Elizabeth Losh, University of California, Irvine

1. The Birth of the Virtual Clinic: The Virtual Terrorism Response Academy as Serious Game and Epistemological Space Elizabeth Losh, University of California, Irvine

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

9. Games for First Responders Use a variety of game engines Present a range of subjectivity positions Example: VStep RescueSim from Artesis

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

11. 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

12. Zero Hourfrom 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

13. Incident Commander Designed as a distance-learning resource for smaller districts. Multiple scenarios: hostage situation, chemical spill, etc.

14. 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

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

16. The Virtual Practicum Series Space and Epistemology Max Boisot Information Space: A Framework for Learning in Organizations, Institutions and Culture (1995)

17. Primary Care of the HIV/AIDS Patient (2001)

18. Epistemological Spaces

19. 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”

20. The Context of the Narrativeof the Virtual Terrorism ResponseAcademy

21. Experiential Learning Spaces

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

23. Risk Communication Ideology and Public Rhetoric

24. Possible Critiques Noah Falstein on a “simulation of a simulation” The cost to situated, intuitive learning

25. The Artifacts of Traditional Learning

26. The Limitations of Keyboard Interfaces

27. Are They “Puzzles” or “Games”? Debates about what constitutes a game Jesper Juul, Half-Real

28. Are Multiple-Choice Tests an Appropriate Assessment Tool? James Paul Gee and the learning revolution?

29. The Palace of MemoryAre epistemological spaces fully capitalized upon?

30. The “Problem” of Cheating Mia Consalvo’s thesis of essential opportunism

31. More Questions? lizlosh@uci.edu