Transformative power of open-ended video games: What does it really take to make them transformative?

 

Squire, K. (2008), “Open-Ended Video Games: A Model for Developing Learning for the interactive Age”. In Salen, K. The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. The John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 167-198.

Summary:

Through a series of ethnographic studies and a game-based intervention in an afterschool program, Squire reflects on the use of, and the communities created around, two commercial games in the “open-ended simulation or sandbox” genre: Grand Auto Theft: San Andreas (GAT:SA) and Civilization III. With questions like: How do open-ended games work? What are their main characteristics? and What drives the communities of players created around them?, his ultimate goal is to outline, from a “design for learning” standpoint, a theory of game-based learning environments. His study reveals these environments as “designed experiences” evolving in tight connection with interpretive communities of practice built around them. As open worlds with no single but multiple solution paths, for players sandbox games are constituted as “possibility spaces” in which they can live, discover, experiment, and develop new expertise and identities sometimes used beyond the game world. When applied to academic content, as in Civilization III, sandbox games are imbued with the transformative power of turning players into designers or creators of knowledge.

Games’ different pathways to learning are the variable which organizes Squire’s categorization of game genres. From this point of view, his open-ended or sandbox games—elsewhere also referred to as ‘strategy games’— display three crucial features which constitute them in “possibility spaces” for experimenting in the world and learning: they represent entire ideological worlds and not mere stories; development of knowledge occurs through performance in those worlds; the meaning of those performances is negotiated by players through participation in interpretive communities. Open-ended games thus introduce players into complex system of ideas, interpretation and negotiation of meaning, and thus individual and collective practices.

Squire’s first set off evidence for such view comes from interviews with three different groups of young poor black and white players of GTA: SA (a game about crime-prone car dealing in US multiracial inner-city settings) whose diverse interpretation and uses of the game reveal multiple context-dependent modes of playing based on players’ diverse interests and identities. These players’ accounts also reveal them as socially critical individuals aware of how the socio-cultural representations in the game world relate to the ‘real’ one they live in. When probed on their reactions about the social and cultural “controversies surrounding the game” (174), players thus report a certain satisfaction with the game world’s ‘realistic’ mapping of their own world of racial, ethnic, and economic segregation. They recognize the use of racial stereotypes as driving the game play and competition, and also identify discrepancies between the real and the game world—for example, as to black people’s economic mobility— thereby revealing a fair understanding of the structural causes of racism. Players are thus seen as active and critical agents in the game’s ‘possibility space’, carving different gaming cultures based on their own developing interests, identities and experiences and asserting themselves as “sophisticated media consumers” (176) “playing [beyond the game] race, gender, and class” (174) with “a fairly serious critique of the current socioeconomic order in the US” and the opportunity through the game “for talking about very real social issues.”(177)

A second set of ethnographic work explores the use of open-ended games in academic domains. It focuses on a school setting experience with Civilization III and on the nature of learning in one of the game’s on-line learning communities. Beyond representing a renewed, less abstract and more patterned, geographical and materialist view of History (much closer to students’ understanding and realities), Civilization III is viewed as confirming the concept of games as ‘possibility spaces’ offering multiple’s paths of engagement and practices with it. Common to all the modes of playing is, however, the highly social nature of the game experience and the influence of local contexts on it. An emerging awareness of the game’s underlying ideological framework or logic (with its renewed perspective on history as a system of rules and a management problem) is also evident in most players. Players’ slow internalization of the game’s ideological framework has two important consequences for learning. On the one hand, as the game “becomes a model with which to think” (183) it acquires a cognitive value; on the other hand, as it gives players a concrete sense of achievement in school related topics, it becomes a self-esteem booster and “good bridging mechanism”(184) especially for “disengaged” students.

However, the constraints inherent to the models of learning in traditional education (single pace of work for all, restricted time windows of work, and a privilege of breadth of exposure to content over depth of understanding) are seen as challenging a full and productive use of games’ potential for educational purposes. Researchers thus turn to the study of the learning occurring in an online community of Civilization III players and attempt to reproduce its successful patterns in an afterschool and summer camp program with poor 5^th and 6^th graders. Learning there was again a “deeply social experience” (187) bringing together expert and novice players. It was also an instance of reflective practice, with reporting on problems and options made in the game a condition for participation in the learning community. Most importantly, learning here entailed a powerful culture of apprenticeship with highly experienced players “unabashedly playing as experts” (189) yet at the same time parsing the complex rule system for their novice peers through the creation of playing ‘scenarios’ and periodic invitation to “lift the hood” of the game and intervene its very design. This is what revealed the online-community players’ “productive” or “design orientation” toward the game and “open[ed up] new trajectories of experience” (189) for the children in the after-school program allowed them to regain school affiliation and become, beyond information consumers, game designers and knowledge producers, i.e. “from players to creators.” (190)

Comments:

The breadth of Squire’s effort to document player’s experiences with open-ended games and their representations of it in diverse interview settings (individual, focus groups and in a classroom or lab environment) is extremely valuable, as is his attempts to compare experience and use for entertainment as well as educational purposes. His “action research” effort exemplified in the establishment of a pilot program is even more admirable. His overall conclusions as to the agency of players, their relative ability to see the ideological features of the world presented to them in the game, the relevance of the social dimension of gaming, and the general opportunities for identity exploration and learning seem highly plausible and relevant for innovative educational endeavors. Further studies, however may look more closely at how these phenomena are played out differently in the diverse contexts (non-instructional vs. instructional, for example) covered in this study. Squire focused on how GTA and Civilization playing modes and contexts confirmed his “possibility spaces” hypothesis and consequently devoted little attention to differences between them. A couple things that called my attention were the crucial role of “adult experts” (as players as well as pedagogues or facilitators of learning!) in the afterschool experience. How does the absence of this trained facilitator impact the “transformative” power of gaming in the GTA context? I also wondered how much of the GTA players’ critical views of the ideological representations in the game world were triggered by the questions of the researchers and how these views might play themselves out in more “natural” interactions within the communities of practice surrounding the game. Gathering information along these lines would of course require different research methodologies and design. Finally, I read the “geographical and materialistic” view of History promoted by the Civilization game less optimistically than Squire. How does it account for the role of ideas in historical change and development?  Equating the end of teleologies (or ‘grand narratives’) to the embracement of a purely materialist and resource management view of History might soon lead us to some version of environmental determinism which dominated all of XIX Century Geography and have long been proven unfruitful. Like tool and learner, natural resources and people (‘s ideas and communities) also mutually influence each other. A social view of history (one of people’s everyday lives) might be a good complement to the much celebrated resource management approach. One of the main cognitive effects of these ‘strategy’ games being, according to Squire, to give learners/players experiential learning of the ideological framework behind the game, I guess my question is how to use game-based learning designs to convey more subtle and complex ideological logics and frameworks.