Game Narratives and Critical Thinking

 

Knowledge is not limited to the acquisition of facts, but is also an exercise of critical thinking and experience. I believe that in the world of teaching and education, we understand that our students must absorb the information we teach them, but we must also encourage them to question. When we assign a book above the elementary school level, we assign essays and projects that encourage students to not just read a book, but to also propose discussion regarding the nature of the book: What themes prevail in the book? What were the messages left in the book? Who were the characters of the book truly representing?

When we ask our students these questions, we ask them to create their own perspectives and narratives defining what they read from the book. Despite all of the students having read the exact same book, their own personal narratives that they develop will never have the same content (well, short of cheating, of course).

I integrate video gaming as a valuable source of literacy because video games are inherently problem-solving exercises. I feel that a large deliberation regarding whether or not video games can also double as literacy exercises is truly dependent on the content of the choice of video game. If a video game is developed to be focused on problem-solving puzzles without much thought about developing a story, then I concede that the video game is not a useful academic tool. When a video game is developed to be focused more on developed literary themes rather than the problem-solving exercises, then I believe that we can consider the resource a useful academic tool.

Literary Themes in a Video Game Example: Gabriel Knight

Less than a month ago, I finished playing a video game named Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, a point-and-click adventure game published by Sierra Games in 1993. The game was directed and written by Jane Jensen, a writer for Sierra Entertainment. Rather than having the focus of problem-solving exercises in the game, Jensen says in an article:

“I work on the plotline first,” she says of her methodology. “I find the puzzles fall very naturally into the story structure and I am somewhat cognizant of where and how the puzzles will fit when I write the story, but at that point the story is my focus. After I have the story down, I break it down into a game design where you add in structure for locations, puzzles, inventory items, dialogue topics, etc.” [1]

The focus of the game is less about solving puzzles than it is to immerse the player into the story as a protagonist. The tone of the game is dark and might be best described as a graphic detective novel focused on a voodoo murder mystery in the medium of a video game. Below are the first three minutes of the game’s introduction, including all of the scenes and dialogue included until the player can control the character of Gabriel:

http://youtu.be/UD4YF1qbdKE

When I first played the beginning of the game, there were a lot of literary elements that I noticed. The first thing I saw in the opening cinematic is the old man shedding a tear while he watches the woman in the flames. Does he know this woman? Is that him hanged at the tree? These are questions that are left a mystery as the camera shifts past a sign that says Bourbon Street, establishing that the setting here is in New Orleans. The camera finally pushes in on Gabriel waking up from a nightmare; the implication here is that the opening of the cinematic was a nightmare of his.

I notice a lot about Gabriel’s character during the cutscene that plays after the cinematic. Gabriel is a shiftless bachelor who sleeps in his own bookshop. He is an aspiring novelist, though Grace (the woman speaking to Gabriel) does not seem to think much of his ability to write. Furthermore, Gabriel is a womanizer and a pervert; how will be grow as a character to overcome those shortcomings of his character? Otherwise, I do know from the introduction that he is determined to find the answers to his nightmares even if he has to make violations to get them. I also notice that the soundtrack and lighting in the bookshop are warm and inviting compared to the rest of the introduction; the dichotomy tells me from the soundtrack and lightning that the bookshop is a safe haven compared to what lies outside of it. As the game progresses, that warmth in the bookshop gradually goes away after certain events in the future.

After that cutscene ends, you take control of Gabriel, and can opt to read books from the bookshop, read the paper, ask Grace about herself and her take on matters, or leave and explore the French Quarter. You are free to learn about Gabriel as you please. I feel that this freedom of researching about the characters, story, and settings are part of the critical thinking process for the player.

The story drives the player to progress and not the problem-solving puzzles. I believe that video games that primarily focus on developing a storyline before weaving problem-solving puzzles in later has a good chance of becoming an academic video game source.

Learning Simulations

As James Paul Gee and Michael H. Levine discuss in “Welcome to Our Virtual Worlds,” teachers “regularly witness a disconnect between the real world outside their classrooms and the contrived, dated world that exists within” when engaging students [2]. As the progression of classroom technology stagnates and social media technology advances, students will continue to feel as if the classroom is a foreign learning tool. Students can quickly find forums, blogs or even scientific journals at their whim on subjects that interest them. Students can, on their own time, being “Pro-ams”-professional amateurs- who can create their own non-academic projects at their leisure using technology outside of the classroom. In the case of this article, Gee and Levine discuss building simulators such as SimCity and Civilization.

Simulation games like SimCity and Civilization are remarkable for their ability to allow a player to create choices to solve problems. Players who are interested in the games will learn about processes that they may not learn in school (in the article, the example of “zone, commercial, industrial, tax rate, power grid, and transportation” are SimCity terms that would help students understand the way city management works). The article doesn’t mention such features from Civilization, but in the case of those games, students also learn about how technologies develop during time, how foreign nations may treat your nation, and how to deal with diplomacy and war.

In the empire-building simulation game Civilization V, players begin a game with a randomized map and must use their knowledge and experiences to create their own narratives for how to develop the best empire based on their surroundings. Strategies of how to build your empire is largely based on economics: What is the most cost-effective path to succeed in my game? The options are nearly limitless. In the following link here, you will see that a host has created a Civilization V game, has developed its rules and players are free to discuss their plans to how they will play the game. In this game as the Roman Empire, the unit with the flag is a settler; it can be expended to create a city, your first city being your capital city. The unit that looks like it has a hammer over its head is a warrior, which is a unit that can help to explore lands, attack enemy units and cities, or defend your own units and cities. In the below comments, players discuss their plans that will ultimately change the nature of the way the empire works. 

In the very first turn of the game, the player can choose to settle the capital city where it is, or move it. The location has a lot of hills and fresh water to support production and a good economy, but does not have a lot of farmable land, and a capital city without food to grow it is generally a very weak capital. If the settler is moved away to the east, there may be more land that's farmable, but the capital would be unable to build a watermill which would help alleviate the problem with the lack of food. However, researching the technology to build a watermill would detract from being able to build world wonders such as Stonehenge, which would be a very necessary world wonder to build for this particular game. However, if the player decides to research toward Stonehenge, the player is not researching the technology for finding iron and building Roman Legions and Ballistas, which are very powerful for declaring war on other civilizations in the early BCE years. In that manner, players who play simulation games like this must learn what strategy is most cost-effective for playing the game comfortably. All of the strategy discussed by looking at the screenshot in the above link is amounted by only two things on the first turn: Where will the settler create the capital city and where will be warrior go? In the above link, you notice players already discussing differentiating plans for their empire despite that they all are looking at the same map. Exercise in visual rhetoric plays into these differentiating strategies by having different people look at the same map and come to different conclusions. As a result, the narrative of their game changes drastically from any other player's game.

Despite the fact that I do believe that students would learn a lot about infrastructure from SimCity and history from Civilization, I think that a good caveat that is lacking in the article is that a simulation game is created based on whatever the game developers feel is a good balance. Learning the terms and basic concepts from a simulation game is good for students, but I would encourage students to remember that those simulations do not necessarily display the best understanding of the real world's systems.

Massively Multiplayer Online Play

In Jonathan Alexander’s article “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation,” Alexander follows on my belief that video games offer several forms of literacy (at least 36, according to Paul Gee) and relates to World of Warcraft to develop his point (39) [3].

His most concise and interesting feature from the article is a table that lists five different types of literacies (Literary reflectivity, trans-literacies, collaborative writing, multicultural literacy, and critical literacy) found in World of Warcraft and then, later in the article, discusses how those five literacies can be used as tools for teachers to teach students using digital technology. Overall, I feel that it is a good article that shows how video games can develop various types of literacy.

Two types of literacies from Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games that I thought about when reading the article that were not mentioned would be political literacy and financial literacy. Financial literacy though the use of trades in any MMO is effective in teaching students basic supply and demand economics.

In the MMO Dark Age of Camelot, the most distinct feature of the game is the focus on a three-way war and its political literacy. King Constantine of Albion (England, essentially) has died and after his death, three eternal warring realms would fight each other over land and game bonuses. One side of the war is Albion (England). Another is Hibernia (essentially Ireland) and the third is Midgard (essentially an amalgamation of Scandinavian nations). With three warring realms, each realm is (theoretically) only 33% of the server’s population. In practice, the three-realm war concept often would provide one realm that was slightly more overpopulated than the other two, and sometimes the two lesser realms would put their differences aside and fight against the larger realm. Informal peace treaties, alliances, backstabbing, and other such politically ploys play out as an interesting part of the game and certainly offers an amateur idea of political literacy for a player.

I do believe that MMOs offer a lot of potential for students to develop literacies that they likely could not develop in a real-life situation. The basic structure is similar to simulation games.

Book versus Video Game

Ultimately, a book is not a video game. A video game is not a substitute for a book on most literary aspects, though I believe that a video game offers more potential literacies than a book can offer. Paul Gee’s blog post, “10 Truths About Books and What They Have to Do With Video Games,” sums up ten points that books and video games can have in common, but he also lists four points that distinguish the two mediums [4].

While I don’t agree wholly of his four distinguished points (most games are not multiplayer), he does sum up what video games do that books do not. Books are not problem-solving exercises. A book can challenge a reader intellectually but nothing in a book prevents a reader from progressing to any part of the book. One notable point he makes is that what video games do and books do not is that problems presented in a video game are solved based on the choices of the player and not entirely by an author.

Concluding Thoughts

I do not intend to have written anything that definitively says that a book or a video game is the better medium. In a vacuum though, I will concede that a book is more likely to offer an intellectual challenge than a video game. The exceptions are frankly dependent on the medium of content. A video game, if driven by content over problem-solving, can not only offer an effective story, but can deliver visuals exactly as the developer intended, and can offer an audio soundtrack as well. Video games can develop many forms of literacies by allowing students to physically manipulate, which simulation games and MMOs support. 

Students can develop their own stories through video games to help develop critical thinking skills and can offer new experiences. It’s not expected for a teacher developing literacy in students to know more about video game literacies over book literacies, but teachers should be encouraged to connect with their students through digital means, and video games certainly offer an option for that objective.

Sources
[1] Wallis, Alistair. "Playing Catch up: Gabriel Knight's Jane Jensen" Gamasutra. 17 May 2007. <http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/104930/Playing_Catch_Up_Gabriel_Knights_Jane_Jensen.php>. 1 April 2012.

[2] Gee, James Paul and Levine, Michael H. "Welcome to our Virtual Worlds." Educational Leadership Volume 66, No. 6. March 2009. <http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el200903_gee.pdf>. 1 April 2012.

[3] Alexander, Jonathan. "Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation." CCC 61:1. September 2009. <http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~tamoriarty/compresearch/alexander/CCC0611Gaming.pdf>. 1 April 2012.

[4] Gee, James Paul. "10 Truths About Books and What They Have to Do With Video Games." "James Paul Gee." 15 May 2011. <http://www.jamespaulgee.com/>. 1 April 2012.