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Proocedural Representations of Ideologies

Proocedural Representations of Ideologies. An example:. About me, and why I am here. Five years in ludology MSc Video Games (A Critical Simulation Analysis) MSc Education and Technology (Perceptions of Ideology in Simulation Games) Why What How. Why games and simulations?.

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Proocedural Representations of Ideologies

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  1. Proocedural Representations of Ideologies

  2. An example:

  3. About me, and why I am here • Five years in ludology • MSc Video Games (A Critical Simulation Analysis) • MSc Education and Technology (Perceptions of Ideology in Simulation Games) • Why • What • How

  4. Why games and simulations? • New medium for expressions of ideologies • Increasingly becoming part of political discourse • Politicians • NGOs • Interests organizations • Advertisement

  5. Official Howard Dean 2004 PrimariesOfficial Republican National Congress 2006'Underground' Bush 2004 Pres election

  6. Momma Kills Animals

  7. US Military

  8. ”Hacktivists”

  9. Why? Pt II • QCDA: Simulations and Models from Key Stage 1 (Year 2/age ~7) • 32.5 million gamers in UK • Avg age: 28 • 86% of girls aged 13-19 • Weekly play time boys 13-19: 11 hours • Source: TNS TIPO Technology for gamesindustry.com

  10. ”Procedurality” • Core component of computational representation (Murray 1997) • Relying on 'procedures' • Streams of logical expressions • 'do if', • 'do when' • 'do after' • 'do if not' • etc

  11. Game of Life • For every increment in time, • All cells look at their eight neighbours • If equal or less than two alive • Die (from loneliness) • If between 3 and 6 alive • Live • If equal to or more than seven alive • Die (from starvation)

  12. A similar model • For every increment in time, • All cells look at their eight neighbours • If more than X% different from me • Move • If less than X% different from me • Stay

  13. An entirely different model? • For every increment in time, • All cells look at their eight neighbours • If more than X% different from me • Move • If less than X% different from me • Stay

  14. Procedural Representations of Ideologies • ”Manipulation of symbols through procedures” • Symbols widen interpretational space • Is vs could have beenvs ought to have been • Hermenutic relationship: procedures/symbols • September 12th revisited

  15. My questions • What do these games say? • How can we analyse them? • Where can we find a (somewhat) compatible conceptual framework?

  16. Critical Simulation Analysis • Based on Norman Fairclough's work in Critical Discourse Analysis (1995, 2003) • Six concepts: • Intertextuality (and absence/presence) • Social Actors • Evaluations • Background Knowledge • Modalities • Nominalizations

  17. The McDonald's Video Game

  18. 'Rainforest'

  19. The Game Experience • To what extent do people project their own understandings on to the game? • How does this impact their ability to understand models they disagree with? • How do people make long-term plans on assumptions they disagree with?

  20. A few player experiences • “but I don't want to make a profit with McDonald's products...” (18:08) • “But obviously if I have to increase my production, I have to do something...” (21:52)”

  21. A few player experiences • “I haven't got enough customers... which is a good thing, to be honest. Like... McDonald's is such a bad thing for you. Why would you want to eat there in the first place?” (31:40) • “How's my shop doing? Oh, excellent! There's a huge queue!” (41:50)

  22. A few player experience • I'm trying to make everyone happy at the moment, because it seems in that game that if you don't make everybody happy, you can't [win]... even if you as a person don't believe in that, but the rules of the game seem to think that if one of the groups is not happy, you lose the whole game!” (P5, 29:40)

  23. That is what games do! • Valorize the outcome (Juul 2005) • Disambiguate the model • Play qua game or qua social statement

  24. Modeling Essential Contestability • Congestion Charge (Freeden 2005) • Indeterminacy of 'Public Goods'

  25. Ideologies Rorshach • Allowing people to construct their own meaning • Their own 'valorization' • Playing their own game • Simple task: Set congestion charge to whatever you think is most fair. Ask any questions you will about the simulation.

  26. Participants • 1: Apolitical, only votes because he feels he kind of has to. • 2: Conservative • 3: Social liberal • 4: Life-long socialist activist

  27. What they said • Apolitical 200: • I take the bus. So can everybody else. • Conservative 45: • I don't want the state to force people to do anything. But I also don't want to sit on the bus for too long. So double the amount of bus takers. • Social Liberal 114: Maximise gain to society. • Revenue from congestion charge + half of time saved * mean minute salary – pollution costs. • Socialist 80: • Get more than half of population into busses.

  28. Essentially contestable models as research tool? • Normal biases: Acquiescence, central tendency, social desirability. • Needs to accommodate everything people could possible imagine (e.g. Individual travel time, accidents) • ”Model/modeling literacy”

  29. Thank you! • Arthur Hjorth • arthur.hjorth@stx.oxon.org • Bibliography • Freeden, M. 2005. What Should the ‘Political’ in Political Theory Explore?*. Journal of Political Philosophy 13, no. 2: 113-134. • Juul, Jesper. 2005. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. The MIT Press. • Murray, Janet H. 1998. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. MIT Press, August 28.

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