The Birth of the Virtual Clinic: The Virtual Terrorism Response Academy as Serious Game and...

The Birth of the Virtual Clinic: The Virtual Terrorism

Response Academy as Serious Game and

Epistemological Space

Elizabeth Losh,University of California, Irvine

The Genre of Popular Games of Crisis

The player is given responsibility for managing a rapidly evolving crisis

The crisis threatens the social order and the rule of law.

The plot revolves around terrorist threats, outbreaksof disease, civil unrest, etc.

A problematic example: State of Emergency

The Causality of Disaster in the Game World

Relatively straightforward algorithms of degeneration and regeneration.

Maneuvers necessary to recover homeostasis in the game world can be understood by a layperson.

No feedback or oscillation in the game world (Wiener 1948)

No power laws or cascading effects in the game world (Barabási 2003)

Example: Left Behind

Problems of Predictability in the “Real World”

Erik Hollnagel and negative reporting modelsFighting from a hole rather than fighting from a hill.

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

CalIT2 and informationsystems

Zeno Franco and the role of ideology

Emergent Behaviors

Volunteer first-responder brigades in MMORPGs for players who are lost or in danger

Online knowledge-sharing about real-world expert practices

Search and rescue missionsIn online worlds

Example: EVE Online

How are social actors in positions of authority as first responders perceived in commercial game

worlds?

They may be treated as models to emulate in search and rescue games.

They may be considered to be potential agents of a government conspiracy.

They may be encountered as non-playing characters that represent corrupt values and potential opportunistic gains.

Metaphors of Contamination

Spatiality and experience

Operable workarounds

Social marketing agendas

News narratives and informal inductions

Examples: the WhyPox in Whyville and the Corrupted Blood plague in World of Warcraft

Serious Games as a Niche Industry

A Different Genre: Games for Change

Assume the audience is

the general public

Assume the purpose is

consciousness-raising

Example: Food Force

Games for First Responders

Use a variety of game engines

Present a range of subjectivity positions

Example: VStep RescueSim from Artesis

Games for First Responders

Present public employees favorably

Often give the player little agency to effect systemic change, even in God’s eye view games

Emphasize procedures, equipment, and rules

Discourage transgressive behavior and intuitive play

Still generally present crises based on relatively simple mathematical models.

Instructor has a “Wizard of Oz” interface

Team interactions are evaluated, not just individual performance

Allows for some emergent behavior when teams change dynamics

Secondary acts and unexpected consequences

Hazmat: Hotzone

Zero Hour from Public Health Games

Emphasis on ubiquitous communication devices and mobile computing

Spatiality trade-offs2D rather than 3D graphics

“Thinking space” not“physical space”

Utilitarian logic

Incident CommanderDesigned as a distance-learning resource forsmaller districts.

Multiple scenarios: hostage situation, chemicalspill, etc.

The Beginnings of the Interactive Media Laboratory

Regimental Surgeon (1989)

Telemedicine and distance learning issues

Mystery narratives derived from popular fiction

Underdetermination and overdetermination

First-person POV, counterintuitive solutions

Development Principles

1) Narratives of crisis2) Computer-generated digital environments that

are explorable from the subject position of first-person perspective

3) Interactive technologies that resist platform obsolescence

4) Dissemination of product at no cost or minimal cost through a distributed network

The Virtual Practicum Series

Space and EpistemologyMax Boisot

Information Space: A Framework for Learning in Organizations, Institutions and Culture (1995)

Primary Care of the HIV/AIDS Patient (2001)

Epistemological Spaces

Disciplinary Spaces: Professional Association and Initiation

The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault

“about space, about language, and about death . . . it is about the act of seeing, the gaze”

“the human body defines, by natural right, the space of origin and the distribution of disease: a space whose lines, volumes, surfaces, and routes are laid down in accordance with a now familiar geometry,”

but it is “neither the first, nor the most fundamental”

The Context of the Narrativeof the Virtual Terrorism Response

Academy

Experiential Learning Spaces

The First-Person Shooter

Galloway on the cinematic framing and the position and role of the weapon/tool

Risk Communication

Ideology and Public Rhetoric

Possible Critiques

Noah Falstein on a “simulation of a simulation”

The cost to situated, intuitive learning

The Artifacts of Traditional Learning

The Limitations of Keyboard Interfaces

Are They “Puzzles” or “Games”?

Debates about what constitutes a game

Jesper Juul, Half-Real

Are Multiple-Choice Tests an Appropriate Assessment Tool?

James Paul Geeand the learningrevolution?

The Palace of Memory

Are epistemological spaces fully capitalized upon?

The “Problem” of Cheating

Mia Consalvo’s thesis of essential opportunism

More Questions?

lizlosh@uci.edu