Grand Theft Morals, or ultimate role model? (part I)

I’m fascinated and challenged by Grand Theft Auto (GTA) IV, the new, extremely violent, extremely popular video game. I need to tell you why in two parts. The first part describes the exciting potential of digital games for learning, listing a number of effective teaching qualities embedded in good games. Part two considers these qualities in the context of GTA IV.

What we have is good learning, with bad content. What do we — as educators, parents, researchers — do with this situation? What can we learn from GTA IV? How can we guide youngsters — who definitely play the game even though it’s not for under-18s — to effectively eat the meat and spit out the bones?

I’m currently researching the potential of digital games for learning. Digital games include platform games (e.g. Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation); arcade games; computer games; and handheld and mobile games (e.g. Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable). In the late 1970s and 1980s there was much interest in the role that digital games could play in supporting learning. That interest waned until fairly recently, thanks to two fundamental shifts since then: games are far more complex and compelling (thanks to technological advances), and they are far more pervasive. Gaming has become a cultural phenomenon.

While research into the educational value of games is somewhat limited, the number and maturity of research projects is increasing. The best research neither sets out to dismiss gaming as a waste of time, nor to look to it as the saviour of broken education systems. In other words, it never claims that games are a panacea, but increasingly uncovers insights that lead us closer to an understanding of what happens when kids, or adults, get totally inside a game.

What legitimate games researchers are beginning to realise is that we probably need to apply new lenses when examining this space, ask different questions, change our perspectives. Game academic, Kurt Squire, points out that the traditional educational technology paradigm “involves looking for blanket statements about whether games ‘work,’ or even isolating variables (like removing teachers from the equation and seeing what happens) in an effort to come up with variables that can be universally applied.” To apply such a narrow frame of reference is to overlook some of the opportunities that games offer for learning — qualities that put them in a different category to educational technology.

Below are a few of those qualities, identified either in the emerging research, or by the theorising of game designers, literacy specialists, educators and others that are drawn into this multidisciplinary field.

Firstly, games are a form of play. Play is one of our earliest forms of learning; through it we begin to relate to our bodies, other people and to our surroundings. While we watch movies and read books, both are passive activities save for our imaginations joining up the storyline or painting mental pictures, we play games. Play is active.

When playing games we can take risks without suffering real world consequences. A game thus facilitates an approach of trial and error, trying out different strategies to succeed in the game. The approach is simply: “game over, start again.” As all great scientists, entrepreneurs and explorers have demonstrated, risk taking is a desirable quality.

“Success,” in gaming terms, often equates to solving a problem. The designer of Sim City and The Sims, Will Wright, argues that “in some sense, a game is nothing but a set of problems.” Henry Jenkins, who interviewed Will Wright, explains that in this context the playing of a game is akin to the tried–and–tested scientific process of problem identification, hypothesising, testing different approaches and refining models.

When playing digital games, kids will tell you that they are having fun. But this “fun” is not laughter–filled, it represents a form of engagement (which is how some people play games for 10 hours straight.) Usually a game offers a reward tantalising enough that players are willing to invest large amounts of time, energy and emotion into the playing thereof. In other words, the playing is deeply motivated.

The other two qualities of games relate to the theory of situated learning, which at its simplest refers to “learning that takes place in the same context in which it is applied.” At chef school, aspiring cooks could sit in a class and listen to a description of how to make a minestrone soup, or they could get into the kitchen and actually try to make it, situated in the context where it will actually happen.

Jenkins, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and avid gamer, argues that game simulations are a powerful vehicle for situated learning. “Simulations broaden the kinds of experiences users can have with compelling data, giving us a chance to see and do things that would be impossible in the real world.”

According to Professor James Paul Gee, situated learning also invites us to take on the identities of our game characters, especially in the form of role playing. In What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Gee describes how role playing games provide such immersive experiences for players that they begin to strongly identify with their character. This character is usually an existing or aspiring expert in some field — the best racing car driver, city planner or spy. The theory is that over time players take on the expert’s attributes. “This means more than saying ‘I felt like a scientist in that game.’ It means doing some of the things that scientists actually do,” according to Squire.

So, game playing encourages experimentation and risk taking, is a form of problem solving and is highly engaging. Games can simulate situated learning — training “on the job” — where role playing develops a strong connection between the player and the identity he or she is taking on. Ideally this projected identity is an expert that the player (learner) wants to become.

From an education point of view, the potential is very exciting. Gaming offers active experiences with a high degree of interactivity. Think of the potential when learners begin to lead civilizations, run farms, plan and build cities, create and inhabit virtual worlds, conduct scientific experiments or solve murder mysteries. In his book, Gee identifies a total of 36 learning principles that good games have built into them.

Now, what happens when the powerful teaching traits embedded in good games also appear in games with wildly unwholesome content — where you are not role playing a scientist but a killer? And what does that mean for gaming and education? These questions, and more, are tackled in part two.