Since their inception, computer and video games have both
fascinated and caused great fear in the politicians, educators, academics,
and the public at large. In the United States, this fear and fascination
goes back to the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan extolled the virtues
of games to create a generation of highly skilled cold war warriors, while
U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop proclaimed games among the top health
risks facing Americans. To be sure, such extreme cultural reactions to
technological and cultural innovations are hardly new; mid twentieth-century
critics feared that television watchers would become addicted to television,
never leaving their homes, and critics before them feared that film would
pervert viewers.
In educational and social science discourse, the reactions to new technologies,
including digital gaming technologies, have been equally excessive. Some
advocates of digital game-based learning imply that developing educational
games is a moral imperative, as kids of the "videogame generation"
do not respond to traditional instruction (See Katz, 2000; Prensky, 2001).
Other educators, such as Eugene Provenzo (1991; 1992) worry that games
are inculcating children with hyper competitive or warped sexual values.
Looking at the range of values and powers that educators ascribe to games,
games begin to look a bit like a Rorschach test of educators� attitudes
toward modern social, technological, and media change, rather than an
emerging and maturing entertainment medium. Indeed, similar statements
were made about the potential for radio, film, television, and desktop
computers to revolutionize learning, yet the overhead projector continues
as the most pervasive piece of technology in most classrooms (Cuban, 1986).
The recent enthusiasm for educational gaming directs researchers, politicians,
game developers and the public toward some important, overlooked issues.
What are people learning about academic subjects playing games such as
SimCity,
Civilization,
Tropico, or
SimEarth?
Might games be used in formal learning environments? This essay argues
that these are critical questions to game studies, and educational studies,
particularly work in the learning sciences, and offers some important
practical and theoretical traditions that games studies can draw upon
as it matures as a field.
Pawns of the Game: The Current State of Games-Based Social Science Research
In the United States, and increasingly in Europe, games such as
Doom
or
Quake have garnered a disproportionate share of attention in
the press, as they have become pawns in a culture war waged by cultural
conservatives. As many gamers, critics, media scholars, and social researchers
agree, this discussion has been devoid of any serious study of games.
For example, in 2001, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft cited the game
Dope Wars as an example of the "the culture of violence" that may have
contributed to a spate of recent deadly school shootings" (Reuters News,
April 4, 2001). How a simple, text-based game (based on a nearly 20 year
old DOS game) that is downloaded over the Internet, played on Palm Pilots,
and features no graphical imagery is contributing to the increased violence
among teens, given the amount of violence in American culture is questionable.
As this example reveals, much of the rhetoric in this culture work has
much less to do with any real knowledge of games than with fears about
violence in American culture.
It is difficult for many to make sense of this contentious and politicized
cultural debate because to date, there has been very little disciplined
study of gaming. Some social science researchers have compared "violent"
games like Doom to "non-violent" games like Myst or compared the rates
of aggressive and violent behavior between gamers and non-gamers. Unfortunately,
this research suffers from many problematic conceptualizations: violent
acts are removed from the narratives contexts in which they are situated
(Jenkins, 1998); researchers used invalid comparison techniques, studying
games from different genres that differ along multiple variables -- such
as comparing
Myst, a slow-paced puzzle adventure game to
Castle
Wolfenstein, a fast-paced 3D action shooter (Anderson & Dill,
2000). These studies generally lack any real-world evidence linking game-playing
to acts of violence; they ignore broad trends that that show inverse correlations
between game-playing and violent behavior; finally, they make wild logical
leaps in linking very constrained behaviors in laboratories to violent
acts where people really get hurt. Anderson and Dill (2000) found that
players who lost a round of
Wolfenstein 3D "punished" opposing
players with a noise blast that lasted 6.81 seconds, compared to
Myst
players, who blasted opponents for 6.65 seconds - a .16 second difference
(there was no difference between players who won their round of Castle
Wolfenstein and
Myst players). To suggest that a .16-second
increase in duration of a noise blast is qualitatively the same as committing
mass murder is not only an illogical leap, but a disservice to the worthwhile
enterprise of studying what are the root causes of tragic events like
school shootings or youth violence. Fortunately, a handful of social science
researchers such as Jonathon Freedman (2001) and Jeanne Funk (2001) have
begun to call for more rigorous research and are taking a much more disciplined
look at the impact of gaming on people's lives. Hopefully social science
researchers will follow suit; as a generation of game players move into
academic positions, perhaps such poorly defined research studies will
be challenged and a more rigorous body of research will evolve.
What's missing from contemporary debate on gaming and culture is any
naturalistic study of what game-playing experiences are like, how gaming
fits into people's lives, and the kinds of practices people are engaged
in while gaming. Few, if any researchers have studied how and why people
play games, and what gaming environments are like. The few times researchers
have asked these questions, they have found surprising results. In 1985,
Mitchell gave Atari 2600 consoles to twenty families and found that most
families used the game systems as a shared play activity. Instead of leading
to poor school performance, increased family violence, or strained family
interactions, video games were a positive force on family interactions,
"reminiscent of days of Monopoly, checkers, card games, and jigsaw puzzles"
(Mitchell, 1985, p.134). This study suggests that investigators might
benefit by acknowledging the cultural contexts of gaming, and studying
game-playing as a cultural practice. If nothing else, it highlights the
importance of putting aside preconceptions and examining gamers on their
own terms.
Rethinking the role of Educational and Social Science Research in Digital
Gaming
Underlying this unease about video game violence research is a growing
disconnect between anti-gaming rhetoric and people's actual experiences
playing games (See Herz, 1996; Poole, 2000). The first generation of gameplayers
is now in its 30s. Despite (and perhaps because of) the hundreds of hours
I've spent playing war games, I'm pretty much a pacifist. I love Return
to Castle Wolfenstein, yet I'd never own a gun. The successes of
such books as
Joystick Nation and
Trigger Happy suggest
there is an maturing generation of gamers who feels the same way: games
are integral parts of our lives, yet they've largely gone unexamined.
So far, concerns about the effects of "violent" video games have drawn
our attention away from the broader social roles and cultural contexts
of gaming. There is some evidence that this trend could be changing -
in the past six months humanities researchers have turned more attention
to games. Art museums in both the United States and United Kingdom have
developed or are planning substantial game exhibits in 2000-2002 (See
Barbican, 2002). Panels at conferences are almost ready to give up on
the "Are games art?" question and begin asking "What kinds of art are
they?" or exploring how and why they work (Jenkins, in press; Jenkins
& Squire, 2002). Other humanities researchers are examining games
to see what they might teach us about the future of interactive narrative
(Murray, 1997).
Despite this increasing attention as a maturing medium, the pedagogical
potential of games and social contexts of gaming have been woefully unexamined.
Already, entertainment games allow learners to interact with systems in
increasingly complex ways. Digital game players can relive historical
eras (as in
Pirates!), investigate complex systems like the Earth's
chemical & life cycles (
SimEarth), govern island nations (
Tropico),
manage complex industrial empires (
Railroad Tycoon), or, indeed,
run an entire civilization (
Civilization series). Or, they might
travel in time to Ancient Greece (
Caesar I,II, & III), Rome
(
Age of Empires I, and II), North America (
Colonization),
or manage an ant colony, farm, hospital, skyscraper, themepark, zoo, airport,
or fast food chain. Anecdotal evidence from teachers suggests that the
impact of gaming on millions of gamers who grew up playing best-selling
games such
as SimCity, Pirates!, or
Civilization is starting
to be felt.
Still, little is known about what players are learning through playing
SimCity? Is it deepening their appreciation for geography, helping
them develop more robust understandings about their environment, or perhaps
promoting misconceptions about civic planning? How does a game such as
Civilization III work as a cultural simulation? Does it impact
players' conceptions of politics or diplomacy? Is there any way to reappropriate
Civilization for use in history classes? Given the immense influence
of
SimCity and
Civilization in present game design, what
innovations might be sparked by games built around science, engineering,
literature or architecture subjects? How might these innovations have
an impact on the rest of game design?
These questions suggest at least three fruitful contributions from an
educational or social science perspective: (1) Studying the role that
games like
SimCity and
Civilization play in people's lives
and how it mediates their understandings of other phenomena; (2) Examining
how such games can be used to support learning in formal and informal
learning contexts; (3) Creating and examining new modes of gameplay through
games that draw metaphors from other domains. Although there has been
woefully little research in this area, there are several research traditions
in education and social science outside of media effects research tradition
that offer useful models for thinking about gameplay.
Studying the Impact of Gaming
With
SimCity more than a decade old, a generation of youth has
grown up with edutainment. Yet, we know very little about what they are
learning playing these games (if anything). Are sim games, civilization-building
games, or war games having any impact on how students perceive social
studies? Games such as
SimCity depict social bodies as complex
dynamic systems and embody concepts like positive feedback loops that
are central to systems thinking. Are students developing intuitions about
systems as a result of playing these games? Do players think they are
learning anything about history or urban planning through these games?
Are the perceived educational benefits part of the attraction of these
games?
The study of games and learning might begin with qualitative study of
game players and game playing communities. Although there have been a
few survey or experimental studies of game players (See Malone, 1981;
Cordova & Lepper, 1996), there have been few studies characterizing
players interactions and experiences in game playing environments since
Mitchell’s (1985) study of families who were given Nintendo machines.
Mitchell studied how purchasing Nintendo game consoles affected twenty
families, finding that playing Nintendo was an important part of family
play, and brought families closer together, much as a traditional board
game might. More recently, researchers such as Funk and colleagues (1996)
have studied correlations between game players' characteristics and popular
genres, but these broad statistical studies fail to open up the complex
relationships behind game players and their games or acknowledge the social
contexts in which game playing is situated. Even a quick glance at fan
communities around games such as
SimCity,
Dance Dance Revolution,
Railroad Tycoon,
Everquest, or
The Sims, each of which
has dozens of fans websites where players create and trade game objects,
maps, levels, scenarios, and stories points to rich relationships between
fans and these games and complex social structures that mediate the game
playing experience (See Jenkins, 2001; Squire, 2000; Yee, 2000 for descriptions
of these communities).
The closest examples of studying gaming communities may be examinations
of online communities. In the 1990s, Sherry Turkle and Amy Bruckman studied
MOO players, yielding insights into how people negotiate among their many
virtual identities (Bruckman, 1993a; 1993b; 1994; Turkle, 1996). These
MUD and MOO studies were not specifically of game playing communities,
but they have provided both theoretical models and specific insights about
online behavior that have become foundational to the design of online
games and learning environments alike. Drawing more explicitly from anthropological,
educational and cultural psychology traditions (e.g. Cole, 1996), future
study of gaming communities might focus specifically on the shared practices,
language, resources, understandings, roles that emerge through game play.
Among the outcomes of examining gameplay in naturalistic contexts might
be creating guidelines for more usable and playable games, leveraging
and promoting social interactions and relationships in the gameplay, and
insights for creating games that appeal to broader audiences.
Games in Educational Contexts
Most people assume that games like
SimCity are used frequently
in geography or urban planning classes. Indeed, Maxis has published a
set of resources for teachers on its website, touting that, "
SimCity
3000(tm) can be used in the classroom to enhance just about any instructional
unit. It can stand alone as an enrichment computer activity, or it can
be used as a pivotal activity connected to other activities and projects
done before, during, or after using the computer program. Use the lessons
in this guide to integrate
SimCity 3000 into your curriculum,
with minimal preparation, or to create custom lessons to suit your needs."
As Doug Church commented at the 2002 Electronic Entertainment Exposition,
most people who have played SimCity recognize that it can be an excellent
resource for understanding urban planning, most people would also not
want to live in a real city designed by someone who has only played SimCity.
As urban planner Kenneth Kolson points out,
SimCity potentially
teaches the player that mayors are omnipotent and that politics, ethnicity,
and race play no role in urban planning (Kolson, 1996). Using
SimCity
2000 at Boys and Girls clubs Barab, and colleagues (et al. in preparation)
have found that students definitely learn from exploring relationships
between supply and demand and population growth and taxation, but they
might also develop naive concepts of how cities form, grow, and evolve.
For example, one six-year old player noted that people began moving into
his city when there was electricity, because people wanted to have lights
for seeing in the dark. This example illuminates how the process of interpreting
game play, of drawing analogies between symbolic representations in the
game and their real-life analogs is one of active interpretation, and
suggests that students might benefit from systematic explanations or presentations
of information. In similar research in anchored instruction and problem-based
learning environments, John Bransford and colleagues have found that students
perform best when given access to lectures in the context of completing
open-ended complex problem solving tasks (Schwartz & Bransford, 2001).
The challenges behind using games to support learning are far from new,
particularly in social studies education. In 1973, Wentworth and Lewis
summarized the findings from nearly fifty research studies on learning
through gaming: "In the majority of these studies, students did neither
significantly better nor worse than other learning experiences in their
impact on student achievement as evidenced by paper and pencil scores."
In his 1991 review of the research on games and simulations in social
studies, Clegg reached similarly inconclusive findings. Consistent with
contemporary instructional design theory (e.g. Heinich, Molenda, Russell,
& Smoldino, 1996), Clegg argues that the instructional context that
envelopes gaming is a more important predictor of learning that the game
itself. Specifically, how the game is contextualized, the kinds of cooperative
and collaborative learning activities embedded in gameplay, and the quality
and nature of debriefing are all critically important elements of the
gaming experience. This tradition of games and simulations in instructional
technology, chiefly promulgated through the
The Society for the Advancement
of Games and Simulations in Education and Training
and the Sage journal
Simulation and Gaming has resulted
in a rich body of practical knowledge about designing effective games
to support learning; however, there is actually very little agreement
among educational technologists as to the theoretical underpinnings of
why we should use games, how games should be designed to support learning,
or in what instructional situations games make the most sense (Gredler,
1996).
The research on games and simulations in education cautions against overexhuberance
about the potential of digital games to transform education. In using
a game such as SimCity, minimally, there needs to be a close match among
desired learning outcomes, available computer and supporting human resources,
learner characteristics (such as familiarity with games conventions),
"educational" game play, and potential supplementary learning
experiences. Fortunately, one can imagine creating instructional resources
around a game like
SimCity or
Civilization that pushes students
to think about their game-playing more deeply. For example,
Civilization
players might create maps of their worlds and compare them to global maps
from the same time period. Why are they the same? Why are they different?
Students might be required to critique the game and explicitly address
built-in simulation biases. Finally, students might draw timelines, write
histories, or create media based on the history of their civilization.
The possibilities for using a game like
Civilization as a springboard
into studying history are endless, but so far, there are less than three
magazine or journal articles published on the topic and no one has done
empirically-grounded research in the successes and challenges of using
such a game to support learning (See Berson, 1996; Hope, 1996; Lee, 1994;
Prensky, 2001; Teague & Teague, 1995).
Creating Next-Generation Educational Media
Despite these cautions about the potential of games to support learning,
games may be the most fully realized educational technology produced to
date. Tom Malone (1981) showed how games use challenge, fantasy, player
control, and curiosity invoking designs to create intrinsically motivating
environments. More recently, Lloyd Rieber (1996) has argued that digital
games engage players in productive play - learning that occurs through
building microworlds, manipulating simulations, and playing games. Rieber
gives reason for renewed optimism for using games to support learning
in leveraging the increasing power of the computer to immerse the player
in interactive simulated worlds. Whereas historically educational games
have relied heavily on exogenuous game formulas, games where content is
inserted into a generic gaming template, like hangman, a game like SimCity
might be thought of as an endogenuous game design, where the academic
content is seamlessly integrated with gaming mechanics. In an endogenuous
game, players learn the properties of a virtual world through interacting
with its symbology, learning to detect relationships among these symbols,
and inferring the game rules that govern the system.
While edutainment games such as SimCity and Civilization are intriguing
educational materials, the most promising developments in educational
gaming might come through games that are explicitly design to support
learning. One example of such a project is the Games-to-Teach project,
a project led by Randy Hinrichs at Microsoft Research and Henry Jenkins
of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. In 2001-2002, the Games-to-Teach
Project (http://cms.mit.edu/games/education/), presented 10 conceptual
prototypes of next-generation educational games to support learning in
math, science, and engineering at the advanced high school and introductory
undergraduate levels. Among these prototypes is:
The Jungle of the
Optics, a game where players use a set of lenses, telescopes, cameras,
optical tools, and optics concepts to solve optics problems within a role-playing
environment;
Hephaestus, a massively multiplayer resource management
game where players learn physics and engineering through designing robots
to colonize a planet; Replicate!, an action game where players learn virology
and immunology through playing a virus attempting to infect a human body
and replicate so that the virus may spread through a population.
Supercharged!
A flying / racing game where players learn Electromagnetism by flying
a vessel that has adopted the properties of a charged particle through
electric and magnetic fields. The Games-to-Teach team will be developing
and testing two of these games in 2002-2003.
Such games will demand a broad, industry-wide investment if they are
to succeed. Long-term, this kind of project requires creative game designers
who understand the tools and capabilities of the medium, educators who
can help ensure an effective product and visionary thinkers who can design
a suite of games that will appeal to a broad market. A primary goal of
the Games-to-Teach Project has been to create games that will engage a
broad audience of players by creating rich characters, nuanced gameplay,
complex social networks, and interactive stories that tap into a broad
range of emotions and player experiences. Hopefully other projects trying
different approaches will emerge in the next few years, as there have
been signs that perhaps the industry and medium are ready for such a challenge.
Understanding and unpacking how learning occurs through game play, examining
how gameplay can be used to support learning in formal learning environments,
and designing games explicitly to support learning are three areas that
educational research can contribute to game studies. In the next section,
I argue that socio-cultural learning theory, activity theory, and educational
research on transfer are three theoretical traditions that might also
be of use to game studies. Although I present each of them from an educational
technology perspective, each one is interdiciplinary in origin, sitting
at the nexus of anthropology, sociology, cultural psychology, cognitive
psychology, and educational studies and for simplicity, will be referred
to as the Learning Sciences.
Unpacking Gameplay Through The Learning Sciences
A fundamental tension facing game studies is that if games do not promote
or "teach" violence, then how can researchers claim that they might have
a lasting impact on students' cognitive development? Far from trivial,
this concern touches on many core social science research issues. What
is the role of the viewer/participant in consuming media? What are the
cultural and social contexts of media consumption? How does - or doesn't
- knowledge transfer from one context to the next? Educational discussions
of transfer, practice, and social activity offer three promising ways
for game studies to think about gameplay as cultural practice.
Transfer. Much of the hype and hyperbole surrounding games and
their potential impact on human behavior (whether it be fear about games’
impact on human behavior or hope that games are teaching students to think
sharper or more quickly) rests on assumptions about activities developed
in game–playing contexts transferring to new contexts. In educational
research, this phenomena is commonly called the "transfer problem" (See
Detterman & Sternberg, 1993). In the early 1900s, E.L. Thorndike and
colleagues (e.g. Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901) conducted a pioneering
set of studies challenging popular notions that the mind functions as
a "mental muscle" and that excellence in general subjects such
as Latin or Calculus could result in increased mental functioning. Thorndike
and Woodworth (1901, cited in Schwartz & Bransford, 2001) write "The
mind is ...a machine for making particular reactions to particular situations.
It works in great detail, adapting itself to the special data of which
it has had experience.... Improvements in any single mental function rarely
brings about equal improvement in any other function, no matter how similar,
for the working of every mental function group is conditioned by the nature
of the data of each particular case" (pp. 249-250).
One classic example of challenges in transferring thinking across contexts
is mathematics. Across industrialized nations, most citizens learn the
basic skills needed to solve everyday mathematical problems using fractions
or Algebra, but most people rarely use but the most simple computational
math in their every day lives. Psychologists working constructivist and
situated learning traditions argue that human behavior is circumscribed
by context (e.g. Barab, Cherkes-Julikowski, 1999; Brown, Collins, &
Duguid, 1989; Solomon, 1993). The purpose of human activity, our goals
and intentions, constrain the kinds of information we collect in the environment,
and how this information is used (Barab, et al., 1999; Lave, 1988). For
example, studies have shown that students who learn Algebra through problem-solving
are more likely to use Algebra in solving problems than students who learn
Algebra through traditional means (e.g. Cognition and Technology Group
at Vanderbilt, 1992). Situational constraints also shape and constrain
activity. Studies of navigators sailing ships, office workers using computers,
and students in classrooms all show how the tools and resources that are
available in our environment both guide thinking and constrain actions
(Solomon, 1993). For example, people doing fractions in cooking frequently
simplify the problem to make mathematics simpler, or manually divide ingredients
using kitchen tools rather than using Algebra. As a result,, people who
have learned Algebra become very good at using Algebra to solve textbook-like
problems within school situations, but develop very different strategies
for solving real-world problems (Bransford, et al., 1977; Lave & Wenger,
1991; Pea, 1993).
Unfortunately for educators looking to use games to support learning,
this skeptical transfer limits what we hope players might learn from gaming.
While pundits and theorists suggest that game-playing might be increasing
kids critical thinking or problem-solving skills (See Katz, 2000; Prensky,
2000), research on transfer gives very little reason to believe that players
are developing skills that are useful in anything but very similar contexts.
A skilled
Half-Life player might develop skills that are useful
in playing Unreal Tournament (a very similar game), but this does not
mean that players necessarily develop generalizable "strategic thinking"
or "planning" skills. Just because a player can plan an attack
or develop a lightning quick reactions in Half-Life does not mean that
she can plan her life effectively, or think quickly in other contexts,
such as in a debate or in a courtroom - one of the main reasons being
that these are two entirely different contexts and demand very different
social practices.
The particularities of gameplaying as social practice, the contrived
and computer-mediated nature of digital game play raise serious questions
for educators using gaming to support learning that will transfer across
different contexts. What are the goals and intentions of players in gaming
environments? Do these overlap with the situational constraints of other
social or classroom practices? Do game players have opportunities to think
with authentic tools and resources in gaming environments? Examining gameplay
as social practice provides one model for approaching these questions.
Game-Playing as Social Practice
Anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) use the term "practice"
to discuss how actions are situated in their socio-cultural contexts.
Essentially, a practice is an activity that involves skills, resources,
and tools, and is mediated by personal and cultural purposes. One way
to produce more meaningful educational games would be to design games
in which players are engaged in richer, more meaningful practices. A game
like
Civilization III, which involves analyzing geography in order
to determine the best geographic location for a city, negotiating trade
deals with other civilizations, and making taxation and social spending
decisions, comes closer to the kind of meaningful practices educators
would like to produce than, say,
Half Life.
Note that despite the wonderful educational opportunities in playing
Civilization III, playing the game is still simulated activity
– as opposed to participating in historical or social practice. Sasha
Barab and Tom Duffy (2000) distinguish between practice fields and legitimate
participation in social practice. Playing
Civilization III is exploring
a simulation / model – whereby learning occurs through interacting
with and observing the outcomes of a model, which is clearly not the same
as actually participating in social practices valued outside of school
- like writing history or in participating in political, government, or
commercial institutions that extend beyond the school context, or creating
a model for research purposes. In short, playing
Civilization might
be a tool that can assist students in understanding social studies, but
playing the game is not necessarily participating in historical, political,
or geographical analysis. Therefore, building on our earlier discussion
of transfer, there is very good reason to believe that students may not
use their understandings developed in the game - such as the political
importance of a natural resource like oil - as tools for understanding
phenomena outside the game, such the economics behind The Persian Gulf
War or contemporary foreign policy, even in a game as rich as
Civilization
III.
Understanding learning as participation in social practice, however,
also suggests ways for educators to transform game playing into participation
in social practice. For example, Civilization could be presented as a
tool that can be used for answering historical questions, such as why
Europeans colonized North America, instead of vice versa, or the comparative
advantages and disadvantages of political isolationism. In a hypothetical
Civilization III unit, students might spent 25 percent of their
time playing the game, and the remainder of the time creating maps, historical
timelines, researching game concepts, drawing parallels to historical
or current events, or interacting with other media, such as books or videos.
In this way, the educational value of the game-playing experiences comes
not from just the game itself, but from the creative coupling of educational
media with effective pedagogy to engage students in meaningful practices.
Indeed, research on teachers’ adoption and adaptation of materials
suggests teachers will adapt the learning materials we create to maximize
their potential to support learning regardless of designers' intentions
(Squire, Barnett, MaKinster et al., in press). As such, the pedagogical
value of a medium like gaming cannot be realized without understanding
how it is being enacted through classroom use.
Activity Theory
Conceptualizing practice conceived broadly enough to capture the individual’s
goals and intentions, the tools, and resources employed in practice, and
the social organization and institutions that mediate practice –
all within empirically grounded cases, is challenging. Restated, how can
one theoretical framework account for both the moment-to-moment interactions
that constitute gameplay (including the player’s goals and intentions)
while also accounting for the broader socio-cultural contexts that situate
the activity?
Over the past decade, socio-cultural psychologists have been struggling
with this issue, and proposed
Activity Theory as one theoretical
framework for understanding how human activity is mediated by both tools
and cultural context (Engeström, 1987; 1993). For an Activity theorist,
the minimal meaningful context is the dialectical relations between human
agents (subjects) and that which they act upon (objects) as they are mediated
by tools, language, and socio-cultural contexts (Engeström 1987;
1993). A generic activity theory system is portrayed in Figure 1.
Subjects
are the actors who are selected as the point of view of the analysis.
Objects are that "at which the activity is directed and which is
molded or transformed into outcomes with the help of physical and symbolic,
external and internal tools" (Engeström, 1993, p. 67, italics in
the original). As such, objects can be physical objects, abstracted concepts,
or even theoretical propositions.
Tools are the concepts, physical
tools, artefacts or resources that mediate a subject’s interactions
with an object. The
community of a system refers to those with
whom the subject also shares transformation of the object; the cultural-historical
communities in which a subject’s activity is situated. Communities
mediate of activity through division of labor and shared norms and expectations.
Figure 1: Visual Depiction of an Activity System
Understanding the basic components of an activity system can be a useful
way of mapping and categorizing key components of experience. However,
for Activity Theorists, it is not the presence of these components in
isolation that make for meaningful analysis, but rather, the interactions
within among these components. Engeström (1993) refers to such relations
as primary and secondary contradictions. Primary contradictions are those
that occur within a component of a system (e.g.
tools), while secondary
contradictions are those that occur between components of a system (e.g.
subjects and
tools). In a situation where
Civilization
III is used in formal learning environments, one might imagine tensions
between winning
Civilization III and learning social studies as
the object of an activity system, depending on whether the student or
the teacher is the subject of the activity system.. Predicated on Hegelian
/ Marxist philosophy, Activity Theory suggests that the synthesis and
resolution of such contradictions brings change and evolution to the system,
and Activity Theorists argue that characterizing the tensions of an activity
system can help participants understand and react to changes in the system.
Activity Theory offers a theoretical framework with strong intuitive
appeal for researchers examining educational games. Growing out of Vgotsky’s
discussion of the mediating role of artifacts in cognition (1978), Activity
Theory provides a theoretical language for looking at how an educational
game or resource mediates players’ understandings of other phenomena
while acknowledging the social and cultural contexts in which game play
is situated. Learning is conceptualized not as a function of the game
itself - or even a simple coupling of the player and game; rather, learning
is seen as transformations that occur through the dynamic relations between
subjects, artifacts, and mediating social structures.
As games studies matures as a field, no doubt it will draw theoretical
concepts from a range of disciplines and research traditions. Thusfar,
most social science research around gaming has come from the media effects
tradition, leaving a range of other research traditions unrepresented.
The impact of digital games on learning and behavior, as conceptualized
through researchers in the learning sciences communities is an important,
but frequently overlooked area of games studies. My hope is that in the
upcoming months, discussions around gaming and cognition will draw upon
research in the learning sciences. While I have argued for the value of
theoretical positions developing out of cultural psychology, cognitive
science, and educational psychology, certainly there is room at the games
studies table for other researchers in these fields contributing their
theoretical models, as well as researchers from the Humanities, History
of Science, Media Studies, and other disciplines.
The author would like to thank Henry Jenkins, Principal Investigator
of the Games to Teach Project, for sharing his vision of using educational
games to expand the cultural sphere of gaming and his contributions to
this paper. The author would also like to thank Alex Chisholm, Co-Producer
of our first Games-to-Teach Project prototype on optics, for comments
on earlier drafts of the paper.
