Games in Libraries

Video games can cause debate not only in the effects of violence, but also in whether or not they should be used in schools and libraries. With some people’s negative views of video games it can be hard to defend using library funds and space for games. There is quite a bit of research that defends the value of video games, and could be used to back up a decision to incorporate video games into a school or public library. Gaming promotes literacy, by needing problem solving skills, making hypotheses, etc., as well as often requiring quite a bit of reading to play the game. For example, Pokemon games can have lots of text that must be read carefully. MMPOGs (massive multiplayer online games) promote literacy as well. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied the learning that takes place: “‘[MMPOG] play is a thoroughly literate activity involving manipulation meaning and achieving particular ends.’ Some of the literate activities taking place in MMPOGs are ‘researching equipment, making maps, managing resources, investing currencies, building models, designing strategies, debating facts and theories, and writing.’”(Quoted by Faris in Children & Libraries, UIUC Ebscohost article here).

On The Shifted Librarian Blog, Jenny Levine has posted quite a bit lately about whether gaming promotes Reading, How Gaming Promotes Reading and Library Usage, and How School Libraries Can Use Board Games. These give anecdotal evidence and quantitative examples of how libraries can use games to bridge to literacy and publicize the library for teens. School Library Journal's Digital Reshift blog also recently posted obvious reasons why your library needs a Wii, and 10 Reasons Why Your Library Needs a Wii (Part 2).

By introducing games in libraries, the libraries attract a part of the population that otherwise would not be served, increase the library’s role in teens’ lives and serve as more of a community hub. Video games may draw teens into the library, and then librarians can work to connect with them in other ways, too. There are Last year, at the Chadron Public Library in Nebraska, teens “borrowed 20 to 30 books a month. Now it's well over 300 each month. The reason: video games.” (Libraries Lure with Video Games) Teens coming into the library to play video games may also realize that the stereotypes they have about libraries are not true; it isn’t just stuffy quietness and books.

I think another important aspect of reaching underserved youth is for potential service later. Teens might not be interested in or not have time for recreational reading, which is what many library users think is a very important service of the library. Teens might not choose to read at that point in their life, but if they have a good relationship with the library they might use it for other things later on.

A few weeks ago in class, Carol mentioned the historical core foundations for libraries’ existence: collection/preservation, organization, and access. These reasons for libraries also relate to a young adult librarian and his or her role, and gaming can easily fit into and reinforce each of these roles.

The young adult librarian should build a collection of material that includes vibrant quality material that is relevant to teens. This includes not just books but music, audio books, magazines, and movies. Incorporating games into the library’s collection includes gaming magazines (like PlayStation: The Official Magazine), manga series that have crossovers (like .Hack), and other books that relate to video games.

Of course, the youth librarian should organize the collection so youth can easily find material without frustration. However, just organizing or decorating a cool teen space is a good start but not enough. They need to relate to young people and welcome them to the library. This includes respecting young people and providing services for them: helping them with information needs, research, and recreational needs. Traditionally recreational needs meant helping young people find books, but this idea can include a lot more. Just like a knitting program or craft program can bring a group of people together using the library as a social space, a library game event provides a safe, fun environment for kids.

The idea of access also can be related to using games in the library. Teen librarians can set out the gaming magazines and related books in an easily seen location, like right by the computers if a lot of teens come to use them. Posters and fliers about gaming events could be placed there. It also should include other interactions with young people to help get to know them more. Related to this, the young adult librarian should create and facilitate programming for teens that is also relevant to young people, which will encourage them to come to the library.

I think different libraries are at vastly different ends of the spectrum in their views and knowledge of using gaming. I don’t have any experience using it and am not working in a library now, but would be excited by the potential of incorporating it into a youth services program. What kinds of experience have you had?

Babyz and Vagina Guitars

On our class message board, we’ve been discussing Miss Bimbo. Klara Kim mentioned The Aberrant Gamer’s take on the game Miss Bimbo. Miss Bimbo seems like a pretty bad idea as something targeted at "tweens" (I agree with The Aberrant Gamer on the cringeworthiness of this word!). But as a social satire I think it's kind of fun.

In that article, The Aberrant Gamer mentions something that's been bothering me for a long time, that even when girls take interest in traditionally male hobbies, they are still being marketed to as Grrlz rather than young consumers.


Imagine™: Babyz

For instance, in The Aberrant Gamer’s previously mentioned column, she mentions a game called Imagine™: Babyz. Here's part of the description of the game from amazon.com:

"-As a babysitter, take care of up to six babies. Feed them, play with them, take them for walks in the garden, and keep them healthy.
-Spend your hard-earned money on new baby outfits, toys, or food, or on new furniture for your house.
-Customize and clean your house with fun mini-games: vacuum, paint the walls, mow the grass, and more."

At least Miss Bimbo strives to be over-the-top and satirical. I guess Imagine™ Babyz is just a new kind of more complex Betsy Wetsy for the DS generation, but it still bothers me that girls (girlz?) are so deeply encouraged at such a young age to regard reproduction (especially up to six kids!) as a fun play thing. Imagine™ also gives young girls (and let there be no mistake, they’re definitely aimed at girls. The covers of the game all have (mostly white) women on them, except for Babyz, which has three (white) babies on it) a digital look at four other careers “relevant to what girls in this age group have indicated they are most interested in”: Fashion Designer, Figure Skater, Master Chef, and Animal Doctor. I won’t even begin to comment on the limited scope of careers that Ubisoft seems to think young girls should be aspiring to or the fact that only the Veterinarian—erm, sorry, Animal Doctor path actually requires a college degree.


If Miss Bimbo is alarming because it encourages eating disorders and negative body images amongst a population already fraught with eating disorders and negative body images, isn’t Imagine™: Babyz just as guilty in a teen pregnancy sense? According to Planned Parenthood, one million teenagers (97 per 1,000 women aged 15–19) become pregnant each year. This is obviously not including women under 15 who become pregnant each year. Furthermore, “teen mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and more likely than their peers who delay childbearing to live in poverty and to rely on welfare.” Lucky for them, not graduating high school only knocks out one potential Imagine™ career field.


Daisy Rock Guitars

I remember talking with one of my friends back in high school about girly guitars. Our local guitar seller had a few choice items in sparkly pink and purple, much like the Daisy Rock guitars. She told me about how almost every time she went to the store whether to buy a guitar or to just pass time while waiting for her (male) friends to finish perusing the store, the store clerks would try to push her to play one of these sparkly instruments. It was more amusing than offensive at the time and we joked about it; “Look, most of the people who know me already know I have a vagina, so I don’t really need to advertise it on my instrument.”
I just discovered Daisy Rock Guitars. They have a special line for younger girls called the Debutante line:
http://debutante.daisyrock.com/
These guitars come in a wide variety of colors ranging from Bubble Gum Pink to Atomic Pink with the occasional Princess Purple or Awesome Blue (only available in daisy-shape) thrown in for good measure. There is only one guitar that isn’t blatantly girly and that’s the Ruby Red Rock Candy Electric Guitar Pack, though the Ruby Red seems a little more like hot pink to me.
The guitars come in different shapes, as well. Four years ago, my friend and I were joking about the idea of a sparkly girly guitar being a musical declaration of vagina-ownership. Now they’re actually making girly guitars in shapes of classic vagina symbols. They make heart and star shaped ones too.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of encouraging young girls to learn an instrument. I just don’t see why they can only achieve this with pink sparkles.

Superheroes teach creativity, teamwork, and proper etiquette

As I write this I can hear my brother in the next room talking to a group of his friends... the last words out of his mouth were "it's time to do some crime-fighting - if you want to hang out, we may have a very good mission coming up for you."

He meets these friends online several times a week to play a "Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game" (MMPORG) titled "City of Heroes." As I read Henry Jenkin's white paper, this game came to mind constantly when I thought about my brother's participation in this game. EmilyZ's post about avatars motivated me to revisit a project I'd abandoned, so here's a slideshow of mixed quality using screenshots my brother has taken over the last few years playing the game to illustrate a few of the concepts from Jenkin's paper:



If the video doesn't embed properly, try going to this link where you should be able to view it separately.

Here are some links directly to the character stories, I don't know that they'll show up properly in a video (they're kind of dark, don't look at them if morbid stories bother you):

Persephone Lee, Mr. Plutonium, Silent Seth (creepy), and Dreameater

Also, the bit of Pokemon-ish music that plays during one bit of the video is from this site, the song is titled "run girl run" and it's a CC licensed song I found on archive.org here.

EmilyZ talked about avatars as expressions of personality. I don't deny that's a really fun part of them, experimenting with "different selves," but some people are more likely to invest the characters with personal meaning and some people are more likely to enjoy investing in a fictional environment that they can explore through a character that doesn't really reflect their own personality. I mentioned some issues with my brothers' female characters here. I find it amusing because it contrasts with his purpose, but other people might find it more offensive or scary. How you play also affects how you react, I suppose.

Also, this game costs $15 a month and requires a computer with a fast internet hookup and pretty decent graphics card, so there are definite barriers to participation in this sort of thing for many people. I'm sure there are more accessible environments out there, but I thought it might be nice to do a more extended tour of one of the more complex ones and it was nice to have the screenshots already there. :-)

Another Irregular News Roundup

Howard Gardner on "The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading."

NPR story on Asian stereotypes in the media (starting with Long Duck Dong in Sixteen Candles)

WWE and new marketing push for kids from Variety. There's more here at AdWeek.

Crunchyroll, a website targeted at Asian youth

New York Times article on the Facebook application, The Honesty Box

Interesting experiment in interactive fiction sponsored by Penguin UK

New York Times article on Nickelodeon's massive games launch

Keep up with teen news with this feed at alltop.

YALSA blog post about recent coverage of teen library services

ShiftedLibrarian post about gaming and libraries (see this earlier post as well)

New web-based comic strip application

Cool time-lapse video of the spread of Wal-Mart across the US

Tame the Web on the banning of social networking sites at the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris PL in Indiana

Provocative blog post on what constitutes "real" library work these days

Storytelling Conventions in Adventure Videogames

Here's my first attempt at a podcast... I've been having the same conversation over and over in different contexts because my YA Lit class, this one, and my family's interests have all been converging lately. How do we understand the media formats as genres? How do we see connections between them or what differences do we see as one story is extended across different formats?

In the sound file below I compare a YA fantasy novel, Sabriel, to the adventure/puzzle games I grew up playing, explaining why similarities across the two formats' storytelling conventions would make this novel a fantastic game. I also touch on other stories that have played out across various media formats, like The Matrix and Joss Whedon's Firefly.

boomp3.com

I'm picturing lots of different scenes from the novel, videogames, television shows, and movies as I discuss them but I can't do "screenshots" for all of them so I've settled for cover images to illustrate my context:

Video Reflection For Week 7: Interactive Media

Behold as my avatar types on a virtual computer and plays video games inside a video game!



LINKS MENTIONED IN VIDEO

Avril Lavigne "Sk8r Boi" machinima.

Digital storytelling machinima of a Japanese folk tale.

Article about need for game criticism.

An Escapist Magazine feature on "What if everyone could make video games?"


LINKS NOT MENTIONED IN VIDEO:

Example of a machinima webcomic, "Concerned", parodying the game "Half-Life 2". You can find humor anywhere, including in a post-apocalyptic future where humans are enslaved to cruel alien overlords.

Example of a column by The Aberrant Gamer, this time about a character in the Objectivist dystopia featured in the game "Bioshock".

(I like The Aberrant Gamer because she focuses on unconventional games and always has something interesting to say about game design, narrative, and the choices players make in gameplay. I really admire the fact that she takes a hobby she loves so seriously and talks about games and game culture in a way that is meaningful. Even if I haven't played more than half the games she writes about, she does it in a compelling manner that makes me feel like I have.)

Last of all, a direct link to an mp3 of a mashup combining Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Eric Clapton's "Layla".

Video Game Analysis Highlights: Guitar Hero

I wanted to post some highlights from my video game analysis for this week’s class. I’m going to talk about Guitar Hero, primarily because I’m familiar with it and I know a lot of teens (and college kids) spend a lot of time playing it. First, watch the video I made below (excuse the copyright infringement for using more than a snippet of “Message in a Bottle” – the microphone for our little digital camera is terrible):



Now a few additional notes that weren’t in the video. Guitar Hero 3 allows players with Wii or Playstation 3 to play against each other online as well as in person. My favorite part about this game is that it’s a great “party game.” You can play with a big group of people – some might watch, while others will just talk and enjoy the music in the background. We’ve done Guitar Hero for a YA program at our library, and it was just as successful as the DDR programs we’ve done. (I even did DDR for 1st-3rd graders last summer, and it went over well – I’m sure Guitar Hero could work, too.)

The beauty of Guitar Hero is that you can pick up any of the games and play them without having played the others. There isn’t a continuous storyline or learned elements in one that are necessary for another. (Which also makes it fun and easy to do for a library program.)

This is one of the few video games I will play. You have a lot of options to play a variety of songs (especially if you get 1, 2, 3, and the 80s version), and you can choose your character, outfit, and guitar. If you play on easy, it’s pretty hard to “die” once you get the hang of it (you can lose the game if you play too many incorrect notes and the Rock Meter goes into the red zone).

I could say more, but this is already over 250 words, and I should really be packing for the LEEP weekend.

Games & Literacy

I saw this post on the Shifted Librarian's blog and thought it was appropriate for next week's discussion.

What Do Games Have to Do with Literacy?

Teaching Information Literacy through Fantasy Football

We haven't talked too much about libraries using gaming yet. Check out Paul Waelchli’s article in the January 2008 issue of the Association of College and Research Library News: Librarians' sport of choice: Teaching information literacy through fantasy football (C&RL News, January 2008. Vol. 69, No. 1)

So, not only can librarians teach students to be media literate, they can use what young people already love doing (video games) and connect from there to teach about information literacy, which then students will apply to other situations. That's the premise, anyway.

“Librarians want students to effectively identify and evaluate information and make decisions based upon what they discover. These are just some of the skills that an information literate student successfully applies. These are the same skills that more than 19 million people use on a daily or weekly basis playing fantasy sports....The challenge for librarians is to connect fantasy sports skills to information literacy and create building blocks for academic applications of the same concepts. One library, University of Dubuque, did just this by teaching fantasy football research to incoming student athletes. Through the lesson, students engaged in discussions of creditability, validity, timeliness, and search strategies to find and evaluate fantasy football information…."

He also has a Research Quest blog on which he writes about "educational applications for video games and gaming strategies," from political video games to Grand Theft Auto.
And, finally, here's a chart from his blog showing which ACRL Information Literacy Standards are met by playing Final Fantasy, Halo, and Madden.

I first saw this on Jenny Levine's blog: http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/

Another take on social networking for kids

I just found this story about Kerpoof, a website for kids designed to act as both a "social networking" site and a multimedia tool set.

It's an intriguing idea - unlike MySpace or Facebook, the "networks" are groups that require passwords to join, keeping the connections private and much more secure. The idea seems similar to Ning, a social networking site where anyone can set up their own "network" based on a shared interest or other connection. The difference here seems to be the extra level of privacy controls so kids, teachers, and/or parents can be careful who kids connect with online.

According to techcrunch's Mark Henderson,

"Kerpoof is working on making it possible for kids to collaborate over movies and stories, too, and on adding support for games and social puzzles later in the year. A type of virtual currency will be coming soon as well."

Evidently the plan is to transition into a subscription-based fee service in the future, but for now it's totally free. People working with kids may want to get a good look at it now before they have to pay for it.

If you are just starting to check out social networking sites, the Library 2.0 Ning group may be something you want to look into - it's a group setup just for people interested in figuring out new services and features libraries can develop using recent technology and media trends.

Oh, How I Love the Onion

Enjoy the almost-whole-truths of fake news:

Half Of 26-Year-Old's Memories Nintendo-Related

Best-Selling Game Spawns Best-Selling Book

Check out this story from NPR about the new book based on the Halo video game series. Read more about the book--Contact Harvest--on Amazon and more about Halo here.