Storytelling with Amnesia

via Marxchivist

While I hate to harken back to Halloween, having now passed Thanksgiving, there is one ritual associated with the former holiday that I feel has year-round appeal; ghost stories.  This past Halloween I managed to engage in two forms of the modern ghost story- I watched both a marathon of 'American Horror Story' episodes (verdict: I like it) and Sean Plott (better known to Starcraft fans as Day9) live stream his play-through of the critically acclaimed horror computer game Amnesia: The Dark Descent.  While both played on familiar horror tropes- dramatic lighting, eerie music and action 'jolts'- I found myself more intrigued with Plott's play-through of Amnesia, in part because it was a computer game (yes, I'm a nerd) but mostly because I immediately sensed that this was a new type of ghost story in which I was participating.  Not only was there the appeal of the main storyline being 'told' through play, but Plott also displayed in his live feed a camera on himself that allowed viewers to see his reactions to horrific elements interspersed in the game.  Plott also set-up a chat room for viewers to espouse their comments (or taunts/jeers), making the experience interactive and not simply a one-way netcast.  While there were moments of tedium, anytime tense or scary moments developed I was engaged and watching with bated breath to see what would happen to Plott's character.  Even though I wasn't playing the game I was still drawn into viewing its narrative effect not simply for the story but also to watch the reaction of players recording or streaming the game because in doing so I felt like a participant in the communal act of telling scary stories.

Screenshot of the Sewer in Amneisa- via Frictional Games

Go search YouTube for Amnesia videos and you will see that I'm not alone- there are several examples of others recording themselves playing and reacting to the game's many scary moments.  After watching only a few it becomes obvious that the makers of Amnesia, Frictional Games, developed a truly immersive and deeply frightful environment.  In his GDC Europe 2011 talk, 'Evoking Emotions and Achieving Success by Breaking All the Rules', lead designer Thomas Grip discussed how the Amnesia team made several unconventional (for the Horror genre) choices in the basic mechanics of the game, those being no death, no weapons and no competitive mechanics.  While Grip does a fine job of explaining why these choices were made in his GDC Talk, I believe this quote from his post reviewing 'Heavy Rain' on the blog 'In the Games of Madness: Unspeakable thoughts on horror game design and development' provides a good summation:

What I think happens is that as we interact in a videogame, there is feedback loop between us sending input to the game and us getting information back from the game (in the form of visuals, audio, etc). which builds the basis of us feeling present inside the game's virtual world.  The better this loop works, the more we feel as a part of the experience.

Eschewing traditional mechanics in horror games- the fear of death, the need for weapons, and 'gaming the game' to defeat the various monster obstacles- Amnesia instead relies upon the circulation of information between the game and the player to capture interest and create a compelling atmosphere.  By removing the more obvious 'game' mechanics Frictional Games paradoxically created an even better 'game' that borderlines on interactive storytelling.  Yet players don't feel like the game is a movie- indeed, one of the reasons for Amnesia's emotion evoking success is how easily (perhaps deceptively) it convinces players that their agency in narrative action is real and has consequences that a flowing movie-like narrative structure wouldn't allow.  Thanks to tweaks in how important mood elements (the sanity meter and appearance of monsters) operate, Amnesia creates effortless feedback loops that, honestly, rely much more on the player than the game to provide both fuel and production of emotive responses.  In this regard playing the game is akin to listening to a ghost story.

via William Cromar

This, alone, would be impressive in and of itself.  Yet Frictional Games went a step further and released mod tools for the player community to use for creating their own Amnesia 'stories'.  The results were impressive, as noted by Grip in his post about Amnesia, one year later, found again on 'Games of Madness':

Another pleasant surprise was the amount of custom stories that have been made.  In Penumbra we only knew of a single attempt to make a user-created level and that one was never released in public.  For Amnesia at least 300 custom story projects have been started, and 20 or so have actually become completed, high quality, experiences.  There has even been a Tetris clone with the tools! … It really show that supplying users with creation of tools is well worth the time.

Over at the ModDB 'Amnesia' site there are listed 75 'story' mods in various stages of completion.  One of the most impressive stories in terms of its scope and complete reworking of the original Amnesia setting is 'White Night', created by Turkish Computer Engineering student Tansel Altinel.  On the 'summary' page of White Night's ModDB entry, Altinel makes it clear up front: "White Night is a total conversion mod for Amnesia: The Dark Descent; and focuses on mostly storytelling." (Emphasis in original)  This is evident the moment you boot up the 'story' as Altinel has clearly spent a lot of time on crafting not only a new environment (Amnesia takes place in a castle, White Night at the Denver Mental Hospital) but also new objects, like the box lightbulbs come in, for the player to pick up, examine and toss about the various rooms in the asylum.  This level of detail only adds to the 'feedback loop' Grip describes above and brings the player deeper into the story experience.

Denver State Hospital Entrance found in 'White Night'

What's even more interesting is how both the original Amnesia and the player created 'stories' allow for more than just single-person interaction when the players themselves either record or stream their gameplay experience.  In the case with Sean Plott's live stream, which included a chat room viewers used to comment, the back and forth between player and viewers produced a mix of teases, taunts, even helpful suggestions.  Even though some of the chat room participants, and probably many of the viewers who watched the archival video, already knew the Amnesia story through previous play, they spent time watching Plott play the same game because there was participatory value in watching him encounter and experience the same frightful moments as they did. Much like those who gather around campfires or held flashlights to tell ghost stories, viewers/commenters of Amnesia or its mod derivatives are engaging in a community-themed narrative experience that heavily relies upon the feedback loop between the story and the listener.

One key difference that viewers/streamers/recorders of Amnesia have over the campfire/flashlight crowd is that they are engaging the narrative story in an augmented reality whereby the experience can be shared online for others to view and engage.  Campfire stories are limited to the time and space they are told, whereas Amnesia stories can be told over much longer spans of time and greater distances thanks to their presence in the analog/digital intermeshing that is augmented reality.

Had Frictional Games instead decided to keep the weapons system they first designed for Amnesia instead of cutting it (watch the GDC Europe talk), I'm not sure the streams and recordings of play-throughs would possess the same narrative impact.  The same goes with repeated death moments or the inclusion of competitive mechanics (the game hunting the player down).  These mechanics would be fun for the player (maybe) but not necessarily for the viewer.  By focusing on the immersion, the feedback loop, Frictional Games instead created a narrative experience that could become communal- something I'm not sure would be as possible without the presence of an augmented reality.  Perhaps, as the various player created 'stories' for Amnesia indicate, there is a future for this new type of narrative experience.

Subverting the Panoptic Structure

While on a recent visit to NYC for some archival digging, I took a day to visit parts of the city I wanted to see- chief among those parts was that glorious bookstore The Strand.  There I picked up a copy of Michel Foucault's '73-'74 lecture at the College de France titled Psychiatric Power, which proved to be a wonderful buy.  I've enjoyed reading Foucault's monographs on Sexuality, Madness, Discipline and Power, etc… but for me, the best place to explore Foucualt's imaginative thought process is in his lectures captured via tape recorder and transcribed for publication.  Psychiatric Power does not let down in this regard, as Foucault spends his twelve lectures investigating what would become the main topic of 'Discipline and Punish'- the role and configuration of disciplinary apparatuses.  His lectures on the topic are succinct and easy to engage, due mainly to the oral nature of their delivery.  I would easily recommend this volume for anyone attempting to grasp Foucault's larger themes of power and the disciplinary mechanisms created to channel power.

Photo by Nicolas Nova

Recently I've been using posts on this blog to investigate what I have termed the mobility potential of knowledge.  While reading Psychiatric Power it occurred to me that Bentham's panopticon and Foucault's use of it to explain the workings of disciplinary power might provide a good opportunity to map out the differences in operation and conception a panoptic mechanism would possess when examined under the framework I've tried to establish for the operation of mobility potentials.

Before diving into the differences each depiction portrays, it might be helpful to establish the baseline for how Bentham envisioned his Panopticon to function and how Foucault found in its operation the workings of a disciplinary apparatus of power.  (Quotes below come from Psychiatric Power)

Bentham designed the Panopticon to augment the power of the central observer through two means.  First, the panoptic design is a multiplier of power that provides 'herculean strength' to power circulating within the institution and to the individual who holds/directs power and, second, the panoptic design gives the center a means of obtaining 'mind over mind' power. This is accomplished by the individualizing nature of the panopticon, as it places the focus of the gaze, the body, on a singular subject. The result Foucault notes,

...means that in a system like this we are never dealing with a mass, with a group, or even, to tell the truth, with a multiplicity: we are only ever dealing with individuals.  ... All collective phenomena, all the phenomena of multiplicities, are thus completely abolished. (75)

Examples of 'collective phenomena' include distinction in workshops achieved by use of songs or strikes, collusion among prisoners, or acts of irritation/imitation found in the asylum.  As a result, "the whole network of group communication...will be brought to an end by the panoptic system."  Power thus becomes collective at the center, the beginning of the anonymous gaze, with the distribution of power always focused on the individuals, the bodies, located in their separate cells.  Foucault equates collective power held at the center as "...a sort of ribbon of power, a continuous, mobile and anonymous ribbon, which perpetually unwinds within the central tower.  ...(The Panoptic Mechanism) is an apparatus of both knowledge and power that individualizes on one side, and which, by individualizing, knows." (Both quotes from p. 78)

Returning to the illustrations above, we can now map out the operation of a panoptic mechanism using both disciplinary and mobility potential frameworks.  The disciplinary framework concerns itself, primarily, with the individualization of the subject in its cell.  The center's gaze penetrates the cell, able to give commands and directives but also capable of conducting observations that record the reaction of the cells to their individualized directives.  This 'feedback' of observation is reconciled in the center via the 'perpetually unwinding ribbon of power' which spurs the creation of new directives and commands.

Now let's examine the same panoptic mechanism through a mobility potential framework.  Because the panoptic mechanism facilitates the imposition of discipline it relies upon the transmission of primarily, perhaps exclusively, low mobility knowledge.  Foucault states that the rise of disciplinary mechanisms is closely tied to the growing use of documentary records to track a body, individually, through space, and the record keeping obsession possessed by many powers from the nineteenth century to present day attests to its enduring practice.  Documentary records, largely, do not transform through transmission or else they would lose their value in the larger practice of forming discipline.  

The cells, upon receiving the transmitted low mobility knowledge, formulate their own reaction or interpretation, although this cannot be shared to the other cells due to the configuration of the panoptic mechanism. (Remember that 'collective phenomena' is what the Panopticon is designed to avoid)  Information produced by the cell, be it high or low mobility, is observed by the gaze of the center and brought into the center for interpretation.  In doing so, the center acts as a 'transition point' for the shifting of high mobility information into low mobility information, a place to reconcile the two and mitigate the disruptive effects their transition generally entails, creating new directives that are then transmitted, once again, to the individual cells.  The key difference in this understanding is that both the cells and the center engage in knowledge interpretation, yet the design of the panoptic mechanism means that only the center can act as the 'transition point'.

Now I would like to ask different questions that I think hold significance with events unfolding today.  Can the panoptic mechanism be subverted?  Are there instances in which the operation of this subverted mechanism could be demonstrated?  I would like to explore the idea that the panoptic mechanism can be subverted and that the prime example of such subversion is the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Below, I've sketched out what I think a subverted panoptic mechanism would look like. 

Here we have the exact same layout as the traditional panoptic mechanisms analyzed above, yet the flow and type of information is highly varied.  Some distinctions are immediately evident.  The center, instead of being solely based on a physical location, now embraces an augmented reality presence allowing both high and low mobility information to be transmitted and received by the center.  This is the first key distinction, as the meshing of the physical and the digital allow the panoptic mechanism to maintain its form even while its very function is subverted.  Because an augmented reality presence necessitates the use of high mobility knowledge potentials, the gaze the center normally possesses in a traditional panoptic mechanism becomes inverted.  Cells now gaze and penetrate the center, attempting to gain knowledge and 'individualize' in a function closely aligned with the traditional panoptic gaze.  The 'perpetually unwinding ribbon of power' is now shared by the center and cell alike, meaning that cells can now engage in the sort of collective phenomena prohibited in traditional panoptic mechanisms.  Now the 'transition point' function, the capacity to interchange high and low mobility knowledge with minimal disruptive asynchronous effects, resides in both the cell and the center.  This shift is the second key distinction of a subverted panoptic mechanism.

In some instances, the subverted panoptic mechanism can wield traditional panoptic powers- this is evident when Occupiers pose for pictures taken by tourists or when video or statements created by the center are transmitted to the cells.  What is interesting is that only in these expressions of 'weak panoptic power' (utilizing the physical structure of the panoptic mechanism) does the center actually gaze into the surrounding cells.  When engaging the cells in an augmented reality presence (as Nathan Jurgenson says, uniting the hashtag and the physical), this gaze is inverted and can no longer penetrate the surrounding cells.  By utilizing the panoptic mechanism in such subversion, the cells also acquire the two benefits outlined by Bentham and explained above- the 'herculean strength' of power multiplied and a means to obtain 'mind over mind' power- and while the effect of the first benefit is immediately apparent when viewing the outpouring of discussion, videos and photos associated with OWS, the second benefit, while very crucial, becomes diminished by simple fact of plurality.  Many cells aligned with the 'ribbon of power' mean that many interpretations are created, making the 'mind over mind' power generated by the subverted panoptic mechanism more suited to the question and analysis of hegemony.

It cannot be stressed enough that the essential characteristic of a subverted panoptic mechanism is the intermeshing of both the physical and the digital.  Absent the physical anchoring, the movement would still be transmitting and receiving information but it would do so outside of the (subverted) panoptic structure.  This, to me, is a key difference between a movement like Occupy Wall Street and a group like Anonymous.  There is a question now, with the general revocation of a physical space to occupy, if the OWS movement can continue or maintain the impact they have fostered so far.  While the loss of a physical location would prevent the movement from subverting the panoptic mechanism for their own uses, there is always the possibility that one of the cells will hold new ground and re-create the movement there.

This is just a very preliminary sketching out of ideas regarding the role of the panoptic mechanism under the framework of mobility potential.  I gladly welcome any comments from readers as to points I either glossed over or missed completely.  

Exploring the Small Demons of Books

When discussing the differences between high mobility/low mobility knowledge constructs, I often invoke the book as an exemplar of the latter given its general property of being unable to undergo modification through transmission.  You and I may have different copies of the same book, but the words, characters, jokes and cultural references (to only name a few) remain the same even if we loan the book to a friend or find a stranger on the subway reading a copy of foreign origin.  This singular property, its immutable character, makes the book a superb transmitter of stable knowledge.
 

And while I am far from an authoritative source of knowledge on the history of books, a la Adrian Johns, the low mobility potential of the book (as I have defined it) continually proves to be a fascinating intellectual investigation.  That's probably why I found the following tweet from James Bridle, author of the Booktwo.org blog and general commentator on the intersection of technology and literature (in addition to 'book futurism' as he states on his blog), to be very interesting with regards to my evolving thoughts on the mobility potential knowledge in books possess.

Tweeting from the 'Books in Browsers' 2011 conference, Bridle added the following thought tweet a day after the above came into came into existence:

Both of these thoughts explain, in their own way, what I have come to see as the interaction of high and low mobility found in knowledge constructs.  In a real sense, the beginning portion of Bridle's first tweet is entirely correct; books do not need a network.  But when brought under the lens of mobility potential, books do need a human network in order to not only transmit their stable knowledge but also facilitate the creation of high mobility knowledge constructs- reader's thoughts, interpretations and influences- that produce a full range of what we might call 'culture', expressed in a variety of forms.  In this interpretation, the second half of Bridle's initial tweet fully affirms the role low mobility books play in the creation of a diversified field of culture, made up of both high and low mobility knowledge potentials- other books, essays, rumors, stories, tweets, blogs, art, music, etc…

Bridle's second tweet affirms this interpretation.  In a good example of circular reasoning, books are products of culture which, when transmitted- networked- produce additional iterations of culture which have the potential to produce other books, and so on.  Whereas in the past, when interaction between knowledge constructs of high and low mobility often produced disruptive asynchronous effects (think the interaction between written documents and oral rumors disputing their contents), thanks to the facilitation of digital networks new forms of knowledge interaction, which I label 'transition points', are engendering greater interaction with knowledge constructs of both high/low mobility with decreasing degrees of disruptive asynchronicity.  In a previous post, I demonstrated how Wikipedia was one such 'transition point' involving both high and low knowledge constructs in the process of certifying encyclopedic knowledge.  I have recently discovered a website that I feel is another 'transition point', this time for analyzing books; Small Demons.

Here is a video explaining, in part, what Small Demons is trying to do:

I recently received a beta invite to use the service (you can register for an invite from the Small Demons main page) and while it is still very rudimentary in many respects, there is a lot of potential for the service as it continues development.  

The reason I qualify Small Demons as a 'transition point' is the way it essentially helps users pick apart the details, perhaps uncovering the influences an author selected when creating their low mobility literary work, and then transfer those users reactions to these details in a high mobility manner.  Engaging in a limited 'reverse-engineering' of 'cultural' sources (it cannot reveal the mystique of writing, only the sum total of references in the work), Small Demons gives glimpses, shadows perhaps (thus the Demons reference?), of the high mobility knowledge constructs- i.e. thoughts, influences, culture- that entered the minds of writers as they produced works dissected by the website.  People can comment via the 'like' function on various ephemeral bits uncovered- a map location, or weapon, or music album- and create their own interpretation of the work, in a very low mobility way (the likes don't change via transmission), that nonetheless acknowledges the extreme high mobility thought process that spurred the 'like' expression people find attachment to in a book.  The asynchronous effect between the interaction of low mobility books and references and high mobility thought-reactions is reduced to the extreme in Small Demons, if only because people can state what attracted them to the work, revealing what part of the creative mystique drew them into the words, in a way that is stable and yet capable of creating high mobility spin-offs.  This is accomplished through debates on the selected book or influences facilitated by the act of reading (see Bridle's first tweet above), further discussions brought about via the 'share' button linking to Twitter or Facebook, or in the soon to be implemented 'curation' option whereby particularly knowledgable people who add details to the site can moderate discussions or review incoming contributions.

Because the website is stability based- there is little to no modification of the works presented- Small Demons embraces the low mobility defined by the books it covers, yet the capacity for high mobility discussion and the examination of the sources used in literary works allows the site to become a 'transition point'.  Increasingly, digital portals and structures are being developed that fuse high & low mobility knowledge constructs in way that augment the presence of both without producing the often disruptive asynchronous effects observed in previous analog or textual conceptions.  Small Demons is more than just a book lovers 'nerd-out' site- it is emblematic of a new type of knowledge production 'augmented reality', reshaping the way we both produce and consume cultural content.

Insights from Valve on High/Low Mobility Potentials

Today, while drinking my coffee, I came across this tweet from Tracy L.M. Kennedy (@netwoman) pointing to a discussion by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell at the recent WITA TechNW conference (Washington Technology Industry Association) that occurred in Seattle.  During the panel discussion, Newell discussed some interesting economic experiments Valve (who runs the very popular on-line game distribution service, Steam) engaged in regarding the use of sales, varied pricing models and 'free-to-play' games in order to understand these effects on their gross sales and profit margins.

While the economic experiments were very insightful, what really caught my attention was how Newell discussed the impact of piracy on Valve's thinking regarding pricing/service.

Newell: One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. For example, Russia. You say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market. 

Ed Fries: That’s incredible. That’s in dollars? 

Newell: That’s in dollars, yes. Whenever I talk about how much money we make it’s always dollar-denominated. All of our products are sold in local currency. But the point was, the people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia. … So that, as far as we’re concerned, is asked and answered. It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.

At the end of the summary, Ed Fries provides the following summation of the point made above:

Fries: That’s some incredible data. … You talk about doing experiments. This is probably the biggest change that’s affected the gaming business over the last few years. It’s not just that we have digital distribution to our customers. It’s that we have this incredible two-way connection that we’ve never had before with our customers. 

We’ve gone from a situation where we dream up a game, we spend three years making it, we put it in a box, we put it out in stores, we hope it sells, to a situation that’s incredibly more fluid and dynamic, where we’re constantly modifying the game with the participation of the customers themselves.” (Emphasis mine)

The discussion is fascinating not simply for the insight it provides into the experimentation occurring in Valve, but also in how the statements above appear (at least to me) to be another validation on the interaction between high and low mobility potentials found in informational constructs- in this case, the constructs being games distributed through digital means.  Pirated copies of digital games would appear to be exemplars of high mobility.  They often emerge in markets where the audience cannot afford, or choose not to purchase, a game that is perceived as highly desirable yet out of sync with the needs of the target audience, either through pricing or format.  The act of piracy often modifies the original piece in order to increase its rate of transmission.  In this view, I am borrowing from the process examined by Adrian Johns in his book Piracy- specifically the chapter dealing with Dublin printers 'pirating' works originally published in London.  Publishers in London often produced large folio versions of books that were neither affordable nor easily transported/stored, two key disadvantages that kept the works from reaching a larger mass-audience.  Dublin publishers, instead, took the same works and printed them in much smaller versions spread over a few volumes.  The Dublin works cost less, could be transported easily and began to eat into the profits of London booksellers.

Yet, looking deeper into the process driving sales of both books and digital games, mentioned above, it becomes obvious that pirated copies, while increasing transmission, do little to foster increased or sustained modification- a key component to my understanding of how high mobility potentials work.  With books, as Johns noted, increased sales were definitely helped by reduction in cost and size, but the real key to growth was producing new volumes altogether.  Compilations filled with 'new' or additional material put together by publishers, sometimes of dubious quality, gave people reason to buy new copies of already owned works.  The original modification, making books smaller and cheaper, increased sales but only continued modifications- provided via new editions, additional material- sustained sales.  A similar phenomena can now be seen in the production and sale of digital games.  Thanks to the emergence of technologies enhancing the speed of communication and distribution (Steam being the noted example), piracy of digital games is of little concern (at least for Valve) as the 'fluid and dynamic...participation of the customers themselves' drives increased modifications of the games sold.  In effect, pirated copies of games become low mobility constructs through their inability to be modified, while official versions become high mobility constructs through their constant modification driven through customer participation and interaction.  Give users control over the modifications or an increased voice in the means of modifications and you largely solve the problem of piracy presented by competing low mobility constructs.

Now the pirates could respond by bringing original modifications into their pirated versions- neither Newell nor Fries say anything of this potential phenomena- yet we might assume this is not the case as users have a dedicated communications channel with the original content creators allowing them to funnel their desires for modifications directly to the source.  It would be interesting to see how pirates operate in other franchises where this communications channel is either denied or cut-off (a game reaching it's 'end of life' so to speak), that is, would pirates become enablers of high mobility potential in products whose lifespan renders them, essentially, ossified low mobility products?  There is also the question of how the act of piracy impacts the transition of an informational construct from high to low mobility and vice versa.  As this brief examination proves, there is clearly a great deal more to explore in the interaction between high and low mobility potentials found in informational constructs.

Course Design Process: History Through Games

As part of the ongoing process that is assembling my 'Graduate Portfolio', I've decided to design a course that addresses one of my growing interests- the intersection of historical inquiry and gaming.  About a year ago, I wrote a draft essay analyzing the Cold War themed board game Twilight Struggle as a 'complex cultural artifact' using, primarily, the methodology behind material culture analysis in order to dissect the deeper narrative generative process one encounters through play.  The essay was a labor of love, not provoked by assignment, and I found the process of looking deeper into the issues related to the play-design mechanics inherent in the game to be a satisfying intellectual exercise.  What I realized through the writing of my draft was that Twilight Struggle could be read, in part, as a historical artifact- albeit one with caveats and peculiarities that needed to be addressed if one desired to utilize analysis of such an artifact to the fullest.

Now many might think it silly that I would come to such an obvious conclusion.  However, in my defense, I was not aware of the diversity of thinking, especially among academic circles, that surrounded analysis of games against a larger historical-cultural backdrop.  I hadn't read a single issue of Simulation and Gaming, nor did I know about excellent blogs like PaxSims or Play the Past (although, to be fair, Play the Past did not yet exist when I wrote my essay).  Needless to say, through my writing on a subject thought to be quite novel, I reinvented the wheel several times over in a rough manner that ill suited the smoothness in inquiry pursued by others in the field.  Being a developing Humanities scholar I am not adverse to such endeavors, but it was, in equal measure, both refreshing and discouraging to see the trail already blazed.

Yet I took comfort in the fact that most scholarship or academic writing focused on video games, leaving the table-top variety largely unexamined.  This makes sense, given the fact that video games are much more rich and diverse objects of study.  However, this should not be taken as a sign that board games possess any less diversity as an object worthy of serious analysis or study- quite the opposite.  As Ana Salter recognized in her four part ProfHacker series on 'Using Games in the Classroom' (selection from part III):

Board and card games can be a great first project, particularly for students.  Digital games are flashy, but board and card games offer the advantages for structured play with a lower barrier to entry.  They can also be good practice for learning the mechanics and structure of games without getting bogged down in programming and logic.  We've all played some version of classroom jeopardy before, and it remains an example of taking game-like mechanics and applying then to any content- but when content guides the way, board games can transcend these roots.

The last line of Salter's quote above is the key to why I want to analyze history through games.  So now I have a topic and suitable motivation- but how, exactly, do I design a course that accomplishes this task?

To answer this question I've drawn on two sources, the first from Mark Sample's two-part discussion about Course Design on ProfHacker (Part I and Part II) and the second from Chad Black's Teaching Philosophy post on his blog Parezco Y Digo.  Sample states that, in course design, we should embrace a 'backwards-design' perspective (a process he borrows from the Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe book 'Understanding by Design') that utilizes a three-step process: Identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence and plan learning experiences.  In this way, course design promotes uncoverage, as opposed to simply coverage, in order to plumb both the depth & breadth of the material we as instructors want our students to explore.  Chad Black's 'Teaching Philosophy' takes the ideas promoted by Sample and provides the linkage to my subject matter- History.  Here is a quote from Black's post on linking desired skill development (reading comprehension, primary/secondary source evaluation, identify/build casual explanations for events/structures/movements and communicate explanations in written form) to his course design goals:

I structured my courses to provide practical experience in each of these areas, mixing primary and secondary source material on the various topics under consideration and emphasizing in lecture and discussion the connection between explanatory narratives of the past with evidence.  I increasingly sought to include a wide variety of media as part of the source-based building blocks of my courses (texts, film, photographs, artifacts, etc.)  My hope for each of my courses has been that students will leave with a keen sense of the problematic relationship between the present and the past and of the problematic nature of the relationship between information and knowledge.

Black goes on to state that he looks to bring the process of collateral learning to his students, fostering the development of skills and attitudes through exposure to not just various cultures but also technical skills that will produce information literacy.  Students in Black's class are prompted to create their own content on their own sites in an attempt to 'demystify the web a bit for a generation that has grown up with the internet as a given in their lives and cultivate a capacity for DIY that is collateral to the specific content of (Blacks) courses…"

Under these guidelines, I've begun to establish the following parameters for my 'History through Gaming' course:

What results do I wish to achieve?  I want students to be able to critically evaluate a board game, or any game derivative, looking at not only its outward theme and graphics/material pieces but also the mechanics and designer motivations/inspirations that went into the overall play-mechanic design.  They should be able to situate the game amongst the larger historical narrative, demonstrating knowledge of what the game excels at modeling and what it fails to accurately portray.  In a real sense, I want students to be able to use games as one of many 'documents' in evaluating what Black identified as the 'problematic relationship between the present and the past' in addition to the 'relationship between information and knowledge'.  

What do I consider acceptable evidence?  To begin, students will need to analyze the game itself and then branch out to the designer behind the game, as well as examine the source materials used in its construction.  Students should also cross-check their initial analysis of game materials and design construction using other critically evaluated primary or secondary sources of the period or theme depicted in the game.

What are the learning experiences I wish to utilize?  Beyond reading and evaluating source material (the bread and butter of historical practice), I want students to actually engage with the games we study through the act of play.  Many modern day board games strive to create a narrative through play and I want students to become observers of this process, yet go a step further, analyzing the structure and limitations of this narrative generative experience.  Because many games rely upon the experiences, both past and present, a player brings to the table, I want to use a coordinated approach of tweets to create a real-time experience backchannel, allowing others to view and comment, in addition to having students produce longer explanatory essays, once reserved for the instructors eyes alone, on blogs of their own creation that will be shared with the entire class.  I also want students to produce 'modifications' of the games we study, based on research they have conducted throughout the course, linking the play-design mechanics they propose on reasoned approaches to historical phenomena.

With these guidelines, the next step in designing the course is to determine a theme upon which to base the semester.  Because I am acutely aware that Russian historians are increasingly asked to teach courses outside the constraints of that particular geographic boundary, I decided that it might be best to pick a topic and era both suited to the wealth of available games and interests of mid-level undergraduates, the target audience of this course- American History.  Immediately, Twilight Struggle comes to mind- but this is a rather complex game that might serve better as the keystone, given its survey of Cold War history.  There is also the recently released Hero of Weehawken, which covers the Aaron Burr conspiracy of the early 19th century.  And, of course, there is a plethora of World War II games that cover every conceivable aspect of the American involvement in that conflict.  One constraint of the course is that I don't want to pick too many games to analyze, as learning how to play these games and then asking students to have at least one go at a complete session- in addition to reading relevant documents/analyses of the period in question- would prove too much to cover in one semester/trimester/quarter.  I also want to avoid focusing too much on 'war-games', which is why I'm considering games that tackle social issues like 'The Battle for Seattle'. 

Then there is the larger question of how to address the concept of approaching a board game (and games in general) as applicable historical artifacts worthy of study.  Here the task is much simpler, due mainly to the recent surge of academic interest by those in diverse fields of study.  A few exemplars immediately surface: Brenda Braithwaite's incredible GDC presentation on her approach to designing Train, a documentary 'People are Knowledge' created by editors of Wikipedia seeking to have oral citations included in the encyclopedia based (in part) on the evolving rules of traditional games, and a recently released collection of essays (edited by Gred Costikyan and Drew Davidson) found in Tabletop: Analog Game Design, just to name a few.  Then, of course, there are the excellent blog posts on both PaxSims and Play the Past, not to mention the deeper levels of analysis found in the works of past luminary Johan Huizinga and contemporary luminaries Alexander Galloway & Ian Bogost.  What I once thought was a desert turned out to be an ocean of thought based solely around games of all forms.  

Herein lies the promise and peril of studying games- how do I decide which texts best suit the guidelines I elaborated above?  Should I select the games I wish to study first or should I pick texts that suit my quest of elaborating the game as a historical artifact?  This is the next hurdle I face in my course design- not to mention the selection of appropriate texts suited to historical analyses of the games I select.  However, thanks to my articulation of the three questions above, I have a much better idea of what I want to pursue in fulfilling my goals for the course.  I would love to hear from others in the comments section, or on twitter (@jsantley) on either game ideas, course approaches, or texts to use.