A Simple Multi-player Video Game Framework for Experimenting and Teaching Cultural Understanding
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The document outlines a framework for a multi-player video game aimed at promoting cultural understanding through interactive gameplay. It emphasizes the importance of cross-cultural communication and aims to create a game that is scalable, playable online, and uses a biased assignment of teams to highlight cultural disparities. The game will allow players to experience challenges based on their understanding of the rules and cultural behaviors, with a goal of fostering empathy and awareness of cultural advantages and disadvantages.
A Simple Multi-player Video Game Framework for Experimenting and Teaching Cultural Understanding
- 1. A Simple Multi-player Video Game Framework for Experimenting and Teaching Cultural Understanding Lindsay Grace Lindsay D. Grace Associate Professor – Film and Media Arts School of Communication Founding Director: American University Game Lab Grace@American.edu http://www.American.edu/GameLab @mindtoggle
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- 4. Lindsay D. Grace Associate Professor – Film and Media Arts School of Communication Founding Director: American University Game Lab & Studio @mindtoggle @mindtoggle
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- 6. “Culture is always a collective phenomenon, because it is at least partly shared with people who live or lived within the same social environment, which is where it was learned. It is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another. “ @mindtoggle Hofstede’s 1991
- 8. Cultural rules around appropriate behavior (e.g. social distance, eye contact, etc) @mindtoggle
- 9. “Project Perdido” M. Treanor, J.McCoy, et al. @mindtoggle
- 11. T. Jackson, L.Grace, et al. @mindtoggle
- 13. Empathy toward advantage and disadvantage @mindtoggle
- 15. Design a framework to facilitate experiments and teaching related to cultural advantages and disadvantages. @mindtoggle
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- 17. “Provide an experiential event in which players are embedded in a cultural phenomena of not knowing the rules, but having to play the game” @mindtoggle
- 20. Synthetic Cultures 3 hours+ to play @mindtoggle
- 21. Paige’s 10 identified cultural differences @mindtoggle ethnocentrism language cultural immersion cultural isolation prior intercultural experience expectations visibility/invisibility status power control
- 23. Our Goals • Create a game as simple as the Barnga framework • Make this game scalable to a minimum of 50 players • Create an online game playable online • Build a rule set to elicit culture disadvantage for specific players • Release the game as open source software @mindtoggle
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- 25. • Client Side: JavaScript • Server Side: Java @mindtoggle
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- 27. Goal: Move your avatar to collect points @mindtoggle
- 30. Each Team is limited in: • What they can see • How they see it • Who can collect certain points. @mindtoggle
- 31. Each Team is limited in: • What they can see • How they see it • Who can collect certain points. @mindtoggle
- 32. In Diagram: Green will see the red team as red, blue team will appear as green; making it difficult to understand who is on your team. @mindtoggle
- 33. Configurable: 1. How many teams there are in the game? 2. How big the world is? 3. How many points start in the world? 4. Is the end game triggered by all points collected or a set goal? 5. How people are assigned to teams, which includes a biased assignment? 6. Do new points appear as points are captured? @mindtoggle
- 34. Configurable: 7. How many points your team gets per capture? 8. How teams see each other? 9. How teams see points? 10.What points teams can capture? 11.How fast are the avatars on your team? 12.Can you see the global score? @mindtoggle
- 35. 6. Do new points appear as points are captured? Allows a biased assignment of teams, some teams have more players and can collect items faster. @mindtoggle
- 36. Allow the designers to give different players physical (sense and movement) advantages @mindtoggle 7. How teams see points? 8. What points teams can capture? 9. What points teams can capture?
- 37. Discriminate by behavior, not appearance Lindsay Grace | American University Gaming Initiative
- 39. 2 teams of equal size: One team represents the players who know about the rules of the game - they can see all types of points as unique to a team, can see all types of players as unique to their respective teams, and can collect any type of point. The other team represents the players who can’t understand the rules - they see everything as looking the same as them, but can only collect their type of points. @mindtoggle
- 40. Team 1: players who know about the rules of the game - they can see all types of points as unique to a team, can see all types of players as unique to their respective teams, and can collect any type of point. @mindtoggle
- 41. Team 2: The other team represents the players who can’t understand the rules - they see everything as looking the same as them, but can only collect their type of points. @mindtoggle
- 42. Educational Psychology, and the game will be played by 25 classroom participants @mindtoggle
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- 44. Thank You Lindsay Grace Lindsay D. Grace Associate Professor Director, Game Lab and Studio American University School of Communication Film and Media Art Grace@American.edu http://www.ProfessorGrace.com Twitter: @mindtoggle @mindtoggle
Editor's Notes
- #2: I’m lindsay Grace – Director of the American University Game Lab
- #3: This is a paper created as a collaboration between American University in Washington DC and Miami University
- #4: The five authors, include Peter Jamiueson from the department of Engineering and Darrel Davis from the Department of Educaiton and Psychology
- #6: Our core research agenda for this work is to facilitate an understanding of cross-cultural communicaiton
- #12: And out stiod studio produces games like Awwakrd Annie, to do educational assessment around social interactions and cross cultural understanding
- #17: Barnga is a game first published in 1990
- #21: We looked at exisiting solutions like Bafa Bafa, which uses synethtic cultures to and requires at least 3 hours to play
- #25: So we went digital
- #38: In Black/White, every character looks the same. To tell a threat from a non-threat, you have to apporch ech and wait for it act aggresivle or not.