Seniors as Game Designers

Seniors as Game Designers
Carolina Islas Sedano1, Erkki Sutinen 1
1
University of Joensuu, PL 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland
<cislas, sutinen>@cs.joensuu.fi
Abstract
In order to create active members of the Information Society (IS) it is not enough just to provide seniors with the
technology. True members of the IS must also understand and be able to use this technology to meet their needs. By
actively monitoring a series of game design workshops it has been possible to observe how a group of seniors learned
through the process. Experience in the game workshops suggests that is important to engender inspiring and
satisfying emotions in the participants during the workshop. This might be possible while blending their individual
experiences with their shared experiences so as to offer the outcome to others.
Keywords
seniors, video games, learning, e-inclusion
1 Introduction
The topic of this work is how to use game development workshops as part of the e-inclusion
process for seniors, and how through this process the seniors can share their life experiences,
culture and knowledge with other members of the Information Society. E-inclusion is defined in
this case as access to and usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by
individuals.
One of the expanding niches of the Information Society is in video games. It should not be
assumed that interest in video games is confined to industry. Academia is taking this field more
and more seriously, incorporating games into different disciplines such as media studies,
education, emerging games studies, and computer science, among others.
It is common knowledge that the world’s population is aging rapidly. The projection given by
Eurostat [2005] mentions that by the year 2025, more than 22 per cent of the European Union
population will be over 65 years old. As a consequence, games manufacturers would do well
to target this growing market. One of the first companies to take this step has been Nintendo,
which has developed and launched “Brain Age DS”, game software for a “retirement-age
demographic” [Nintendo, 2006].
There is not much research being done on the real gaming needs of seniors. LeeAnn Prescott
[2006] reported on the most popular type of games played by females, including a special
study of the over fifty-fives’ preferences. The three most successful games were the Jigzone
[2006], Atlantis [2007] and Lycos Gamesville [2007]. However, the design of games for
seniors has not been systematically approached, and whilst talking of video games, another
challenge involved is the use by seniors of ICT. The fact is that even though we are living in
and promoting a life in the Information Society, it is not clear how we plan for it to be
inclusive of everybody. In the specific case of seniors, Naumanen [2007] mentions that "[the]
role of information and communication technologies is pervasive but it is not clear yet how
older people themselves should be taken into this framework".
This observation should cause researchers and developers to reflect on a various questions. Are
we being inclusive in the development of video games? How can we encourage senior people of
different ages and backgrounds to play video games together? What elements do we consider
important to different types and ages of players? The importance of these questions and actions
increases the more we become aware that games are part of a culture. As Salen and Zimmerman
clearly state: “Creating games is also creating culture, and therefore beliefs, ideologies, and
values present within culture will always be part of a game, intended or not.” [2004: 517]. This
explanation is more clearly supported with the work of Huizinga [1955], in which he mentions
that play is nothing new - in fact play is older than the culture itself: “…culture arises in the form
of play, that it is played from the very beginning.” [1955:46]. Hence, bearing in mind that seniors
are individuals who have acquired their experience while living and producing the changes of
our world, how do they experience the process of being game designers? What can they learn of
ICT during the process of game designing?. In order to answer the previous questions, it is
fundamental to be in the process that takes place while the seniors are game designers.
Furthermore, with the purpose to improve the process careful observation and analysis on the
course of events it is needed. Hence, it is suitable for this type of research to use action research
approach.
With the aim of addressing the issues of how to play together in our Information Society era and
learn from each other, we created a game workshop for the Seniors’ Club at the University of
Joensuu. This experience has shown us that these seniors were interested to play video games
with us, and that their creativity merged with their experience can produce interesting and
enjoyable games. They had produced three different games, from concept through to the paper
prototype. Furthermore in a second workshop using participatory design principles [Schuler and
Namioka, 1993], their games were digitalised and are now available on the web.
2 Background
2.1
Seniors’ Club
In October 2005, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Joensuu, Finland,
started a research and community outreach programme called “Seniors’ Club” [Naumanen,
2007]. The Seniors’ Club presents a space for elderly people, aged 60-75, to learn and develop
their ICT skills, and for researchers to nurture their knowledge in the fields of educational
technology and human-computer interaction. This concept offers a rare combination of research
and club activities. And it makes Seniors’ Club different from many other similar kinds of
activities offered to senior citizens by community colleges or other educational institutions
devoted to life-long learning.
The Seniors Club model of working with senior citizens is based on the experiences gathered in
the Kids Club [Eronen, Jormanainen, Sutinen and Virnes 2005], a project that has been running
at the same department since autumn 2001. Some of the aims of both clubs are: to engage the
participants with creative design and problem solving activities for innovative ICT- flavoured
artifacts, and to develop fresh tools and approaches for understanding technology. Furthermore,
one of the goals of the Seniors’ Club is to empower its members to make use of their life and
social experiences for relevant innovations. These goals are pursued while formulating activities
in collaboration with their peers and researchers [Naumanen, 2007].
The Seniors Club consists of 12 members (six male and six female), who all enrolled voluntarily
for the project, together with one lead researcher and two volunteer tutors. The age range in the
club is between 61 to 74, and their background can be summed as diverse. The level of
participants ICT skills range from complete novices to proficient users, but all have been equally
active members of the society. The club has been running, during term time, once a week at
Joensuu University’s EdTech laboratory, for two hours since May 2006.
In 2007 the activities of the Seniors club were not confined to any specific area. The main goal
was to hear what were the main interests of the seniors and take these into account. The activities
included theoretically informing them about digital cameras, digital TVs and computers, through
to practical hands on activities such as blogging, internet use, and the creation of Power Point
presentations.
However the first phase of our work together, which lasted six weeks, concentrated on express
the cultural elements from the participant’s backgrounds and surroundings which we were then
able to transform into pilot computer games.
2.2
Seniors’ previous knowledge of digital games
The seniors, now into their second year of the project, raised some interesting questions
regarding video games early on. Some were related to what some had seen on television. Others
arose from matters relating to what they had heard or read about video games in the press. In
parallel, in the academic year 2005-06, our research group started to collect knowledge on the
subject of games, with special focus on casual players. Using this information we gave an
introductory talk to the Seniors Club about video games in May 2006.
After this introduction, the goal of which was to offer an historical explanation of video games,
we proceeded, in a more dynamic and less lecture oriented way, to encouraged the seniors to
play with the different digital games. The games, carefully chosen by our researchers, were set
up and ready to play in our laboratory. One of our goals was to present them with as wide a
variety of games as possible whilst also considering their age group. During the sessions, and
through the interactive play between seniors, researchers and tutors everyone got to know one
another in an environment of total acceptance and encouragement.
From our observations we noted that those games that involved foreign language skills, had
complicated user interfaces, and/or had long and difficult instructions, were less appealing in
general for the seniors. We saw that they were interested and keen, not only to learn about and
understand the digital world of games but also, that they wanted to get involved in it and try it for
themselves. They wanted to learn about and play the games their grandchildren and “modern”
people played. However, in order to get them more involved in the video games, steps must be
taken. The first is to help them to develop their ICT skills. Even when they showed an interest in
playing video games, they did not feel secure using the technology and so would rather not try.
Secondly, we need to find and/or develop games that are appropriate for them, not only in
content but also in their presentation - size of fonts, colours, animation, language, etc.
3 Research method
This is the first workshop to explore the topic of seniors and video games. It was possible to
notice that in order to create the new games several specific problems had to be resolved. Those
ranged from formulating the basic idea of the game from the individuals’ own creativity,
knowledge and experience, the conceptualization and creation of the components, the
understanding and skills needed to use ICT through to finally creating their game as paper
prototypes as the outcome of this first game workshop.
In order to successfully accomplish each one of the games, it is necessary to have a specific
action plan and to achieve each one of the intermediate steps, which are strongly interdependent.
On the other hand, even with perfect planning, each game will be different and different
challenges will arise in each session, which may differ completely from what has been
academically reported before, even by the teaching of just one specific ICT tool. For that, the
researcher used an interventionist method with action research, gaining theoretical and practical
knowledge about this specific phenomenon.
The agenda of the researcher was to cover the five different phases of action research, diagnosing
(problem definition), action planning, action taking, evaluation and specific learning [Lindgre,
Henfridsson and Schultze, 2004]. A summary of these different phases reflected on the game
workshop process can be observed on Table 1. The total number of people involved in the game
workshop was: nine seniors, two tutors and two researchers. The data to be analyzed from this
process was collected through different communication channels. From the participants and
tutors through their reflection on web blogs, a final questionnaire and group interview. While
from the researcher’s observations a diary was written after each session. In addition all the game
workshop sessions and the group interview were video recorded.
Description
Data sources Data
analysis
To gain experience working with the seniors within the concept
of the Seniors club and to gain game research experience
theoretically and practically in diverse areas. Through this work
it was possible to identify that there has not previously been a
game workshop focusing on seniors as game designers.
- Literature
review
The data
collected was
discussed and
- Previous
experiences in reflected.
game design
The following working hypothesis was formulated: While workshops
using seniors as game designers we would encourage them to - Previous
express their knowledge about Joensuu for other users of the experience on
information society to see and encourage them to involve Seniors Club
themselves more in the video game world whilst increasing
their understanding of a wide range of ICT tools.
Develop a game workshop concept with five main steps.
- Mind maps
Researchers and tutors were coaching the seniors and helping - Meetings’
them resolve their doubts and problems with the tools and/or summaries
concepts continually.
Results: three groups, creating and producing three different
games as a final product.
Control of
events by
comparison
and analysis
with action
plan.
Evaluating
The game workshop concept was implemented. On the first Resume after
day, after the introduction, three teams were formed according each session.
to their game interests. One tutor per team was provided in
order to cater properly for their requirements. The procedures
were followed in stages.
Collaborative
meetings
involving the
action
researchers
Evaluation: qualitative data was collected during the
workshops. Sessions were recorded on a blog webpage where
seniors, tutors and researchers could write their impressions
after each session. At the end of the project there were group
interviews and questionnaires.
Games (paper Transcribed
material
prototypes),
analysed by
web blog,
using a
group
grounded
interview,
theory.
video record,
observations
and
questionnaire
S.L
Action taken
Action
Diagnosing
Phase
Develop the proper documentation informing if the working
hypothesis was supported, partially supported, or not
supported. Specify the problems and potential solutions for
improvement..
Working
hypothesis
and results of
evaluation
Discussion
and reflection
in
collaboration.
Table 1: Summary of research process in the game workshop at Seniors club.
Moreover the specific role of the researcher while the workshop was taking place was to explain,
in each session, the goal of the session, clarifying to the participants its connection with the
previous session and following sessions. In addition, each activity was carefully related to the
actual state of development of each team. Because of the constant awareness on how each team
was evolving, good coordination with the tutor of each team was fundamental. Each time a
problem was presented that was not easily resolved by the seniors and tutors, prompt
intervention by the lead researcher was essential.
4 Game workshop concept
One goal of the game workshop is to explore how we can involve seniors in playing video games
with other members of the information society and furthermore within this process create
together meaningful games built on their interests and past experiences from which they could
learn from and share with each other. Hence we start addressing the idea of involving seniors as
game designers and producers, rather than evaluating a diverse set of games with them.
Figure 1 shows the core structure of a game workshop that consists of three main groups of
information that can be found in the immediate vicinity. From each element we take:
• Game studies research. We made use of the conceptual framework of Cultural Resistance
from Salen and Zimmeram [2004].
• Educational technologies. We use the approach of enhancing technology literacy by
being aware that each session of the workshop should include a teaching/learning
experience using ICT.
• Seniors’ knowledge. Including their life experience.
• Environment. The physical space that connects all of us (seniors, researchers and tutors)
and what we can observe from many different perspectives.
Figure 1: Elements of the game workshop
The game workshop concept presents five main steps. One for each Senior’s Club session. The
timetable of activities in the Seniors Club was kept flexible in case more time was needed for any
of the stages. The steps were as follow:
I. Warm up, introduction, overall objectives and start up (form teams by game interest).
II. Games conceptualization.
III. Creating components, working with pictures.
IV. Integration of components into their concept.
V. Game testing.
The “Lotería Mexicana” was the game model to be transformed by the seniors. This game is a
type of bingo, and by its origin is a game based on the art and culture of Mexico in the 18th
century. The purpose of using this specific game as a model was to challenge the participants in
different ways. First it was to expose how bingo can be culturally enriching and educational,
easily played by different generations and nationalities. Secondly the old and new juxtaposition
added to a familiar game concept gives it a totally new dimension. They had just two constraints
for the alteration of this game: all the new games should use pictures and be about Joensuu.
The figure 2 represents the time line of the research process, and it embeds the steps of the game
workshop. After the first step, the seniors built three teams (A, B, C) according to their game
interests. Each team finalized the workshop with a playable paper game prototype.
Team A: Joensuu Koodi game (strategic game for one player about the Joensuu’s knowledge).
Team B: Joensuu Lottery game (Joensuu’s historical architecture bingo).
Team C: Type of Domino (storytelling game with own poems).
Figure 2: Time line of the action research and game workshop
5 Results
For the purpose to answer the research questions stated earlier in this paper, it is analysed the
following data: the comments available on the web blog, the answers from the last questionnaire
and research observations have been included. From the last questionnaire, the relevant questions
are: How did you like from workshop? What did you not like from the workshop? Which was
the difficult part on the workshop? What did you learn during the game sessions? What would
you like to do next?. The analysis is done by identifying, naming, categorizing and describing
relevant phenomena found in the text.
Research question: How do seniors experience the process of being game designers?
The overall feedback from the nine participants was positive about the experience of being game
designers. Positive feedback taken from the group interviews included comments such as: “each
step was a step forward”, “it has intellectual satisfaction, makes old brains work”, “nice when it
started to get a shape”, “after we invented the idea, everything slid like butter”, “the ideas help
me to develop”, “it makes sense”, “it demanded versatile skills, it was creative, inspiring, and the
spirit in the group was really good”, “extremely interesting”, “Rat’s! We became inspired like
youths”.
Two elements repeatedly present themselves in the feedback from the seniors about their
experience: inspiration and satisfaction. Even though inspiration can present a wide range of
intensive feelings, according to the situation and the person in question, it was possible to sense
the value of it as an element that can drive an individual to reach a specific goal. This was might
explain clearly why there were no seniors who were inactive. Their internal desire to pursue a
goal drove them on, and the lack of knowledge or skill in ICT was not big enough to stop their
determination. They were not focusing on their lack of knowledge of the unknown and new
world of ICT, their focus rather was on how to reach their game design goal and what they
needed to learn in order to get there.
The second element, satisfaction, was an important reinforcement to the seniors’ initial
inspiration phase. It supported their positive attitude, and as a consequence successful games
were produced at the end of each workshop. After they had conquered each step, their
satisfaction increased, which in turn gave them even more inspiration to keep on working. The
games became part of them, not only because they contained their ideas and experiences, all their
effort had gone into the project and they were able to see how they were transforming it into a
reality that others could see as well. All of them were eager to show each development in the
creation of their own game; they even worked at home, often surprising us with their fast
progress.
Last but not least it is worth mentioning that the fact that the topic of the games had to be about
Joensuu made it an important inspirational element as well, as reported in the last questionnaire.
This was partly because on they could go through their memories, look at old pictures together or
simply walk through the city and observe. Another reason was that they could reflect on what
they would like to share with others about of their city and on ways in which they could achieve
this while making the game interesting and fun to play. It turned out not only to be an intellectual
exercise that they could identify with, but became a form of responsibility to the next generation
as well. They had lived through the history of the city and seen its transformation.
Research question: What can they learn about ICT during the process as game designers?
The beginning was challenging for most of them, starting with lack of clarity about the
objectives, due to the fact that it was not clear what was expected of them in the workshop. The
thought of using unfamiliar computer software and programming also caused them anxiety at
first. However with the flow of the workshop and the support team taking the time to clarify their
doubts, use of ICT didn’t present any obstacle to them reaching their objectives in the end.
We saw how they came to use the available technology with flair and confidence by focusing on
their ideas and concepts and how make them into reality. Most of the time the tutors just had to
guide them at the beginning on how they could produce their desired goal using ICT. Photoshop,
image manipulation software, which is not a simple tool, was used effectively enabling them to
edit pictures in whatever way they required. They used scanners, USB sticks, learnt to organize
their files, use word processors on a network of computers, bring all components together, make
them ready for printing and finally present their product. For some of them this was the first time
they’d ever used many of the tools, however there were no apparent concerns about that.
To our surprise from the feedback we discovered that the difficult part of the game workshop for
them was the beginning: to conceptualize an idea for a game, rather than, as we had imagined,
the use of ICT. This might imply three possibilities: 1) the seniors on the workshop were highly
skilled. However one third of the seniors had never used, for example, a scanner before and none
had ever used Photoshop. 2) The tutors were well prepared to cover all the needs that arose
during the process 3) The main focus of the seniors was not related to the challenge of using ICT
for the first time. From our analysis this third option seems most likely.
Even though the seniors seemed to fully grasp and carry out all the processes necessary in order
for them to produce their chosen game using ICT, we can’t be sure that they have fully
understood and internalised the technology. However we can report that seven out of the nine
seniors expressed an interest in participating in similar types of projects in the future. Another
interesting fact to surface from the questionnaire was that they had been surprised to discover
that video games could be both interesting and educational.
It is worth mentioning two important elements that affected the collection and analysis of the
data for this research:
1. Language barriers. This problem was encountered in two ways. Firstly the lead
researcher did not speak Finnish, so many things had to be done through an interpreter.
Nevertheless this also proved to be an interesting experience, with seniors and researcher
looking for new ways to communicate. Mime was used to communicate ideas and
instructions as was various bits of other foreign languages, mainly English, that they
knew. Secondly language difficulties arose when the seniors and researcher were faced
with software commands that were in a different language to their own. Obviously in this
case the seniors preferred to use software in Finnish. Unfortunately in our case the
Photoshop software for example, was available only in English. It was noticeable how
this diminished their interest in exploring and experimenting with the software.
2. Feedback. Even though we actively collected feedback each week from seniors, it was
not always given by all of them. Also, as it proved difficult to motivate them to write
their opinions down after each session. We decided to assure that the last questionnaire
should be complete answered by all the members before award them with stheir diploma.
6 Conclusions
It is apparent that more work needs to be done in order to analyse what kind of games interest
seniors, and how through analysing their learning process on workshops such as this, we can
create software suitable for all seniors. In addition by increasing awareness of the fact that
“intelligent” video games can and do exist, we would further increase their interest and openness
towards this area. Finally, analyse of relevant symbols, themes and topics of interest and value to
seniors, would be a way to involve other new players into the video game culture. It is important
to improve the quality of the data collection for this type of research. What has been especially
noticeable throughout this project has been the enjoyment experienced by all. The blending of all
their individual experiences and knowledge, the creating of something original combined with
the means to further that sharing with others.
Acknowledgement
Special thanks to Minna Neumanen, for all her support , excellent work and guidance in putting this workshop
together. Also to the tutors Minna Hiltunen, Janne Krohns for their quality on their coaching, and to the comments
from Markku Tukiainen and Jyri Keränen.
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