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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
