Deep Sea Islands of Innovation 2024

May 2024

I presented at the University of Liverpool’s Deep Seas Islands of Innovation conference this month. This was an international, online conference, hosted by the University’s Vietnam campus, so the first presentations were at awful o’clock in the morning. I’ve never drunk so much coffee so swiftly in an attempt to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and if my bladder is anything to go by, I won’t be doing it again!

My presentation: What if? The Unintended Consequences of Playing Video Games was anchored around a series of brief in-game videos. To kick off, footage captured in Skyrim and Diablo IV demonstrated violence as a force for good and the irony of improving one’s well being via mindless slaughter. As they watched the films, I asked the audience to think of a recent frustration they had experienced, to imagine it was them cutting a swathe through hordes of monsters, and to consider how this may help them – and more importantly, their game-playing students, to reduce their frustration and improve their wellbeing. 

In the next slides I tried to demonstrate how gamers’ problem-solving skills can be honed via a brief film demonstrating the solution to a puzzle in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The puzzle involved moving and posing a series of mirrors so a beam of light could travel from one mirror to another, until finally aligning with a door, shining directly onto its lock, and opening it. I have a theory - or maybe just a hunch - that solving these Crystal Maze-like side quests impact positively on player’s problem solving skills, and perhaps even hone employability skills by stealth. I again asked the audience to consider this as they watched the film. 

Next up: how building in terms of both the player's character creation and the construction and furnishing of a homestead can induce a state of flow; something I experienced as an unintended consequence when playing several games, but under certain conditions. Entering this state of flow allows me to solve real world problems, and to reflect upon events, but those aforementioned conditions have to be met:

1. I put the game on its easiest setting, then build my character as a 'tank', ensuring they are heavily imbued with strength and endurance-type stats, but to the detriment of other skills. This allows me to wander around the open world without the fear of enemies being tougher than me, I have no anxiety about encountering anything that may mean GAME OVER, and I am able to enter a state of flow.

2. (Apparently) violence isn't always the way, so building, furnishing, and decorating my in-game homestead, outpost, or settlement also provides an environment where I can enter a state of flow.   

To this end, a screen captured video tour of one of my homes in Starfield, highlighting every lovingly-positioned teaspoon demonstrated how digital 'pottering about' can be just as effective at inducing a state of flow as mindlessly hacking zombies to pieces, or weeding the garden in the real world.

My final film explored how academic attainment can be improved by playing  OWRPGS. Here I used Starfield once more to demonstrate how I have subconsciously learned some of the Periodic Table of Elements, and how I realised that loading screens in games can provide a surprising way to 'sneak in' some learning. The Assassin's Creed franchise likes to add  interesting historical facts to theirs, like the one below.