Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
He-Man and the Masters of Transmedia

Henry Jenkins reflects on the He-Man action figures that his son used to play with, back in the day:

I never understood the parents who feared such toys would stifle my son’s imagination because what I observed was very much the opposite – a child learning to appropriate and remix the materials of his culture. The fact that these stories were shared through mass media with other kids and that they were some vividly embodied in the action figures meant that it was easy for children to have intersubjective fantasies, to share their play stories with each other, and to pool knowledge about the particulars of this fictional realm.

The entire piece made me thrillingly happy, if only because it’s a reminder that the things kids love – the video games, the action figures, the mass-mediated toys, and all the stuff we adults can’t see a value in – aren’t ever necessarily bad or good: but rather what matters more is what our kids do with them. I’ve become so exhausted lately of hearing about how video games and media are keeping our kids indoors and depriving them of nature. The sentiment may be well-placed indeed, but it’s aggravating to see the issue simplified, and to have a category of things demonised – especially when very few people making the statement have used or played what the kids are playing with, or understand the attraction they may hold for kids.

Nature and video games and cheap plastic toys can co-habitate our children’s lives very happily together, thank you very much, and in any case it’s never for us adults to decide what’s intrinsically valuable or worthwhile. Kids can make the most out of what adults perceive as utter crap; I know I did, as did Henry Jenkins’ son, as did every generation before. I think it’s time we start showing kids just a bit more trust when it comes to what and how they play.

May 21, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #

The Latest Crappy Video Game Study

By Daniel Bigler :: Monday March 22, 2010

There’s a new video gaming research study making the news rounds that examines video gaming’s impact on boys’ test scores – and it’s unfortunately just plainly questionable as research.

The gist of the study, which is titled “Effects of Video-Game Ownership on Young Boys’ Academic and Behavioral Functioning” and was in the April 2010 issue of Psychological Science:

New research shows that young boys who own a video game system don’t do as well academically as their non-playing peers, suggesting that time spent playing video games is supplanting time spent on homework.

Study author Robert Weis, an associate professor of psychology at Denison University in Ohio, said that “we can never say with 100 percent certainty that it’s playing video games that causes kids to have delays or deficits in reading and writing performance, but … we can be pretty confident that it’s the game ownership and the amount of time they spend playing that causes these academic delays.”

The problem with this claim is that it’s just a flat-out falsified oversimplification of a more complex issue: it makes a broad (and fairly true) point – that kids who do things other than homework will get worse test scores when tested on that work – but it then lands the blame for that specifically on video gaming, when really any time-consuming activity could be a potential culprit based on their measures.

Amy Kraft brought the research to my attention first, calling it out as “Another flawed study with totally speculative results.” I agree, and even an initial examination of the research can draw out its shortcomings on many levels, beyond the grandly falsified oversimplification of the issue as a whole.

First, there’s no mention of the inherent (and in this case significant) limitations of research methodology: I’d encourage you to revisit this primer by Karen Sternheimer on how to evaluate studies about video games to get into that critical mindset, because once you are the research just starts unravelling. For instance, one particular concern is that we don’t get any explanation of the tests used to evaluate the children, or why we should care about them. How strong is the correlation, and can it really be used to make a reliable prediction about future behavior?

Perhaps equally appalling was the limited, negatively defined scope of the research question: Asking “Do video games negatively impact boys’ math and language test scores?” is a very different question from “What variables have an influence on boys’ math and language test scores, and to what extent do those variables matter?” In only examining this one negative impact of gaming, too, we don’t get any idea about whether in fact it could be a worthwhile trade-off: that is, gaming could offer children something that’s perhaps more valuable in their lives than test scores. A sense of context is vitally important, in this case – as video games and gaming must be positioned within the larger picture of children’s lives and their benefits as well as drawbacks must be considered as a whole. It seems like the study’s authors start to go this way, toward a more holistic examination of children’s lives and how they spend their time, but they clearly biff it halfway through.

Finally, it’s a far leap to do a study and then publicize your additional speculation about why something is the case if you didn’t research that.

“Video games could affect a child’s brain, particularly executive functioning, and it could compromise his or her ability to do well in certain academic activities,” Weis said. In children, executive functioning refers to such things as their ability to manage time and keep track of more than one thing at once.

If Weis didn’t study executive functioning and video games, he should shut up about it. Weis conducted a behavioral study that solely examined the impact of the gaming variable on test scores – he didn’t hook the kids up to neuro-scanning machines to examine their executive functioning and brain activity. In any case, Wil Wright would certainly have something to say about executive functioning and video games – and while the research just isn’t there to say anything either way, I’d be more inclined to support Wright’s belief, that video games serve as a calibrating simulation that can offer a very positive outcome for executive functioning.

Ironically, an undergraduate student who worked with Dr. Weis on the study seems to be far more conscientious of its shortcomings than he is:

Cerankosky emphasized that “there isn’t necessarily something inherent in video games that negatively affects kids; it’s an activity that detracts from time that could be spent on schoolwork.” “The kids in our study could have been reading Stephen Hawking, and we might have found similar results,” she noted.

To me, this is the real kicker. In effect, headlines are getting splashed all over about the damaging impact video games have on children’s test scores – yet, wait, kids could equally read a book and that could have a similarly damaging impact on these scores? Uhhh….

So basically, we could have thrown the entire study out and just asked the logical question: What is important for our children to spend time on in their lives? How useful is studying for tests, as compared to playing video games, or doing something else? I think that’s really what’s infuriating about this study: It’s cultural value-setting in the guise of “social science research.” (In this case, lifting up the value of testing and achievement in boys’ lives, but not considering the value other enriching activities.) Because the research is “Science!” we’re inclined to believe its importance – but what we should really be doing is considering whether our values really match up with the study’s values.

In the end, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by this kind of thing, though. We’re dying to look for a nice and simple scapegoat to pin our fears about our children onto, and video games have historically been just that. Come up with a botched research design, throw in a little speculation – and voila, now we have “research” to back up the scapegoating too.

Tagged under: , :: #




Research Methods, Statistics, and Video Games

Or, Why You Shouldn’t Necessarily Trust What “The Research” Says About Things.

Mar 11, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

"It's All a Matter of Imagination."

If there’s one thing I’m excited for this coming year, it’s LEGO Universe – the toy company’s first foray into Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Gaming (MMORPGs). The idea is simple: gamers get to start with a minifig, taking it and customising its mouth, eyes, arms, clothing… and then you’re let loose into a creative LEGO world, filled with other minifigs running around just like you – with pirates, ninjas, knights, astronauts, ranging the whole gamut of the LEGO company’s past and present play universes. Together, you and other players must save the world by creating things and fulfilling tasks. For instance, Ben Kuchera – in his detailed, hands-on review of the game for Ars Technica – describes it thusly: “Bring the banana to a monkey. Build a bridge and get to a new level. Build a race car and challenge others to a race.”

What amazes me, I think, about the concept most is its versatility and expansiveness, its wide range of play forms (you can build, play minigames, race cars, complete tasks), and the freedom it allows. As Kuchera writes,

The idea of freedom and character absolutely fills the game. You can do a quick-create sort of thing to build bridges and other small details, while larger models such as cars and spaceships are modular—you can pick from different choices for each section to make it feel like your own. Then, as you earn bricks in your travels, you can also build things from scratch and put them into your own little world. The game is filled with tens of thousands of different types of bricks, spanning every theme and offshoot of the world.

Jan 14, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

LEGO Universe Trailer Unveiled

Thank you, CES Gods, for gracing our eyes with this amazing first look at the LEGO Universe MMORP game. I will officially be in heaven when it comes out.

Jan 10, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Parents in the UK Tend to Ignore Media Ratings

Via What They Play, a new study done by an online discounts website finds that a large percentage of UK parents allow their children to play, watch or listen to media that is not intended for them or designated as suitable for their age group given the game’s assigned rating.

Sure, the study itself could probably come from a more reputable source – but I think the general trend toward disregarding ratings holds true. And who’s to blame parents? In the words of Roger Ebert (specifically about movie ratings, though it can hold true for any other), “The MPAA rating system is guided by the greed of the movie industry and its fear of the religious right.”

Jan 09, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

"The Hidden Playground"

Four or five months ago now a game called “The Hidden Park” came out as an app for the iPhone platform, and it offered a rather unique experience. By using the device’s built-in GPS and camera, players could visit real world places and “augment” those places with virtual creatures that they could interact with digitally.

This trend of “Augmented reality” really provides an interesting shift in how people are now seeing “gaming.” For most parents and concerned adults before, gaming was a “playing actively outdoors” versus “sitting in front of the screen indoors” thing; but now, we’re seeing that the two don’t have to be so diametrically opposite.

The ever-excellent doctoral candidate and blogger Sara Grimes has an essay about this new form of play over at The Escapist Magazine:

Drawing on trends established in alternate reality games, this new crop of outdoor gaming titles incorporate real-world exploration into gameplay through the use of GPS and wireless communication. Buildings, park benches and cul-de-sacs become the secret hiding places of fantastical creatures and treasures. As such, they provide kids with shared tools for re-defining their relationships with urban and suburban landscapes.

Imagine this emerging genre as the digital equivalent of a “seeing stone.” The seeing stone shows up in a number of modern fairytales, including Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black’s The Spiderwick Chronicles and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. A primitively carved totem, its key feature is the eye-sized hole in its center. By looking through this hole, the children in these stories are able to see aspects of the world that are usually invisible to humans: magic, fairies, portals to other dimensions, ghosts and goblins and even other people’s souls. The idea that the world around us is much more magical than it seems has clear links with childhood traditions of outdoor play and make-believe….

hat is promising about these seeing stone games is the way in which they open up space for those more imaginative and autonomous forms of play. By breaking down existing definitions of what an urban or suburban landscape is, how it should be experienced and what kids are expected to do there, games like The Hidden Park put forth a direct challenge to the idea that public space is inappropriate and dangerous for kids. Once this space is opened up, so is the play potential. That’s really all that outdoor play and the wilderness of childhood have ever needed to thrive.

It does just boggle the mind with possibilities, doesn’t it? Makes me excited to see what childhood will be like ten, fifteen years from now.

Nov 23, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Debunking a 'Video Games Cause ADD' Claim

Family gaming website What They Play takes a stab at debunking this recent study out of Iowa State University, that according to its press release reveals “a reduction in brain activity and disruption of behavior associated with sustained attention ability related to video game experience, which converges with other recent findings indicating that there is a relation between frequent video game playing and ADD.” (In other words, video games = decrease one’s proactive attention.)

Yet as always, the first rule of research is to Question Everything. What They Play had Dr. Christopher Ferguson, of Texas A&M, evaluate the study (and its press release) for its veracity:

The study measures Stroop performance (a measure of executive functioning) and EEG results and finds generally inconsistent results. Unfortunately the authors decide to interpret inconsistent findings as supportive of their original hypotheses which worries me in regards to the degree of objectivity with which they conducted their study. Either way, there is no clinical measure of ADD … Nonetheless the authors choose to generalize their results in the press release to a clinical disorder that they never measure.

That’s what we (well, at least I) call a “Whoopsy daisy” in research, and the study’s authors should hereto forth be banished and forced to play Barney video games for their rest of their academic careers. That’ll teach ‘em.

Oct 20, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Texting, Surfing, Studying?

This pretty much sums up the state of adults’ understanding of children and their relationship with the new digital age we live in.

The New York Times:

Parents are digital immigrants, Dr. Christakis said; children are digital natives. “In the 20th century, you worried about a digital divide separating rich from poor,” he said. “That’s narrowed, and the one that’s emerging is separating parents from their children. We’re fairly clueless about the digital world they inhabit.”

Oct 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , , , , :: #

The Turbulent Rise of the 'Child Gamer'

The wonderful Sara Grimes – researcher, PhD candidate, and blogger – is celebrating the recent publication of a new journal article, entitled “The Turbulent Rise of the ‘Child Gamer’: Public Fears and Corporate Promises in Cinematic and Promotional Depictions of Children’s Digital Play.”

It explores “the ways in which child gamers have been depicted and mobilized within popular and public discourses since the introduction of home gaming systems in the late 1970s. We focus specifically on the ways in which moral panics and celebratory discourses about kids and gaming (which are inherently linked to discourses about kids and information technologies) resurface again and again within various cultural texts, from television ads, to magazine covers, to Hollywood film.”

A great read, if you have access to the journal article through, say, an academic library.

Sep 27, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Debunking the 'Video Games Cause Violence' Myth

The family gaming website What They Play brought to my attention a new study from Texas A&M University that adds further support to the idea that video games – in and of themselves – just don’t cause children to behave any more violently.

The study, which is featured in the newest issue of the Journal of Pediatrics, cites depression and delinquent peers as the most significant factors in whether or not a child engages in violent behavior. Also in predicting behavior was whether or not a parent was verbally cruel to a child. Watching violent television and playing video games were not shown to have a measurable impact on children’s behavior.

Media, television, and video games do seem a nice scapegoat for scared parents and eager politicians, but as with anything, we must remember this: these things are complex and interactional, not simply transactional.

It’s not a one-way thing. Children are not blank slates nor paragons of innocence onto which violence and horror can simply be projected; but rather, individuals who frequently scrutinise and interpret media in mindful and considerate ways. Further, often both kids and adults play games that appear anti-social or deal with incredibly violent gaming worlds – Grand Theft Auto, for instance, or Medal of Honor – but the gameplay itself (which in many cases is complex, cognitively challenging, based in process/problem-solving, and often actually pro-social in nature) is what resonates with the gamer. It’s the process, the Game Play, that matters – not the setting it is placed in.

What lies at the real root of violence is something that just can’t be explained by scary video games.

Sep 15, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #