Ebook: Making Sense of Virtual Risks

We know the technology works, we have proven it over and over again, and we just want to get on with using it—Don Johnson, the Pentagon, in Prensky (2001, p. 295)

When we think of the Netherlands with its levees (or dikes) and water, we immediately think of a tale by Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge from her novel Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates from 1865. What we think of in particular is when “Hans Brinker” becomes the Hero of Haarlem by putting his finger in the levee to prevent a flood. This legend goes like this:

The excerpt from Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge's novel Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates from 1865 is based on the old English version as analyzed by the Dutch folktale researcher Theo Meder and revised by me to suit its purposes here. stopped! Ah! he thought, with a chuckle of boyish delight, the angry waters must stay back now! Haarlem shall not be drowned while I am here!

Many years ago, there lived in Haarlem, one of the principal cities of the Netherlands, a sunny-haired boy of gentle disposition. His father was a sluicer, that is, a man whose business it was to open and close the sluices, or large oaken gates, that are placed at regular distances across the entrances of the canals, to regulate the amount of water that shall flow into them.

The sluicer raises the gates more or less according to the quantity of water required, and closes them carefully at night, to avoid all possible danger of an oversupply running into the canal, or the water would soon overflow it and inundate the surrounding country. As a great portion of the Netherlands is lower than the level of the sea, the waters are kept from flooding the land only by means of strong levees, or barriers, and by means of these sluices, which are often strained to the utmost by the pressure of the rising tides. Even the little children in the Netherlands know that constant watchfulness is required to keep the rivers and ocean from flooding the country, and that a moment's neglect of the sluicer's duty may bring ruin and death to all.

One lovely autumn afternoon, when the boy was about eight years old, he noticed how the autumn rains had swollen the waters. He thought of his father's brave old gates and felt glad of their strength, for, thought he, “If they gave way, these pretty fields would all be covered with the angry waters—Father always calls them the angry waters. I suppose he thinks they are mad at him for keeping them out so long.”

While thinking about this, the boy was suddenly startled by the sound of trickling water. Whence did it come? He looked up and saw a small hole in the levee through which a tiny stream was flowing. Any child in the Netherlands will shudder at the thought of a leak in the levee! The boy understood the danger at a glance. That little hole, if the water were allowed to trickle through, would soon be a large one, and a terrible inundation would be the result.

Quick as a flash, he saw his duty. The boy clambered up the heights until he reached the hole. His chubby little finger was thrust in, almost before he knew it. The flowing was

Although it is a nice little story, it is wrong. Putting a finger in a hole is more likely to cause a flooding than prevent one. I do not want to get too (geo-)technical, but such an action increases the pressure onto the levee which will ultimately undermine it. It would be better to manage the flow of water instead of stopping the “angry waters” right away.

This book is about investigating how we can ensure that practitioners recognize risks, like Hans Brinker did when he heard “the sound of trickling water,” and know what to do when they encounter them. If Hans would have been properly trained, he would know not to put his finger in the levee. He would have made sense of the situation differently.

Many ways exist to achieve proper training and this book is geared toward exploring one potentially powerful one: the use of digital games. Like the tale of Hans Brinker, the value of game-based training is almost legendary. Its application has risen dramatically in the past decades and has been embraced gracefully with little to no foundations for why it works. When it comes to games, it seems as if people are putting their fingers in holes, because “that is how the story goes.” Some people, like Don Johnson, believe such stories so zealously they do not even want to look into the foundations. They “just want to get on with using it.”

The truth is that we are just getting an idea about the value of game-based training. Whereas this book concerns a small step in the larger scheme of things, it provides invaluable insights to anybody interested in using and evaluating games to train practitioners. These insights go beyond stories, fairy tales, and legends. They are based on a rigorous attempt to get to the bottom of it.

This attempt concerns a “small step” because the insights are derived from a single game: the game Levee Patroller, used to train practitioners in making sense of flood risks, such as the one encountered by Hans Brinker, by letting them make sense of virtual risks first. Since its initial release in 2006 this game has received widespread attention in the Netherlands and beyond, and users have responded positively to it. We could have decided to “get on with using it,” but we wanted to get to know its actual value and see what this means for the field in general.

Delft, the Netherlands, August 2012

Casper Harteveld

Notes

1. This book is based on and continues from my book called Triadic Game Design. This book describes the design of Levee Patroller in detail and gives an overview of the field of serious gaming. Serious gaming refers to the use of game technology for serious purposes, such as training and education.

2. Similar to the previous book, this one is divided into levels instead of chapters too. Playfulness is not the sole domain of games. I even added progress bars to keep you engaged.

3. Because I wanted to find a balance between rigor and readability in writing this book, you can find gray boxes like this throughout the book. These boxes give an in-depth explanation about what is described in the main text.

4. I tried to be consistent with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.), but for purposes of readability I deviated from it occasionally. For example, percentages are displayed in whole numbers (and because of this they may not total 100% due to rounding).

5. The statistical analyses in this book are based on the steps and advice by Field (2005) who has the gift of making statistics into something playful.

6. Most analyses were performed with Microsoft Excel 2010 and PASW Statistics 18. The word analyses in Level 8 were done with Wordsmith Tools 5.0.

7. The names of the participants and organizations in this book are fictional, but it is not based on fiction.

8. Quotes by participants and from reports in Dutch have been freely translated by me.

9. I used several codes throughout the book for referencing my empirical material:

• IPpre/post–# = Interview Patroller–pre- or post-interview–Participant number.

• GQexercise–# = Game Questionnaire–exercise (e.g., ex1 or ex3)–Participant number.

• GDexercise–# = Game Data–exercise (e.g., ex2 or ex4)–Participant number.

• Dgroup–# = Discussion–group number (e.g., A1 or C2)–Random number to distinguish contributors.

10. The research presented here was performed as part of fulfilling the requirements of the Ph.D. degree at Delft University of Technology and was funded by Deltares. Deltares is a research institute for delta technology and is the product owner of Levee Patroller.