Serious Games as Platform Agnostic

I offer a second argument refuting a generalized definition of serious games as digital objects. Game scholars including Landers, Tarja et al. (2007),Dörner et al. (2016), Djaouti et al. (2011), Ben Sawyer (2002), David Michael & Sande Chen (2005), and Michael Zyda (2005) propose definitions that assume serious games are digital. I demonstrate that this cannot be true and explore potential underpinnings for this assumption. Both of these refutations stem from the same core misconception of serious games. In line with Deterding et al. (2011), I argue for a separation between concepts and insist on platform agnosticism. That said, I arrive at the same conclusions as they do—but for different reasons. At stake is a division between gamification and game design more generally. While Deterding et al. seek to collapse these in the case of gamifying games, I argue for further distinction given the premises laid out in the previous two refutations. From here, I explore two exemplars of games for learning to demonstrate both the usefulness of the distinction and to create touchstones for discussion in the following chapters. These are Do I Have a Right? (iCivics 2011) and Sweatshop (LittleLoud 2011). Neither of these act as paradigmatic example of either serious games or gamified learning. Rather, they

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demonstrate how these concepts overlap and interrelate. By disambiguating serious games and gamification in this way, I build a foundation for further argumentation where I argue that serious games rely on emergence to communicate.

Despite several references to analog games designed to educate, Djaouti et al. in writing on the “Origins of Serious Games,” emphasize that definitions of serious games tend to focus on them as computational objects (10). They cite Sawyer & Rejeski (2002), Michael & Chen (2005), and Zyda (2005), each of whom makes similar claims regarding the use of digital games to achieve something other than entertainment (3-4). Even in the same collection of essays, De Freitas and Liarokapis offer “a broad definition” of serious games referring to “computer games that have an educational and learning aspect and are not used just for entertainment purposes” (emphasis mine, 10). Immediately, this definition strikes me as erroneous, given that classrooms regularly use boardgames and folk games to teach (see Williams 2014; Randel et al. 1992). There is also research to show that boardgames can have educational value in the classroom as well (Laski and Siegler 2014; Ramani and Siegler 2012; Bochennek et al. 2007). For instance, the card game Science Ninjas: Valence (Schreiber 2015) is designed to teach high school children about molecule formation.

Even one of the most popular boardgames of all time, Monopoly, exhibits educational value. The Landlord’s Game, designed by Elizabeth Magie in 1903, served to demonstrate the value of land tax (Flanagan 87). The Parker Brothers bought the patented game from Magie, renaming and repackaging it as something of a capitalist celebration, but it has a remarkably socialist origin. Even though it has changed in tone and layout, Monopoly continues to

demonstrate how unregulated capitalism leads to income disparity. It is clear in the goal of the game that this is true: “A bankrupt player must immediately retire from the game. The last player

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left in the game wins” (Monopoly 8). The goal here implies that the structure of Monopoly leads to widespread poverty, save for one player who owns everything. Through the structure of her game, Magie suggests that if land profits were heavily taxed, this outcome would not occur. In this way, the game has a teachable outcome that emerges through an economic simulation. Given that it is an analog game that focuses on teaching, it seems patently unreasonable then to reject the analog from a conception of serious games. What, then, motivates so many scholars to do so? Here are some speculations:

1. There is more capital invested in digital games

2. Digital games are newer and offer clear avenues for further development 3. Digital games circulate in novel and valuable ways

4. Digital games can limit player behaviours and better shape learning by offloading cognitive steps required by analog games

5. Digital games make use of a series of techniques to retain and engage players in ways analog games cannot

All of these points help legitimize the study of games, so it should not surprise us to find these elements foregrounded by researchers. However, it is this last point that sticks out in relation to the previous issues I highlighted with Landers’ work. If we erroneously hold Landers’ position that serious games are exceptionally robust gamified learning processes and not as something qualitatively different, then it becomes almost reasonable to think of serious games as digital objects. Of course, leaderboards, rewards, social features, etc. can all be analog, so that even if one did not agree that serious games are not an accumulation of gamified techniques, one would have to reject the claim that they were digital. And while each of the five other reasons above legitimizes interest in digital games, none of them relates to games proper, but to a particular mode of industrial game development and design. These scholars do not seem to take interest in the formal properties of games, but in digital substrates that grant those games useful properties. They care about the bells and whistles that game designers have been developing to entice users, and not the actual games. My argument here is that thinking about serious games in a strictly

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digital way limits our understanding of games and leads to examinations more closely linked to user experience than games. This, in turn, leads to processes of gamification and the confusions I highlighted in the above sections.

Deterding et al. suggest that gamification is “an umbrella term for the use of video game elements (rather than fully-fledged games) to improve user experience and user engagement in non-game services and applications” (1). They report that there are several instances of serious games research in which this distinction is not clear. Their claim is that, “Whereas serious games describes the use of complete games for non-entertainment purposes, gamified applications use elements of games that do not give rise to entire games” (2). Deterding et al. argue that serious game design often fails to leverage the medium-specific qualities of games. Rather, investments in game design (particularly videogame design) have led to the development of ancillary

functions and features. These include leaderboards, pinch points, check-ins, tiers of currency, reward schema, etc. Rather than contribute to the simulational properties of the game, the

elements validate and contextualize that gameplay in such a way as to increase retention of users. Deterding et al. suggest that the distinction to be made between gamification and serious games is one based on “game” in opposition to “play” (11). While I am sympathetic to Deterding et al.’s maintenance of a distinction between serious games and gamification, their reasoning for distinguishing these is underdetermined. In positing that serious games are fully-fledged games that produce play—whereas gamified learning only uses certain game elements—we run into the same issue regarding quantity vs. quality. Introducing more measurements to user behaviour does not lead to a greater simulational representation of some target concept. Deterding et al. admit that the boundary between these two concepts is blurry. They even ask: At which point does a game become “fully-fledged” and not just largely gamified? To solve this problem, they

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rely on theories of playiii _{and contrast them to theories of games to suggest that those works that} foster playful attitudes are serious games and not gamified learning (5). That said, they stop short of demonstrating how playful attitudes would help us distinguish between these as objects. Essentially, the difference would be determined by their reception, and not any of their structures—despite their work indicating a likely formal difference. The duality of playful vs. gamified is this same ideologically fraught concept that Whitson and Nelson try to use when addressing their critiques of motivated labour. There is a bias here towards the playful in all three. I would suggest that there is a desire to believe that free play is not ideologically

constructed behaviour, and maybe even critical, but I see no reason for this to be the case. It is possible that by playful, the authors have some sense that there is a lusory attitude, but this attitude is not locked to either serious games or gamified practices.