Naughts Had, Alls Spent: The Arden Failure and the Challenges of Literature Videogames

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Naughts Had, Alls SpentThe Arden Failure and
the Challenges of Literature Videogames

• Elizabeth Losh
• University of California, Irvine

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a time for taking criticism seriously

• what if educational games are neither the best
  form of education nor the best form of games?

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looking at the data Ute Ritterfeld

• how do serious games compare to learning
  materials that are supposed to be less
  interactive?

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looking at the history Mimi Ito

• what assumptions are made by authority figures
  about educational games?

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looking at the ethics Mia Consalvo

• why would players not cheat in an educational
  game?

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looking at the mechanics Scot Osterweil

• how many educational games are weird hybrids
  like Osterweils imagined title Grand Theft
  Calculus?

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looking at the aestheticsthe serious becomes
trivial Ian Bogost

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asserting that games are aboutliteracy not
knowledge transfer

• James Paul Gee, Henry Jenkins, Kurt Squire,
  and others have been careful to qualify their
  claims.

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what else makes discussion happen?searching for
failure case studies
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beyond failures of usability

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being mindful of outsider hubrissome recent
failures of game criticism
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a failure that actually used the f-word Arden
at Indiana University
a 240,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation
announced in October 2006
on October 2, 2007 the Chronicle of Higher
Education announces the foundation has pulled out
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obviously a rhetorical failure on several
levelsthe initial blog entry on Terra Nova

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the rhetoric of lessons learned

• It's been a bumpy road. We've learned lots of
  lessons, mostly that this is very hard to do, and
  especially hard to do in an academic context. I
  have new layers of respect for the world-builders
  out there.

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the rhetoric of downsizing

• What now? Work continues, with an uncertain
  time frame. I really enjoy writing systems in NWN
  Script, so I will keep tinkering. But - there's
  no telling when there will be anything to report.
  Based on the current direction and progress of
  the project, I should downplay expectations.
  Think "small Dungeons-and-Dragons world with a
  Shakespeare layer," not "World of Warcraft but
  with Hamlet." When we have built a small world
  that people like to play in, we will do some
  experiments. Small, limited objectives. The
  bigger objectives of the Arden project are on
  indefinite hold. 

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scrolling down to self-criticism

• You're all correct in guessing that there's
  more to the story. I made some awful mistakes as
  a manager, which I don't hesitate to admit
  because, well, I am not a manager. And the
  project wasn't funded at a level where hiring a
  manager was feasible. As manager, I did a lot of
  stupid things. 

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and down to criticizing the feasibility of a
Shakespeare game

• The object is and remains to do
  experiments. Emphasizing Shakespeare was a
  mistake. The burdens of a license! Everyone
  thought it was World of Hamlet and the point was
  to teach high school kids 2B2B. But teaching
  Shakespeare has always been an ancillary benefit,
  not the point. I thought it would be cute. But
  putting Shakespeare in the game, I found, took
  away resources from fun. Lore, by itself, did not
  make a fun game. Shakespeare also loaded us up
  with an entire community of expectations, people
  who dig the idea of a digital Shakespeare.

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Castronovas postmortemin Technology Review

• Its no fun . . . You need puzzles and
  monsters . . . or people wont want to play. ...
  Since what I really need is a world with lots of
  players in it for me to run experiments on, I
  decided I needed a completely different
  approach.

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the rhetoric of recuperation

• Our experimental question (kept secret up to
  now) was Are fantasy game players economically
  normal? Or on the contrary, when they make
  themselves into elves and dwarves and hobbits, do
  they stop taking economic decisions seriously?
• published as A Test of the Law of Demand in
  a Virtual World Exploring the Petri Dish
  Approach to Social Science

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scaling back in Arden II Londons Burning

• original plan 500 people to play for 100
  hours per month each
• actual test group 43 players, recruited from
  undergraduate classes, who clocked 10 to 12 hours

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burning London and burning bridgessetting an
anti-literature agenda in Wired

• This is going to be a game about hitting
  rats, chasing down cockatrices. Some would say,
  What a waste of time. But I have no problem with
  it. I like ordinary gameplay. Human nature likes
  to hit rats more than it likes to read text. Why
  do we want to fight against what humans want to
  do?

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three commonly uttered forms of received wisdom
about Arden
failures of experience They were theoreticians
not practitioners. They were players not
designers. (from degree-granting
university-based game design programs) failures
of budgeting They never had enough money for a
project with so many technical challenges. (from
military-funded game development teams) failures
of collegiality They ruined it for the rest of
us. (from those with their own educational
projects in virtual worlds)

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all the kings horses

are these criticisms fair? is it possible to
make a good Shakespeare game? is a Shakespeare
game even a good idea?
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not yet Shakespeare

Meaningful Play Conference, Richard Hilleman,
October 9, 2008
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Speare
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Prosperos Island
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a history of disastrous Shakespeare
adaptationsOrson Welles and Chimes at Midnight

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Hazlitts Prohibition
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is this a better map to Shakespeare?

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why do Shakespeareans find thisform of play more
appealing?
play for fans vs. play for neophytes
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how well can other forms of computational media
do the work of literature?

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Ian Bogost on translation and adaptation

• a role for comparative literature
• looking back to GDC 2005
• Will Wright and others on
• the Emily Dickenson license

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some questions about adaptation

• do games need to have the same stories or
  characters as the original sources?
• could a game be about a counternarrative that is
  repressed in the original work or a seemingly
  marginalized character?
• could the purpose of a literary narrative or
  device be accomplished by other means?
• to what extent do literary experiences imply
  winning or losing?

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whats the difference between fan fiction and
adaptation?

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mash-up madness

• There were a few MMO junkies on the team. The
  lead programmer is a HUGE fan of Final Fantasy
  XI. I really cant stress how infatuated he is
  with that game. The lead designer and the project
  manager are both fans of EQ2. The rest of us play
  a hodgepodge of MMOs. I tried a few different
  games but I eventually settled on Lord of the
  Rings Online. I cant say that there was a single
  favorite amongst all of us.
• I think that EQ2 had a bit of an influence on
  Arden. Like EQ2, Arden had an immensely complex
  crafting system.

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Arden 0 the Multiverse plannine months of work
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Arden I the Neverwinter Nights plansix weeks of
work
Revolution at MIT whats in a Game Engine?
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why settle for these avatars?
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why not these avatars?
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contingency in Shakespeare

• why druids and ogres?
• why not witches and ghosts?

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programming and play
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other stagings and improvisations
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this is a fun game
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what can be learned from the Arden experience?