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USC educational / alternative Games

Agh! Feckin Zombies!Flash games usually rely on loud, colourful graphics and an ‘old-school’ style of gameplay (beat-em-up, shoot-em-up, pick-em-up, click-em-up) to make their bones on the internet. Most are generally considered to be fairly limited in terms of what they can achieve and for most people will usually amount to nothing more than 5 minutes or so spent shooting crudely-drawn zombies,  while a horiffic home-produced soundtrack bleats in the background.

But the potential for alternative, and in particular educational, uses is always present, and is continuously improving. Nowadays in particular, flash games are often a common feature used in viral marketing – taking advantage of existing online social networks and relying on word-of-mouth to increase product awareness. Just type “flash game viral marketing” into google to see the number of companies that are selling their service of creating games for your product.

Often, the use of flash games for educational purposes is considered to be little more than another way of providing generic activities such as multiple choice questions, drag and drops, etc. But the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts’s Interactive Media Division is a prime example of how online games can be used to educate and innovate. According to the Electronic Arts – sponsored Game Innovation Lab at USC: “The goal of the lab is to nurture concepts that push games beyond their currently defined genres, markets and play patterns and to make breakthroughs in these areas that will be valuable to lab sponsors and the industry on the whole”

Some of their most famous and fascinating games, dealing with subjects ranging from the crisis in darfur to the concept of a “Passively Multiplayer Online Game”, are below:

  • Darfur is Dying – The thesis project of Susana Ruiz, darfur is dying is an online ethical or “serious” game (a list of serious games can be found here) designed to spread awareness about the crisis in Darfur. The game consists of several different “sub-games”, each one different to the other, each designed to communicate a sense of the different traumas that refugees in Darfur must experiece – a running/ First person perspective game to emphasize the fear and danger of finding water, a top down management game to demonstrate the difficulty in maintaining agriculture, etc. The game won the Darfur Digital Activist Contest. An interesting facet of the game is that the game cannot be “beaten” through the simulated activities – the game’s purpose is to instill the player to take real-life action on the darfur crisis – to “win” the game in reality.
  • Torrent Raiders – The thesis project of Aaron Meyers, Torrent Raiders is an application game which serves two functions: an interactive visual representation of the BitTorrent process and a tongue-in-cheek game on counter-piracy. The Bittorrent data transfer is visually represented by packets of data pulsing from cities on a 3-D globe (the internet) to a futuristic hovering spaceship (the computer) above the planet. The player can track data to be used as evidence against individual file sharers by locating and shooting torrent swarms moving from the planet to the mothership. You can see a video of the game in action here.
  • flOw – Part of the thesis project of Jenova Chen, flOw is probably the most well-known and recognizable online flash games available on the internet nowadays. Originally developed as part of a thesis on Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment, flOw involves guiding a tiny, aquatic organism through the ocean on a quest to eat other organisms and evolve to more advanced forms of development. The dynamic difficulty is provided through the ability to move deeper into the ocean to engage in more difficult environments (but greater rewards), or stay in shallower water to transverse less threatening environments. There is no real narrative to the game – no beginning and end – rather, it allows the user to enjoy the game at their own desired pace. flOw has since acquired more than 4,000,000 downloads, and has had versions of the game developed for the Playstation 3 and the Playstation Portable.
  • PMOG – Part of the thesis project of Justin Hall, PMOG was originally developed by the USC Interactive Media Division but has since become a product beyond the University. The concept behind PMOG is to  transform web surfing into “ongoing social play”. The method of playing the game is simply through browsing the internet – players earn and lose data points by visiting unique domains, they can spend these points on various game items that can be attached to web pages to trigger events when another player next visits that page. A plugin for a browser is downloaded when a player signs up to PMOG, and the browser then enables the user’s actions – visiting pages, etc – to affect their PMOG status. E.G: A player can purchase a “mine” with their data points which can be attached to a webpage; should another PMOG player visit said website,  the mine will detonate causing the visiting player to lose 10 datapoints. There are a number of associations/ character types,  tools, missions, badges, etc which can be used – the idea being to turn browsing the internet into a quest with objectives and consequences for PMOG users.
  • The Redistricting Game -  The Redistricting Game was created at the USC Game Innovation Lab. The process known as redistricting in the United States (also known as redistribution in many Commonwealth countries) is the changing of political borders. Often this means changing electoral district and constituency boundaries, usually in response to periodic census results. The game provides a basic introduction to the redistricting system, allows players to explore the ways in which abuses can undermine the system, and provides info about reform initiatives. They are asked to attempt to redistrict areas efficiently, and see the consequences of not doing so effectively (and how abuse of redistricting could be used for political advantage). The website itself also provides a lot of information about the redistricting process and consequences thereof. The game is structured into various elements of the process, according to graded levels – E.G: Level 1 deals with the fundamentals of redistricting, level 2 deals with a moderately difficult situation for dedistricting, etc.

Other educational games in development at USC include:

    • E.L.E.C.T. – Enhanced Learning Environment with Creative Technology is based on developing skills for U.S military stationed overseas. The game aims to increase ability in Bi-Lateral Negotations, identify common areas of misunderstanding between western and other cultures, and offer general military training for both negotiation skills and cultural awareness. The current version in development is designed to take place in Iraq, although the application “will be adaptable to introduce other countries and cultures”.
    • The Cat and the Coup – Designed to educate on the subject of CIA-created coups, in this game, in development at the moment, the player takes the role of the cat of Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran, who was ousted in 1953 in a CIA sponsored coup.

      For more information on the theory of using games for education and social purposes, see the games for change website

      All of which said, there is probably no fear of these alternative games taking over the market just yet. There’s always a market in flash games for shooting those zombies.

      Darragh

      September 10, 2008 · Filed Under Uncategorized

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