season two!

We're slightly shifting focus to social impact games: games that explore social issues like elections, climate change, homelessness, and immigration.

Each episode will evaluate the effectiveness of a different game. What was it trying to accomplish? Did it work? Our goal isn’t to take a stance on the issues or evaluate the accuracy of the games, but to examine how effective their design is at achieving their goals.

We'll draw on the theories and ideas we talked about in past episodes, plus bring in new perspectives whenever we can.

We're also going bi-weekly.

Since the 2017 Inauguration is a major event this week, our season premiere is on topic with Voter Suppression Trail. Released shortly before the 2016 Presidential election, this was the New York Times' first stab at a video game editorial.

Borrowing liberally from Oregon Trail's design style, Voter Suppression Trail puts you in the shoes of three potential voters: A white programmer from California, a Latina nurse from Texas, and a Black salesman from Wisconsin. Each of them has varying obstacles to overcome as they wait in line to vote.

What impact did it have on players? We think it was only partially successful in drawing attention to real electoral issues. Listen to the episode to find out why.

Games mentioned in this episode

Oregon Trail

The GOP Arcade's many other titles




Show Notes & Links

Test yourself - which of the Four Frames do you see the world through?

Gamasutra's The Making of GOP Arcade's Voter Suppression Trail

The Effect of a persuasive social impact game on affective learning and attitude, by Dana Ruggiero, Computers in Human Behavior, 2015

The Art of Game Design, by Jesse Schell

Many games put you in the role of someone else. It's right in the name of at least one genre: Role-Playing Game.

We identify with each of these avatars to varying degrees. It's hard to feel much of a connection with Pac-Man, but Link and Chrono were much easier to map onto ourselves.

What did we take away from that mapping? What does current research say about how we relate to our avatars?

This week Brandon introduces theories about how we connect with games' avatars, then we look at Final Fantasy XV as an example. What opportunities does it take or miss to link us with Prince Noctis?

And what does this all have to do with Clippy, anyway?



Show Notes & Links


Monster Factory

Clark, Ruth Colvin. Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2007.

Fox, Jesse, and Jeremy N. Bailenson. "Virtual self-modeling: The effects of vicarious reinforcement and identification on exercise behaviors." Media Psychology 12, no. 1 (2009): 1-25.

Groom, Victoria, Jeremy N. Bailenson, and Clifford Nass. "The influence of racial embodiment on racial bias in immersive virtual environments." Social Influence 4, no. 3 (2009): 231-248.

Ruggiero, Dana. "The effect of a persuasive social impact game on affective learning and attitude." Computers in Human Behavior 45 (2015): 213-221. Doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.062.

Woolfolk, Anita. Educational Psychology. 8th ed. Needham Heights: Allyn and Bacon, 2001.

Yee, Nick, and Jeremy N. Bailenson. "Walk a mile in digital shoes: The impact of embodied perspective-taking on the reduction of negative stereotyping in immersive virtual environments." Proceedings of PRESENCE 246 (2006): 147-156.

Yee, Nick and Jeremy N. Bailenson. “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior.” Human Communication Research 33 (2007): 271-290.

Yee, Nick, Jeremy N. Bailenson, and Nicolas Ducheneaut. “The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior.” Communication Research 36 (2009): 285-312.


Games mentioned in this episode

Chrono Trigger

Secret of Mana

Halo

Legend of Zelda

Spent

Papers, Please

Final Fantasy XV

Final Fantasy VII
Hearthstone

Disgaea 4