Stine Ejsing‐Duun, Thorkild Hanghøj and Helle Skovbjerg Karoff impossible to overcome the technical hurdle of registering her cooperative, she explained how “very sorry” she felt about having created “such a mess”. At that point in the game, the transactions of the international cooperative had resulted in a severe financial imbalance, which caused a sense of growing frustration for both the farmer and her co‐players. Moreover, the game facilitator found himself in an impossible position, where he tried to skirt the technical hurdle of the game system and legitimise the illegal cooperative. Facing imminent chaos, Maria and the game facilitator were so‐to‐speak saved by the sudden death of Maria’s character, which allowed the game session to return to a more balanced progression. The transgression of rules surrounding the failed cooperative and the facilitator’s subsequent dilemmas are by no means a standalone example from the Tough Road game sessions. A week after the fourth game session, one of the participating social studies classes evaluated the game. Several students, especially those who valued fair competition, were upset that “it was far too easy to cheat in the game”, for example by transferring incorrect amounts of money or by gaining insider knowledge from other characters while smoking together outside the school premises. One student mentioned how “it gets back to you, if you cheat too much”. Maria, who had organised the international cooperative, praised the game, as did other students, for creating a “realistic” experience, which allowed her to “incorporate all those concepts and different things that I’ve learned in social studies in a different way”. The ambiguity surrounding the flexible rules illustrates an important premise about the facilitation of the Tough Road pervasive game. Namely, that no one – not even the game facilitator or the technical game facilitator – had a full overview of the unexpected events that emerged during the game sessions. One of the teachers who acted as co‐facilitator for the third game session even described the game as a monster since no one had a clear idea of where the game would end. This teacher valued the chaotic and unpredictable aspects of the game positively as it forced students into unknown territory. By contrast, another teacher emphasised how the overwhelming amount of information needed for playing the game, especially the banker roles and the financial dealers, made it too difficult for weaker students to grasp the complexity of game.
6. Discussion By using Boden’s categories, the analysis of the game episode suggests how the players dealt with ambiguity. They creatively combined their existing knowledge to be used “without” the pervasive game system (e.g. what they have been taught in class about global trade and what it meant to be a coffee farmer from Java etc.). The players imaginatively explored the conceptual game space through their actions by learning what was within the frame of the game, for instance, whether it was meaningful or acceptable for farmers to sell their coffee directly to exporters. Players even resourcefully transformed the play space by reinventing parts of the system as was the case with Maria’s failed cooperative. When players meet a complex game system such as Tough Road, which works as a conceptual space but has limits that remain open to interpretation, they need to work creatively as they interact with the rules. We argue that this demands and develops creative competencies. As the topic of the game requires that players understand the dynamics of global coffee trade, they must interact creatively with these dynamics and learn about them from within the game system. In this way, Tough Road allows players to learn about trade, cooperation and (eschewed) power. In order to fulfil the goals of the game, the facilitator must allow players to experiment with the contingent dynamics of the topic of the game and understand how these premises create a conceptual space. Consequently, players learn about the premises and conceptual space by exploring the rules and the frames of the game. The failed cooperative example shows how the game facilitator continually tried to legitimise new and relevant possibilities within the game, even though it entailed transforming the game rules. The important point here is that the transformation of the game rules was permitted as long as they adhered to the overall learning objectives. Thus, the Tough Road game sessions studied provide numerous examples of banal cheating such as when exporters tried to buy coffee directly from the farmers even though this was not allowed until the farmers had formed cooperatives. Upon discovering this, one of the game facilitators punished the exporters by ignoring their further requests for help with the game. The game facilitator also insisted on the rule that no trader or farmer should know what was actually happening on the stock market in the game – because this is also the case in the real world as well. By insisting on these rules, he helped sustain the conceptual space of the trade dynamics.
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