Gaming for Public Good
On March 4th 2020, sneaking in before lockdown, BBC Technology Strategy & Architecture in partnership with BBC Academy Fusion hosted and live streamed a great Lunch & Learn event. The topic was using gaming for public good, so I was excited to attend.
The event kicked off with lunch and an opportunity to network and try things out. BBC Blue Room, BBC Research & Development, and guests SpecialEffect demonstrated the latest in games technology. Nearby, BBC Children’s game Nightfall was set up to play. Attendees included interested BBC staff, many of whom had worked in the games industry, and a number of invited guests.
We were welcomed by journalist and presenter Steffan Powell. Host of BBC Radio 1’s The Gaming Show and a senior reporter for Newsbeat, Steffan brought subject knowledge along with his enthusiasm and energy. He shared that in the UK, video gaming revenue is worth more than music and movies combined. Half the population game. Over 3 million watch eGames. The industry has its own Bafta games awards, and that museums like the V&A have created exhibitions on video games.
The talks kicked off with Si Lumb (BBC Research & Development) and Phil Rich (BBC Digital Partners) providing a snapshot of the gaming industry, and reasons the BBC should take notice and explore gaming as a content medium.
Over the past 6 years, the time 16–25 year olds spend with video games has tripled. More than half would like a career in the industry. Over 70% of 18–35 year olds play video games, and about 46% of gamers are female.
The market isn’t all about hardware and game titles. Gaming is increasingly something to watch as a spectator. It has bigger audiences than traditional sporting events thanks to social media, video streaming and services like Twitch. Not surprising when the average video gamer is 43 and raising children, who both play and watch video games. The multi-player social game popular with younger audiences, Fortnite, had a total prize pool of $100,000,000 in 2019, and Netflix consider Fortnite a major competitor for audience time. British eSports are trialling tournaments in schools. And as Si eloquently positioned it, “Strictly Come Dancing is just Battle Royale in sequins”.
Technology improvement enables high quality games to optimise as smaller file sizes, similar to video clips. MS XBox, Amazon and Google are taking gaming into the cloud. Interactive and object-based media add into the mix. While Virtual or Augmented Reality provide more immersive experiences or deep fakes as actors in film or television. Further industry convergence has seen Unreal, a gaming engine, used to flood the Weather Channel studios, build the virtual world in which The Lion King remake was filmed, and create locations and scenery for The Mandalorian TV series.
Augmented reality, interactive video and deep fakes are of interest to the BBC, as are eSports qualifications, Minecraft for educational purposes, innovations addressing physical and mental health issues, providing accessible social interaction… the list goes on. From Newsbeat reports, to its documentary on Hideo Kojima. From This Game Changed My Life podcast, to The Game Show on Radio 1. From experimental content like interactive Casualty and a virtual Queen Vic or Tardis, to Nightfall the game. There’s a lot to gaming, and the BBC is taking notice and exploring.
Recently the BBC Children’s Games team launched Nightfall, their first multiplayer online game for children. Ashleigh Middleton and James Woodham presented the rationale and strategy behind the game.
Nightfall is set in a dream world, where players are battling anxieties and fears. Players can explore freely and use the light from their torch to extract negativity from the nightmares they encounter. However, they need to collaborate with other players in order to deal with the biggest nightmares. The community of players feedback on what the nightmares should be and how the characters should look. Contracted companies Good Boy and Mira do the game development and artwork.
Aware that games are very popular with children, the team wanted to explore where the audience are. Part of the BBC’s mission “to act in the public interest” is to entertain. For children this can be done within games. The team want to create games that provide a safe, social, collaborative space, live in real time. The games can also take an informative and ethical stance as they are non-commercial. There are no ad purchases. No chatting with strangers. And kids can play with their friends.
For example, Nightfall can introduce temporary branded zones within the game. The first of these is a Blue Planet zone. The zone should help grow the audience and provide marketing opportunity. It also directly addresses known concerns and worries of the audience.
Nightfall and the Blue Planet zone within it are live and proving popular. Other partnerships are being prepared and will go live soon. There are plans to stage scheduled events and challenges. As well as discussions around turning off or disabling the game at night, when children should be sleeping.
BBC are not alone in recognising the potential of games as a tool for learning and creative innovation. Stephen Reid from Immersive Minds shared inspiring stories and thoughts from their pioneering use of games and other interactive technologies to teach and educate young people.
His own Eureka moment came after asking his class to tell him something they knew that he didn’t. One pupil knew how to slow-mo TV by holding the play button on the remote for 6 seconds. Apparently, they found out by experimenting, fearless of breaking something that could be reset or fixed. When he asked the class what this was useful for, he got a roomful of different ideas.
Stephen deduced that kids have a simple process around tools, uninhibited by experience. They identify a problem, find something that works, learn how to use it, and apply it to the problem.
Are we inspiring our students? Are we challenging kids enough, to solve real world problems for social good? In Egypt, Stephen visited a school where the classrooms and attitude were both fun and inspiring. He challenged the kids to find and solve real problems during the three months until his next visit. When he returned, one group had made a drone. They taught themselves how from the internet, including the lithium batteries. The drone was for detecting and countering an airborne plant pathogen affecting their parents rice straw crop.
Elsewhere, Stephen challenged some younger kids to build a hydro-electric power dam with Lego bricks. They learned that energy is created by turbines underneath the dam, not where the water flows over it. Then they recreated their dam in Minecraft to see it working and how weather could affect energy production. One kid worried about the fish in the river and discussed it with their father, who helped devise a solution. The next day they added a series of stepped pools at the side of the dam, so that fish could safely bypass it.
Other students were challenged to recreate a local ruin using Minecraft. They visited and measured the ruin. In the process, learning about its history and the fire that had destroyed the original building. They decided to create the full pre-fire building in Minecraft, using stone for the ruins that remained and wool painted like stone elsewhere. Then they recreated and watched the fire in Minecraft, and 3D-printed their version of the ruin.
Creative games like Minecraft can provide a much richer learning experience. Students could recreate Pompeii, Monet’s studio, world wonders, and more. They can build using bricks or learn and only use code.
In Africa, in a poor area that is lucky to get 3 hours of electricity in a day, Stephen met a man on the street showing kids how to create things from refuse. He provided a laptop and 3D-printer with a few supplies, then showed the man how to use it, along with tinkerCAD and Minecraft. The kids designed and printed small low-cost toys to sell in the city, and over a few months managed to raise enough money to build a school. Yet in the UK 3D-printers languish in school cupboards because no-one knows how to work them.
Second generation gamers don’t settle for what is given by the developers. They want to modify and hack the game, similar to the early simple gamers of the 70s and 80s.
Little Big Planet can be used for climate change game creation. Assassins Creed and Age of Empire can be used to teach history. Democracy can be used to teach politics. Kerbal Space Program can be used to teach rocket building. Ark can be used to teach about dinosaurs, food chains and ecology systems. Universe Sandbox can be used to teach about the effect of small changes. Riven can be used for teaching languages and number systems. Portal can teach physics. Valiant Hearts can teach about war from a dog’s point of view. Drone can teach about modern warfare and ethics. Interland can teach about internet and data safety. Life Is Strange looks at mental health, depression, culture, and immigration. A Normal Lost Phone covers alcoholism, refugees and more.
And this is only getting started with how games and interactive technology can be used for learning and education.
It’s also important to ensure everyone can participate. Tom Donegan from SpecialEffect spoke about the life-changing impact of making games and technology accessible and inclusive for people with severe-disabilities.
SpecialEffect started out trying to provide access for the physically disabled to play games, initially for educational purposes. While the work is led by an occupational therapist approach, they have found that access to games has a wider impact. Games connect a player socially when they’re unable to do other activities. Games give some independence and sense of achievement, provide a release and are something to look forward to. To some extent, video games level the playing field when playing with others.
Sometimes adaptations are as simple as providing a joystick or a couple of suitably large buttons. Other times it requires highly complex multi-modal personalised controls such as an eye-brow switch combined with eye-tracking and voice commands. The recent XBox Adaptive Controller helps simplify creating such custom set-ups.
SpecialEffect also do much collaboration, research and design to develop custom control hardware, such as improved Eye Gaze technology, and interfaces for using it. And the costs are significantly reducing, which also improves accessibility.
The event wrapped up with a panel conversation chaired by Steffan Powell. Discussing the significance of “gaming for the public good” were:
· Dr Maria Stukoff — Director of the Salford University Maker Space and Co-Chair of eSports Industry Collaboration,
· Stephen Reid — Founder and Director of Immersive Minds and Creative Consultant with Microsoft Education, who had previously spoken about his work during the event,
· Jordan Erica Webber — a freelance presenter and journalist who is the resident gaming expert for Channel 5’s The Gadget Show and co-author of Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us: (about life, philosophy and everything),
· Elle Osili-Wood — an award-winning video game presenter and journalist, named as one of the most influential women in gaming.
Steffan kicked off by asking about their perceived attitude of the BBC in regards to gaming. Jordan wishes BBC departments would talk with each other more, to move beyond the basics of what video games are and how they are not damaging children. Elle is working on several BBC projects about the artistic, scientific benefits and technology aspects of games, and would like more stakeholders to move past the concept of games being juvenile or insignificant. Maria described games as content-rich immersive storytelling not dissimilar to TV dramas or documentaries and would love to see the BBC have its own Twitch channel. Education works well by doing and problem solving, and it’s surprising the BBC isn’t already doing more. Stephen meets similar attitudes in education with teachers, who would love the BBC to add some weight to the positive side of games and speed up the needed change in attitude, so that conversations no longer start on the back foot.
The next question was about trends. Elle, an editor for PlayStation’s YouTube channel, recently helped create a 12-episode professionally edited series of playing a game, based around the challenges. Jordan highlighted that online content for audiences has been around for some time and is becoming more professional and interactive with the audience. Maria shared that Fortnite’s best player Ninja has 231 million hours of live-watched play, ratings competitive with the top sports and Netflix shows. She also pointed out that XR (extended reality) will change the gaming and eSports environment to be even more immersive in significant ways. Jordan pointed out that the BBC could add quality control to eSports production that YouTube doesn’t or could learn from. Stephen shared that 84m people in US will watch eSports by 2021, almost as much as NFL, so eSports is definitely a big trend.
When asked what the BBC could do differently in the gaming space, Stephen jumped on education as a key area that isn’t being addressed yet, in particular supporting teachers. Elle shared how games improve literacy, social and communication skills, can improve physical fitness, emotional regulation, and help with conditions like ADHD and Dyslexia, and that there are numerous scientific studies proving all that. Stephen pointed out that gaming is play based learning, though it has become digital, and we need to advocate more for play.
Asked if there is room for more representation on TV, there was a resounding yes. Elle pointed out that online and gaming is now more mainstream than TV. Jordan shared that suitable content formats are needed for TV, such as documentary, as daily news on eSports has too slow a turnaround. Maria pointed out the need for regulatory shaping and normalising of gaming as content.
Asked if the BBC should make games, as they did 20 years ago, again there was a resounding yes. The Hitchhiker’s text adventure game was fondly remembered.
Asked about their opinion on the balance between play and education in games, Stephen shared insights from a recent 3-year study on games for learning Maths, where the kids hacked the game to do what they wanted. Kids recognise enforced learning. Environment, mechanics and narrative all matter. Elle emphasised the importance to work with people with experience as storytellers, writers and researchers.
Final thoughts hoped the BBC would become more proactive than reactive in regard to gaming, with more around the stories and art of games, content no one else would create. Steffan shared that more is happening, and Stephen mentioned BBC Build-it Scotland, that recreated the country 1:1 in Minecraft, and got over 10,000 responses to build local places.
With more time afterward to check out Nightfall and the latest in games technology, there was plenty to talk about as the event wrapped up. Hopefully this is just the beginning of much more to follow.
Find out more and stay tuned for further updates at:
https://canvas-story.bbcrewind.co.uk/gaming-for-the-public-good/
This post was originally published on the BBC Technology & Creativity Blog.
