This is the second in a series of guest posts by Martha Attridge Bufton, member of the Reacting Consortium Board and author of "Do We Take Shelter? Evaluating 'High Stakes' Information."
By Martha Attridge Bufton, MA, MLIS
Round 2: Choose a Compelling Narrative
Somewhere in my early “search for relevant literature” travels over the past eight or nine years, I found myself on the doorstep of two sources that are undoubtedly familiar to many game designers: Serious Games (Abt, 1970) and MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research (Hunicke, LeBlanc, & Zubek, 2004). Being new to using games and game design, most of what I read did not “stick”—I didn’t have enough experience at that point for many ideas to make sense—and yet I did learn an important principle that has clung: a compelling story is foundational to a successful immersive roleplaying game, whether it is recreational, educational, both or neither.
The inspiration: Gertrude and Velyien Henderson
The mentors: Clark C. Abt; Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek; Sarah Thorne
The design task: Identifying a plausible, engaging plot.
Step 1: Be Creative and Dramatic
When I started studying business administration at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in 1976, faculty in my program did not use case studies or simulations to teach. This educational strategy was used elsewhere in Canada, most notably at the School of Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario (now the Ivey Business School), so there was some buzz at SFU about this novel approach, which engaged students in solving problems based on events that had actually happened or scenarios that were realistic and plausible. Who knows? Perhaps faculty at Western had read Clark C. Abt’s slim pedagogical treatise on serious games and decided that preparing students for the “real world” through real-life scenarios was a good idea.
Abt published the first edition of Serious Games in 1969. He argued that a game could provide an effective framework for teaching students to think and evaluate a situation critically and solve significant problems because a game was “a particular way of looking into something, anything. This way of looking has two main components, a rational analytical one and a creative, dramatic one.” (Abt, 5-6) Clearly, the “rational, analytical” component allowed players (students) to use reason and logic to understand a problem and find a solution. Just as (or more) motivating, the “creative, dramatic” characteristics of a game could hook students emotionally into staying “in play” and using their imaginations and instincts to arrive at unexpected and/or transformational solutions to a given problem (Abt, 5-6). Plus, as Nick Proctor points out in his Game Designer’s Handbook, drama introduces variability or spontaneity into a game and keep players more engaged in underlying problem-solving (p. 11).
Overall, I was taken with the idea that a game afforded opportunities to think differently, even transformationally, about our relationships with information. More specifically, I loved the idea of creativity and drama as a counterpoint to logical, linear approaches to understanding our need to find, access, and use information in a variety of contexts. My interpretation of creative and dramatic was simple: I needed a storyline that had interesting characters, lots of potential action, plus a climax that involved potentially satisfying endings that were not preordained. The holy literary trinity of action/climax/resolution would provide the drama. The possibility of multiple endings would allow players room to be original and thoughtful and maybe learn more than if I just lectured or demonstrated database searches.
Listen to the radio: Introduction to Do we take shelter? Evaluating “high stakes” information gameplay.
Step 2: Operationalize Drama with Aesthetics
I can’t remember if I read Abt’s book first and Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek’s article second or the other way around. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that these two sources formed the yin and yang of my early understanding of game design. Abt confirmed that a creative, dramatic story would support game-based learning. Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek gave me a framework for translating this “big idea’ into a practical framework for approaching game design.
When I began thinking about designing a game, I had a very unrealistic ambition: to design a video game. Totally not happening, given that I did not (and still do not) play video games, had no coding knowledge or skills, and had no money to fund such a project. However, I did have a couple of incredibly supportive colleagues at the Carleton University Library, Ryan Tucci and Colin Harkness, who embraced the idea of an information literacy game. They worked with me to create Sources, a card game–a very good place to start. This project led me to Prof. Sarah Thorne and her fourth-year Games Studies course, which I took in 2018 so that I could learn more about the theory of game design and the use of Twine to design at least a “digitally born” game.
MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research (Hunicke, LeBlanc, & Zubek, 2004) was required reading in Sarah’s class and the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics (MDA) model became a design life raft for me. Here was a way to think about the design process that I could understand relatively easily and apply relatively quickly. I already had a working definition of mechanics, based on my work with Ryan and Colin, so I understood that I would need rules, processes, and methods for playing for a game to work. I also understood that gameplay would happen, would come alive, as players used mechanics in gameplay. Where the MDA framework was particularly helpful was in providing a vocabulary for thinking about the “creative, dramatic,” and emotional experience of a game that was vital to an aesthetically pleasing or fun experience–and players (students) are motivated and learn when they are having fun.
As Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek (2004) point out, “design methodologies guide the creative thought process and help ensure quality work.” In particular, the authors argue that narrative "can be used to design a game that is dramatic: serious games can be [are] aesthetically pleasing when there is a good story. As the three authors argue, a “good” game aesthetic will be more than just dramatic. The game will have other “beautfiul” qualities, such as competition, make believe, and/or opportunities for discovery. So having a good storyline isn’t enough to make for a good game, but it’s a good start.
Do We Take Shelter? Evaluating “High Stakes” Information Twine passage. Created by Martha Attridge Bufton, Chantal Brousseau, and Roscoe Brubek-Campbell.
Step 3: Choose a wicked “true story” problem
So, I needed a story that was dramatic and even wicked, i.e. a story that had a problem with "intellectual collisions" and without an obvious or easy solution (Proctor, p.11). Fortunately, I had a story that could be the basis for a microgame–a story that happens to be a lived, historical experience and lends itself to the exploration of the concept of “authority is constructed and contextual.”
Velyien (left) and Gertrude Henderson, wedding photo, 1939 (Dublin Ireland).
Photograph courtesy of Barbara Henderson
My parents’ close friends, Gertrude and Velyien Henderson, lived in Manchester, England during World War II. The Hendersons had a small circle of friends who smoked like chimneys and believed that they needed access to various authoritative sources of information if they were to as well informed as they could be about the war. This close-knit circle was keenly aware of the quadruple threat of wartime information: censorship, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. They knew that the British government censored information and that the newspaper of record, The Times, would comply to some extent with official censorship. They also understood that governments (allied and enemy) would disseminate either propaganda or disinformation (information known to be false and harmful) to encourage public support for the war and misguide their enemies. And, as always, anyone could share misinformation with no intentional desire to mislead or harm. Gertrude told me this story in a way that struck – she was, after all, Irish and quite dramatic – and I was fortunate that her daughter Barbara is a friend and filled in some of the gaps.
One strategy to meet this need for a range of authoritative sources was for the couples to collectively buy copies of different newspapers–regional and national–and pass the papers around amongst themselves so that everyone could read the published news. Sharing multiple newspapers allowed the couples to gather more information about key events, identify what might not being widely reported, and try to separate out the facts from fiction or propaganda that were circulating. Finding trustworthy, authoritative information during wartime can be considered a “wicked” or tricky problem (Rittel & Weber, 1973). War creates a complex and ever-changing environment in which there is no clear end or “stopping” point, factual information can be difficult if not impossible to access, and no “right or wrong” solutions, just solutions that are good or not so good. In addition, there are potential opportunities for subversion (e.g., the spreading mis- or disinformation, perhaps by possible spies).
A short game based on this story could be played over four or five rounds, with new information–probably primary sources–introduced in several rounds. Students would consolidate the information they gathered in the final round. This process could mimic the basic undergraduate humanities research process (pick a topic, define a question, search for sources, write a paper) and be a novel approach to teaching students how to evaluate sources in terms of the authority or influence that the source creator might have in this context. Although undergraduate research assignments tend to be less than wicked (i.e., students do have to propose answers to questions and solutions to problems), setting the game in an inherently chaotic environment where arriving at “the truth” can be difficult if not impossible can create a sense of drama and challenge.
Three design takeaways
A “big idea” about the nature of games can help us think our way into the process of game design. In this case, Abt’s idea that a game needed to be creative and dramatic resonated with me, as a teacher and a librarian. Our relationships with information are complicated and a good, serious story could effectively engage students in exploring and understanding how and why our trust in sources can increase or decrease depending on context.
We benefit from a game design method that meets us where we’re at, i.e., that fits with our current levels of knowledge and expertise. Scholars and game designers have written extensively about design and do not always agree on principles and approaches. However, we have to start learning somewhere and a framework such as MDA can be helpful to newbies because the conceptual barriers to entry are relatively low.
Lucky is the designer who starts with a potentially wicked problem. Historians are fortunate because history offers a seemingly endless supply of dramatic stories. In my case, I benefited from knowing a story that aligned so well with my goal of teaching information literacy and also happened to be historical and dramatic. The story took place in a dramatic period of time (World War II) and offered the possibility of presenting students with a “wicked” problem, one that did not have an obvious solution and would require them to think deeply about which sources should influence a life or death decision. Plus, a challenging problem can be fun, aesthetically pleasing, emotionally satisfying.
Next Round: Be Strategic: Use an Existing Structure
References
Abt, C. C. (1970). Serious Games. Viking Press.
Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (2004, July). MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI(Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 1722).
Biography
Martha Attridge Bufton (MA, MLIS) is the Interdisciplinary Studies Librarian at the Carleton University Library. Martha’s research interests include labour history, computational methods for the humanities, and game-based learning. She teaches at a comprehensive Canadian university, including a for-credit course in information literacy entitled Critical foundations in undergraduate research. Based on her historical research on the unionization of white-collar workers in Canada, she has produce the documentary short film Women at the bargaining table. White collar unionization at Carleton University. Martha is the co-recipient of the inaugural RTTP Brilliancy Prize with Dr. Pamela Walker and currently sits on the Reacting Consortium Board.
