» Highlights for McCall's: Historical Simulations as Problem Spaces: Criticis... - 0 views
journalofdigitalhumanities.org/...blem-spaces-by-jeremiah-mccall
video games digh5000 experience information history simulations problem spaces classroom
shared by Chris Milando on 11 Mar 14
- No Cached
-
The concept of problem space is a highly useful tool for studying historical simulations, teaching history, and using the former to help in the latter.
-
Simulation games are interpretations of the past designed as problem spaces
-
In the field of educational and cognitive research a problem space is a mental map of the options one has to try to reach a goal, the various states.
- ...54 more annotations...
-
There is no implication of physical space. In contrast work by some scholars of video games, most notably Jenkins and Squire, discuss video games as contested spaces: here there are certainly problems, but the space itself (or rather the representation of it) becomes critical.
-
concepts a historical problem space has the following features:
-
Players, or in the physical world, agents, with roles and goals generally contextualized in space
-
Choices and strategies the players can implement in an effort to achieve their goals
-
That simulation games represent problem-spaces is in some respects just a more sophisticated articulation of the basic core of game-ness. By most definitions games require players, conflict, and a quantifiable outcome.
-
What a historical simulation game does beyond this basic game-ness, however, is craft a virtual problem space that represents to some degree a real-world one.
-
As expansive as a game might be in its treatments, it will impose arbitrary limits on its subject. These limits begin with the roles and goals of the player, decisions that shape the entire design
-
The quantifiable gameplay elements and mechanics all, in a tightly designed game any way, factor directly into whether the player achieves their goals.
-
There has been excellent discussion on Play the Past about the appropriateness of, and methods for critiquing simulations historically.
-
they are interpretations in the form of quantifiable problem spaces
-
It suggests considerations for rigorous and meaningful criticism that is holistic and sensitive to the medium
-
why Colonization codes native peoples the way it does, why Civilization does not deal with social issues in cities, or why East India Company does not represent the tensions between English and Indian customs—one needs to consider holistically the problem space selected by the designers
-
Generally speaking however—and I welcome examples where this is not the case—simulation games, especially pleasurable and/or commercially successful ones must commit to a very small set of roles and goals, often one role and one goal. Even where roles and goals differ and conflict, they tend to be set up as binary opposites or at least draw from the same well of constraints and affordances.
-
This is in large part, again, because games must be closed functioning systems: each part must connect to every other part. So a game cannot represent roles and goals well that do not fit into the core choices, affordances, and constraints of the chosen problem space.
-
Slaves in the game become a commodity, a valuable source of cheap labor and it is not unreasonable at all for players to initiate battles in the hopes of gaining more slaves for mines and building projects.
-
Suppose, however, one wanted to criticize formally this historical representation of slaves. One might start by noting that these slaves have very little agency.
-
slaves become nothing more than affordances, resources for the player to exploit in the game
-
Why does the game not portray the agency of slaves? How Longbow defined the primary problem space, the human player’s problem space, is a critical answer. For the player Philip king of Macedon is the role with a goal of uniting Macedonia and building a Balkan empire. With this role and goal driving the articulation of the problem space, depicting slaves in the game as affordances is fully understandable.
-
It is important to note, however, that saying a portrayal of ancient slaves, native Americans, Hessian mercenaries, railroad barons or any other agent or aspect of the past, takes the form it does because of the problem space is not meant to be a tactic for ending discussion or defending an implementation (one could imagine such a chilling effect: “why are they portrayed this way? Because the problem space demanded it. Oh … okay, so what’s for lunch?”). It is meant to focus criticism on a game holistically and consider how the affordances and constraints of the simulation game medium and the interests and goals of a game’s creators (their concerns, assumptions, hopes, attitudes, what have you) shape a game’s interpretation of the past.
-
These designers have their own goals, and they are generally different from those of the historian.
-
At no point in the process of identifying problems of historical interpretation in a simulation game should the goal be to blame a game designer for somehow failing to get “the facts straight” (whatever that means) or for intentionally misrepresenting the past.
-
I suggest, as historians, that sentiment also applies to understanding why a historical game takes the form it does. The goal should not be to assign blame but to understand how the past is represented in games that suggest they are about historical topics and why it is represented in the ways they are. This requires understanding the medium and its constraints and affordances, the audience and its expectations, the designers and their goals, and the ways these and other factors shape how knowledge of the past is transmitted from that past to our living rooms
-
So, what kinds of questions might one ask of a simulation game as a problem space and what kinds of meaningful criticisms/evaluations can be made? A few, necessarily incomplete suggestions:
-
One might meaningfully question why the particular main roles and goals for the game were selected in the same way one can meaningfully question why certain generations of historians privileged one set of topics and questions over another. Indeed meaningful answers to such questions can be given based on careful research of prevailing ideas at the time. Simulation games, for example, tend to be inclined to issues of domination whether in political, military, or economic forms – discussing why this is continues to be a lively debate.
-
One absolutely should question whether the roles and goals selected for the players are historically legitimate. In other words, do they reflect what our evidence suggests were some important roles and goals in the past?
-
A thorough critique of why slaves are mere tools in Hegemony, happiness is the defining metric for success in CivCity: Rome, Indian culture is not represented in East India Company, or any other element in any game, should consider the goals set out for the game and the supporting game mechanics to be compelling.
-
So, suppose that one accepts the roles and goals of a game as historically valid goals, i.e. goals that reasonably represent what good evidence suggests motivated some peoples of the past. That might well mean that a thorough challenge to the portrayal of some historical agents in the game could only be made by suggesting:
-
the agents could not reasonably be conceived to play that role in the problem space from the point of view of the player, the primary agent
-
-
So it's not just the experience. The spacial context also helps us to understand what caused specific decisions and events in history. While books can accurately tell us what happened, games can make us understand /why/.
-
-
So challenging the portrayal of slaves in Hegemony, if one accepts the historical validity of the role and goals (which I do), would require suggesting how slaves could have been portrayed more complexly and validly within the defined problem space, how they could have had a greater portrayal of agency through expanded roles and goals.
-
It becomes necessary to move outside the game design itself and consider what external factors (modern cultural assumptions and misunderstandings, design deadlines, demands of game-ness) shaped the inaccuracies.
-
simulation games are human interpretations of the past subject to certain constraints, as sources and media they should be considered holistically, and this can be done by thinking in terms of problem spaces.
-
When it comes to the history class, there is significant educational value to studying the past in terms of historical problem spaces. This is not to say that students should come to view the past exclusively or mostly in terms of problem spaces. It is simply to suggest that problem spaces provide an excellent framework for achieving certain goals in a 21st century history education.
-
Players and actions in physical space: One of the points I made in Gaming the Past[3] is that teachers and students too easily and often forget that humans in the past (and present) operated in physical, spatial contexts. Even the most intellectual/emotional/spiritual of goals is embodied in a physical and spatial context. Understanding that context helps understand agents’ roles, goals, choices, affordances, and constraints.
-
what more legitimate roles the agent could have played in the game that would mesh with the system incorporating the player’s roles and goals in the problem space
-
Players with choices and strategies
-
Affordances and constraints: Agents in the past (and present) have opportunities and roadblocks, abundances and scarcities, talents and weaknesses, access and exclusion. These affordances and constraints shape their choices, goals, and roles.
-
Spatial context: it is worth repeating. Human motives, goals, and actions are physically contextualized as are many of the affordances and constraints that influence these things. The psychological, the emotional, the spiritual, and the intellectual play critical roles, to be sure. Human goals and actions, however, cannot be severed from their environments and remain fully comprehensible.
-
Why use the idea of problem space as a framework for studying, teaching, and learning about the past?
-
One of the goals of history education should be for students to understand how factors shape and promote certain actions and outcomes over others, how everything is hardly ever equal, and how everything is contextualized.
-
It teaches to contextualize actions within space rather than divorcing choices from their real-world context. Humans in the past and present do not make decisions in vacuums. Learning to consider the context for decisions and actions before considering the decisions and actions is critical to studying human behavior.
-
-
This is what it is all about. We can learn from history books what happened, but games allow us to feel and understand /why/. Information on its own is insufficient - we need context to get a proper understanding.
-
-
It fosters flexible problem solving and critical inquiry as students consider why actors made the choices they did, what else they could have chosen, and what the likely results of those other choices might have been (all of which is important counter-factual reasoning). It undermines the perennial problem of viewing the past as pre-determined. Training flexible problem solvers like this should be a goal high on the list for history teachers. These are the thinkers that can see many sides of a problem, analyze different possibilities, and, hopefully, come up with excellent solutions.
-
make notes on the following: role, goals, geographical setting, types of choices available, affordances (I didn’t call them that at first, but got there quickly), and constraints.
-
I indicated I would start the class off by giving some background biographical information on Pliny.
-
Comprehension: even those who sometimes struggled with the challenge of making sense of primary sources and organizing a variety of historical evidence reported their sense that they understood Pliny and his world better than they normally understood many topics we explored
-
t is too easy for evidence and facts (such as they are) to get divorced from one another and appear meaningless, particularly when one lacks a deep background in a subject.
-
Engagement: problem solving is inherently engaging
-
Flexibility and Creativity: Historical imagination requires individuals not only to understand the evidence for what did happen but also to use that evidence to consider what could have happened. To be able to reconstruct a world of possibilities requires creativity and flexibility far beyond that fostered by the rote examination of what did happen and the simple acceptance of standard explanations for why it had to be that way. Again, this is the kind of powerful thinking a 21st century history education should foster: ending not with how things are but considering how they can be.
-
what reasonably valid simulation games offer most of all to students of the past is the ability to explore problem spaces from the strategic, if not emotional and intellectual, perspective of a player/agent in the space.
-
Simulation games are particularly good at modeling choice in problem spaces.
-
When students play and critique simulation games, they can actually make choices within a problem space and see how they are resolved.
-
potentially a much closer analogy to the reality of the past problem than regular classroom media
-
Of course we must be very careful when using simulation games to help students study problem spaces. The games will tend to focus on one set of roles and goals in the problem space and it is essential to remind students that there are many roles and goals.
-
Quick Summary: McCall explores problem spaces - self-contained moments in history where a gamer can relive the experience of a specific event in time, and understand how history came to be through the decisions they are forced to make.
