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Bold:	Interviewer
Regular:	Respondent
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There we go.  Thank you.  Okay, I also might shortly switch to audio only because it helps with the connection and you don't need to be looking at my face the whole time.  
So, Gaming Horizons is a European funded project.  We're looking at and listening to the kind of discourses that go on around video games.  So we're thinking video games in society and culture and kind of ethical questions that come up around video games as things that we and people experience in society.  
So, as part of that, we're trying to explore the ways in which they're understood, the ways in which people use them is understood by different groups.  So your interview is one of about sixty interviews that we're conducting between us.  We're interviewing researchers, educators.  We're interviewing gamers.  We're interviewing game designers.  We've got different partners working on the project, so we're interviewing different people.  So what we're interested in is your perspective, from your perspective as a researcher, but also from your personal perspective on video games.  
The interview will take between thirty minutes and forty minutes.  I don't have a structured set of questions.  I've got some areas that I'd like to cover, and so my questions will kind of hopefully direct us in the area so that we're kind of on topic.  But equally, feel free to take the discussion wherever you want to.
People have asked us what we mean by video games, and I think what we mean is what you mean by video games.  Whatever you take to be a video game and whatever that experience or that application of video games is is absolutely fine.  Is that okay?
It's fine.  It's great, Chris.  Yeah, sure.
Great.  Okay, with that in mind, I think I'm now going to switch to audio because I'm going to be flitting backwards and forwards between questions.  So I'll switch to audio only, and feel free to do the same, or whichever you prefer.  
I'm going to start by asking you, then, what are your research interests that you could link or that are around gaming or video gaming?  Any kind of experience that you've got or what your particular interest is in that area.
Okay.  So I come out of a background in English, English teaching, and literature, that kind of world.  So, initially my interest in games was really to do with them as just absolutely fascinating and complex media forms that told and created stories in very interesting ways, that did fascinating things in relation to how the player or the reader was positioned.  When you were watching the mix, the way I thought about it at that stage, between reception and production, was that it was merging, making and doing in relationship with your avatar, that you were in a first, second and third person position in some ways.  So, how that affected your reading.
So part of what fascinated me initially was just the evolution or the stretching or the richness of these as multimodal forms of text.  And coming, as I did, out of a background in English teaching where some of the students I taught were [0:03:35] but quite a lot weren't, they were smart, intelligent kids, as well as kids that really struggled, and the thoughtful and intelligence use of games, or the engagement with games that I was seeing from so many students just gave me massive respect for—  I understood more about what the students were doing and it gave me massive respect for both them and for passive games to work in this way.
So for a long time I was pretty much thinking about games as text and looking at literacy and the literacy practices that surround them, and that's continued to very much be the overall organising framework that I bring to games.  But in the course of a number of projects, and in particular the last two projects, I've become increasingly interested in and aware of, and I want to avoid, I suppose, the games [0:04:38] perspectives or the looking at what the difference is with games.  That they're not just texts and the action component of games and the mechanics and the procedural rhetoric, to use some of those terms, really further challenged and extended my notion of what I had previously been thinking as textural forms.
So, at a personal level, that's become increasingly important and interesting and teases out how I understand things.  And, of course, the kind of learning that's going on when kids are playing games and the kinds of understanding and the insights that are going on around there.  Literacy is really central there, but it's not the whole story.
So, particularly the last project that we completed, the last major project on serious play was looking at literacy and learning.  And so there was a component that was about game based learning where, I mean, for me, I could see literacy all the time going on there, but for some of the teachers that were using it, the literacy was a means to an end and it was games based learning to increase understanding in social studies, for example, or whatever it was.
Great, thank you.  There's so many things that we could talk about from that already and so many kind of different directions.  What I'd like to do is just—  I know you said you've moved on from the idea of game as text and that kind of idea.  What I'd just like to do—
[0:06:08].
Sorry.
Sorry, go on.
I'm putting words in your mouth, and I don't mean to.  What I'd like to do is kind of linger with the idea of literacy at the moment, if that's okay?
Yes.
Because I think that's a perspective that is kind of a distinct perspective that you can bring to this discussion for a start, and one that we haven't necessarily heard from some of the other interviews I've done.  So in terms of literacy and literacies, what are games good for?
Ah, Chris, can I step back slightly?  I would never [0:06:43] games as text and as literacy forms.  It's just that because I've become very conscious of other things as well, I try to avoid speaking in terms that reduce or deny that dimension of games.
I think I got that and I didn't express what you'd said very well.  But absolutely, yes, thank you for clarifying.
Sorry.  I suppose what I want to say is that, for me, games are always about literacy and text.
Great.
And I would never leave that area.
(Laughs) No, no, totally get that.
Yeah.  I mean, I think that games enable a vast amount of… well, support an enormous number of the things that we've always valued in literacy and literacy education, and they're tremendously exciting and tremendously enabling.  
So, just to add that, at one level, for example, the kinds of understandings that are needed in order to play, for example, narrative structures, for example, about the role of characters, the role of the logic – you know, if you do one thing, then something else happens – I'm very, very interested in games as embodiments of multimodal forms of literacy and literacy as design.  So that notion from the New London Group of those six elements of different symbolic meaning-making forms and the ways in which multimodality combines all those dimensions, for example, seems to me that they're kind of living versions of that because you have to process lots of information presented in different forms simultaneously, very quickly, very rapidly.  So the sophistication of the reading process is, I think, massive, and obviously the different elements, kind of foreground and background a little bit.  
I think that games – and this I suppose actually comes in slightly – are evolving and changing and pushing the boundaries so fast that I suspect there are semiotic forms in there that we don't even recognise yet or we can't put a name on yet, but they're in addition.  So I think they're fascinating.
I suppose the first set of things I was trying to talk about really was in terms of what we would traditionally see as core elements of literature, that they're there in those literary features and those literary structures and those organisational dimensions.  The multimodal literacy dimensions are there.  The kinds of reading and writing in both word-based forms and in non-verbal forms are there.  The constant interaction that players have then, the kind of give and take that the representation, the ways in which games are in part about how you envisage yourself within the games as a player, the ways in which your position is as a player, the kinds of roles that you're required to take on, I think there's lots of things to do then with the ways in which language or literacy and identity are closely kind of linked at a crude level, for example, whether you choose to play a [0:10:10] or a warrior.  For example, other kinds of levels, if you're playing with somebody else, what kind of person you represent yourself to be, all those things about language and identity and representation and experimentation I think are there.
And then there's the bigger – it's not quite as hierarchical – but there are the social practices and [0:10:34] practices around the game.  And again, I'm a bit caught with the in and out thing, but whether that's kind of collaborating with somebody else or whether that's working out what to do next, whether you're a single player or a multi player, all those sorts of interactions that are a purposeful use of language, I find really kind of impressive.  
I could keep going but perhaps I need to (laughs) give you a chance to ask a different question.
No, it's fine.  No, I'm very happy for you to talk.  This kind of idea of literacy around gaming is something that I'm familiar with, but isn't necessarily a perspective that—  Having reviewed a lot of the literature more broadly around video games, it's not necessarily a perspective that is always there.  So it's great to hear you talking from that perspective.  So, thank you.
If I move us on slightly just to think about types of games, when you're talking about games and literacy, are you thinking of a particular type of video game or a particular genre of video game?
Yeah, that's a really good question, Chris.  When I first became involved in games, I think the first game I was interested in was Prince of Persia, and still, the games that I find really fascinating to watch are games where there is narrative in them.  Whether that's things like Prince of Persia or whether that's games that have a sort of implicit narrative but where you need to also create your own narrative within that, like World of Warcraft, for example, which is the other one that I'm drawn to most, I suppose, because I have a kind of literary preference and frame of mind.
So a lot of what I initially came in with was particularly interested in those kinds of games and less interested in games which are more at the ludology end.  And I guess that's still the case.  That's what I like and I'm conscious that—  I think some games lend themselves more to elaborated versions of literacy than others, or in the narrative parts, but I think that my observation is that more limited games – well, I call them limited – which are more like puzzles, are different but there are literacy practices entailed there.  They're different kinds of literacy practices.  
From my point of view, they're not so extended, but in terms of what the players are doing and the ways in which the players are reading a diversity of images on the screen, or singles, or whatever is on the screen, and making snap judgements and responding to those, the ways in which players kind of decide to proceed, it seems to me that that's also kind of literacy practices.  It's a different kind of literacy and it's not dominant or extended in the way that it might be with narrative games, but I suppose they're the two kind of ends of the spectrum.
So if I think about something old, for example, like Tetris, that's at one end of the spectrum of games, that it would have extended literacy attached.  But even with something like Tetris, you're still doing that kind of reading and interpretation and responding as you go along, and of course, whatever kinds of paratext around that or whatever kinds of discussions that are going on.  But I do regard that as much more limited and I guess I, at a personal level, am less interested in that.  And in terms of linking that to the curriculum or linking that to learning, which, in the last project anyway, has been about working in the school context with games, that seems to me to have more limited potential.  It's still there, but it doesn't offer as much.
Thank you.  So I think I probably know, or I can probably imagine, your answer to this, but let's see.  I won't put words in your mouth (laughs).  There's an idea in video games and video game research of there being kind of games for entertainment, and then there's the kind of interesting games that are called either serious games or applied games.  Do you see those distinctions?  Do you think those distinctions are important, and do they influence the way you see video games at all?
Yes, my interest in video games very much arose from seeing kids playing games themselves, you know, at home or, later on, in internet cafés, places like that, where they were real life, real world games.  They weren't things sort of packaged up for educational purposes.  They were wide-ranging, anarchic.
Yeah (laughs).
You know, all of those things.  I think that those kinds of games, commercial games and more indie games, are quintessentially what games are and might be.  And for quite a long time I was not that interested in games that were made for educational purposes because it seemed to me that they were very tame, I felt, ignorantly probably.  But nonetheless (laughs) it felt kind of like a [0:16:04] what games were about and a misappropriation, even, of what games were and should be.  It was kind of like taming them for educational purposes where education had a very [damp principle 0:16:20].  
I was aware that people were using them, but I was certainly interested in people who weren't necessary – quote – educational.  They were games like Civilisation, for example, that was not overtly educational but it leant itself to… you might use it, and people did, use it as part of their teaching and learning.
With the existence of serious games, I think there are actually some quite interesting examples of that, and certainly in some of the research we were doing in serious play, there were some fantastic serious games.  So I know a lot of people think that serious games are necessarily problematic.  I think they're problematic if they have a diminished view of curriculum or a diminished view of what kids can do if they're very black white, you know, right answer, wrong answer content driven.  I think those are a bit reductive.  On the other hand, if I think about some of the games that teachers in our project were working with, they opened up things enormously.
So I don't want to not work with serious games, but on the other hand, I really dislike the notion of gamification and I don't know that I would do a project that was solely focused on serious games.
Thank you.  Can I push you a little bit further on gamification?  You said you don't like the idea of gamification.  What is it that you don't like about that kind of idea?
Well, right at the start I didn't like the idea of turning something into something else just for the sake of it because, I mean, the notion of gamification, amongst other things, kind of implies that everything can be turned into this, and I don't think that that's necessarily the case.  But what I kind of worry about, or one of the things I worry about a lot, so I just find it distasteful.  If somebody took a novel- For example – I'm trying to think in a positive sense – if I think about the ways in which a novel gets translated into a film, if I take that remediation notion and go back further, for that to be done well, it can be really interesting, but what you then have is two different forms.  You don't have something fixed, you don't have the novel that that nobody could get into fixed because, all of a sudden, now it's a film.  What you have is a novel and you have a film, and you might have two or three different films.  So I don't like the idea of things being reduced to the one form, but mainly I don't—  
So it's a distortion of what the capacities are into a different form, but I particularly dislike, or I'm fearful of, reductive understanding of what games are or what games can do.  So, gamification appears, to me anyway, to imply a version of knowledge and a version of learning which doesn't allow for messiness and for diversions and for reflection and disagreement and all of those kinds of things.  So for me, it implies both a distortion of the original form, but also a reduction to a formula that may not necessarily allow for the kind of wide-ranging learning and insights and understandings and reflection growth and arguments, all those things that I want.
Yes, that's a very interesting response.  Thank you very much.  It sounds, in what you're saying there about gamification, like there's some ethical concerns there about the process of gamification.  Would that be fair?
Yes, I think there are, kind of to do with the nature of the genre, I suppose, and the – quote – art form and so on.  That's at a kind of theoretical level.  I also have quite a lot of concerns about what it does to notions of learning and what it does to constructions of curriculum and knowledge and pedagogy.
Great, thank you.  If we think about that kind of problematic ethical aspect of gamification and kind of transfer that to video games, if we're thinking of video games, in a way, similar to how we might a book or a story, or you've talked a lot about the strong narrative aspect of video games and how, if we were introducing a text, as in a written book to children, you would be thinking around whether that text was appropriate, whether it represented things in certain ways.  If we kind of apply that kind of ethical consideration to video games, are there any problems you see there, or any advantages of video games in terms of ethics?
Could you put that differently, Chris, or say it again?
I think I can.  I've probably not put it very well.  What I'm interested in getting at is are there some ethical concerns around introducing video games, narrative video games, into children's lives, into classrooms?  Are there things that video games bring with them that might lead them to being problematic?
The short answer is yes (laughs).  That's really interesting.  I value video games as part of a whole spectrum of texts and a whole spectrum of engagement, a spectrum where there's all sorts of literacies and there's all sorts of aesthetic dimensions and there's all sorts of narrative or generic features, and I think that they offer a very great deal there.  
I also think that because they're things that kids are already playing, often – and this a very old teacher education – working with the text that the children are already using and are familiar with enables you to connect and to dig deeper and to create spaces for things like reflection and analysis and critique, all those things that we value everywhere.  So I really value games very much for that.  On the other hand, I also think that all the other things that are going on in children's lives are really, really important and I think, if there are ethical issues as a consequence of doing this, that other things get driven out.  
So I think it's a judgement that the teacher makes and I think it's partly a question of quantity and it's partly a question of choice.  That is that you need to choose a game, obviously that's not going to be – and this gets complicated – inappropriate for that age level.  And it's inappropriate, of course, because kids play games that are—  It's very common for kids to be playing games that are way beyond their age rating.  On the other hand, well, schools can guard against that, but there's also games, I think, whereby some of the ideologies are pretty toxic and, if you're going to be introducing those in school, you'll be wanting to make sure you protect those rather than just have students unproblematic to take them on board.
So yes, it's quite a fraught area ethically, I think.
Are there any ways in which you think that could be made less fraught?  I'm thinking maybe from a kind of game design perspective.  Is there any way in which we could encourage – I don't know – a kind of more ethical approach to designing the kinds of games that we might use with children in the classroom?  I'm not talking about the kind of watering down of the experience that you talked about earlier through serious games, but is there space for a different sort of narrative in video games, I suppose is what I'm saying?
Well, there could be a lot more nuance in relation to gender, for example, but I don't want to say that all serious games are diminished.  I would say that that's the frame of mind that I brought to it, but I've come across some fabulous serious games, so I've kind of backed off of that slightly, or I don't want to globalise about that.  
But yes, I think it depends again whether we're talking about—  I mean, if I could change the world, I would change the world so that video games were not so violent, were not so driven only by… well, not only.  I would wish it was not quite so dominant with kind of representations of gender and possibility and ethnicity that are in games.  I would hope them to be more nuanced and kind of open, a sense of the possible in there.  If I could change the world, I would not want first shooters to be quite as dominant as they are (laughs).  I would quite like gamers to remember that they're engaging with other human beings (laughs).
Yeah, so again, it's not an easier area to be in and it's not a neutral area to be in.  I mean, there's some fabulous [women 0:26:43] working, for example, around games and there are some fabulous men working around games too, but there's quite a lot in the video game world that you would want to resist.
That's really interesting, thank you.  This ideal 'if I could change the world, if I could make things more like I want to' is really a nice way of thinking what position would we like to get into.  We'll move on from ethics and this in a second, but I'm just wondering, if we want that kind of change to come about – there's a wide range of changes you've talked about there – whose job is it to make those changes happen?  Or can you see a way into making that kind of stuff more possible?
It's complicated because it's such a huge industry and there's so much money involved.  It taps into a reservoir of cultural – not just cultural – values and ways of behaving and being that are very widespread.  I mean, in education, I guess because I have a great belief in the power of education and a great belief in the importance of education – and I guess I'm speaking about English because that's what I came out of – I think it's everywhere really to help young people to become critical and thoughtful and imaginative and ethical human beings.
So the bit of me that is still trying to change the world (laughs) is hoping that, through education, as young people become adults and move out into the world and take those values with them that, increasingly, they may be less tolerant of games that continue to represent, you know, if you're a man, you've got to be this kind of person; if you're a woman, you've got to be that kind of person; if you're a human being, you've got to be wise; if you're a woman, you don't count unless you've got a particular kind of figure, all those sorts of things.  Or the only games that are fun are where you're killing people, even though I know about representational balance and that killing people is kind of like part of just about every bit of literature in the world.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely (laughs).
So I suppose if the world was to change, I think the way in which it might change would be through different kinds of demands from game players which would then, in turn, force different kinds of production from game makers.  I don't know how else it could happen, unless there was—  Well, yeah, I don't know how else it could happen.
No, that's a really insightful answer, thank you.  I just want to briefly touch on the idea of games research or the kind of research you do around video games.  In terms of how that's positioned within the kind of education academic world, would you say that the sort of research you do is valued within the education world?
I think so.  I think it is.  The education world is a big world and certainly the fact that the research I do, and the people I work with, tends to be qualitative rather than quantitative means that in some quarters it's not valued or it's not seen as useful.  I mean, it's not uncommon when I'm presenting my work for somebody to ask whether we've got statistical proof that things have improved as a result of playing the games, and, largely speaking, we don't.  We might have people's perceptions that they've improved, but we don't – or I don't, anyway – do research that has kind of pre- and post-tests of control groups and all of that sort of thing.
So I guess for people that want that kind of research, then the research that we do, which is much more qualitative, has less status.  On the other hand, I think there's a great deal of interest in it.  There's a growing interest in games and greater acceptance of multimodality, and certainly within the literacy fields and work that's looking at literacy in games, there's a high degree of interest in it and respect for it.
Thank you.  I would totally agree there.  I would like to kind of—  I'm aware of the time.  We're drawing towards the end.  A couple more questions.  First of all, do you have an idea of what kind of future directions that your sort of research around gaming and games might take?  Are there any kind of new innovations that you're interested in?  What sort of perspectives are you thinking about in the future?
What I'd really like to do – it's sort of a yearning really – would be to spend more time exploring the literary aesthetics narrative kind of world and the ways in which teachers might work with games at that kind of literary end.  I'd love to do more in that space.  I guess because, as I was saying before, the notion of games as part of that spectrum of text is wonderful and I'd love to do more work at that point.
Things are changing so fast in terms of what are games and what games do and don't do that you're sort of a bit breathless trying to keep up with it (laughs).  In terms of the sort of work that I'm interested in pursuing at the moment, or that I look like I'm going to be pursuing, that I hope to be pursuing at the moment – and there's fabulous work that already exists in this space but I want to explore it nonetheless – is the kind of work that goes on with games in a museum, in those kinds of spaces, and to look at—  I very much like the work of Cathy Burnett and [Guy Merchant 0:33:37] and that group of people, as you know.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That materiality/immateriality space about the ways in which the physical and the digital kind of co-exist.  It tends to be in museums that this particularly interesting kind of—  Well, everywhere [0:33:52], but I would love to explore more in that space and to look at things like notions of history and notions of experience and emotion and knowledge and concepts and those sorts of things.  
So, personally, that's where I'm hoping to do more work, and also some work that my colleague, [Joanne Marrow], is really interested in.  We have an application at the moment – and I hope it gets out – which is to follow coding, looking at coding as making but [seeing how that happens 0:34:30], which might sort of sit within that broader literacy perspective.  Yes, coding is about how to do that technical stuff, but so much more as well.
So I'm hoping that that might take us—  And that seems to be the logical next step in terms of production and reception.  In the past, I've been a bit fearful of coding or a bit wary of it because it looked to me like very—  I was fearful that it was reductive, and I can never remember with denotative and connotative which one is which, but the one that has no associations (laughs).
Yeah, I have the same confusion.  But yes, absolutely (laughs).
That's been my wariness about coding, but I'm very interested and I have great—  The teachers that I've seen and that I've worked with, and the colleagues in this team, have such a rich vision of what's possible that I'm very interested to explore that if we can.
Yeah, it sounds really worthwhile and really great.  Knowing that we were going to have a conversation about video games, is there anything that I've kind of not asked you that you think you were expecting to talk about, or hoping to talk about?
Not really.  It's just that I think that it's so important that we have sociocultural research in here, or sociocultural plus more, and that games are the product of the humanities and of ideas and of this kind of interaction.  I think that's really important.  
I would also just want to say that in just about everything I've watched, certainly in terms of schools, the importance of there being a space – not just in schools – for kids to kind of reflect and talk about and think about things, and the ways in which teachers are working with games, what goes on outside, if you like, the game is really important in terms of, if we're trying to understand games in their totality, we need to be aware of the context in which things are happening and of what's going on in the context, rather than seeing the game as being able to deliver the whole package.
That's a really valuable perspective.  Thank you very much.  I'm now going to stop the audio.