Paper for 4th E-MAIL SEMINAR ON CARTOGRAPHY 2001 "Cartographic Education"
William Cartwright
Department of Geospatial Science
RMIT University
GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 3001
E-mail: william.cartwright@rmit.edu.au.
METAPHOR AND GAMING AND ACCESS TO SPATIAL
INFORMATION
Abstract
Todays computer generation have access to sophisticated computers and games
computers. They are attuned to gameplaying and manipulating on-screen complex
imagery. This paper proposes that these skills might be applied to the exploration of
geographical using different interfaces, those more attuned with (computer)
gameplaying than traditional approaches to the provision of geographical information
to children.
Introduction
Many methods can be used to deliver spatial information. Some of those available
are the use of the Internet, and more particularly, the World Wide Web, the
application of the ideas behind Interactive Books to atlas delivery, the use of
animations for space-time mapping, combining domestic televisions and telephones
for the provision of interactive hyperlinked television mapping services, and using the
Games strategies for providing systems that provide the means for geographical
discovery.
Almost a decade ago Kindleberger (1993) saw future multimedia development linked
to the development of new hardware, software and communications advancements.
He commented that, in the future videogames industry companies like Sega and
Nintendo will influence the manner in which user interface design develops. His
future is now. Gaming computers are now as powerful as their office/industry
counterparts, and, in some cases, more powerful. Gaming strategies and games
could provide an innovative means for accessing geographical information.
Access to information through other interface metaphors
Researchers have investigated the use of visualization methods to access large
databases of information. It was agued that access via different interfaces can
empower novice users to quickly ‘get up to speed’ with access methods to spatial
information. Geographical-based visual methods have been used to access diverse
non-spatial information like documents and news stories (Chalmers, 1993; Skupin
and Buttenfield, 1996) and non-spatial visual interfaces have been employed to give
access to spatial data. Some interfaces are designed to fall somewhere between
these two extremes. A good example of this type of interface is the cartoon streets of
Apple Computer’s ‘eWorld’ (Figure 1), where the complex operations and
connections are hidden behind a usable graphic interface.
Fig. 1. Apple ‘eWorld’: a cartoon-like interface to on-line information.
1995, p. 40.
(White,
A proposal and prototype for map use innovation introduced along similar lines to
eWorld was ‘The Geographer’s Desktop’ (Egenhofer and Richards, 1993). It
developed the notion that users would be more comfortable if a virtual light table was
made available for users and they could ‘drag’ map overlays onto the light table and
then view the composite image (the very basis for initial developments of GIS). The
Geographers Desktop concepts were developed on a Macintosh platform, using
Macromind (now Macromedia) Director as an authoring tool for development of the
demonstration prototype. Initial testing by Egenhofer and Richards (1993) received
positive feedback from users. The use of Macintosh icon ‘dragging’ to assemble the
desktop enabled users to bypass keyboard commands and get direct access to the
spatial overlays on-screen. Principal components of the system were geographic
data that a user could select and combine and presentation parameters that could be
applied to the selected data. A number of tools were proposed for user manipulation
and interrogation of the desktop maps, as well as methods for the user interface to
be personalised. The Geographers Desktop interface is shown in Figure 2.
Fig. 2. The Geographer’s Desktop. Icons representing layers of information from the GIS database
have been dragged onto the desktop, enabling the required map overlays to be assembled for viewing.
(Egenhofer and Richards, 1993, p. 68).
Games
McLuhan (1994) devoted a chapter on games in his book, Understanding Media: The
Extensions of Man, as he saw games being popular as a way of presenting the
collective, social reactions to the main drive or action of any culture. Games, like
instructions, were described as extensions of social man and of the body politic. As
extensions of the popular response to the workday stress, games become faithful
models of a culture. They incorporate both the action and the reaction of whole
populations in a single dynamic image. McLuhan (1994, p. 237) describes games as
“dramatic models of our psychological lives providing release of particular tensions”.
Ancient and nonliterate societies naturally regarded games as live dramatic models
of the universe or of the outer cosmic drama. The Olympic Games were direct
enactments of the agon, or struggle of the Sun god. The runners moved around a
track adorned with the zodiacal signs in imitation of the daily circuit of the sun chariot
(McLuhan, 1994). Modern-day game players do not mimic the gods, but they often
play games in ‘temples’ of gameplaying.
McLuhan (1994) made these comments about the use of games:
 For games to be welcome they must convey an echo of workaday life;
 Art and games enable us to stand aside from the material pressures of routine and
convention, observing and questioning;
 Art and games need rules, conventions and spectators;
 Games are a translator of experiences;
 Games shift familiar experiences into new forms, giving the bleak and the bleak side of
things sudden luminosity;
 Games are contrived and controlled situations, extensions of group awareness that permit
a respite from customary patterns; and
 Games are situations contrived to permit simultaneous participation of many people in
some significant pattern of their own corporate lives.
Computer games
In Australia, Deakin University trialled the use of form handling computer games such
as Tetris and Welltris to encourage architecture students to do the mental gymnastics
required in design thinking. Coldwell, an associate of the University’s School of
Architecture and Building said that “Interacting with computers in a games mode can
contribute to the development of a design space...” (Yellard, 1994, p. 19). In some
games the landscape itself is created as part of the play. In Populous, the player
creates the physical landscape by raising and lowering the land, forming areas of
water and producing earthquakes, volcanoes or swamps on opponent’s land.
Simulations of grassy plains, deserts and snow-covered areas can be used to depict
landscapes, completely under the control of the user (Tivers, 1996).
Perhaps the game that has been used most recently to teach concepts of geography
and urban development, still within the confines of a computer game is SimCity. The
basic interface is illustrated in Figure 3.
Figure 3. SimCity 2000. One of the (many) images gameplayers navigate
through when playing the game. Skills learnt here could be applied to
contemporary mapping package interfaces. (SimCity 2000 Web Site)
Players use the game to develop strategies for urban development and, in so doing
they also develop an appreciation for geography and things that impact on things like
cities. Recently the city of Torino (ww.oct.torino.it) in Italy have used SimCity as the
basis for providing the general public of that city with a concept about how the city
might develop if several strategies were developed. It develops the game and then
produces a digital video of the sequence of events.
Gameplaying and the exploration of Geography
Katz (1997) contended that games like Myst, Civilization and SimCity are
extraordinarily educational and they require complex planning and rewards patience
and strategic thinking. For mapping applications, the skills learned using games like
SimCity 2000, where players think little of moving from an aerial view, to a map, or a
subterranean view, could be applied to seeing multiple views of the city (Ormeling,
1993). Aerial views could be replaced by aeronautical charts, users could then move
to topographic maps, move 'down' through various scales to planimetric maps, down
further to maps of the urban utilities infrastructure, further down to soil maps and
finally to geological maps. The new generation of games players are attuned to the
use of these types of interfaces.
Kuhn (1992) saw that, for mapping and GIS applications, play allows developers to
emphasise creativity and encourage ‘trying-out’, and that video games ideas that
included strong spatial components could be useful. He stated (p. 98) that: “… it
seems tempting to further explore this kind of paradigm for GIS applications. In
some sense, a GIS is like a toy world - a model of reality simplified to the point where
users can play with it”.
For mapping products to 'target' the new generation of users they will probably have
to offer a package consisting of broadcasting, computing, publishing and telephony
(Wark, 1994). Future mapping package terminals could be a much smarter television
or an easier to use home computer (or a Sega or Nintendo with a few additions?).
Whichever way the future goes for user access, it is apparent that the types of user
interfaces that exist today may not be appropriate for the next generation of map
users.
Games: metaphors for geographical discovery
The video and computer games industry is one that generates enormous interest by
consumers. 'Shoot-em-up', or 'twitch', video games continue to be popular with
adolescent males, but not with girls (who prefer games of personal development and
inter-personal communication (Beato, 1997)) or adults of both genders (Caruso,
1996; Lawrence, 1996). Games are still mainly marketed at young players (Hilvert,
1995) and the gaming addict is usually a teenage male (Laidlaw, 1996) who has also
been described as also the predominant high digital producer (Sefton-Green and
Buckingham, 1996). The most popular game titles still include mayhem and martial
arts (Elrich, 1996), but there is also much interest in the so-called ‘god games’
exemplified by titles like Theme Park or Sim City (Sefton-Green and Buckingham,
1996).
A cartographic game, Magellan (Taylor, 1994), was launched in late 1993, and it
operated as an interactive ‘touchtalk’ globe that can be used as either a computer
game or as an educational tool. ‘Virtual keypads’ could be added to the interface,
allowing responses to touch that gave taped audio information on each country.
Another computer game, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? taught
geography whilst users were playing a mystery solving game. Multimedia and
hypermedia technologies like the USGS's GeoMedia have been used to teach upper
elementary students in the USA geographical concepts. Hypermedia techniques
allow students to make associative links between graphics, text, animation and
sound. Animations show earth science processes such as plate tectonics and the
water cycle and an ‘understanding maps’ section explains the use of maps (GIS
World, 1993). And even the US military uses game-like Distributed Interactive
Simulation (DIS) systems, that include maps and imagery, along with computer
objects representing military matérial to create a Synthetic Theater of War (STOW)
(Hamit, 1996).
There has been some concern that computers are becoming more and more like
television - insofar as the software leaves little for the user to do other than point,
click and watch (Lawrence, 1996). This has led to a new genre of action-adventure
games (NewMedia, 1996), operating on age-specialised machines (Sefton-Green
and Buckingham, 1996), and usually produced as a design trade-off between speed
and image quality (Laidlaw, 1996). The trend in computer games has been towards
the development of multi-player games for the Internet, provided by cooperative
ventures between gaming networks and Internet service providers (Tanner, 1997).
Battelle (1993) has examined the 'new generation' of users who were not brought-up
on television alone. They have been described as the 'Nintendo Generation'
(Ormeling, 1993), after one of the popular computer games companies, or, in the
beginning of the ‘90s, the ‘Doom Generation’, from the computer game that uses
spatial orientation (The Age, 1996), or 'Generation X' (McIntosh, 1995). The
'Nintendo Generation' may be more comfortable with material laid out for the easily
distracted eye - the eye raised on a diet of Sesame Street and three-minute ad
breaks (Watson, 1995). This group of users has adapted easily to new technologies
and media, something that observers that will take longer to adopt for the mass
audience which generally lacks computer-literacy skills. It has been suggested that
the cyberspace revolution will be shaped by gameplayers - kids, lots of them
(Laidlaw, 1996).
About the future of games, Teller (1995, p. 135) has noted:
“I don’t believe that the center of gravity in the online world will be naturally
emanating from Hollywood. It’s likely going to come from a whole new generation of
kids who grew up with videogames”.
Conclusion
Multimedia, gameplay and geographical information need not be based on the typical
puzzle solving / shoot-em up type games, but should instead consider the human
part of the interpretation of “the game”. Computer games themselves, and the ways
they present landscapes help to reinforce certain ideologies (Tivers, 1996). If
gameplay is to be used as a means of allowing the user/viewer/participant to
discover patterns of phenomena that are meaningful for each individual user then the
gameplay needs to consider not just the way things appear on the surface, but also
what is happening to the human part of the interaction. Games need to be designed
and produced with human interaction in mind and multimedia gameplaying, in its
various forms, can assist greatly.
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