This blog is designed to describe my experience of playing Will Wright's most recent PC game, Spore. The various posts in this blog will lend insight into the teaching element of games and explore several subjects including gameplay analysis, history of games such as Spore, artificial intelligence, and why Spore has been so greatly anticipated for years. Please feel free to leave comments and describe your own gaming experiences!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Commentary on a Great Article About Spore, Revisiting Old Concepts
Recently, I’ve been doing some research for the paper I’m writing about how Spore can be used as an education/teaching tool. A friend gave me a copy of the September/October edition of Seed Magazine, which featured articles about Spore. After reading the articles and interviews, I can say that I’ve never read a more complete, relevant source of information about Spore. The main article, “The Creation Simulation,” was the most impressive because it talked about everything I’ve written about in these blogs and more. I wanted to go ahead and share it in a blog because it presents a lot of very intelligent ideas about Spore’s design, its criticisms, and why it can be used in education.
This article is set up in a great way because it starts off by giving a detailed description of how Will Wright and his design team went about incorporating science into the game. I’ve always known that Wright spent the last eight years meticulously researching for this game, but until I read this article, I had no idea just how much research and thought went into designing it. Overall, the science in Spore is centered on two main ideas. The first is a documentary film made in the ‘70s called Powers of Ten. I’ve never seen it, but it shows a zoom out from a man all the way to the universe. I can see why this was a good inspiration for Spore. The second is the Drake Equation. It’s a pretty complex equation that astrobiologist Frank Drake came up with to quantify the prevalence of intelligence in the galaxy. Will Wright took a lot of inspiration from this equation and even incorporated it into the Space Phase of Spore by name in one of the mission briefs. The article says that by looking at these inspirational scientific ideas, Spore started off as the ultimate science project. After this came the research. Wright handpicked his team members and had them read science books and research galactic dynamics, the origin of life, and sciences from sociology to astrobiology. I can’t even go into all the detail of this research because it’s so expansive. However, during design, some team members started worrying about how all this science would appeal to the gaming audience. So while Wright would look at the latest scientific novelties of the game and be extremely impressed, the “cute team” would express doubts. The “science team” had to eventually make compromises in order to make this hard science approachable. This came at a cost though. Some of the impressive scientific concepts had to be either removed or significantly dumbed-down to make the game more user-friendly. For example, Wright was determined to show that travelling faster than the speed of light is impossible, but this had to be overlooked in order to make the Space Phase more enjoyable. The best way the article described the gradual loss of complex science in the game is by saying that Spore went from being the ultimate science project to the ultimate game. The editing of science in Spore caused a lot of scientists who reviewed the game to express the belief that Spore was more about intelligent design and inaccurately used terms like “evolution” and “mutation.”
The article then shifts to show how the cute aspect of Spore is actually something that may have saved the game from being labeled as inaccurate. The main point that’s made here is that “the tiny planets and multilimbed creatures give out a very strong message that this isn’t quite our world, so why should it be playing by our rules?” (p. 51). The creatures in the game are different from what we see in real life, yet they can be seen as a basis for understanding the real thing. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, there is a potential to teach these broad scientific concepts through Spore. It doesn’t have to be scientifically flawless in order to introduce these principles to the audience. Wright elaborates on this idea in the article as well. Another good point made in the article is that because evolution is such a complex process, it’s difficult to visualize and experience because it takes place over such a long period of time. Spore gives us the opportunity to actually see this process taking place. Write emphasizes the fact that the big scientific message is to show that life evolves. Simple as that. I thought that this was a very important point to make and I also found great significance in another idea like this in the article. This idea is that Spore “may not teach or visualize scientific fact, but teaches scientific thinking itself” (p. 51). That is, concepts of observation, experimentation and questioning that come from playing a game like this.
There’s no way I can go in detail into all the other great points that are brought up in this magazine because there are so many. In the article I was just writing about above, the author goes into Sporn, AI, female gamers, intelligent design versus evolution, a comparison of the Sims, and the future of gaming. So, pretty much everything I’ve covered in my blog posts until now. If you are able to, I would highly recommend getting a copy of this magazine and reading it. There’s also an interview with Will Wright, a documentary of five video game projects that are expanding science, and other general articles about evolution and ecology. It’s a great reference for anyone who’s interested in the larger issues surrounding Spore.
After writing this blog, I was able to find the article I was talking about online, but I still suggest looking through the whole magazine if you’re able to. Here’s the link:
Here's a link to the power of 10 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBsOeLcUARw There's also a strange website: http://www.powersof10.com/ It's about the video and the concept. There's a lot of interesting production information about the video and some unusual typos littered about. They also link to a Nickelodeon game. I wasn't expecting much, but I was still underwhelmed.
In bringing up the scientific accuracy of the game, you bring up an important point that educators should probably pay more attention to. It is often described as the difference between games and simulations, although this can get somewhat confusing as we have talked about games as simulations. The idea is that games are best (both in terms of entertainment and as learning tools) when they caricature their subject matter to some degree. In this way the learner can come to see the area in broad strokes instead of getting bogged down in minutiae. The reasoning goes much farther than dumbing the game down, although it's often hard to get part content inaccuracy.
1 comment:
Here's a link to the power of 10 video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBsOeLcUARw
There's also a strange website:
http://www.powersof10.com/
It's about the video and the concept. There's a lot of interesting production information about the video and some unusual typos littered about. They also link to a Nickelodeon game. I wasn't expecting much, but I was still underwhelmed.
In bringing up the scientific accuracy of the game, you bring up an important point that educators should probably pay more attention to. It is often described as the difference between games and simulations, although this can get somewhat confusing as we have talked about games as simulations. The idea is that games are best (both in terms of entertainment and as learning tools) when they caricature their subject matter to some degree. In this way the learner can come to see the area in broad strokes instead of getting bogged down in minutiae. The reasoning goes much farther than dumbing the game down, although it's often hard to get part content inaccuracy.
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