Failing at immersion: fancy play buttons

Have you ever experienced a fancy play button? You know what I mean. Its that experience where you are wrapped up in an interesting tale, and the natural ebb and flow of the story is stopped because.. you have to click play again. This annoyance usually runs by the name of "engagement," as if giving a viewer something, anything, to do will make a passive experience transform into something that has engagement. It's especially concerning when it comes to "VR," and we see things fly under the flag of immersion which are really just even fancier play buttons.

Rewards Structures in The Ward Game: An interview with Paul Darvasi

As the second interview in this series, I am excited to interview Paul Darvasi, who is a high school English and Media Studies teacher who teaches at Royal St. George’s College, in Toronto, Canada. Paul is also a doctoral candidate at York University, and a founding member of the Play Lab at the University of Toronto. He researches, writes, and speaks at the intersections of games, culture, society, education, and learning. He also designs pervasive or alternate reality games which he has implemented in instructional settings, and one of those games will be the focus of today's interview.


KM: So I’m excited to talk about the very first time I heard you talk about your classroom. It was at the Games for Education conference in Troy, and you talked about what you did with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Could you provide a brief description of that game here?

PD: Essentially, I used the narrative, setting, theme, and characters from Ken Kesey’s novel to create a 30-day game where my students are immersed in the world of the asylum. I was struck that so many of Kesey’s critiques about Nurse Ratched’s ward, such as the use of authority, coercion, and clockwork organization coincided with some of the worst aspects of schooling.