Bogost begins this section with an overview of two central educational models. On the one hand, there is the behavioristic model of education where a series of positive and negative stimuli teach students to adopt certain behavior. This theory is the prevalent model in public schools today, and is tremendously focused on forcing students to learn the content. Another contingent of educational theory is the constructivists, who argue that learning is concerned with abstract processes which should be encouraged through apprenticeship, practice, and experience. Bogost goes on to discuss how both the behaviorist and constructivist perspectives is flawed, as the former relies too heavily on content knowledge, and the latter abstracts knowledge which, is many cases, disconnects general strategies from specific cases.
Through a behaviorist perspective, video games teach the precise content in the game, so that simulation games, such as Sim City or Flight Simulator are welcomed. However, behaviorist pedagogues have a problem when it comes to more violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty, where the player is rewarded for the practice of killing people, and where the scenario is “realistic.” This type of argument makes it easy for behaviorists to construct a system for “good” and “bad” games based on the cultural biases at the time.
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| Yay! |
A constructivist might appreciate all kinds of games, but connects them in abstract ways to educational goals such as problem solving and critical thinking. In this way constructivist models point to the way the player “learns the game” as a way for students to grow in their ability to recognize and develop systems of their own.
But Bogost contends that this constructivists approach “underscores videogames’ ability to cultivate higher-order thinking skills” (240). By this he means that players learn more than how to win the game, but begin to connect the process of winning the game to the content of the game itself. For example, in the game League of Nations, the player learns a great deal about problem solving as well as how those methods are historically and culturally grounded. Bogost furthers this claim when he cites Europa Universalis as an example of grounding abstracted learning within a specific contextual environment/time.
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| I will always have a place in my heart for peanut |
Bogost goes on to describe the way that video games can affect things like values and aspirations. A large part of the chapter is devoted to the concept of consumer culture, and the ways that games can force players to think about the underlying cultural models of their behavior. The game Animal Crossing (which, by the way, was awesome), was of particular interest for Bogost, who pointed out the games ability to bring together the views of consumerist material saturation along with a societal valuation for the land and the people. I can say, from playing the game myself, that it is the latter which sets Animal Crossing apart from other games I’ve played. The town truly becomes a small community, and the relationships that the player forms with the animals are very interesting. Bogost explains that the game brings two different moral views together, and leaves the player to decide how to deal with them.
Another interesting note in the chapter was how religion factored into game development. Predictably, religious games in the past have been simple skins of popular games, sometimes with biblical quizzes or information to read in between. Later, games have used the procedurality of prayer, but it was a marginal use, and the religious standpoint has yet to move past visual or verbal rhetoric to the procedural rhetoric. In the end, Bogost places games with the ability to 1) enforce the dominant view 2) contest the dominant worldview 3) Leave the player in a state of ambiguity on the moral stage.
From there Bogost provides an overview of excer-games, starting all the way back with pinball machines could cause exertion, or the way that walking to the arcades tied videogames and physicality at a crucial time in their development. From there he moves into rudimentary games, footpads, and the procedural rhetorics of exercise games. The games that apply the logic of a personal trainer often will either try to reprimand the player ineffectively, or to talk to the player with the kind of communication that a personal trainer would make. Bogost also gets into the prevalence of DDR for a bit, talking about how exercise becomes an extra function, and not the main focus of the game.
For the last chapter, Botgost talks about conveying the effectiveness of persuasion through games. The normal routes of checking, via numerical data, seems to misrepresent the game, and doesn’t say much about the actual persuasiveness. Instead, Bogost points to an extremely theoretical standpoint on events and situations, much of which would take too long to parse through in this blog post. But in the end Bogost at least privileges the ability of descriptive analysis to get us further than empirical study to some extent.
Questions:
How would Bogost perceive the slew of wii games and the xbox kinect within the framework of chapter 10?
In what ways would a procedural rhetoric of religion defy correlation to one religion, opening the possible interpretations to several different religions at once? How could this be used for/against the goals of different organized religions?
Bogost talks about the ability of video games to enable the dominant views, work against the dominant views, or put the player in an ambiguous position Is there a benefit for a position of moral ambiguity?
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