Closing Session: The Power of Play and Games in These Uncertain Times

The Power of Play and Games in
These Uncertain Times
By Karl M. Kapp, Ed.D., Professor of Instructional Technology, Bloomsburg University
Spring 2020

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Email: Karlkapp@gmail.com
Twitter: @kkapp
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Gaming Usage
In March…2020 Hardware spending
spiked __%
Sales of video game hardware, software, accessories and game cards.

Gaming Usage
75%
In March…2020

Gaming Usage
75%
Hardware spending
spiked 63%
In March…2020

Gaming Usage
75%
$1.6 Billion
Hardware spending
spiked 63%
In March…2020

Gaming Usage
75%
$1.6 Billion
Hardware spending
spiked 63%
In March…

Why are Video Games Taking Over?

Video Games Front and Center
Study of veterans and video game play found:
Adaptive Coping: Distraction, Control, Symptom Substitution
Colder Carras, M., Kalbarczyk, A., Wells, K., Banks, J., Kowert, R., Gillespie, C., & Latkin, C. (2018). Connection, meaning, and distraction: A qualitative study of video game play and mental
health recovery in veterans treated for mental and/or behavioral health problems. Social science & medicine (1982), 216, 124–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.08.044

Eudaimonic Well-Being: Confidence, Insight, Role-Functioning

Socializing: Participation, Support, Camaraderie

“When you’re battling yourself with traumatic thoughts,
you can lose yourself in a game. Right now, during this
pandemic, real life is the traumatic situation. What
games are able to do for people in mental health
recovery, all of society now needs.”
--Michelle Colder Carras, a public health researcher at
Johns Hopkins University

Corona Ball Social-distancing Tag
Cray, K. (April, 2020) How the Coronavirus Is Influencing Children’s Play: The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-tag-and-other-games-kids-play-during-a-pandemic/609253/

Meandering
path/opposed to
rigid routine.
Sense of
movement/
opposed to non-
movement.
Colorful and
bright/ opposed
to white and
sterile.
Effortless
movement/ opposed
to painful
movement.
Design Constructs of Candy Land
Freedom/
opposed to
confinement.

Team 1
You are Playing as Karl
Name: Score:
Mike:* 0
Jane: 1
Mark: 0
Karl: 1
https://www.enspire.com/digital-games/

“Plague Inc. has been out for eight years now, and whenever there is an outbreak of disease,
we see an increase in players, as people seek to find out more about how diseases spread and
to understand the complexities of viral outbreaks,” the studio said in a post
https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/

On the game’s official Facebook page, some players said they considered the
simulation essential to their understanding of the coronavirus outbreak.

“It engages you while it teaches you,” said Ali S. Khan, a former senior official at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. “The game is based on a solid mathematical model of how
[a pathogen] spreads in a community. A simplistic [one], but no fantasy.”

The popularity and longevity of Plague Inc., as well as its broader social relevance, can be explained by placing it
within the context of public anxieties about vulnerability to infectious diseases.
Mitchell, S. & Hamilton, S. N. (January 2017) Playing at the apocalypse: Reading Plague Inc in pandemic culture. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into Media
Technologies. Vol. 24, Issue 6. PP 587-606,. DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856516687235

Pandemic 2 placed on Addicting Games in 2008.
In the first 12 days of March, Pandemic 2's page experienced a 3,500% increase in views
https://www.addictinggames.com/strategy/pandemic-2

https://www.addictinggames.com/strategy/pandemic-2

Games Help with Sense-making
Measure of Control

-Insight into Actions/Behaviors

Big Picture View

Make Some Sense of Our World

Express Concern
https://socialexpress.com/

Seeking Understanding

”Try on” Behaviors

Visceral Understanding

“The reality is that playing helps
us process the world around us.”
-Audra M. Swarthout, an associate professor of biology
at Delta College in Michigan

https://www.shortsims.com/covid19

Who Could Have
Predicted this Pandemic?

Sims players discovered
that the pet guinea pig was
carrying a potentially fatal
virus that could kill a human
character in the game.

A pet guinea pig spread a disease in the Sims.
if a Sims player neglected to clean its cage, and
if a player reached into the cage to pet the
animal and is bitten then they got sick.

If someone who has gotten sick sneezes
and coughs and will infect other human
characters in the game who come within
several ''tiles'' distance.

Whyville is an educational Internet site geared
towards children from ages 8–14+ . The game
environment engages its users in learning about
a broad range of topics, including science,
business, art and geography.

February of 2002,
the first cases of
Why-Pox appeared.

At first just a few Whyvillians
noticed they had red spots on
their faces and sometimes when
they tried to talk they would
cough instead.

Reactions:
-Cover pock marks
-Contract disease
-Avoid Disease
-Prevent Spreading
-Spread the Disease

Researchers asked students the question “In which ways was Whypox like a real infectious disease?”
Answers showed students perceived several features of the virtual infectious disease as features
inherent in natural infectious diseases including: being contagious, having symptoms, and being like a
specific other disease.
Neulight, N., Kafai, Y. B., Kao, L., Foley, B., & Galas, C. (2007). Children's Participation in a Virtual Epidemic in the Science Classroom: Making Connections to
Natural Infectious Diseases. Journal of science education and technology, 16(1), 47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-006-9029-z

Why-Pox
reappeared in 2003,
annual event.

New diseases
started appearing in
2007.

Extremely virulent,
highly contagious
disease.

NPCs were
asymptomatic.
Started in isolated
area, spread animal
to character and
character to
character.
Lofgren, E. T. & Fefferman, N. (Sept 2007) The untapped potential of virtual game worlds to shed light on real world epidemics. The Lancet: Infectious Diseases.
VOLUME 7, ISSUE 9, P625-629, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(07)70212-8

Blizzard employees imposed
quarantine measures, isolating
infected players from as-yet
uninfected areas.

First online instance of
uncontrolled plague to affect
millions of Americans, Asians, and
Europeans at home
By games using games as an untapped experimental framework, we may be able to gain deeper insight
into the incredible complexity of infectious disease epidemiology in social groups.
Eric T. Lofgren and Nina H. Fefferman.

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6824-2019-10-key-findings-and-
after/05bd797500ea55be0724/optimized/full.pdf

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6824-2019-10-key-findings-and-
after/05bd797500ea55be0724/optimized/full.pdf
A large-scale outbreak of novel
influenza begins in China and
quickly spreads, first detected in
Chicago in the U.S. and grows to
pandemic proportion by human-
to-human contact.
2019 Government
Sponsored
Table Top Exercise

Findings:
• Insufficient federal funding sources for a severe influenza pandemic.
• Confusion on how to apply the Defense Production Act.
• The current medical supply chain and production capacity could not meet the
demand.
• Global manufacturing would be unable to meet the domestic demand for personal
protective equipment (PPE) and ancillary supplies (including ventilators).

A pro-invasion admiral who presided at the war game, set aside a
ruling made by more objective umpires. Thus, providing a
favorable “prediction” to the outcome of the battle. But the real
outcome more closely resembled the original umpires ruling.

Total War Research Institute, a part of the Japanese
government in the 1940’s conducted a war-game (table
top simulation) of the invasion of Midway.

The war with Japan had been reenacted in the game rooms at
the Naval War College by so many people and in so many
different ways, that nothing that happened during the war was a
surprise…absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward
the end of the war
-- Admiral Nimitz

Games test personnel, tactics, procedures, organizations and
equipment. Games have a tendency to expose weaknesses in
everything from individual leadership to tactics and doctrine.
Games can be seen as a stress test.
Mizokami, K. (September, 2013) A Brief History of Naval War Games.
SNI News. https://news.usni.org/2013/09/24/brief-history-naval-wargames

Conclusion Power of Play and Games

Closing Session: The Power of Play and Games in These Uncertain Times

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