Drafts by Stephen R Mallory
How did The Origin of Totalitarianism (Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism 1951) become a semi... more How did The Origin of Totalitarianism (Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism 1951) become a seminal work, how was it received by the broader culture, and how it does it continue to be relevant within the modern political science and political philosophy zeitgeist? While Arendt’s work is thoughtfully written in prose and structure, one can note a mixture of passion and anger. In elucidating the same masses that were either actively or silently complicit in the rise of authoritarian states across the globe, she is careful to highlight the threats that their veiled anti-semitism had in the formulation and execution of the authoritarian states of the now vanquished Nazi Germany and still ascendant Soviet Union. She strove to illustrate how something as accepted, even mildly, as the dehumanization or othering of a sector of the people could be spun into and out into a spasm of domination and fear. In this striving, she succeeded.
Since their inception as a business and entertainment medium in the late 1970s, video games have ... more Since their inception as a business and entertainment medium in the late 1970s, video games have been dictated by financial and creative realities. Games cost money to create, publish, release and maintain after release. Over the last forty years, numerous game companies and publishers have been formed, created groundbreaking titles, and gone out of business. In that same period of time, a select few developers have created and continue to create games that consistently meeting with critical and financial success. These games are virtuous. A virtuous game has characteristics of play that encourages cooperative behavior, crafted with exacting detail, embraces specific forms of play, and has been updated and revised based on direct feedback from the player base, establishing the standards for craftsmanship, interactivity and content. These games are crafted and managed by virtuous companies. These companies are upstanding in their interactions with players and fans alike, taking direct player feedback and use it to tune or modify the game following its release on the marketplace. This cycle of interaction, between creation and player and player and company, creates a pattern of improvement that establishes market trends, sets quality and interactivity benchmarks, and creates communities that other major studios and publishers strive to attain.
Around the tables of millions of dining rooms, groups of participants meet and play table-top rol... more Around the tables of millions of dining rooms, groups of participants meet and play table-top roleplaying games. These games feature a highly formalized structure of play, a collection of artifacts and interactions with representations of imaginary or conceptual spaces through which the players coordinate and interact. The data for this study was collected over the Fall 2015 semester in Allen, Texas. The Game Master was running a module for the other four participants at the gaming table. One participant was absent but returned after the recording was completed. Data was collected from site notes, interviews, photographs, and a single video camera, placed to view the entire gaming table. The game master’s interaction with the participants, as well as the individual participant activities, provided a unique look at activities performed either as part of a larger activity in the group or begun in response to occurrences explained by the Game Master.
Persuasion in games is in an unusual space. As games mature as a media form, establishing new rul... more Persuasion in games is in an unusual space. As games mature as a media form, establishing new rules of creation, interpretation and mediation, the volume of academic and scientific research around what games are, what they can do, and how they do it has grown. Psychology has begun to analyze digital games as well, viewing them as a medium identical to other forms of visual media like television and film. While these early attempts illustrate a fundamental immaturity of game studies, they have begun to lay out the initial framework for understanding what games do mentally to players. Games have also begun to reach out and embrace methods of understanding from psychology to create more engaging games. While certain psychological theories, like flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008), certainly relate to why people play games for extended periods, designers often stop their excursions into understanding psychology there (Baron, 2012). Understanding other aspects of psychology, like persuasion, allows designers to make their games more than engaging pastimes, but powerful tools for education. Understanding persuasion as a mechanic for games needs to go beyond persuasive rhetorics (Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, 2007) and its structures, but understanding the behavioral roots of persuasion and how they relate to games generally and educational games specifically. This paper will review the concept of flow, what makes an engaging digital game, how games are currently used in education, and how the elements of persuasion can be used in the design of digital education games to become persuasive and engaging educational games.
Poster Presentations by Stephen R Mallory
A poster presentation for the 2016 McDermott Scholars Fellowship application process
Teaching Documents by Stephen R Mallory
This brief powerpoint discusses how games differ from other modes of artistic expression and how ... more This brief powerpoint discusses how games differ from other modes of artistic expression and how do they generate emotional responses - aesthetics - in the participants.
Creative Work by Stephen R Mallory
Everyone is the agent of change in their own life
Papers by Stephen R Mallory
NCBDS 39, 2024
John Dewey, in his influential writing How We Think (Dewey, 1910), asserts that the experiences, ... more John Dewey, in his influential writing How We Think (Dewey, 1910), asserts that the experiences, interests and tendencies of the student are “the natural resources with which (the educator) has to align himself” to be effective. Dewey’s observations are particularly relevant when teaching first year, university-level coursework. These students arrive with tendencies and habits shaped by their pre-college lives, and not the rigorous, critical structure demanded by university faculty. This disconnect can create feelings of alienation - a problem particularly acute amongst first-generation and long-distance students (Morrow & Ackerman, 2012; Lake, 1999; Lara 1992). This can lead to under-performance, disenfranchisement, and poor motivation, believing incorrectly that they do not belong and leaving the university altogether.
To transition from the former to the latter requires faculty to engage the entering student’s experience and recognize their students as fully humanized with agency over their learning (Friere, 2000). According to scholars such as John Dewey and Donald Schon, this can be accomplished by utilizing the tools of the students’ pre-college experience, leveraging social media, memes, streaming, AI-based technologies and other shared experiential markers. After all, per Friere, “[o]ne cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people'' (Ibid, 95). By providing a framework whereby students might critically engage this collective experience, the faculty offers students a chance to leverage this background to facilitate more critical engagements of it. Properly articulated, these engagements leverage the students’ curiosity to more rigorously contextualize, and carefully utilize, their pre-college experience. These engagements foster a community of practice that the students utilize as a support system, affording them greater resilience from the shocks of university-level rigor.
This proposed presentation will use a variety of evidence, including student work and course evaluations, to demonstrate how educators might more respectfully and critically engage this necessary foundation for learning, and encourage their students to do likewise (Freire, 2000). Pulling from the perspectives of thinkers such as John Dewey, Donald Schon, and Paulo Freire, this provocation will offer educators patterns of engagement that allow students to appreciate the value of their pre-college lives, without resorting to pandering or thoughtless engagements. The offered patterns will demonstrate strategies and offer exercises which encourage students to more thoughtfully and critically engage their embodied experiences and to begin proposing new, more useful, patterns by which their pre-university knowledge might be engaged, letting students develop meaning from the memes and reason from remixes. This session will engage these topics through an active learning environment, allowing the frameworks used to this end, and the outcomes achieved through them, to become concrete and their meaning apparent. It will use project-based learning to showcase specific tactics that enable students to both embrace and challenge their pre-university experiences, and create “tools for reflective examination” (Dewey, 1910). After all, to quote John Dewey: “Ideas are not then genuine ideas unless they are tools in a reflective examination which tends to solve a problem” (Ibid, 109).
Visual arts research, Nov 30, 2023
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2019
This paper is a case study illustrating how a digital game that conforms to what James Paul Gee t... more This paper is a case study illustrating how a digital game that conforms to what James Paul Gee terms good game design is one which encourages a state of cognitive flow engages players as a playful experience. This case study will review how good game design, combining flow and specific elements associated with the play outlined in the playful experience framework can lead to learning outcomes. The paper will look at specific designed elements of the game Kerbal Space Program, such as open and directed play modes and the community of player-participants and content creators as they relate to principles of learning and elements of pleasure framework to illustrate how good educational game design is pleasurable game design and by linking pleasure, play and learning.
This paper is a case study illustrating how a digital game that conforms to what James Paul Gee t... more This paper is a case study illustrating how a digital game that conforms to what James Paul Gee terms good game design is one which encourages a state of cognitive flow engages players as a playful experience. This case study will review how good game design, combining flow and specific elements associated with the play outlined in the playful experience framework can lead to learning outcomes. The paper will look at specific designed elements of the game Kerbal Space Program, such as open and directed play modes and the community of player-participants and content creators as they relate to principles of learning and elements of pleasure framework to illustrate how good educational game design is pleasurable game design and by linking pleasure, play and learning.
Digital games represent the next evolution in teaching tool for parents, students and teachers. T... more Digital games represent the next evolution in teaching tool for parents, students and teachers. These games, unique in their capacity to evoke and follow rules, control content, ensure mastery, and provide a way for schools to utilize engaging content while simultaneously engaging students across multiple cognitive processes either alone or with other students in highly controlled and contained social situations both inside and outside of the game space. By engaging students through play, itself a fundamental cultural artifact, teachers can more easily engage in a heightened sense of awareness and focus known as flow. As a former AAA game designer, I will review the current state of literature covering elements of play as it has evolved and how the elements of play are used and subverted by the existing cultural practices to the detriment of school, students and instructors. I will also review how the psychological concept of flow, from its broader definition within human activity and review how this concept has been distilled by professional game designers for use within an educational context. I will also discuss how games represent a product that both reinforces and contradicts the currently implemented methods of accountability and instruction in the United States education system. Games, thoughtfully designed, can track progress, reinforce their achievement and serve as a method of constantly testing and retesting student capabilities. They can also create unique social environments for students, encouraging a form of distributed cognition where solving complex problems encourages communication, creative application of learned content, and the social skills needed beyond the confines of the school house.
In August of 2014, a harassment campaign initiated by Eron Gjonji exposed the underbelly of digit... more In August of 2014, a harassment campaign initiated by Eron Gjonji exposed the underbelly of digital game culture to the rest of the world. Using digital technologies like twitter, facebook, and online communities of practice like 4chan, agents of this harassment action attempted to discredit the target of Eron’s angst and began “CRASHING HER CAREER WITH NO SURVIVORS” (LOG, 2014) along with anyone that defended her. This action spread, morphing into an ex post facto justification (Read, 2016) to continue their harassment campaign to also include commentaries on the nature of digital games in the broader culture generated as a response to their initial actions (Alexander, 'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over, 2014) (Bernstein, 2014) (Plunkett, 2014) (Johnston, 2014). Viewing GamerGate through the lens of cultivation theory, we begin to see the action as the result of nearly three decades of questionable content potentially cultivating the digital video games audience. Understanding that the theory of cultivation (Morgan, 2009) may have played a pivotal role in the initiation and explosion of the internet hate mob and by viewing this social phenomenon through the eyes of a former game developer, I hope to illustrate how the specific content choices could have cultivated a modified world view regarding gender roles and sexuality generated by the video games they consume to amplify existing gender roles.
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Drafts by Stephen R Mallory
Poster Presentations by Stephen R Mallory
Teaching Documents by Stephen R Mallory
Creative Work by Stephen R Mallory
Papers by Stephen R Mallory
To transition from the former to the latter requires faculty to engage the entering student’s experience and recognize their students as fully humanized with agency over their learning (Friere, 2000). According to scholars such as John Dewey and Donald Schon, this can be accomplished by utilizing the tools of the students’ pre-college experience, leveraging social media, memes, streaming, AI-based technologies and other shared experiential markers. After all, per Friere, “[o]ne cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people'' (Ibid, 95). By providing a framework whereby students might critically engage this collective experience, the faculty offers students a chance to leverage this background to facilitate more critical engagements of it. Properly articulated, these engagements leverage the students’ curiosity to more rigorously contextualize, and carefully utilize, their pre-college experience. These engagements foster a community of practice that the students utilize as a support system, affording them greater resilience from the shocks of university-level rigor.
This proposed presentation will use a variety of evidence, including student work and course evaluations, to demonstrate how educators might more respectfully and critically engage this necessary foundation for learning, and encourage their students to do likewise (Freire, 2000). Pulling from the perspectives of thinkers such as John Dewey, Donald Schon, and Paulo Freire, this provocation will offer educators patterns of engagement that allow students to appreciate the value of their pre-college lives, without resorting to pandering or thoughtless engagements. The offered patterns will demonstrate strategies and offer exercises which encourage students to more thoughtfully and critically engage their embodied experiences and to begin proposing new, more useful, patterns by which their pre-university knowledge might be engaged, letting students develop meaning from the memes and reason from remixes. This session will engage these topics through an active learning environment, allowing the frameworks used to this end, and the outcomes achieved through them, to become concrete and their meaning apparent. It will use project-based learning to showcase specific tactics that enable students to both embrace and challenge their pre-university experiences, and create “tools for reflective examination” (Dewey, 1910). After all, to quote John Dewey: “Ideas are not then genuine ideas unless they are tools in a reflective examination which tends to solve a problem” (Ibid, 109).
To transition from the former to the latter requires faculty to engage the entering student’s experience and recognize their students as fully humanized with agency over their learning (Friere, 2000). According to scholars such as John Dewey and Donald Schon, this can be accomplished by utilizing the tools of the students’ pre-college experience, leveraging social media, memes, streaming, AI-based technologies and other shared experiential markers. After all, per Friere, “[o]ne cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people'' (Ibid, 95). By providing a framework whereby students might critically engage this collective experience, the faculty offers students a chance to leverage this background to facilitate more critical engagements of it. Properly articulated, these engagements leverage the students’ curiosity to more rigorously contextualize, and carefully utilize, their pre-college experience. These engagements foster a community of practice that the students utilize as a support system, affording them greater resilience from the shocks of university-level rigor.
This proposed presentation will use a variety of evidence, including student work and course evaluations, to demonstrate how educators might more respectfully and critically engage this necessary foundation for learning, and encourage their students to do likewise (Freire, 2000). Pulling from the perspectives of thinkers such as John Dewey, Donald Schon, and Paulo Freire, this provocation will offer educators patterns of engagement that allow students to appreciate the value of their pre-college lives, without resorting to pandering or thoughtless engagements. The offered patterns will demonstrate strategies and offer exercises which encourage students to more thoughtfully and critically engage their embodied experiences and to begin proposing new, more useful, patterns by which their pre-university knowledge might be engaged, letting students develop meaning from the memes and reason from remixes. This session will engage these topics through an active learning environment, allowing the frameworks used to this end, and the outcomes achieved through them, to become concrete and their meaning apparent. It will use project-based learning to showcase specific tactics that enable students to both embrace and challenge their pre-university experiences, and create “tools for reflective examination” (Dewey, 1910). After all, to quote John Dewey: “Ideas are not then genuine ideas unless they are tools in a reflective examination which tends to solve a problem” (Ibid, 109).