Leveraging Video Game Strategy Communities

1. What is Systems Thinking?

Systems Thinking is a discipline of analytical techniques for understanding the complex systems and their relationships and processes which underlie natural phenomena, social conditions, and technological constructs. Whilst it is often thought of as a technical endeavour (for instance, teaching of systems thinking in the classroom will often demonstrate it refer through the scientific mapping of natural ecosystems), Systems Thinking is emphatically a humanistic discipline, dedicated to the progressive understanding of complex systems and controversial issues through the rational debate of a community which uses Systems Thinking concepts as its natural language.

Outline:

* Based on Systems Dynamics (Jay Forrester, MIT) - analysis of reinforcing and balancing feedback stock/flow relationships that stabilize or change systems (e.g. stock markets, ecosystems, immune systems)
* Popularized as “Systems Thinking” by management guru Peter Senge (Sloan) “The Fifth Discipline” of “Learning Organizations”. There is now a thriving and expanding academic and management professional community dedicated to systems thinking training and research.
* provides powerful analytical perspective
* Specialized language e.g. archetypes, loop diagrams
* Set of conceptual tools and diagrams
* For understanding any kind of complex system and solving stubborn problems in everyday systems

For a more detailed explanation of Systems Thinking, especially in relation to education,

see http://www.fieldbook.com/Links/friends.html

or download our design document.

2. Leveraging Video Game Strategy Communities

The Example of WarCraft III

To give one example of the power of game communities, Blizzard Entertainment's fantasy battle WarCraft series has been the bestselling strategy games of recent years, selling several million units, with hundreds of thousands playing against each other online every month. (For the official guide to the game, see www.battle.net/war3/ )

A typical Warcraft player community website, www.warcraftstrategy.com, archives hundreds, or even thousands, of different strategies for playing the game in various ways. These strategies - efforts to think through the complex system underlying the Warcraft game to achieve victory against other human intelligences attempting the same feat, are written by ordinary players typically in their teens. Estimating the mind and mood of your opponent (or your teammate) is as important as grasping the technical details of the game system as instinctively as possible. New strategies are added daily to enthusiastic debate, and often include video replays or illustrative captures of the competitions. The picture below showing just one of several warcraftstrategy.com’s forums shows that almost 80,000 posts by fans on about 7,000 topics – this kind of scale is not uncommon for game communities.

Teenagers contributing strategies to the site may have spent anything from a hour to several days to, quite commonly, sustained efforts over several months, in thinking through and writing their sometimes lengthy documents (and multiple progressively improved versions), of advice - the best will win the thanks of the community, and even cash prizes. For every writer, there are thousands more readers; and a large guide typically benefits from the contributions of numerous gamers. These Warcraft fans exemplify how computer games not only often represent complex systems but also create lively young communities - collective intelligences - that continually think through these systems. In addition Warcraft III has powerful customization and editing tools which allow the players to build their own maps and battle situations from scratch – another time-intensive challenge which millions of players enthusiastically try, and which GameMaven would also be ideal in providing a design support tool.
For examples of fan-produced Warcraft III guides, see
http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/warcraft_iii_a.txt
(www.gamefaqs.com is a premier source for finding fan-produced guides to all games)
For examples of fan-produced maps, see
http://maps.warcraftiii.net/
However, the vast majority of fan-written strategy guides and game FAQs often struggle to articulate their knowledge of the gameplay’s system dynamics in a clear way - the common style is some combination of the rote detailing of a gambit's component steps and a listing of game mechanic statistics discovered through experimental observation. These game communities are already inherently enthusiastic about thinking and discussing about complex systems and relationships but lack a simple natural language that would facilitate both communication and understanding.
We believe that developing a visual, interactive, and collaborative systems thinking tool for gamers to think through their favorite games is an excellent way of "virally" spreading natural habits of systems thinking through young communities. Such a project need not restrict itself to the strategy genre – all video games that involve meaningful stakes and deep gameplay that encourage player community development can be rich canvases for systems thinking experimentation. In addition, such a tool would be useful for games developers and designers, and so establish itself in a rapidly growing industry – a further development might be to present it as part of games engineering and design creative kit for children.
If the widespread popularization of such a tool by gamer communities succeeds, it would empower students for systems thinking lessons in more formal contexts, such as school. It will help emphasize that systems thinking is a humanistic discipline that roots itself as a natural language in communities of enthusiastic and rational debate - and not simply a technical instrument.


main concept features rationale	1. What is Systems Thinking? Systems Thinking is a discipline of analytical techniques for understanding the complex systems and their relationships and processes which underlie natural phenomena, social conditions, and technological constructs. Whilst it is often thought of as a technical endeavour (for instance, teaching of systems thinking in the classroom will often demonstrate it refer through the scientific mapping of natural ecosystems), Systems Thinking is emphatically a humanistic discipline, dedicated to the progressive understanding of complex systems and controversial issues through the rational debate of a community which uses Systems Thinking concepts as its natural language. Outline: * Based on Systems Dynamics (Jay Forrester, MIT) - analysis of reinforcing and balancing feedback stock/flow relationships that stabilize or change systems (e.g. stock markets, ecosystems, immune systems) * Popularized as “Systems Thinking” by management guru Peter Senge (Sloan) “The Fifth Discipline” of “Learning Organizations”. There is now a thriving and expanding academic and management professional community dedicated to systems thinking training and research. * provides powerful analytical perspective * Specialized language e.g. archetypes, loop diagrams * Set of conceptual tools and diagrams * For understanding any kind of complex system and solving stubborn problems in everyday systems For a more detailed explanation of Systems Thinking, especially in relation to education, see http://www.fieldbook.com/Links/friends.html or download our design document. 2. Leveraging Video Game Strategy Communities The Example of WarCraft III To give one example of the power of game communities, Blizzard Entertainment's fantasy battle WarCraft series has been the bestselling strategy games of recent years, selling several million units, with hundreds of thousands playing against each other online every month. (For the official guide to the game, see www.battle.net/war3/ ) A typical Warcraft player community website, www.warcraftstrategy.com, archives hundreds, or even thousands, of different strategies for playing the game in various ways. These strategies - efforts to think through the complex system underlying the Warcraft game to achieve victory against other human intelligences attempting the same feat, are written by ordinary players typically in their teens. Estimating the mind and mood of your opponent (or your teammate) is as important as grasping the technical details of the game system as instinctively as possible. New strategies are added daily to enthusiastic debate, and often include video replays or illustrative captures of the competitions. The picture below showing just one of several warcraftstrategy.com’s forums shows that almost 80,000 posts by fans on about 7,000 topics – this kind of scale is not uncommon for game communities. Teenagers contributing strategies to the site may have spent anything from a hour to several days to, quite commonly, sustained efforts over several months, in thinking through and writing their sometimes lengthy documents (and multiple progressively improved versions), of advice - the best will win the thanks of the community, and even cash prizes. For every writer, there are thousands more readers; and a large guide typically benefits from the contributions of numerous gamers. These Warcraft fans exemplify how computer games not only often represent complex systems but also create lively young communities - collective intelligences - that continually think through these systems. In addition Warcraft III has powerful customization and editing tools which allow the players to build their own maps and battle situations from scratch – another time-intensive challenge which millions of players enthusiastically try, and which GameMaven would also be ideal in providing a design support tool. For examples of fan-produced Warcraft III guides, see http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/warcraft_iii_a.txt (www.gamefaqs.com is a premier source for finding fan-produced guides to all games) For examples of fan-produced maps, see http://maps.warcraftiii.net/ However, the vast majority of fan-written strategy guides and game FAQs often struggle to articulate their knowledge of the gameplay’s system dynamics in a clear way - the common style is some combination of the rote detailing of a gambit's component steps and a listing of game mechanic statistics discovered through experimental observation. These game communities are already inherently enthusiastic about thinking and discussing about complex systems and relationships but lack a simple natural language that would facilitate both communication and understanding. We believe that developing a visual, interactive, and collaborative systems thinking tool for gamers to think through their favorite games is an excellent way of "virally" spreading natural habits of systems thinking through young communities. Such a project need not restrict itself to the strategy genre – all video games that involve meaningful stakes and deep gameplay that encourage player community development can be rich canvases for systems thinking experimentation. In addition, such a tool would be useful for games developers and designers, and so establish itself in a rapidly growing industry – a further development might be to present it as part of games engineering and design creative kit for children. If the widespread popularization of such a tool by gamer communities succeeds, it would empower students for systems thinking lessons in more formal contexts, such as school. It will help emphasize that systems thinking is a humanistic discipline that roots itself as a natural language in communities of enthusiastic and rational debate - and not simply a technical instrument.
Games-to-Teach Project MIT Comparative Media Studies