Traveling to Microworlds Part 1 “The Introduction”

Exploring the frames of mind video games can offer

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the qualities that authors David W. Shaffer and James Paul Gee call epistemologies and semiotic domains respectively allow video games not only to be used as compelling learning devices, but as microworlds offering players a journey to other frames of mind than their own. Because of video games, today’s generation, at least the members of it who open up their minds to it, have much more frames of mind than their elders, enabling them to view situations from different perspectives, professional attitudes and viewpoints. This specific ability exceeds and goes beyond any educational merit a game might have, although its educational applications are well understood by the authors and institutions like the United States Military. In comparing a commercial and an epistemic wargame, it seems that both games take players to similar semiotic domains or frames of mind. This means that a game does not need to be designed as educational nor has to stress certain values in order to let a player experience a world outside their own.

Table of contents:

• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Broadening your horizons
• Part 3 Epistemic games
• Part 4 Semiotic domains and their similarity to travel
• Part 5 Homo Ludens
• Part 6 Case in point: waging war as frame of mind
• Part 7 Conclusion & References.

Introduction

In a world filled with colourful screens, ringtones, engaging online discussions and gaming on high definition tv-screens, many children and students around the world feel they have to ‘power down’ when they enter a classroom or training facility. As Marc Prensky puts it in the first chapter of his 2001 book Digital Game-Based Learning:

“Today’s trainers and trainees are from totally separate worlds. The biggest underlying dynamic in training and learning today is the rapid and unexpected confrontation of a corps of trainers and teachers raised in a predigital generation and educated in the styles of the past with a body of learners raised in the digital world of Sesame Street, MTV, fast movies and “twitch-speed” video games.”[1]

The many possibilities that computer technology holds when it comes to education are still largely untapped. Schools, universities and training centres sometimes seem to educate their students for the world of yesterday. These institutions utilize blackboards, pencils, paper and outdated computers, while the outside world offers a stark contrast with its high-end laptops, video games and iPhones. Authors like Prensky, but also James Paul Gee and David W. Shaffer, are among the first of scholars to acknowledge the educational value that digital entertainment might hold. By understanding the methods in which digital entertainment captures the attention of today’s generation and applying these methods to educational material, they hope to bridge the generation gap that makes teachers seem ever more out of touch with their students. In Prensky’s words, this gap sooner or later has to close because learners will demand it. But anticipating on this change will make it all the more easy for everyone to make a smooth transition into the twenty-first century. According to Prensky:

“Within most of our lifetimes pretty much all learning will become truly learner-centered and fun -fun for students, fun for trainers and teachers, fun for parents, supervisors, administrators and executives. The huge wall that has separated learning and fun, work and play for the last few hundred years is finally beginning to tremble and will soon come tumbling down, to everyone’s benefit. And although it will continue to resist for a while yet, like the Berlin Wall in the political world, when the wall finally falls there will be a stampede to freedom.”[2] The result is what can be called digital game-based learning or serious games.

In this paper, I will explore what specific quality of video games makes them suitable for educational purposes. I will use mostly literature from Prensky, Shaffer and Gee, but will also reflect on the nature of play as defined by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga. I argue that what Gee and Shaffer call semiotic domains or epistemologies respectively is what allows video games to be used as compelling learning devices. I will call these frames of mind. Computers in general and video games in particular help you build and explore simulations that let you see the world in a different way. The main question is whether or not a game, through these frames of mind, can offer something that is valuable regardless of educational intent.

Because of video games, today’s generation, at least the members of it who open up their minds to it, have much more frames of mind than their elders, enabling them to view situations from different perspectives, professions and viewpoints. Having different frames of mind is not the same as having some kind of split personality, it is the same mindset people might get from travelling. Travelling means meeting new people and experiencing new situations. You will have to bear with different cultures, paradigms and customs and getting a glimpse into other frames of mind in the process. This explains the title of my paper Travelling to Microworlds. Having a versatile mind is an invaluable asset in today’s globalised, open-ended world where we meet more and different people than our ancestors ever did and switch jobs and life paths more often. In this regard, I claim, gamers have an edge. In the last part of the paper, I will consider two wargames, namely America’s Army and Battlefield 1943, as a case in point how such a trip to a microworld might occur in both an educational and, perhaps more surprisingly, in a commercial game as well.

[2] . Ibid., pp. 14-15.