Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Practical Problem Solving and Games!

There are some fantastic thinkers who have considered the pedagogical implications of game and the impact game theory can have on the process of education. James Paul Gee and Jane McGonigal have written some fantastic books on the subject and done some fascinating research on the subject. I’d go so far as to call McGonigal’s work in generating gaming communities with practical impact seminal. Sure, it’s not a global phenomenon yet, but her optimism is so infectious, her generosity and work ethic so inspiring that it’s hard not to see her vision of games changing the world becoming a reality. Each victory for her is a landmark, an assurance that our progress as both a subculture and a cultural whole is indefatigable and unstoppable.

I want to believe in McGonigal’s vision, and in a way I do. But she’s very specific in her goals and her conceptual reinforcement, which is fantastic, and I’m not sure I quite agree yet. Because games have taken a lot of my free time and made me something of a social recluse. Well, games, books and writing together have. And television and film. But I digress.

I also just haven’t noticed the kind of conceptual benefit that McGonigal expresses, and I find some of her abstract attempts at solving specific problems through gameplay models to be somewhat obtuse. She essentially sees games as a means of behavioral reinforcement and structural progression in order to showcase an incremental progress system which makes seemingly insurmountable tasks extremely achievable (as I understand it – apologies to the wonderful Ms. McGonigal if I just misrepresented her here!). Such a system relies on a majority of an effected group participating in such a system – World of Warcraft, for example, wouldn’t be able to support its end-game model of giant fifty person raids without a collective understanding and investment in completing the operation again and again, performing specific tasks that form a portion of a massive collective task. McGonigal’s model of collective problem solving makes total sense, if we can get enough people to participate – she says as much. More people need to play games and play them with the kind of focus she has in mind. If they do so, the world can change, reform into a wonderful, beautiful, better place.

I’ve got a notion that games can improve the world in a more personal and individual fashion, based on another claim that McGonigal makes. In her fantastic TED talk she introduces the idea that games boost our self-esteem by presenting us with manageable problems – a game never asks you to solve an un-solvable puzzle, never puts you in a situation where you don’t have the tools to solve the problem you’re presented with. This is totally true, especially now. Games, since around 1998, have endeavored to never present a player with an absolute fail state, an occasion wherein the player will be totally incapable of advancement. The end result is a system of games that are sometimes quite easy, sometimes quite difficult, but always present players with a task that is inimitably do-able.

The downside of this is that gamers sometimes do things that aren’t necessarily in their best interest, things they can’t necessarily do (I recall a situation where a gamer was shot while attempting to subdue an armed assailant in a public place in…I want to say the Netherlands?) and sometimes develop inflated senses of confidence that make them in some measure unbearable. But all games encourage a sort of problem-solving skill set, a tendency to look for solutions where others see problems, and certain games do this explicitly and, despite their abstraction, in such a fashion that encourages the develop of problem solving skill sets in their users. Games like World of Goo and Portal, for example, force players to engage in systemic problem solving that involves assessing resources, environment and goal and then form an effective solution (perhaps not the one the developers anticipated!) based on these factors. This pattern of behavior and thought isn’t just attuned to this sort of systemic problem solving, however. These are the same factors that enter into practical problem solving.

I’m not sure these skills translate perfectly – I’m not aware of any psychological studies on the matter, and to be perfectly frank I’m not sure how you’d form control groups for assessing such a conditional skill set (though psychologists who assess behavioral traits of “gamers” rarely seem troubled by such concerns) but I will say that I’ve personally come to approach practical problems with a more open mind since I’ve started playing more puzzle games. I’m not saying that it magically made me good at solving problems – rather it made me realize that solving problems is something anyone can do, so long as they carefully observe the tools available to them, the problem facing them and the circumstances surrounding that problem.

Perfect example: I’ve been hand-binding books to help out one of my classmates who are micro-publishing a magazine for our MFA program. Hand binding, unfortunately, is quite difficult and takes a shitload of time. Each book takes thirty to forty minutes of collaborative work to complete, even after the signature pages have been printed. And sewing the book is probably the single most time-consuming part of the process for the worker – four book signatures need to be bound by thick gauge fabric thread, bound tightly and securely. And mistakes can happen.

My mistake occurred before I even began sewing – I miss-measured the amount of string I needed to bind the signatures by around half a book length. As such I found myself at the last signature with most of the book assembled, but a string end where I needed another four inches to finish my spine. After briefly lamenting my plight I looked at the resources I had available, noticed some string remnants from previous bindings (over measuring string is encouraged, as under measuring leads to situations like mine) and realized that I could just knot a remnant into my spine on the inside of the signature I was working on and then complete the project. In the end, I created a book that was indistinguishable from the other copies, thanks to sitting down, assessing my resources, assessing the situation and trying to derive a solution for success. I did this a few more times with miss-bound books with skipped stitches and miss-formed spines.

I know it’s a bit much to say that this is a product of me playing puzzle games – I’ve also been involved in wilderness survival since I was a kid and spent time in elementary school in a club that challenged young students by presenting them with engineering puzzles. But as I play more puzzle games I’ve certainly noticed my aptitude for seeing solutions where others see road blocks improve. Sure, I still fuck up a lot, but that’ll happen. I’ve learned to let my failures inform me and help me form solutions. If something doesn’t work, it’s a lesson that can point me in the right direction.

Sorry if this got a little too anecdotal for some – it’s New Years Eve and I’m somewhat homeless, so I’m writing this as a bounce from couch to couch and my gaming rig sits in a storage unit in downtown Brooklyn. I’ve actually gotten my hands on some games I’m incredibly excited to write about – Star Wars: The Old Republic, the final chapters of Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3 and Rage are all stand-out games with great histories and topos that I want to explore and discuss over the next few weeks. DotA 2 will soon be going live, and a renewed involvement in critical theory and textual analysis in the coming months might find its way in here soon. It’s been a wacky year, and just keeping the content coming has been a challenge over the last few weeks. So if you find this particular SNS lacking, but think the topic of the practical impact of games interesting, I apologize (more so than I usually do for these, which is saying quite a bit) and encourage you to read some Ian Bogost, some James Paul Gee and some Jane McGonigal. There’s some great material on this subject, and a discussion is slowly taking shape around it – if you find the topic interesting you should read up and get involved. Become a bigger part of the community and figure out how games can impact the field you care about more than gaming!