The Gee article for this week reminded me of a series of Nancy Drew-themed video games that I used to play on my computer in middle and high school. In each game, you are Nancy Drew and you get to solve a mystery. They have titles like “Nancy Drew and the Haunted Mansion” and “Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Scarlet Hand.” In the games, you control Nancy as she walks around the game world. There was a lot of reading involved because there would inevitably be a creepy library full of books or a bunch of old love letters that Nancy found hidden in a secret box, and some of the clues to solve the mystery were contained in the written text, so literacy was directly involved in the game in that way. Nancy also got to interview lots of suspicious people and talk to them throughout the game, so you had to listen carefully to what they said to pick out clues.
My favorite part of the games was that there would be a lot of puzzles to solve. The puzzles could be anything from organizing a lot of objects in the right order to reading up on how to play chess and then having to beat another character at chess in order to “win” some vital information for the case. Solving these puzzles applies to many of the points Gee brought up about video games, such as co-design, distributed knowledge, well-ordered problems, system thinking, and skills as strategies. The puzzles also relate to the Frey and Fisher article about motivation. I felt motivated to complete each task because it was a do-able challenge and I could contribute to the outcome.
I always played the Nancy Drew games collaboratively with my younger sister. We would fight about whose turn it was to “be the mouse.” Whoever didn’t get to control the mouse that day was the secretary. We kept meticulous notes on each game and wrote down clues, observations, and numbers we had to remember like lock combinations. Sometimes we would have to identify specific objects, like in one game where we had to know the difference between various types of clouds (stratus, cirrus, cumulus, etc.), so the secretary had to draw pictures of all the different clouds so we could identify them later in the game. Taking notes outside the game helped us keep track of our thoughts so we could better analyze the game. I think this example shows that video games can be much more social than we assume. We often picture “gamers” as nerds with no people skills who sit at home playing video games all day to avoid social contact. However, video games can be a collaborative effort. Sometimes my sister would be better than me at solving a certain puzzle and she could teach me how to do it, so I learned new skills with her help. Three of my (female) cousins also played the Nancy Drew games around the same time that we did, so we had a LOT of discussions and debates about them: which game was the best, which was the scariest, which was the hardest, which had the best characters, etc. Video games can promote thoughtful discussion and engage various literacy skills.
I appreciate Rachel’s argument that video games can encourage social interaction rather than promoting self-isolation. She describes the various ways that she and her sister collaborated to record notes and clues, compare observations, and share tips pertaining to the Nancy Drew video game. The game also sparked vivid conversations with her cousins that challenged the idea of gamers as anti-social individuals.
Rachel’s discussion of the Nancy Drew video game reminded me of a computer game called “The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis” that we used to play in my school computer classes. Zoombinis were little blue creatures that the player created at the beginning of the game. As the controller of the zoombini’s the player could choose the physical characteristics of each creature—glasses, eye shape, nose color, shoes or wings, etc. After the creation process was finished, the player sets out to help the Zoombini’s escape enslavement and reach a new island. Every level tests the players logical reasoning and mathematical skills. While the game itself was meant to be played individually, there was a mutual enthusiasm for the game among my classmates. After class, we chat in the hallways about what our zoombini’s looked like and we would share triumphs and struggles from that day’s game. Like Rachel’s experience with the Nancy Drew game, the Logical Journey of the Zoombinis created a culture that spark lots of conversations and enthusiasm.
My teachers could have capitalized on our common interest in the game by encouraging in-class dialogue about the experience. Rather than waiting until after class to discuss our strategies and divulge hints, we could have made it into a class-wide activity that included debates on game tactics, opportunities to give advice, and conversations about how the game relates to real life. In this way, games do not only create grounds for socializing, but they can also help teachers to facilitate group discussion.