Game Design as a Beneficial Participatory Culture among Disadvantaged Youth

Chelsea Gill
Summer 2017
Western Oregon University

Using Web 2.0 technology in the 21st century has become even more important. Students

use technology on a consistent basis that enables them to learn at a much quicker pace. However,
not all students have access to Web 2.0 technology. In fact, those who come from poor or low

socioeconomic households are often at a greater disadvantage than those who have constant

access to technology. As educators, it is important to give students the opportunity to use

technology and learn from it through an academic lense. Some school districts have even begun

to use gaming as a way to teach students. This paper will look at the benefits of using game

design to teach disadvantaged youth.

The introduction of Web 2.0 technology has shaped how educators teach and how

students learn (Li, 2010, p. 428). In this shift, into a technology-based pedagogy, has emerged

into what is known as a participatory culture. According to Li (2010), researchers have claimed

that our society is moving towards being a participatory culture. Jenkins et al. (2006) describe

this as a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong

support for creating and sharing ones creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby

what is known by the most experiences is passed along to novices (p. 3). Members of a

participatory culture believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social

connection with one another (Jenkins et. al. 2006). In this essay, I am going to highlight the

benefits of a participatory culture involving disadvantaged students active involvement in game

design, which Peppler (2010) calls gaming fluencies. According to the research, young people

who take active ownership over the design of their own games benefit in many ways, such as

providing creative expression, increased language and literacy, problem-solving skills, specialist

language acquisition, ethics, leadership, and more.

Participatory Culture

Jenkins et. al. (2006) explain that a participatory culture can be in several forms:

Affiliations include memberships, both informal and formal in online communities; Expressions:

the production of new creative content, such as video games, movies, digital music sampling,

video game skinning and modding, writing, mash-ups, etc.; Collaborative Problem-Solving:

working together in teams, both formally or informally to complete tasks or create new

knowledge (wikis); and Circulations: shaping how the media flows through podcasting and

blogging (p. 3). Jenkins et. al. (2006) described the benefits of these forms of participatory

cultures, including peer-to-peer learning, a new outlook on the ethics involving intellectual

property, diverse cultural expressions, and the increased knowledge of skills which are valued in

the contemporary workplace (p. 3). However, there is concern that the digital divide can create

gaps in how students are getting access to these new forms of learning due to socioeconomic

status and the slow reaction of schools towards participatory cultures (Jenkins et. al., 2006, p. 4).

There is also what is known as the participation gap involving internet access some cities in the

United States, such as Philadelphia, are creating programs in which low-income families with

children can access the web for free in the belief that the children will fall behind and never catch

up (Jenkins et. al., 2006, p. 12). Jenkins et. al. (2006) state that the greatest opportunity for

change involving the emergence of participatory cultures is through afterschool programs (p. 4).

Scratch

Peppler and Kafai (2010) state that the focus of game design on learning is a newer topic

in the field of education (p. 3). The academic community several decades ago focused on

designers at game companies being the creators of content, not players (Peppler & Kafai, 2010,
p. 3). Game players as game designers was met with resistance, and players were seen as being

consumers of media (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 3). According to Peppler and Kafai (2010), one

of the first important empirical studies of game design in schools was done by Kafai in 1995. In

that study, a class of 16 elementary school students who were 10-11 years old were invited to

create a game for younger students in their school to learn fractions. The students created a game

using Logo programming code over a period of six months. The students also created

advertisements and packaging for their game. The older students then acted as mentors to the

younger students, the latter of which provided feedback about the game design to the older

students (Peppler & Kafai, 2010), p. 4).

Peppler and Kafai (2010) looked at the concept of gaming fluencies to promote game

design as a context in which youth not only learn to read but also to produce digital media in

creative ways (p. 2010). They specifically wanted to look at how game production by children

enhances technology fluency in disadvantaged youth. They examined game production by youth

for two years at the Computer Clubhouse, an after school community technology center in south

Los Angeles that serves over 1000 disadvantaged high poverty African-American and Hispanic

youth (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 7). Peppler and Kafai (2010) explained that the youth had

access to multiple types of design tools, but their focus was on a tool called Scratch. Scratch was

developed at MIT and is found online on their website (http:// scratch.mit.edu/). According to

MIT, Scratch has the ability for youth to program your own interactive stories, games, and

animations and share your creations with others in the online community. The Scratch

website states that the program helps young people learn to think creatively, reason

systematically, and work collaboratively essential skills for life in the 21st century (MIT).

Peppler and Kafai (2010) assert that a tool like Scratch can promote the developmental
relationship between the individual and the community and will enable youth to express their

cultural heritage, have a broad communicative value, and allow for an information and resource

exchange (p. 6).

Game Design

Peppler and Kafai (2010) analyzed over 643 Scratch projects designed by the centers

youth. The authors drive in this study was pushed by a need to better understand young peoples

game design activities (p. 7). They wanted to focus their attention on the creative and technical

aspects of each project (p. 6), with a focus on the youth designers artistic expression as we

struggle to be include of individuals with diverse backgrounds (p. 7). The participants at this

center worked either individually or in small groups on their Scratch projects and ranged in age

from 8-18 years old, but most were between 10-14 years old. The participants were supported by

mentors from a local university, but the authors note that the mentors themselves were novices in

regards to computer technology, game design, and programming (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 7).

The participants at the Clubhouse had access to a networked server which stored their

projects, as well as access to multiple programs that supported their programming, such as sound

editing, photography, video, and graphics editing software (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 7). Scratch

was beneficial to the youth as it relied on a familiar building block command structure,

eliminating thorny debugging processes and the risk of syntax errors that could prevent a

beginner game designer from successfully creating games (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 7). The

projects the youth created were in two-dimensional game design, which according to the authors,

afforded the participants with several advantages such as greater creative expression through the
ability to create their graphics in third-party software and then import them into Scratch (Peppler

& Kafai, 2010, p. 8).

Though 252 participants out of a thousand created projects in Scratch, Peppler & Kafai

(2010) focused in on three specific participants game designs and their approaches to different

gaming genres (p. 11). One student, Jerrell, created a game called Hoops which featured a

basic clip art basketball hoop, a timer, and a ball. The goal of the game was for participants to

shoot as many balls into the hoop within 60 seconds. The game became popular in the

Clubhouse, with members trying to beat their own personal best score or their peers scores

(Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 12). A second participant, Chandelle, created a game called

Chandelle Castle. The authors noted that she was of mixed African-American/Latina heritage,

as females and minorities are typically underrepresented as creators of video games. Chandelles

project was noted to be more advanced than some of the other designs, with features such as

custom audio recordings, win/lose component, utilization of mouse movements in the interface,

animation, and three-dimensional perspective (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 13). The third

participant the authors examined was Jorge. Jorge was older than the previous two described

participants, and his game, which was similar to Mortal Kombat, featured more advanced

techniques within the game design than the others. He utilized over 16 different 3D backgrounds

that he downloaded from the web and embedded into his game which created a three-

dimensional play space, as well as visual instructions on the screen of which keystrokes to push

for certain fighting moves (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 15).

Peppler and Kafai (2010) found that over fifty percent of the games archived on the

Clubhouses server were considered to be interactive narrative projects. These projects included

choose-your-own-adventure games, short animations, and interactive art (p. 18). The authors also
noted that the participants were often engaged in learning about the professional practices of

media artists and that several of the designs observed appeared to resemble the works of

modern professionals in the game design field (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 19). In regards to

technical aspects of game design, the authors noted that in the second year of the study, the

technical concepts increased in advancement and frequency, which to them indicated that the

participants had become more experienced (Peppler & Kafai, 2010, p. 20). Peppler and Kafai

(2010) note that this is an indication that a sustainable video game design community was taking

place (p. 20).

Peppler and Kafai (2010) argue that their findings indicate that new literacies were

cultivated through game design (p.21). They state that the activity of game design acted as more

of a pedagogical tool than that of a game in the Clubhouse, and had acted as a launching pad for

the aspirations of several of the youths goals to become video game designers (Peppler & Kafai,

2010, p. 22). Peppler & Kafai (2010) state that their study provides a perspective on how urban

youths informal video game making culture and practices can be used to support alternative

pathways toward gaming fluencies, and, more broadly, the new literacies important to 21 st

century learning (p. 22).

In the 2010 study by Ivan Alex Games, the author examines the use of Gamestar

Mechanic, which is a flash-based online-based game developed by the MacArthur Foundation

with the goal of helping youth form a designer mindset and to learn its associated forms language

and literacy (p. 31). Games (2010) states that games are one of the fastest growing types of

entertainment with millions of players worldwide, but that certain populations (minorities, low-

income, girls) are underrepresented in the use of gaming in educational settings (p. 32). The

author contends that this makes games an attractive contexts for educators interested in finding
new avenues to engage students historically disaffiliated with school (Games, 2010, p. 32).

Games (2010) states that well-designed games can potentially be powerful tools to engage

learners in active and critical forms of learning (p. 32).

Games for Disadvantaged Youth

Games (2010) describes the Gamestar Mechanic project as being a collaboration between

the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Gamelab.com studio (p. 34). The projects goal

was to create a program that would teach middle-school-aged youth to think and communicate

like game designers with a specific interest in youth from populations that were shown to be

underrepresented in their access to technology at both school and at home (Games, 2010, p. 34).

These populations include minorities (African-American and Hispanic youth), youth from low-

socioeconomic backgrounds, and females (Games, 2010, p. 34). The projects leaders intended

Gamestar Mechanic to teach them some of the complex language, literacy, and thinking skills

central to the discourse of game design (Games, 2010, p. 34).

Gamestar Mechanic allowed the youth participants to role play game mechanics. The

participants began as characters in a fantasy virtual world where the population discovered

ways to harness games as sources of energy and when a disaster struck, the game factories

began producing low energy (Games, 2010, p. 34). This required the youth participants to find

ways to fix this problem through three different game jobs they must complete to restore design

problems. These jobs require players to (1) learn design principles by playing pre-designed

games, (2) repair dysfunctional games, and (3) design games from scratch according to given

specifications (Games, 2010, p 34). Players have the ability to make their designs available for

sharing with others via a website, The Game Alley, which allows others to play their games and
to rate them (Games, 2010, p. 35). By allowing youth participants to participate, it gave them the

opportunity to make a difference in the learning for others. What would have been an

opportunity not given to these students, was not accessible to them with valuable input for

developers.

In Games research, participants played the game after school in game design workshops

for 2 and a half hours a week for 12 weeks, with the goal of trying to complete some of the jobs

in Gamestar Mechanics curriculum (Games, 2010, p 37). There were 12 participants of middle-

school age, with several ethnicities represented. Games main interest was to evaluate how

Gamestar Mechanic could support youths communication using the languages in game design

and how it impacts the participants thinking practices (Games, 2010, p. 38). Games (2010)

found that Gamestar Mechanic promotes learners to establish critical communication skills

through the specialist-type languages found in game design (p. 49). Games (2010) states that the

data found that players are able to think about complex systems through the solution to game

design problems and to gain a deeper understanding of the possibilities of the technological

medium they are using (p. 49).

Supporting that of what Jenkins et. al (2006) has said about participatory cultures, Games

(2010) states that the community features found in Gamestar Mechanic can place players in the

sort of active, critical roles necessitated by most knowledge communities (p. 49). Among

disadvantaged youth, a study by the MacArthur Foundation found that youths experiences

online are shaped by their social factors (age, race, class, nationality, etc.) and that while middle-

class youth are likely to rely on resources from their peers and family within their own homes,

working-class children must rely heavily on teachers and peers to make up for a lack of

experience at home (Jenkins et. al., 2006, p. 14). Thus, a program such as Gamestar Mechanic,
can assist disadvantaged youth in gaining knowledge and modern skills through its knowledge

community/participatory culture aspect.

Moving Forward

Jenkins et. al. (2006) states that in pedagogical intervention, educators must consider

several important concerns. Simply placing students into the participatory culture without giving

them background knowledge and support will set them up for failure. With that, these concerns

must be taken into consideration in order for disadvantaged youth to have an effective role in

being part of the participatory culture. First, educators must ensure that every child has access to

the skills and experiences needed to be a full participant in our changing society; and second,

educators must ensure that children have been socialized into the emerging ethical standards

that should shape their practice as media makers and as participants in online communities

(Jenkins et al, 2006, p. 18). The research conducted by Peppler and Kafai (2010) and Games

(2010) support these goals through the utilization of implementing game design programs for

disadvantaged youth.

Both studies showed in this paper show many advantages in implementing these

programs. It remains to be seen if these types of programs will remain as merely afterschool

programs, or if they can gain a foothold in the curriculum of traditional schooling. The benefits

of allowing children to gain ownership over their own game design are many, and it allows youth

from disadvantaged populations a way to access technology that they may ordinarily never be

able to use. The participants are also engaged in a participatory culture, which provides them

with social connections, pride in creative pursuits, collaboration among peers, and leadership
skills when mentoring others in the skills they have obtained. This topic is one that needs to be

focused on as our society moves even further in technology.

Switching our Mindset

One way in which educators can begin to use gaming as a way to teach disadvantaged

youth is to give them the opportunity to explore. To explore technology and tools they may not

easily have access to. By allowing them to explore, educators are letting the students set up their

successes and failures in learning. By doing this it gives disadvantaged youth ownership of their

own game design using the tools they feel confident with. Too often we get into a mindset that

disadvantaged youth will not focus or not follow through. However, switching our mindset to

believe disadvantaged youth can succeed and focus allows them to take ownership of the design.

Secondly, it is important for us to know that disadvantaged youth from working class

families cannot always rely on family to assist them. As mentioned earlier, many youth from

working class families rely on teachers and their peers to help them succeed. By giving

disadvantaged youth the opportunity to game design in an environment that takes away all

stigmas and the pressure of needing to succeed, it gives them the ability to thrive. It also allows

those youth to continue to have access to technology they do not normally interact with on a

consistent basis. Again, by changing our mindset on allowing them to feed off their peers can

help create an environment that is conducive to creating and learning a rich environment that

promotes learning while having fun. It also closes the gap for those who are technologically

savvy and those who have little exposure to technology because of socioeconomic status. As

long as educators can continue to see the benefits of game design for disadvantaged youth,

perhaps, learning will begin to move towards an interactive and differentiated environment.
 References

Games, I. A. (2010). Gamestar Mechanic: Learning a designer mindset through communicational

competence with the language of games. Learning, Media and Technology, 35(1), 31-52.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the

21st Century. An Occasional Paper on Digital Media and Learning. John D. and

Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Li, Q. (2010). Digital game building: learning in a participatory culture. Educational Research,

52(4), 427-443.

MIT. Scratch website. Retrieved from https://scratch.mit.edu/about/.

Peppler, K., & Kafai, Y. (2010). Gaming fluencies: Pathways into participatory culture in a

community design studio. International Journal of Learning and Media, 1(4), 1-14.