The article I have chosen for this blog post is titled Reciprocal Innovation in Modding Communities as a Means of Increasing Cultural Diversity and Historical Accuracy in Video Games. My choice of article was determined by two factors.
Firstly on a personal level I was interested to find out more about the phenomena of “Modding” that I was constantly hearing my 12 year old son discussing with his friends online. Secondly from an educational perspective modding had been mentioned as a higher order skill in terms of young people engaging in the process of online gaming not just as consumers but as creators and I wanted to further research an area that I believe will influence future approaches to education.
For the purpose of this post I believe it is important to first develop an understanding of what modding is. Finding adequate information to provide a defintion proved to be difficult, as the term mod or modding, in reference to gaming appears to be nonexistent in publications such as the Macquarie and Oxford online dictionaries. Wikipedia cites the term mod an abbreviation of modification which is generally applied to personal computer (PC games) and suggests that mods can be made by the general public or game developers.
Mods themselves are not stand alone software and generally require the user to have the original release in order to run. The modification might include small variables such as game items, weapons, characters etc. or can range through to larger scale variations such as the creation of new levels, unique storylines and game modes.
Moshirnia, & Walker, (2007) focus specifically on the player flags in the turn based strategy game Civilization IV and puts forward the argument that practically any game feature, even those that may be seen as unimportant, can be modded to increase the historical and cultural quality of the game. Further to this it argues that by understanding the complex processes of conception, design and implementation of modifications educators can more easily examine existing games for features which could be modified to increase their educational benefit.
Moshirnia, & Walker, (2007) note that in the unmodified version of Civilization IV a player’s units are marked by a flag which allows them to differentiate between their own units and those of an opponent. The flags in the unmodified version serve the purpose of identifying different units; however communicate very little in terms of historical or cultural origins of a unit. In 2007 Moshirnia, & Walker, noted that almost immediately after the games release, modders began creating flags that they saw as more historically accurate than those offered as defaults within Civilization IV.
The flags created by modders were many and varied and looked at a broad range of significant features of a civilization including national iconography of civilizations over variant time periods, religious beliefs, cultural diversity of tribes within whole civilisations and artistic symbolism. In one example a group of modders engaged in discussion over the development of a flag for a newly added civilization, the Iberians. The vibrant discourse that ensued highlighted the complex processes involved in the creation of an appropriate flag. The modders first considered historical records and found that there was no clear record of a flag or forerunner to a flag affiliated with that civilization. After determining that a flag had to be constructed, the modders investigated national symbols, however in doing so, had to reach a balance between historical accuracy and uniqueness so as to avoid any possible confusion with other civilizations. By eliminating symbols that too closely resembled other flags in use, the modders created a flag that served its purpose within the context of the game, while simultaneously communicating the national character of the new civilization.
Moshirnia, & Walker, (2007) suggest that there are many examples of reciprocal innovation in modding communities and note a distinct lack of the existence of any form of hierarchy. For instance a modder may create a graphic, with no specific purpose in mind, however will often share this graphic with other modders who will brainstorm all possible uses for the modification. The outcome of this collaborative and reciprocal process being that a single modification may well lead to multiple modifications for a broad range of purposes.
In his ethnographic study of fan cultures, Textual Poachers (1992) Henry Jenkins introduces the concept of participatory culture and suggests that fan cultures draw their resources from commercial media while also reworking them to serve alternate purposes. This is certainly indicative of the cultural phenomena of modding and highlights the affordances current technology in terms of blurring the lines between designers and users.
So what does this mean for educators? In her seminal work, Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out (2010), Ito Mizuko highlights that this type of social participation shifts the focus away from the individual towards a much broader network of social relationships. This type of situated learning theory suggests that the relationships that are developed within these environments, show that participants are learning within all contexts of the activity, not just as individuals internalising their sole experiences but as part of a shared cultural system in which at any given time they might fulfil the role of pupil, teacher, mentor or creator.
There is no doubt that the phenomena of computer based games and modding offer windows into a vibrant culture of participatory learning. To ignore this in terms of future education would be nothing short of negligent. As educators we need to encourage our educational institutions to develop the flexibility to offer more than just cursory attempts at using games in the classroom and look more deeply at absorbing the broad spectrum of opportunities such cultures might afford.
As teachers we must make the effort to engage with these cultures not necessarily to become experts but to become participants and experience firsthand the participatory nature of these environments.
Informed game scholarship must involve play, just like scholars of film and literature experience the works first hand, as well as through secondary sources. (Aarseth 2003)
Gregor MacKenzie
References
Aarseth, E. (2003), Playing Research: Methodological approaches to game analysis, DAC2003, Melbourne, retrieved from http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Aarseth.pdf 20-10-2011
Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Routledge, New York and London
Mizuko, I (2010) Hang Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Moshirnia, A. & Walker, A. (2007) Reciprocal Innovation in Modding Communities as a Means of Increasing Cultural Diversity and Historical Accuracy in Video Games. Digital Games Research Association. Retrieved from http://digra.org:8080/Plone/dl/db/07311.28264.pdf 22-09-2011
Sotamaa, O. (2004) Unpublished seminar paper: Computer Game Modding, Intermediality and Participatory Culture
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