Futures of Learning

Gaming is a completely unexplored area in Ghana. Other than two instances of Ghanaians trying to develop computer games, there is little information on this topic. In the first case, the founders of Leti Games, based in Ghana, announced in early 2009 that they had developed a game – Bugzvilla – for the iPhone (http://whiteafrican.com/2009/03/24/iphone-and-computer-game-development-in-africa/). The developers indicated that the game would be available on iTunes in April. As at May 11, however, I could not find it in the iTunes App Store. A visit to the company website shows no active links and the message, “We’ll be back.”

Another Ghanaian, in response to the assertion that a game created by a Kenyan programmer was possibly the first 3D game in Africa shot back a response noting that he had developed the first such game as a final school project, which had won a competition in 2006 (http://www.ghanathink.org/blog/2006/11/1gtpc06-we-have-a-winner). It does not appear that the game went into production. 

Some mobile phone users report playing games on their phones, especially when bored (Sey, 2008), but the extent of this is unknown. Clearly, issues surrounding actual adoption and use of computer games within the Ghanaian population remain to be investigated or at least documented.

Japan is one of the national contexts that has had a vibrant gaming culture that has rivaled that of the US, emerging in the late seventies with arcade culture, and coming of it’s own in the international scene with the spread of the Nintendo systems in the mid eighties. In many ways, Japan is seen as the home base for video gaming culture worldwide, and it is in some circles a source of national pride. Japanese developers have dominated internationally, particularly in the console market of Playstation and Nintendo games. Japanese is also home to unique genres of gaming that do not make it out internationally, particularly dating sims, erotic games, and interactive graphical novels. Arcade game design is also unique in the domestic market, with advanced networked gaming and interfaces that are not found in other parts of the world. Unlike countries where there is a strong culture of PC-based game arcades, Japanese arcades are based on customized and high-end coin-drop arcade systems that are home to vibrant location based gaming communities of urban geeks.

As we have seen in the case of other countries, however, there is relatively little research on gaming practice, despite its centrality as an everyday practice. The work that does exist centers on documentation of negative effects from a psychological research perspective. Here we briefly review this dominant research trend before reviewing studies that look at social and cultural dimensions of gaming in the areas of game arcades, online games, and portable gaming.

Perils of Gaming

As we saw in the case of China and Korea, the research literature in Japan on gaming has focused on negative psychological effects. Throughout the eighties and nineties, with the rise of gaming culture, a series of publications has focused on the negative consequences of gaming, as reviewed by Yoshimasa Kijima (2007). The press took up cases of kids becoming addicted to Space Invaders, and later, of elementary school students skipping school to line up for a new release of a popular game franchise. Research tended to follow these trends in public discourse, supporting the thesis that video game play results in violent behavior (Yukawa and Yoshida 2001). For example, Akira Sakamoto (2003, 2005) conducted experimental studies where he separated kids into an experimental and control group and examined the effects of exposure to violent games. He found that kids who were exposed to video games were more prone to applying hostile auditory stimulus to other kids when given the opportunity by the researchers.

Overall, contemporary research on gaming suggests that games reward violent behavior and may result in violent activity. Other research has taken up the question of whether games make kids antisocial, though there has been little empirical support for the claim of causality. The researcher probably most known for arguing for the antisocial effects of gaming is Akio Mori (2002, 2007). His book, The Horror of the Game Brain (ゲーム脳の恐怖), suggests that game play reduces the activity of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that supports higher mental functions such as creativity and social behavior.

Game Arcades and Gamer Communities

Photo by sleepycat

Although the psychological research on negative effects has been dominant in the literature, there is a small and growing body of research that looks at gaming practice. As we have found in other research contexts, this kind of qualitative research tends to be more sympathetic and positive about the social outcomes of gaming. Although there has been virtually no research on gaming practice that takes up gaming in the home, one area has received some research attention is the study of arcade game arcade cultures. This work has tried to work against the dominant cultural image of game centers as corrupting influences. Hiroki Aihara (2001) has written about the unique sociality that game centers provide. He describes how they provide an opportunity for intergenerational contact, where school children can observe the activities of the core gamers, who are generally in their twenties or even older. They also provide a context where kids can participate in a social and competitive environment and achieve status on par with adults.

Hiroyasu Kato (2005, 2006a, 2006b) also describes the ways in which game arcade strip people of their everyday status and identities, providing a space to interact with a new social group around a shared activity. Gamers gain status among a specific community through their skills and hard work. He traces how the regulars at a game arcade develop strong social ties, and how various elements of the game center’s structure contributed to this communal context. For example, he notes how the game machines allow for communal viewing and peer learning, and how the arcade provides a communication notebook for players to leave comments and messages. He also describes how players have gamer names that they use specifically for their gaming status, differentiating it from their real life identity.

Online Games and Social Dynamics

Although Japanese gaming has centered on console, portable, and arcade-based gaming, PC-based networked games are becoming more popular. As with other forms of game research, most studies center on negative psychological effects, such as game-induced violence and antisocial behavior (Hirai and Kasai 2006). Katsura Fuji (2007) conducted a survey examining the relationship between online game activity and real life stress and interpersonal conflict. They found that online games can function as a place to relieve everyday pressures and stress, but can also contribute to a sense of social isolation if the games are used as a flight from everyday life.

Testuro Kobayashi and Kenichi Ikeda (2006) take a more sociological approach in their survey work, examining community dynamics. They found that when players were part of a group that had a flatter social structure based on reciprocity, people gained a positive sense of trust, but when the structure was hierarchical, the effect was negative.  They also found that the positive sense of trust could spill over into everyday life. They argue against the view that online games result in social withdrawal, suggesting instead that people can gain important social skills through online participation.

Portable Gaming and Social Media

Photo by A Malchik!

Mobile gaming has been on the rise in Japan, centered around the Nintendo DS and casual games on the mobile phone. Tamagotchi and card games also represent mobile gaming experiences that have been pervasive among elementary aged kids. Despite the prevalence of mobile gaming, there has almost no research on mobile gaming effects or practices. Christian Licoppe and Yoriko Inada (2008) have studied the players of a location based mobile game called Mogi, and how the game supports unique social connections between players. My work (Ito 2007) has also looked at how portable gaming promotes unique forms of sociability, by looking at the case of media mixes such as Yugioh and Pokemon. I look at how card games enable a kind of “hypersocial” exchange of game information and tokens that support unique kinds of learning and extroverted kinds of game experiences. Although there has been research on Pokemon uptake overseas (Tobin 2004, Allison 2006), there has been little comparable work conducted in Japan. As in the case of other forms of gaming, research on gaming practice is sparse despite its centrality in the culture.

References

Aihara, Hiroyuki (相原博之). 2001.「ゲームセンター」という空間に子供は何を求めるか？『児童心理』No.754, pp100-105.

Allison, Anne. 2006. Millenial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fuji, Katsura (藤桂). 2007. 「オンラインゲーム利用が孤独感・敵意的認知に及ぼす影響」『筑波大学心理学研究』　33, pp51-57.

Hirai, Daisuke and Makiko Kasai (平井大祐・葛西真記子). 2006.「オンラインゲームへの依存傾向が引き起こす心理臨床的課題：潜在的不登校・ひきこもり心性との関連性」『心理臨床学研究』24(4).

Ito, Mizuko. 2007. Technologies of the Childhood Imagination: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Media Mixes, and Everyday Cultural Production. In Joe Karaganis Ed., Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. New York: SSRC Books.

Kato, Hiroyasu (加藤裕康). 2005.「ゲームセンターにおけるコミュニケーション空間の生成」『マス・コミュニケーション研究』No.67, pp106-122.

Kato, Hiroyasu (加藤裕康). 2006a.「ノートを介した小集団における合意形成の過程：コミュニケーション・ノートの誹謗中傷・落書きとイラストの事例から」『社会情報学研究』Vol.11, No.1, pp31-47.

加藤裕康Hiroyasu Kato (2006b)「落書きをめぐるポリティクス--ゲームセンターの伝言・掲示板を事例として」余暇学研究No.9, pp49-58

Kijima, Yoshimasa (木島由晶). 2007. ビデオゲームの現在. 富田他編『デジタルメディアトレーニング』有斐閣選書。

Kobayashi, Tetsuro and Kenichi Ikeda (小林哲郎・池田謙一). 2006. 「オンラインゲーム内のコミュニティにおける社会関係資本の醸成」社会心理学研究22巻1号 pp58-71.

Licoppe, C., & Inada, Y. (2008). “Geolocalized Technologies, Location Aware Communities and Personal Territories “ : The Mogi Case”, Journal of Urban technology 15(3), pp. 5-24.

Mori, Akio (森昭雄) 2007.「脳力」低下社会. PHP研究所.

Mori, Akio (森昭雄). 2002. ゲーム脳の恐怖. 生活人新書.

Sakamoto, A. (2003) Video games use and children’s psychological development: Japanese situations. In D.W. Shwalb, J. Nakazawa, and B.J. Shwalb Eds., Child development in cultural context: Applied research on Japanese children. Westport, CT: Ablex/Greenwood Publishing.

Sakamoto, Akira (坂元章). 2003.「テレビゲームと暴力」問題の過去と現在：社会心理学における研究の動向『シミュレーション＆ゲーミング』13(1).

Sakamoto, Akira (坂元章). 2005. テレビゲームと子供の心：子供たちは凶暴化していくのか？. メタモル出版.

Yukawa, Shingaro and Fujio Yoshida (湯川進太郎 ・吉田富士雄). 2001.「暴力的テレビゲームと攻撃：ゲーム特性および参加性の効果」『筑波大学心理学研究』23.

Tobin, Joseph, ed. 2004 Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon. Durham: Duke University Press.

In the introduction to this blog series on new media practices in Brazil, I discussed how particular forms of new media embody the ethos of carnival, becoming a space where the norms of everyday life are suspended, reversed and reordered and people have a space to “forget” and reframe traditional boundaries and hierarchies. Bar, Pisani and Weber (2007) have made a similar case in their working paper “Mobile technology appropriation in a distant mirror: baroque infiltration, creolization and cannibalism”. Drawing upon the Latin American context, the authors argue that the three forms of appropriation in the region can be applied to our conceptualization of innovation and appropriation of technology. As they describe,

“At one extreme, we find cannibalism, a radical physical reaction later transformed in a cultural program. Cannibalism is appropriation trough dismembering, absorption, and chemical transformation. It appears as a reference in a Brazil’s Ministry of Culture program conceived to encourage multimedia creativity and open source tweaking. At the opposite end, baroque is a reaction of the mind. It is the appropriation of spaces through filling and layering, and generally does not imply direct confrontation. An infiltration strategy, it begins by occupying the edges, continuing to fill-in the available spaces until it makes the center marginal. In-between, creolization is appropriation through miscegenation, and detour (roundabout), through unpredictable mixing. A process, more than a condition, it does not need to be confrontational but generally leads to new power arrangements.” (Bar, Pisani and Weber 2007:15)

Drawing upon recent scholarship by Brazilian scholars as well as the work by Bar, Pisani and Weber (2007) and McCann (2008), throughout this blog series I have demonstrated how Brazilian’s new media practices reflect a commitment to the value of mixture, resistance and reversal. Examples of this include the Brazilian government’s receptivity to the integration of open source software use in the nations telecenters, the relatively laissez-faire attitude of the state towards piracy in relation to the video game industry as well as blogs, videos and sites such as Orkut and Overmundo to re-route traditional centers for the circulation and redistribution of new media. While this culture of resistance and rebellion may characterize many of the ways in which new media practices and discourse emerge, it is also evident that there are other media spaces where the freedom to experiment, explore and play in a carnival-esque fashion continues to be restricted, the barriers to participation reflecting long-standing hierarchies and inequalities. For example, the creative appropriation of the mobile phone whereby low income Brazilians return calls through the use of the local phone booth reflects as much of the forced creativity that undergirds everyday strategies to survive economically as it does the telecommunications industry to penalize Brazil’s poorest citizens through the extensive tariffs on calls for users of pre-paid plans. Similarly, Recuero (personal communication) notes that sites like Orkut are as much about the display of status and popularity as they are about sociality; upper class Brazilians rarely interact in a meaningful way with residents living in favelas even when they join in the same activity. In other words, and much like studies of the practice of carnaval in Brazil reveals (see Scheper-Hughes 1993, daMatta 1991, Lewis and Pile 1996), new media practices – even of the same media – are diverse and people in different social and economic locations throughout Brazil modes of engagement often reflect these inequalities, locations and dispositions which, in turn, engenders different meaning and interpretations of these practices.

In future research, the challenge will be to understand these practices within the particular social and historical conditions of Brazil as well as their significance in relation to other media practices throughout the world. There is much about about the Brazil case that reflects innovative, if not forward-looking, policies. For example the Brazilian government’s support of open source and Creative Commons, a distinct difference from the Indian government’s recent attempt to copyright traditional yoga poses. Yet, the efficacy of Brazil’s policies are also tied to a strong state that with prominent personalities, such as Gilberto Gil, driving these efforts. Now that Gil has stepped down and President Lula is facing the end of his term in the next few years, it is unclear the extent to which these policies will continue. At the level of research, there are definite ‘gaps’ in our knowledge of new media practices. My training as an anthropologist leads me to wonder more about the informal economy that has emerged around software, video games, mobile phones and new media production. I also want to know more about the practices that are connected to and supportive of people’s participation in Orkut, blogs, LAN houses, the remix of videos and other practices that are often rendered invisible, or partial, in these online milieu. Studies – ethnographic, qualitative and otherwise—of gaming are particularly absent despite Brazil’s rich gaming culture. It is clear that theoretically-driven empirical work needs to be done to extend and challenge existing understandings of new media participation.

A final note. In our early discussions of writing for this blog series, we expressed an explicit commitment to reading the research literature of local academics in the countries we wanted to explore in greater depth. Indeed, and with a few notable exceptions, much of what we know about new media practices in Brazil emerges from Brazilian scholars. The ability to engage in these literatures the span of days and months reflects the fact that many of the scholars involved study and participate in sites such as Flickr, Twitter and Orkut. Many scholars involved in internet and new media research also make a concerted effort to publish drafts of their work online on their blogs, personal websites and other sites in Portuguese and English. Although there are sites like Babelfish and other translation services to ease this burden, access to this material rests upon the good will, generosity and (importantly) the trust of “local” scholars to translate, share and even provide feedback on the interpretation of the innovative work that has not made its way through the lengthy peer review process and into journals and books. Over the next three weeks, Mimi Ito and Daisuke Okabe will continue to follow this commitment to understanding the national and transnational perspectives of new media practices in their co-authored blog series on the new media landscape in Japan.

References:
Bar, Francois, Francis Pisani and Matthew Weber. 2007. paper “Mobile technology appropriation in a distant mirror: baroque infiltration, creolization and cannibalism” May 15, 2007. Prepared for discussion at Seminario sobre Desarrollo Económico, Desarrollo Social y Comunicaciones Móviles en América Latina. Convened by Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires, April 20-21, 2007. http://arnic.info/Papers/Bar_Pisani_Weber_appropriation-April07.pdf, Accessed May 18, 2008.

DaMatta, Roberto. 1991. Carnivals, rogues and heroes. An interpretation of the Brazilian dilemma. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press.

Lewis, C and S. Pile. 1996. Woman, Body, Space: Rio Carnival and the politics of performance. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, Volume 3, Number 1(1):23-42.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1993. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.