Reflection

Takeaways

I’m sick of discussing commercial gaming

Too much time is spent criticizing serious games for failing to reach commercial success. These categories are obviously not mutually exclusive as they have coexisted quite fine so far.

Mobile games are a great example. This form factor is perfect for brief escapism, but not extended play. Saying that mobile devices will ruin RPGs or other immersive game experiences makes as much sense as faulting serious games for their lack of entertainment. People play games for a variety of reasons and there is no need to place them in opposition.

Those who can’t…can

Standards for graduate SISLT courses are abysmal. Since when is a 9000 level course an “introduction”? I teach undergraduates and expect more diligence from them than my graduate instructors do of me. No, assigning numerous blog posts is not challenging. How about actually expecting people to care about the course they are paying for?

Next semester will be my last and I look forward to getting back to learning. Going part time helped me stay up to date with web development, but it is hard to make progress when there is no allowance made for a real technical skills in an “educational specialist” program.

Online courses are delegitimizing themselves

Minimum discussion board posts, halfhearted course sequencing, outdated materials (with previous years still lingering on file names), and outsourced learning management systems are still happening in 2019. No law requires these things, yet they keep happening. A cartoon villain must be behind all of this. Such self-destruction is unreal.

Accomplishment

The hubris of this assignment! This course required me to churn our blog posts about an outdated commercial game, discuss the merits of Adobe Flash, and argue for the right to create something useful for my program portfolio. This course, like many others in SISLT required me to constantly beg for exceptions in order to actually learn something.

Next Steps

I want to actually acquire the design and development skills to create a video game. Is that so outlandish? Now that I have spent my 14th semester in higher education proving my writing abilities, I look forward to actually learning something new.

Serious Games

The course was designed based upon the assumption that students love sexist, commercial games and are skeptical about the quality of games in educational contexts. The fact that no one in this course did not seem to fit that expectation did not impede the instructor’s plans to regurgitate an entire course shell.

As was noted at the beginning of the course, I understand the educational value of serious games and have appreciated being able to share them with my students and children. I am not put off by their lack of grotesque violence. I don’t mind that they try to impress upon me the complexities of a system without trying to sell me “skins” or peddle racist stereotypes about “barbarians who oppose civilization”.

I didn’t harbor deep skepticism about the educational value of game mechanics back in August and I don’t now.