There's an excellent post by games guru Raph Koster about the recent Newsweek article on the declining creativity scores of American youth, and how this might be tied up with gameplaying. Here's Newsweek's take
It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children.It's no surprise that the mainstream media could not pass up another chance to dump on games. What is surprising is that Koster agrees, to an extent.
The article salutes problem-solving skills, persistence and the like which, as Koster points out, are skills cultivated by gameplay:
...The rest of the article (and the rest of the research in the field) seems to suggest that handing students problems and obliging them to think about possible solutions, is a much better way to go than rote memorization. And that is what the best games do.But Koster also brings up the very concept of a designed, and by association, controlled game. Even multiple paths for success are paths designed by the game designers/puppetmasters:
Many games these days “come with the answers” — there’s only one way to solve the puzzles they present — a “through line” that was created by the designers. Could games like this, as opposed to ones that provide truly emergent answers, be an issue in terms of creative development?That there is a presumed solution is incompatible with real-live problem-solving, where some riddles cannot be cracked, or the answers take years to determine. Are all of life's problems reducible to games, i.e. crack the genome!, or produce better solar panels! And who determines the problems in the first place? Who decides how this new knowledge will be implemented?
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2 comments:
Hi, I replied (and please excuse my recycling some of this from a comment I've just made to Raph's blog)
First, replying to your comment that "mainstream could not pass up another chance to dump on games," you should be aware that Po Bronson, my co-author, and I have also written for Newsweek on how neuroscientists have used computer games to increase kids' reasoning ability. And we wrote in our book, NurtureShock, about how TV wasn't to blame for kids' obesity epidemic.
So we are not simply slamming media/games because they are an easy target.
However, Elizabeth Vandewater of the University of Texas has studied children’s media use, finding that for every 1 hour a kid spends in front of the television, his time spent in creative activities drops by about 10%. Every single creativity scholar we spoke to was critical of children’s heavy media use. They are, as a couple commenters observed, kids who simply never have to work through boredom.
As for computer games, I had a long conversation about them with Michele Root-Bernstein, lead scholar on the study of paracosms (those imaginary worlds). And I specifically asked if kids’ building imaginary play spun off of movies, books, games, counted. Yes, she said: if they add new characters, new events to playing Luke Skywalker or Nancy Drew, that might still count as a paracosm. So, I continued, what about time spent in role-playing games, whether they were online games or D&D in a kid’s room with friends? No, she replied. The professor was adamant that time actually playing the games themselves would not count as a creative activity.
The reason is that as long as you are playing by somebody else’s rules – that’s not considered creative play. Even games that say “Decorate your house,” “Make an avatar,” don’t pass this hurdle because they decide what you get to be “creative” about; it’s the creator of the game who decides when and if you get to be creative, and exactly what constraints can be put on your creativity.
I even specifically asked about things like Second Life and SimCity – where the whole premise of the game was to build out things yourself – and she still said no – that came closer, but as long as the reference point of the game (e.g., build a house, get money, etc) was defined, it wasn’t going to be truly creative.
It’s important to remember the scientific definition of creativity is something must be original and useful. The creator of the game is certainly very creative. But the scholars’ view is that it takes much more than playing a game to be creative as well.
I do sincerely hope that that helps, and I do hope that you will take a moment to read our work at Newsweek.com.
Hi, Ashley, and thanks for your comment. I wish I could respond to you directly, but I'm not sure how to get in touch with you.
My comment on the Newsweek article on creativity and Raph Koster's posts actually address some important elements of creativity and digital media. But a few points:
* I don't doubt that you praise videogames in other articles, I just didn't see much of that here.
* There is a great deal of research on children's media use, creativity and agency, and the results are mixed. There is a great deal of variation when it comes to types of games, length of gameplay, gender, age, SES, etc.
* That being said, in my research I've observed similar phenomena relating to creativity; a general decline over time. Whether this is fueled by a culture of fear and scarcity or a culture of distraction and information is another matter altogether.
I hope you read this, and I'd love to chat more about how our work is complementary. : )
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