Gee, J. P. (2008). Cats and portals: Video games, learning, and play. American Journal of Play, 1(2), 229.
Descriptive
In this paper Gee makes a distinction between two major types of games: problem games that focus on solving a given problem, and world games that simulate an environment within which many different kinds of problems can be solved.
He uses the term ādiscoveryā to describe a kind of playfulness that is not goal-oriented, or rather where the goals are subject to change based on what the player experiences during play.
Lastly, Gee sees games as a way to investigate new possibilities in the ārealā world by foregrounding possibilities that donāt exist (yet) in the real world.
Analytical
While he argues that āyoung peopleā¦practice in play very real skills crucial for success in school and the worldā and that āoften they are doing no such thing at work or in our schoolsā, I would suggest that more recent developments (since 2008), for example in authentic assessment designs, have improved the way that these life skills are taught in schools ā though perhaps Gee would see these as a subset of games?
One weakness in Geeās overall argument is that he seems to imagine play as being a similar experience for all players, while it could equally be argued that āone personās play is another personās torture (in our case, we each view role-play and karaoke very differently)ā (Whitton and Moseley 2019, p.16), with consequences for how games are designed and deployed in educational contexts.
Burning question
How can we turn the implicit knowledge learned through games into the explicit knowledge that students are expected to demonstrate in accreditations and exams, without losing the element of play?
Gee, E., & Gee, J. P. (2017). Games as distributed teaching and learning systems. Teachers College Record (1970), 119(12), 1-22.
Descriptive
The authors point out that interactive experiences such as games differ from static texts such as books in that they have the capacity to ātalk backā to the people interacting with them.
They see video games as being interactive in ways that written texts are not, offering new ways to socialize and communicate through turn taking, where each response is modified and constructed based on feedback to previous responses.
The concept of DTAL (distributed teaching and learning) systems is introduced as the existence of a wider ecosystem of resources into which any educational experience that we design can fit.
Analytical
I think the authors underplay the role of characteristics such as age and gender in affinity spaces, and they offer a questionable division between these inherent characteristics and peopleās interests, whereas I see these as interrelated. In practice examples such as Gamer Gate indicate the extent to which inherent qualities have a bearing on peopleās access to and dialog within affinity spaces.
Burning question
In designing interactive experiences such as games for learning, how can educators leverage affinity spaces that they have not designed? For example, can we āoutsourceā the meeting of some learning objectives to affinity spaces that we did not create?
Bridging Thoughts
The two articles, a decade apart, show how the Geesā thoughts on videogames moved from viewing games as useful but largely standalone tools for learning, to a view where videogames form one part of a DTAL space that includes social media and other affinity spaces.
What remains common to both is the idea that we learn best by ārunning simulationsā and trying out actions before we take them, whether in single-player gameplay or as participants in a social affinity group.
References
Gee, J. P. (2008). Cats and portals: Video games, learning, and play. American Journal of Play, 1(2), 229.
Gee, E., & Gee, J. P. (2017). Games as distributed teaching and learning systems. Teachers College Record (1970), 119(12), 1-22.
Whitton, N., Moseley, A., & Taylor & Francis eBooks EBA. (2019). Playful learning: Events and activities to engage adults. Routledge.