Stage 1 roundup: Summary, reflections, and future direction for Libranarchy.com

In this blog post, I'm going to reflect on my learning experience for this part of the blog and identify a couple of the features of said experience, with a view to giving a better idea of the scope of what I've done so far. I'll identify some of my own strengths and weaknesses (albeit from a much more subjective point of view than the SWOT analysis that I carried out before), and give a bit of explanation of where I'm going to go with this blog from here. The university-based part of this project is over, for which I've received an excellent mark.

To being with, here’s a screencast of the presentation that I did. It basically gives an overview of what I covered in the course of the blog. (14 minutes)

This was a fairly hard project for me to maintain - not really because of the format, but because of the other pressures that I had in my studies and the fact that it was much more academically grounded than I am used to. I like blogging, but I'm not a huge fan of referencing and research (which seems kind of silly seeing as I'm studying, and I'm studying to become a librarian). I found the academic grounding pretty eye opening, however, and I feel a lot more confident in progressing with my studies now that I've done a bit of actual research into the area I plan to pursue. The effort has definitely paid off and I am looking forward to pursuing the idea of gaming as a learning tool.

In terms of the research I did, I realize it's not completely infallible, but it is still fairly robust. I may not have been critical enough during my investigation, but there are two reasons for this - first, I just didn't have the time to undertake a multi-faceted account of the concept. I had a full study load and - to be blunt about it - a bunch of other life stuff to look after. It just wasn't practical to take a devils' advocate approach and look at the downsides of gaming, though I think the Negative aspects of the SWOT analysis made an excellent attempt.

The second reason I didn't take a more critical view of gaming in libraries is to do with my own personal viewpoint and the purpose of the blog. I am a gamer, more than I am an academic or librarian. It interests me and I can see a lot of benefits for the concept in a library environment. I also think that there's enough hard data to justify the medium as a legitimate tool - I'm not so concerned with that as I am implementing it in a setting where it can be of use. To me, the debate is done - let's work out how it can best be used. This was a huge challenge in the blog - at times, it felt like I was a bit of a bull at a gate, wanting to progress straight to the design aspect of a/the game and skipping all of the background. The blog is driving towards practical implementation and that design aspect, not a drawn out scholarly debate about the pros and cons of gaming.

I hope that so far, this blog has provided a decent starting point for those looking into gaming, from what amounts to essentially a library patrons' perspective (seeing as I neither work in a library nor have a particularly strong academic interest in the subject). It may even serve as a jumping-off point for further research, if someone else wants to take that up. I'd like to publicly thank my Supervisor, Ann Gillespie and Helen Partridge, the Coordinator for the course that I began this blog for. Their guidance allowed me to produce pretty much every entry here thus far and I am appreciative of their time and effort, especially considering that my chosen subject matter was a bit outside everyones experience.

Just to cap off the main learnings that I've gained from this stage of my research -

o   Gaming and gamification are valuable and useful tools that can have a huge payoff when done right

o   Story is one of the most important, hard to get right, and valuable elements of gaming

o   As informal learning spaces, games resist quantification but are qualitatively rich

o   Most of the problems involving the implementation of gaming  stem from biased or dated perceptions of the idea of play

           

These are the major points that I feel bear mentioning at this stage, in the interest of rounding out and summarizing this part of the blog. In terms of future direction, I intend to take more of a design/implementation path here. I want to design games that are of use for purposes other than entertainment (or even as well as being entertaining), but I don't want to gamify things - I'm totally on board with 'gamification' being a bit of a marketing gimmick, and bastardising the medium into a tepid version of itself. This blog will hopefully become my vehicle to chronicle my explorations into creating working game systems and texts, including my reflections on the process. There will be more referenced posts on the subject, mainly involving the theoretical side of gaming and the narratological aspects that I've found to be so important to developing fully functioning games.

Thankyou for reading and I hope that this has rounded out the academic justification for gaming having a place in the library, which I've been exploring up to this point. I'm looking forward to getting into the fun stuff from here on out. Cheers!

SWOT analysis chart and advocacy of gamification of libraries – the beginning of the end (of the beginning)!

This post will begin the development of my argument for advocating gaming and gamification in the library. I have spent the last few posts dissecting the concept and relating it both to the current wider information landscape and the organization of the library itself, and now that I’ve examined all of this, I think it’s time to reflect on the process overall. I’ll begin with a chart that sums up the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) that I’ve investigated:

 

Strengths and Opportunities

Taken together, the positive aspects of gamification in libraries represents an excellent tool that fits in well with the form and function of the library. It can be adapted in many ways to fit with the already existing resources of the organization, as well as employed at service points to increase engagement with the systems in the library themselves. Gaming itself also lends itself to be well integrated into the model of ‘library as community hub’ as it is a heavily interactive concept that allows spectatorship and has a low barrier to client participation once initial considerations are dealt with.

The overall benefit to the organization here is increased immersion in all aspects of the service, a service that offers excellent return on investment when applied properly, and a creative outlet for both staff and clients. Given the massive popularity of gaming and gamification in almost all aspects of world culture, the implementation of them almost seems a no-brainer, as far as benefits go to an institution whose main deliverable is information.

Weaknesses and Threats

As with many negative aspects of any project, the ones present here often spring from outside concerns exacerbating inherent flaws in the concept itself. Here, the immersive and subtly educational aspects of gamification are mainly at in the line of fire, which is interesting because they are also some of it’s greatest strengths. Though the idea of a flawed concept may sound like a very bad thing to bring into an advocacy statement, it should be said that no concept is completely foolproof; anything, applied in the wrong way, will result in a failure. The problem in regards lies in the earlier mentioned immersion and lack of overt educational value – it’s all too easy to get these things wrong in the implementation phase and not realize until it’s too late and the player decides that the game isn’t worth it; they’re over it and have to be coaxed back, with heightened expectations and blunted enjoyment. It’s not until the outcome is revealed that the effectiveness of the means can be judged, if that makes sense.

Talking about the dangers of gamification as a simple case of misunderstanding  might seem like a bit of a copout, but this reveals a bit more of the nature of gaming to those uninitiated – the medium relies on complex machinery behind the scenes to achieve what seems to be a fairly cosmetic and formulaic outcome. A seemingly complicated game might be governed by a few simple rules; a beautifully intuitive game might have an absolutely mind wrecking algorithm behind it, or rely on unquantifiable nuances to present an equally unquantifiable story. This goes back to immersion and respecting the player, as well as the nature of the game being informal and fun – true gamefulness comes not only from an understanding of concepts but an adaptability to the changing situation of the player. In turn, that adaptability is another thing that libraries are having to come to terms with, not only in relation to themselves in the new knowledge economy, but within themselves at the vanguard of that changing economy. The old paradigm is falling away, driven off by technology, and the new one is coming. Games are now more accessible than ever, and it’s because of this that I make my case that libraries should be getting on board with it.

Reflection

The idea that stories and games don’t exist in a vacuum can’t be ignored, and neither can the idea that libraries collect the information that those media are dependent on in vast amounts. The organizations themselves are in the enviable position of having access to thousands, if not millions of texts, and the collective resources to capitalize on them to present hungry audiences with an engaging, interesting, and fun way to consume them.  Given the sheer scope of the gaming industry alone, it’d be remiss of our information repositories to dismiss the concept as not worthy. It’d be tantamount to dismissing compact discs or any form of new media that came out after books.

I say let’s feed the audiences what they want, in a considered and sustainable way. It can only benefit everyone.