First draft – please do not quote or distribute Paper Nordisk Medieforskerkonference Helsinki 16-19 august 2007Workshop: Computer Games

Professor Nukem - communicating research in the age of the experience economy

Kjetil SandvikMA, ph.d. assistant professor, Film and Media Studies Section, Dept. of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Phone: +45 3532 8119, Mobile: +45 2494 4770, E-mail: sandvik@hum.ku.dk

Anne Mette Thorhauge MA, ph.d. post doc, Film and Media Studies Section, Dept. of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Phone: +45 3532 8133, Mobile: +45 6127 2097, E-mail: thorhaug@hum.ku.dk

AbstractThe experience economy, that is, the creative and communicative turn in today’s social, cultural and

economic structures implies, as explained by Pine and Gilmour (1999), that consume is embedded

in a communicational format that conveys some kind of experience to the consumer. The consumer

in turn becomes more than just a passive user - she becomes an active participant in the

experiential/communicational design. As such the mode of consume in the experience economy is

an interactive and play-centric one. And the computer game embodies the very core logic of this

experience economy. In the experience economy focus is not on consume of commodities and

services, but on the consumer’s engagement in an experience which uses products, services and

information as props and creative tools. Using the user-centered mode of consume as our point of

departure, this paper examines how the computer game format may be used as a new tool for

communicating academic research to a broader audience. By applying some findings from a recent

project, we will focus on the ways academic research may be communicated in a format that makes

the recipient take part in the process of communication and acquiring knowledge. This may include

different elements of the academic process such as asking questions, posing hypothesis, working

with complex and conflicting subject matters. Thus, this model for communicating academic

research positions the recipient as an active participant in the communicational process and

provides communicating academic research with an experiential dimension.

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Professor Nukem is an experiment on the use of games in the communication of research about

computer games. It is done in a relatively simple way by combining elements from two classical

(computer) game genres: The quiz and the 1st person shooter. In the game, the player is confronted

with an opponent in the form of a prejudice about computer games and graphically displayed as a

monster. To beat the opponent the player has to choose a weapon in the form of a counter-

argument. There are more counter-arguments to choose between and the player has to select the

right one, that is, the one based on scientific inquiries and reports. Accordingly, this initial sequence

has a classical quiz-structure and it is followed up with a sequence that has more in common with

the shooter. In this sequence the player has to use her weapon to shoot the opponent. It has an

evaluating function with regard to the quiz sequence as the player’s chances of overcoming the

opponent depend on the choice of weapon. If the opponent loses life when hit the right weapon has

been chosen if this is not the case the wrong weapon has been chosen. If this happens the player has

the opportunity to put the game on hold and choose among the other alternatives. The shooting

sequence ends as the player or the opponent runs out of life and it is followed up with an

explanation that clarifies why a given counter-argument is right or wrong. These explanations

represent the primary knowledge-content that is to be communicated in the game and they can also

be found in the game’s “walkthrough” at the website.

Computer games and the experience economyUsing the experience economical user-centered mode of consume as our point of departure,

Professor Nukem was an experiment on how the computer game format may be used as a new tool

for communicating academic research to a broader audience. The project’s main focus was on the

ways academic research may be communicated in a format that makes the recipient take part in the

process of communication and acquiring knowledge.

The experience economy may be defined as an economy based on an increasing

demand in today’s society for experience and which is building on the value of consumer creativity

applied to both new and more traditional products and services. Computer games are characterized

by a basic principle in the experience economy (see Arvidsson & Sandvik, 2007): the

implementation of the consumer (which in this context rather must be termed user or player) as

creative and productive agent in the economical circuit. Thus computer games illustrate thus the

core logic of the experience economy in which focus no longer is on consumption of goods and

services but rather the engagement of the consumer in an experience in which goods and services

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are used as props and staging tools (Pine & Gilmor, 1999) and which is characterized by

mediatization of both production, marketing and consumption of experiences. Especially the digital

technology – computer, mobile phones, internet – constitute new experience economical arenas in

which goods and services are embedded in digitally mediated and mediatized experiences in which

the consumer may be engaged and involved, often via several media platforms.

As Pine and Gilmor points out in their book The Experience Economy (in which the

concept is introduced for the first time) experiences as mode of consumption is no so much about

entertaining as it is about engaging the consumer, which may take place on different levels of

participation. But regardless the level of participation designing experiences is about scripting

structures of actions and events which are open-ended in order to make room for consumer

participation. Computer games are characterized by this logic: the consumer (the player) is

participating in a way that contributes to the very experience the computer game has to offer. As

such computer games present themselves as performative in that they position the players as active

subjects who have to take action in order produce and perceive the game experience.

The centrality of the computer game to the experience economy as cultural paradigm

is evidenced by the spectacular rise in the size of the computer games industry (by now outstripping

that of the film industry), by the dominant status of computer game aesthetics in films like The

Matrix, Lola Rennt, Timecode, eXistenZ, and Eternal Sunshine in a Beautiful Mind, by the computer

game’s importance to military applications like flight simulators and other types of computer-based

training systems, and by the general “conflation and confusion of war and game” that has lead to

“the development and proliferation of wargaming in the United States’ defense and foreign

policies” (Der Derian 2003, p. 38). But this paradigmatic status is also and perhaps primarily

illustrated by the technological form of the game medium itself.

First, computer games are part of the contemporary process of mediatization by means

of which new spatial and temporal dimensions of life are opened up for commoditization. This is

particularly clear when the computer game spreads from the PC or the game console (PlayStation,

Xbox and so on) to other technological platforms (the portable console, the cell phone or the PDA,

or – even more significant – to the Internet) that make gaming possible in a much wider and more

diverse range of situations, or when, as in the case of Electronic Arts’ adventure game Majestic, the

gameplay includes taking clues from mysterious midnight phone calls, anonymous e-mails and

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faxes, and fake websites1. In these cases, the game platform tends to coincide with the contours of

the life-world itself.

Second, computer games make user agency contribute to the production of the very

experience that they offer, and ultimately, a substantial share of the value of the game-commodity.

In short, computer games are performative, they position their users (that is, the players) as active

subjects that must act in order to forward the gameplay. The performative aspect of gameplay is

constituted by the fact that the player’s reception and interpretations produce the game fiction. The

game evolves in the sense that these user interpretations constantly make re-entries into the game

fiction enabling further player actions. Furthermore, computer games are operational in the sense

that they create a more or less complete media environment in which that action can unfold and be

pre-structured to varying degrees.

These two central components of the technological form of the computer game - the

activation of users and the creation of artificial operational environments - are neither separate

phenomena, nor unique to computer games. Instead, they mark contemporary media culture and

experience economy in general, where they are intrinsically linked. The mediatization of the life-

world, the creation of mediatic environments of action (or we may say: play), is directly connected

to the promotion of user agency and is encouraged by the primary media technology – the computer

– at work. As interactive media, the computer (in all its forms and shapes) facilitates

communication processes that differ from traditional one-way formats, in that the user has to take

action in order to keep the communication going. This is particularly the case when it comes to the

interplay between the user and the fictional universe of the computer game. As Pearce (2002) points

out, the computer as a dynamic two-way medium makes it possible for game designers to create a

“new narrative ideology” in which the designer creates a narrative framework for the players’ own

game-stories. He or she does not simply function as a storyteller in the traditional sense. This

becomes particularly clear when it comes to so-called Massively Multiuser Online Role-playing

Games (MMORPGs). These games, according to Pearce, include both a meta-story in the shape of a

pre-designed fiction world that contains a variety of story-lines structured in a progressive form like

a series of missions for the players to engage in, implying that the players attain higher levels of

experience, and a story-system which enables the players to develop their own game stories in a 1 Majestic was promoted as a game that would “take over your life” and produce a game experience along the lines of what is experienced by Michael Douglas’ character in David Fincher’s The Game, and even though the game flopped and was taken of the market shortly after its release Majestic forecasted the design trend called pervasive gaming, which creates gaming opportunities in the streets, offering a combination of tracking and location based interaction, including cell phones with cameras, GPS and internet-access. A similar pervasive computer game (In Memoriam by Ubisoft) was released in 2004 with greater success including e-mails and surfing the Internet as part of the gameplay.

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variety of events and campaigns initiated by game clans within the framework of this world. What

we have here is a kind of user agency that is constituted by collective, collaborative and

improvisational story-production. It develops and evolves in realtime for the players who are logged

on to the game. This ‘realtime-ness’ enables a blurring of the line between the fictitious world of the

game and the world of the player, thus making the game transgress into the player’s life-world

where social activities and communities are mediatized by means of chat channels, blogs, and clan

websites related to the game.

Computer games’ educational potentialUsing the experience economy as a cultural paradigm and how computer games embody its core

logic, we will in the following put forward some thoughts on the educational potential in computer

games which is of importance to how computer games may be used as a participation-oriented way

of communicating knowledge. We will do so by focusing on computer games in a cultural and

historical perspective, according to modern theory of pedagogy, as part of children’s culture

(dealing with some prejudices and misconceptions), and finally computer games regarded as role-

play.

Our point of departure will be an obvious yet important point: Computer games are games

and thus related to play and games in a broader sense. When analyzing the educational potential of

computer games we can start of with examining the role of games through out our history. In a

cultural and historical perspective games have never played a role as just fun and entertainment (see

Huizinga, 1963). The value of games has been both religious, political and pedagogical. In ancient

Greece games had a religious value in confirming and describing the cosmology; the relationship

between gods and humans. The political value was that games created the very space and format for

political debate which constituted democracy (and at the same time had a practical-political

dimension in the way that different games of contest and combat where used in e.g. the selection

and training of the state’s soldiers). And finally: in a pedagogical sense games were playing an

important role in the upbringing of children and cultivation of the population. The point is that

games have not just been a part of the field of entertainment and leisure time activities nor limited

to childhood activities.

Still, the invention of childhood in the 1700s has had an important impact on how we

regard play and game (see Egenfeldt-Nielsen & Smith, 2000). Play and games got ‘colonialized and

monopolized’ by children and were increasingly regarded as something children do and something

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that plays a role in their socialization: Play and game became means for training children’s ability to

form social relations, and later on a cognitive-psychological perspective is added. Play and games

are training children’s cognitive competences, as Jean Piaget points out (see Piaget, 1976): Play and

games are training:

1. Areas of development: Senso-motoric, symbolic, concrete operations and formal operations.

2. Fundamental cognitive competences: Concentration, memory, perception, motoric, spatial,

visual, analysis, coordination and creation of concepts.

3. Level of synthesis: Problem-solving, making priorities and combinations.

4. Level of knowledge: language, knowledge of history, names, places, math, reading, writing and

so on.

Piaget puts forth three categories of play – play of function, play of symbols and play of rules –

which exercises these competences in different ways. One of the credos of the cognitive psychology

is that play is not just controlled by our instincts: it has to be learned and stimulated from the

outside, as a stimulus for further learning. While play of function is aimed at developing knowledge

about the world and play of rules is aimed at understanding as well as perceiving already fixed

codes, the play of symbol (or the role-play) is a kind of play which teaches the child to

conceptualize the world and to abstract its thoughts.

The role-play is a collective play in which the child not only sets up the rules and creates

the frame of fiction inside which the child can play (see Krøgholt, 2001). The child also observe

this framework and negotiates the rules during the course of the play and this playing with the rules

plays an important role in the socializing as well as creative function of the play: It exemplifies how

the child teaches itself to learn. At the same time as these rules frames the play they also have a

creative function: The play becomes an oscillating movement between respecting the rules and

commenting and negotiating them, and this playing with the rules, with the context of the play

constitutes a level in the play which generates more play.

Piaget’s findings have had great impact on modern theory of pedagogy and different

learning theories which proposes that we should regard learning as a) complex processes, based on

b) construction of knowledge, which are c) taking place across different contexts, d) placing the

child in the centre, and which e) primary modes are a combination between ‘learning by doing’ and

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‘learning by reflection’ (see Sørensen, 2005). We will return to how these characteristics relates to

computer games in an educational perspective later on.

However, one of the main obstacles for introducing computer games into the field of

education seems to be the prejudices and misconceptions still flourishing around the computer game

phenomenon (see Sandvik, 2006a). Even though computer games have grown to be one of the

largest fields within today’s culture, computer games are often regarded with skepticism and

debates on computer games often seem to evolve around questions about whether computer games

have possible damaging effects on their users. This debate – led by politicians along-side scientists

within the field of education and psychology as well as parent’s organizations, religious

organizations and so on and fueled by news media being eager to reproduce dubious scientific and

psychological studies claiming that computer games create violent behavior and are as addictive as

narcotics – often depicts computer games as trashy entertainment which at best is of no value and

which at worst may have damaging effects on its users. However, this is a misconception: It is an

illusion to believe that violent computer games exclusively are played by lonely boys in dark

basements (see Jessen, 2000). Children’s use of computer games is far more complex than usually

anticipated and computer games thus play an extensive social role. Playing games covers a variety

of different activities all of which may evolve around the game even though playing the game itself

is just one activity while others concerns competition, exploration, exchanging of knowledge and so

on. Thus the game experience – playing the game – contains much more than just the player’s

interaction with the game universe, and in this light, computer games may be regarded as good tools

for creating spheres in which social fellowship and play may emerge and where pedagogical

processes may take place. Computer games are always part of a larger media circuit (see

Thorhauge, 2004): Computer games encourage different types of play which again may encourage

creative production or storytelling, which is why it is useful when evaluating computer games and

their impact on children and young people as well as their educational potential to regard them as

just a small part of a greater whole, and if we want to understand their importance, we need to

consider the whole situation. The main point here is that use of media always is enclosed in a

context in which the media is being used for different purposes like for instance a basis for personal

reflections, creativity and, in the case of children, as a starting point for larger play communities

and further play.

When we wish to study how children and young people experience, reacts to and perceives

computer games (whether we do that to survey their effect or to judge their educational potential)

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we have to look into the context of the game experience as well as the specific mode of reception at

work in computer games (see Sørensen & Jessen, 1999): The fact that children playing computer

games are co-producers who control, act and choose have an impact on their fascination by

computer games and on the games’ potential effects and educational value. Thus immersion in the

fictional universe of computer games is of another type than immersion in movies and novels.

While the absorption when reading novels or watching movies is about getting carried away or

daydreaming, computer games demand that you are acting actively.

If we were to overcome these obstacles and to erase the boundaries between different

types of learning the concept of education may be expanded and the learning situation will probably

become more effective. Off course children still need to learn how to read, write, do math and so

on, but their interest in computer games and in being active players may be put to work here as may

be seen in the Danish Magnus og Myggen ‘learn-to-read’ game (Ivanoff Interactive, 2006) and in

the Danish role-playing game Homicide/Melved (LearningLab Denmark, 2006) which has been

designed for high school science classes. These, off course, are games designed for educational

purposes, but even non-educational games may be used as pedagogical tools. Just to give a couple

of examples borrowed from Danish game researcher Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (see e.g. Egenfeldt-

Nielsen, 2005): If a class is to learn about the Medieval Age a realtime strategy game like Age of

Kings may be used. In this game you build your own kingdom using different units and buildings

offered by the game. The player controls priests, knights, archers and so on. A variety of scenarios

are based on historical events. The player may take on the responsibility for Joan of Arc’s desperate

attempt to save France or the Scottish riot against English superiority. Introducing this game as a

tool in the teaching of history may give the children a ‘hands-on’ insight in mechanisms and logic

of wars and power. If the children were to learn about the laws of physics a game like The

Incredible Machine may be used as a pedagogical tool. In this game a variety of objects should be

arrange in such a way that a small ball roll into a hole. The game design applies different physical

principles in this setup, and thus the game may be used as a means for making science more

appealing and less abstract to children.

This, off course, is just a couple of hypothetical examples on how actual games may

be used as tools for specific pedagogical situations. But computer games are – as games in general –

also potential tools for acquiring skills and knowledge on a more general level. Media play a crucial

role to the way in which modern human beings get information and communicate with each other:

Modern, digital communication is due to its interactivity to high degree based on computer game

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formats and this is why playing computer games may be regarded as means to train general media

competences as well as other competences needed in today’s hyper-complex society in which

analyzing and acting according to complex structures of meaning is vital and in which the ability to

adapt, the ability to be part of mobile teams, to believe in oneself, the ability to communicate a

strategy and to understand information, which are what characterize e.g. the players of online

multiplayer games like Counter-Strike, are qualities demanded e.g. by the business community.

Thus computer games may function as media training and rehearsals in handling

complexity whether this takes place in the shape of violent play (when playing an action game like

Grand Theft Auto) or in the shape of mastering complex structures of meaning (when solving

complicated puzzles in an adventure game like Myst or when building large systems in a strategy

game like Civilization) or in the shape of experimentation on social structures (when playing the

build-your-own-family game The Sims).

In order examine the educational potentials of computer games closer, we may consider complex

role-playing computer games and examine their resemblance to educational formats such as role-

play used as pedagogical tools in e.g. educational drama. The gameplay activities here resembles

the ideals for learning found in modern learning theory and the educational practice found in the use

of role-play as a pedagogical tool: Here we find complex processes, facilitated by the game

designers, focusing on construction of a world, its characters and stories and on building different

social, political and economical systems. And this processes work across different contexts when

players are operating both inside and outside the game. And – as goes for all games – the player is

placed in the centre as the main character of events. Examples are MMORPGs like Ultima Online,

Everquest and Anarchy Online.

There are striking similarities between the collective story-producing processes taking

place in these games and that type of theatre, which over the past 10-15 years especially within

Danish educational drama research has been described as the open theatre (see Szatkowski, 1991,

Krøgholt, 2001, Sandvik, 2006b). This is a theatre with only participant which are offered a

dramatic fiction world to participate in. But they are not just invited to partake in a devised theatre

fiction but are also granted the possibility to devise the fiction themselves. The framework is

constructed so that the narrative outcome is not yet determined. The participants contribute to the

development of the story-line and are thus situated in the middle of the creative process. The open

theatre insists on fiction as a crucial creative as well as pedagogical tool, which is expressed by the

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fact that the open theatre implements the possibility for its participants to re-quire important tools

(acting techniques, dramaturgical competences and so on) which are needed in order to create

fiction.

This characteristic can be found in e.g. Ultima Online. The game not only contains

tools for creating and developing a character but also different kinds of ‘practice grounds’ in which

the players can try out their characters and the possibilities for creating dramatic action. In Ultima

Online this educational practice runs through several phases: After having created her character the

player goes through a tutorial in which she gets to know the game’s interface and gameplay. The

player is taught how to operate her character and how to interact with other characters and so on.

Having used a template to create the character the player is offered a tutorial suited for the specific

type of character chosen by the player: A warrior learns how to fight and kill, a magician learns

how to make portions and cast spells and so on. Next phase is inside the fiction world itself: Here

the newbie player starts out in the town of Haven, which – as the name indicates – is a safe-haven

for inexperienced players: The player can get a lot of help from tutoring NPCs and at the same time

not risk being attacked by monsters, killed or exposed to other kinds of disaster that would make it

difficult to get into the game. Last step of this ladder of experience is a status as ‘young character’,

which the newbie player gets when leaving Haven and which implies that the character can not be

harmed by other characters, attacked by monsters and so on. The player grows out of this status

when she has gained a certain level of experience and has learned how to participate in the creation

of dramatic story-lines within the world of the game. In Ultima Online the process of story-creation

constitutes the interactive and emergent fiction. An important part of what makes the game

fascinating is that the player both on her own and in collaboration with other players gets to

‘possess’ the fiction and to be participant in its development and in experimenting with the possible

ways in which the story-lines and the characters may evolve.

The creative dimension of a MMORPG is constituted partly by players working

together within the fiction frame-work and partly by players who outside the fiction (and out of

character) discuss the possibilities for changes and new story-lines inside the game’s fiction and

who exchange experiences and stories on the multitude of websites surrounding the game or by

using the game’s chat channel. This kind of complex player activity both in character and out of

character is an important part of what makes the game fascinating and is encouraged by the game

de-signers in the sense that great missions in the upper experience levels of the game necessitates

that players make their characters join forces in clans and guilds. According to Danish game

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researcher Lisbeth Klastrup (2004), the characteristics of a game world may be defined respectively

in the cross between aesthetics and structure (the world’s appearance, its design as fiction universe

and game system) and the social dimension (the social text emerging from the encountering of the

users of the world centered on the use of it).

The open theatre, which interactive and player-centered fictions found in a game like

Ultima Online resembles, is radically different from more traditional forms of theatre performances,

which are performed in front of and separated from an audience. In the open theatre there is no-one

watching, there are just participants operating both outside and inside the framework of the

dramatic fiction. The participants can be actively engaged in creating a piece of drama as actors,

playwrights, directors, set designers and so on in an improvisational story-producing process. This

implies a unique contract of fiction: The participant plays roles, that is: fictitious characters, in a

shared time/space-continuum, which is both fiction and physical reality at the same time. The

theatrical situation and its contract of fiction determine rules of conduct: The participants are

partaking in a special type of theatrical communication that e.g. has improvisational role-play as its

modus operandi. Within this framework two positions are established between which the

participants oscillate. In one position the participants engage in developing the fiction, that is: the

dramatic story-lines that emerges and evolves when the participants’ characters interact with each

other. This takes place within the framework of the fiction. In the other position the participants

analyze and negotiate the dramatic development and make choices concerning how the fiction may

evolve and change next. This takes place outside the fiction framework. It may be said that while

the participants situated inside the fiction (and in character) is opening the fiction and testing its

possibilities, situated outside the fiction (and out of character) they evaluate and make decisions and

thus perform operative closures, which are determining in which direction the fiction may develop

next. And this double existence or double perspective is also at stake in games like Ultima Online.

As is the case with the participants in the open theatre, the players of Ultima Online are not

immersed in the fiction all together: At the same time as they play their roles in the game’s fiction

and thus partake in creating it they have to observe and interpret the fiction. They have to

understand the rules of the game, to learn how to operate its interface and in other ways deal

analytical with the dramaturgy of the game’s fiction and thus act both inside and outside the

fiction’s framework.

In online multiplayer games like Ultima Online a lot of game activity takes place ‘out

of character’ where players exchange experiences, give each others good advice and discuss the

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game world as well as its rules: As Klastrup (2004) points out, the players themselves have no

problems with stepping out of and into the reality of the game and appear in a position in which

they e.g. pretend to be a magician inside the world and respectively in a position in which they

discuss some of the “bugs” that may appear in relation to this magician’s activities (e.g. a spell that

does not work as it uses to). In an online world you can discuss the functions that create the fiction

and at the same time be a part of this fiction. And this double perspective contains a great

educational potential in which the children both can be ‘learning by doing’ and ‘learning by

reflection’, which is one of the important principles in today’s pedagogical theory.

Forms of knowledge in Professor NukemAs it has been argued in the former sections computer games represent a new potential with regard

to the communication of research and other types of knowledge. Computer games turn the

recipients into active participants and they are thus possible vehicles of pedagogic experiments

focusing on a more active and engaging learning process. Professor Nukem is such an experiment

where statements about computer games are organised into a relatively simple gameplay. In order

to win the game the player has to choose between various statements about computer games and is

subsequently given an explanation. While the integration of these statements into a gameplay

potentially heightens the player’s feeling of engagement it also raises some critical issues with

regard to the concept of knowledge.

Professor Nukem builds upon a conception of knowledge as a phenomenon that can be

organised in categories of right and wrong. There are right answers and wrong answers and the right

answers are those that can be supported by research reports and scientific publications. The player

wins the game by choosing those counterarguments that are in this way defined as the right ones

and she is subsequently explained why a given answer is right or wrong. These explanations

represent the primary knowledge-content that is to be communicated in the game which means that

the communicational value of the game depends on the player’s willingness to read those

explanations. From a design point-of-view we have facilitated this activity by removing any kind of

time-pressure on the quiz-sequences. The player can take her time to choose a weapon or read an

explanation without losing any points on that account. Still, it does not guarantee that the player will

read the explanations – this ultimately depends on the player and the player group. What counts as

relevant knowledge in order to play the game depends on the characteristics and motivations of the

players.

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When we developed the game we defined our target-group as schoolteachers, parents

and politicians with an interest in children’s use of computer games and media in general. We

expected this group to possess sufficient reading skills to read the explanations as well as we

expected them to have a motivation for playing that went beyond simply mastering the game and

toward gaining knowledge about computer games. We have some indications that this is also the

case. In the game-test, for instance, several respondents were commenting on the specific wording

of the explanations which implies that they actually read them.

However, when the game was presented to a couple of teenagers the picture was quite

different. After a few minutes of gameplay the following analysis was given: Quite easy: the right

answers are the long ones we don’t understand. The teenagers did not care about the content of the

questions and answers – their main motivation was to master the game that is a quickly and

effectively as possible to kill the monsters and proceed through the level structure and for this end

the written content seemed to have little value to them. This does not mean that their gaming

activity did not involve any knowledge at all but it was another kind of knowledge: Recognition of

the basic game logic (gameplay and the game mechanic characteristics of the quiz and 1 st person

shooter) and a general pattern in the wording of these statements and how this was to be

operationalized into successful manipulation of the game.

What the teenagers playing Professor Nukem did was applying their skills as computer

players, their knowledge about game genres, gameplay and game mechanics. When we are

exploring how computer games may be used as educational tools and tools for communication

knowledge, it is important to take this type of media-specific knowledge which is acquired by the

players through playing games into consideration. It is evident that successful gaming (that is the

playing of computer games) requires a particular kind of player socialization in which the player

acquires the necessary knowledge in order to play the game. To pinpoint the main characteristics of

computer games in this context, computer games may be described as computer-mediated settings

in which the player is invited to take part as a major agent in the interactive structures of actions and

events. The game narrative (and we use the word narrative in a broad sense as a structure of actions

and events in time and space) found in computer games presents itself as interactive and as “play-

centric” (Pearce, 2002). Computer games are interactive in that they are constituted by interactions

between a fictitious world and a plot structure (how ever complex and multi-threaded) and a

player’s action within and in relation to this world and structure. They are play-centric in that this

interaction between game and player is not limited to mere reading or watching, but must be played

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- that is, the player engages in some kind of role-play (and we use the term role-play in a broader

sense than what is common in game studies, meaning the characteristics of the agency a given

computer game expects from the player, see below).

Computer game narratives come in many shapes and forms – shoot’em ups, puzzles,

turn-based og realtime strategy games, sports games (from the almost abstract table tennis match

found in Pong to the complex soccer-scenarios of the Fifa-series), war games (using historical wars

as setting such as the Battlefield-series), combat games (one-on-one beat’em ups in the line of

Tekken, Virtua Fighter and so on), and vast fictional online-worlds that work as arenas for

improvisation with player-designed characters. All of their differences aside they have one thing in

common: role-play and participation in some kind of action-based and event-producing process.

They may be described as spatial structures (Manovich, 2001) or as emergent structures, i.e. fictions

with a story-line evolving and developing only due to the player’s actions (Jenkins, 2001). Or they

may be regarded as dramatic narratives casting the player in the role as main character (Sandvik,

2006b). This is the case whether the player engages in playing the part of the space soldier in Halo,

the assassin in Hitman, the adventuring heroine in Tomb Raider, or if she steps into the role as

creator, developer and administrator of systems such as families, cities, empires as in The Sims,

SimCity or Civilization. And in MMORPGs like Ultima Online, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft

this role-playing mode has been extended to the degree that the player can create her own unique

character using the creative tools the game has to offer. Even when playing an abstract game such

as matching tile-games like Tetris or Bejeweled, the player can be said to put on specific roles, here

either managing falling blocks into specific patterns or swapping adjacent gems in order to make

sets of three.

Thus interactive and play-centric structures of actions and events imply a

transformation of the recipient. From merely playing the role as a spectator to the dramatic story

unfolding in front of her, she is offered a role within the action and event structure itself. Thus the

interactive and play-centric structure found in computer games dissolves the line between spectator

and fiction, which is why it is not entirely correct to assume that interactive systems (“the computer

as theatre”) mimic a situation in which the audience members enter the stage and become actors

(Laurel, 1991, p.16). It makes little sense to talk about actors and audience in the traditional sense.

There is no point outside the game from which an audience is intended to watch and therefore there

is no one for the player as actor to act for. A game is not meant to be watched like a theatre

performance. The central issue in a game is play. This involves different demands on the interactive

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and play-centric fiction than on traditional fictions, which are meant to be read or watched.

Narrative contingency, psychological character development, depth in characters as well as story

play to some extent a minor role compared to possibilities for the recipient to play a role within the

story. The point is not to discover, reveal or to read for the plot (see Brooks, 1984), but to play the

plot.

In order to function as a competent player, one has to have acquired both knowledge

and skills which are generally available within the language game of computer games in general:

one must be able to function as a ‘social individual’ within the world of computer games. This

connects to the dyadic system of various game universes and interactive structures embedded in

computer games that the player can influence. This structure of game universe and possible player

actions is what we usually term a game’s gameplay. Gameplay may be described as the pace and

eye-and-hand coordination skills as well as the cognitive effort that the game requires of the player

(Crawford, 1997, p.21). Different gameplay genres have demanded different sets of player

qualifications throughout the history of computer games and thus have created traditions for the

socialization of ‘competent players’; action games require the ability to operate the game interface

at a high speed and react real-time to the multitude of choices constantly presented by the game,

while adventure games demand skills of pattern recognition, logical reasoning, puzzle solving and

so on; strategy games build on a players ability to construct and handle increasingly complex

systems (a family, a city, an ecosystem etc.). Even though the game genre landscape is much more

complex now than when Chris Crawford formulated his trend-setting genres in The Art of Computer

Game Design (1982), and contemporary game design tends to blend genres into action-adventure,

action-role-playing, and realtime-strategy, classic notions of gameplay genres still play an important

role when games are released and promoted. As such, a new game will always be released into a

context constituted by gaming communities (groupings of different types of players that exchange

experience and engage in different kinds of fan-activities connected to certain games or certain

types of game), as well as by the game tradition set by the historical development of different game

genres.

Game designer Richard Rouse (2001, p. xviii) defines gameplay as the one component

in computer games that can be found in no other art form: interactivity. In the context of this paper,

however, we will claim that gameplay cannot be linked solely to the game’s interactivity; gameplay

is also connected to the game’s fiction. Computer games may be described as both a system of rules

and as fiction in that “playing a [computer game] is to be engaged in the interaction with some real

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rules while imagining a fictional world” (Juul, 2005, p. 2). However, rules are not only found in

games and play-centric fictions. Even classic, closed and static non-interactive fictions set up rules

for the reader or spectator concerning their conduct and how the fiction should be perceived: Thus

the novel, movie or theatre performance set up a ‘contract of fiction’. In computer games, however,

this contract of fiction is not limited to regulating the possible interpretations made by the reader or

spectator, but includes rules governing how the player may interact with the game and its fiction

and is as such imperative in order to make it possible for the player to play the game at all. The

player must understand the rules of the gameplay in order to get a satisfactory game experience. As

such, the rules of the gameplay constitute a visible and recognizable dramaturgy which enables the

player to play. In game design, this recognition is ensured by the use of different matrixes within

popular culture like genres (fantasy, horror, science fiction etc.) or a well-known fictional universe

(as seen in the large amount of computer games re-mediating film series like Star Wars , Harry

Potter, James Bond. For example, in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, EverQuest and Ultima

Online, the use of the fantasy genre well-known from e.g. the universe of J.R.R. Tolkien functions

as a structuring device, which evokes anticipations in the players regarding the characteristics of the

fictitious world (its topology, its culture, character gallery and so on) and the possible ways to act

within it. The competence to successfully engage in gameplay is thus not only a consequence of

socialization within the particular universe of computer games, but derives from a general

knowledge about (popular) media culture at large.

At the level of the particular game, players are socialized through a wide variety of

strategies: voluminous manuals, extensive introduction sequences, informative cut-scenes, tutorial

levels, and so on. In highly competitive games like action games, the possibilities for the player to

get better at playing the game (pursuing ‘high-score’) are ensured by designers introducing ’save-

game’ functionalities which make it possible for the player to install points in the dramatic story

that she can return to in case the development proves to be unfortunate (e.g. the player-character

dies). In games that focus on some kind of collective story-producing process, the gameplay

includes the possibility for the player to require important tools (acting techniques, dramaturgical

competences and so on) that are needed in order to create fiction. This is the case with MMORPGs.

These games contain not only tools for creating and developing a character, but also different kinds

of ‘practice grounds’ in which the players can try out their characters and certain possibilities for

creating dramatic action. They are thus socialized into the game by the process of getting

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acquainted with the game rules, game interface and game fiction, and they use this knowledge in

order to play the actual game, but also when encountering new games.

Returning to Professor Nukem it is evident that this game involves several types of knowledge

depending on the players. Whereas the knowledge to be communicated consists in explicit

statements about computer games the teenagers ignore this construction and apply another kind of

knowledge – a more or less tacit recognition of the language patterns in the quiz-sequence

combined with gameplay skills and knowledge about game genres. We describe this recognition as

“more or less tacit” as it is only made explicit because we asked them about it. Albeit players may

choose to verbalise and make explicit this type of knowledge in order to share it does not have to be

made explicit in order to be useful. In this way the two types of knowledge involved differ with

regard to their explicitness. Furthermore, whereas the explicit statements refer to the subject matter

of the game the analysis given by the teenagers refer to the way the game is constructed. The two

types of knowledge involved are associated with different aspects of the game system.

Accordingly, if computer games are to be a tool for the communication of research we

have to be aware which kind of knowledge the term “research” is expected to cover and how this

type of knowledge works in computer games. In following section we will suggest the distinction

between factual, situational and systemic knowledge as a useful classification in this regard.

Factual, situational and systemic form: A theory of knowledgeIf games are to be used as tools for the communication of research we need to define which form of

knowledge we consider research to be and how it relates to other forms of knowledge. That is, we

need a general explanation of the concept of knowledge. One such explanation is given by Lars

Qvortrup who takes a systemic approach to the question. Thus, with a reference to Polanyi’s

concept of tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1967), he draws a basic distinction between immediate and

reflexive capacities (Qvortrup 2004, p. 71–73). Immediate capacities are usually referred to as skills

whereas reflexive capacities are usually referred to as knowledge. However, Qvortrup points out

that both are forms of knowledge. In the case of Professor Nukem the explicit statements as well as

the tacit understanding count as knowledge even though they represent different types of

knowledge.

Qvortrup furthermore addresses two basic philosophical traditions with regard to the

definition of knowledge: Cartesianism based on the works of Descartes in the 17th century, and

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phenomenology based on the works of Husserl and Heidegger by the beginning of the 20 th century.

From a classical cartesian point of view, knowledge is a token of the relationship between the

subject and the world (Qvortrup 2004, p. 76). Thus, as cartesianism separates the subject and the

world into two fundamentally different categories, res cogitans and res extensa, knowledge resides

in the subject’s contemplation of the world. However, this separation of subject and world into two

distinct categories has met a substantial amount of critique and phenomenology represents an

alternative perspective. According to a phenomenological standpoint the subject and the world

cannot be separated. The subject is in the world and a part of the world and this is a basic condition

for all knowledge (see Heidegger, 1935). According to this perspective, knowledge is not a token of

the relationship between the subject and the world it is a token of the subject’s being the world – a

way of handling the complexity of the world (Qvortrup 2004, p. 82). The subject not only

contemplates the world – it also contemplates its own being in the world as well as the world as a

condition for the contemplation of the world. This gives way to several orders of knowledge:

Factual knowledge, situational knowledge, systemic knowledge and world knowledge as

summarised below:

Knowledge form Knowledge system Knowledge termFactual Knowledge Knowledge about the world QualificationsSituational knowledge Knowledge about knowledge Competences

Systemic knowledge Knowledge about the knowledge-system Creativity

World knowledge Collective basis of knowledge CultureTable 1: An overview of knowledge forms taken from Qvortrup 2004, p. 86

World knowledge is a relatively abstract construction that resides not in the individual subject but in

the social community in general. As regards the other knowledge forms, however, they represent

some very useful tools indeed. Seen in relation to Professor Nukem factual knowledge represents a

statement about the world such as: “gamers seldom display all necessary symptoms of addiction”.

In comparison, situation knowledge refers to the specific knowledge situation: The statement above

is a part of a game and it may thus represent a right or a wrong answer which means that choosing it

has consequences for the further progression of the game. Finally, systemic knowledge refers to the

knowledge-system that underlies at given statement. In this case the systemic knowledge represents

the various research traditions maintaining different definitions of the concept of addiction which

determines whether it makes sense to apply it in specific situations.

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Thus, according to the table above, what do we communicate when we communicate

research? Are we communicating factual knowledge in the form of statements about the world or

are we communicating systemic knowledge in the form of knowledge about those systems that

condition the statements? We believe we do both. That is, communicating research means to make

obvious the connection between statements about the world and those knowledge systems that

provide the statements with their truth-value. In the case of Professor Nukem it is the relation

between the counterarguments and the research that renders them true or false that is to be

communicated. As the teenagers strategy indicates this only happens to some degree. Thus, some of

Professor Nukem’s shortcomings can give us an idea about future improvements.

Future improvements: The lesson learned from Professor NukemAs already mentioned the teenagers ignored the written content of the game and relied instead on an

identification of the general language pattern and how it was to be operationalised into successful

manipulation of the game. According to the table in the former section they focused mainly on the

situational level ignoring the content of the statements and their relation to a general knowledge

system. Furthermore, their recognition had a more or less tacit character in that they only verbalised

it because we asked them to do so. In Qvortrups terms their knowledge about the game had the form

of an immediate capacity with a strong potential to become a reflected capacity. This situation

indicates two important issues for further experiments in the field:

1. The transformation of immediate capacities into reflected capacities

2. An integration of the knowledge forms involved in gameplay

As regards the first issue the aim of a game like Professor Nukem must be knowledge in the form of

reflected capacities. Other types of educational games like, for instance, flight simulators may have

immediate capacities such as an intuitive understanding of a complex relationship or change in

behavioural patterns as their principal aim. However, the communication of research as defined in

the former sections implies making obvious the connection between specific statements and general

systems of knowledge, that is, to make the player reflect on this connection. This does not mean that

such games should not imply immediate capacities. That is not possible. Rather, the relevant

immediate capacities should be transformed into reflected capacities either by way of gameplay or

by way of an educational context.

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As regards the second issue one of the reasons why the teenagers could focus solely

on the situational level was that this was not sufficiently integrated into the other knowledge forms

of the game. It was possible to play the game without taking into consideration the content of the

statements. Thus, an important aim of further experiments should be to develop game concepts

where the immediate or reflexive capacities required to master the game, that is, the situational

knowledge is more closely connected to those reflexive capacities that are expected to be

communicated by the game, that is, the factual and systemic knowledge. In an ideal but perhaps

impossible situation the knowledge required to master a game should be the logical link between

the factual and the systemic knowledge of the game.

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