Values and Aspirations

While political video games' agenda advances the action of existing/proposed public agenda, educational video games "advance the function of conceptual systems" (264).

Users can learn values that they can use in real life. Take the example of real estate investments as a way of creating wealth as opposed to saving money in the bank--a useful skill. The downside is the materialism that comes with creating wealth as demonstrated in games such as Animal Crossing. I suppose the point here is just as in the real world, so are video games--materialism. The fact is, though, that capital and finances is a much needed literacy; one that adults grapple with and for which they seek out knowledge workers.

The point is that video games can teach values and aspirations that are valued by the society. Users can learn the ideology behind certain tasks. As well, they learn to submit to the logic and value the structure of the workplace. This is how procedural rhetoric in video games opens up spaces of critical contemplation.

I liked his discussion on schooling and education on p262

From a meeting of minds

Randy: Hello Room
alicia: hi gamers
josue: wazuuuup!
Sergio Figueiredo: so... about educational video games
Sergio Figueiredo: what are they?
josue: great segue
Randy: yeah...
Sergio Figueiredo: so what is the difference between video game learning and digital based learning?
josue: procedural rhetorics?
alicia: yes, josue
josue: sans (s)
Sergio Figueiredo: it seems that procedural rhet has to do with all technology
Sergio Figueiredo: does that seem right?
Randy: How abotu Digital Game Based Learning? Didn;t this chapter remind you of Prensky?
josue: agreed
Sergio Figueiredo: who is that?
alicia: it did me, randy
Randy: Mark Prensky - Digital Games based Learning
josue: what is the argument?
Randy: here's a link to his site: http://www.twitchspeed.com/
josue: oooo nice site!
Sergio Figueiredo: Josie just said that"vg" sounds like a disease
alicia: that games have taken on a connotation as being *only* associated with entertainment, but that you can NOT ONLY learn through a game, but possibly learn BETTER than if the same info was delivered in a non-game medium
alicia: that's Prensky's thesis
josue: this reminds me of the same credibility checks that other media have had to endure and finally overcome
Randy: Presnky's big claim - as I remember it - is that learnign shoudl be FUN!!!
Sergio Figueiredo: some dude named Daniel has something like that in 75 called INFOTAINMENT
Sergio Figueiredo: sounds oddly like EDUTAINMENT
Randy: hmmm
alicia: and, in fact, that people have been learning through games (c.f. the games Presky has on his site) all along, so we shouldn't be squeamish about bringing games into the classroom and into business
josue: the difference is that you can really leran thu videogames, while other media present more of a content based learning
anastasi: what about reinforcement theory?
alicia: i think "edutainment" is a word prensky uses, actually
josue: or at least the possibility is there
josue: that's an awful word
Sergio Figueiredo: ok, i get that, but what is Bogost adding to the conversation?
alicia: yes, games present really powerful reinforcers---perhaps at the procedural level
josue: edutainment looks, at first glance, like "adult entertainment!
anastasi: It must have something to do with the intellect, based on Maria Montessori's approach.
Sergio Figueiredo: like the XXX industry
josue: yes
Randy: Wasn;t that Vin Deisel?
josue: and yes
Sergio Figueiredo: haha
josue: and no
Randy: or is that a professional wressler? XXX?
Sergio Figueiredo: that was Ron Mexico
josue: he does add a convincing argument against both behaviorist and constructivist approaches
anastasi: he says Videogames "cultivate higher order thinking skills. Like which ones?
josue: which I think needs to be kept alive
josue: um.....
alicia: like planning
josue: planning?
alicia: that's like, totally, a higher order activity
josue: what do you mean by "planning?"
alicia: like, with the McVideo game
Randy: does that have to do with rules and strategy?
alicia: ok, so what i really meant was strategy
Randy: i see
josue: you are smart Randy
Sergio Figueiredo: which seems like procedures, right?
Randy: exactly...
anastasi: does it have to do with situated meanings, and embodied learning conected to 'particular" worlds and relationships (241)?
Sergio Figueiredo: then, what doe we think of what bogost says at the end: "videogames develop procedural LITERACY"?
Sergio Figueiredo: is isn't a literacy if it is visual... it is a visualicity
josue: i don't like his use of literacy though
Sergio Figueiredo: i agree
Randy: Well I think Bogost is getting at the fact that this "literacy"...
Randy: is developed as a sort of co-creation...
josue: we have had the same arguments about visual literacy, or media literacy
anastasi: there is something about semiotic domains (243) that speaks to embodied experience
Randy: between the designer, game (procedures) and the user's interaction.
josue: but is this a literacy?
Sergio Figueiredo: i don't think so... i think it is a seeing
Sergio Figueiredo: a "see-icity"?
josue: a voyeaurism?
alicia: *ahem* "videogame players develop procedural literacy through interacting with the abstract models of specific real or imagined processes presented in the games they play. Videogames teach BAISSED presepctives about how things work. AND THE WAY THEY TEACH SUCH PERSPECTIVES IS THROUGH PROCEDURAL RHETORICS" (260)
Sergio Figueiredo: yes, i am looking at your body ... in the game... as my fetish
alicia: so, procedural rhetorics make all the difference
anastasi: I think it is literacy in as far as the learned experiences go, don't you?
Randy: good question, much like the question as to whether "procedural rhetorics" is acutally a new rhetoric?
alicia: New Rhetoric
Randy: NeuvoRhetorica
Sergio Figueiredo: a New Rhetoric, like a New Criticism?
Randy: NeoRhetoricus
josue: maybe not new, but perhapsrehabilitated
alicia: as amanda said, "i think anything with 'new' before it as an adjactive is inherently NOT new"
Sergio Figueiredo: What about a Player Response theory, rather than a Reader Response theory?
josue: you'd have to
Randy: now you're onto something!!
josue: have one
Randy: Let's get Katz on the Guitar!
josue: Bogost does discuss this somewhat in regards to the Playmobil toys
Sergio Figueiredo: so this seems like a game, interwining conversations, and trying to keep up with them.... the procedure is all over the place and we are still learning and developing new though
alicia: dudes -- can games be "read" like texts??
Sergio Figueiredo: this doesn't fit in to his Procedural Rhetoric
Randy: Can we consider the "game" or "toy" a text? What happens with Playmobil in this way
josue: that you must play by the rules to break the rules
josue: NOOOOOO!!!!!!
alicia: if so, then there could be a Player response theory
Sergio Figueiredo: can we read movies josh?
josue: j/k you can
Sergio Figueiredo: aren't VGs the new movies?
Sergio Figueiredo: YES!!
josue: if you want to be phallologocentrist
Randy: hmmm - so the interaction in games - or with Legos - is a kinfd of writing?
josue: VGs are the new movies, and movies are the new VGs
anastasi: My question is: are we all capable of writing processes, esp in as far as writing computer programs
alicia: the playmobil thing is weird....i didn't think there were rules to playing with those toys
alicia: since they're TOYS and all
alicia: and, you know, toys sans rules
josue: Playmobil has rules, as far as the themes of the particular set - like procedures in VGs
Sergio Figueiredo: is it writing though? It seems that bogost is arguing that it is a creating.... creating a world, a culture and through that culture is where we learn through procedural rhet.
alicia: how does theme = rule?
Randy: BUT... with Playmobil you can"leave" the area of play - unlike the hard rules of procedural rhetoric, right?
alicia: maybe not, randy. paradigms are all around us.
Randy: I mean, you could put your playmobil toys in the toilet and flush...
josue: it doesn't, in any strict sense of the word. but it does encourage a certain way to play and make connections, which of course are then subverted.
Sergio Figueiredo: is the computer, then, a black bod?
Sergio Figueiredo: box*
josue: sexxxy
Randy: ah - so i see - I have left the non-toilet paradigm for the toileet paradigm
Randy: hmmm
josue: are you designing a toilet in 2L or something Randy?
Randy: not me - that seems an ambitious project
Sergio Figueiredo: just make it a portal... to the clemson experiemental island
alicia: so, is procedural rhetoric ultimately a form of brainwashing?
josue: LOL
josue: wow, that's a srong word...
josue: lemmee see
alicia: i know it was
alicia: maybe explain to me how it's NOT
Sergio Figueiredo: i don't think so if the game has some allowances, like GTA 4
anastasi: I get it; procedural literacy is about understanding the logic underpinning the behavior see page 258
josue: no, it is a orm of play, in a very post-structuralist sense of the word play.
Randy: i don;t think i would call it that, but after playing October 12,... nevermind
Sergio Figueiredo: if you can play without being too restricted by the rules, as we saw a few weeks ago, we are allowed to create out own experience... but yes... only within the theme
Randy: good point
alicia: *nods* i see it from the play perspective...however, i would argue that invoking those post-structuralist connotations actually makes my point about brainwashing
josue: eleborate
Randy: She must be stopped
josue: e = a
Sergio Figueiredo: but isn't that part of the goal of "Education" in the traditional sense
Randy: she is questioning our whole system of procedural rhetorical rule
Randy: serg makes sense
anastasi: the last word is on page 260..videogames "teach biased perspectives about how things work through engaging players directly and through criticism
Randy: At least, sergge, from the approach of instrumentality in education
Sergio Figueiredo: yeah
josue: i don't think that the designers intended any such "play" with their toy
alicia: you're assuming people are good
Randy: didn't they, josh, didn;t they?
Sergio Figueiredo: are you being cynical again?
alicia: what kind of play did the designers of WoW intend?
Randy: Wow!
Sergio Figueiredo: is it all for the money? - Method Man's "C.R.E.A.M."
Randy: (no i really meant - wow)
alicia: WoW pushes a capitalist agenda
Sergio Figueiredo: yeah... so does SL
Randy: and depends on a capitalist model?
alicia: the communal aspects are only there to get you to stay and spend more money
Randy: well... this raises some great questions - let.s continue this!
Sergio Figueiredo: yeah.. and in SL, you are expected to actually use real money to buy game money
josue: I think this capitalist agenda is, as Baudrillard would say, a "bloated" ideology; one that tries to say too much...
Sergio Figueiredo: isn't it then, just a simulation of reality
alicia: ok, so i'm being reductive
alicia: but i'm trying to get back to that brainwashing point
Sergio Figueiredo: brainwashing, conditioning to waht we already know - just another re-inforcement
alicia: see, it's working.........
Sergio Figueiredo: just getting there in a round-a-bout way
Sergio Figueiredo: So, in conclusion....
josue: the ideology itself includes these possibilities because it says "too muc"
josue: much
Sergio Figueiredo: we need a Player Response Theory
Sergio Figueiredo: Games can't be taken out of the capitalist structure of society
josue: of course not
alicia: well, in theory, you could construct a game that would push a socialist agenda, make it just as addictive as WoW, and, suddenly, Obama;s plans wouldn't look so bad anymore
alicia: ;]
josue: they recapitulate in a lot of ways,
Sergio Figueiredo: so can we argue for communism using a "Sims" type game
alicia: yeah, seems so
alicia: sorta
josue: not in the same way, no
Sergio Figueiredo: in-game, that is
josue: well, maybe a little commie
Sergio Figueiredo: as in "communal"
Sergio Figueiredo: , just to clear that up
Sergio Figueiredo: language scholars
josue: as in the diminunitive of communist
Sergio Figueiredo: ok... my batter is about to die
Sergio Figueiredo: i am out, but i will be posting this - *battery
josue: is it a phillie pitcher?
Sergio Figueiredo: Hamels goes tonight at 8:22ppm
Sergio Figueiredo: just to the exta emphasis
Sergio Figueiredo: later
josue: good, nothing is settled, but nothing is ever settled, or shouldn't be

Procedural Literacy

Procedural literacy is about learning to become a literate programmer; it's about becoming computationally expressive. However, computer processing is but one form of procedurality. The other part is about active experimentation in terms of mixing and re-mixing, combinations that yield new results. Underlying procedural literacy is the notion that a conceptual effort is called for in all pedagogy. There is therefore need to engender true procedural literacy through creating opportunities in which learners can understand and experiment with reconfigurations .

How can video games be educational?
An article from the BBC titled Video Games Stimulate Learning seems to confirm Bogost's claim. A study in the UK has concluded that simulation and adventure games help develop players strategic thinking and planning skills. These include: SimCity, RollerCoasterTycoon--games that task players to create societies or build theme parks.

Here is a list of top 10 free educational video games coutesy of http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/the-top-10-free-educational-video-games/

1. Revolution
Type: Modification of Neverwinter Nights Gold
Learning Objective: Experience historical incentives for the American Revolution from the grassroots level.
Host URL: http://www.educationarcade.org/revolution (link unavailable)
Comment: Several papers were published on this game, focusing on its interactive means of teaching students about the American Revolution.

2. Re-Mission
Type: Executable
Host URL: http://www.re-mission.net/
Learning Objective: Understand cancer better and develop a positive attitude toward defeating it.
Comment: The game from HopeLab is aimed at teaching young cancer patients about the disease and providing opportunities to enhance understanding in a positive environment.

3. River City
Type: Multi-user Virtual Environment
Host URL: http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/muvees2003/index.html
Learning Objective: Develop an understanding of the scientific method through inquiry and teamwork, as well as an appreciation for history and environmental issues.
Comment: A Harvard product freely available to schools, but only on disc through the mail.

4. Quest Atlantis
Type: Multi-user Virtual Environment
Host URL: http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu
Learning Objective: Help students understand social studies, environmental concerns, current events, and scientific standards.
Comment: Although this Indiana University project offers a guest area where interested parties can explore the Quest Atlantis universe, the NSF-funded project requires teachers contact the team before allowing full access. Several thousand participants have joined QA, and research is ongoing. Sasha Barab spearheaded the project

5. Arden
Type: Modification of Neverwinter Nights Diamond
Host URL: http://swi.indiana.edu/arden/index.shtml (link not available)
Learning Objective: Attain an appreciation of Shakespearean authorship and Elizabethan England.
Comment: Said to be not very exciting to typical gamers (no monsters to slay). However, the notion of exploring Shakespeare’s world should prove interesting to English majors and other aficionados of the Bard’s work.

6. The History Canada Game
Type: Modification of Civilization III
Host URL: http://www.historycanadagame.com/
Learning Objective: Understand social forces surrounding Canadian history since 1534.
Comment: Funded by Canada’s National History Society and The Historica Foundation aims to change that, for Canadians as well as those outside her borders.

7. America’s Army
Type: Executable
Host URL: http://www.americasarmy.com
Learning Objectives: Teamwork, and a greater understanding of US military expectations for recruits.
Comment: Critics decry this free videogame as a recruiting tool for the military. The Army shrugs its collective shoulders and says, “So?”

8. Food Force
Type: Executable
Host URL: http://www.food-force.com/
Learning Objectives: Understand world hunger and efforts to alleviate it.
Comment: Classroom materials and instructions are available on-site. Besides English, the UN-backed Food Force is available in (alphabetical order): Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, and Portuguese.

9. Whyville
Type: Instructional Online Virtual World
Host URL: http://www.whyville.net/smmk/nice
Learning Objectives: Provide a student-centered, hands-on environment for exploring various school subjects.
Comment: This Numedeon-backed product is aimed at elementary and middle school students, in hopes of encouraging “scientific discovery” and “social responsibility.”

10. SimCity
Type: Web-based
Host URL: http://simcity.ea.com/play/simcity_classic.php
Learning Objectives: Understand variable manipulations for urban management while having fun building a simulated city.
Comment: Critics have attacked its oversimplification of urban management, but countless children the world over have learned such truisms as the correlation between higher taxes and a disgruntled populace. Also, if you deplete the fire departments’ budget, disasters will devastate your city! The original SimCity is available online gratis from Electronic Arts, with adverts for the newest version, SimCity 4.

Comics and Games

Finally, I made it to level 10 last night. Phew!
I was so relieved I actually thought I'd reward myself with six hours of sleep. That was not to be, however, but that's a subject for another blog.

Since my last post, I have become quite invested in my character. I learned to protect myself by not venturing out too far and not taking on more than, say, one defiance character, bear, spider,wolves, etc. I learned to lure one away from the crowd before taking him/her on. I learned that I have more chances of beating someone at a lesser level than me. I learned not to get killed because that set me back in terms of finding myself in the spirit world and having to go find my corpse and then get to do what I needed to do.

Also, I figured out, what my son had known all along, which was kill, kill, kill, if you are to get ahead. Without killing, you were pretty much stuck in the same position. You could wander off into the wildest region and "discover" new places and your progress would be very slow indeed.

The Quests
Variations of

Licensing and Product Placement

"Simulations...present biased perspectives on the function of systems and situations in the material world. Procedural rhetoric takes advantage of this tendency to make claims about how things work in the world" (173)

The way procedural rhetoric works in product placement is that it makes claims about how things work. My question then is are positive campaign ads examples of product placement? At any rate, video games have to allow a player "to do something meaningful inside its interpretation" (175). Often, however, games are brand extensions that are based on repackaging. Repackaging in a new media does not create the user experience association both with the theme and the genre because of procedurality rules. The game will often adapt the plot, characters, and the story of a book. It may not, however conform to the tenets of a game and that is a failure as far as games go. But such games all come under the umbrella of Licensing. Licensing takes products from their primary forms to secondary others such as toys, clothing, theme parks, all in an effort to engender players to the product. Some think that licensing joins the cast of ad nuseum, which may estrange players.

Bogost's discussion of games such as Caterpillar Construction Tycoon, American Farmer, and Food Forces indicates that they have something in common. I came to the conclusion that games are socially constructed ways of communicating values such as empathy.

How about product placement?
Take a look at this:



Looks like there ain't no mountain high, no valley low, no river too wide for those who have the savvy to reach niche audiences. While this video shows the Obama campaign ads on virtual billboards alongside the gaming action, Bogost writes about more subtle ways of product placement in movies such as Minority report. Popular shows like American Idol have come under fire for prominent displays of coke products on the judge's table.

In video games as in TV and film, or even reality shows, product placement only follows the norm. Bogost, however argues that a better form of product placement would utilize procedural rhetoric by allowing play and interaction with the product itself so it can do the talking. In addition, "context and code-level integration" aid the process of product placement (what does that mean?) At any rate, product placement seems to be an insidious, even beguiling way of advertising.

The rationale for product placement in videogames is that they add realism, which makes that form of advertising more effective than the illustrative or associative form. Using procedural rhetoric can be more effective than moralism. Watch out, anti-advergames crop up with their own agenda using the same technique for the product. At their core is discontent, disaffection with the product.

In the end, however, both advergames and anti-advergames expose the logic that demonstrate claims about dysfunction of products. It encourages critical consumption so gamers can decide between needs and wants. It's the player who has to evaluate

While on the subject of product placement, how do we account for popularity of products worn by prominent people such as Sarah Palin's eye ware and Michelle Obama's clothing

Persuasive games in advertising

In this chapter, Ian Bogost continues to advance his theory of how video games make arguments and influence players. he manages to exemplify that even in games, advertisers take advantage of that genre that allows for a simulation of the real and imagined. In embedding product placement within games, advertisers invite players to interact with those products that they may not have known before and form judgments about them. And so, in the spirit of Althusser, they are interpolated.

Building on the theme that advertisers colonise media, Bogost bases his claim on Baudrilliard's notion of simulacra, and the signifier(d) to build the case for the strategies employed here. Basically. Ads are signifiers of other ads rather than of the choices and lifestyles of the users. As such advertising relies on the meaning we assign to consumption as exemplified by the blurring lines between needs and wants.

In the BMW game above, this role is neatly blended between aesthetics and functionality to an even higher level of social status. It's thrilling, the user begins to feel, to be behind one of those wheels. The imagery and visual representation in this game, as in others, is used persuasively.

The thing is consumers know they are being aggressively pursued and so they have become cynical. Cynicism means we are not paying attention to their message and so they have to rethink their strategies. The solution is what Bogost calls "permission marketing (150). With the help of technology, permission marketing can permeate our every media source. If you wish toe scape TV, t play video games, you will find it. It's like the omniscient presence from whose presence you cannot flee. But therein lies the procedural rhetoric. Before long you are 'consuming" something you didn't want to. You will be watching the movie Oceans 12 and in it you see features The Oprah Show, or Jay Leno in Juwanna Man, an addition that draws your attention to these real life shows. In this way, persuasive games turn the game over to the consumer by focusing on niche markets, on social cultural contexts of the products, and on product utility.

This is how brand awareness is built, and how consumers invariably become aware of certain products.

Digital Democracy

Building on his understanding of persuasive rhetoric, Bogost's procedural rhetoric, fits the bill for a system of delivery, if you will, that operates through processes, of necessity afforded by computers. At the core of procedural rhetoric is persuasion, just like in the rhetoric of old. However, procedural rhetoric is "devoted to representing, communicating, or persuading the player toward a particular biased point of view" (135). The core difference lies in the ability, by procedural rhetoric, to be "open to reconsideration" (143) through other procedures. Thus digital democracy fits in well with procedural rhetoric.

First, digital democracy has several artifacts:
1. Procedurality
2. participation
3. Spatilaity
4. Encyclopedic scope (124)
Digital democracy is played out in the form of social software resulting into social networks such as myspace

This is how:

Digitization allows for interrelations--interaction; so where a game has been designed to fit this genre, it afford gamers the opportunity to interact with the content at a cognitive level. In Take back Illinois, for example, players immersed in the process of debating/negotiating public policy can see how complex policy making is. If at the end of the game they are persuaded to take a position they were initially opposed to, they would have been interpolated.

However, while the goal of taking back Illinois seems to have been to get people involved in shaping public policy, I was taken aback by the process that prevents would-be-planners, form, say, affording the same school standards across the board.

Interesting issues
JFK Reloaded: does it teach strategic warfare? trench warfare? He seems to suggest that this deal was too sophisticated for a person like Harvey Lee Oswald to pull off. However he does say that the game procedure is constrained by the goal of the designer.

The reference to the Howard Dean campaign and how it failed in as procedure rhetoric because it was abstract in its communications strategy (135).

I wonder what Bogost would think of the Obama Campaign on procedurality.

Game Design

The term, Ludology, was coined by Espen Aardseth, who advocates the emergence of a new field of study, specifically focused on the study of games and game play, rather than framed through the concerns of pre-existing disciplines or other media.

Costikyan: I have no words so I must design....more

A historical artifact that takes us to minds of game designers. Costikyan makes a call to game designers and to the game industry for a critical language.Defines a game as "a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal." He then provides game designer with tools to analyze games. Points to the narrative aspect of games, while emphasizing that an interactive narrative is not a game just for being interactive

Ways to strengthen games

Variety of Encounters
–Random elements are never wholly random, they are within a range of possibilities
–Randomness can be useful.. It is one way to provide variety
–Players like to encounter the unexpected
–With inadequate variety, it gets boring quickly
Positive Identification
–Character identification is a common theme in fiction and games
–Lends emotional power to a story
–In a sports game the identifying position is YOU,
Making the game more important to YOU
Role Playing – provides position identification, the feeling that the world is alive and colorful
Socializing – When designing think about social issues and how the game encourages or discourages socialization.
–How can you encourage better socializing
Narrative tension- The story should become more gripping as it proceeds until climatic resolution.

Narratives:
metanarratives


narratives are not just linear and crafted; Jenkins broadens understanding of narrative into a metanarrative
Jenkins: Game design as narrative architecture
Explores the relationship between games and story
Read: The image of the city
Kevin Lynch argues that the structure of a city exists not only in physical reality but also in the minds of its inhabitants. Individuals hold a unique image of his or her city, a visual representation that guides through daily life and maps out meaning. He breaks down interconnected design elements into five categories: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.
Paths are the transportation routes of the city and are the most common points from which the city is experienced. They can be made distinct and memorable through variation in design and natural setting. To avoid confusion, there ought to be an obvious hierarchy of streets, indicating which carry a higher volume. Each street need not be absolutely straight, but it ought to travel in one general direction and have a directional gradient to communicate where on the line the traveler is. Paths should have well-defined origins and destinations as well as landmarks along the way.

Edges provide a spatially distinct constitution to elements of the city. The more visually obvious they are, like a waterfront or park side, the better. Edges can be strong, but planners must ensure they are are still penetrable enough to allow connections across them.

Districts are relatively large areas that have enough identity to be named. Each district should be set apart from others through thematic, visual clues. Districts often become defined in terms of class or special use as well. Some districts are introverted, with sharp boundaries and an exclusive association, while others are extroverted, tied more closely to the whole pattern of the city.

Nodes are precise locations that require extra attention from the observer, usually junctions along a network of paths or transit stations. They should be limited to a reasonable amount and made distinct through edges and landmarks. A landmark is anything that stands out that can help an observer orient himself. It could be lavish and visually appealing, or it could simply be a foreground that contrasts sharply with the background.