The%20Birth%20of%20the%20Virtual%20Clinic:%20The%20Virtual%20Terrorism%20Response%20Academy%20as%20Serious%20Game%20and%20Epistemological%20Space

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The Birth of the Virtual Clinic The Virtual
Terrorism Response Academy as Serious Game and
Epistemological Space

• Elizabeth Losh,
• University of California, Irvine

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The Genre of Popular Games of Crisis

• The player is given responsibility for managing a
  rapidly evolving crisis
• The crisis threatens the social order and the
  rule of law.
• The plot revolves around
• terrorist threats, outbreaks
• of disease, civil unrest, etc.
• A problematic example State of Emergency

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The Causality of Disaster in the Game World

• Relatively straightforward algorithms of
  degeneration and regeneration.
• Maneuvers necessary to recover homeostasis in the
  game world can be understood by a layperson.
• No feedback or oscillation in the game world
  (Wiener 1948)
• No power laws or cascading effects in the game
  world (Barabási 2003)
• Example Left Behind

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Problems of Predictability in the Real World

• Erik Hollnagel and negative reporting models
• Fighting from a hole rather than fighting from a
  hill.
• Life can only be understood backwards, but it
  must be lived forwards.
• CalIT2 and information
• systems
• Zeno Franco and the
• role of ideology

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Emergent Behaviors

• Volunteer first-responder brigades in MMORPGs for
  players who are lost or in danger
• Online knowledge-sharing about real-world expert
  practices
• Search and rescue missions
• In online worlds
• Example EVE Online

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How are social actors in positions of authority
as first responders perceived in commercial game
worlds?

• They may be treated as models to emulate in
  search and rescue games.
• They may be considered to be potential agents of
  a government conspiracy.
• They may be encountered as non-playing characters
  that represent corrupt values and potential
  opportunistic gains.

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Metaphors of Contamination

• Spatiality and experience
• Operable workarounds
• Social marketing agendas
• News narratives and informal inductions
• Examples the WhyPox in Whyville and the
  Corrupted Blood plague in World of Warcraft

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Serious Games as a Niche Industry

• A Different Genre Games for Change
• Assume the audience is
• the general public
• Assume the purpose is
• consciousness-raising
• Example Food Force

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Games for First Responders

• Use a variety of game engines
• Present a range of subjectivity positions
• Example VStep RescueSim from Artesis

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Games for First Responders

• Present public employees favorably
• Often give the player little agency to effect
  systemic change, even in Gods eye view games
• Emphasize procedures, equipment, and rules
• Discourage transgressive behavior and intuitive
  play
• Still generally present crises based on
  relatively simple mathematical models.

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Hazmat Hotzone

• Instructor has a Wizard of Oz interface
• Team interactions are evaluated, not just
  individual performance
• Allows for some emergent behavior when teams
  change dynamics
• Secondary acts and unexpected consequences

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Zero Hour from Public Health Games
Emphasis on ubiquitous communication devices and
mobile computing Spatiality trade-offs 2D rather
than 3D graphics Thinking space not physical
space Utilitarian logic
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Incident Commander
Designed as a distance-learning resource
for smaller districts. Multiple scenarios
hostage situation, chemical spill, etc.
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The Beginnings of the Interactive Media
LaboratoryRegimental Surgeon (1989)

• Telemedicine and distance learning
• issues
• Mystery narratives derived from
• popular fiction
• Underdetermination and
• overdetermination
• First-person POV, counterintuitive
• solutions

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Development Principles

1. Narratives of crisis
2. Computer-generated digital environments that are
   explorable from the subject position of
   first-person perspective
3. Interactive technologies that resist platform
   obsolescence
4. Dissemination of product at no cost or minimal
   cost through a distributed network

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The Virtual Practicum Series

Space and Epistemology Max Boisot Information
Space A Framework for Learning in Organizations,
Institutions and Culture (1995)
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Primary Care of the HIV/AIDS Patient (2001)
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Epistemological Spaces
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Disciplinary Spaces Professional Association
and Initiation

• The Birth of the Clinic,
• Michel Foucault
• about space, about language,
• and about death . . .
• it is about the act of seeing,
• the gaze
• the human body defines, by natural right, the
  space of origin and the distribution of disease
  a space whose lines, volumes, surfaces, and
  routes are laid down in accordance with a now
  familiar geometry,
• but it is neither the first, nor the most
  fundamental

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The Context of the Narrativeof the Virtual
Terrorism ResponseAcademy

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Experiential Learning Spaces

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The First-Person Shooter
Galloway on the cinematic framing and the
position and role of the weapon/tool
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Risk Communication

Ideology and Public Rhetoric
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Possible Critiques

Noah Falstein on a simulation of a
simulation The cost to situated, intuitive
learning
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The Artifacts of Traditional Learning

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The Limitations of Keyboard Interfaces
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Are They Puzzles or Games?

• Debates about what constitutes a game
• Jesper Juul, Half-Real

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Are Multiple-Choice Tests an Appropriate
Assessment Tool?
James Paul Gee and the learning revolution?
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The Palace of MemoryAre epistemological spaces
fully capitalized upon?
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The Problem of Cheating

• Mia Consalvos thesis of essential opportunism

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More Questions?

• lizlosh_at_uci.edu