Learning from FPS
Computer games are a pop-cultural phenomenon. At the University of Potsdam, there is therefore one of the largest collections in the world - for science.
"Users tell of FPS games, that they would get a tunnel vision and do their work focused in everyday work." Image: micjan / photocase.com
POTSDAM taz | The muscle-bound rocker Eddie fluctuates from his black monster racer in an apocalyptic underworld. Breathe deeply - he has survived the wild escape over a collapsing bridge, but what comes now? Suddenly, a huge monster out of the ground breaks out and roars at Eddie. The hero of the leather jacket promptly produce his gun - a glowing axe...
Student Silja Rheingans paused the game and turns the head to right: "The perspective of action is a semi subjektive or avatar-focused now?" "Rather semi subjektiv or?" "It is bound to a view axis Yes", says their fellow student Sarah Schuster, who also sitzt with a multi-page table sheet on crossed legs. All around are five students for European media studies and look at the screen, just the Xbox game "Brütal legend" will be played on the.
Display
The aim of the exercise: the game should correctly be categorized to facilitate its study. In the small room where up to ceiling cardboard boxes and DVD cases with computer and console games stack, science is run - "Game Studies", to be exact.
The room is located in a nondescript office building of the University of Potsdam and is home to a unique pan-European project: the computer game collection of digital games Research Center (Digarec), an interdisciplinary Association of various institutes of the University of Potsdam and the computer game Museum Berlin.
Over 7,500 games
Also in another room, the walls sources over before games from all possible genres. Classics are as well as curiosities and current Bestsellers: over 7,500 neatly signed title from 1960 to the present. Consoles like the Nintendo Wii or a PlayStation Store in a lockable metal cabinet. It is a games paradise, no doubt, at the same time pursuing a serious purpose: allowing a scientific study of computer games. But why is this even necessary?
"Humanities deal with artifacts that brings forth the culture." "Game studies have same permission like about literature", says Michael love, 33, Digarec founding member and initiator of the collection. "Computer games are a pop-cultural phenomenon which reflects the spirit of the times." "If I want to understand, I have to deal with me so."
Sebastian Möringen, 30, PhD student of game studies at the IT University of Copenhagen, which looks similar to: "Eighty percent of young people use computer games and increases the average age of the players continuously." "Of course we want to know, what happens with those."
Games does also mark Butler (37), researcher at the Institute of Arts and media of the University of Potsdam. For years, he has interviewed players, observed that even when playing, and evaluated its outcomes psychoanalytically. He tells of so-called transfer phenomena: "Some players of building simulation 'Sim City' started internally, the real city, where they moved to divide into construction zones." "Users told about FPS, that they would get a tunnel vision and do their work focused in everyday work."
Games promotes competence
The most important findings, counts for Butler, that games are not only entertaining, but numerous skills promote: "It questioned the rules according to which to play in the game." "Many players transfer this expertise to the non-virtual world." And games change also physical skills: 2004 Israeli scientists found that doctors who operate laparoscopic surgery (where the surgical tools by computer are controlled), achieved better results, when they played in their free time often.
Games are not just for media and cultural studies a research object. For a long time there were mainly psychologists and educators, who dealt with them, now even scholars, sociologists, philosophers, military scientist and even theologians have discovered playing for themselves.
This is no longer about to find out whether first-person shooter promote violence, but larger questions: How can we use games in the classroom? Can the artificial intelligence of the game characters on robot transfer? Change our understanding of narrative structures to adventure games? And how can war strategies in simulations to test? "Games are a newly discovered object that provides many hungry Sciences with new problems," says Sebastian Moering.
To give this hunger food was however for years difficult. Because while every academic can borrow books from libraries or films from libraries are for his investigations, it looks bad at games. "Just as you must read books, to examine them, you must also play computer games", says Michael Liebe. But how will you explore something, which is not easily and without great cost can access?
Starting budget: 100 euro
A need that is seen by the University Administration: "The computer game collection at the University of Potsdam represents an important step in the still-young field of research", says Ulrike Lucke, Chief Information Officer of the University of Potsdam. While this collection has must start small: the main budget of just 100 euros was 2006 first invested in computer game magazines with freebie from older games, later the collection through the help of private donors and large game publishers such as electronic arts grew.
Particularly video game journalist Carsten Görig has much contributed: "In the Internet Forum 'Game culture list' he had written that he cleans up his attic and donated much of his collection", says Michael love, "because I'm gedüst immediately to Hamburg and fully had the car up to the front seat with over 2,000 games."
Still, the situation of the collection is unsatisfactory: due to the difficult access there are per semester only about 20 loan requests. That will soon change: "A collaboration with the University library appears make sense", says Ulrike Lucke. Also the public Philip Schaeffer Library in Berlin has established a "Game Lounge" with about 3500 console titles recently, and the computer game Museum in Berlin, which has an archive of 20,000 games, is currently working to make more accessible its inventory.
The Museum runs however privately - just like the world's perhaps largest collection with about 30,000 titles at Stanford University in California - while collection of a public University is one the Potsdam. "I understand the game collection in this way and this size unique in Europe is perhaps even worldwide," says Michael Liebe.
Sarah Schuster and Silja Rheingans turn off the Xbox. The Arch of categorization with over 20 questions has been filled: game mode, setting, object interaction, rule structure, action axes. Alone to develop this system, the Potsdamer have for years tested game studies pioneers. Now the games can be transferred gradually to the categories, so that future researchers can focus on them. "The real work comes now", says Mark Butler.
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