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Bold:		Interviewer
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Interview with [anonymised].  Thanks for sparing us your time for this interview for Gaming Horizons.  Before we start just a couple of things, some housekeeping.  Just to let you know I’m already recording the call, just so you know if that’s all right.  As you know we ask you to give your consent for the recording for the transcription and the recording which will both be made available online but they’ll be anonymous.  So it won't be identifiable.  Because of the European Commission regulations and so on we have to make all of our raw data available online for research purposes.
Okay, yeah.
We can begin.  What we can do is perhaps if I just start by giving you a little bit of introduction, background and so forth, some explanation about the interview itself and then we’ll actually start.  You know a little bit about the project.  Just to reiterate, because it was a while back when we arranged the interview.  Basically in this round of interviews we’re interviewing different stakeholder groups, be they educators, researchers, players, game developers, policy makers and so forth.  We’re looking to try to get the interviewees perspectives and ideas about games from their personal experience, their professional experience, but also their impressions about games, gaming and gamification in society at large.
These interviews will be transcribed, they’ll be analysed and a report will come out in summer with the results of this interview round, so we’ll let you know about that further down the track.
Fine.
This is more or less how we’ll proceed.  What I’ll do is in the project we’ve outlined some very general themes that we’re investigating.  We’re going to use these as our markers through the interview.  I’m going to actually show you a slide with the name of each of these general themes, one at a time, and we’ll talk about those.  After the slide with the name of the general theme, for each one I’ll show a second slide which will have some keywords on it.  These will be a few of the keywords that have come up in the discussions and investigations around that topic in the project.  
So we’ll look at those keywords after we’ve talked a bit about that topic, we’ll look at those keywords and see if there are some that we have or haven't already commented about, something we’d like to say more about, or an area that we haven't touched on.  I’ll talk you through those, I’ll bring them up on the screen and you’ll be able to see them.
As for the interview itself, the thing is, it’s a very – it’s anonymous so it’s very relaxed and there’s absolutely no requirement for us to do a journalistic style interview.  By which I mean you can just take as much time as you like to think about things before you answer or while you’re answering.  You can stop, you can answer your phone if you like, if you get a call or something that’s fine, no problems.  You can stop me and ask me questions or ask for clarification, no problem, at any time.  If you like you can also decide not to answer a question I put to you, that’s all right.
When we’re finished at the end I’ll give you some time for you to bring up your own, if you have any further comments or questions to make, either about what we’ve talked about or about the interview itself.  So you can do that at the end  of the interview. That’s about it.  I guess at this point we can start the interview proper.  I’m going to bring up the first of these slides with these general themes.  I’ll just bring up my screen.  This is very interesting, because it’s not giving me the option to share my screen, which is the first time this has happened.  It’s given share sound and show dial pad, but it’s not giving me the option to show the screen, which is a little bit of a worry.  
(Disconnects and calls back)
What I’ll do is simulate that you can see the actual slides.  I’ll read out some of the words that are on them.  Which is what we sort of do anyway to a certain extent, so it’s no big change I’d say.  I’m just going to have one more look in the regular menus.  Sometimes a setting gets blocked.  We’ll go ahead and I’ll talk you through those. 
We can start the interview proper.  What we’ll start with is if I can just ask for you to introduce yourself a bit, say who you are, what you do and so forth.  And give some idea about your experience with games, be it as a player of games or as someone who uses games in an educational context.  I didn’t actually mention what the general theme is, so the general theme of this first introduction is games and you.
I work at a teachers’ education college but I worked also as a normal teacher for ten years and that’s when I came into contact with digital game based learning, by taking part in a project.  Before that project I always thought, okay, you can't really learn anything by playing digital games.  Of course I also play digital games in my free time and I didn’t think of any connection between educational learning and digital games.  In this project, I first tried out using a digital game in my school class and it really worked out fine.  And that’s when everything changed and I got interested into games, also from educator’s point of view, and later on from a researcher’s point of view.  I think that was back in 2008.  And since then I really like everything connected to games.
You were talking about using it in an educational setting, that would have been with what sort of learners, what sort of school or subject area?
It was a secondary high school, so they were 15, 16 years old.  And I used it in the subject German, but then we did a project which was cross curricular and involved quite a lot of other subjects as well.
What sort of game did you use in that case?
It was basically a simulation game, The Movies.  I used it as – because you were able to make your own movies within the game, so I introduced my students into scriptwriting and really making a film within this game.
So what sort of game elements were there that added or gave some added value to the experience of simulating film production?
I think it was the context of course, because the game put everything into context.  It was not so abstract for my students.  Just of course watching films is something we’re familiar with but what does it mean to make a film, which people are involved, why do you need a script before and things like that.  It really gave a good context and a lot of background information in a playful way.
As you saw it, you sounded like it was a very successful experience from your point of view as an educator.  What sorts of added value do you think you were getting through using that approach would you say?  Or what sort of objectives did you have?  I guess it must have had some research objectives because it was a research project.
It was kind, yeah, so the added value was motivation.  My experience before this project was that there are always some students who are not quite into the subject German and they didn’t like to write the texts and whatever.  In this project really everybody, so I did it with two classes which were altogether about forty-five students, all of them wrote their own texts which they made into films.  And a very important added value was the social competence of the students because they worked together in teams, they helped each other.  In the beginning they tried to ask me everything about the game, where do I find this, how can I make that?  And I couldn’t give them all the answers.  So they tried to find their own ways of getting to solutions either by asking other students or by looking it up on the internet.  I think there were quite a lot of competences involved which I didn’t think of before the project.  My target was just to have a look if they afterwards know better how a film is made and what is involved.  That came during the project, this was kind of a nice side effect.
I’m going to simulate now going on to the next slide with those keywords up, which are things like experiences, you’ve told us about the impact that it had, you’ve mentioned, and the context you were working in.  One of the other areas of the keywords for games and you is the types of games, and here there are some types mentioned.  Such as entertainment games, serious games, and gamification.  How would you see your experience in game based learning in terms of those general game types?
I think it has changed a bit.  In the beginning it was more entertainment games.  And in recent years I’ve really liked to do quite a lot of things or have a closer look at serious games.  I have tried out a bit of gamification with students at university but I’m not so convinced of gamification.  
Well, (laughs) I could ask you later on, because we’ll talk a little bit about that, but I’m too curious now, so I’ll ask you.  Why are you not so convinced about it?  What is it that—?
I think sometimes it’s a bit too much of maybe stressing extrinsic motivation.  And maybe it’s also because when I used it with the university course with the students it was not really that successful.  It’s also kind of personal experience that I’m not so much convinced of it.
We’ll now move on from there to the next general theme which is games and learning.  Here, although we’ve already mentioned some aspects, we go into a little bit more detail about how you see let’s say both the added value and also perhaps the limitations of games for learning and games in learning.
Let’s start with the limitations (laughs).  I think it would not really work when you use games and just use games for teaching any real content.  So hard facts or things like that.  But it works in my opinion when students or pupils are really interested in the topic and already know a bit about it and then they soak up everything around the topic like a sponge.  But if you’re not interested the game alone can't change anything, so they just kind of forget whatever they came across in the game.
In this case it’s important I think that the teacher or educator does something with the games to make sure there’s any kind of learning trends happening.  What games are good at is making people curious about the topic.  To give a good starting point for discussions, especially when using the serious games of course.  And just maybe making people aware of certain topics or things.  And also to understand maybe very complex topics like you have for – I’ve used some environment games where you can see what’s connected and what does it mean, or political simulators, something like that.  Which is of course also more motivating when you can be in the position of a politician and try things out.  Some things which you couldn’t do in reality.
So more experiential type of learning?
Mm-hmm.
How would you see the impact then – I’m just now virtually moving on to the next slide with the keywords regarding games and learning.  In the area of impact and where you were talking about things like knowledge, knowledge acquisition and attitudes and things, another area is skills.  How do you see the skill development related to games and learning?
I think it depends on the skills.  I think some skills can be trained by games, yeah.  I’ve not that much experience with skill training games but I think there are quite a lot of typing, learn how to type games and things like that, so skills like that can easily be trained because it’s of course more motivating if you have a game environment than if it’s just kind of typing whatever you need.  It might also help as I’ve already mentioned for social skills.  If you have – especially games where you have to work together, where you have to cooperate or even compete.  It depends on the skill basically.
You mentioned competing, competition and collaboration, two that came up.  Do you see those as being somehow paired in some way or quite disrelated, disconnected?
That’s an interesting question.  I think they are generally each in a game.  Quite often if you have competing games you can also compete as a team, which of course has collaboration, if you want to succeed.  If it’s a game where you just have to compete against either artificial intelligence or against somebody else, there’s no collaboration, so I think that also depends on the game of course.  Also, if you work in an educational context what do you do as an educator with the game, if you try a competitive aspect or if you try, okay, try to do things as a team.  I think for learning aspects no matter if it’s competitive or collaborative it helps for learning.  It’s always better than doing things completely on your own.
Good, so that’s games and learning.  That brings us on quite nicely to the next general theme which is games and the individual.  Now we’re thinking in terms of the sort of influence that games and game playing could have on the individual.  The individual being perhaps in an educational context or also outside of education.  You may have heard some reports about the way people see games and game playing affecting individuals, I don’t know what sort of things you’ve heard and what your own feelings are about that?
Of course, quite often until some years ago you always heard games making people aggressive or making people addicted to games.  I don’t think that there is quite often that direct relation.  On the one hand it’s good of course when it comes to talking about people becoming violent because of playing [0:23:10] or something like that.  But on the other hand, for the educational context of course it’s sad that there is no direct relation to that, you can't influence people that easily.  
I think of course it always depends very much on the individual.  If it’s something in a game which is maybe something you’ve experienced before personally in real life it might affect you more than if it’s just something, okay, it’s just kind of a game.  So it has to do with this magic circle of course.  When playing a game normally people know they are in this magic circle.  But if there’s something that is related to the person outside of this magic circle there might be more transfer than if it’s just very abstract to you.  
So I think, yeah, it really depends on the person and it depends on the game.  Sometimes there might be effects, positive or negative ones of course.  But I think in most cases it’s a bit overrated that games have so much influence on the individual.
I’m now virtually moving on to the next slide with the keywords about games and the individual.  It’s got things like engagement and immersion there, which are things that you’ve mentioned about how games can leverage the immersiveness that they can have to engage people in the game play activity and experience.  Addiction is something you were talking about there.  There’s also a mention of different cognitive abilities and perception, things like problem solving or affecting attention, memory scan.
Yeah.  So I think if we talk about [0:25:12] games they can do a lot for players to feel like being in the game.  There can be quite a lot of immersion.  Especially when you think of games that also use virtual reality, these games, there will be quite a lot of development in the following years that they become even more immersive.  Also if you have a look at all these blockbuster games with the graphics which you can't quite often not really say if it’s machine made, if it’s a game or if it’s real.  And of course also this identification with your game character.  So there is also quite a lot of things done I think in games, especially if you look at all these cosplays and so on, really people tend if they like a game to identify with a certain character in the game.  So I think that’s something games are quite good at.
And I think because of the player being active, having to do something, games are better at this than any other media.  Watching a film of course is something very passive.  Playing a game you always have to do something and I think that’s part of I think identifying with the character.
It’s interesting you mentioned there about being active, because another of the keywords that came up in this theme is physical activity.  
Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  I think that’s also something recent developments have shown that more and more games, with all these kind of alternative controls, where you have to use your complete body, that’s something that also adds to the immersive aspect.  And of course it’s not any longer just people sitting in front of the PC or the console and just moving their fingers.  I think that adds of course to your whole body experience of the game.
That completes games and the individual.  Another area that we’ve looked at in the project is the general theme of games and ethics.  There are a number of different issues if you like or ethically related issues that are sometimes related or connected with or perceived as being related to games and game playing.  What’s your experience about that?
I think that’s a topic that has become quite relevant in recent years.  Because especially when you have a look at serious games, there are some games really playing around with this ethical topic like This War of Mine for example, how people experience war as civilians or just where you really have to decide what to do which really has some consequences also in game.  When talking about ethics of course it’s also the question what should games allow you to do.  There are also quite a lot of discussions going on.  Should you be allowed to shoot people or just to kill innocent people in a game or not and things like that.  
I think that these discussions are so intense also has to do with games being interactive and games immersing you more than a film.  Because when you watch films there are always innocent people killed and nobody cares basically.  But when that happens in a video game it’s always a public outcry, especially if it’s a blockbuster game or something like that.  And I think that’s something people have started to discuss.  I’m quite curious what these discussions will develop as.  Also it’s connected to are games part of culture or can we see games as cultural objects, which is also closely connected.  Because art of course is allowed to do much more than non-art.  
But all these discussions show that people think about games, maybe not only what happens in a game but all the things that happen around a game influence maybe the individual and society more than really just playing the game.  Because I don’t think that most players, if they play a blockbuster game see, okay, I’m going to kill this innocent person or whatever, it’s just kind of playing, basically you don’t kill a person, you kill a pixel or whatever.  But all these discussions going round do something with people and that’s the interesting thing.
Yes, it’s interesting actually you mentioned before about character identification and the implications that can be very strong and the implications it can have for identity.  If we can just virtually move on to the next slide with the keywords in games and ethics, one of those areas is identity and diversity in identity.  I wonder what you thought about that in terms of games?
Yeah, I think games still, especially when it comes to the commercial games, are not very diverse.  So if you look at games characters they are quite often stereotyped.  There are certain races or groups of people underrepresented, it’s kind of this typical appeal to the white, male gamer, let’s say that.  And I think that’s something that should change of course.  If you have a look at all these indie games and serious games, things are different there.  You have black characters, you have handicapped people there, you have all kinds of groups of people involved that in most production of games still is kind of – also if you have a look at how especially women are pictured in the games, it’s always very stereotyped.  I think it will take some time until things change there and it will not change completely.  As long as people buy these games there is no need for the game industry to change anything.
That’s interesting you were talking about the industry, because there are some I suppose ethical aspects about how the industry operates.  Some people sometimes look at areas of monetisation of games and how that is done and see some ethical issues in that area.  Is that something that has come to your mind?
Yeah, of course.  So it’s basically if you have a look at games as an economic sector it’s really huge.  If you also have a look at how games are designed it’s always quite – yeah, the game industry tries to cater for the needs of the mass of players of course, because they want to make money.  So that’s why certain topic areas are quite often excluded.  I read some articles about why religion is not really included in games.  There is of course always fantasy religion and there is mythology and things like that, but not really something like a certain religion included because they just think that’s too delicate to use in games and there might be too many people may be offended and not buy the game.  Which was also the case when we had a look at the example of BioShock of things like that.  If they try to include something there may be even negative consequences for the game industry.  So I think they’re very careful.
Another problem I see is that most game designers are of course male.  That’s also something you can read quite often about, that there are not enough female designers which would bring in a different point of view of course in this industry.  
I think that rounds off very nicely the discussion on the topic of games and ethics.  Perhaps at this point we’ll move on to the next general theme, which is games and society.  Looking at how games, you mentioned them as being cultural objects, how games relate to culture in society, cultural change in society and social change, these sorts of issues.
Yeah, I think games definitely have an influence on society.  We talked about there are a lot of public discussions going on about games being good or bad or whatever.  And of course society is also influenced by – or social change, some games are really trying to make a social change, especially serious games again.  Sometimes they might of course help to make people aware.  But again, I don’t think that games only are enough.  You just again can make people interested maybe into a topic, can maybe show some consequences for things.  
Again, it has to do with the individual, how people see the game, what they take out of a game.  Because most of these games are discussed quite controversial.  If you take any kind of game like – which game could you take?  Whatever games, there are always people saying, okay, it’s not going far enough for introducing a social change.  There are some people saying, okay, that’s a good starting point but there needs to be more, there needs to be real world actions.  Yes, it’s really hard.  I think again like a bit they can of course do something but a little bit might not be enough I think.  For introducing a social change, games are one part of a complete range of things you could do.
One thing you mentioned earlier, thinking about the position of games and the development of games, you suggested earlier that things like virtual reality might become a lot more – leverage a lot more common in games and that might affect the way that games evolve and their position in society.  If I understood what you were suggesting with that?
Yeah, of course.  Because yeah, virtual reality makes you experience things even deeper than just kind of playing with your keyboard or mouse or controller.  I think it has to do with immersion again and experience of things.  If you maybe experience what life is like in a less developed country using virtual reality it might have stronger effect on your opinion and on maybe your willingness to help and change things than if you just have a nice game which is on screen but it’s just two dimensional and you just move the character around.  So I think that’s of course doing something, and things are just starting in this area, we will see what will happen in the next years, that’s very interesting developments going on.
I think it’s at this point we can move on to the next part.  It’s not actually a general theme as such but as a part of a suggestion area in the sense that we have been asking people that we’re talking to if they would like to put forward some suggestions that they think might be useful for taking games, gamification, game playing, forward.  Suggestions that might be say for different sorts of stakeholders in the gaming sphere.
Oh, yeah.  I think that’s a tricky question.  Suggestions.  I think what’s really necessary is to have a more objective view on games.  I think at the moment you have the one side who say games are just really awful, they just are violent, they make you aggressive, they make you addicted, whatever, and they just don’t present anything useful.  And then you have a group of people who say, games are everything, you can teach everybody by games, you can change the world to make it a better place, games are basically the answer to every question we have.
And I think that’s the problem because you can't neither of that.  I think games, as I’ve already said, sometimes games might help, they might introduce some change, they might teach you something.  But we have to be realistic, they are not the one and only solution and they do not work for each and every problem we want to solve, they do not appeal to every person, not every game works with every individual.  So that’s something we need really to be careful about.  And I think that’s at the moment this kind of problem, the very sceptical people and the very too positive people, it kind of needs, no matter which topic and games we’re looking at, we need to do more research first of all.  And just have a really realistic look at it.
So it sounds like finding that middle ground of critique about games, the potential of games, the application of games, you see in terms of the researchers in particular as relevant in this.  I’m just looking at the next slide for the suggestions theme.  There are some other stakeholder groups up there, educators, parents, players, game developers and also policy makers.  I’m just wondering whether you would have any suggestions for any of these other stakeholder groups in terms of again taking games forward?
I think many advocators don’t know the potential of games.  Have not thought about games and learning before.  I always see that with my students when I teach them and I just introduce some digital game based learning.  Quite often they’re games like Candy Crush maybe on mobile phones for just if you have some minutes left and you want to play a game, or you just think of the very quite often in the shooters or the really big games like World of Warcraft.  They quite often don’t know about the smaller games, indie games or serious games or also games which are I think relevant for education which you could use in an educational context.  
So I think that’s something we need to teach teachers how to use games and where to find games.  When you think of Austria there are some kind of teachers who try that, who are very successful doing that, but of course it’s not the great mass of teachers.  So they haven't ever thought about using games in lessons.  And I think that’s one point which really needs to be addressed to get that thing moving on.
The same is true of course for policy makers.  I think they also quite often didn’t think – or didn’t know what the potential of games is.  So quite often they just have no idea, they just see statistics, how much children and teenagers play, how many minutes a day and things like that.  And they say, okay, you should not do that.  But there is no kind of differentiating what kind of games, what is made of games, and things like that.  And the same is true for parents.  They also quite often don’t know.  
Things are changing a bit too because most of the gamers or the kind of game generation becomes parents themselves.  So they know games from their own perspective.  But I’m not quite sure if they realise how to deal with games with children so that you have to talk about it and to reflect on gaming and things like that.  So again, I think there needs to be a lot more information for these groups of people, to just change – to look at games.  And again, it must be realistic.
That’s really interesting suggestions there, Sonja.  Just one extra thing.  Perhaps if I ask you to recall a particular moment or episode or memory that you have about games, in any context at all, but just something that has remained in your memory let’s say about digital games.
The first thing that comes to my mind is basically one of the first digital games I played as a teenager.  I think it was called Sokoban, it was just basically a problem solving game, so you had a labyrinth and you had to find – you had to kind of push a box to the exit.  Which was kind of a tricky game and normally I’m not that patient a person but I still can remember playing that game for really long time and really trying to figure out how to solve the level.  That’s something that good games really can make you stay and really try again and again.  That’s something that fascinated me with games.  If that would be solving a maths problem on a piece of paper which is kind of, okay, I can't solve it, let’s get rid of it, I’m not interested.  But games really try to make you stick with a problem until you find a solution.  That’s something fascinating for me.
That’s interesting.  So you see that’s remained with you because of this sense of supporting a problem solving approach…
Yeah.
…or a problem solving experience I suppose.
Mm-hmm.
That’s really interesting.  Great, thank you very much for that, Sonja.  Just to conclude, as I said at the beginning, we’d like to give you some space to ask any questions, you can ask me any questions you like, as I said, about what we’ve spoken about or about the interview in general.  If you have any questions?
Any questions?  No, I don’t have any questions.  I’ve talked so much (laughs).
That’s fine, that’s very good.  Wonderful.  
Really interesting questions and sometimes really tricky questions.  I had to think about it.
Great.  I think we can conclude it there.  What will happen now is I’ll get back in touch with you shortly.  I’ll send you of course the certificate of participation in the project activities for the interview.  As I said, we’ll also be in touch with you as well when the research deliverable or report essentially comes out, when that’s released.  Which will contain the analysis of the interviews that we’ve done.  That should be hopefully, fingers crossed (laughs), if we don’t collapse in the meantime, that should be towards the end of the summer I guess when that’s due to come out.  Anyway, we’ll be back in contact with you before then to let you know when that’s going to be released, if you’re curious to know what outcomes there have been from this interview.
The other thing I want to mention to you, I’m not sure if this might interest you or not, in July and if I’m not mistaken the date is the 12th July, there’s going to be a one day event in Brussels.  Which will bring together a number of people from these different stakeholder groups, including educators and teacher trainers, but also as I said the other groups such as game developers, policy makers, players and so forth, to discuss some of the issues and the questions and the areas that we’ve brought up in the interview today.  If you’re interested, I can give you some more information about that event, if you think it might be something that you’re interested in taking part in?
Yes, please give me some information on that, that really sounds interesting.
Okay, together with the certificate and so forth, I’ll send you the information about that.  And so then I’ll let the – this event is being organised by the project coordinator which is Leeds University.  I’ll pass on your response that you’d be interested in taking part and let them know, because they’re compiling the list of people that would be able to attend.  So they’ll again get in touch with you later on about the possibilities of attending and all the details and so forth.
Okay, fine.
Thank you very, very much, Sonja, it’s been really good, really interesting speaking to you.  It’s been very interesting doing these interviews, it’s also a little bit frustrating for me because I’m very interested in the sorts of things that you’ve been telling me about and I’d very much like the chance to stop and chat about them and things, but unfortunately that’s not the sort of time window we’ve got to be able to do that.  In any case, it’s been a real pleasure and thank you very, very much for giving us your time.
You’re welcome.  It was a pleasure for me too.
Good.  Take care, Sonja.  As I said, I’ll be in touch very soon.
Okay.
Bye.