{"id":1970,"date":"2011-09-01T11:00:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T15:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2011-09-01T10:25:30","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T14:25:30","slug":"dear-archaeologists-simulation-doesnt-equal-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=1970","title":{"rendered":"Dear Archaeologists, Simulation Doesn’t Equal Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I saw that archaeologists were using Second Life for the creation of meaningful archaeological games I was of two mindsets. My first thought was how awesome it would be to play an adult version of an archaeological game. As seen from my previous post on gaming in archaeology<\/a>, most are made for children or young adults. My second thought was how much it was going to hurt having to actually down load Second Life, an act I promised I would never do. I’m not saying Second life is a bad platform, but its just not for me, a girl whose favorite games are all in the first person shooter or action adventure genres.<\/p>\n

Luckily for me, and sadly for the archaeological games created using Second Life, there appears to be a lack of understanding about the use of the term ‘game’ in an educational context. I know that ‘game’ can be a fairly vague description, but for purposes of this post I’m going to define it as including a bounded space, rules, rewards, goals and competition. Competition and goals create motivation, rules constrain the player and provide a source of challenge, and choice provides the player with control over the results of their gameplay (Charsky 2010:193). To be educational, the primary outcome of the game is to provide students with a visual and immersive experience to learn by doing, in which the definition of a game still stands.<\/p>\n

The ‘game’ I’m going to focus on is the Laconia Acropolis Virtual Archaeology project (LAVA). LAVA was designed by the University of St. Andrews as “an environment which enables students to gain an understanding of the skills and techniques required in order to successfully undertake an archaeological excavation project.” The project leveraged technology from Second Life and Quake 2 to construct both a third person and first person element. Students must find the site, propose an excavation, draft a plan for excavation, compete for funding, manage their resources, and properly excavate the site to reveal as much information as possible. At the end, they must present their findings at a virtual museum.<\/p>\n

This project has been touted as being at the forefront of archaeological gaming, appearing as a prime example of serious gaming and meaningful play in archaeology. it does use video gaming technology, but is it a game, or is it simply a simulation?<\/p>\n

Serious games easily become conflated with simulations, and while the two do have some overlap in learning objectives, there are important difference. When serious games first became popular, there was a tendency for the difference between simulation and game to be almost non-existent. Early forms of educational games were military based, using the game platforms to simulate battles and combat situations. These simulations were designed by gamers, who injected the simulation with gaming elements like competition, engagement, playability and clear win\u00a0situations (Zyda 2005).\u00a0Definitions for simulations vary as widely as definitions of games, but for this analysis simulations are artificial creations, which approximate real world ones (Prensky 2001). Educational simulations allow for students to learn by doing, but can lack features like competition, explicit rules, and collaboration.Games, simulations lack any form of engaging challenges, entertainment, and there is no obvious end-state.<\/p>\n

Second Life itself is not a gaming platform; it is a simulation. Second Life is a virtual world that lacks a designated objective, traditional game play mechanics and rules. So is the LAVA project a game or a simulation? It does have an element of competition, as the teams must compete against one another for funding, however this is not directly linked into the program but is done outside of it by the professor or facilitator. Other than that, the only competition or challenge comes from the drive of the student to get a good grade on the assignment. Students are rewarded with better information if they procede through the excavation with a good strategy, but the model then doesn’t allow for experimentation but rather forces the player to either pick the correct way or lose information. There is no room for play and creativity in ‘game’. While there is random chance and strategy involved, it is fairly limited and from the descriptions appears controlled.\u00a0Prensky (2001) argues that simluations require goals, explicit rules and challenges, often backed by a narrative, in order to become games. \u201cGoals can be either be built-in to the game or self-or instructor imposed, but as soon as you add them, suddenly there is more engagement, whether or not there is actually a score\u201d (Prensky 2001:3).<\/p>\n

Bringing this back to the original question, is LAVA a game? Its difficult to answer without actually playing the game, but I would argue that yes the simulation does have some game elements, but it is primarily a simulation. In order to be a full fledged game, LAVA needs to introduce more game features including increases the number of challenges that are directly linked into the game, allowing for flexibility, and creating a greater sense of competition. LAVA isn’t gaming archaeology, rather it is simulating it and adding in some game like elements. Semantics, yes, but it is still an important distinction.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Prensky 2001. Digital Game Based Learning. McGraw-Hill.<\/p>\n

Zyda 2005.\u00a0From Visual Simulation to Virtual Reality to Games<\/a>,” IEEE Computer, September 2005, pp. 25-32.<\/p>\n

Charsky 2010. From Edutainment to Serious Games.\u00a0Games and Culture <\/em>2010 5: 177<\/p>\n

Getchell et al. 2009 Exploring Second Life of Byzantine Basilica. In <\/em>Serious Games on the Move. Springer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I saw that archaeologists were using Second Life for the creation of meaningful archaeological games I was of two mindsets. My first thought was how awesome it would be to play an adult version of an archaeological game. As seen from my previous post on gaming in archaeology, mostContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[45,159,158],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["entry","author-katy","post-1970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-articles","tag-archaeology","tag-meaningful-play","tag-serious-games"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1970"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1979,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions\/1979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1970"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=1970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}