Game studies in Brazil Book I:: experiences in Education, Health Science, Poetics and Game Analysis

By Tamer Thabet

Game Studies in Brazil: Book One ins an attempt to begin mapping out the research field of videogames ins Brazil by means of cartography of knowledge. Game Studies in Brazil: Book One contains five chapters written by Brazilian researchers in the fields of education, health sciences, games studies, poetics, and literature. The chapters in this book are about projects and experiences in using games for teaching literature in public schools, and serious games for public health awareness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: EDUEL
• Release date: Apr 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9788578465919

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Reitora Marta Regina Gimenez Favaro

Vice-Reitor Airton José Petris

Editora da Universidade Estadual de Londrina

Diretor Gilmar Aparecido Altran

Conselho Editorial Ana Cristina de Albuquerque

Daniela Braga Paiano

Edison Archela

Efraim Rodrigues

Ester Massae Okamoto Dalla Costa

Gisele Franco de Lima Santos

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Marcos Alexandre Gomes Nalli

Maria Luiza Fava Grassiotto

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da Biblioteca Central da Universidade Estadual de Londrina

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Bibliotecária: Fátima Silvério Biz Accorsini – CRB-9/820

T32g Thabet, Tamer

Game studies in Brazil book 1 : experiences in education, health science, poetics and game analysis [recurso eletrônico] / Tamer Thabet ; organização e tradução: Mirian Ruffini. – Londrina : Eduel, 2023.

1 livro digital.

Inclui bibliografia.

Disponível em: https://www.eduel.com.br

ISBN 978-85-7846-591-9

1. Jogos educativos. 2. Jogos digitais – Educação. 3. Jogos digitais – Medicina. 4. Jogos – Análise. I. Ruffini, Mirian. II. Título.

CDU 37:519.68(81)

Enviado em: Recebido em:

Parecer 1 17/09/2021 16/11/2021

Parecer 2 16/09/2021 19/11/2021

Aprovação pelo Conselho Editorial em: 20/12/2021

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Lovingly dedicated to

Sabbah Thabet

1942-2017

INTRODUCTION

Personal and academic reflections on game studies in Brazil

Tamer Thabet

Videogames represent an important cultural voice, medium of expression, economic marker, and an internationally recognized area of knowledge. This led many researchers in Brazilian universities to respond to videogames through interdisciplinary studies, research projects, game development, and publications. This book is an attempt to begin mapping out the research field of videogames in Brazil by means of cartography of knowledge. Game Studies in Brazil: Book One contains five chapters written by Brazilian researchers in the fields of education, health sciences, games studies, poetics, and literature. The chapters in this book are about projects and experiences in using games for teaching literature in public schools, serious games for public health awareness, personal reflections on studying games in postgraduate studies when Game Studies is not yet an officialized area of knowledge in Brazil, and literary analysis. Game Studies in Brazil: Book Two, which is still in the works with all its chapters delivered, is another edited book with chapters about Game Development in a Brazilian University’s Computer Science department, Game Development in a Brazilian University’s Faculty of Education, using video games for school curricula, and essay accounting on a thirty years of video game research career in a Brazilian university, and a chapter to propose a critical model for game stories.

The need for this series is obvious since communication between Brazilian game researchers is so far non-existent. Therefore, the publication of such works aims to gain more recognition of the field among academics. The second problem is the connection between Game Studies in Brazil and the rest of the world, which is largely due to the language of Brazilian universities. Portuguese is a rich language and eloquently serves the study

of any field of knowledge, but at the same time is self-sufficient, which shields Brazilian research from the world, even if not the other way around.

Game Studies is still an obscure and unrecognized area of knowledge in Brazil because Brazilian game researchers work independently in their own universities and are forced to study videogames only as objects of research within their own other areas. These researchers are also unconnected to each other nationally. However, Game Studies is already gaining momentum in Brazil.

The book is a product of the Game Studies in Brazil, a research project that is a continuation of a precursor research project the Local Videogame Project conducted by the same research team between 2013 and 2015. The Local Videogame Project was an international project and aimed to train postgraduate students on game design and development to employ local culture, fiction, folklore, and history in video game content to communicate Brazilian narratives and contexts in an interactive medium. This video game content is one that Brazilians can relate to and can help express local cultures internationally. The project resulted in the production of a videogame and research publications in the field of Game Studies with focus on Brazil.

The videogame produced by the research team is The Red Foot Saga (RFS). The RFS was a 3D browser adventure videogame about the history and culture of Londrina. This free-to-play videogame is the first product of the Canadian-Brazilian research project called The Local Video Games project, which is an international partnership between universities and private sector leaders to explore new horizons in game design and content and to use games as cultural bridges of knowledge.

The chapters in this series are loyal to academic fields such as Education, Computer Science, Psychology, Literary Studies, Health Sciences etc. as they contribute new knowledge to their fields with focus on the Brazilian context. However, what stands out – intentionally – is the personal and memoir-writing qualities as the writers do not avoid reflecting on their personal experiences and cultural surroundings. These books bring new knowledge to the area, as they should, but they are also about scholars stepping into Game Studies in Brazilian universities. While the principal motive of these edited books is to increase the recognition of the field in Brazil, I asked the writers to make their chapters about their life contexts, themselves, and their personal experiences in tackling Game Studies, and that is to highlight the Brazilian context of this research on video games.

In chapter one, Vilas Boas states that video games can enhance school students’ abilities to read, interpret, and produce literary texts, which can be a quite bold statement given the noisy anti-videogames media crusades. This chapter is the abridged version of a successful doctoral degree research with the goal to assert the effectiveness of videogames as a pedagogical instrument in teaching literature at schools. The argument is supported by extensive bibliographical reviews and field study.

Driven by an early passion for videogames, like most of the writers of this volume, Vilas Boas views are informed by his career as educator and later a pedagogical technology advisor to different branches of the Parana State Board of Education. Vilas Boas, as an educator, favors interactive fiction because it involves children in creative action rather than grammatical training or memorization of rules. In this book, Vilas Boas, Dainezi, Macedo, and Raposo weigh in with different accounts of earning academic degrees in Game Studies’ early times in Brazil. Their research papers also serve as accounts of their academic journeys, and sharing these experiences is valuable for both scholars in different career stages whether supervisors or students.

Vasconcellos and de Carvalho’s chapter is about videogames for public health awareness. The authors present a decade-worth of experience, both academic and professional, in the field communication within the public health system (SUS). The chapter is rooted in praxis as the authors detail the design and development of newsgames as a medium for collective health campaigns. The research of Vasconcellos and de Carvalho intersects with their work in the Brazilian health field at Osvaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), which is one of the largest health institutions in the world.

The chapter From Rivers to Liquid Crystal: Paths of Game Studies in the Amazon is by Macedo whose writing style is a fusion of storytelling, memoir-writing, and ethnography. His contribution is all a poetic description that overwhelms academic standards to achieve what he promised to do, which is describing the intersection of themes when it comes to Game Studies in the Amazon. This is a special chapter for many reasons. One of them is its ability to describe how big and diverse is Brazil; also, how distant. Macedo meticulously describes the travels in pursuit of events related to Game Studies across the country and the academics whom he met along the way and who influenced his research. The author describes the northern part of the country, its river, wildlife, and the people’s culture on the surface and the banks on the Amazon.

Vanessa Raposo writes about her academic journey and attempts to link between the field of publishing to Game Studies. She applies the groundwork concepts of Game Studies by Murray and Aarseth to analyze the game The Walking Dead by Telltale Games and the digital graphic novel Bottom of the Ninth by Ryan Woodward. Raposo’s account and analysis provide insight on queerness in video games and Game Studies.

Relating the structuralist literary theory to the analysis of video game fiction is my contribution to this volume. I use the system terms coined by the greats such as Genette, Burgoyne, and Stanzel to describe the game fiction as a narrative system. Once we understand how the storyworld in games work and what questions can we ask about the meaning-making that occurs during narration, I suggest a few questions inspired by reader-response criticism.

Digital games and literature in public education: an experience

Alexandre Vilas Boas da Silva

I remember my strong and growing interest in electronic games as soon as I had my first contact with Atari and the arcades¹ in the 1980s - even though this activity was socially considered a frivolous distraction². In the 1990s, my contact with computer games started a new experience with electronic games, which draws my attention in a special way even nowadays. Although I do not consider myself a hardcore player, I have missed a few nights of sleep trying to get ahead in a game (in a somewhat obsessive way, even after adulthood, I confess). Searching in my memory for the electronic games of my childhood and adolescence, I remember my immersive experiences with games in a somewhat positive way. Even though I still have an interest in electronic games nowadays – although more occasionally, sometimes even sharing space with my kids in their virtual games–, considering the use of digital games at school seemed a fascinating and complex challenge at the same time.

This chapter aims to present, but not in its totality, the methods and results of my doctoral research, which was completed in 2016. The research sought to verify, from a bibliographical review and field research, whether the use of games could positively encourage students to develop skills related to activities of reception, interpretation, and production of literary texts, constituting, thus, a viable instrument to the pedagogical approach of literature to future generations. I began from the assumption that new information and communication technologies, more specifically digital games, can aid literature education in the school environment.

Among the initial motivations to carry out this work are some findings I made during the first years of my professional activity in primary education, whose course was initially traced between 2005 and 2007, as a Portuguese language teacher of the public education network of the State of Paraná, in the final years of Elementary School and High School. Subsequently, the material I developed as a technical and pedagogical advisor for the use of technologies, together with the Regional Coordination of Technology in Education (CRTE), in the Regional Department of Education (RNE)³ of Londrina, in the state of Paraná, between 2008 and 2013, also contributed to my insights on the subject.

During this period, I could see - from the work done in dozens of educational institutions in Londrina and vicinities, in central and peripheral schools - that, despite the expansion in the availability of technological resources in public schools, their significant use happened occasionally in the development of daily pedagogical activities, often motivated by affinity and particular initiatives of teachers. Considering the area of literature, specifically - my area of interest and academic background- the use of technology seemed to be even less frequent, although there are some digital educational objects available. The daily proximity to various public policies to incorporate technologies in schools provided me with institutional proposals for the use of technology, which I considered of problematic scope, effectiveness, and continuity in general. Initially, I supposed the lack of familiarity with those resources, the inadequacy of the materials, as well as the infrastructure contingencies only aggravated this situation. I watched the implementation process of computer laboratories of the Paraná Digital Program (PRD) in some schools in the city of Londrina, as well as the expansion of laboratories with the ProInfo Program. I was able to accompany the distribution of educational tablets for teachers and to attend training workshops for their use. I provided several courses in digital education for teachers and school staff, as well as individualized service - in a format of assistance for the use of information and communication technologies - in schools in Londrina and its region. During this process, I observed that the initial training for basic operation of equipment and apps was highly requested and usually welcomed in the schools by educators, but the advanced use of resources was