Serious Game Review: Do I Have a Right?

This is a serious game guest review by Alan Reid, a doc student in instructional design and technology over at Old Dominion University. – JR

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Serious Game Review: Do I Have a Right?
by Alan Reid

Source:  http://www.ourcourts.org/play-games

Game Information

“Do I Have A Right?” is an interactive web-based game that focuses on the constitution of the United States and the rights of US citizens by having the user manage a law firm. The game does not specify a target audience, but given the content, it is most likely aimed towards elementary and middle school grade levels. The ultimate intention is to educate its user on the rights guaranteed to US citizens in the constitution by presenting him or her with real world scenarios of law cases and their courtroom verdicts.  Successfully defending a client in accordance with his/her rights results in a courtroom win and an increase in “prestige” points, with which you can afford to hire more lawyers with different expertise. The host site for the game offers a teacher guide to accompany the gameplay (http://www.ourcourts.org/our-courts-pdf-library/DIHR_Game_Guide_v2.pdf), and a corresponding lesson plan on interpreting the constitution (http://www.ourcourts.org/our-courts-pdf- library/Interpreting_The_Constitution.pdf).

Interface

The graphics for the game are effective and clean. Instructions are provided as the game is played, and movement of the characters is restricted to a point-and-click of the mouse. Below (Figure 1) is a screenshot of the main office view. This is the home screen for most of the game. Your partners in the firm are seated at their desks, and potential clients walk in through the office doors. Waiting too long to address a client will result in him or her leaving in disgust.

The interface is very well organized with pertinent information about the character, money supply, and court record readily available. Also accessible is a cheat sheet of the US Constitution.

Because multiple clients enter the office at once, you must possess time management skills. As the game progresses, the user must become more familiar with the constitutional rights and their corresponding amendment, or else the potentially valuable clients leave.

Unfortunately, you cannot save your work in this game, and exiting out of the game window loses all data accrued on your character. Although, it is a free, live streaming game that doesn’t require registration, so this is to be expected.

Gameplay

The gameplay is straightforward and easy to understand. Throughout the ‘day’ at the law office, instructions guide the user from one task to the next. As each client enters the office, the user must listen to their individual case and determine whether he or she has a constitutional right or not. Figure 2 is an example of a potential client explaining his situation. The user determines whether he can be successfully defended in court or not:

The user must identify key phrases in the client’s statement in order to pair the plaintiff with a lawyer with expertise in that field. This step is crucial in the user’s understanding and interpretation of the US Constitution. The user may also do a “Rights Review” (Figure 3) to refresh their memory on which amendment is most proper for that client.

The game, however, does not simply revolve around constitutional rights and their corresponding numbers. It also requires the user to successfully run a law firm. Expenses arise during gameplay, and the user must maintain a business while increasing his or her ‘prestige points.’ This is what makes this game extremely useful for its users: real world application.

In terms of feedback, the game produces a newspaper front page that shows how your law firm is doing.

Although it is a lot to manage at first, once the user gets a firm grasp of the constitution and his rights, the game reaches a plateau. The chances of reaching a flow state while playing the game are minimal because the emphasis is on the constitution. The game climaxes at the point where the law firm has acquired enough expert lawyers to cover all of the constitutional rights. In this sense, it then just becomes a game on maintaining a successful business.

Learner Characteristics

This game is most likely in an elementary grade setting, but knowing and understanding our individual rights is applicable to all US citizens. It is most appropriate for a class in civics.

Instructional/Learning Factors

This game exemplifies a few different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Mainly, at face value, this game is a game of recall, remembering, and memorizing, all lower order thinking questions. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, because in addition to recalling the constitutional amendments and their numbers, the user is also required to make an interpretation of the amendment and use judgment in each individual court case. This is evident in Figure 2 where the user decides either “You Don’t Have A Right” or “You Have A Right” after hearing the plaintiff’s scenario. Therefore, this game is productive on all levels.

It is certainly adaptable to the classroom and may be specifically beneficial to learning about citizenship and constitutional rights. Students learn what the constitution actually says in addition to applying the constitution to certain scenarios. Discussion of this game and the user’s decisions could ultimately lead to the judicial system, the Supreme Court, and the political process.

Overall Rating

This game receives an A. It is relevant, well-organized, applicable to the real world, and integral to an understanding of what being an American citizen means.

ED-MEDIA 2010 Early Registration

Deadline May 3, 2010

June 29 – July 3, 2010  *  Toronto, Canada
The Westin Harbour Castle

This annual international conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications on all topics related to multimedia, hypermedia and telecommunications/distance education. ED-MEDIA spans all disciplines and levels of education and annually attracts more than 1,500 leaders in the field from over 70 countries.

Beyond Second Life

Tony Bates refers us to an article in the Chronicle by Jeffrey Young: After Frustrations in Second Life, Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds.

The article details the challenges universities have faced when trying to integrate SL into lessons. Consequently, they are exploring other venues for instruction that offer more controls and fewer distractions.

Sometimes this leads to additional problems. Few companies in this specialty are as established as SL’s parent, Linden Labs. Some have gone broke, taking virtual classroom space with them when the plug was pulled.

A couple of promising efforts either underway or coming this year include Open Cobalt from Duke University, funded by the NSF and the Mellon Foundation, and OpenSimulator which leases virtual space for instructional purposes.

Several initiatives are out there to offer classroom space to educators at no cost to them. Young notes Aaron E. Walsh over at Boston College hosts about 2,000 educator accounts on Education Grid, a world devoted to online instruction that Walsh set up through his project, the Immersive Education Initiative. The mix on Education Grid is about 80% university profs and 20% secondary teacher accounts. The IEI leases space from OpenSimulator.

To counter the academic exodus, SL now offers a version of its software universities can host on local servers, which effectively prevents outsider access and the ability for students to wander over to red light districts.

It’s interesting to see the idea mature from a fanciful notion, to gritty reality, to something tailored for specific educational needs. For instance, initially universities set up virtual spaces identical to real world lecture halls. This resulted in unwieldy virtual space that was hard to navigate. It’s also interesting to see the day coming when SL will be considered “old hat” by professors and students, who will be using newer, more robust environments geared specifically for virtual education from the ground up.

The Top Journals for Video Game Research

It seems like there were not many journals devoted specifically to video game studies not so long ago. Now there are several. Here is a list of journals for videogame and gaming research, with indications as to whether they are print or online, and brief descriptions from their websites. Drop me a note if I missed one or if a new one starts up.

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Computer Game Education Review

Type: Online

Note: Initial publication is set for 2010.

CGER is a peer-reviewed, annual, aca­d­e­mic pub­li­ca­tion address­ing issues that con­cern the teach­ing of game design and devel­op­ment. These include, but are not lim­ited to, cur­ricu­lum orga­ni­za­tion, teach­ing method­olo­gies (e.g., con­cep­tual vs. exem­plary), assess­ment tools and tech­niques, game gen­res and clas­si­fi­ca­tions, soci­etal impact, eco­nomic and com­mer­cial issues, legal aspects, and approaches to stu­dent eval­u­a­tion that are of inter­est to fac­ulty and insti­tu­tions involved in the edu­ca­tion and train­ing of future game developers.

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ELUDAMOS, Journal for Computer Game Culture

Type: Online

ELUDAMOS is an international, multi-disciplined, biannual e-journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles that theoretically and/or empirically deal with digital games in their manifold appearances and their sociocultural-historical contexts. ELUDAMOS positions itself as a publication that fundamentally transgresses disciplinary boundaries. The aim is to join questions about and approaches to computer games from decidedly heterogeneous scientific contexts (for example cultural studies, media studies, (art) history, sociology, (social) psychology, and semiotics) and, thus, to advance the interdisciplinary discourse on digital games. This approach does not exclude questions about the distinct features of digital games a an aesthetic and cultural form of articulation, on the contrary, the issue is to distinguish their media specific characteristics as well as their similarity to other forms of aesthetic and cultural practice. That way, the editors would like to contribute to the lasting distinction of international game studies as an academic discipline.

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Game Studies, the International Journal of Computer Game Research

Type: Online

Our Mission – To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming.

Game Studies is a crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org.

Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games, but any previously unpublished article focused on games and gaming is welcome. Proposed articles should be jargon-free, and should attempt to shed new light on games, rather than simply use games as metaphor or illustration of some other theory or phenomenon.

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Games and Culture, A Journal of Interactive Media

Type: Print

Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media is a new, quarterly international journal that publishes innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within interactive media. The journal serves as a premiere outlet for ground-breaking work in the field of game studies.

Games and Culture’s scope includes the socio-cultural, political, and economic dimensions of gaming from a wide variety of perspectives, including textual analysis, political economy, cultural studies, ethnography, critical race studies, gender studies, media studies, public policy, international relations, and communication studies. Other arenas include the following:

• Issues of gaming culture related to race, class, gender, and sexuality
• Issues of game development
• Textual and cultural analysis of games as artifacts
• Issues of political economy and public policy in both US and international arenas

Of primary importance will be bridging the gap between games studies scholarship in the United States and in Europe.

One of the primary goals of the journal is to foster dialogue among the academic, design, development, and research communities that will influence both game design and research about games within various public contexts.  A second goal is to examine how gaming and interactive media are being used outside of entertainment, including in education, for the purposes of training, for military simulation, and for political action.

Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media invites academics, designers and developers, and researchers interested in the growing field of game studies to submit articles, reviews, or special issues proposals to the editor.  Games and Culture is an interdisciplinary publication, and therefore it welcomes submissions by those working in fields such as Communication, Anthropology, Computer Science, English, Sociology, Media Studies, Cinema/Television Studies, Education, Art History, and Visual Arts.

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International Journal of Computer Games Technology

Type: Print

The overall aim of the International Journal of Computer Games Technology is to bring together both the research and development aspects of games technology covering the whole range of entertainment computing and interactive digital media. The focus will be on three research and development frontiers: first, to expand the technology frontier in terms of both hardware and software for games, second, to validate innovative procedures including algorithms and architectures for games, and finally, to explore novel applications of games technology both for entertainment and serious games.

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International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations

Type: Print

The International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS) is a peer-reviewed, international journal devoted to the theoretical and empirical understanding of electronic games and computer-mediated simulations. The journal is interdisciplinary in nature; it publishes research from fields and disciplines that share the goal of improving the foundational knowledge base of games and simulations. The journal publishes critical theoretical manuscripts as well as qualitative and quantitative research studies, meta-analyses, and methodologically-sound case studies. The journal also includes book reviews to keep readers on the forefront of this continuously evolving field. Occasional special issues from the journal provide deeper investigation into areas of interest within either gaming or simulations.

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Journal of Virtual Worlds Research

Type: Online

The Virtual Worlds Institute based in Austin, Texas, USA is a not-for-profit research organization dedicated to:

* The promotion and publication of leading research

* Direct research and innovation in the fields of virtual worlds, 3d internet, immersive interfaces and the singularity

* Developing a commercialization channel for researchers to take their ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace

The Virtual Worlds Institute is looking for, on an on-going basis: research, development, commercialization and funding collaborators and partnerships.

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Simulation & Gaming, An International Journal of Theory, Practice and Research

Type: Print

For more than three and a half decades, Simulation & Gaming: An International Journal of Theory, Practice and Research has served as a leading international forum for the exploration and development of simulation/gaming methodologies used in education, training, consultation, and research. It appraises academic and applied issues in the expanding fields of simulation, computer- and internet-mediated simulation, virtual reality, educational games, video games, industrial simulators, active and experiential learning, case studies, and related methodologies.

The broad scope and interdisciplinary nature of Simulation & Gaming are demonstrated by the wide variety of interests and disciplines of its readers and contributors, who practice in areas such as: business, cognition, communication, decision making, psychology, economics, education, educational technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, environmental issues, human resources, international studies, language training, learning theory, management, marketing, medicine, multiculturalism, , negotiation, organization studies, peace and conflict studies, policy and planning, political science, project management, sociology, teamwork, technology, and research methodology.

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Finally, there are several journals that regularly touch on video game research while not devoted exclusively to the topic. A great example is the International Journal of Roleplaying. Video game research continues to be published in several venues besides the ones listed here.

No Indoor Plumbing, but Plenty of Ethernet

Thanks to Tony Bates for pointing out the latest issue of Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. There’s a very interesting article, complete with photo spread, on a Chinese gold farm for World of Warcraft by Anthony Gilmore.

Far from the sophisticated urban centers marking China as a world power, this rural tech outpost employs folks around the clock, and pays them a decent local wage for their efforts. The article is quite positive toward this gray market endeavor despite its violation of WoW players’ TOS.

I’ve never bought gold in WoW (at the higher levels, making gold is rather easy, particularly when gaming the auction house), but I’ve always been curious about gold farmers. This article is worth a read.

References:
Gilmore, A. (2010, February). China’s new gold farm. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 2(4). [Online.] Available: https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/863/628

No Need to Reinvent the Wheel to Revolutionize Educational Video Games

(Fellow blogger Tom DeRosa and I are trading posts this week. He runs the excellent blog, I Want to Teach Forever. Be sure and take a look at his book, too.  Details after the article – JR)

I am not a gamer. I don’t own any consoles, and the only game I play with any regularity is Tetris online. When I look at video games today, I usually see them through the eyes of an educator. This is why I’m so convinced that everything we need to make paradigm-shifting educational video games that kids will actually play has already been created. Instead of starting from scratch, educators need to team up with innovative video game studios and merely tweak the powerful learning-based game models that already exist.

My revelation came over winter break as I was visiting my family in New Jersey. What was to be a very busy holiday turned into a week of me sitting on my Dad’s couch, sick as a dog. My father has an xBox 360 and regularly plays games that involve running around and shooting things (first person shooters or FPS in gamer parlance), none of which I’ve had interest in. This year he was focused on a game that was very different, where he was given a wide open world with innumerable choices and methods of achieving goals and completing tasks: Fallout 3, widely regarded as one of the best xBox titles ever (if not best video game ever).

It is a mix of first person shooter, role playing game (RPG), puzzle (in the vein of Myst or Riven) and open-world exploration (like a single player Second Life) on a scale that by all accounts is hard to find elsewhere. In this game, you make decisions that change your character, and who you are changes the possibilities of what you can do.  You solve difficult problems, most of which have more than one answer. It’s the kind of thinking that we want students to do in school, that we know they need for college and beyond, but it often gets buried beneath rote memorization and test-prep strategies.

Fallout 3 represents a world of well-designed, immersive, and most importantly popular video games that have most or all of the structural elements that make learning possible. These elements are now fairly common in top games:

• Players make decisions that effect not only themselves, but the world around them.
• Players are faced with multi-step problems that require logic and reasoning skills.
• Collaboration and cooperation is encouraged (if not required).
• An engrossing story creates a context that’s fun and far different than their school-influenced concept of “learning”.
• Players are given small, specific tasks to complete, keeping meaningful goals in clear sight.
• Each small task completed is often part of a bigger picture, and each one opens up the possibility for other tasks that keep the player going.
• Most tasks or problems have multiple solutions.
• A comprehensive, fairly automatic system tracks players’ achievements, and can be referred back to at any time.
• There’s some level of freedom to explore and to choose which tasks they will do first (or at all).
• Often, tasks require or would be made easier with background knowledge of a subject players might not already know about. They are often forced to look up and learn about these topics if they truly want to reach their goals.
• Players are encouraged to go back and replay part or all of the game differently in order to reach measurable goals.

If you replaced the word “players” with “students” above, wouldn’t this list appear to be the features of an excellent, high-achieving classroom?

The immersive video game of today encourages, even requires learning and higher order thinking. The structure is there. More importantly, let’s not forget that these games represent the most popular and ubiquitous games available, with a generally bigger audience than movies and TV shows.

The only thing missing is for educators to partner with the studios to incorporate content across the curriculum, taking advantage of what’s already there. Isn’t that what the best teachers always do?

This is a guest post by Tom DeRosa, aka “Mr. D” of I Want to Teach Forever. You can find more ideas, resources and inspiration for teachers on his blog, or in his book Ten Cheap Lessons: Second Edition.

Is FarmVille Educational?

This blog has followed social gaming juggernaut Zynga’s progress for a couple years now. One of its most popular gaming apps is FarmVille, which runs on Facebook and touts an estimated 70 million players, making it one of, if not the, most popular games ever. Testaments to the game’s popularity abound. On the radio station I listen to on the way to work, the morning guys brought up the game recently. One complained he introduced his mother to Facebook, and now she spends hours playing FarmVille. Another said he avoids Facebook specifically so he won’t get caught up playing games like FarmVille all day.

Many players have noted the “work” in FarmVille seems somewhat educational. This, in fact, is what intrigues educators about video games in general. They are so interactive and require focused attention to progress. So, the thinking goes, if we can have students play with educational elements perhaps they’ll absorb some pedagogical content in ways they can’t through books or television.

Could FarmVille be a tool leveraged for classroom use? In November I was invited to sit on a panel of school district tech directors at a regional technology conference to discuss the educational value of social networking. One fellow tech director indicated her school board suggested the district open their network to Twitter, Facebook, and other social tools to students as well as staff. She described the various issues involved, how teachers treated the new access as a classroom management issue, and ways in which the tools were being incorporated into the school day. Then, she said the high school Ag teacher was investigating ways to bring FarmVille into the classroom.

So, is FarmVille educational? Can it be used effectively in the classroom to teach useful things? I turned to the net to see what the hive has to say and also try to find some academic research on the issue.



Math and Organization Skills
Like many games, there are things you can count in FarmVille, and a modest amount of math skills might prove helpful in the game. An eHow article offers six steps in using FarmVille to teach math. Here’s a sample:

Teach fractions using the Chicken Coop and Dairy Barn. There are 4 windows in each building and each building can hold 20 animals. For every 5 animals a head pops out a window. So you can show them how 4/20 is 1/5 of the animals.

CommonSenseMedia.org, which purports to rate video games for parents and teachers, notes that FarmVille requires “simple math and organizational skills.” Later in the review author Carla Thornton writes:

The game itself is clean, safe, and loads of fun, if not especially educational. In FarmVille players plow, plant, and harvest crops to earn virtual coins, raise animals and improve their farmsteads with fences, windmills, and other objects. The more Facebook friends a player can convince to become FarmVille neighbors, the bigger and more successful the farm will be.

Lisa Russell, writing over at the home schooling section for Suite101.com, shows how players can exert a little more math effort to figure out the fastest way to earn money in the game:

Initially, the only seeds available are strawberries, eggplant, wheat and soybeans. Strawberries cost 10 coins and after 4 hours are harvested for 35 coins, a ROI (return on investment) of 25 coins, or 6.25 coins an hour. Using the same method of calculation, it can be seen that the eggplant is worth only 1.31 coins per hour, the wheat breaks down to only 1.1 coins per hour and finally, the soybeans are worth 2 coins per hour. Clearly, the strawberries are a better investment for the player who has time to return in 4 hours to harvest.

Later, she offers a formula for the calculation:

H=harvest value

C=initial price

T=time (in hours)

ROI=(H-C)/T

Players can use a similar formula for comparing the value of their trees (both purchased and gifted) as well as their animals. … FarmVille may have absolutely nothing to offer on a scientific level. In fact, if an entire generation of humans were to learn farming skills from this game, humans might starve to death. However, for math skills and virtual applications of algebra, as well as estimation and strategic planning, FarmVille is more than just fun and games.

So the general consensus seems to be, FarmVille requires a little math skill and some attention to organizational details, but it was made more for fun than education, as are so many popular games.



Academic Interest
As far as academic consensus, a lot of the research interest in FarmVille has revolved around the game indirectly. It crops up in lists of popular social games in academic papers, for instance, but specific studies focusing on the game itself are rare if not non-existent.

A great example of FarmVille serving as a framework for a presentation is one loaded onto Slideshare.net by Sidneyeve Matrix over at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It is titled Pedagogy Inspired by FarmVille, or Seeds of Engagement, From Social Games to the Classroom: Educational Design Inspired by FarmVille.

In it, she highlights three videogame design principals that can be extrapolated for classroom courses. They are derived from a discussion at the recent Social Games Seattle meeting led by Amitt Mahajan, who is part of the core team and lead designer for FarmVille.

First, instructors should design games with broad appeal. FarmVille succeeds because playing farm is something many kids have grown up doing, sometimes using plastic toys provided by companies like PlaySkool. In the classroom or lecture hall, Dr. Matrix suggests this can translate to humanized case studies, current events, and pop cultural references to widen the appeal of the subject matter to apathetic students.

Second, FarmVille uses something Mahajan called “microsociality,” meaning social connections become painless. Players don’t have to go out of their way to keep up with contacts; they’re all easily accessible in the game. This has become “a viable alternative to offline face-to-facetime,” according to Dr. Matrix. So, for classroom incorporation she suggests instructors build or use existing social sites where students can share and divide workloads and resources.

Finally, FarmVille succeeds because it adds “visual pleasure.” There is a certain graphic appeal to the game, common among most successful commercial titles, that enhances player engagement. Instructors should be sure and incorporate visually appealing graphics in lectures and discussions to help focus attention on the subject matter.

Conclusion
All told, FarmVille is a major hit, sure to be popular for years to come. Educators, as well as perhaps classroom students, can certainly learn a thing or two from the game. But, ultimately, it was designed more for fun than for teaching essential knowledge.

Exploring the Renaissance Through Videogames

Shortly after Assassin’s Creed 2 came out, gamers noticed the rich historical detail included in the game’s setting. The protagonist who players guide through the game is sent back in time to Italy, AD 1499, there to prowl around buildings and streets and attack villains. The developers, self-avowed history nerds, hired consultants to ensure the buildings were rich in period detail. Here’s how The Wall Street Journal reported on their efforts:

They hired Renaissance scholars to advise on period garb, architecture, urban planning, weaponry and the like. They took tens of thousands of photographs of interiors and streets. They used Google Earth liberally to piece together the ground-up and sky-down perspectives through which the action flows. …

The game’s creative director, a Montrealer named Patrice Desilets, lived in Italy for some years, where he acquired a feel for the vivid intrigues of the Renaissance. He grew fascinated, he says, with the notion that “finally people can control time, and relive the past, through games.” The producer, Sebastien Puel, was born in the south of France, in the fortified medieval French town of Carcassonne, and grew up surrounded by history. The head writer, a Harvard graduate from Los Angeles and former screenwriter, Corey May, was driven, he says, by the challenge of “telling a story that feels real and is set among real people who existed.” …

Overall, though, Assassin’s Creed II is as close as we’ve managed to get to real time travel. The grown-ups can lap it up as a kind of virtual tourism. For the high schoolers, still the main audience, the video offers a kind of education by stealth. History matters more if your life depends on it, even as Ezio, and even if you’ve got lives to spare.

The amazing thing is developers of a highly anticipated release would even care to get most of the details right. If modifications of the game are allowed, it may find its way into history courses. It may find its way into classes regardless. Other academic efforts, such as Rome Reborn offer students only the opportunity to explore architecture. In AC2 students can fight bad guys while exploring.

Now, another major game focusing at least in part on the Italian Renaissance is due for release. This one is based on Dante’s Inferno. Yes, players will plumb the depths of hell, as envisioned by Dante, in this game from Electronic Arts. As you might imagine, hell is a bit graphic. Also, if you’ll recall, Dante described levels associated with the seven deadly sins. In the game, the level for lust is particularly graphic, replete with phallic symbols and nudity. This and other extreme graphics earn the game an M rating.

Producers are releasing a print edition of the poem illustrated by pictures from the game, hoping to encourage players to read Dante’s original work. Maybe kids who talk their parents into buying the game, despite its M rating, can actually learn something about the original work. But, I suspect parents would prefer the old-fashioned text version of the poem rather than an explicit video game.

References:
Kaylan, M. (2010, January 12). Time travel gets closer to reality. The Wall Street Journal, D7.

Toy Spy Robots: A Practical Way to Teach Programming

Seymour Papert taught us years ago the most effective way to teach computer programming to children was to make it fun, and MIT’s Logo programming language remains popular (and free). Since then, other languages designed to teach programming concepts have been developed, including Scratch, Game Maker, and Alice. (I wrote an article on educational programming languages for TechEdge that is online here.)

From a commercial standpoint, especially with languages like Logo, the urge to combine programming with real world robotics has been highly successful, most notably with the Lego Mindstorms line of products. Now, a new company has developed a toy spy robot that will encourage the creation and posting of programs by its fans.

The Spy Video TRAKR from Wild Planet Entertainment will blend online and offline fun for budding robotics enthusiasts. Offline, the target market of eight-year-old and older boys can guide the remote controlled vehicle into other rooms and use its wireless camera for surveillance. Taking a tip from Webkinz, which ties an online product with toys in the real world, the Spy Video TRAKR will offer strong inducements to play on their site. Here’s a quote from a recent news article:

Wild Planet says the Trakr goes a step further than other Web-tied toys. It sends children online to create application and then brings them back to the toy, instead of just leaving them playing related games online.

The marketing pitch for this seems brilliant. The toy will function as a spy robot right out of the box, but for the kid who wants more, plenty of customization is offered, whether it’s an app downloaded from the site or one he makes on his own. Here’s part of the press release:

Though the Spy Video TRAKR can be used without ever being hooked up to a computer, tech-minded kids will be quick to connect their toy and start the customization process. Beginners can access an online application modulator that will allow them to modify existing apps as they familiarize themselves with writing code. All the tools they need to write their own unique programs will be available online, for free.

The toy will be available in October, in time for Christmas, and should retail for about $120. I wish the best for Wild Planet, and I hope their new product is highly successful. Also, hopefully, it will encourage many new future programmers to pursue careers in the STEM fields.

References:
Zimmerman, A. (February 10, 2010). I spy a market for kids. The Wall Street Journal, D1.

DSM-V Will Avoid Videogame Addiction

There are very few windmills I’ve charged at on this blog over the years, but one notion I have battled is the idea of video game “addiction.” I prefer the Council on Science and Public Health’s term “overuse” for people who spend too much time playing video games, and I simply do not believe it warrants psychological treatment in and of itself. There may be other issues a heavy gamer needs addressing, psychologically, but not solely video game overuse. That’s my position based on years of engagement with others and consumption of what literature there is on the subject.

In the past, I’ve applauded when the AMA called for more research on the issue before formally deciding to declare video game addiction diagnosable. I’ve been delighted with researchers’ efforts to distinguish between the “addictive” elements surrounding online gambling and traditional role playing games. Finally, my position piece on the issue, Video Game Addiction: Fact or Fiction, remains popular and is currently first to show up on Google searches for “video game addiction fiction,” and fourth on “video game addiction fact.”

So now, the time approaches for the DSM to be modified. One major development in the issue of video game addiction has been to roll it into a broader category of Internet addiction. Since most games these days are online, this sort of makes sense. Overuse of all types of screen time, though, might challenge the definition a bit. If a child spends too much time playing a game that is not connected to the Internet, could he be diagnosed as addicted to the Internet? You can see the difficulties.

Fortunately, the committee in charge of revisions sees the difficulties, too. News this week indicates that gambling will be included in DSM-V as a behavioral disorder, but Internet addiction will not. It will be relegated to an appendix in order to encourage more research, and possible future inclusion in DSM-VI. Of course with so many years between revisions, the relationships we’ve developed with Internet technology may substantially change by that time. Social networking hardly existed just a few years ago, after all.

So, this is a good thing. I’m glad this blog played a part, however small, in the discussion on video game addictions and the struggle over defining it. The public can comment on the proposed revisions to the DSM here, through April. DSM-V is scheduled to be published in 2012-2013, after field trials have been conducted on new and revised diagnoses.

References:
Gever, J. (2010, February 10). DSM-V draft promises big changes in some psychiatric diagnoses. [Online.] Available: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/GeneralPsychiatry/18399