It's been about 65 years since the creation of what is considered the world's first video game. In 65 years, we have seen a massive evolution of not only video game technology, but the cultural and societal dialogue surrounding video games. We've heard an array of claims from video games will rot your brains, to video games will help you become a programmer and make money, and everything in between. But what if we look at video games beyond the scope of societal norms and money? What if video games can actually be an educational tool for self-discovery and reflection? What can we unlock in ourselves when we are given the freedom of creativity, a platform with endless possibilities, and the bravery to break out of the box? Join us today for what we can really gain from video games. Welcome to Research Outside of the Box, a podcast for unconventional, unique, and out-of-the-box research happening at Texas State, and the innovative research approaches faculty use along the way. I'm your host, Kamarie Carter, training specialist for faculty development. Joining us today is Dr.

Brad Robinson, assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Hi, how are you? Hi, Kamarie. Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here. Thanks, Brad. I'm excited that you're here. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself? So my name is Brad Robinson. I am an assistant professor of educational technology and secondary education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the university. Nice. Can you tell us a little bit about your research or what you're currently looking at? Yeah, sure. So broadly speaking, my research explores the kind of intersection of technology and literacy. And so that kind of general interest translates into a few more specific strands. So the one I'll primarily talk about today relates to kind of the literacy implications of novice video game design and video game play. And then, but I also look at the proliferation of digital education platforms and education again with a focus on literacy. So looking at how platforms like accelerated reader are kind of reshaping and reconfiguring what it means to be a reader and writer and what it means to teach reading and writing. And then over the past couple of years, I've been doing a lot of work looking at the influence of artificial intelligence. So large language models like chat GPT and how they're also exerting different kinds of pressures on what it means to be a reader and a writer. It's a big time for that, too. Yeah, yeah, it is. There's a lot of people saying a lot of things. So how did you get into for the research that we're talking about today? How did you get into video games? So when I was a high school English teacher, I had grown kind of tired and I could tell that my students were kind of tired of doing a lot of the kind of typical assignments that you teachers, English teachers often do. So writing essays or whatever it might be. Just your typical kind of repertoire of English teacher assignments. And so it was close to the end of the semester. I could tell that my students didn't want to write any more papers. And honestly, I was reading more papers. And so I was like, well, what can I do? So finally, I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to see what they want to do. And so I developed this kind of idea that do something awesome project. And so we had just finished reading Fahrenheit 451. And and so I was like, you know what, your assignment is to do something awesome that shows that you read and understood some key idea or ideas from Fahrenheit 451. And and that was it. Like that was basically the direction I gave them. And so there wasn't like a document with all kinds of stuff. It was just it was very it was very open. Yeah.

And within seconds, a group of my students had arrived at the idea of collaborating to create a Minecraft level on the novel. And so I don't know if you're so spoiler alert, but at the end of Fahrenheit 451, there's like a firebombing that destroys a city. And and so they decided they wanted to recreate that scene. And so they spent like two weeks. They would bring their Xbox to class when they had time to work on it and they would hook it up to my projector and they would build their Minecraft world. And they were like looking at the book to kind of figure out like what the city looked like and then they would translate that into Minecraft. And they built it all up and then they put TNT all over the place in the in the in the city that they had spent like hours and hours building. And then on the day of like where we were presenting our projects, they one of the boys like read through a passage that they had selected the passage where the destruction of the city is described. And then while he was reading it, another has one of his group mates like took the Xbox controller and kind of navigated through the world, the Minecraft world, in a way that kind of corresponded to the passage that was being read. And then, of course, culminated in the firebombing where like, while he's reading the part about the destruction of the city, the city that they had spent tons of time like building, they just blew it up. Two weeks, you said. Yeah, so they just destroyed it. And I thought it was like just so such a beautiful kind of thing where it was like they're kind of sacrificing their project. Right, right. This is this is definitely overstating the significance of this. But it just reminded me. I want to make that real clear here. But it reminded me of the kind of, you know, the the the mandalas that that people make like with the sand art that like Buddhist monks make where these would be beautiful creations that they spend hours and hours in the end of it, they like destroy it. And it's meant to be like this message about the impermanence of life and things like that. And so I'm not it's not that I want to be very clear, but it just the fact that they have that it has a similar right feel to that. Yeah, exactly.

And so so that that was like a really kind of profound moment for me as a teacher. Also, as someone I should say, too, as a video game player myself, where I was like, wow, like it's impactful.

Yeah. That this it isn't just that like these kids were interested. Like a lot of times in education, when we talk about video games, we educators just land on this word engagement. Oh, well, we can engage students like it's always about engagement. And I'm not always sure what people mean by that, except maybe that the kids are like doing what they're supposed to be doing at any given time. Mm hmm.

But what I saw there was like these kids engage in this like deeply meaningful like literacy practice where they were developing as readers and they were developing interpretations of a complex text that they were then, you know, to use a fancy word here, trans mediating, they're translating it to another medium to then share their interpretation. And then they were like performing that interpretation through a choral and so, you know, when you take the kind of conventional traditional literacy skills that they were developing and how that they those skills were kind of interacting with the the digital literacy skills that they have brought to the video game, their video game literacy, the interaction there, I just found to be exciting and rich and really interesting. And so that that experience actually played a really major role in kind of and not only inspiring me to kind of pursue a PhD, but also just in the the direction that my research ended up taking. So my dissertation kind of ended up being about novice video game design as a literacy practice. And that is in large part because of what those kids did with that Minecraft project, because because they were engaged in a design practice, like that's what's kind of cool about Minecraft is like to play Minecraft is to design. Yeah. To be a part of it to be part of the creation aspect of it. Yeah.

So so, yeah, I'll stop there. No, that that is really exciting. I'm sure when you because you got to watch them create this over two weeks is what you said. I'm sure you got to see the excitement and the joy that learning provided them. Yeah.

And and what was cool about it, too, is all the kids were kind of like had had selected for themselves what doing something awesome meant. And so, you know, some kids, a couple of kids like just wrote a paper because they were like, I don't know if they actually like writing papers, but they decided that, yeah, that's what it's like. OK, like that's what you choose to do. You do it. And these kids are doing that. But because that a kid wrote a song that they play on the guitar. And so there was like really kind of lots of interesting things going on, going on there. And and as you were saying, like it was was a very joyful experience. Where a lot of bodies were moving. Laughter was happening. Creativity was happening.

Literacy was happening. And a lot of it was kind of outside the bounds of what we typically think of as what an English class kind of looks like. And so so, yeah, I just again, I just found it super exciting. I mean, I'm inspired and wasn't even there. That sounds really cool.

Oh, that's great. So tell us a little bit about what project you're working on right now. So let's see. Recently, I just recently finished collecting data on a project funded by the Research Enhancement Program here at Texas State. And it's called the Gameful Living Lab, and it's kind of an early stage project housed in the in the College of Education, where it's just kind of the idea. You know, the Ed Tech program has a space there. And the idea is to kind of use it to invite young people to to explore all the different kind of educational, social implications of, you know, video game play and design. And so just a few weeks ago, I invited 10 young people between the ages of 13 and 17 from kind of the San Marcos, kind of greater San Marcos area to come. And they spent a week designing video games and playing video games. The basic question, the idea for the research was like was to create interactive life stories. So it was like, can how can video game design like novice video game design be used to do the kinds of things that you often see happen in English classes, which might be something like writing a personal essay or reading an autobiography or writing an autobiography? And so, again, drawing on that experience that I had as a teacher, I was like, hmm, I wonder if someone could use a video game design like design their own video game in a way that's meant to kind of share a life story, you know, that to share to provide others an opportunity to interact with a life experience. And so that was kind of the guiding idea and inspiration for the for the for the workshop, you know, research study. What did you learn from that? I'm sure you're still parsing some days you said that was fairly recent, but initially, what do you feel like you've learned from that? So I want to back up a little bit to help answer that question. But a little bit of context is that so there's this great foresight cartoon from like 2000, where the cartoonist Gary Larson, I think his name is. He created this cartoon where you have there's like this image of a child playing video games and he's like super locked into the video game. And then his parents are standing behind him like watching and they look slightly concerned. And then over their head is a thought bubble. And it says things like like job opening, Nintendo expert, like eighty thousand dollars a year or something like that. And it's and so the parents were like worried about like what is their kid going to do with the career? And so most people think of that cartoon, their read of that cartoon is that it's criticizing, you know, that it's suggesting the video games are useless or whatever. So again, this is in 2000. Since that time, like video games have exploded.

Absolutely. They are the largest. They're larger than the as an industry. They bring in more revenue than like the music industry and film industry combined. I mean, I know. I think there are like 15 year olds that make three times as much as I do playing video games on YouTube. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like this whole like creator economies that are just playing video games like as streamers. That's just one aspect of video games. There's a whole world. Yeah, so it's massive. And and while that was happening, adults began to realize, well, wait a second. We've been pretty critical of video games. We thought it's like a waste of time. But now we see that there's this like massive industry and around like computer coding, programming, design, et cetera. And it began to kind of assuage like educators anxieties about kids playing video games and then also parents. And that's like a good thing, I think, in general. But one thing that has concerned me a little bit about that is that I think sometimes I wonder if it's gone too far. OK, where where young people's video gaming practices are like legitimized under this idea of like they can get jobs in STEM. Like, I don't need to be worried about them playing video games or designing video games because it all can kind of be directed towards like STEM careers and you see this in schools, you see this in educational research, like tons of research that's focused on video game design, for example, has like focused specifically on, well, does it develop coding skills? You know, how what are the implications for STEM learning? And that's all like that's fine. But I've been kind of interested in what else can these things do. And so so and again, this is part of me coming from the background of being an English teacher. So I was interested in like, well, how can video game play and novice video game design, how can it serve as an outlet for like self-expression or self-exploration or doing identity work kind of understanding who we are by creating interactive other interactive experiences for other people to share. And so I kind of started to think about video game design as kind of another genre to sit alongside a lot of the other genres and classroom genres that we encounter each day, like the essay or the short story or the poem, like there's the video or the film, you know, there's the video game. And so so all all that in mind, like I was interested in like, what else can video game design do? And I should and I should note, just as a quick footnote, is that there was a time where this really wasn't possible. The technical skills needed to design a playable video game were such that you just really you really couldn't just bring in a kid for a week at a workshop at a university and then over the week develop a playable video game 2023. We can do that. Yeah, the there's so many different platforms now where kind of the coding kind of gets out of the way a little bit and really user friendly interfaces kind of allow, you know, kids to manipulate the codes, the procedural logics of video games and to focus more on like the creative product rather on the technical skills. And so so that that's what like allows a research project like this one to happen where I can invite these kids to come spend a week at the university authoring interactive life stories through video game design. And I don't necessarily need to be super stressed out about like, I need to teach them how to like computer program because they're again, these novice friendly computer like platforms that they can that they can use. And so they came in. And and so if the if we're to frame it as like an experiment and can video game design novice video game design serve as an outlet for kind of telling interactive life stories or, you know, telling autobiographical stories? The short answer is yes, it absolutely can.

Yeah. And I thought that some of the games that the kids created were actually like deeply like meaningful. And I found them to be really powerful. So for example, one participant, it turned out that he suffers from like a like a really severe insomnia where he has to like take medication and whatnot. And it's like a real struggle. Like he just really finds it difficult to sleep. And there's and he talks about he was telling me there's like weird things happen, like sometimes he hears noises and stuff and like he thinks he does and he his mind imagines things. And he just he just can't sleep. And so he did. And so that's like something that he really lives with and constantly kind of struggling again, struggling with and reckoning with. And so he was like, I want to create a video game that tries to like show people what that experience is kind of like. And so that's what he did. So he set out to create a video game and he and he kind of leaned into like the horror genre. Yeah. And so, you know, the the you're like your character wakes up and you walk out of your bed right before you wake up the scary ghost figure and noise kind of goes by. That's kind of startles you as kind of a jump scare. And then you and then you wake up and you start walking around. You leave the room and then you're like you're you talk to your mom and then you go to another room and you move around. But it ends up being the circular thing where you end up back in your room and you can't escape it. Yeah. And and then there's these like weird, like surrealist kind of moments where you go into these hallways where these weird particle effects are making it seem very dreamlike and kind of disturbing. And then you kind of end up back in your bed. And it's all just very weird.

Yeah. Like psychologically kind of unsettling. I mean, that's how the brain works in those states. Yeah, exactly. And it's and it's and it's like his whole thing was like, I want to try to help other people kind of understand what what it's like for me to like struggle with insomnia. Yeah.

And so a communication tool, essentially. And so I and so and it worked like not only was it like a cool game to play. It was fun and interesting. But also at the end of it, you do kind of feel like, wow, like I had no idea that like that people talk about having insomnia often colloquially. Oh, like I'm sorry, but he's like he's an insomniac. He is someone who like consistently finds it very difficult to get any sleep and you get a profound sense of of the kind of traumatic experience that that can be. And that was all kind of conveyed through this like video game design project. And so that's one example. Another another example is a participant was really interested in how we when you're at school, you are one person around your friends and then you're you have to be a different person when you're in your teachers or when you're in your parents. So this is very like a very adolescent kind of like awakening where you're realizing you put on these different identities. And and she wanted to kind of explore that idea through a video game. And she did this really clever thing where instead of having so like a video game, we talk about sprites, which are the like characters and objects in the game that you can kind of interact with. So rather than have like a human looking sprite or a sprite that kind of looks like her through pixel art or something like that, she decided to use like just like a like a colored circle, like a yellow circle. OK. And and so you start off the game and you're with your parents and your parents are like, have a good day at school. And you're this yellow circle. And then you leave and you go to school and you encounter your friends and your friends are these blue squares. And so when you go and you talk to your friends, the friends influence you. And so your your sprite changes from yellow to green to like convey this idea, the mixing of influences. And then you go back home, but now you're a different color and your parents are like, why are you what's happening? You've changed, you know. And so that's so cool. Smart.

And and so again, just like the other one, it was, I mean, it was very clever. It was very well designed. It's fun to play. You know, it's short. But but like it was clear that the that the that the the participant was doing some like really deep identity, identity work and like playing around with like symbolism and shape and color while also creating this kind of interactive experience. And so, you know, those are just like two two quick examples. But like it's really moving. Yeah. Yeah. I thought so, too. I mean, it really show it really suggested to me, like if the question was, can video games design serve as like a meaningful, novice video game design serve as a meaningful outlet for telling life stories, interactive life stories that other people can engage with and interact with? Then the short answer was, yeah, yeah, 100 percent can. And so then, you know, the next question is like, so what do we do with that? You know, what does this mean for like classroom teachers? You know, how might they think about the opportunities for those kinds of projects and schools? But then also, again, like I don't want to. There's a tendency when it comes to things like video games designs for adults to just immediately kind of schoolify them. And so so as an educator and as a researcher, I share that sometimes. I want to be like, oh, what kind of learning can we kind of really encourage and suss out here? But at the same time, I also want to respect and honor youth cultures as things that like are for them and they explore. And so sometimes walking that line can be kind of tricky. But but I am definitely interested in thinking about, well, what are the classroom implications of thinking about video game design as a compositional genre alongside other classroom genres? So thank you so much for telling me about the research. I'm curious.

So I asked this question of everybody. It's called research outside of the box. Yeah.

What do you feel like is out of the box with this research project? So I think that I think the main thing that's out of the box, I've kind of already talked about it, which is that there's this tendency to amongst adults and amongst educators to locate video game design practices, young people's video game design practices, whether they be video game play or novice video game design in the context of like STEM learning. Like how can this be used for careers? And you just see this all over the place. You see it in the marketing that the a lot of video game development platforms make to teachers and schools are like, hey, this can build coding skills. And I mean, I've heard that from people that I know with their kids. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so again, like I don't want to diminish the importance of that. But like I guess one thing that's kind of out of the box about this particular research project is that it kind of runs counter that impulse. It's like, OK, that's fine. But like, what if we what if we use the video game development tools that actually don't really teach coding and because they don't teach coding, the kids can really focus on developing like the game, like as a as a as a playable game that can have characters and events and tell stories and whatnot and in rich ways. So you're pushing the boundaries on on. The broad application of them, but also how deep these these practices and activities can go for kids. Yeah, it's and it's and it just kind of basically comes from a personal commitment of mine, which is that like that I, you know, I'm just committed to the idea that that play of all forms is valuable in its own right, in that it doesn't always need to be legitimized by saying, OK, you can make money doing this, you know, and if someone if a kid were writing poetry in their own time or, you know, something like that, it's unlikely that people would be like, oh, so that you're writing poetry because you can now be a professional poet when you grow up. Like that's not really what people would say. People be like, oh, isn't that cool that you're doing that creative practice? But when a kid's like designing a video game on like Roblox or something like that, it's often the case that people are like, OK, well, I can feel OK about this because this will develop skills that they can, you know, leverage into careers.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's like one kind of I think key out of the box piece of this particular research. Yeah, it sounds like it. And I may or may not add this part in, but I'm curious on my end. Why do you think that that's the mentality of trying to monetize or? Push, yeah, video game creation to be a career. Why do you think that has kind of gone in that direction? I think it's largely an artifact of a generational dynamic where. I think it's it's becoming less true when people like who are now adults like me are who grew up and have been playing video games and have played video games with my my son, which is like a really meaningful way that he and I kind of connect to one another. And so I think that there was a time where earlier generations who didn't grow up with those experiences just had a lot of anxieties about about the fact that kids wanted to spend so much time playing these games. And then when you combine that with a lot of the kind of politicians blaming video games for all kinds of like social ills, for example, Macron, the France recently with the riots in Paris, like in part blame them on violent video games, like not all these like socioeconomic forces that are leading people to riot. No, it's the video games. And so that's a kind of a good example of how that kind of thinking still persists. And so I think I think that that tendency to legitimize video game play and design in relation to its potential to translate into STEM careers is a product of anxiety that certain generations have had about what this new form of engagement with technology and play that I that they didn't have as a kid. What is it? What does it mean? How should I feel about it? Oh, OK, I can now feel good about it. And there's a what I deem a good value product at the end of my I can stop fighting my kids about it. I can stop like saying, hey, no, you can't play video games. You know, and the reason why is because like, OK, well, they can play video games because maybe one day they'll, you know, make two hundred thousand dollars a year as like a computer programmer for Google or something like that. And you're looking at, well, this can be art. This can be an expression. This can be an exploration of the self. This can be a good tool for people who are, like you said, adolescents who are learning about themselves. And it doesn't have to be monetized. It doesn't have to be a career, but it can be a part of their self journey. That's what you're looking at. Yeah. And what's key here, I think, is worth saying, too, is it can it can do both things. Like, yeah, while while the while kids are engaged in that, you know, identity work through video game design, they're also developing like technical skills that may or may not translate one day into some sort of like career. There's a holistic development that's great. Like, that's that's awesome. But if they don't, they're still valued. That's also OK. Like, it's OK for them to for them to like to play. You know, I have some things about the pleasures of pointless play. Like, sometimes it's OK to just play. I love that. The pleasures of pointless play. Yeah. I will put that on a T-shirt or something. So I really like it. Yeah.

So I really do believe that. And so so, yeah, I think that there's a strong possibility that over time and hopefully, you know, I'm not the only person doing research like there's other people, specifically people in in literacy who are doing work to kind of rethink and reframe how we understand young people's video game practices. And a lot of the people doing that research are people who themselves like me grew up playing video games, play video games now, and so understand them in a way that's different than I think generations did. Yeah, that's really unique. So working with you said, I think you said 13 to 17 year olds, is that correct? I'm sure that there are a lot of logistics that go into, of course, working with, you know, children or people who are under the age of 18. What advice do you have for other researchers who might be doing that for the first time? Wow.

Yeah. So this is not a strength of mine. The administrative work that went into getting this off the ground. So my dissertation research at the University of Georgia was also about video game design, but it was in a preexisting context. And so I came in as a researcher and I didn't need to like create the program. Yeah, I just kind of came in as a researcher. And like for this one, I actually had to create it. And so not only did that involve recruiting participants and to do that, I created a recruitment survey that I didn't send out to kind of schools and the greater kind of San Marcos area, kind of Hays County and then use that the questions kind of were geared to the selection criteria. So I was looking for people aged 13 to 17. I was interested in people who had little to no experience with video game design. And then I was interested in having a group of participants that kind of reflected the demographics of the area that also kind of emphasized serving students from marginalized communities and providing them kind of an opportunity because it was cool. You know, it was a free, you know, week long video game design play workshop thing. Each day we took we took them to everything was paid for. So we went and they had free lunch and I bought all these like snacks and stuff. And so it was a really fun, like kind of cool space to be in. So in some ways, it was like a research study. But I also just really wanted them to have a really good time. And so that was like a main priority. It sounds fun to me.

I'd go. Yeah. So like, but to make that happen, back to your question, it just required a lot of administrative lift. There was a seemingly infinite number of forms that needed to be signed to in order to just bring minors onto campus for that kind of opportunity, medical stuff, liability stuff, stuff related to the rules. And that's not even including the IRB stuff because, you know, I started in 2020 and my idea when I came in was to kind of keep the momentum going from my dissertation research and to kind of jump right into getting this project off the ground. But like from IRB, the when Covid hit, there was this whole new set of kind of requirements for IRB approval. And then when you combined the Covid stuff with the fact that you're having like minors come on the campus stuff, it was just such such a mess that like I just kind of waited. And so not that Covid is over by any means, but it certainly has shifted and evolved to a place now where, you know, it made it much more doable. Yeah. So but the but the I don't know. I honestly, I'm still seeking advice on how to make the administrative parts reach out to Brad. Yeah, it's it was it was that was actually more work than I had anticipated. Yeah. And so that's a good piece is, yeah, if you're working with minors, just be aware it's really worth it. It sounds like there's just a lot of paperwork. So just be mentally prepared. Be organized is what I'm is what I'm learning from you. Yeah. And one of the other cool things about about doing it, about doing that, the one of the payoffs of going through that, because you can do educational research in schools. And often that is where educational research happens. Makes sense. Yeah. But but one of the one of the cool parts about about creating like what sometimes refers to like a third space outside of school is that is that you are free of some of the constraints and limitations that school sometimes imposes, things around like testing requirements or curricular mandates or rules about what can and can't be done, what can't be taught, like you create this like other space where educational, rich educational things are happened, but you can experiment with things like, you know, telling using video games for as autobiographical stories. You can do that kind of thing and see what happens, learn from it and then say, OK, now let's like think about how this might map to a formal kind of learning space. Yeah, I love that. So what other projects? And I think we kind of talked a little bit about this, but what other projects do you have in store that we could get a sneak peek at? So one of the interesting things that happened during the the workshop project, the Gameful Living Lab project is I didn't anticipate this necessarily going in. So I am, as I mentioned earlier, very interested in AI and literacy and large language models, chat, GPT and stuff. And so I I wanted this project to be about like video game design, but it ended up happening where the some of the kids did start using chat GPT to help them with their projects. All right. And so when they had a question about the platform that they were using, something they couldn't figure out, they would like go to chat GPT and say, how do you add a sprite or something in the platform? And and then it would like give them an answer. And and sometimes it would just completely make up stuff. That's right. I was like, did it always give it the right? No, it didn't. It was funny. Like it would make up whole menus. Like it would say, click on the whatever menu. And you'd be looking to be like, which I know we've had conversations outside of the podcast. That's how chat GPT works. Right. Predictive. Yeah, it doesn't know what it's saying. It just says stuff based on probabilistic, you know, what would be a sensible word to come next. so that that so that so I saw kids using that way. But when when when one of the participants got kind of kind of combative with it and was like being like, no, that's wrong. That that that menu is not there or that doesn't work. And then chat GPT would say, oh, I apologize. You know, it would it would. Now, of course, it's not apologizing. It can just tell that someone has said something, these words, and now it makes it negative. Yeah.

And so it would quote unquote apologize, even though it's not doesn't have the capacity to do that. And then it would like adjust its response and say something else that might be a little bit more useful. And then the and the participant would say, OK, yeah, that worked. Or no, that's not going to work either. What about this? And and what I realized is through those interactions, the the student was actually doing what's called prompt engineering. The the student was manipulating the the chat GPT to try and get something kind of meaningful out of it. And so that was happening. And then another participant was, you know, was so this is kind of ridiculous. But the whole idea for the the workshop was like tell a life story. And so on the last day of the workshop, we invited family and friends to come. And we had like a play test where they could come. And and all of the all the parents and the show can go around and play the games. And to to kind of give the play testers our guests a frame of reference, each of the the kids kind of rode up like a short three to five sentences kind of giving the context for their game, like why they made this game. And then we kind of printed them out and I had them sitting next to their computer station so that the playtester could read it. And and a couple of the kids like went to chat GPT and said, hey, can you tell me like how this like how is this game autobiographical? And it was weird because they were like asking an A.I. to like help them think through the way that their game that they had already created was autobiographical. And which is like a really bizarre thing to do and think about. And in part, it was because like I've I gave two examples of where the the the the games like very thoughtful. There were a couple other examples where kids got kind of very focused on like making a particular thing happen in their game. Like like this one person was really interested in making this like particular boss fight work. And so they got so interested in that that the kind of autobiographical dimension of it became kind of secondary, which was fine. Like, yeah, but that was an example of a participant who then kind of needed to retrofit an explanation, a rationale into their game that ended up going to chat GPT. So anyways, that all got me thinking about like another similar kind of opportunity that but that rather than focuses on video game design that like thinks about how using like language models, whether they be like textual models like chat GPT or, you know, visual things like Mid Journey or Stable Diffusion or Dolly using using those and doing other kind of like fun, creative like activities with that with with with AI, you know, and seeing how that kind of interacts with literacy. Because again, just like with video games, this is a lot of paranoia and anxiety about like video games. We see a lot of that. And and I actually like, unlike the video game things, I share it. Like I'm I'm very skeptical and and concerned about like the the where, how these technologies may be influencing education and and just human expression in general. And so so, yeah, I think that but that's like a half thought. Like, yeah, to kind of be developed for the spark. But what happened in the study kind of made me think, like, what are what are some ways where I can create similar opportunities that kind of aren't that that way from video game design? Not that I won't do that anymore. I'm still interested in that, but also like thinking about like a similar kind of thing with AI. Yeah, no, that's really cool. I'm excited if you do venture that direction. I know a lot of people who would be very interested in that. I am one of them. So I am interested to see where that goes. If if you take it somewhere, do you use students in your in this past research project? Did you use students to help you? Yeah, so I taught a class. So the educational technology, we have a master's program in the D in educational technology, and it's it's all online. It's not all asynchronous. It's mostly synchronous online, but it's a really great program. And just a quick plug there. It's a it's super fun and people seem to get a lot out of it. I taught a class last fall on digital game based learning, which was about, you know, video games and education. And it was kind of an elective class, a seminar graduate seminar class. And again, thinking about that, do something awesome project. I didn't call it that. But like the final project for that class is very kind of open. And one of the options I gave was creating a video game. And I had one, I think I had like 11 or 12 students and only one of them chose to actually like create a video game. And so when I was then in the spring, when I was like getting my ducks in a row for the for the Gameful Living Lab Project this summer, I was like, Hmm, I wonder if if that student would have any interest in like, you know, helping with the project.

Yeah. And so his name is Steven Bueller. He's he's a master's student in the in the program, and he agreed. So I had some funding that I was able to to pay him to come. And he basically was the instructor, because through creating creating his project, he had learned a lot about like creating video games design using these kind of novice friendly video game development platforms. But he had developed enough expertise that he kind of came in. And he was the he was basically the lead instructor for the camp workshop experience. And and then, you know, I kind of played more of the research role and kind of a supporting role as kind of an observer and helping along where where I where I could. But yeah, he was it was amazing to have a good opportunity for him. Yeah, it was he seemed to really enjoy it. I was glad that he was able to to get to get to get paid for it as a as a. Yeah, yeah, that worked really well.

Good. Awesome. So as we're closing up, I'm curious, what advice do you have for other researchers who want to think out of the box in regard to their research? Yeah, that's that's tricky. So.

I think there's two things that come to mind. The first one is related to the project, the Game for Living Lab Project, where I kind of had to confront some kind of methodological constraints on how to study this. How do you like study a video game design and process? Like, how do you how do you make that legible as like a research object? A thing to study. And so to do that, like, I think relates to kind of the advice, which is that I think that sometimes in academics, we universities are structured around disciplinary boundaries. There's the College of Education. There's the College of, you know, there's the English, the departments, different colleges, and they're all kind of carved up by discipline. And that makes sense in like any number of ways. But I think it's also important for me at least to break out of that box and to read and and see what's going on in adjacent disciplines and sometimes like completely different disciplines. And so, for example, in my research, I spend a lot of time reading what's going on in media studies. And so that's not an educational field at all. But there's so much interesting work going on in media studies, both like conceptual work where people are coming up with interesting ideas for how to think about the ways that people interact with technologies, but also methodological things. So, for example, there's the the idea of like the walkthrough. So I can and I don't know if you're familiar with this, but there's this phenomenon on YouTube where people do video game walkthroughs where you kind of record yourself playing a video game and talking about it, not in like the Twitch streamer kind of way, but just like sometimes with no commentary whatsoever, just so that someone can come along and like see what it's like to play a particular level if they're stuck. And so people call that like a walkthrough. You're walking someone through the video game. And so I saw how people were in media studies were using that as a way to think about studying how people interact with digital platforms. So people will do like walkthroughs of how how did someone interact with Instagram? Like you kind of walk through Instagram and you look at like what the user interface is like, what are the terms of use, all that kind of stuff. But anyways, I kind of got to thinking about that concept of walkthrough. And I was like, hmm, that might be an interesting way to have my participants talk about their video games. And so so after the the lab and I have two of these interviews later today, these post-workout interviews, basically what we do is we meet on a Zoom call and they open up their video game project and they and they give me a walkthrough. And so I like screen record it and they just kind of like talk me through their game. And so they play it and they're like, this is where this happens. And then they talk about like how it was autobiographical, autobiographical, rather, what sort of life experiences they drew on. And then they also they kind of go behind the scenes and walk me through the coding. And so that idea of like the walkthrough as a way of like a methodological approach for making sense of the video games was something that I didn't find by reading, you know, educational articles. It was something that I discovered reading within in media studies. And so I think that sometimes academics can kind of get the box that they're stuck in can be their discipline. And so reading outside your discipline, selecting a discipline that's like you're interested in and curious about, you can come across things that are can be inspiring and often like really give you great ideas for ways to kind of innovate on whatever's happening in your particular field. And yeah, I think that's great. That's great advice. Research outside of the box by reading and and exploring outside of your own discipline. I think that's really good advice. Well, Brad, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate it. I learned a lot. I'm excited to know. Yeah, more about what your data is, the data that you've collected and also just see where you go from here. It's it's been a great interview. Thank you. Well, it's my pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me. It's super fun talking about the work, and I really appreciate your interest. Yeah, absolutely. All right.

Bye, everybody. Take care. Thanks for joining us today. This podcast project is sponsored by Faculty Development using YouStar Studios and Alkek One on the hill in the bright and beautiful San Marcos, Texas. Thank you to all the faculty who are making amazing strides in your research. We hope you join us next time. And until then, stay curious and dare to research outside of the box.