All games can be understood as complex systems of rules. This includes social rules
(such as who gets to go first and the rules governing the behaviour of the player) and
system rules. Computer games involve the players of a game in negotiating the social
rules and in interacting with a formal system of rules. System rules can be
understood as ‘a formal expression of object relationships in a programming system,
that is a programmed rule that specifies the formal condition and action for the
behaviour of game elements’ (Adamson et al., 2002:1). I show that through the
process of making a game the students became increasingly aware of the system rules
of Toontalk and are forced to consider the relation between condition and action. This
process enables the students to learn about rules and how they can be modified and
expressed.
As I will show through the analysis offered in this chapter, the process of
constructing a game in Toontalk requires the students to engage in problem solving
and understanding the mathematical relationships that under pin everyday phenomena
such as movement. The students use logical thinking, reasoning and generalising
skills, and predictive abilities in order to solve design problems. These are core skills
that are emphasised in both the National Curriculum and the Numeracy Strategy.
Part 1: A Multimodal Analysis of Toontalk
Toontalk uses an animated programming paradigm in which animations are the
source code of the language. Programming in ToonTalk (which is a Turing
equivalent ‘language’) is done by example (see Cypher, 1993, Lieberman, 2001),
with animated robots being trained to work on an example input. Set in an animated
world consisting of a city with streets and houses, these resources consist of ready-
made games, picture and sound media, and pieces of combinable ready-made
Toontalk programming code (termed ‘behaviours’ in the Toontalk application). An
‘actor’ can be given functionality through the addition of a ‘Behaviour’. Interacting
pictures are then combined to form a game. I show that he games, media and
Behaviours in Toontalk facilitate multiple entry points for young children into the
147