I have a graphics problem. Actually, I have two graphics problems.
The first problem is inherent in the challenge of programming any video game: one of the largest hurdles is developing the graphical representation of the game. Coding loops isn't terribly challenging, but making those loops mean something recognizable on the screen is far more daunting. I've decided to use the Game Maker software popularized by YoYo Games. The website itself does a great job of pooling together already developed graphics, sound, and loop libraries from other users, allowing the community to do a great deal of the potential legwork for the beginning programmer. That said, I wasn't able to find much support for my particular graphics need (i.e. no trolleys), so this has left me at square one.
The second issue has been examined--at least tangentially--in much of the written research I've done. The overall goal of this project is to assess the video game medium as a way of portraying moral thought experiments, which hitherto has been a primarily textual undertaking. A responsible examination requires a careful consideration of rhetorical factors that affect other forms of thought experiment presentation, whether it be asked orally or read as a written question. The research presented by Ditto, et. al. (2009) and Petrinovich, et. al. (1996) are two sample studies that consider how the thought experiment is conveyed and/or the context in which it is conveyed. When considered in tandem, the "framing" and "priming" effects described begin to point to some of the inherent challenges in analyzing normative decisions in response to scenarios and questions presented rhetorically.
With both these factors in mind, I think what I have on my hands here is a project that, in practice, is attempting to examine two things simultaneously: 1. Can you effectively convey moral dilemma-type thought experiments in a video game? And 2. What are the control factors involved in doing so?
Throughout the semester, there has been a thoughtful examination of how digital writing affects cultures, communities, identity, and academia, and a motif of the discussion has been an examination of the unintended consequences of the digital writing medium. Although gender or racial inequality was not something that was intentionally designed into the internet 'apparatus', Nayer's writing and other writers we have examined have argued that the way the written discourse on the net is structured that there is oftentimes analogous forms of discrimination present online. Because video games frequently try to mimic the physical conventions of the offline world, the encoding and graphical manifestations of many of the factors that play into real life "framing" and "priming" will only be more manifest in a video game environment.
In Ditto, et al's, study, the attempt was made to partially obscure the racial identities of those presented in the trolley problem and yet the expected social prejudices were still (as expected) manifest. Turning the same situation into a graphically represented one would likely only increase the likelihood of such manifestations of social "priming."
Even at the 16-bit level of graphical representation that I am working at, the same issues apply. If I represent the in-game avatar as a white male--say, Mario--and I give him the choice of saving either Princess Toadstool or Luigi, Toad, and Yoshi, have I not presented as situation where the player is already "primed" to decide to save the former? The question of whether it is even possible to use popularly familiar avatars--the most readily available graphics libraries--has certainly provided me a key point of consideration. Likewise, having characters that are non-human or non-familiar has the possibility of tweaking the 'buy-in' factor of moral considerations.
I have however, come to a few conclusions on game mechanics that I am generally convinced will enhance the virtual thought experiment's efficacy. First, drawing on Sicart (2010), I believe that avatar selection or customization greatly enhances the simulation's ability to create the moral tie to the game player needed to exacerbate the level of player interest in the situation presented. Second, drawing on some of the considerations by Galloway (2006) about some of the features of gamer culture, I need to ensure that I break from some of the common conventions of contemporary video games, including the graphical depiction of the realization of the outcome of whatever decision is made. (The resulting violent act--resulting in a kill--is far too conventional of reward for standard video gameplay.)
References:
Galloway, A. (2006). Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. USA: University of Minnesota Press
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Research Post: Motivated Moral Reasoning
Article Link:
http://www.peezer.net/storage/Pizarro%20PublicationsChaptersDitto%20Pizarro%20Tannenbaum%20.pdf
In my last research post, I discussed an article that used the trolley problem to examine what moral philosophers called "framing." A similar concept is something that Peter Ditto, David A. Pizarro, and David Tannenbaum call "priming." In this paper, they describe a series of tests using a variation of the "trolley problem" and other moral thought experiments to test for the presence of social, political, and linguistic influences on the moral stances of various groups. This includes both examining in-text and out-of-text factors, meaning that both how the moral dilemma is conveyed is as important of a consideration as where it is told and who it is told to.
The paper's conclusions point to understanding all moral decisions as being affected by social priming, in all its different forms. The first part of the study dealt with whether or not names and professions that inferred a certain racial identification within the trolley problem would effect the moral analysis of participants. The second part of the study examined whether or not the nationality of potential victims in a military setting would affect the moral decision making of those presented with a trolley-type moral dilemma. The final part of the study analyzed whether or not the presentation of written material slanted towards certain moral conclusions prior to the presentation of the trolley problem would affect the decisions. Additionally, all participants in all parts of the study were examined by comparing self-identified political affiliations. All the empirical portions of the study showed that these forms of "framing" and "priming" did influence moral decision making in statistically significant ways.
In a video game environment, this means that the visual, textual, or audio representations of avatars, NPCs, etc, will have substantial effects on the moral reasoning of the player, even if these effects are unintended/unnoticed by the game's developers. This paper suggests that the innumerable unintended consequences of game design, including all its rhetorical components, simply because of the complexity of the task of representing a narrative in such a multifaceted medium, make it impossible to create a virtual environment that does not affect the decision making of the player. This, however, does not undermine the exercise of attempting moral thought experiments inside virtual environments because, as the studies presented in the paper show, every presentation of a moral dilemma will be affected by "priming" of one sort or another. Yet, the care one must take to separate the apparent empirical conclusions from the intended and unintended "priming" effects of the medium will be critical in creating quality moral studies.
References:
Ditto, P.H., Pizarro, D.A., & Tannenbaum. (2009). Motivated moral reasoning. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 50, 307-338. doi:10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00410-6.
http://www.peezer.net/storage/Pizarro%20PublicationsChaptersDitto%20Pizarro%20Tannenbaum%20.pdf
In my last research post, I discussed an article that used the trolley problem to examine what moral philosophers called "framing." A similar concept is something that Peter Ditto, David A. Pizarro, and David Tannenbaum call "priming." In this paper, they describe a series of tests using a variation of the "trolley problem" and other moral thought experiments to test for the presence of social, political, and linguistic influences on the moral stances of various groups. This includes both examining in-text and out-of-text factors, meaning that both how the moral dilemma is conveyed is as important of a consideration as where it is told and who it is told to.
The paper's conclusions point to understanding all moral decisions as being affected by social priming, in all its different forms. The first part of the study dealt with whether or not names and professions that inferred a certain racial identification within the trolley problem would effect the moral analysis of participants. The second part of the study examined whether or not the nationality of potential victims in a military setting would affect the moral decision making of those presented with a trolley-type moral dilemma. The final part of the study analyzed whether or not the presentation of written material slanted towards certain moral conclusions prior to the presentation of the trolley problem would affect the decisions. Additionally, all participants in all parts of the study were examined by comparing self-identified political affiliations. All the empirical portions of the study showed that these forms of "framing" and "priming" did influence moral decision making in statistically significant ways.
In a video game environment, this means that the visual, textual, or audio representations of avatars, NPCs, etc, will have substantial effects on the moral reasoning of the player, even if these effects are unintended/unnoticed by the game's developers. This paper suggests that the innumerable unintended consequences of game design, including all its rhetorical components, simply because of the complexity of the task of representing a narrative in such a multifaceted medium, make it impossible to create a virtual environment that does not affect the decision making of the player. This, however, does not undermine the exercise of attempting moral thought experiments inside virtual environments because, as the studies presented in the paper show, every presentation of a moral dilemma will be affected by "priming" of one sort or another. Yet, the care one must take to separate the apparent empirical conclusions from the intended and unintended "priming" effects of the medium will be critical in creating quality moral studies.
References:
Ditto, P.H., Pizarro, D.A., & Tannenbaum. (2009). Motivated moral reasoning. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 50, 307-338. doi:10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00410-6.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Research Post: Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions
Article Link:
The primary focus of an upcoming project I am working on is comparing whether certain medium presentation mediums of a moral dilemma affect the moral decisions of those confronted with morally challenging scenarios. The question is a primarily rhetorical one: does the method the story is told by effect the moral persuasiveness of the story. Within the field of rhetoric, similar considerations have been made by specifically changing word selection in certain aspects of a story. A 1996 study by Lewis Petrinovich and Patricia O'Neill (Journal of Ethnology and Sociobiology), studied exactly this. By examining the differences in the decisions of groups posed with the trolley problem first posed by Phillipa Foot when the moral dilemma presented at conclusion of the problem was with either "saving" a number of workers or "killing" the reciprocal number of workers on the alternate track.
Moral philosophers call differences in wording "framing effects." This study was designed to specifically examine the efficacy of such effects. The study was conducted in two parts, the first of which dealt specifically with the trolley problem. The presentation of the problem was presented eight different narrative presentations, or "dimensions," coded both for the varying presentation factors and the "kill-save" variation. The study found that people were far more likely to agree with statements worded with the "save" variation.
While this study is fairly limited in the range of difference in presentation--or at least compared to comparing a video game to a written description--but it demonstrates that the differences can be profound in how the moral problem is conceived by the participant. My expectation is that similar differences would exist in any medium. For example, camera angles in a film presentation may affect the moral disposition of the viewer when presented with what may be the identical moral scene. This intra-medium analysis does not, in my opinion, make it impossible to examine inter-medium differences. Ultimately, the most predominant factor of the moral dilemma presented is the dilemma itself. Although the "framing effects" may 'nudge' moral intuitions to one side or other, the essential aspects of the morally reasoning process, once reflected upon, remain the same. The is, however, an immense value in examining, as this study did, the nature of the 'nudge.'
References:
Petrinovich, Lewis and O'Neill, Patricia. (1996). Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions. Ethology and Sociobioiogy 17:145-171. New York, NY: Elsevier Science Inc.
The primary focus of an upcoming project I am working on is comparing whether certain medium presentation mediums of a moral dilemma affect the moral decisions of those confronted with morally challenging scenarios. The question is a primarily rhetorical one: does the method the story is told by effect the moral persuasiveness of the story. Within the field of rhetoric, similar considerations have been made by specifically changing word selection in certain aspects of a story. A 1996 study by Lewis Petrinovich and Patricia O'Neill (Journal of Ethnology and Sociobiology), studied exactly this. By examining the differences in the decisions of groups posed with the trolley problem first posed by Phillipa Foot when the moral dilemma presented at conclusion of the problem was with either "saving" a number of workers or "killing" the reciprocal number of workers on the alternate track.
Moral philosophers call differences in wording "framing effects." This study was designed to specifically examine the efficacy of such effects. The study was conducted in two parts, the first of which dealt specifically with the trolley problem. The presentation of the problem was presented eight different narrative presentations, or "dimensions," coded both for the varying presentation factors and the "kill-save" variation. The study found that people were far more likely to agree with statements worded with the "save" variation.
While this study is fairly limited in the range of difference in presentation--or at least compared to comparing a video game to a written description--but it demonstrates that the differences can be profound in how the moral problem is conceived by the participant. My expectation is that similar differences would exist in any medium. For example, camera angles in a film presentation may affect the moral disposition of the viewer when presented with what may be the identical moral scene. This intra-medium analysis does not, in my opinion, make it impossible to examine inter-medium differences. Ultimately, the most predominant factor of the moral dilemma presented is the dilemma itself. Although the "framing effects" may 'nudge' moral intuitions to one side or other, the essential aspects of the morally reasoning process, once reflected upon, remain the same. The is, however, an immense value in examining, as this study did, the nature of the 'nudge.'
References:
Petrinovich, Lewis and O'Neill, Patricia. (1996). Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions. Ethology and Sociobioiogy 17:145-171. New York, NY: Elsevier Science Inc.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Flickr and Twitter: Too Much Effort (And then some...)
The past few weeks I've been working with two forms of social media that I had thus far managed to avoid. I feel compelled to write about my experiences with each both because this sort of reflection is required for a class I'm taking and because I spent a great deal of time pondering what about these sites make them unique enough to fulfill whatever cyber-voids that Facebook, blogging, commenting, texting, and emailing don't.
Twitter
Of the two, Twitter is the most important. This is both because its sudden ubiquity, but also because it has become our de facto agora in contemporary society. I had a very hard time crossing into the realm of "Tweeters" (this is the right terms for someone on Twitter, right?), because I am aware that should any amount of fame or infamy ever find me, my Twitter posts will be the likely point of focus of any public speculation on my state of mind, interests, or opinions either relevant or irrelevant to whatever notoriety I may incur. Thus, picking a user name on Twitter was a dizzying challenge of prediction and restraint. Do I use my real name? Do I use an absurd name? Will all of humanity either find me pretentious or ridiculous for choosing or not choosing either one of those? (I eventually settled on the name "TysonMe"--decidedly not clever, but probably unoffensive as well.)
Tweeting hasn't been too much of a chore. It's as easy as sending a text message or updating my status of facebook. Which of course brings me to my biggest issue with Twitter: What distinguishes it from a facebook feed or text message? I suppose the extreme public nature of Twitter posts is the essence of what makes it different than a facebook post (but only marginally so, unless your facebook privacy settings are cranked all the way up). At the same time, though, this makes me hesitate at the point of tweeting anything: Who is going to read this and why? There is an existential crisis built into the Tweeting process, something simultaneously akin to public nudity and voyeuristic urge, which although probably ignored by many prolific Twitter users (Yes you, Kanye), that creates the risk of the whimsical gaining ground on the profound on happenstance alone.
Answering the question: "What's happening?" has never been such a simultaneously banal and profound act.
Flickr
My first thoughts while trying to register for Flickr: Yahoo has deserved to suffer a long and protracted death.
My current thoughts about using Flickr: Yahoo deserves to suffer and continuing long and protracted death, preferably involving bees and feral dogs.
I've posted hundreds of photos on Facebook, used Picasa any number of times, and uploaded photos to everything from newspaper websites to blogs. The process of setting up my Flickr account was agonizing? What do I get in return for setting up a YahooID? Given the effort, time, and frustration of setting up a web-based account, then having to essentially repeat the process on my phone, I think I may have rather gone through the process of acquiring an STD--at least some portion of that acquisition might be enjoyable.
What did I get for my efforts? Well, not that much. Although I appreciate all the functionality in tagging, geo-tagging, cropping, rights-setting, etc, that Flickr provides, I haven't really found myself warming up to the whole process. Granted, I'm not the photo-taking type, but the level of investment just to get pictures out and available to my friends and family using this site just doesn't provide the type of return that other sites I already use do.
Of the two, Twitter is the most important. This is both because its sudden ubiquity, but also because it has become our de facto agora in contemporary society. I had a very hard time crossing into the realm of "Tweeters" (this is the right terms for someone on Twitter, right?), because I am aware that should any amount of fame or infamy ever find me, my Twitter posts will be the likely point of focus of any public speculation on my state of mind, interests, or opinions either relevant or irrelevant to whatever notoriety I may incur. Thus, picking a user name on Twitter was a dizzying challenge of prediction and restraint. Do I use my real name? Do I use an absurd name? Will all of humanity either find me pretentious or ridiculous for choosing or not choosing either one of those? (I eventually settled on the name "TysonMe"--decidedly not clever, but probably unoffensive as well.)
Tweeting hasn't been too much of a chore. It's as easy as sending a text message or updating my status of facebook. Which of course brings me to my biggest issue with Twitter: What distinguishes it from a facebook feed or text message? I suppose the extreme public nature of Twitter posts is the essence of what makes it different than a facebook post (but only marginally so, unless your facebook privacy settings are cranked all the way up). At the same time, though, this makes me hesitate at the point of tweeting anything: Who is going to read this and why? There is an existential crisis built into the Tweeting process, something simultaneously akin to public nudity and voyeuristic urge, which although probably ignored by many prolific Twitter users (Yes you, Kanye), that creates the risk of the whimsical gaining ground on the profound on happenstance alone.
Answering the question: "What's happening?" has never been such a simultaneously banal and profound act.
Flickr
My first thoughts while trying to register for Flickr: Yahoo has deserved to suffer a long and protracted death.
My current thoughts about using Flickr: Yahoo deserves to suffer and continuing long and protracted death, preferably involving bees and feral dogs.
I've posted hundreds of photos on Facebook, used Picasa any number of times, and uploaded photos to everything from newspaper websites to blogs. The process of setting up my Flickr account was agonizing? What do I get in return for setting up a YahooID? Given the effort, time, and frustration of setting up a web-based account, then having to essentially repeat the process on my phone, I think I may have rather gone through the process of acquiring an STD--at least some portion of that acquisition might be enjoyable.
What did I get for my efforts? Well, not that much. Although I appreciate all the functionality in tagging, geo-tagging, cropping, rights-setting, etc, that Flickr provides, I haven't really found myself warming up to the whole process. Granted, I'm not the photo-taking type, but the level of investment just to get pictures out and available to my friends and family using this site just doesn't provide the type of return that other sites I already use do.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Research: The Rhetoric of Video Games
Article Reviewed: The Rhetoric of Video Games by Ian Bogost
One of challenges of bringing the study of a video games into the realm of academic discourse is attempting to define the academic ontology that video games can be studied under. Computer science is an obvious choice, as are fields that study human computer interactions (i.e. psychology, neurology, computer engineering), media studies, and the effects of video games on children. Philosophers and rhetoricians also seem to have a stick in this fight, examining games as some sort of combination of narrative medium and rhetorical play. One of the more seminal arguments for game under this interpretation is presented by Ian Bogost in "The Rhetoric of Video Games."
Bogost argues that video games present a new form of rhetoric, "procedural rhetoric," that, in the case of video games, is a subset of digital rhetoric and visual rhetoric. Illustrating his point by citing games such as Rockstar Studios Bully,"...models the social environment of high school through an expressive system of rules, and makes a procedural argument for the necessity of confrontation;" and Will Wright's Spore, which "subtly arguing through its game play that the spread of life in the universe is most likely caused by sentient beings transporting other creatures from star to star."
I find that there are three profound implications to Bogost's essay, two that he names and one that he does not. First, as Bogost writes, "...playing video games is a kind of literacy... that helps us make or critique
the systems we live in." Second, "By teaching...arguments in procedural form—even simple ones like models of their everyday life—video games can become a carrot medium for both programming and expression." The final implication, that Bogost does not overtly mention, but can be derived from his work, is that video games merit the same forms of study and criticism as other forms of rhetoric. Video games are just as susceptible to critical inquiry as literature or film and gaming elements, like literary elements (i.e. syntax, metaphor) or visual elements (i.e. composition, color), are just as due for analysis and study. Conventions of genre and form in video games should and will become principle to cultural and social understanding of the medium.
For my own research, I found it interesting that Bogost on multiple occasions cited Plato and his use of allegory to make rhetorical arguments about behavior and perception. To contrast and place video games next to classical forms of rhetorical discourse says a great deal about what video games may be capable of in terms of "education" in the most classical sense of the word. That said, of course, I find no closer real world analog to Plato's Cave Allegory than the contemporary living room, with its large screen TVs, XBOX's, Blue Ray players, and 24/7 cable programming feeds. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
References
Bogost, Ian. (2008). The rhetoric of video games. In K. Salen (Ed.), The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (117-140). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
One of challenges of bringing the study of a video games into the realm of academic discourse is attempting to define the academic ontology that video games can be studied under. Computer science is an obvious choice, as are fields that study human computer interactions (i.e. psychology, neurology, computer engineering), media studies, and the effects of video games on children. Philosophers and rhetoricians also seem to have a stick in this fight, examining games as some sort of combination of narrative medium and rhetorical play. One of the more seminal arguments for game under this interpretation is presented by Ian Bogost in "The Rhetoric of Video Games."
Bogost argues that video games present a new form of rhetoric, "procedural rhetoric," that, in the case of video games, is a subset of digital rhetoric and visual rhetoric. Illustrating his point by citing games such as Rockstar Studios Bully,"...models the social environment of high school through an expressive system of rules, and makes a procedural argument for the necessity of confrontation;" and Will Wright's Spore, which "subtly arguing through its game play that the spread of life in the universe is most likely caused by sentient beings transporting other creatures from star to star."
I find that there are three profound implications to Bogost's essay, two that he names and one that he does not. First, as Bogost writes, "...playing video games is a kind of literacy... that helps us make or critique
the systems we live in." Second, "By teaching...arguments in procedural form—even simple ones like models of their everyday life—video games can become a carrot medium for both programming and expression." The final implication, that Bogost does not overtly mention, but can be derived from his work, is that video games merit the same forms of study and criticism as other forms of rhetoric. Video games are just as susceptible to critical inquiry as literature or film and gaming elements, like literary elements (i.e. syntax, metaphor) or visual elements (i.e. composition, color), are just as due for analysis and study. Conventions of genre and form in video games should and will become principle to cultural and social understanding of the medium.
For my own research, I found it interesting that Bogost on multiple occasions cited Plato and his use of allegory to make rhetorical arguments about behavior and perception. To contrast and place video games next to classical forms of rhetorical discourse says a great deal about what video games may be capable of in terms of "education" in the most classical sense of the word. That said, of course, I find no closer real world analog to Plato's Cave Allegory than the contemporary living room, with its large screen TVs, XBOX's, Blue Ray players, and 24/7 cable programming feeds. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
References
Bogost, Ian. (2008). The rhetoric of video games. In K. Salen (Ed.), The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (117-140). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
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