Starting design of Operation ΜΗΝΙΣ: a potentially cool idea

Over the next year, I'm going to have the pleasure of developing an online version of the course I've always considered my favorite to teach: CAMS 1101 Greek Civilization, in which I get to tell my students the amazing story of how Western Civilization discovered the questions that still obsess us--above all, the question of ἀρετή arete ("excellence"). Simply put, that question is more or less just "What does it mean to be a good person?"

Now, though, I get to design it as a practomime from the ground up, and I think I've just had a wonderful idea for the framing:

The Demiurge recruits the students as operatives in Project ΑΡΧΑΙΑ in the usual way (cryptic e-mails on the course's web-site saying that their services have been commandeered to save Western Civilization yada yada yada). In order to reach the mission objectives of knowledge and skill necessary to brief the world about Greek cvilization (including sub-objectives of reading ancient Greek), the Demiurge has coded the following practomimetic simulation into the TSTT:

It's the lead-up to the trial of Socrates, and operatives are inserted into Athenians who could be called on to be jurors. In order to make the best possible decision about his guilt and his penalty, they must learn everything they can about how Socrates ended up on trial (which is, when told correctly, a story that goes back to the Bronze Age), and what the consequences of the trial have been for Western Civilization.

Operatives travel via the TSTT to the agora of Athens in the spring of 399BCE. They must find the answers to the questions put to them by the Demiurge and brief him on those answers, questions like, "What does Achilles mean to Athens?"

In order to complete this task (here's where the "activities" and "assessments" come in): they must gain certification on the TSTT through Challenges in the form of multiple-choice quizzes; they must heighten their particular skills through Ancient/Modern-Interweave Skill-Practice Exercises (AMISPE's); they must power-up the TSTT through Imaginative Text Analysis (ITA), including reference to features of the ancient Greek that demands developing skill in reading that language; they must carry-out Practomime once in the Demiurge's TSTT-simulation, and provide him with Briefings (in disguise as exam essays).

Oh, and did I mention they're going to have to learn the beginning level of ancient Greek to do that?

Thinking about the coming design process energizes me in a way that I have to say nothing else in my professional life ever has: the lessons learned from ΚΤΗΜΑ, FABULA AMORIS, and ΚΛΕΟΣ are going to let me have a real go at convincing the world that game-based learning is a fantastic way to teach anything. And as a special bonus, my students and I are going to engage this world-beating material more deeply and immersively than we ever have before.

Life in Rome: examples of excellent practomime

To celebrate my students' efforts, and to entice others to try the practomimetic method, I want to start highlighting some of the incredible things students in these courses are doing. The students of FABULA AMORIS ROMANI are now on their way North from Rome towards two neighboring farms in the Sabine Hills: one is the famous farm of Horace, given him by Maecenas; the other is the farm of the Recentii, the gens of my students' Romans.

Along with them go their wicked uncle Gaius, and the future emperor Tiberius, whom I call Drusillus (an unattested but plausible nickname), and a disreputable poet named Naso (that's Ovid's real name, from one perspective, and indeed the name by which he has frequently been known through history; it means "nose," so it also has the benefit of just being kinda funny). They've been sent on this sojourn by none other than Augustus the princeps himself, after having performed for him his favorite song, Horace's Carmen Saeculare, with which a chorus of boys and girls had celebrated Augustus' New Age of peace 25 years before. My students' Romans performed the song as a chorus in the portico of Aeneas in the Forum of Augustus, as Augustus himself took a regal position next to the life-size statue of his "ancestor."

Earlier, when they had first entered the Forum, the student who goes by the Roman name Portia had practomimed thus:

Portia, fearing that all these extravagant plans for creating commotion might fail--i.e. anger the Princeps instead of gain an audience with him--decides to create an Augustus-pacifying back-up plan. 1d10=9 (9)

After the group has re-emerged from the dark alley with the litter and continued on its way on the Via dei toward the Forum pincipis, she slips away for a moment to Julius Caesar's temple of Venus Genetrix. There she pauses to admire the apse and eight splendid columns [from the source, I cannot quite tell whether these were Trajan's creation or whether they existed in Caesar's construction, storing up details its construction and the impression they gave in her memory. If Augustus cannot be distracted by more flamboyant means, she might be able to compliment him on the beauty and inspirational qualities of his father's temple, which could even lead to allusions about the connection between the temple's patroness and the temple's builder. Then stories of any of the three illustrious figures (Venus, Caesar, or Augustus), or at least didactic advice for young Romans, might ensue, if the Princeps should feel loquacious, and his narration would not likely prove short. By the time he has finished, perhaps he will have forgotten to punish the malefactors for bringing commotion into his forum--or at least he might be slightly more willing to mitigate the punishment.

Source about the temple:
Orlindo Grossi, "The Forum of Julius Caesar and the Temple of Venus Genetrix" (JSTOR)

And, that the dramatic element not be excluded, here's what the student cui est Romulus nomen did in hopes of entering the forum:

Romulus is feeling a bit confused about the plan to meet the princeps, but he decides to try a radical plan. He notices a group of slaves standing around a litter that looks particularly fanciful and ornate. Being a country rube, Romulus has never seen such a thing.

"What's that?" he asks the slave.

"It's called a litter," says one of the slave. "Rich people use them to ride around the city so they don't step in all the sewage. It's our job to carry it."

"Who does this belong to?" Romulus asks.

"It belongs to the princeps himself," says the slave, somewhat proudly. "We're bringing it to pick him up at the forum principis. Well, I'd better get going now."

"Wait," says Romulus, putting an arm around the man's shoulders. "Come talk to me in this dark alley for a second." Once they are inside the alley, away from the profanus vulgus, Romulus draws his gladius and charges at the slave with murder in mind. 1d10=9 (9)

Romulus stabs the slave 9 times and the man falls to the ground, quite dead. Romulus strips off the man's livery (or whatever the Roman equivalent was) and quickly puts it on. Then he steps back out on to the street. Along with the other slaves of the princeps, Romulus picks up his side of the litter and begins walking towards the forum principis. Disguised as the princeps's litter bearer, he should have no trouble getting close to him.

For enrichment: http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/litter.jpg

It has also become clear that Augustus has plans for Naso that Naso hadn't known about. Ovid, clearly being a poet who prides himself above all on his cleverness, had, it seems, placed much too much faith in the princeps' obtuseness. It now appears that the princeps knows about what Ovid has been up to. I don't want to spoil the story, but if you're reading this post, you probably know how it ends. . . . Obviously the signal benefit of the practomime is that my students and I get to experience it for ourselves in such a way that we may be able to understand the poetry surrounding the event in a deeper way.

That then is the narrative context in which we find one of my favorite exasperating students, whose Roman is named Fabius, formulating the following:

Fabius has not a multitude of things to say about paved roads, but he recalls something very specific about roads and the end of the third servile war...but since he feels like it at the moment, Fabius reasons, he shall first talk a little more about Russell Crowe.....

From his youth to the present, Crowe has had a special love of horses. "They're just like people," he told CraveOnline. But how does this relate back to paved roads? An excellent question, for, well, it doesn't. But Crowe's critically acclaimed film Gladiator is much based on the events of the rebellion led by Spartacus in 73 b.c....a rebellion also known as the last of the servile wars...Fabius recalls that his father's father ('s father, possibly) witnessed the brutality with which the defeated slaves under Spartacus were treated after the war...all six thousand prisoners were crucified along the Appian way from Rome to Capua...Fabius thinks it'd be totally intimidating if one had to walk along a road lined up full of rotting corpses..."But surely the corpses have been taken down by now...well if not they're definitely skeletons"

Will they reach the farms before Naso's fate finds him? Can we find a way to make that fate less, or perhaps more, than tragic?

Operation KTHMA: Day 1

(KTHMA means "possession," and it's a word that turns out to be very important in the course. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers here in the early stages, because I'm lucky in that a few of my students actually read my blog, and thus I won't spell the significance out right now, but feel free to find me via e-mail or Twitter and inquire. The irony of a guy who has probably spoiled Bioshock for more people than anyone else in the world being careful about spoilers in his own game isn't lost on me, by the way.)

Day 1 of the course/operation will be an in-class briefing. I'll be taking the role of the Demiurge from the beginning, but making it clear that the Demiurge has disguised himself as a simply university professor, and that that disguise needs to be maintained for the integrity of the operation. I'll start by expressing the premise of the course/game: the Demiurge has made a mistake in his teleological calculations. Western Civilization is in danger of losing vital skills and information that can help world culture survive and help people spread world civilization to the stars. I may throw in a reference to Zefram Cochrane. I will emphasize (as I do at the beginning of all my courses) that Western Civilization and its roots in ancient Greece have no inherent superiority to any other part of world culture; I'll say that the Demiurge is also launching other missions to places like Africa, India, and China.

In order to resolve this crisis, the students must change history in the subtle way that, the Demiurge says, such a thing is possible. The Demiurge can't reveal right now what the method will be, but he promises that he will reveal it soon. He can, however, reveal the reason behind the method: the fundamental importance of play. Because Herodotus and Thucydides, like the homeric bards before them, engaged their culture in a fundamentally ludic (that is, playful and interactive) way, reshaping the past as they found it into a discourse intended to enlighten their audience, the Demiurge has the ability to use his operatives' (that is, the students') imaginations to immerse them in the past, and to allow his operatives themselves to play the world.

The Demiurge realizes he is being obscure, but promises that this fundamental notion will become clear in the course of the mission.

We'll then talk about the central goals and objectives of the course/game, which would be the same whether we were "playing" it as a game or "taking/giving" it as a course. It's worth noting that before now I've never thought of laying out goals and objectives this way for this course; it's a notion that's come to me both from instructional design and from game design, and is not something in which I ever received training in graduate school. I'm nearly certain that I am far, far from alone in that among professors.

The goals of the course are

• skill at analysis of the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides
• skill at analysis of historical discourse across time periods
• knowledge of the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides
• knowledge of the practice of Herodotus and Thucydides (that is, what they actually were doing in ancient Athens in the context of Greek and Athenian culture)
• knowledge of the cultural context of that practice in ancient Athens (in particular homeric epic, tragedy, and Plato, as well as what we know of daily life)
• knowledge of the relationship of the practice and writings of Herodotus and Thucydides to what we know of the actual events of the past

The objectives associated with those goals are, for the skill-based goals, the ability to analyze the relevant discourse, and, for the knowledge-based goals, the ability to summarize the relevant information.

The Demiurge will express those goals and objectives in the form of the students' mission--these are the objectives that they must achieve in order to help save the world's hope. The Demiurge can at this point only reveal that they will demonstrate their attainment of these objectives in completing each of seven individual mission modules, and in completing the entire mission of Operation KTHMA.

Then we'll take a look at what the Demiurge has done with the HuskyCT site for the class, especially the "Pyschometric Sortition Tool" (in some ways resembling the questions at the start of some games from Bethesda like Morrowind and Fallout 3), which they'll be expected to complete before the next operation meeting.

(When they complete the tool, I will assign each of them to a numbered class, with the rank of "Observer Class 1," "Observer Class 2," etc. At that point, I will add them to groups for their classes on the website, and give them access to a document that describes the first level of their class, and the skill that goes with that level; they will have access only to their own classes, and will have to learn about the other classes from one another. Once that reveal has happened, I'll post more here about it.)

If we have time left, the Demiurge will engage the operatives in a discussion about their preconceptions about history, focusing primarily on the ever-new difference between history as the events of the past and history as accounts by people of their ideas about the events of the past. We may get into the etymology of "history," but I'm hoping to save that for Day 2.

Living Epic, the online course, live for registration!

Thanks to the wonderful folks at the UConn Center for Continuing Studies, we've got a very nice gateway into the first tangible effort of the Video Games and Human Values Initiative, my short course in January 2009 for teachers, parents, and anyone else who's interested, "Living Epic: The Power of Video Games in Culture from the Ancient to Modern World." Suitable for a virtual stocking stuffer, this course will be, above all, a great way for us to start reaching an audience of teachers who want to think about the educational potential of games in a new way.

To be completely clear, here's where you register.

The initiative itself now has a spiffy new Ning social network. I beseech you, if you like what we're up to, to head over, join up, and start talking about the future of this conversation. Most importantly, we're starting to talk about the proto-symposium, "Defining Play," inspired by the wonderful work of Corvus Elrod.

(Gaming) Homer Course-design (2): Activities

This is a post in a series taken from the preliminary version of the course-design document for CAMS 3208. Dig in and see what you think! Please do let me know if you’ve got suggestions for other activities, or if you think anything needs clarification. I really want this course to be something gamers with the slightest interest in the ancient world, and classicists with the slightest interest in gaming, are drooling to take. :D

Here's the planned range of course activities for the course. I'm incredibly excited not just about the cool individual items (in-game labs and discussions, interviews with designers and community-managers, internet forum observation), but by the way they're all going to fit together in the matrix for the course, so that every unit (the next post in this series will have the specific units) is going to have a mixture of enlightening and fun stuff to do.

Readings: Homeric Iliad, Homeric Odyssey, A. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambrdige, MA: 1960); G. Nagy Homeric Questions (Cambridge, MA: 1996)

Lectures by podcast and video podcast

In-game labs in Halo, Fable, Lego Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings Online

In-game discussions in The Lord of the Rings Online

Internet forum discussions

Internet forum labs through observation of discussion on gaming web-forums

Designing, conducting, and analyzing interviews with developers’ personnel (incl. community-managers) about what it means to be an interactive storyteller

Visits by proxy (video podcast) to developers’ studios

Quibus lusoribus bono?

My provocation of the field of game studies and its practitioners has appeared today in The Escapist. My heart quails a bit at facing the consequences of this kind of piece, but while I admit some hyperbole in the cause of getting a conversation going, I stand by my central point, that the attempt to marry game criticism to game design is not a good idea.

At any rate, I'm in the process of trying very hard to put other people's money where my mouth is, and thereby to keep that mouth flapping. This is as good a time as any to announce that there's a Center for Video Games and Human Values in the works, for which my course "(Gaming) Homer" is actually the pilot. The center will be based at UConn, but its true existence will be entirely online, and it will include scholars of game studies, should they want to participate, alongside a truly interdisciplinary mix of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, Fine Arts, Education, and Business.

I'm pleased to say that Michael Abbott and Jeff Howard are my extramural collaborators on this project. I'm hoping they'll keep me from saying anything quite so provocative in the future, since they're much more sanguine about game studies than I am!

Course activities for "(Gaming) Homer," the online UConn course in Spring 2009

This is a post in a series about my UConn course, CAMS 3208 "(Gaming) Homer." I will offer the course in Spring 2009 in an online, heavily game-enhanced form, and I will have a few spots available for non-UConn students. E-mail me (amphiaraus@msn.com) if you’re interested in getting onto the waiting list. General information on registration and fees may be found here. Note that it's too early to register as of this writing--but I'll be sure to notify readers here when registration becomes available!

How should I teach Homeric epic as a video game? Let me know what you think of what I’ve got planned, and about any ideas you’ve got for gaming-related activities!

I can think of three activities that I think would set this course far apart, and that will illustrate Homeric epic in a really interesting way: in-game discussion sections, gameplay labs, and in-game discussion-interviews with game-developers.

In-game discussion sections on the one hand are only a way to get some kind of synchronous discussion going: to have the whole class in one place at the same time, even if that place is LOTRO’s version of Rivendell. At the same time, it will be possible to demonstrate certain play dynamics and experiment in an informal way with how different facets of the narrative experience of the specific game, and of narrative gaming in general, work. Adventuring together, with the interactions availably with the game and with each other, will give students the ability to analyze things like quest-structure and grinding very closely.

What I call in-game labs will be more targetted in-game experiences in specific games, some of the single-player variety and others of the multi-player (both versus and co-op). The idea will be to carry out a specific experimental assignment, like “Finish the first level of Halo 2 three ways, and analyze the experience as a story.”

Third, we’ll get a chance to talk to some of the people who work with these games everyday, and ask them questions that we’ve drafted beforehand about how they tell stories and how they think about their task and about their audience. Students will collaborate in small groups to write-up reports on these discussion-interviews.

Another idea I’ve had, but need help fleshing out, is to have students make observations of what goes on on several different internet boards of gaming communities, and write reports about how the storytelling of the games brings about (or fails to bring about) certain kinds of community, just as the Homeric epics were vital in the constitution of the early communities of Archaic Greece.