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<p>WHAT VIDEO GAMES</p><p>HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT</p><p>LEARNING AND LITERACY</p><p>James Paul Gee</p><p>WHAT VIDEO GAMES</p><p>HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT</p><p>LEARNING AND L ITERACY</p><p>JAMES PAUL GEE</p><p>01 gee fm 3/13/03 12:04 PM Page i</p><p>WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT LEARNING AND</p><p>LITERACY</p><p>Copyright © James Paul Gee, 2003.</p><p>All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any</p><p>manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief</p><p>quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.</p><p>First published in hardcover in 2003 by Palgrave Macmillan</p><p>First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ paperback edition: May 2004</p><p>175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and</p><p>Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.</p><p>Companies and representatives throughout the world.</p><p>PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave</p><p>Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.</p><p>Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom</p><p>and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union</p><p>and other countries.</p><p>ISBN 1-4039-6538-2</p><p>Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data</p><p>Gee, James Paul.</p><p>What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy / James Paul</p><p>Gee.</p><p>p. cm.</p><p>Includes bibliographical references and index.</p><p>ISBN 1-4039-6538-2</p><p>1. Video games—Psychological aspects. 2. Computer games—</p><p>Psychological aspects. 3. Learning, Psychology of. 4. Visual literacy.</p><p>5. Video games and children. I. Title: What video games have to teach us</p><p>about learning and literacy. II. Title.</p><p>GV1469.3 .G44 2003</p><p>794.8’01’9—dc21</p><p>2002038153</p><p>A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.</p><p>Design by Letra Libre.</p><p>First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN paperback edition: May 2004</p><p>10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1</p><p>Printed in the United States of America.</p><p>01 gee fm 3/1/04 2:47 PM Page ii</p><p>v v v</p><p>I dedicate this book to my six-year-old son, Sam. I originally tried</p><p>to play his computer games so I could teach him how to play</p><p>them, but in the end, things worked out just the reverse and he</p><p>taught me how to play. More, he taught me to take learning and</p><p>playing games seriously, all the while having fun. I also dedicate</p><p>the book to my twenty-two-year-old son, Justin. He didn’t play</p><p>computer or video games much as a kid, though he had no trou-</p><p>ble thoroughly trouncing me when we last visited an arcade.</p><p>Justin’s early fascination with StarWars was my first guide, Sam’s</p><p>with Pokemon, my second guide, to the powerful and creative</p><p>learning people can bring to the aspects of “popular culture” with</p><p>which they choose to identify and which they often choose to</p><p>transform for their own ends. The children, teenagers, and</p><p>neotenic adults, including my identical twin brother, and now</p><p>myself, who play computer and video games were my third.</p><p>v v v</p><p>01 gee fm 3/13/03 12:04 PM Page iii</p><p>This page intentionally left blank</p><p>CONTENTS</p><p>1. Introduction: 36 Ways to Learn a Video Game 1</p><p>2. Semiotic Domains:</p><p>Is Playing Video Games a “Waste of Time”? 13</p><p>3. Learning and Identity:</p><p>What Does It Mean to Be a Half-Elf? 51</p><p>4. Situated Meaning and Learning:</p><p>What Should You Do After You Have</p><p>Destroyed the Global Conspiracy? 73</p><p>5. Telling and Doing:</p><p>Why Doesn’t Lara Croft Obey Professor Von Croy? 113</p><p>6. Cultural Models:</p><p>Do You Want to Be the Blue Sonic or the Dark Sonic? 139</p><p>7. The Social Mind:</p><p>How Do You Get Your Corpse Back After You’ve Died? 169</p><p>8. Conclusion: Duped or Not? 199</p><p>Appendix: The 36 Learning Principles 207</p><p>References 213</p><p>Index 221</p><p>01 gee fm 3/13/03 12:04 PM Page v</p><p>This page intentionally left blank</p><p>1</p><p>INTRODUCTION:</p><p>36 WAYS TO LEARN A V IDEO GAME</p><p>I WANT TO TALK ABOUT VIDEO GAMES—YES, EVEN VIOLENT VIDEO</p><p>games—and say some positive things about them. By “video games” I mean</p><p>both games played on game platforms (such as the Sony PlayStation 2, the</p><p>Nintendo GameCube, or Microsoft’s XBox) and games played on comput-</p><p>ers. So as not to keep saying “video and computer games” all the time, I will</p><p>just say “video games.” I am mainly concerned with the sorts of video</p><p>games in which the player takes on the role of a fantasy character moving</p><p>through an elaborate world, solving various problems (violently or not), or</p><p>in which the player builds and maintains some complex entity, like an army,</p><p>a city, or even a whole civilization. There are, of course, lots of other types</p><p>of video games.</p><p>But, first, I need to say something about my previous work and how and</p><p>why I arrived here to discuss video games. In two earlier books, Social Linguis-</p><p>tics and Literacies and The Social Mind, I argued that two things that, at first</p><p>sight, look to be “mental” achievements, namely literacy and thinking, are, in</p><p>reality, also and primarily social achievements. (See the Bibliographic Note at</p><p>the end of this chapter for references to the literature relevant to this chapter.)</p><p>When you read, you are always reading something in some way. You are never</p><p>just reading “in general” but not reading anything in particular. For example,</p><p>you can read the Bible as history or literature or as a self-help guide or in many</p><p>other ways. So, too, with any other text, whether legal tract, comic book, essay,</p><p>or novel. Different people can interpret each type of text differently.</p><p>When you think, you must think about something in some way. You are</p><p>never just thinking “in general” but not thinking anything in particular. The</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 1</p><p>2 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>argument about thinking is, in fact, the same as the argument about reading.</p><p>For example, you can think about people who kill themselves to set off a</p><p>bomb, in pursuit of some cause they believe in, as suicide bombers, murder-</p><p>ers, terrorists, freedom fighters, heroes, psychotics, or in many other differ-</p><p>ent ways. Different people can read the world differently just as they can read</p><p>different types of texts differently.</p><p>So, then, what determines how you read or think about some particular</p><p>thing? Certainly not random chemicals or electrical events in your brain, al-</p><p>though you do most certainly need a brain to read or think. Rather, what de-</p><p>termines this is your own experiences in interacting with other people who</p><p>are members of various sorts of social groups, whether these are biblical</p><p>scholars, radical lawyers, peace activists, family members, fellow ethnic group</p><p>or church members, or whatever. These groups work, through their various</p><p>social practices, to encourage people to read and think in certain ways, and</p><p>not others, about certain sorts of texts and things.</p><p>Does this mean you are not “free” to read and think as you like? No—</p><p>you can always align yourself with new people and new groups—there is no</p><p>shortage. But it does mean you cannot read or think outside of any group</p><p>whatsoever. You cannot assign asocial and private meanings to texts and</p><p>things, meanings that only you are privy to and that you cannot even be sure</p><p>you remember correctly from occasion to occasion as you read or think about</p><p>the same thing, since as a social isolate (at least in regard to meaning) you</p><p>cannot, in fact, check your memory with anyone else. The philosopher Lud-</p><p>wig Wittgenstein made this case long ago in his famous argument against the</p><p>possibility of “private languages.” There are no “private minds” either.</p><p>Does all this mean that “anything goes” and “nothing is true”? Of course</p><p>not. We humans have goals and purposes, and for some goals and purposes</p><p>some groups’ ways of reading and thinking work better than do others. But it</p><p>does mean that things are not “true” apart from any purpose or goal whatso-</p><p>ever. In the world of physics, as an academic area, if you have pushed your</p><p>stalled car until you are dripping with sweat but the car has not budged, you</p><p>have done no “work” (given how physicists use this word), but in the world of</p><p>“everyday” people, people not attempting at the moment to be physicists or</p><p>do physics, you have worked very hard indeed. Neither meaning is right or</p><p>wrong. Each belongs to a different</p><p>interacting, valuing, and believing as</p><p>more or less typical of people who are “into” the semiotic domain. Thus we</p><p>can talk about the typical ways of thinking, acting, interacting, valuing, and</p><p>believing as well as the typical sorts of social practices associated with a given</p><p>semiotic domain. This is to view the domain externally.</p><p>What I have said about viewing first-person shooter games internally or</p><p>externally applies to any semiotic domain. Take, for instance, my own aca-</p><p>demic field of linguistics, viewed as a semiotic domain. Within linguistics</p><p>there is a well-defined subdomain often referred to as theoretical linguistics</p><p>or the theory of grammar, a field largely defined by the work of the noted lin-</p><p>guist Noam Chomsky and his followers. (Even alternative views in the field</p><p>have to be defined in reference to Chomsky’s work.) If we view this semiotic</p><p>domain internally, in terms of content, we can point out that a claim like “All</p><p>human languages are equal” is a recognizable one—is recognizably a possible</p><p>piece of content—in this semiotic domain, though Chomskian linguists give</p><p>very specific meanings to words like “language” and “equal,” meanings that</p><p>are not the same as these words have in “everyday” life.</p><p>On the other hand, a claim like “God breathed life into the word” is not a</p><p>recognizable claim—is not recognizably a possible piece of content in—the</p><p>semiotic domain of theoretical linguistics. If history had been different, per-</p><p>haps there would have been a field called linguistics in which this was a possible</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 27</p><p>28 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>piece of content. But given how history did happen, and how we therefore now</p><p>define the nature of science and academic fields, this is not a possible piece of</p><p>content in the semiotic domain of theoretical linguistics.</p><p>So far, then, we have been talking about and viewing the semiotic do-</p><p>main of theoretical linguistics internally in terms of its content. But we can</p><p>also talk about and view the domain externally in terms of the ways in which</p><p>such linguists tend to think, act, interact, value, and believe when they are</p><p>being linguists. This is to ask about the sorts of identities they take on when</p><p>they are engaged with, or acting out of their connections to, the semiotic do-</p><p>main of theoretical linguistics. This is to view the domain externally.</p><p>Theoretical linguists tend to look down on people who study the social</p><p>and cultural aspects of language (people like me now). They tend to believe</p><p>that only the structural aspects of language (e.g., syntax or phonology) can be</p><p>studied rigorously and scientifically in terms of deducing conclusions from</p><p>quite abstract and mathematically based theories. In turn, they tend to see affil-</p><p>iations between themselves and “hard scientists” like physicists. Since physics</p><p>has high prestige in our society, theoretical linguistics tends to have higher</p><p>prestige within the overall field of linguistics than does, say, sociolinguistics.</p><p>The claim here is not that each and every theoretical linguist looks down</p><p>on linguists who study social and cultural affairs (though when I was a theo-</p><p>retical linguist earlier in my career I did!). Rather, the claim is that each and</p><p>every such linguist would recognize these ways of thinking and valuing as</p><p>part of the social environment in and around the field of theoretical linguis-</p><p>tics. This is to view the domain externally.</p><p>The external view of theoretical linguistics, and not the internal one, ex-</p><p>plains why this subbranch of linguistics is regularly called theoretical linguis-</p><p>tics when, in fact, people who study language socially and culturally also</p><p>engage in building and arguing over “theories” (though less abstract and</p><p>mathematically based ones). Given its assumptions about being rigorous sci-</p><p>ence in a wider culture that values physics more than literature or sociology,</p><p>for instance, this branch of linguistics has easily been able to co-opt the term</p><p>for itself. People who study language socially and culturally often use the</p><p>term “theoretical linguistics” just for Chomskian (and related) work, thereby</p><p>enacting their own “subordination.” This last comment, of course, is an ex-</p><p>ternal view on the larger semiotic domain of linguistics as a whole.</p><p>Do the internal and external aspects of a semiotic domain have anything</p><p>to do with each other? Of course, if we are talking about academic disciplines</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 28</p><p>29v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>as semiotic domains, most academics would like to think that the answer to</p><p>this question is no. But the answer is, in fact, yes. Content, the internal part</p><p>of a semiotic domain, gets made in history by real people and their social in-</p><p>teractions. They build that content—in part, not wholly—in certain ways be-</p><p>cause of the people they are (socially, historically, culturally). That content</p><p>comes to define one of their important identities in the world. As those iden-</p><p>tities develop through further social interactions, they come to affect the on-</p><p>going development and transformation of the content of the semiotic domain</p><p>in yet new ways. In turn, that new content helps further develop and trans-</p><p>form those identities. The relationship between the internal and external is</p><p>reciprocal.</p><p>I am not trying to make some postmodern relativistic point that nothing</p><p>is true or better than anything else. The potential content of a semiotic do-</p><p>main can take a great many shapes. Some of them are better than others for</p><p>certain purposes (e.g., as truth claims about grammar or language), but there</p><p>is always more than one good (and bad) shape that content can take, since</p><p>there are so many fruitful and correct facts, principles, and patterns one can</p><p>discover in the world.</p><p>For example, Noam Chomsky and his early students spoke English as</p><p>their native language and, thus, tended to use this language as their initial</p><p>database for forming their theories. These were, in fact, theories not about</p><p>English but about what is universal in language or common to the design of</p><p>all languages. This early emphasis on English (treating English as the “typi-</p><p>cal” language) gave the theory a certain sort of initial shape that helped lead</p><p>to certain developments and not others. Later the theory changed as more</p><p>languages—ones quite different from English—received more careful con-</p><p>sideration. Nonetheless, no matter how good the theory is now (assuming for</p><p>the moment the theory is good), if Chomsky and others had been speakers of</p><p>Navajo, it might be equally good now but somewhat different.</p><p>There are a myriad of things to get right and wrong, and theoretical lin-</p><p>guistics as it is now undoubtedly has some things right and some things</p><p>wrong. Theoretical linguistics as it might have been had Chomsky spoken</p><p>Navajo would have had other things right and wrong, though it may well</p><p>have had some of the same things right and wrong as well. The American</p><p>philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce argued that “in the end,” after all the ef-</p><p>forts of scientists over time, all possible theories in an area like theoretical</p><p>linguistics would converge on the “true” one. But you and I won’t be here for</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 29</p><p>30 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>“the end” of time, so we are stuck with the fact that the internal and external</p><p>aspects of semiotic domains—even academic fields and areas of science—</p><p>influence each other.</p><p>MORE ON SEMIOTIC DOMAINS:</p><p>DESIGN GRAMMARS</p><p>Semiotic domains have what I call design grammars. Each domain has an inter-</p><p>nal and an external design grammar. By an internal design grammar, I mean</p><p>the principles and patterns in terms of which one can recognize what is and</p><p>what is not acceptable or typical content in a semiotic domain. By an external</p><p>design grammar, I mean the principles and patterns in terms of which one can</p><p>recognize what is and what is not an acceptable or typical social practice and</p><p>identity in regard to the affinity group associated with a semiotic domain.</p><p>Do you know what</p><p>counts as a modernist piece of architecture? What sort</p><p>of building counts as typical or untypical of modernist architecture ? If you do,</p><p>then you know, consciously or unconsciously, the internal design grammar of</p><p>the semiotic domain of modernist architecture (as a field of interest).</p><p>If all you know is a list of all the modernist buildings ever built, then you</p><p>don’t know the internal design grammar of the domain. Why? Because if you</p><p>know the design grammar—that is, the underlying principles and patterns</p><p>that determine what counts and what doesn’t count as a piece of modernist</p><p>architecture—you can make judgments about buildings you have never seen</p><p>before or even ones never actually built, but only modeled in cardboard. If all</p><p>you have is a list, you can’t make any judgments about anything that isn’t on</p><p>your list.</p><p>Do you know what counts as thinking, acting, interacting, and valuing</p><p>like someone who is “into” modernist architecture? Can you recognize the</p><p>sorts of identities such people take on when they are in their domain? Can</p><p>you recognize what count as valued social practices to the members of the</p><p>affinity group associated with the semiotic domain of modernist architecture</p><p>and what counts as behaving appropriately in these social practices? If the an-</p><p>swer to these questions is “yes,” then you know, consciously or uncon-</p><p>sciously, the external design grammar of the semiotic domain.</p><p>Do you understand what counts and what doesn’t count as a possible</p><p>piece of content in theoretical linguistics? Do you know that claims like “All</p><p>languages are equal” (in one specific meaning) and “The basic syntactic rules</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 30</p><p>31v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>in the core grammar of any language are optimal” count as possible claims in</p><p>theoretical linguistics and that claims like “God breathed life into the word”</p><p>and “Nominalizations are very effective communicative devices in science”</p><p>don’t? Do you know why this is so, how it follows from the ways in which the</p><p>elements of the content of theoretical linguistics relate to each other as a com-</p><p>plex system? If you do, you know the internal design grammar of theoretical</p><p>linguistics. If all you know is a list of facts from the domain, you will never</p><p>know whether a claim not on your list should or shouldn’t count or even</p><p>whether the matter is open to debate or not. You can’t “go on” in the domain.</p><p>Are you aware that theoretical linguists don’t value work on the social as-</p><p>pects of language as much as they do work on the structural aspects of gram-</p><p>mar? Do you know that even when they are assessing work in the social</p><p>sciences and humanities, they tend to value logical deductive structure and</p><p>abstract theories in these domains over richly descriptive but less abstract and</p><p>less theoretical studies? Are you aware that the term “descriptive” is (or, at</p><p>least, used to be) a term of insult and “explanatory” a term of praise when</p><p>such people are talking about academic work inside and outside their field?</p><p>Do you know why? If you know things like this, you know the external de-</p><p>sign grammar of the semiotic domain of theoretical linguistics. You find cer-</p><p>tain ways of thinking, acting, and valuing expectable in the affinity group</p><p>associated with the domain, others not.</p><p>Of course, the internal and external grammars of a domain change</p><p>through time. For example, it was once common to find linguists who saw</p><p>studying issues germane to the translation of the Bible, for example into Na-</p><p>tive American languages, as a core part of their academic work and identity as</p><p>linguists. They hoped to facilitate the work of missionaries to the speakers of</p><p>these languages. They saw no conflict between doing linguistics and serving</p><p>their religious purposes at the same time. Other linguists, not involved in</p><p>Bible translation, did not necessarily dispute this at the time and often did</p><p>not withhold professional respect from such religious linguists. The external</p><p>grammar of the domain (and this was certainly influenced by the wider cul-</p><p>ture at the time) allowed a connection between linguistic work as science and</p><p>religious commitments as an overt part of that work.</p><p>Today most linguists, theoretical and otherwise, would be skeptical of any</p><p>connection between linguistic work and religion. They would not see translat-</p><p>ing the Bible into languages connected to cultures without the Bible, to facili-</p><p>tate the work of missionaries, as a central part of any branch of linguistics.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 31</p><p>32 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>Today the external design grammar of the field does not readily allow for a</p><p>connection between work as a linguist and religion, for identities as a linguist</p><p>that are formed around this connection or for social practices germane to it.</p><p>So why I am being so perverse as to use the term “design grammar” for</p><p>these matters? Because I want us to think about the fact that for any semiotic</p><p>domain, whether it is first-person shooter games or theoretical linguistics,</p><p>that domain, internally and externally, was and is designed by someone. But</p><p>who was/is this someone who designed the semiotic domains of first-person</p><p>shooter games and theoretical linguistics?</p><p>Obviously real game designers and producers determine what counts as</p><p>recognizable content for first-person shooter games by actually making such</p><p>games. Over time, as they apply certain principles, patterns, and procedures</p><p>to the construction of such games, the content of first-person shooter games</p><p>comes to have a recognizable shape such that people not only say things like</p><p>“Oh, yeah, that’s a first-person shooter game” or “No, that’s not a first-per-</p><p>son shooter” but also “Oh, yeah, that a typical first-person shooter game” or</p><p>“Oh, no, that’s a groundbreaking first-person shooter game.”</p><p>Yet these designers and producers are only part of the people who pro-</p><p>duce the external grammar of first-person shooter games. People who play,</p><p>review, and discuss such games, as well as those who design and produce</p><p>them, shape the external design grammar of the semiotic domain of first-per-</p><p>son shooter games through their ongoing social interactions. It is their ongo-</p><p>ing social interactions that determine the principles and patterns through</p><p>which people in the domain can recognize and judge thinking, talking, read-</p><p>ing, writing, acting, interacting, valuing, and believing characteristic of peo-</p><p>ple who are in the affinity group associated with first-person shooter games.</p><p>And, of course, the acts of people helping to design the domain exter-</p><p>nally as a set of social practices and typical identities rebound on the acts of</p><p>those helping to design the domain internally as content, since that content</p><p>must “please” the members of the affinity group associated with the domain</p><p>as well as recruit newcomers to the domain. At the same time, the acts of</p><p>those helping to design the domain internally in terms of content rebound on</p><p>the acts of those helping to design the domain externally as a set of social</p><p>practices and identities, since that content shapes and transforms those prac-</p><p>tices and identities.</p><p>Just the same things can be said about those who design the semiotic do-</p><p>main of theoretical linguistics, internally and externally. Linguists who write</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 32</p><p>33v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>and publish and give talks at conferences shape the internal design grammar</p><p>of the domain through their research. They shape and transform the princi-</p><p>ples and patterns that determine what counts as the content of theoretical</p><p>linguistics.</p><p>All linguists shape the external grammar of the domain through their so-</p><p>cial interactions and the identities they take on in those interactions. It is</p><p>their ongoing social interactions and related identity work that determine the</p><p>principles and patterns through which people in the domain can recognize</p><p>and judge thinking, talking, reading, writing, acting, interacting, valuing, and</p><p>believing characteristic of people who are in the affinity group associated</p><p>with theoretical linguistics.</p><p>It is crucial, as I have pointed out, to see that the internal and external</p><p>grammars and designs of semiotic domains interrelate with each other, mutu-</p><p>ally supporting and transforming each other. Let me exemplify this point, and</p><p>further clarify the notion of design grammars, by returning to video games.</p><p>Some people play video games on game platforms like the Playstation (X</p><p>or 2), the Nintendo GameCube, or the Xbox. Some people play them on</p><p>computers like the one on which I am typing this book. When people play</p><p>video games on game platforms, they use a handheld controller with various</p><p>buttons and often a little built-in joystick or two. They never use the sort of</p><p>keyboard associated with a computer.</p><p>It is part of the external design of the semiotic domain of video games for</p><p>game platforms that games and handheld controllers go together and part of</p><p>the design of the semiotic domain of video games on computers that games</p><p>and keyboards or handheld controllers go together, since some players do, in</p><p>fact, plug handheld controllers into their computers to replace the keyboard.</p><p>So far this just seems to be a matter of brute technological facts. But</p><p>things work in the world in certain ways because people make them do so or,</p><p>at the very least, are willing to accept them as such. Then, when they work</p><p>that way, people come to expect them to do so and build values and norms</p><p>around them working that way.</p><p>One could conceivably get a keyboard to work with a game platform. At</p><p>the very least, it would be easy for designers to modify a platform so that it</p><p>would work with a keyboard. However, you don’t understand the external de-</p><p>sign grammar of the domain of platform-based video-game playing if you</p><p>don’t realize that doing this would “break the rules.” It would be a serious de-</p><p>parture from what the affinity group associated with this domain expects,</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 33</p><p>34 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>wants, and values. Many platform-game players think keyboards are a bad</p><p>way to play video games, while some computer-game players think they are a</p><p>good way. In turn, these matters are connected to their identities as game</p><p>players (e.g., the editors of PC Gamer magazine regularly “apologize” when</p><p>they have spent time playing games on a game platform and not on a com-</p><p>puter, and look down on the enterprise).</p><p>When Microsoft’s Xbox came out in 2002, it was the first game platform</p><p>to contain a computerlike hard drive. Hard drives allow games to be saved at</p><p>any point. Heretofore, games played on game platforms, thanks to the tech-</p><p>nological limitations of the platforms, could be saved much less regularly</p><p>than computer games. Players on typical game platforms, for example, can</p><p>save only at the end of a level or when they have found a special save symbol</p><p>in the game. This means that in an action game, they have to stay alive long</p><p>enough to get to the end of the level or find the save symbol, no matter how</p><p>long they already have been playing.</p><p>In a computer game, thanks to the computer’s hard drive, players can</p><p>save their progress at any time they wish. (There are some games made for</p><p>computers in which this is not true). This can make a difference in the strate-</p><p>gies one uses. When playing on a computer, the player can save after a partic-</p><p>ularly hard battle and not ever have to repeat that battle. If the player dies a</p><p>bit later, he or she starts again from the game that was saved after the big bat-</p><p>tle was already won.</p><p>On a game platform, if there was no save symbol after the big battle or if</p><p>the battle was not the end of a level, the player could not save and must move</p><p>on. If he or she dies, the big battle will have to be fought again, since the</p><p>game will reload from an earlier saved game that did not contain that battle.</p><p>Indeed, the last save could have been quite far in the past, and the player may</p><p>be required to repeat a good deal of the game.</p><p>However, again, these are not just technological matters. Platform users</p><p>do not necessarily see being unable to save whenever they want as a limita-</p><p>tion. Many of them see it as a virtue; they say it adds more excitement and</p><p>challenge to a game. Computer-game players who save after each big battle</p><p>or dangerous jump might be thought of as “wimps” who can’t last any length</p><p>of time against rigorous challenges. Furthermore, in my experience, many</p><p>platform users do not see playing large parts of a game over and over again as</p><p>repetition in the way in which I do. They see it an opportunity to perfect</p><p>their skills and get more play out of a game they enjoy.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 34</p><p>35v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>So we see here the ways in which external technological and material</p><p>facts become social facts and values. The Xbox’s coming out with a hard drive</p><p>led to a debate that anyone who understands the external design grammar of</p><p>the platform domain could have predicted. Was the Xbox really a game plat-</p><p>form? Could a real game platform have a hard drive? Perhaps the Xbox is re-</p><p>ally a computer in disguise. This is a debate over the very external design</p><p>grammar of the domain: Is the pattern “video game, game platform, hard</p><p>drive” acceptable within the external design grammar of the domain? Does it</p><p>count as an acceptable part of valued social practices and identities in the do-</p><p>main? Should it?</p><p>It is not surprising, either, that of the games Microsoft initially brought</p><p>out for the Xbox some used the hard drive to allow players to save whenever</p><p>and wherever they wanted (e.g., Max Payne) and others did not and func-</p><p>tioned like a “proper” platform game (e.g., Nightcaster). The company obvi-</p><p>ously wanted to entice both platform players and computer-game players</p><p>onto its system, though this can, in some cases, be a bit like enticing cats and</p><p>dogs to play ball together.</p><p>A good number of people play both platform games and computer</p><p>games, of course. Nonetheless, somewhat different affinity groups, with dif-</p><p>ferent attitudes and values, have arisen around each domain, with lots of</p><p>overlap in between. There are people who play in both domains but have</p><p>strong opinions about what sorts of games are best played on platforms and</p><p>what sorts are best played on computers. All this is typical: Semiotic domains</p><p>and affinity groups often don’t have sharp boundaries (though some do), and</p><p>in any case the boundaries are often fluid and changing.</p><p>Since the Xbox has the capacity to break the pattern that associates game</p><p>platforms and limited saves while still retaining some of the other patterns</p><p>typical of game platforms, it has the potential to create a new affinity group</p><p>and/or to transform old ones. In the act, it and the social interactions of peo-</p><p>ple around it might eventually create a new semiotic domain within the big-</p><p>ger domain of video-game playing, a new domain with a new external design</p><p>grammar determining new social practices and identities. Indeed, the matter</p><p>is already in progress, as the Xbox has already generated (with the help of</p><p>Microsoft, of course) its own magazines, Internet sites, and aficionados.</p><p>But all this transformation and change in the external design grammar</p><p>will rebound on and change the internal design grammar. Designers and pro-</p><p>ducers will use the hard drive on the Xbox together with its more typical</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 35</p><p>36 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>platform features to design new games. Hybrids between typical platform</p><p>games and typical computer games will arise. The distinction in content be-</p><p>tween platform games (which tended to stress fast action) and computer</p><p>games (which can store more information and stress deeper stories) may blur.</p><p>As new content arises and new principles and patterns regarding the accept-</p><p>able content of various different types of games also arise, the affinity groups</p><p>associated with those different types of games will change their social inter-</p><p>actions, values, and identities, and so, too, the external design grammar of</p><p>their respective</p><p>domains.</p><p>Some of these changes will be small, some large. But that is the way of all</p><p>semiotic domains in the world. They are made, internally and externally, by</p><p>humans and changed by them as these humans take up technological and ma-</p><p>terial circumstances in certain ways and not others and as they shape and re-</p><p>shape their social interactions with each other.</p><p>L IFEWORLDS</p><p>Our talk about semiotic domains may lead some to think that everything said</p><p>thus far only applies to “specialist” areas like video games, theoretical linguis-</p><p>tics, law, or the workings of urban gangs, not “everyday,” “ordinary” life.</p><p>However, “everyday,” “ordinary” life is itself a semiotic domain. In fact, it is a</p><p>domain in which all of us have lots and lots of experience. It is what I call the</p><p>lifeworld domain.</p><p>By the lifeworld domain I mean those occasions when we are operating</p><p>(making sense to each other and to ourselves) as “everyday” people, not as</p><p>members of more specialist or technical semiotic domains. Not everyone</p><p>does physics or plays video games, but everyone spends lots of time in his or</p><p>her lifeworld domain. And, of course, people move quite readily between</p><p>specialist domains and their lifeworld domain. For example, a group of physi-</p><p>cists at a dinner meeting might, at one moment, be discussing physics as spe-</p><p>cialists in physics and, at the next moment, be discussing the weather or</p><p>movies as “everyday” nonspecialists. (Of course, there are people who can</p><p>and do discuss the weather or movies as specialists in a specialist semiotic do-</p><p>main devoted to the weather or movies.)</p><p>Lifeworld domains are culturally variable; that is, different cultural</p><p>groups have, more or less, different ways of being, doing, feeling, valuing,</p><p>and talking as “everyday people.” Thus there are many lifeworld domains,</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 36</p><p>37v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>though they overlap enough to allow for, better or worse, communication</p><p>across cultures,</p><p>If we look at lifeworld domains internally, we can say that their content is</p><p>just the wide range of nonspecialist experiences of the world that people share</p><p>with other people with whom they share various group memberships, up to</p><p>and including the human race. Once a group has carved out an area of this ex-</p><p>perience (whether this is playing in the guise of video games or dealing with</p><p>the weather as a science) and created “specialist” ways of talking and thinking</p><p>about it (“policed” by themselves as “insiders,” who determine what is accept-</p><p>able and what not, who is adept and who is not), then they have left the life-</p><p>world (and the rest of us behind) and created a specialist semiotic domain.</p><p>If we look at lifeworld domains externally, we can ask about the ways of</p><p>thinking, talking, acting, interacting, valuing, and, in some cases, writing and</p><p>reading that allow a particular culturally distinctive group of people to recog-</p><p>nize each other as being, at a time and place, “everyday” or “ordinary” nonspe-</p><p>cialist people. For example, how do you know when a friend of yours who is a</p><p>theoretical linguist (and you are not) is talking to you and engaging with you</p><p>not as a specialist linguist but just as an “everyday” nonspecialist person? How</p><p>do you know this even when, in fact, you happen to be talking about language?</p><p>And, of course, these matters will differ if you and the linguist are from</p><p>quite different cultures—say you are an African American and the linguist is a</p><p>Russian. But, again, I caution against assuming too much variation across</p><p>human beings. People can and very often do recognize “normal” human be-</p><p>havior across cultural groups, however problematic this sometimes may be</p><p>(even to the point of leading to violence).</p><p>It is important to realize that meanings are no more general—they are</p><p>just as situated—in lifeworld domains as they are in any other semiotic do-</p><p>main. For example, in different situations, even such a mundane word as</p><p>“coffee” has different situated meanings. Consider, for instance, what hap-</p><p>pens in your head when I say “The coffee spilled, get a mop” versus “The</p><p>coffee spilled, get a broom.” In different situations, the word “coffee” can</p><p>mean a liquid, grains, beans, tins, or a flavor. It can mean yet other things in</p><p>other situations, and sometimes we have to come up with novel meanings for</p><p>the word; for example in a sentence like “Her coffee skin glistened in the</p><p>bright sunshine,” “coffee” names a skin color.</p><p>For another example, think of the different situated meanings of the</p><p>word “light” in everyday interactions in these sentences: Turn the light on.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 37</p><p>38 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>This light isn’t giving much light. I can see a far off light. I am just bathing in</p><p>this light. The effects of light in this part of the county are wonderful. The</p><p>last thing I saw was a bright light. Of course, when we consider, in the con-</p><p>text of lifeworld domains, words like “truth,” “good,” “democracy,” “fair-</p><p>ness,” “honesty,” and so forth, things get yet more variable, more deeply</p><p>rooted in specific situations in specific culturally relative lifeworld domains.</p><p>There are a number of important points to make about lifeworld do-</p><p>mains. First, we are all used to making claims to know things based not on</p><p>any specialist knowledge we have but just as “everyday” human beings. How-</p><p>ever, in the modern world, specialist domains are taking more and more</p><p>space away from lifeworld domains wherein people can make nonspecialist</p><p>claims to know things and not face a challenge from a specialist.</p><p>For example, I once lived in Los Angeles. Every nonspecialist in Los An-</p><p>geles “knows” the air is polluted and dangerous, and they are usually willing</p><p>to say so. Nonetheless, it was not at all uncommon to read in the newspaper,</p><p>say, that “lay people” didn’t really know what they were talking about (and</p><p>choking on). Specialists in the matter claimed that there was no technical</p><p>“evidence” that the air was particularly unsafe. Tobacco companies tried the</p><p>same thing for years in regard to the dangers of smoking. Companies that</p><p>pollute ground and water often engage in the same tactic when people in</p><p>their areas of operation claim to feel sick (or drop dead) from their pollution.</p><p>Helping students learn how to think about the contrasting claims of vari-</p><p>ous specialists against each other and against lifeworld claims to know certainly</p><p>ought to be a key job for schools. To do this, students would have to investigate</p><p>specialist domains and different culturally distinctive lifeworlds, internally in</p><p>terms of content and externally in terms of social practices and identities.</p><p>A second point to be made about lifeworld domains is this: In the mod-</p><p>ern world, we are used to having to face the fact that children, including our</p><p>own, are specialists when and where we are not. Many children are adept at</p><p>the semiotic domain of computers—sometimes because they play video</p><p>games and that interest has led them to learn more about computers—when</p><p>the adults in the house are intimidated by computers.</p><p>Kids have turned video games, roller-blading, skateboarding, and snow-</p><p>boarding into specialist domains that internally in terms of content and ex-</p><p>ternally in terms of social practices bewilder adults. Many children have</p><p>learned through the Internet and television more about stock trading or even</p><p>law than many of the adults around them could ever imagine knowing. (One</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 38</p><p>39v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>teenager had the top rating for legal advice on a legal Internet site in which</p><p>many of the others on the highly ranked list were professional lawyers.)</p><p>Adults are getting used to the fact that they are “immigrants” in many a</p><p>domain where their own children are “natives” (specialists). The lifeworld—</p><p>the domain in which people can claim to know and understand things as</p><p>“everyday” people and not as specialists—is shrinking, not just under the at-</p><p>tack of specialist domains like science but because our children are creating</p><p>and mastering</p><p>so many specialist domains themselves.</p><p>A third point I want to make is this: I firmly believe we need to protect</p><p>lifeworld domains from the assaults of specialists (yes, even our own children).</p><p>We need to understand and value people’s “everyday” knowledge and under-</p><p>standings. At the same time, I believe it is crucial, particularly in the contem-</p><p>porary world, that all of us, regardless of our cultural affiliations, be able to</p><p>operate in a wide variety of semiotic domains outside our lifeworld domains.</p><p>It is very often in these non-lifeworld domains that people form affilia-</p><p>tions with others outside their own cultural groups and transcend the limita-</p><p>tions of any one person’s culture and lifeworld domain. Of course, it is</p><p>important not to insult anyone’s culture or lifeworld domain; it is important,</p><p>as well, to build bridges to these when introducing people to new semiotic</p><p>domains. But in my view, it is a poor form of respect for anyone to leave peo-</p><p>ple trapped in their own culture and lifeworld as the whole and sole space</p><p>within which they can move in the modern world. If this view comports</p><p>poorly with some versions of multiculturalism, so be it.</p><p>BACK TO PIKMIN: CRIT ICAL LEARNING</p><p>If learning is to be active, it must involve experiencing the world in new ways.</p><p>I have spelled this out in terms of learning new ways to situate the meanings</p><p>of words, images, symbols, artifacts, and so forth when operating within spe-</p><p>cific situations in new semiotic domains. Active learning must also involve</p><p>forming new affiliations. I have explained this in terms of learners joining</p><p>new affinity groups associated with new semiotic domains.</p><p>Active learning in a domain also involves preparation for future learning</p><p>within the domain and within related domains. I will deal with this issue</p><p>below, when I draw a comparison between the sorts of learning that take place</p><p>when playing good video games and the sorts of learning that take place in</p><p>good science classrooms and when I discuss the notion of precursor domains.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 39</p><p>40 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>However, as I said earlier, critical learning involves yet another step. For</p><p>active learning, the learner must, at least unconsciously, understand and oper-</p><p>ate within the internal and external design grammars of the semiotic domain</p><p>he or she is learning. But for critical learning, the learner must be able con-</p><p>sciously to attend to, reflect on, critique, and manipulate those design gram-</p><p>mars at a metalevel. That is, the learner must see and appreciate the semiotic</p><p>domain as a design space, internally as a system of interrelated elements making</p><p>up the possible content of the domain and externally as ways of thinking, act-</p><p>ing, interacting, and valuing that constitute the identities of those people who</p><p>are members of the affinity group associated with the domain.</p><p>Let me return to the child playing Pikmin for a specific example of what I</p><p>mean. What does it take just to play a game as an active learner? To do this</p><p>the player must understand and produce situated meanings in the semiotic</p><p>domain that this game, and games like it, constitutes. Elements in the con-</p><p>tent of Pikmin—for example, a yellow Pikmin—do not have just one general</p><p>meaning or significance in the game world. Learners must learn to situate</p><p>different meanings for such elements within different specific situations</p><p>within the domain.</p><p>For example, when a player is faced with a rock wall, his yellow Pikmin</p><p>(who can throw bomb rocks) take on the situated meaning the type of Pikmin</p><p>who can use bombs (unlike red and blue Pikmin), since a good strategy for de-</p><p>stroying walls in the game is to have yellow Pikmin throw bombs at them.</p><p>However, when attacking a fat, sleeping, dangerous spotted creature (a</p><p>Spotty Bulborb) found throughout the first levels of the game, the yellow</p><p>Pikmin take on the situated meaning the sorts of Pikmin who can be thrown far-</p><p>ther than other sorts of Pikmin, since a good strategy when fighting big crea-</p><p>tures like these is to have Captain Olimar tell the red Pikmin to run up and</p><p>attack from the rear, while he throws the yellow Pikmin onto their backs to</p><p>attack from up top.</p><p>Additionally, players need to know what patterns or combinations of ele-</p><p>ments the game’s internal design grammar allows. They need to know, given</p><p>the situated meanings they have given to each element in the pattern or com-</p><p>bination, what the whole pattern or combination means in a situated way</p><p>useful for action.</p><p>For example, the internal design grammar of Pikmin allows the player to</p><p>bring together (by moving Captain Olimar and his Pikmin) the combination</p><p>of Pikmin, a rock wall, and a small tin can laying near the wall, containing lit-</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 40</p><p>41v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>tle rock bombs. Of course, the game did not need to allow this pattern or</p><p>combination to be able to occur; its design grammar could have been built</p><p>differently. Even given that the design grammar does allow this combination,</p><p>players still have to build a situated meaning for this combination out of the</p><p>situated meanings they have given to each element in the game based on the</p><p>situation they take themselves to be in and their own goals.</p><p>If this is a point in the game where the player needs to get past the wall,</p><p>and given the fact that he or she can build a situated meaning for yellow Pik-</p><p>min like the type of Pikmin that can throw bombs, the player can build a situated</p><p>meaning for this combination something like: Equip the yellow Pikmin with the</p><p>rock bombs and have them use the bombs to blow up the wall.</p><p>Here is another example from Pikmin of a combination of elements al-</p><p>lowable by the internal design grammar of the game. The player often finds a</p><p>Spotty Bulborb—a creature with big teeth and jaws suitable for swallowing</p><p>Pikmin whole—sleeping peacefully in a fairly exposed space. So the design</p><p>grammar of the domain allows the combination: Spotty Bulborb, sleeping, in</p><p>exposed area. Depending on what situation the player takes him- or herself</p><p>to be in, this combination can be assigned several different situated mean-</p><p>ings. For instance, it could be taken to mean: Attack the Spotty Bulborb care-</p><p>fully from the rear before it wakes up; or it could be taken to mean: Sneak quietly</p><p>by the Spotty Bulborb to get where you want to go without trouble. Nothing stops</p><p>the player from assigning the combination a more unexpected situated mean-</p><p>ing, perhaps something like: Wake the Spotty Bulborb up so you can get a more</p><p>exciting (and fair?) fight.</p><p>Since the child can successfully break down rock walls and attack Spotty</p><p>Bulborbs, he can understand (“read”) and produce (“write”) appropriate situ-</p><p>ated meanings for elements and combinations of elements in the domain</p><p>(game). But all of this is “just” playing the game in a proactive way—that is,</p><p>using situated meanings and the design grammar of the game to understand</p><p>and produce meanings and actions (which are a type of meaning in the do-</p><p>main). Of course, one could just ritualize one’s response to the game and try</p><p>pretty much the same strategy in every situation, but this would not be a</p><p>proactive way to play and learn.</p><p>All these meanings and actions are a product of what I have called active</p><p>learning, but they are not yet critical learning that leverages the design gram-</p><p>mar at a metalevel in a reflective way that can lead to critique, novel mean-</p><p>ings, or transformation of the domain. However, the child is learning to do</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 41</p><p>42 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>this as well—that is, his process of learning the game is not only active, it is</p><p>increasingly critical.</p><p>When the child had recovered 5 of the spaceship’s 30 missing parts, he</p><p>was able to search in a new area called The Forest’s Navel. This area had a</p><p>much harsher and more dangerous-looking landscape than the previous areas</p><p>the child had been in. It had different dangerous creatures, including a num-</p><p>ber of closely grouped creatures</p><p>that breathed fire. And the background</p><p>music had changed considerably. Since the player has already found five</p><p>parts, the game assumes that he is now more adept than when he began the</p><p>game; thus, the landscape and creatures are getting harder to deal with, offer-</p><p>ing a bigger challenge. At the same time, these changes in features communi-</p><p>cate a new mood, changing the tone of the game from a cute fairy tale to a</p><p>somewhat darker struggle for survival.</p><p>The child was able to think about and comment on these changes. He</p><p>said that the music was now “scary” and the landscape much harsher-looking</p><p>than the ones he had previously been in. He knew that this signaled that</p><p>things were going to get harder. Furthermore, he was aware that the changes</p><p>signaled that he needed to rethink some of his strategies as well his relation-</p><p>ship to the game. He was even able to comment on the fact that the earlier</p><p>parts of the game made it appear more appropriate for a child his age than</p><p>did the Forest Navel area and considered whether the game was now “too</p><p>scary” or not. He decided on a strategy of exploring the new area only a little</p><p>bit at a time, avoiding the fire-breathing creatures, and returning to old areas</p><p>with the new resources (e.g., blue Pikmin) he got in the Forest Navel area to</p><p>find more parts there more quickly and easily (remember, the player has only</p><p>30 game days to get all the parts and so wants to get some of them quickly</p><p>and easily.)</p><p>What we are dealing with here is talk and thinking about the (internal)</p><p>design of the game, about the game as a complex system of interrelated parts</p><p>meant to engage and even manipulate the player in certain ways. This is met-</p><p>alevel thinking, thinking about the game as a system and a designed space,</p><p>and not just playing within the game moment by moment. Such thinking can</p><p>open up critique of the game. It can also lead to novel moves and strategies,</p><p>sometimes ones that the game makers never anticipated. This is what I mean</p><p>by critical learning and thinking. Of course, the six-year-old is only begin-</p><p>ning the process of critical learning in regard to Pikmin and other video</p><p>games, but he is well begun.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 42</p><p>43v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>The child is learning to think reflectively about the internal design</p><p>grammar (the grammar of content) of Pikmin and games like it. As he inter-</p><p>acts with others, he will have opportunities to reflect on the external design</p><p>grammar (the grammar of social practices and identities) too. For example,</p><p>he has already learned that he can search the Internet for helpful tips about</p><p>playing the game, including what are called Easter Eggs (little surprises play-</p><p>ers can find in a game if they know where and how to look for them). He</p><p>considers these tips part of playing the game. On the other hand, he charac-</p><p>terizes advice about how to play as “bossing him around” and claims he can</p><p>“do his own thinking.”</p><p>These are early moments in the child’s induction into the affinity groups</p><p>associated with video-game playing, their characteristic social practices, and</p><p>the sorts of identities people take on within these groups and practices. If he</p><p>is to engage with these external aspects of game playing critically, he will</p><p>need to reflect in an overt way on the patterns and possibilities he does and</p><p>does not find in these social practices and identities. Doing this is to reflect</p><p>on the external design grammar of the domain.</p><p>Critical learning, as I am defining it here, involves learning to think of</p><p>semiotic domains as design spaces that manipulate us (if I can use this term</p><p>without necessary negative connotations) in certain ways and that we can ma-</p><p>nipulate in certain ways. The child has much more to learn about Pikmin as a</p><p>design space (internally and externally). He also has much more to learn</p><p>about not just the single game Pikmin but the genre (family) of games into</p><p>which Pikmin falls (adventure strategy games) as a design space. And he has</p><p>much more to learn about not just this genre but about video games in gen-</p><p>eral (a larger and more loosely connected family) as a design space.</p><p>Then there is the crucial matter of learning how these design spaces re-</p><p>late to each other and to other sorts of semiotic domains, some more closely</p><p>related to video games as semiotic domains, some less closely related. That is,</p><p>the child can learn how to think about, and act on, semiotic domains as a</p><p>larger design space composed of clusters (families) of more or less closely re-</p><p>lated semiotic domains.</p><p>So, then, why do I call learning and thinking at a metalevel about semiotic</p><p>domains (alone and in relation to each other) as design spaces critical learning</p><p>and thinking? For this reason: Semiotic systems are human cultural and histor-</p><p>ical creations that are designed to engage and manipulate people in certain</p><p>ways. They attempt through their content and social practices to recruit people</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 43</p><p>44 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>to think, act, interact, value, and feel in certain specific ways. In this sense, they</p><p>attempt to get people to learn and take on certain sorts of new identities, to be-</p><p>come, for a time and place, certain types of people. In fact, society as a whole is</p><p>simply the web of these many different sorts of identities and their characteris-</p><p>tic associated activities and practices.</p><p>Some of these identities constitute, within certain institutions or for cer-</p><p>tain social groups in the society, social goods. By a “social good” I mean any-</p><p>thing that a group in society, or society as a whole, sees as bringing one status,</p><p>respect, power, freedom, or other such socially valued things. Some people</p><p>have more or less access to valued or desired semiotic domains and their con-</p><p>comitant identities. Furthermore, some identities connected to some semiotic</p><p>domains may come, as one understands the domain more reflectively, to seem</p><p>less (or more) good or valuable than one had previously thought.</p><p>Finally, one might come to see that a given identity associated with a</p><p>given semiotic domain relates poorly (or well)—in terms of one’s vision of</p><p>ethics, morality, or a valued life—with one’s other identities associated with</p><p>other semiotic domains. For example, a person might come to see that a</p><p>given semiotic domain is designed so as to invite one to take on an identity</p><p>that revels in a disdain for life or in a way of thinking about race, class, or</p><p>gender that the person, in terms of other identities he or she takes on in</p><p>other semiotic domains, does not, on reflection, wish to continue. In this</p><p>sense, then, semiotic domains are inherently political (and here I am using</p><p>the term “political” in the sense of any practices where the distribution of so-</p><p>cial goods in a society is at stake).</p><p>Let me make this discussion more concrete. A game like Pikmin recruits</p><p>from the our six-year-old a complex identity composed of various related</p><p>traits. The game encourages him to think of himself an active problem solver,</p><p>one who persists in trying to solve problems even after making mistakes; one</p><p>who, in fact, does not see mistakes as errors but as opportunities for reflec-</p><p>tion and learning. It encourages him to be the sort of problem solver who,</p><p>rather than ritualizing the solutions to problems, leaves himself open to un-</p><p>doing former mastery and finding new ways to solve new problems in new</p><p>situations.</p><p>At the same time, the boy is encouraged to see himself as solving prob-</p><p>lems from the perspective of a particular fantasy creature (Captain Olimar)</p><p>and his faithful helpers (the Pikmin) and, thus, to get outside his “real” iden-</p><p>tity and play with the notions of perspectives and identities themselves. He is</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 44</p><p>45v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>also encouraged to focus on the problem-solving and fantasy aspects of his</p><p>new identity and not, say, his worries about killing (virtual) “living” creatures,</p><p>however odd they may be, though he can choose to avoid killing some of the</p><p>creatures by running from</p><p>them or sneaking around them. The learner, in this</p><p>case, gets to customize the identity the game offers him to a certain extent—</p><p>this, in fact, is an important feature of good video games.</p><p>The identity that Pikmin invites the player to take on relates in a variety</p><p>of ways to other identities he takes on in other domains. I believe, for exam-</p><p>ple, that the identity Pikmin recruits relates rather well to the sort of identity</p><p>a learner is called on to assume in the best active science learning in schools</p><p>and other sites.</p><p>If this is true, then our six-year-old is privileged in this respect over chil-</p><p>dren who do not have the opportunity to play such games (in an active and</p><p>critical way). An issue of social justice is at stake here in regard to the distri-</p><p>bution of, and access to, this identity, whether through video games or sci-</p><p>ence. We can note, as well, that the boy is using the video game to practice</p><p>this identity, for many hours, at an early age, outside of science instruction in</p><p>school, which may very well take up very little of the school day. Other chil-</p><p>dren may get to practice this identity only during the limited amount of time</p><p>their school devotes to active and critical learning in science of the sort that</p><p>lets children take on the virtual identity of being and doing science rather</p><p>than memorizing lists of facts—which often is no time at all.</p><p>VIDEO GAMES: A WASTE OF T IME?</p><p>I have now discussed a perspective on learning that stresses active and critical</p><p>learning within specific semiotic domains. So, let me now return to the</p><p>grandfather’s remark that playing video games is a waste of time because the</p><p>child is learning no “content.”</p><p>If children (or adults) are playing video games in such a way as to learn</p><p>actively and critically then they are:</p><p>1. Learning to experience (see and act on) the world in a new way</p><p>2. Gaining the potential to join and collaborate with a new affinity</p><p>group</p><p>3. Developing resources for future learning and problem solving in the</p><p>semiotic domains to which the game is related</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 45</p><p>46 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>4. Learning how to think about semiotic domains as design spaces that</p><p>engage and manipulate people in certain ways and, in turn, help cre-</p><p>ate certain relationships in society among people and groups of peo-</p><p>ple, some of which have important implications for social justice</p><p>These, of course, are just the four things one learns when engaging actively</p><p>and critically with any new semiotic domain. So the questions in regard to</p><p>any specific semiotic domain become: Are these good or valuable ways to ex-</p><p>perience the world? Is this a good or valuable affinity group to join? Are</p><p>these resources for future learning applicable to other good and valued semi-</p><p>otic domains? Is this domain leading the learner to reflect on design spaces</p><p>(and the concomitant identities they help create), and their intricate relation-</p><p>ships to each other, in ways that potentially can lead to critique, innovation,</p><p>and good or valued thinking and acting in society?</p><p>The answers to these questions will vary along a variety of parameters.</p><p>But they show that a great deal more is at stake than “content” in the grandfa-</p><p>ther’s sense. This book offers a positive answer to these questions in regard to</p><p>a good many (certainly not all) video games, as long as people are playing</p><p>them in ways that involve active and critical learning. Video games have the</p><p>potential to lead to active and critical learning. In fact, I believe that they often</p><p>have a greater potential than much learning in school (even though school</p><p>learning may involve learning “content”). Indeed, I hope my discussion of the</p><p>child playing Pikmin already suggests some of the lines of my argument.</p><p>What ensures that a person plays video games in a way that involves ac-</p><p>tive and critical learning and thinking? Nothing, of course, can ensure such a</p><p>thing. Obviously, people differ in a variety of ways, including how much they</p><p>are willing to challenge themselves, and they play video games for a great va-</p><p>riety of different purposes. But two things help to lead to active and critical</p><p>learning in playing video games.</p><p>One is the internal design of the game itself. Good games—and the</p><p>games get better in this respect all the time—are crafted in ways that encour-</p><p>age and facilitate active and critical learning and thinking (which is not to say</p><p>that every player will take up this offer). The other is the people around the</p><p>learner, other players and nonplayers. If these people encourage reflective</p><p>metatalk, thinking, and actions in regard to the design of the game, of video</p><p>games more generally, and of other semiotic domains and their complex in-</p><p>terrelationships, then this, too, can encourage and facilitate active and critical</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 46</p><p>47v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>learning and thinking (though, again, the offer may not be taken up). And,</p><p>indeed, the affinity groups connected to video games do often encourage</p><p>metareflective thinking about design, as a look at Internet game sites will</p><p>readily attest.</p><p>This last point—that other people can encourage in the learner metareflec-</p><p>tive talk, thinking, and actions in regard to a semiotic domain as a design</p><p>space—leads to another point: Often it is critical learning—focusing on the</p><p>semiotic domain one is learning as a design space in a reflective way—that actu-</p><p>ally encourages and pushes active learning. One can learn actively without much</p><p>critical learning, but one cannot really learn much critically without a good deal</p><p>of active learning in a semiotic domain. The critical is not a later add-on. It</p><p>should be central to the process of active learning from the beginning.</p><p>There is another important issue here that bears on deciding whether a</p><p>given semiotic domain—like video games—is valuable or not: Semiotic do-</p><p>mains in society are connected to other semiotic domains in a myriad of</p><p>complex ways. One of these is that a given domain can be a good precursor</p><p>for learning another one. Because mastering the meaning-making skills in,</p><p>and taking on the identity associated with, the precursor domain facilitates</p><p>learning in the other domain. Facilitation can also happen because being (or</p><p>having been) a member of the affinity group associated with the precursor</p><p>domain facilitates becoming a member of the affinity group associated with</p><p>the other domain, because the values, norms, goals, or practices of the pre-</p><p>cursor group resemble in some ways the other group’s values, norms, goals,</p><p>or practices.</p><p>Let me give a concrete example of such connections. In the larger semi-</p><p>otic domain of video games, first- and third-person shooter games are a well-</p><p>defined subdomain. However, such games often have elements that are</p><p>similar to features found in arcade games, games (like Space Invaders, Pacman,</p><p>and Frogger) that involve a good deal of fast hand-eye coordination to move</p><p>and respond quickly. (In fact, one of the original first-person shooter games,</p><p>a game that helped start the genre—Wolfenstein 3D—operates very much like</p><p>an arcade game.) Thus, someone who has mastered the domain of arcade</p><p>games has mastered a precursor domain for shooter games, though such</p><p>games now contain many other elements, as well.</p><p>On the other hand, fantasy role-playing games are another well-defined</p><p>subdomain of the video-game domain. People who have earlier played and</p><p>mastered the Dungeons and Dragons semiotic domain (as make-believe play or</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 47</p><p>48 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>with books and cards) are advantaged when they play fantasy role-playing</p><p>games, since such games developed out of Dungeons and Dragons, though they</p><p>now contain a good many additional elements.</p><p>Both the shooter domain and the fantasy role-playing domain have other</p><p>precursor domains, and they share some precursor domains (e.g., make-be-</p><p>lieve play wherein one is willing to take on different identities—a domain</p><p>that some cultures and social groups do</p><p>not encourage in children or adults).</p><p>Some of these video-game (sub-) domains may well serve as precursor do-</p><p>mains for other semiotic domains. For example, it may well be that the popu-</p><p>lar (sub-) domain of simulation games (so-called god games, like SimCity, The</p><p>Sims, Railroad Tycoon, and Tropico) could be, for some children, a precursor</p><p>domain for those sciences that heavily trade in computer-based simulations</p><p>as a method of inquiry (e.g., some types of biology and cognitive science).</p><p>In interviews my research team and I have conducted with video-game</p><p>players, we have found a number of young people who have used the domain</p><p>of video games as a fruitful precursor domain for mastering other semiotic</p><p>domains tied to computers and related technologies. Indeed, several of these</p><p>young people plan to go to college and major in computer science or related</p><p>areas.</p><p>So we can ask: Can various subdomains in the larger domain of video-</p><p>game playing serve as precursor domains facilitating later learning in and out</p><p>of school?. I believe that the sorts of active and critical learning about de-</p><p>sign—and the type of problem-solving identity—that a game like Pikmin can</p><p>involve may well relate to later learning in domains like science, at least when</p><p>we are talking about teaching and learning science as an active process of in-</p><p>quiry and not the memorization of passive facts.</p><p>I am convinced that playing video games actively and critically is not “a</p><p>waste of time.” And people playing video games are indeed (pace the six-year-</p><p>old’s grandfather), learning “content,” albeit usually not the passive content</p><p>of school-based facts. (Many games, such as the Civilization games, do con-</p><p>tain a good number of facts.) The content of video games, when they are</p><p>played actively and critically, is something like this: They situate meaning in a</p><p>multimodal space through embodied experiences to solve problems and reflect on the</p><p>intricacies of the design of imagined worlds and the design of both real and imagined</p><p>social relationships and identities in the modern world. That’s not at all that bad—</p><p>and people get wildly entertained to boot. No wonder it is hard for today’s</p><p>schools to compete.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 48</p><p>49v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>LEARNING PRINCIPLES</p><p>The discussion in this chapter suggests a variety of learning principles that</p><p>are built into good video games, games like Pikmin, as will the discussion in</p><p>each of the following chapters. Some of the learning principles suggested in</p><p>this chapter are a bit more general than are those in later chapters. Here I</p><p>bring together these principles to start a list that will continue in subsequent</p><p>chapters.</p><p>I state only five very basic principles, since quite a number of other</p><p>principles that are implicated in the earlier discussion will be discussed in</p><p>greater detail later. The order of the principles is not important. All the</p><p>principles are equally important, or nearly so. Some of the principles over-</p><p>lap and, in actuality, reflect different aspects of much the same general</p><p>theme. Furthermore, these principles are not claims about all and any video</p><p>games played in any old fashion. Rather, they are claims about the potential</p><p>of good video games played in environments that encourage overt reflec-</p><p>tion. (While good video games do indeed encourage overt reflection, this</p><p>feature can be greatly enhanced by the presence of others, both players and</p><p>viewers.)</p><p>I state each principle in a way that is intended to be equally relevant to</p><p>learning in video games and learning in content areas in classrooms.</p><p>1. Active, Critical Learning Principle</p><p>All aspects of the learning environment (including the ways in which</p><p>the semiotic domain is designed and presented) are set up to encour-</p><p>age active and critical, not passive, learning.</p><p>2. Design Principle</p><p>Learning about and coming to appreciate design and design princi-</p><p>ples is core to the learning experience.</p><p>3. Semiotic Principle</p><p>Learning about and coming to appreciate interrelations within and</p><p>across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, arti-</p><p>facts, etc.) as a complex system is core to the learning experience.</p><p>4. Semiotic Domains Principle</p><p>Learning involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and</p><p>being able to participate, at some level, in the affinity group or groups</p><p>connected to them.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 49</p><p>50 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>5. Metalevel Thinking about Semiotic Domains Principle</p><p>Learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships</p><p>of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains.</p><p>BIBL IOGRAPHICAL NOTE</p><p>See Kress 1985, 1996, and Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 2001 for insightful discussions</p><p>on reading images and multimodal texts, that is, texts that mix words and images. For</p><p>work on literacy as involving multiple literacies, see the citations to the New Literacy</p><p>Studies at the end of chapter 1 as well as Cope & Kalantzis 2000; Heath 1983; Scollon</p><p>& Scollon 1981; and Street 1984.</p><p>The discussion of physics students who know Newton’s laws of motion but can-</p><p>not apply them to a specific situation is taken from Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser 1981.</p><p>For further discussion, see Gardner 1991 and Mayer 1992.</p><p>On the nature of reading tests, see Hill & Larsen’s 2000 superb analyses of actual</p><p>test items in relationship to different ways of reading. On reading more generally, see</p><p>Adams 1990; Coles 1998; Gee 1991; Snow, Burns, & Griffin 1998; see Pearson 1999</p><p>for discussion of the range of controversy in the area. The “fourth-grade slump” is</p><p>discussed in Gee 1999a; see Chall 1967 for an early and influential discussion.</p><p>On Noam Chomsky’s work, see McGilvray 1999. For C. S. Peirce’s work, see</p><p>Kloesel & Houser 1992.</p><p>On semiotics and content learning, especially in regard to science education, see</p><p>Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis 2001; Lemke 1990; and Ogborn, Kress, Martins,</p><p>& McGillicuddy 1996. On the notion of affiliation and affinity groups, see Beck 1992,</p><p>1994; Gee 2000–2001; Rifkin 2000; and Taylor 1994. For the idea of preparation for</p><p>future learning, see Bransford & Schwartz 1999, a very important and illuminating</p><p>paper for anyone interested in learning. On the notion of design and design gram-</p><p>mars, see New London Group 1996, a “manifesto” written by an international group</p><p>of scholars (a group of which I was a member) working in the area of language and lit-</p><p>eracy studies.</p><p>My notion of critical learning combines work on situated cognition (see biblio-</p><p>graphic note for chapter 4), especially work on metacognition—see, for example</p><p>Bereiter & Scardamalia 1989; Bruer 1993: pp. 67–99; Pellegrino, Chudowsky, &</p><p>Glaser 2001; Schon 1987; and Paulo Freire’s 1995 work on critical thinking and liter-</p><p>acy as “reading the world” and not just “reading the word.” On the concept of the</p><p>lifeworld, see Habermas 1984.</p><p>For discussions of game design relevant to the concerns of this chapter, see Bates</p><p>2002 and Rouse 2001.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 50</p><p>3</p><p>LEARNING AND IDENTITY:</p><p>WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A HALF-ELF?</p><p>ARCANUM: LEARNING AND IDENTITY</p><p>THE LAST CHAPTER ARGUED THAT SEMIOTIC DOMAINS ENCOURAGE</p><p>people new to them to take on and play with new identities. I discussed the</p><p>sort of identity as an exploratory problem solver of a certain type that the</p><p>game Pikmin encouraged the six-year-old to take on. All learning in all semi-</p><p>otic domains requires identity work. It requires taking on a new identity and</p><p>forming bridges from one’s old identities to the new one.</p><p>For example, a child in a science classroom engaged in real inquiry, and</p><p>not passive learning, must be willing to take on an identity as a certain type of</p><p>scientific thinker, problem solver, and doer. The child must see and make</p><p>connections between this new identity and other identities he or she has al-</p><p>ready formed. Certainly the child will be at a disadvantage if he or she has</p><p>one or more identities that do not fit with, are opposed to, or are threatened</p><p>by the identity recruited in</p><p>the science classroom (e.g., his or her identity as</p><p>someone who is bad at learning technical matters, as someone who dislikes</p><p>school, or as someone from a family that is not “into” science or school—not</p><p>to mention cases like creationist Christians in biology classes).</p><p>This chapter uses learning to play video games as a crucial example of</p><p>how identities work in learning, an example that illuminates how active and</p><p>critical learning works in any semiotic domain, including in school. Video</p><p>games recruit identities and encourage identity work and reflection on iden-</p><p>tities in clear and powerful ways. If schools worked in similar ways, learning</p><p>in school would be more successful and powerful because it would become</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 51</p><p>52 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>the sorts of active and critical learning discussed in the last chapter. To make</p><p>the discussion concrete, I base it on one particular video game, a fantasy role-</p><p>playing game called Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.</p><p>I first discuss this game and the sorts of identity work it recruits. Then I</p><p>turn to learning in school, making comparisons and contrasts with learning</p><p>in Arcanum and games like it. Finally, I continue the list of learning principles</p><p>that are embedded in good video games, principles that are important for</p><p>powerful learning in any domain. Let us turn, then, to Arcanum.</p><p>Arcanum takes place in a massive world called Arcanum, a world made up</p><p>of a great many countries and towns. Once upon a time magic (“magick”)</p><p>held sway throughout Arcanum. But now technology has arrived, and Ar-</p><p>canum has become a place of both ancient runes and industrial steamworks, a</p><p>land where magic and machines coexist in a tension-filled and uneasy bal-</p><p>ance. A variety of races—Humans, Elves, Gnomes, Dwarves, Orcs, and</p><p>Ogres, as well as Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, and Half-Ogres (each of which have</p><p>one Human parent)—cohabit this world, each orienting to the conflicts be-</p><p>tween magic and technology in different ways.</p><p>Before you start playing Arcanum, you must construct your character.</p><p>Each race and gender has different natural characteristics. For example, I</p><p>chose to be a female Half-Elf, whom I named “Bead Bead.” Half-Elves, like</p><p>all other races, have their own unique degrees of strength, constitution, dex-</p><p>terity, beauty, intelligence, willpower, perception, and charisma. Each of</p><p>these traits will affect how your character—that is, you—carries out dialogue</p><p>and action in the world of Arcanum and how other characters in the world</p><p>respond to you (e.g., if you are not strong enough to fight in a given situa-</p><p>tion, you better be intelligent enough to think your way out of the problem,</p><p>or beautiful or charismatic enough to get others to want to help you).</p><p>You can also initially choose from a wide variety of unique backgrounds—</p><p>things that happened in your character’s past. For example, your character</p><p>might have been a rich debutante who developed strong social skills in her</p><p>youth suitable now for recruiting help from others or might have been a child</p><p>of a hero, a parent who has given you extra-special skills with a sword, but</p><p>whose reputation for goodness you must now live up to, and so on through</p><p>many other choices.</p><p>When the game starts you get five “points” that you can choose to dis-</p><p>tribute, in any way you wish, to your character, thereby changing his or her</p><p>“natural” state. For example, Bead Bead, as a female Half-Elf, had a natural</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 52</p><p>53v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>strength of 7, but I used one of my five points to make her stronger. As the</p><p>game progresses and you gain more worldly experience, you gain yet more</p><p>points to distribute, thereby allowing your character to develop in certain</p><p>ways and not others.</p><p>You can distribute these initial and subsequent points to your character’s</p><p>primary traits, such as strength, dexterity, intelligence, and so forth, but you</p><p>can also use them to build up a wide variety of other skills, such as ability with</p><p>a bow and arrow, skill with picking locks, or persuasive skills; ability to cast a</p><p>wide variety of magic spells or to build a wide variety of technological appara-</p><p>tuses, including weapons; or the ability to heal better or get less fatigued as</p><p>your character engages in effortful tasks. You can choose to have a character</p><p>primarily oriented to magic or technology or some mixture of the two.</p><p>During game play you talk and interact with a great many other charac-</p><p>ters in the world of Arcanum. Your actions gain you a reputation as good or</p><p>evil. Various other characters will join you or not, depending on their own</p><p>alignments as good or evil and also depending on things like your persuasive-</p><p>ness, beauty, and charisma. Throughout the game, you can get gold and buy</p><p>clothing, armor, and equipment for yourself and any of your followers, who</p><p>may run off with your purchases and leave you if you don’t treat please them.</p><p>For example, one of my followers, a rather self-righteous human, kept</p><p>threatening to leave me if I continued to attempt to pick people’s pockets.</p><p>Rather than quit picking pockets (though I did lay off a bit, at least when he</p><p>was looking), I reassured him by giving money to poor street beggars, some-</p><p>thing of which he approved.</p><p>Your adventures in Arcanum start with a catastrophe. Your character is a</p><p>passenger on the Zephyr, a large blimp. Two quite odd flying vessels appear</p><p>and attack the Zephyr, destroying themselves in the process. The Zephyr</p><p>bursts into flame and smashes into the ground. Only your character and a</p><p>dying old man survive the crash. The old man musters just enough strength</p><p>to give you an engraved ring along with a cryptic message. He pleads with</p><p>you to take his ring and bring it to “the boy,” telling you that a great evil is</p><p>coming back to destroy everything. After assuring you that the boy “will</p><p>know what to do,” he dies. You are left as the sole survivor of the crash,</p><p>though you soon meet a mysterious follower of one of Arcanum’s religions, a</p><p>man named Virgil, who, if you wish, will follow and help you.</p><p>Thus, your quest begins. The game involves not only the main quest of</p><p>carrying out the dead man’s wishes, a quest that eventually leads to a great</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 53</p><p>54 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>many sub-quests that are part of the main quest. It also has lots of side quests,</p><p>given to you by characters you meet throughout Arcanum, which you can</p><p>choose to do or ignore. (Though you can gain experience and, thus, more ex-</p><p>perience points to distribute to your character if you do them.) By the time</p><p>you finish, your character is very different from the characters other players</p><p>would have built, and the game you have played is very different from what it</p><p>would have been had you built your character differently initially and</p><p>throughout the game.</p><p>THREE IDENTIT IES:</p><p>VIRTUAL, REAL, AND PROJECTIVE</p><p>A game like Arcanum involves playing with identities in very interesting and</p><p>important ways. When one plays Arcanum, and role-playing games like it,</p><p>three different identities are at stake. All are aspects of the relationship: “A</p><p>real person (here James Paul Gee) as a virtual character (here Bead Bead).”</p><p>They operate all together, at once, as a larger whole.</p><p>First, there is a virtual identity: one’s identity as a virtual character in the</p><p>virtual world of Arcanum—in my case the Half-Elf Bead Bead. I will repre-</p><p>sent this identity as “James Paul Gee as Bead Bead,” where Bead Bead is itali-</p><p>cized to indicate that, in this identity, the stress is on the virtual character</p><p>Bead Bead acting in the virtual world of Arcanum (though I am “playing/de-</p><p>veloping” her).</p><p>In the virtual world of Arcanum, given the sort of creature Bead Bead is</p><p>(a female Half-Elf) and how I have developed her thus far, there are, at any</p><p>point, things she can do and things she cannot do. For example, at a certain</p><p>place in the game, Bead Bead wants to persuade a town meeting to fund the</p><p>building of a monument to please the town’s</p><p>mayor. To do this, she needs to</p><p>be intelligent and persuasive. Half-Elves are, by nature, pretty intelligent,</p><p>and I had built up Bead Bead to be persuasive during the game (i.e., given her</p><p>points in this area). Thus, she was able to pull off the task at the town meet-</p><p>ing (something I very much doubt a Half-Orc could have done, though Half-</p><p>Orcs have other talents). These traits (her intelligence and persuasive skills)</p><p>and her accomplishment at the town meeting—for which she received ample</p><p>praise—are part of my virtual identity as Bead Bead.</p><p>The successes and failures of the virtual being Bead Bead (me in my vir-</p><p>tual identity) are a delicious blend of my doing and not my doing. After all, I</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 54</p><p>55v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>made Bead Bead and developed her, so I deserve—partly, at least—praise for</p><p>her successes and blame for her failures. Yet Bead Bead is who she is—a fe-</p><p>male Half-Elf—and must move through the world of Arcanum and be</p><p>formed, in part, by it, a world I did not create. Thus I am, in this sense, not</p><p>responsible for her successes or her failures. I suppose this is how many a par-</p><p>ent feels about his or her child, save that in this case, I (James Paul Gee) am</p><p>my own child (Bead Bead).</p><p>A second identity that is at stake in playing a game like Arcanum is a real-</p><p>world identity: namely, my own identity as “James Paul Gee,” a nonvirtual</p><p>person playing a computer game. I will represent this identity as “James Paul</p><p>Gee as Bead Bead,” where James Paul Gee is italicized to indicate that, in this</p><p>identity, the stress is on the real-world character James Paul Gee playing Ar-</p><p>canum as a game in real time (though Bead Bead is the tool through which I</p><p>operate the game).</p><p>Of course, in the real world I have a good many different nonvirtual</p><p>identities. I am a professor, a linguist, an Anglo American, a middle-age male</p><p>baby boomer, a parent, an avid reader, a middle-class person initially raised</p><p>outside the middle class, a former devout Catholic, a lover of movies, and so</p><p>on through a great many other identities (most of which need not be men-</p><p>tioned here). Of course, these identities become relevant only as they affect</p><p>and are filtered through my identity as a video-game player playing Arcanum.</p><p>And, indeed, any one of my real-world identities can be so engaged whenever</p><p>I am playing Arcanum. Which of these identities, for instance, was at play—</p><p>positively or negatively—when I got such joy at having Bead Bead pick rich</p><p>people’s pockets? When I chose to be a female Half-Elf in the first place?</p><p>When I chose to use my points to make her as strong and good as a male at</p><p>melee fighting with a sword?</p><p>A third identity that is at stake in playing a game like Arcanum is what I</p><p>will call a projective identity, playing on two senses of the word “project,”</p><p>meaning both “to project one’s values and desires onto the virtual character”</p><p>(Bead Bead, in this case) and “seeing the virtual character as one’s own proj-</p><p>ect in the making, a creature whom I imbue with a certain trajectory through</p><p>time defined by my aspirations for what I want that character to be and be-</p><p>come (within the limitations of her capacities, of course).” This is the hardest</p><p>identity to describe but the most important one for understanding the power</p><p>of games like Arcanum. I will represent this identity as “James Paul Gee as</p><p>Bead Bead,” where the word “as” is italicized to indicate that, in this identity,</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 55</p><p>56 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>the stress is on the interface between—the interactions between—the real-</p><p>world person and the virtual character.</p><p>A game like Arcanum allows me, the player, certain degrees of freedom</p><p>(choices) in forming my virtual character and developing her throughout the</p><p>game. In my projective identity I worry about what sort of “person” I want</p><p>her to be, what type of history I want her to have had by the time I am done</p><p>playing the game. I want this person and history to reflect my values, though</p><p>I have to think reflectively and critically about them, since I have never had</p><p>to project a Half-Elf onto the world before. But this person and history also</p><p>reflect what I have learned from playing the game and being Bead Bead in</p><p>the land of Arcanum. A good role-playing video game makes me think new</p><p>thoughts about what I value and what I do not.</p><p>I, the real-world person, James Paul Gee, a creature with multiple identi-</p><p>ties, face the fact that I am fixed in certain ways. Though I am, like all human</p><p>beings, ever changing, at the moment I am who I am (I wish I had more hair,</p><p>but I don’t; I wish I was thinner, but I am not; I wish I was a better game player,</p><p>but I am not). At least for the moment, I must live with my limitations. Bead</p><p>Bead, my virtual alter-ego, is a creature who is, at any moment in the game,</p><p>also fixed in certain ways—she is skilled in certain areas, not others (e.g., while</p><p>she was pretty good at picking pockets, she was lousy at picking locks). At least</p><p>for the given moment in the game, I/she must live with her limitations.</p><p>The kind of person I want Bead Bead to be, the kind of history I want</p><p>her to have, the kind of person and history I am trying to build in and</p><p>through her is what I mean by a projective identity. Since these aspirations</p><p>are my desires for Bead Bead, the projective identity is both mine and hers,</p><p>and it is a space in which I can transcend both her limitations and my own.</p><p>To see more clearly what I mean by a projective identity and how it dif-</p><p>fers from the virtual identity of being Bead Bead and the real-world identity</p><p>of being James Paul Gee (however myriad a thing that is), consider that each</p><p>of the three identities I am talking about can fail (or, for that matter, succeed)</p><p>in different sorts of ways.</p><p>The virtual character Bead Bead (my alter-ego) can fail to defeat another</p><p>character in battle because, as a Half-Elf, at that point in the game, she just is</p><p>not strong enough to win. This is a limitation I have to live with if I want to</p><p>be Bead Bead. Of course, I can mediate on what it feels like—in my role as</p><p>Bead Bead—to be unable to get what I need or want at a certain point be-</p><p>cause I am physically too powerless to get it.</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 56</p><p>57v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>The real-world person (James Paul Gee) can fail to use the game controls</p><p>in an effective way, thereby causing Bead Bead to lose a fight against a weaker</p><p>creature she could have otherwise beaten; he can fail to save the game at a</p><p>good time and place (e.g., saving in the middle of a battle that cannot be won</p><p>is a bad move); he can fail to find his (Bead Bead’s) way in a maze because he</p><p>has poor spatial abilities (a trait Bead Bead therefore inherits). He can even re-</p><p>alize that his former Catholic inhibitions will not let Bead Bead take up a</p><p>madam’s offer of a free trip to her (female) brothel. (This is just an example:</p><p>there is such a brothel in Arcanum, but my former Catholic inhibitions, very</p><p>real in the real world, did not, in fact, deny Bead Bead a well-deserved night of</p><p>forbidden pleasure, though, it turns out, she fainted in the middle of things.)</p><p>These are limitations in the real-world me as a game player (an identity</p><p>intersected by a good many other identities), limitations I have to live with if</p><p>I want to play and eventually get better at games. One sort of limitation video</p><p>games certainly bring up to real-world baby boomers like me is that they do</p><p>not reward—in fact, they punish—some of my most cherished ways of learn-</p><p>ing and thinking (e.g., being too quick to want to get to a goal without en-</p><p>gaging in sufficient prior nonlinear exploration).</p><p>The projective identity of Bead Bead as a project (mine) in the making</p><p>can fail because I (the real-world James Paul Gee) have caused Bead Bead</p><p>(the virtual me) to do something in the game that the character I want Bead</p><p>Bead to be would not or should not do. For example, on my first try at the</p><p>game, early on I had Bead Bead sell the ring the old man had given</p><p>social world. However, if you want to do</p><p>physics—for good or ill—it’s best to use the word “work” the way physicists</p><p>do. In that case, they are “right.”</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 2</p><p>3v INTRODUCTION v</p><p>These viewpoints seem obvious to me. They will seem so to some read-</p><p>ers as well. Nonetheless, they occasion great controversy. Furthermore, they</p><p>are not the views about reading and thinking on which most of our schools</p><p>today operate. Take reading, for instance. We know a great deal about the</p><p>psycholinguistics of reading—that is, about reading as a mental act taking</p><p>part in an individual’s head. These views strongly inform how reading is</p><p>taught in school. And there is nothing wrong with this, save that psycholin-</p><p>guistics is only part—in my view the smaller part—of the reading picture. We</p><p>know much less about reading as a social achievement and as part and parcel</p><p>of a great many different social practices connected to a great many different</p><p>social groups that contest how things should be read and thought about.</p><p>The same is true of thinking. Cognitive science has taught us a great deal</p><p>about thinking as a mental act taking part in an individual’s head. For various</p><p>reasons, however, these views less strongly inform how teaching and learning</p><p>work in today’s schools than they used to. This is so, in part, because the</p><p>views about thinking current in cognitive science stress the importance of ac-</p><p>tive inquiry and deep conceptual understanding, things that are not politi-</p><p>cally popular any longer in schools, driven as they are today by standardized</p><p>tests and skill-and-drill curricula devoted to “the basics.”</p><p>Nonetheless, it is true that we know much less about thinking as a social</p><p>achievement and as part and parcel of a great many different social practices</p><p>connected to a great many different social groups that contest how things</p><p>should be read and thought about. For example, it turns out that botanists</p><p>and landscape architects classify and think about trees quite differently. Their</p><p>different contexts, social practices, and purposes shape their thinking (and</p><p>reading) in different ways. Neither way is “right” or “wrong” in general. We</p><p>know little about how social groups, social practices, and institutions shape</p><p>and norm thinking as a social achievement, that is, about how they shape</p><p>human minds when those minds are being botanists or landscape architects,</p><p>though not when these same people are being other things.</p><p>And this last point is crucial. Since reading and thinking are social</p><p>achievements connected to social groups, we can all read and think in differ-</p><p>ent ways when we read and think as members (or as if we are members) of dif-</p><p>ferent groups. I, for one, know well what it is like to read the Bible differently</p><p>as theology, as literature, and as a religious skeptic, thanks to different experi-</p><p>ences and affiliations in my life thus far. Any specific way of reading and think-</p><p>ing is, in fact, a way of being in the world, a way of being a certain “kind of</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 3</p><p>4 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>person,” a way of taking on a certain sort of identity. In that sense, each of us</p><p>has multiple identities. Even a priest can read the Bible “as a priest,” “as a lit-</p><p>erary critic,” “as a historian,” even “as a male” or “ as an African American”</p><p>(priest, literary critic, historian, or ethnic group member), even if he chooses</p><p>to privilege one way of reading—one identity—over another.</p><p>This does not mean we all have multiple personality disorder. We each</p><p>have a core identity that relates to all our other identities (as a woman, femi-</p><p>nist, wife, ethnic of a certain sort, biologist, Catholic, etc.). We have this core</p><p>identity thanks to being in one and the same body over time and thanks to</p><p>being able to tell ourselves a reasonably (but only reasonably) coherent life</p><p>story in which we are the “hero” (or, at least, central character). But as we</p><p>take on new identities or transform old ones, this core identity changes and</p><p>transforms as well. We are fluid creatures in the making, since we make our-</p><p>selves socially through participation with others in various groups. Social</p><p>practices and social groups are always changing, some slowly, some at a faster</p><p>pace (and the pace of change, for many social practices and groups, gets faster</p><p>and faster in our contemporary high-tech global world).</p><p>Although the viewpoints I have sketched above may (or may not) seem</p><p>obvious, they have taken me a lot of time to work on and, in the act, I have</p><p>become if not “old,” then “older,” what we might call a late-middle-age</p><p>“baby boomer.” I was born in 1948. So, for heaven’s sake, what I am doing</p><p>playing video games and, worse yet, writing about it? The short answer, but</p><p>not really the whole answer, since I came to this desire after playing the</p><p>games, was that I wanted to say about learning just what I have said above</p><p>about reading and thinking.</p><p>The longer answer is this: When my six-year-old was four, I used to sit</p><p>next to him as he played video games, starting with Winnie the Pooh and mov-</p><p>ing on to Freddy Fish, Pajama Sam, and Spy Fox. I was intrigued. One day I</p><p>decided I wanted to help my child play Pajama Sam in No Need to Hide When</p><p>It’s Dark Outside. This is a game where the player (as the comic book super-</p><p>hero “Pajama Sam”—a character who is “just” the small boy Sam pretending</p><p>to be a superhero in order to increase his courage) must solve problems in the</p><p>“Land of Darkness” to meet “Darkness” and tame him, so that the player</p><p>(Sam) need no longer be afraid of the dark. A typical problem in the game is</p><p>deciding how to convince a talking wooden boat that wood floats, so that the</p><p>boat, which is afraid of water, can feel free to go “boating” on the water and</p><p>take Pajama Sam where he needs to go. I decided to play through the game</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 4</p><p>5v INTRODUCTION v</p><p>by myself so I could “coach” my child as he played. (Now he charges me a</p><p>dollar any time I attempt to “coach” him when he is playing a video game—</p><p>he calls it “bossing him around” and “telling him what to do when he can fig-</p><p>ure it out for himself.”)</p><p>When I played the game I was quite surprised to find out it was fairly</p><p>long and pretty challenging, even for an adult. Yet a four-year-old was willing</p><p>to put in this time and face this challenge—and enjoy it, to boot. I thought, as</p><p>someone who has worked in the second half of his career in education (the</p><p>first half was devoted to theoretical linguistics), “Wouldn’t it be great if kids</p><p>were willing to put in this much time on task on such challenging material in</p><p>school and enjoy it so much?”</p><p>So I decided to buy and play an adult game (“adult” here means the game</p><p>is played by teenagers on up; video-game players tend to be anywhere be-</p><p>tween 3 years old and 39). I somewhat arbitrarily picked the game The New</p><p>Adventures of the Time Machine, a game involving adventure, problem solving,</p><p>and shooting (based loosely on H. G. Wells), knowing nearly nothing about</p><p>video games. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. This game,</p><p>like nearly all such games, takes a great many hours to play. Many good video</p><p>games can take 50 to 100 hours to win, even for good players. Furthermore,</p><p>it was—for me—profoundly difficult.</p><p>In fact, this was my first revelation. This game—and this turned out to</p><p>be true of video games more generally—requires the player to learn and</p><p>think in ways in which I am not adept. Suddenly all my baby-boomer ways of</p><p>learning and thinking, for which I had heretofore received ample rewards,</p><p>did not work.</p><p>My second realization came soon after, when at the end of a day in which</p><p>I had played Time Machine for eight straight hours, I found myself at a party,</p><p>with a splitting headache from too much video motion, sitting next to a 300-</p><p>pound plasma physicist. I heard myself telling the physicist that I found play-</p><p>ing Time Machine a “life-enhancing experience,” without even knowing what</p><p>I meant by that. Fortunately, plasma physicists are extremely tolerant</p><p>her. This</p><p>is not a mistake at playing the game (thus not a failure of the real me to play</p><p>the game properly). It’s a move allowed by the internal design grammar of</p><p>the game and one for which I would have suffered no bad consequences in</p><p>the game world. It is also not something that Half-Elves can’t do or are, for</p><p>that matter, necessarily too principled or ungreedy to want to do. Thus it is</p><p>not necessarily a violation of Bead Bead as a virtual identity.</p><p>However, the act just seemed wrong for the creature I wanted Bead Bead</p><p>to be (or to have become, however partially, by the end of the game). I felt</p><p>when I (Bead Bead) had sold the ring that I was forming a history for Bead</p><p>Bead that was not the one she should have. I wanted her to be a creature who</p><p>acted more intelligently and more cautiously, a creature who could eventually</p><p>look back on the history of her acts without regret. I felt I had “let her down”</p><p>and started the game all over again. Thus, in my projective identity—Bead</p><p>Bead as my project—I am attributing feelings and motives to Bead Bead that</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 57</p><p>58 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>go beyond the confines of the game world and enter the realm of a world of</p><p>my own creation.</p><p>It is not uncommon, even when young people are playing first-person</p><p>shooter games featuring a superhuman hero (like Master Chief in Halo, a</p><p>game for the Xbox)—a character that, unlike Bead Bead, they usually cannot</p><p>choose or develop but must take as is—that they will redo a given fight scene</p><p>because they feel they have “let their character down.” They want to pull off</p><p>the victory more spectacularly as befits a superhero. They feel responsible to</p><p>and for the character. They are projecting an identity as to who the character</p><p>ought to be and what the trajectory of his or her acts in the virtual world</p><p>ought, at the end of the day, to look like.</p><p>Likewise, while some young people will let a superhero first-person</p><p>shooter character kill “civilians” and not just enemies, a good many others</p><p>will not, since they feel that it just isn’t fitting for such a superperson—that is,</p><p>the person they are projecting into the world—to do such a thing. In fact, I</p><p>once had remorse when I let/made Bead Bead kill a pesky chicken, an action</p><p>for which she was also suitably castigated by the self-righteous follower I</p><p>mentioned earlier. Players are projecting an identity onto their virtual char-</p><p>acter based both on their own values and on what the game has taught them</p><p>about what such a character should or might be and become.</p><p>This tripartite play of identities (a virtual identity, a real-world identity,</p><p>and a projective identity) in the relationship “player as virtual character” is</p><p>quite powerful. It transcends identification with characters in novels or</p><p>movies, for instance, because it is both active (the player actively does things)</p><p>and reflexive, in the sense that once the player has made some choices about</p><p>the virtual character, the virtual character is now developed in a way that sets</p><p>certain parameters about what the player can do. The virtual character re-</p><p>dounds back on the player and affects his or her future actions.</p><p>As a player, I was proud of Bead Bead at the end of the game in a way in</p><p>which I have never been proud of a character in a novel or movie, however</p><p>much I had identified with him or her. I can identify with the pride characters</p><p>in a novel or movie must or should feel, given what they have done or how</p><p>far they have come. But my satisfaction with Bead Bead is tinged with pride</p><p>(or, it could have been regret had things turned out differently), at various</p><p>levels, in and with myself. This feeling is not (just) selfish. In a sense, it is also</p><p>selfless, since it is pride at things that have transcended—taken me outside</p><p>of—my real-world self (selves), if I am playing the game reflectively.</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 58</p><p>59v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>IDENTITY AND LEARNING</p><p>The theme of this book is that good video games reflect, in their design,</p><p>good principles of learning. We turn directly to some of these principles in</p><p>the next section and in following chapters. Now I want to discuss how and</p><p>why the sort of play with identities at work in Arcanum is relevant to learning</p><p>outside video games.</p><p>A game like Arcanum is powerfully caught up with playing with identi-</p><p>ties. However, all deep learning—that is, active, critical learning—is inextri-</p><p>cably caught up with identity in a variety of different ways. People cannot</p><p>learn in a deep way within a semiotic domain if they are not willing to com-</p><p>mit themselves fully to the learning in terms of time, effort, and active en-</p><p>gagement. Such a commitment requires that they are willing to see</p><p>themselves in terms of a new identity, that is, to see themselves as the kind of</p><p>person who can learn, use, and value the new semiotic domain. In turn, they</p><p>need to believe that, if they are successful learners in the domain, they will be</p><p>valued and accepted by others committed to that domain—that is, by people</p><p>in the affinity group associated with the domain.</p><p>It has been argued that some poor urban African-American children and</p><p>teenagers resist learning literacy in school because they see school-based lit-</p><p>eracy as “white,” as associated with people who disregard them and others</p><p>like them. They don’t believe that a society that they view as racist will ever</p><p>allow them to gain a good job, status, and power, even if they do succeed at</p><p>school-based literacy. Thus they will not envisage themselves in the new</p><p>identity that success in school-based literacy requires—that is, as the “kind of</p><p>person” who learns, values, and uses such literacy and gets valued and re-</p><p>spected for doing so. Without such an identity commitment, no deep learn-</p><p>ing can occur. The students will not invest the time, effort, and personally</p><p>committed engagement that active, critical learning requires. In fact, they re-</p><p>sist learning in school in the name of another identity that they see such</p><p>learning as putting at risk.</p><p>The tripartite play of identities that a game like Arcanum recruits is at</p><p>the root of active and critical learning in many other semiotic domains, in-</p><p>cluding learning content actively and critically in school. Let’s take good</p><p>school science learning as an example.</p><p>First, let’s consider virtual identities. In a good science classroom, a virtual</p><p>identity is at stake. Learners need to be able to engage in words, interactions,</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 59</p><p>60 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>and actions that allow them to take on the identity of a “scientist.” But what</p><p>does this mean? There are many different sciences and types of scientists. The</p><p>teacher must put into motion, in his or her classroom, a set of values, beliefs,</p><p>and ways with words, deeds, and interactions that represent, for the teacher</p><p>and the students, what it means to be a particular kind of scientist in this class-</p><p>room. Doing this means taking up a specific viewpoint on a specific branch of</p><p>science as a set of cognitive and social practices. Of course, the students are</p><p>not “real” scientists and are not going to become real scientists any time soon.</p><p>What is being created here is a virtual identity (“student as scientist”).</p><p>As I did with Bead Bead in Arcanum, learners in a science classroom should</p><p>see the virtual identity (being a particular type of scientist) as partly fixed by the</p><p>history and workings of the (scientific) semiotic domain being learned and</p><p>partly open to some choices (compatible, of course, with the domain) that they</p><p>themselves get to make about this virtual identity. For example, in one fourth-</p><p>grade classroom in which I have worked, the children did experiments on fast-</p><p>growing plants, mentored, in part, by the scientist who actually invented such</p><p>plants (a man with strong views about how scientists ought to think, value, and</p><p>act) as well as by their teacher (a teacher with strong views about how she wants</p><p>her students to think, value, and act when they are learning</p><p>science). In this</p><p>classroom, the children were expected to act, interact, and use language in ways</p><p>that were recognizable, in terms of the norms set up in this classroom, as scien-</p><p>tists doing science. However, the children could also choose a particular style</p><p>of carrying out their virtual identities as scientists.</p><p>For example, the children chose what questions they wanted to ask and</p><p>what sort of experiments they wanted to carry out to help answer those ques-</p><p>tions. Some worked in closer collaborations with other children than others</p><p>did. Some studied texts more thoroughly before experimentation, some more</p><p>thoroughly afterward. Some experimented to check on the results of previous</p><p>experiments they found suspicious; others chose to try something for the first</p><p>time. Some used African American Vernacular English phonology, some did</p><p>not, though they all used the lexicon and syntax of scientific language about</p><p>plants when they needed to, which was an important norm in the classroom.</p><p>Second, let’s consider real-world identities. In good science classrooms,</p><p>the learners’ real-world identities are involved (“learner as scientist”). All</p><p>learners in a science classroom bring to that room their real-world identities.</p><p>As was the case with me playing Arcanum, each learner has multiple real-</p><p>world identities: A given child might be middle-class, male, African Ameri-</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 60</p><p>61v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>can, a Pokemon fanatic, adept at rap music, and have a good many other</p><p>identities as well. But, too, like me playing Arcanum, where these multiple</p><p>identities are all filtered through my identity as a game player, the multiple</p><p>real-world identities of learners in a science classroom are filtered through</p><p>their real-world identities as a learner, a school learner, and a school science</p><p>learner learning science here and now.</p><p>If a child brings to science learning a real-world identity as a learner, a</p><p>school learner, or a school science learner who is already damaged—and a</p><p>good many children do—then this identity needs to be repaired before any</p><p>active, critical learning can occur here and now. Imagine how successful you</p><p>would be learning to play Arcanum if you started with the assumption that</p><p>you are a failure at learning to play video games and role-playing games in</p><p>particular. This, in fact, is what has happened to me when I tried to learn</p><p>real-time strategy games (e.g., Age of Empires, Star Wars: Galactic Battle-</p><p>grounds, or WarCraft III). I am intimated by anything that is a race against</p><p>time, and so, thus far, I have been a failure at playing real-time strategy</p><p>games well and with enjoyment. Some repair work needs to be done.</p><p>Furthermore, if children cannot or will not make bridges between one or</p><p>more of their real-world identities and the virtual identity at stake in the</p><p>classroom (here, a particular type of scientist)—or if teachers or others de-</p><p>stroy or don’t help build such bridges—then, once again, learning is imper-</p><p>iled. Children who, for instance, see themselves as members of families that</p><p>are adept at technical learning have an advantage, since they can build a pow-</p><p>erful bridge between one of their real-world identities (“people like us learn</p><p>technical stuff well—it’s no big deal”) and the virtual identity at stake in the</p><p>science classroom (“scientists in the sort of semiotic domain being created in</p><p>this classroom do not fear or put off technical learning”). If a child cannot or</p><p>will not build such bridges, then, again, repair works needs to be done.</p><p>But how can such repair work be done? It is no easy matter. In fact, often</p><p>this is what good teaching, especially in socially and culturally diverse class-</p><p>rooms, amounts to. However, good repair work is just a more intense version</p><p>of good teaching and learning for all types of students, including those who</p><p>have no need of any particular repair work.</p><p>Such teaching and learning is, in my view, a matter of three things:</p><p>1. The learner must be enticed to try, even if he or she already has good</p><p>grounds to be afraid to try.</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 61</p><p>62 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>2. The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even if he or she be-</p><p>gins with little motivation to do so.</p><p>3. The learner must achieve some meaningful success when he or she has</p><p>expended this effort.</p><p>There are three principles here because people will not put in effort if they</p><p>are not even willing to try in a domain; success without effort is not reward-</p><p>ing; and effort with little success is equally unrewarding.</p><p>These three things seem pretty basic. Nonetheless, they are left out of</p><p>most of the current debates about education, which tend not to engage with</p><p>issues about the identities learners bring to school and how these identities</p><p>relate to motivation and effort (or their lack) in relation to specific sorts of</p><p>pedagogies.</p><p>Video games are particularly good at these three things, at least for some</p><p>types of learners. For instance, when I started playing video games, I cer-</p><p>tainly brought a fearful and damaged identity as a game player to the task. I</p><p>had never been good at such things in the past, and my identical twin brother</p><p>always beat me when we played the early video games. And I felt too old now</p><p>to have any success. Furthermore, initially I could not conceive of which of</p><p>my multiple real-world identities could possibly serve as bridge to the sorts</p><p>of virtual worlds and identities video games set up (e.g., blasting Aliens—I’ve</p><p>always liked Aliens).</p><p>What enticed me to try in the first place, then? Well, I watched my son</p><p>play video games, starting with Winnie the Pooh, moving on to Pajama Sam,</p><p>Freddy Fish, Putt-Putt, and Spy Fox. I played some of the games myself (“just</p><p>to help him”). I tried a more adult game, one I picked “randomly” at the</p><p>store, the little-known game The New Adventures of the Time Machine. Of</p><p>course, its tie to literature (H. G. Wells’s book The Time Machine) piqued my</p><p>interest and made playing a video game seem more acceptable, in terms of</p><p>some of my real-world identities. My engagement with games through my</p><p>child taught me there was some level at which I could enter this semiotic do-</p><p>main in which I could achieve enough initial success to keep on practicing</p><p>and getting better. To repair damaged learners in any domain, there must be</p><p>some such story, though the stories will be as various as the learners.</p><p>Even more important, I learned that video games create what the psychol-</p><p>ogist Eric Erickson has called a psychosocial moratorium—that is, a learning space</p><p>in which the learner can take risks where real-world consequences are lowered.</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 62</p><p>63v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>After all, you can save the game and start back at the save point when you fail.</p><p>Often you can customize the game to a level of difficulty you can cope with ini-</p><p>tially. And, of course, you can choose the game you want to play. Although you</p><p>have to put out a good deal of effort to play any good video game, there is a rel-</p><p>atively low cost of failure and high reward for success. None of this is to say</p><p>that it does not bother or even frustrate players when they die or do not play</p><p>part of a game well. It does indeed. Of course they care about how well they</p><p>do—but the cost of caring is not prohibitive, as it so often is in school.</p><p>What made me, once I was enticed to try, willing to put in lots of effort</p><p>and practice with video games? When you have chosen a video game well,</p><p>the virtual world it allows you to live in is quite compelling. I found the vir-</p><p>tual world of The New Adventures of the Time Machine simply amazing. I par-</p><p>ticularly liked how, when a certain wave of light went through the world, all</p><p>adult characters in the game changed to their child selves and all children</p><p>changed to their adult selves, so that sometimes the virtual character you are</p><p>playing, Brendan Wales, is a boy, sometimes a man. What makes a game</p><p>compelling to me might not make it so to you. Indeed, what</p><p>made a game</p><p>compelling to me when I started to play is not what makes a game com-</p><p>pelling to me now. But if the virtual world and virtual identity at stake in</p><p>learning is not compelling to the learner, at some level, then little deep learn-</p><p>ing is liable to occur, in part because the learner is going to be unwilling to</p><p>put in the effort and practice demanded for mastering the domain.</p><p>What made The New Adventures of the Time Machine compelling to me</p><p>was initially the way in which I could bridge some of my real-world identities</p><p>to the virtual character I played in the game and the virtual world in which</p><p>he/I moved. For example, there were the ties to literature (books); academics</p><p>(Wales is a scientist); problem solving (another tie, at least initially, to my ac-</p><p>ademic identity); a medieval but futuristic world (I once lived for real in the</p><p>medieval world, though we don’t need to pursue the matter further here);</p><p>and fantasy worlds (I have always been a willing escapee from reality, which is</p><p>why I have always loved movies and have nothing against Ivory Towers).</p><p>Once these ties had drawn me into the game and made me put in lots of ef-</p><p>fort, it would have been disappointing in the extreme to experience no success.</p><p>However, it would have been equally disappointing to get the sorts of rewards</p><p>that much better players get. This would have made me believe the domain</p><p>was not very deep and rich. So how does one build in success for effort, success</p><p>that is earned, not given away, but nonetheless ensured, given the effort?</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 63</p><p>64 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>Good computer games are designed so that they adjust to different levels</p><p>of play and reward each sort of player, if the player is putting in effort, with</p><p>some appropriate degree of success. For example, in a shooter game, after</p><p>much exploration, I may uncover a spiffy rifle that I am just thrilled with,</p><p>since it is so much better than the crowbar I have been using to fend off ene-</p><p>mies, while you, much better at the game than I, may have found a tank.</p><p>Of course, video games offer players a feeling of achievement in a num-</p><p>ber of different ways. First of all, they operate according to a very powerful</p><p>learning principle, a principle we can call the “amplification of input princi-</p><p>ple.” When systems operate according to this principle, they give, for a little</p><p>input, a lot of output. (Driving a car is a good example: You press a little</p><p>pedal and off you zoom.) In a video game, you press some buttons in the real</p><p>world and a whole interactive virtual world comes to life. Amplification of</p><p>input is highly motivating for learning.</p><p>By the way, in the real world, science often operates by the amplification</p><p>of input principle. In a chemistry experiment, you mix a few chemicals and</p><p>make a major discovery, cure cancer, or blow up the lab. Think, too, of the</p><p>monk Mendel and his peas: He putters (in the right way) in the garden and</p><p>unlocks the key to the origins and development of species on earth. Think</p><p>even of Newton’s laws of motion: Such simple and elegant principles cover so</p><p>much ground and give so much insight into so many things that one is simply</p><p>amazed. None of this is to say that great effort is not required. Mendel</p><p>worked for years (and, by the way, failed his exam to become a high school</p><p>biology teacher, which was why he was stuck in the garden). It is just to say</p><p>that there is something very satisfying when what one actually does seems so</p><p>small compared to what one gets. It’s like a miracle.</p><p>Video games also offer other rewards than the powerfully amplified</p><p>outputs they give. When I was enticed to put in effort on The New Adven-</p><p>tures of the Time Machine, new compelling elements quickly arose, beyond</p><p>those connected to my real-world identities and the amplification of input</p><p>I experienced. I discovered that this game, like many other good video</p><p>games, encourages new ways of learning and thinking for an old baby</p><p>boomer like me. I discovered new powers in myself. I felt the dawning of a</p><p>new identity growing, one to be added to my other real-world identities.</p><p>Of course this is true of all good learning—we gain a new valued identity</p><p>that gives us new powers; it’s the final hook where the repair work is fi-</p><p>nally done.</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 64</p><p>65v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>This discussion suggests that good science instruction—or good instruc-</p><p>tion in any content area—must accomplish the same three goals. The learner</p><p>must be enticed to try. This is done through building bridges to his or her</p><p>real-world identities and by creating a psychosocial moratorium.</p><p>The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort. This is done by mak-</p><p>ing the virtual world and virtual identity (e.g., being/doing a particular type</p><p>of scientists in the classroom) at stake in the learning compelling to the</p><p>learner on his or her own terms. The learner needs to be sucked in.</p><p>And, finally, this effort must issue in success at an appropriate level, cus-</p><p>tomized to the learner’s stage of development in the semiotic domain being</p><p>learned. Success for effort at different levels needs to be built in, letting</p><p>learners know all the while that there will be yet greater successes for yet</p><p>greater effort. Amplification of input needs to be designed into the teaching</p><p>and learning. And to ensure the deepest sort of success, the virtual world</p><p>needs to be built in such a way that learners discover new powers and feel the</p><p>dawning of new valued identities.</p><p>Let us turn to projective identities (“the learner as scientist”). If learners are</p><p>to take on projective identities in the science classroom, they must come to</p><p>project their own values and desires onto the virtual identity of “being a sci-</p><p>entist of a certain sort” in this classroom. They also must come to see this</p><p>virtual identity as their own project in the making, an identity they take on</p><p>that entails a certain trajectory through time defined by their own values, de-</p><p>sires, choices, goals, and actions. This is what creates ownership.</p><p>When learners take on a projective identity, they want the scientist they</p><p>are “playing” to be a certain sort of person and to have had a certain sort of</p><p>history in the learning trajectory of this classroom. They have aspirations for</p><p>this scientist, just as I had aspirations for Bead Bead when I played Arcanum.</p><p>Perhaps they want their scientist to have had a history of having been persist-</p><p>ent, resilient in the face of failure, collaborative, risk taking, skeptical, and</p><p>creative. They want their scientist to become this sort of person, whether or</p><p>not they are themselves anything like this in their “everyday” lives. In good</p><p>science learning, learners are not just role-playing being a scientist of a cer-</p><p>tain sort (their virtual identity). They are also proactively building that vir-</p><p>tual person as a certain kind of person with a certain kind of history. They are</p><p>projecting their own hopes and desires onto that person.</p><p>The learner’s hopes, values, and aspirations for the “character” (the vir-</p><p>tual scientist)—and the project the learner makes of that character, the history</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 65</p><p>66 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>he or she builds for that character—have their source not just in the learner’s</p><p>real-world identities, though they most certainly partially have their source</p><p>there as the learner reflects on his or her values, desires, aspirations, and goals.</p><p>They also have their source in what the learner is learning about the virtual</p><p>identity and the virtual world (what it means to be a scientist in this class-</p><p>room). Remember that the projective identity is the interface between one’s</p><p>real-world identities and the virtual identity (e.g., between the real me and the</p><p>virtual Bead Bead). The projective identity is the space in which the learner</p><p>can transcend the limitations both of the virtual identity and the learner’s own</p><p>real-world identity.</p><p>If learners in classrooms carry learning so far as to take on a projective</p><p>identity, something magic happens—a magic that cannot take place in quite</p><p>the same way when playing a video game. The learner comes to know that he</p><p>or she has the capacity, at some level, to take on the virtual identity as a real</p><p>world identity. However much I might want to do, I myself, in the real world,</p><p>have no capacity to become the sort of female Half-Elf I wanted and built</p><p>Bead Bead to be (though I can still adopt some of her persona). But learners</p><p>in a good science classroom come to feel what it is like to have the capacity to</p><p>be the sort of scientist (and person) they have wanted and built their “charac-</p><p>ter” in the classroom to be.</p><p>Learners do not, of course, have to realize this capacity in actuality and</p><p>become scientists. They don’t even have to feel they could become particu-</p><p>larly good scientists—after all, in the projective identity you also learn about</p><p>your own limitations. Often it is enough that they have sensed new powers in</p><p>themselves. They will, possibly for a lifetime, be able to empathize with, affil-</p><p>iate with, learn more about, and even critique science as a valued but vulner-</p><p>able human enterprise.</p><p>This is why it is important for teachers to pick the semiotic domains they</p><p>will teach—and the particular virtual identities and worlds they will create in</p><p>their classrooms—carefully. If children are learning deeply, they will learn,</p><p>through their projective identities, new values and new ways of being in the</p><p>world based on the powerful juxtaposition of their real-world identities (“So,</p><p>that’s what I really feel, think, and value”) and the virtual identity at stake in</p><p>the learning (“So, these are the ways of feeling, thinking, and valuing open to</p><p>a scientist”). This juxtaposition is the ground on which their projective work</p><p>has been done. (“So, I want, for this time and place, to have been this type of</p><p>scientist and person and not that type.”)</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 66</p><p>67v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>LEARNING PRINCIPLES</p><p>The discussion has suggested more learning principles that are built into</p><p>good video games. In this section, I bring these together to continue the list</p><p>started in chapter 2. After listing principles we have already discussed, I dis-</p><p>cuss a few others that are related to them:</p><p>6. “Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle</p><p>Learners can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are</p><p>lowered.</p><p>7. Committed Learning Principle</p><p>Learners participate in an extended engagement (lots of effort and</p><p>practice) as extensions of their real-world identities in relation to a</p><p>virtual identity to which they feel some commitment and a virtual</p><p>world that they find compelling.</p><p>8. Identity Principle</p><p>Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a way</p><p>that the learner has real choices (in developing the virtual identity)</p><p>and ample opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new</p><p>identities and old ones. There is a tripartite play of identities as learn-</p><p>ers relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual</p><p>identity, and a projective identity.</p><p>9. Self-Knowledge Principle</p><p>The virtual world is constructed in such a way that learners learn not</p><p>only about the domain but about themselves and their current and</p><p>potential capacities.</p><p>10. Amplification of Input Principle</p><p>For a little input, learners get a lot of output.</p><p>11. Achievement Principle</p><p>For learners of all levels of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the</p><p>beginning, customized to each learner’s level, effort, and growing</p><p>mastery and signaling the learner’s ongoing achievements.</p><p>Because good video games are built in such a way that they operate by</p><p>these learning principles, several other principles also come into play. One</p><p>thing that designers of video games realize, but that many schools seem</p><p>not to, is that learning for human beings is, in large part, a practice effect.</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 67</p><p>68 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>Humans need to practice what they are learning a good deal before they</p><p>master it. Furthermore, they tend to lose a good deal of their learning—</p><p>including school learning—when they cease to practice the skills associ-</p><p>ated with this learning in their daily lives. This is why it is easy to discover</p><p>many adults who are no longer very good with school-based science, math,</p><p>or literacy if they do not, in their work or home lives, practice these on a</p><p>regular basis.</p><p>The fact that human learning is a practice effect can create a good deal of</p><p>difficulty for learning in school. Children cannot learn in a deep way if they</p><p>have no opportunities to practice what they are learning. They cannot learn</p><p>deeply only by being told things outside the context of embodied actions. Yet</p><p>at the same time, children must be motivated to engage in a good deal of</p><p>practice if they are to master what is to be learned. However, if this practice is</p><p>boring, they will resist it.</p><p>Good video games involve the player in a compelling world of action and</p><p>interaction, a world to which the learner has made an identity commitment,</p><p>in the sense of engaging in the sort of play with identities we have discussed.</p><p>Thanks to this fact, the player practices a myriad of skills, over and over</p><p>again, relevant to playing the game, often without realizing that he or she is</p><p>engaging in such extended practice sessions. For example, the six-year-old we</p><p>discussed in the last chapter has grouped and regrouped his Pikmin a thou-</p><p>sand times. And I have practiced, in the midst of battle, switching Bead Bead</p><p>to a magic spell and away from her sword in a timely fashion a good many</p><p>times. The player’s sights are set on his or her aspirations and goals in the vir-</p><p>tual world of the game, not on the level of practicing skills outside meaning-</p><p>ful, goal-driven contexts.</p><p>Educators often bemoan the fact that video games are compelling and</p><p>school is not. They say that children must learn to practice skills (“skill and</p><p>drill”) outside of meaningful contexts and outside their own goals: It’s too</p><p>bad, but that’s just the way school and, indeed, life is, they claim. Unfortu-</p><p>nately, if human learning works best in a certain way, given the sorts of bio-</p><p>logical creatures we are, then it is not going to work well in another way just</p><p>because educators, policymakers, and politicians want it to.</p><p>The fact is that there are some children who learn well in skill-and-drill</p><p>contexts. However, in my experience, these children do find this sort of in-</p><p>struction meaningful and compelling, usually because they trust that it will</p><p>lead them to accomplish their goals and have success later in life. In turn,</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 68</p><p>69v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>they believe this thanks to their trust in various authority figures around</p><p>them (family and teachers) who have told them this. Other children have no</p><p>such trust. Nor do I.</p><p>In any case, I have already made my own position clear: Passive learning—</p><p>rather than active, critical learning—will not lead to much power and empow-</p><p>erment in the contemporary world, however much it may suit one for a</p><p>low-level service job. Mastering literacy or math as a set of routinized proce-</p><p>dures without being able to use these procedures proactively within activities</p><p>that one understands and for the accomplishment of one’s own goals will not</p><p>lead to learners who can learn quickly and well as they face new semiotic do-</p><p>mains, as they will throughout their lives.</p><p>Learning how to operate the controls of a computer game outside any</p><p>understanding of the meaningful activities the controls are used to accom-</p><p>plish in the virtual world of the game and outside one’s own goals in that</p><p>world leads, in a shooter game or a realistic military game, for example, to a</p><p>quick demise (and, thus, not all that much practice, save at dying again and</p><p>again). In my view, the same is true—metaphorically speaking—in school.</p><p>The achievement principle above (Principle 11) tells us that good</p><p>video games reward all players who put in effort but reward players at dif-</p><p>ferent</p><p>skill levels differently. But there is more to this matter: Good video</p><p>games give players better and deeper rewards as (and if) they continue to</p><p>learn new things as they play (or replay) the game. This means that, in a</p><p>good video game, the distinction between learner and master is vague (at</p><p>whatever level of mastery one thinks one has arrived). If players have just</p><p>routinized their behaviors (i.e., if they operate on “automatic pilot” and</p><p>keep reacting to problems in the same now well-practiced way), a level of</p><p>the game will be reached at which the game will realize this and disreward</p><p>these behaviors. This fact forces players to think about the routinized</p><p>mastery they have achieved and to undo this routinization to achieve a</p><p>new and higher level of skill. This higher level of skill will itself, thanks to</p><p>the large amount of practice that video games allow, become routinized</p><p>(automatic) as the player perfects it, only to be undone later in the game,</p><p>or in the same game played a second time at a higher level of difficulty, or</p><p>in a new game.</p><p>Several educators have argued that this cycle of automatization of skills</p><p>through practice, rethinking this automatization when faced with new condi-</p><p>tions in order to learn new skills and transform old ones, and then perfecting</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 69</p><p>70 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>these new skills through further practice that once again leads to automatiza-</p><p>tion is the very foundation of intelligent practice in the world. Automatization</p><p>is good and necessary if one is to engage in fluent and masterful practice.</p><p>However, it gets in the way of new learning if it does not change and adapt in</p><p>the face of novel conditions and new opportunities to learn, which requires</p><p>the learner to bring back to conscious awareness skills that have become un-</p><p>conscious and taken for granted and to think anew about these skills and how</p><p>they relate to specific sorts of problems. A cycle of automatization, adaptation,</p><p>new learning, and new automatization is a sine qua non of learning for those</p><p>who want to survive as active thinkers and actors in a fast changing world that</p><p>requires the mastery of ever newer semiotic domains. Video games are quite</p><p>adept at creating and sustaining this cycle.</p><p>Finally, all the design features discussed so far work to ensure that a good</p><p>video game operates within the learner’s “regime of competence.” By this I</p><p>mean that the game often operates within, but at the outer edge of, the</p><p>learner’s resources, so that at many points the game is felt as challenging but</p><p>not “undoable.” If learning always operates well within the learner’s re-</p><p>sources, then all that happens is that the learner’s behaviors get more and</p><p>more routinized, as the learner continues to experience success by doing the</p><p>same things. This is good, as we have seen, for learning and practicing fluent</p><p>and masterful performance (which is, indeed, necessary), but it is not good</p><p>for developing newer and higher skills. However, if learning operates outside</p><p>one’s resources, the learner is simply frustrated and gives up.</p><p>While good video games offer players ample opportunity to practice and</p><p>even automatize their skills at various levels, they also always build in many</p><p>opportunities for learners to operate at the outer edge of their regime of</p><p>competence, thereby causing them to rethink their routinized mastery and</p><p>move, within the game and within themselves, to a new level. Indeed, for</p><p>many learners it is these times, when they are operating at the edge of their</p><p>regime of competence, when learning is most exciting and rewarding. Sadly</p><p>in school, many so-called advantaged learners rarely get to operate at the</p><p>edge of their regime of competence as they coast along in a curriculum that</p><p>makes few real demands on them. At the same time, less advantaged learners</p><p>are repeatedly asked to operate outside their regime of competence.</p><p>Additional learning principles follow. These are principles found in good</p><p>video games, but ones that are hallmarks of deep (active and critical) learning</p><p>beyond video games as well.</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 70</p><p>71v LEARNING AND IDENTITY v</p><p>12. Practice Principle</p><p>Learners get lots and lots of practice in a context where the practice is</p><p>not boring (i.e., in a virtual world that is compelling to learners on</p><p>their own terms and where the learners experience ongoing success).</p><p>They spend lots of time on task.</p><p>13. Ongoing Learning Principle</p><p>The distinction between learner and master is vague, since learners,</p><p>thanks to the operation of the “regime of competence” principle</p><p>listed next, must, at higher and higher levels, undo their routinized</p><p>mastery to adapt to new or changed conditions. There are cycles of</p><p>new learning, automatization, undoing automatization, and new re-</p><p>organized automatization.</p><p>14. “Regime of Competence” Principle</p><p>The learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the</p><p>outer edge of, his or her resources, so that at those points things are</p><p>felt as challenging but not “undoable.”</p><p>BIBL IOGRAPHICAL NOTE</p><p>There is a massive amount of work on socially situated identities and how they are</p><p>changing in the modern world. For work compatible with my approach in this chap-</p><p>ter, see Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood 1999; Bauman 2000; Beck, Giddens, & Lash</p><p>1994; Castells 1996; Foucault 1980; Gee 2000–2001; Gee, Hull, & Lankshear 1996;</p><p>Giddens 1991, 1992; Hacking 1995, 1998; Martin 1995; Mishler 2000; Rifkin 2000;</p><p>Sternberg & Grigorenko 1999; Taylor 1989, 1992, 1994. For an early, but brilliant</p><p>work on socially situated identities, specially relevant to science, see Fleck 1979, orig-</p><p>inally 1935.</p><p>For a discussion of the advantages of many middle- and upper-middle-class stu-</p><p>dents in our schools and the disadvantages of many minority and lower socioeco-</p><p>nomic students, see Finn 1999; Gee 1996; Heath 1983; Miller 1995; Varenne &</p><p>McDermott 1998.</p><p>For Erikson’s notion of a psychosocial moratorium, see Erikson 1968. Several of</p><p>the learning principles in this chapter relate closely to principles developed in current</p><p>accounts of efficacious learning in cognitive science; see, for example, Bransford,</p><p>Brown, & Cocking 1999 and Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser 2001. Several of the</p><p>principles fit very well with Bereiter and Scardamelia’s 1989 important discussion of</p><p>learning and expertise. The importance of gaining and undoing automatization, and</p><p>its connection to the ongoing learning principle, is well discussed in Bereiter and</p><p>Scardamelia’s book. The practice principle is discussed in sociocultural terms in</p><p>Scribner and Cole’s famous 1981 study. The regime of competence is discussed in</p><p>diSessa 2000 and is related to Vygotsky’s well-known notion of the zone of proximal</p><p>development; see Vygotsky 1978. diSessa 2000 also discusses amplification of input</p><p>and contains an extended and important discussion of committed learning.</p><p>04 gee ch 3 3/13/03 12:07 PM Page 71</p><p>This page intentionally left blank</p><p>4</p><p>SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING:</p><p>WHAT SHOULD YOU DO AFTER YOU HAVE</p><p>DESTROYED THE GLOBAL CONSPIRACY?</p><p>LEARNING AND EXPERIENCE</p><p>TRADITIONAL VIEWS OF LEARNING STRESS THE MIND AND NOT THE</p><p>body. Learning is held to be a matter of grand generalizations, principles, rules,</p><p>abstractions, and logical computations. This view treats the human mind as if it</p><p>is pretty much like a digital computer. Digital computers operate by rules that</p><p>tell them how to manipulate symbols, symbols that have no real meanings to</p><p>the computer beyond the manipulations the computer carries out on them.</p><p>Another view of learning holds that human learning and thinking does</p><p>not, in fact, always work this way and often does not work this way when hu-</p><p>mans are thinking at their best. This view holds, rather, that humans learn,</p><p>think, and solve problems by reflecting on their previous embodied experi-</p><p>ences in the world. That is, humans have experiences, store these experi-</p><p>ences, and make connections or associations among them.</p><p>Of course, humans don’t just store these experiences</p><p>in their minds “as</p><p>is.” Rather, they edit them according to their interests, values, goals, and so-</p><p>ciocultural memberships. This editing process helps them structure the ways</p><p>in which they pay attention to their experiences, foregrounding some things</p><p>in them and backgrounding others. Furthermore, it is the connections or as-</p><p>sociations that people make among their experiences that are crucial to learn-</p><p>ing, thinking, and problem solving.</p><p>When people are faced with a new situation in the world, aspects or ele-</p><p>ments of this situation remind them of aspects or elements of experiences</p><p>they have had in the past. They use these elements of past experience to think</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 73</p><p>74 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>about the new situation. Sometimes they can just apply past experience pretty</p><p>much as is to the new situation. Other times they have to adapt past experi-</p><p>ence, more or less, to apply it, in the process learning something new that</p><p>can, in turn, be applied to future situations.</p><p>Let me give you an overly simplified but instructive example of the contrast</p><p>between learning and thinking as using grand generalizations and learning and</p><p>thinking as using one’s embodied experiences in the world. Let’s say that you</p><p>have experienced in the past a number of white, middle-age, professors who</p><p>were born outside the middle class but who are now in the middle class. In each</p><p>case, say, these people displayed a good deal of “class conflict,”—that is, they</p><p>displayed a certain discomfort with their middle-class identities and associates.</p><p>Now consider two ways this information could be stored in your mind.</p><p>One way would be as verbal generalization, something like:</p><p>(Some? many?) white, middle-age, professors born outside the middle class,</p><p>but now in the middle class, display a good deal of class conflict.</p><p>The other way you could store your experiences of such people in your mind</p><p>is as a set of more or less strong connections or associations among all the ele-</p><p>ments that compose the experiences. That is, you would associate or connect</p><p>“being middle age,” more or less strongly, with each other element in the experi-</p><p>ences, namely, “being a professor,” “having been born outside the middle class,”</p><p>“being now middle class,” and “displaying a good deal of class conflict.” The</p><p>same is true of all the other elements, each of which must be associated with each</p><p>other element, more or less strongly. Perhaps you associate “being a professor”</p><p>strongly with “being middle class”; strongly, but somewhat less strongly, with</p><p>“being white”; and weakly with “having been born outside the middle class.”</p><p>You must form such links or associations between any and all of the ele-</p><p>ments that compose your experiences of these sorts of professors. Doing this</p><p>makes for complicated diagrams on paper, though the brain realizes such</p><p>things by forming more or less strong connections among (sets of) neurons in</p><p>terms of which notions like “being a professor” activate or remind you, more</p><p>or less strongly, of other notions like “being middle class” or “displaying class</p><p>conflict.” What we are talking about here, in reality, is patterns you are dis-</p><p>covering in your experiences and storing in your mind.</p><p>Now consider what happens when you are faced with an African Ameri-</p><p>can, middle-age, professor who was born outside the middle class but who is</p><p>now in the middle class. What do you conclude? If your mind has stored the</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 74</p><p>75v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>verbal generalization above, you conclude nothing, since this person, being</p><p>African American, does not fall under the generalization, which was, after all,</p><p>about white professors. A digital computer that has stored this generalization</p><p>as a set of symbols, confronted with the symbol “African American,” will sim-</p><p>ply not apply the generalization.</p><p>On the other hand, if you have stored the sorts of associations or links</p><p>between elements of your experiences just discussed, then, many of the fea-</p><p>tures or elements of this person’s situation will activate or remind you of</p><p>those associations. For example, the fact that this African American is a pro-</p><p>fessor but was born outside the middle class will bring to mind the likelihood</p><p>that he or she will display a good deal of class conflict. This is so because your</p><p>mind associates (fairly strongly) the combination of being a professor and</p><p>having been born outside the middle class with displaying class conflict.</p><p>While you may also associate being a professor with “being white,” you do</p><p>not use this association, since in this case you know the person is not white.</p><p>You suppress it and go with the others that lead you to predict you might find</p><p>this person displaying some degree of class conflict.</p><p>Of course, you might turn out to be wrong. Perhaps this African Ameri-</p><p>can professor is quite comfortable with his or her middle-class status. But one</p><p>has to make guesses and hypotheses to think, act, and problem-solve in the</p><p>world at all. All the cavepeople who stored the generalization “Tigers are</p><p>dangerous” and refused to apply it to even the first lion they saw probably</p><p>died without many offspring. The ones who let the many features lions share</p><p>with tigers trigger the association between these elements and danger passed</p><p>on a great many more genes.</p><p>If you turn out to be wrong, you will, perhaps, store a negative associa-</p><p>tion between “being African American” and “class conflict” and strengthen</p><p>your associations between “white” and “class conflict.” You will adjust a num-</p><p>ber of other associations, as well, though all rather tentatively, since so far</p><p>you have only one case to go on. If you experience many other cases of con-</p><p>tent middle-class African American professors born outside the middle class,</p><p>eventually you will revise your associations more confidently.</p><p>I pointed out that the view of the mind and learning that favors rules, ab-</p><p>stractions, and generalizations is connected to the digital computer as a</p><p>metaphor for how human thinking and learning work. The view of the mind</p><p>and learning that favors associations among the elements of our actual (and</p><p>vicarious) embodied experiences is itself connected to another sort of com-</p><p>puter: a so-called connectionist or parallel distributed network computer.</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 75</p><p>76 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>One of several sources of rich evidence that human thinking is deeply</p><p>rooted in embodied experience of the world comes from studies of human</p><p>languages. In all human languages, very often abstract notions are encoded in</p><p>words and phrases that constitute metaphors based in concrete, embodied ex-</p><p>perience of a material world. For example, consider how we talk about the</p><p>mind and thinking. We say things like “Why can’t you get this into your</p><p>head,” “Keep this in mind,” or “I can’t get the idea out of my head.” In all the</p><p>cases we treat the mind as a container that things can go in and out of.</p><p>For another example, consider how we talk about argumentation. We say</p><p>things like “He destroyed your point,” “She defended her own perspective,”</p><p>“She marshaled her arguments,” or “You need to challenge his basic premises,”</p><p>where we treat argumentation as a form of fighting or combat. Or, for a final</p><p>example, note how we talk about consciousness: “He came back to conscious-</p><p>ness,” “He lost consciousness,” “He went unconscious,” or “Try to bring the</p><p>experience back to conscious awareness;” here we treat consciousness as a sort</p><p>of place we can come to and leave.</p><p>There are, of course, a great many more such examples. The argument is</p><p>that just as language builds abstractions on the basis of concrete images from</p><p>embodied experience of a material world, so, too, does human learning and</p><p>thinking. One good way to make people look stupid is to ask them to learn</p><p>and think in terms of words and abstractions that they cannot connect in any</p><p>useful way to images or situations in their embodied experiences in the</p><p>world. Unfortunately,</p><p>we regularly do this in schools.</p><p>In this chapter I discuss the ways in which video games encourage and</p><p>recruit situated, experiential, and embodied forms of learning and thinking.</p><p>In this respect good video games incorporate quite good perspectives on how</p><p>learning, thinking, and problem solving work in the world and should work</p><p>in schools. I base my discussion, for concreteness, around a particular game,</p><p>the game Deus Ex.</p><p>DEUS EX</p><p>Deus Ex combines two different genres. It is a first-person shooter in which</p><p>you fight a variety of enemies from a first-person perspective. It is also a role-</p><p>playing game in which, like Arcanum, you have choices about how to build</p><p>and develop your character. Before you start playing the game, you choose</p><p>the name and look of your character. (Your character can be black or white,</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 76</p><p>77v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>for instance.) Whatever real name you choose, your character’s code name is</p><p>“J. C. Denton.” J. C. is a covert special operative for UNATCO, the United</p><p>Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition. Note that this game came out well before</p><p>the events of September 11, 2001. In fact, the game raises interesting issues</p><p>about who is and who is not a “terrorist” and under what circumstances.</p><p>J. C. Denton is not fully human. He and his brother, Paul, have been</p><p>“augmented” via a technology that allows them to leverage advanced abilities</p><p>through the use of “nanite organisms” placed in their blood. Nanites are ro-</p><p>bots so tiny that they can fit inside individual cells. (They have been said to</p><p>be the future of robotics, tiny devices that could be used for things like clean-</p><p>ing out clogged arteries or performing other sorts of surgery inside the</p><p>body—however, I have no idea how far such technology has gone, or will go,</p><p>in the “real” world.) In this case, nanites have been injected into J. C. Den-</p><p>ton’s body. This gives him (you) the capacity to gain superhuman powers of</p><p>various sorts in the game world.</p><p>After choosing a real name and look for J. C. Denton, you get a certain</p><p>number of points with which you can increase his (your) skills. There are 11</p><p>skills (computers, electronics, environmental training, lock picking, medi-</p><p>cine, swimming, and skills with weapons of different types, including demoli-</p><p>tion devices, heavy weapons, low-tech weapons, pistols, and rifles). Each of</p><p>these skills has four levels of mastery (Untrained, Trained, Advanced, and</p><p>Master). You begin the game with each skill at Untrained Level, except for</p><p>skill with pistols, which begins at Trained Level. You use your initial points to</p><p>increase J. C.’s (your) training level in some of the other areas, though you</p><p>only have enough initial points to increase a few skills a bit. As you play the</p><p>game, you earn additional points with which you can further increase J. C.’s</p><p>(your) skills.</p><p>Enhancing certain skills and not others, at the beginning and throughout</p><p>the game, directly affects how you play. For example, if you are at the Expert</p><p>Level as a lock picker, then you can easily get into places you wouldn’t be able</p><p>to get into otherwise, unless you have found a key. If your Demolition</p><p>Weapons skills are no good, then you are quite likely to die if you try to dis-</p><p>arm a bomb. If your Computer skills are good, you can hack more easily into</p><p>the myriad of computational devices you find in the world of Deus Ex; other-</p><p>wise you have to gain such information through other sources, if you can.</p><p>When I played the game, toward the end, at a point where I knew I was</p><p>about to face a great many powerful robots and other enemies, I found a very</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 77</p><p>78 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>large gun in a dark corner of a military base, quite suitable for blowing robots</p><p>off the face of the earth. Alas, I did not have any great skill at Heavy</p><p>Weapons, so stealth and more subtle fighting strategies were the order of the</p><p>day. (Truth be told, I used the experience points I gained using these more</p><p>subtle strategies to increase my Heavy Weapons training, went back and got</p><p>the gun, and had great fun blasting robots with a single shot.)</p><p>But choosing J. C’s skill levels is not the only way in which you can develop</p><p>him. As I said above, he is “nano-augmented.” In fact, he has slots for nano-</p><p>augmentations distributed around his body. You begin the game with three</p><p>nano-augmentations already installed: an Infolink that allows J. C. to receive</p><p>real-time neural communications from commanders and allies; an IFF (Identi-</p><p>fication: Friend or Foe) system that analyzes people and tells J. C. whether they</p><p>are hostile or not; and a Light that runs off J. C.’s own biological system.</p><p>You can fill the unfilled slots as you find special augmentation canisters</p><p>in the game world. Canisters contain blueprints for two special abilities, such</p><p>as having the strength to lift a truck or the ability to see through concrete</p><p>walls. When you install a canister into the appropriate slot on J. C.’s body,</p><p>thereby releasing its nanite organisms into his bloodstream, you must choose</p><p>one, and only one, of the two special abilities associated with that particular</p><p>canister. Once you fill a slot, that augmentation is permanently installed, and</p><p>the second option is gone forever. So you must choose wisely. The augmen-</p><p>tations you select greatly affect how you (J. C. Denton) develop in the game</p><p>world and what strategies will be most advantageous against different foes</p><p>and challenges. You can also find upgrade canisters that allow you to upgrade</p><p>any augmentations you have already installed, thereby making them stronger</p><p>or more efficient.</p><p>Besides developing J. C.’s skills and nano-augmentations, there are other</p><p>ways in which the player’s decisions affect how the game will unfold. In your</p><p>role as J. C. Denton, you have conversations with a number of other charac-</p><p>ters. You can choose different things to say and different ways to respond.</p><p>How you have carried out a conversation with a given character will affect</p><p>what that character thinks of you, how he or she reacts to you, and what he or</p><p>she will later do or not do for or against you. Furthermore, you face other</p><p>sorts of consequential choices in the world of Deus Ex, and how you make</p><p>such choices affects what happens later in the game.</p><p>When you start the game, you enter a futuristic world that has fallen on</p><p>hard times. Crime, terrorism, and disease are out of all control. No single</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 78</p><p>79v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>government or agency can react fast or efficiently enough to control the</p><p>worldwide devastation. In particular, a horrible plague, known as the Grey</p><p>Death, is sweeping through cities and countries around the world over,</p><p>killing millions. There is only one known cure for the disease, a vaccine</p><p>called Ambrosia, a product that is in short supply and manufactured by the</p><p>U.S. corporation VersaLife.</p><p>One of UNATCO’s duties is to administer this cure for the Grey Death.</p><p>However, the general public does not know that the cure exists. It is kept a</p><p>secret and given only to politicians, dignitaries, and billionaires to ensure that</p><p>the world’s economy does not crash. Or so the rich and powerful claim.</p><p>Nothing is ever as it seems at first in Deus Ex.</p><p>J. C. Denton’s first mission takes place on Liberty Island, New York, site</p><p>of the Statue of Liberty. Inside the statue, a terrorist group knows as the NSF</p><p>is holding an UNATCO agent hostage. J. C. (you) soon discovers that the</p><p>NSF is aware of Ambrosia and intends to replicate it and release it to the</p><p>public. This begins a wild adventure in which you move to various sites and</p><p>cities across the world (all rendered in great futuristic detail, based on actual</p><p>architectural maps), uncovering plots and conspiracies, solving a great many</p><p>problems, and fighting enemies of all sorts.</p><p>Deus Ex involves a good many moral dilemmas. For example, you dis-</p><p>cover, fairly early on, that the NSF are not really the “bad guys” and you and</p><p>your fellow UNATCO soldiers are not</p><p>really the “good guys.” Yet you have</p><p>already killed a number of NSF soldiers. If you have been too enthusiastically</p><p>gung ho in this enterprise, you are left with a very real sense of guilt. In fact,</p><p>when I returned to the UNATCO base from one of my first missions and</p><p>told the munitions officer, a seasoned veteran, how I had performed, he told</p><p>me that I was not a real soldier, because I too readily killed the enemy rather</p><p>than attempting to sneak past them when I could. He refused to give me</p><p>more ammunition, telling me to use what I had left more carefully and hu-</p><p>manely. Thus, when I discovered that the NSF troops were not really the ter-</p><p>rorists UNATCO claimed, I felt all the more guilty.</p><p>Later in the game you are forced to choose whether to save your badly</p><p>wounded brother, Paul, now fighting at your side against UNATCO, or to</p><p>escape and let him die in order to go on fighting for your current cause. (In-</p><p>deed, Paul urges you to go on and leave him to protect your retreat.) If you</p><p>save your brother (and survive yourself, of course), he plays a role later in the</p><p>story; if you don’t, he doesn’t, though you later see his body in one of your</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 79</p><p>80 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>enemies’ bases. When I played Deus Ex, I let Paul die and have regretted it</p><p>ever since. (At the time, I didn’t feel I had the requisite game-playing skills to</p><p>save him—but perhaps that was just a lame self-exonerating excuse.)</p><p>By the time Deus Ex ends, you know a great deal more than you did at</p><p>the beginning. You have discovered that the world is, in fact, run by a small</p><p>number of rich global elites, elites who hide behind and control forces like</p><p>the U.S. government, many members of which don’t themselves fully under-</p><p>stand who is actually pulling the strings in the global world. These elites have</p><p>helped bring on all the devastation in the world, and they benefit by it. At the</p><p>conclusion of the game, three opposing figures (each of whom has been help-</p><p>ing you) try to convince you to engage in a different set of specific final ac-</p><p>tions that will end the game in three different ways.</p><p>One figure tells you the world will always be run by a small elite, though</p><p>the current ones are selfish, evil, and corrupt. He tells you that you and he</p><p>and his allies should replace this ruling elite and that all of you will behave</p><p>more humanely, because you are better people. If you do what he suggests,</p><p>you will become one of the elite rulers of the world—and, indeed, you (J. C.</p><p>Denton) are a moral force and incorruptible force, are you not?</p><p>Another figure tells you that the world will always be run by a small elite as</p><p>long as there is a global world tied together through global networked commu-</p><p>nications. This figure encourages you to engage in actions that will destroy this</p><p>global communicational infrastructure, returning the world to small and tech-</p><p>nologically primitive villages that will not be closely connected to each other in</p><p>any larger system. This, he claims, is the only moral and humane future.</p><p>The last figure agrees that the world will always be run by a small elite,</p><p>especially if the world is a globally interconnected into one big system, as it</p><p>is. But this figure, who happens to be not a human but a massive and sophis-</p><p>ticated artificial intelligence, tells you that the only moral and humane way</p><p>forward is to have him—a completely dispassionate and rational being—run</p><p>the world, not human beings, any of whom will simply be corrupted by their</p><p>passions and by power. Humans have failed, over all of history, to institute a</p><p>nonviolent, humane world for everyone. Only a purely rational and logical</p><p>being can make good decisions. The artificial intelligence device tells you to</p><p>engage in actions that will allow it to rule.</p><p>You must choose which ending to bring on. Yourself as an incorruptible</p><p>elite? Return to small villages? Rational rule by artificial intelligence? I must</p><p>admit, I was thrilled at the end of Deus Ex as I (J. C. Denton) ran from the</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 80</p><p>81v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>ruins of the massive global communicational infrastructure collapsing all</p><p>around me after what I had just done and returned the world to a plethora of</p><p>small villages. You might have decided otherwise.</p><p>Deus Ex has one feature that is characteristic of good video games,</p><p>though the feature is stronger in this game than in many others: There are</p><p>nearly always multiple solutions to any given problem. Players can choose</p><p>strategies that fit with their style of learning, thinking, and acting. This, of</p><p>course, is highly motivating both for learning and for playing the game and a</p><p>rich source for reflecting on one’s own styles of learning and problem solving</p><p>(and, perhaps, experimenting with new ones).</p><p>STORYING AND L IVING IN</p><p>THE VIRTUAL WORLD OF A VIDEO GAME</p><p>Deus Ex has a rich, ever-twisting and turning story line. However, story in Deus</p><p>Ex, and other video games with rich stories, functions quite differently than it</p><p>does in books or movies. A book or movie can tell its story from first episode to</p><p>last or it can begin in the middle of the action and only later get to the initial</p><p>events in the story. In either case, the reader or viewer knows someone else (the</p><p>“author”) has determined the order in which events in the story will be encoun-</p><p>tered. This “author” (which, of course, can be multiple people) also determines</p><p>the sources through which the reader or viewer gains crucial information. For</p><p>example, a crucial piece of information may be in a conversation between two</p><p>lovers rather than in a hidden diary. In a video game, on the other hand, some</p><p>players will gain such information one way and others in another way.</p><p>In Deus Ex, the player uncovers the story bit by bit as he or she discovers</p><p>documents, hacks into computers, overhears or engages in conversations, or</p><p>sees things happen. Different players find different things and discover infor-</p><p>mation relevant to the story line in a different order. Furthermore, the player</p><p>him- or herself engages in actions that are themselves part of the story line</p><p>and different players will engage in different actions or the same ones in a</p><p>different order.</p><p>The story line in a video game is a mixture of four things:</p><p>1. The game designers’ (“author’s”) choices</p><p>2. How you, the player, have caused these choices to unfold in your spe-</p><p>cific case by the order in which you have found things</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 81</p><p>82 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>3. The actions you as one of the central characters in the story carry out</p><p>(since in good video games there is a good deal of choice as to what to</p><p>do, when to do it, and in what order to do it)</p><p>4. Your own imaginative projection about the characters, plot, and</p><p>world of the story</p><p>The first and fourth of these items are true of books and movies, as well, but</p><p>items 2 and 3 are true of video games only.</p><p>Thus, in video games like Deus Ex, stories are embodied in the player’s</p><p>own choices and actions in a way they cannot be in books and movies. Let’s</p><p>just call them, for short, “embodied stories.” When I use the term “embod-</p><p>ied,” I mean to include the mind as a part of the body. So “embodied” means,</p><p>for me, “in the body” and/or “in the mind.” It’s too bad there is no word</p><p>“emminded” to go alongside “embodied.” When I talk about a person’s em-</p><p>bodied experiences in the world (virtual or real), I mean to cover all the per-</p><p>ceptions, actions, choices, and mental simulations of action or dialogue.</p><p>This is not to say that stories in video games are better or worse than sto-</p><p>ries in books and movies. Each form has its own advantages and disadvantages.</p><p>For example, since stories in video games are embodied in you the player, you</p><p>(i.e., the character you are playing) cannot die and stay dead (you can die, but</p><p>then you start the game again from a saved point or from the beginning). Oth-</p><p>erwise, the game would be over before its “ending.” In a book or movie, you</p><p>can get quite sad and</p><p>upset when a character you empathize with dies (you</p><p>know that the character probably won’t being coming back, unless it’s a super-</p><p>natural story, and when characters we like do come back in books and movies,</p><p>we sometimes cry because it is such a rare, unreal, and special event).</p><p>When the character you are playing dies in video game (and it is always,</p><p>of course, a main character), you can get sad and upset, but you also usually</p><p>get “pissed” that you (the player) have failed. Perhaps you even feel that you</p><p>have failed your character. And then you start again, usually from a saved</p><p>game, motivated to do better. This is part of what it means to call these</p><p>video-game stories embodied stories. The emotional investments you have in</p><p>a video-game story are entirely different from the emotional investments you</p><p>have in a book or movie.</p><p>There are all sorts of reasons why stories in video games cannot (yet?) be,</p><p>in a sense, as deep or rich as stories in good books and movies. For example, a</p><p>video game must work out different futures based on choices different players</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 82</p><p>83v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>have made and different things they have done earlier in the game. This creates</p><p>a computational problem that books and movies do not face, since in a book or</p><p>movie the designer always knows what choices have been made earlier. (Al-</p><p>though quite simple “choose your own adventure” books are available.) Fur-</p><p>thermore, real conversation is beyond the current computational power of a</p><p>video game, since human beings can make so many different responses to any-</p><p>thing said to them. A game like Deus Ex carries out conversations by giving the</p><p>player a choice among several different things to say. Again, creating flexible,</p><p>unpredictable conversations is a computational problem that books and movies</p><p>do not face, since they simply script specific set dialogue.</p><p>Video games compensate for these limitations by creating what I have</p><p>called embodied stories, stories that involve and motivate the player in a dif-</p><p>ferent way than do the stories in books and movies. One intriguing thing I</p><p>have found about video-game stories is that I am so involved at the level of ac-</p><p>tion—worrying about where I am, what’s to be found there, what I am doing,</p><p>what good or bad things might happen to me, what needs doing right now—</p><p>that the larger story line often seems to float somewhat vaguely above me. I</p><p>can’t quite pull all the pieces together, since I’m too busy right now and, in</p><p>any case, some of the pieces I discovered long ago are a bit hazy now. I can, of</p><p>course, later (in a safe place) stop and try to put the pieces together, and I can</p><p>then also usually look things up in notes games often keep for players.</p><p>Thus, although every once in a while in playing a game I do pause to</p><p>consider the bigger picture—I certainly had to, at the end of the game, be-</p><p>fore I decided to send the world back to small villages—there is also a deli-</p><p>cious feeling of being in the midst of things, looking at the world from the</p><p>ground up and not from a God’s-eye perspective. I suppose this is, again, part</p><p>of what it means to call these stories “embodied stories.” But it is also a whole</p><p>lot like what “real” life is like. (Also, it is a lot like what it feels like to engage</p><p>in an academic discipline when one does research and doesn’t just study</p><p>things after they have become all cut and dried.)</p><p>Again, video-game stories are not better or worse than stories in books and</p><p>movies. They are different. They offer different pleasures and frustrations.</p><p>S ITUATED AND EMBODIED MEANINGS</p><p>The embodied nature of video-game stories brings out a crucial feature. In</p><p>video games, meaning (sense, significance) is itself situation-specific and</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 83</p><p>84 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>embodied. In the chapter 2 I argued that this is how meaning operates when</p><p>people actually know what they are doing in a domain and can do more than</p><p>mindlessly repeat words and other symbols that they cannot situate inside</p><p>any real practice. Video games are particularly good examples of how learn-</p><p>ing and thinking work in any semiotic domain when learning and thinking</p><p>are powerful and effective, not passive and inert.</p><p>In games like Deus Ex, the meaning of any event, object, artifact, conver-</p><p>sation, written note, or any other potentially meaningful sign is up for grabs.</p><p>You don’t really know what it means unless and until you can give it a specific</p><p>meaning in terms of the world through which you are moving as a character</p><p>or the actual actions you carry out in that world. Furthermore, as that world</p><p>and your actions in it change, the meanings of things you have seen or dis-</p><p>covered can change as well. That is, meanings in video games are always spe-</p><p>cific to specific situations. They are always actively assembled (or changed)</p><p>by the player, on the spot, in terms of images, materials, and embodied ac-</p><p>tions in the virtual world being mutually created by the game and the player.</p><p>In other words, meanings in video games are what I called, in chapter 2, “sit-</p><p>uated meanings” or “situation-specific meanings,” not just general ones.</p><p>Take something as simple as a numerical code—say five numbers—that</p><p>you find on a desk or hack from a computer while playing Deus Ex. It’s pretty</p><p>clear that this code is nearly meaningless—not completely so, of course, since</p><p>you know that it’s a code of some sort. The code, at this point, just has a de-</p><p>contextualized, general meaning, the meaning “code of some sort.” This</p><p>code means nothing until you find something (e.g., a safe, a locked door, a</p><p>computer) that it can be used on to some good effect. Then the numbers take</p><p>on the situated, embodied, action-oriented meaning “opens this safe.”</p><p>There is a wonderful moment in Deus Ex when a completely evil and</p><p>powerful cyborg woman at the UNATCO command center, a creature who</p><p>has threatened me (J. C. Denton) throughout a large part of the game, is</p><p>about to kill me when I have switched sides away from UNATCO. She ex-</p><p>pects an all-out fight at which I am quite likely to lose badly. But I have</p><p>found—unbeknownst to her—a code word in a computer that will cause her</p><p>cyborgian mechanisms to self-destruct should I utter it in her presence.</p><p>Those who have not found the code must fight her. I, on the other hand,</p><p>utter the code word and experience a delicious moment of wonderfully em-</p><p>bodied and situated meaning (much as I did when I first realized that fractal</p><p>equations lead to marvelous patterns when you feed them into a computer or</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 84</p><p>85v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>actually graph them on a piece of paper, rather than learn just to repeat them</p><p>and verbally list their numerical properties).</p><p>What I have said about a set of numbers found on a discarded note in</p><p>Deus Ex is true, too, of any written note or diary you find in the game. It’s</p><p>true of any words you hear as well. To make sense of them you must fit them</p><p>into the emerging plot and virtual world you are discovering and helping to</p><p>build. And you must do this actively, since you have choices about where to</p><p>go and what to do. Every potentially meaningful sign in a game like Deus</p><p>Ex—whether word, deed, artifact, or action—is a particular sort of invitation</p><p>to embodied action (action actually carried out or simulated in the mind). And</p><p>the nature of that invitation changes as you experience new situations and en-</p><p>gage in new actions in the virtual world of the game.</p><p>Even something that seems to have a set and general meaning—a lock</p><p>pick, for example—takes on different meanings in different situations. For</p><p>example, at a certain point you may have but one lock pick left. Then that</p><p>lock pick comes to mean something like: try other ways into doors, use this lock</p><p>pick as last resort, because there may be more important doors coming up. Notice</p><p>that if you don’t assemble some useful meaning for the lock pick, bad effects</p><p>can happen to you in the virtual world of the game.</p><p>There is a price to be</p><p>paid for not thinking at a situation-specific level and in terms of embodied</p><p>actions in the game.</p><p>Of course, one might now say, “Well, that’s just how meaning works in</p><p>video games—it isn’t and shouldn’t be that way outside of games, say, in</p><p>school.” You already know from the discussion in chapter 2 that I disagree</p><p>with this view. General, purely verbal meanings, meanings that a person has</p><p>no ability to customize for specific situations and that offer the person no in-</p><p>vitations for embodied actions in different situations, are useless (save for</p><p>passing tests in school).</p><p>This theory of meaning as situated and embodied fits well with some</p><p>current work that I believe to be at the cutting edge of psychological research</p><p>on how comprehension of oral and written language works when it works ef-</p><p>fectively. For example, consider these two remarks:</p><p>. . . comprehension is grounded in perceptual simulations that prepare</p><p>agents for situated action.</p><p>. . . to a particular person, the meaning of an object, event, or sentence is</p><p>what that person can do with the object, event, or sentence.</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 85</p><p>86 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>While video games actively encourage such situated and embodied</p><p>thinking and doing, school often does not. In school, words and meanings</p><p>usually float free of material conditions and embodied actions. They take on</p><p>only general, so-called decontextualized meanings. Their meanings just</p><p>amount to spelling out a word or phrase in terms of still other words and</p><p>phrases, themselves with only general meanings. People (like the college</p><p>physics students discussed in the chapter 2) cannot actually do anything with</p><p>these words. (They cannot even simulate or carry out a conversation with</p><p>these meanings, a conversation in which what they know is used flexibly and</p><p>adapted differently to specific situations being discussed.)</p><p>Imagine you were to design a video game in which the player, a student</p><p>of architecture, had to learn a new 3-D architectural drafting system, a quite</p><p>complicated symbol system. (Such a game does exist, though I have not</p><p>played it.) Certainly learning such a system is equivalent in complexity to tak-</p><p>ing a class on a new language or a new academic area in school. If this game</p><p>operated like a good video game, then the player’s understandings of this new</p><p>system—all its words, symbols, and procedures—would have to be embodied</p><p>in materials, images, and actions in the game’s virtual world. Furthermore,</p><p>the player’s understandings would have to change and transform in new and</p><p>different situations. Additionally, the player would have to actively assemble</p><p>these understandings on the spot and face real consequences in the virtual</p><p>world for these assemblies. In fact, it is these consequences that allow the</p><p>player to test whether the situation- and action-specific meanings he or she</p><p>has constructed are viable or not.</p><p>Compare this to sitting these students down and having them read books,</p><p>listen to lectures, and discuss these matters apart from any real consequences.</p><p>In this case, the students would have only general and/or verbal meanings, not</p><p>embodied ones that they can customize to and for different situations of actual</p><p>practice. I am not saying that we need to teach these architecture students—or</p><p>any others—via video games. Good classrooms can teach people how to situ-</p><p>ate and embody meanings in a variety of different ways, though this may in-</p><p>volve getting out of the classroom from time to time.</p><p>I suppose we are unlikely to teach people new to drafting via just reading</p><p>and telling. (Though we do often try to teach adults who already know some-</p><p>thing about an older drafting system a new one via this route—it works as</p><p>well as you’d expect, which is not well at all.) But we do routinely try to teach</p><p>children things like science and math this way in our schools.</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 86</p><p>87v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>Now someone’s sure to say: “But we cannot teach children everything</p><p>they need to learn in school, things like science and math, in ways that</p><p>make sense in terms of situated meanings and embodied actions. There</p><p>just isn’t enough time, and, after all, they’re not all going to become scien-</p><p>tists.” There is a sort of good common sense in this remark, but the prob-</p><p>lem is this: There really is no other way to make sense. If all you know—in</p><p>any domain—are general meanings, then you really don’t know anything</p><p>that makes sense to you.</p><p>Of course, students in a science classroom do not need to know how to</p><p>situate meanings in all the contexts a “real” scientist does. And they don’t</p><p>need to be experts at situating meanings in the sort of science they are study-</p><p>ing. But they do need to know how some important and central situated</p><p>meanings work in the semiotic domain—to have some embodied feel for the</p><p>matter. Otherwise they have, in reality, no idea how or why words and other</p><p>sorts of signs in the domain make sense.</p><p>Imagine a person who claims to know what the word “democracy”</p><p>means, because she can give you a dictionary definition of the word or, per-</p><p>haps, a definition she has gotten out of a social studies textbook. However,</p><p>faced with the following claim, she can make no intelligent response that</p><p>speaks in any situated way to the situation the claim is about (i.e., the impact</p><p>of wealth on elections in some countries):</p><p>A country is not a democracy when candidates must take contributions from</p><p>wealthy people in order to run for office, since then only wealthy people de-</p><p>termine the slate of candidates.</p><p>The responder does not have to agree with this claim. But he or she</p><p>surely has to see the sort of situated meaning being given to “democracy” in</p><p>the claim. Further, he or she must then either accept that situated meaning or</p><p>counter it with another situated meaning customized for (i.e., situationally</p><p>relevant) to the situation the claim is dealing with. This is dialogue as en-</p><p>gaged action. If you can’t use “democracy” in a situation-specific way in such</p><p>dialogues, then the word does not make sense to you, no matter how well you</p><p>can repeat a dictionary definition for the word.</p><p>Let me give one more example, again taking a rather mundane word. A</p><p>faculty colleague of mine who is an avid proponent of phonics instruction in</p><p>the early grades said to me once, “Kids are coming to college unable to read</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 87</p><p>88 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>the books I assign.” He blamed this situation on a lack of early phonics in-</p><p>struction. (The students were victims, he claimed, of Whole Language.)</p><p>Thus, he was giving the word “read” the situated meaning: able to decode print,</p><p>that is, translate letters into sounds.</p><p>However, this situated meaning, in fact, does not work well for the very</p><p>situation the faculty member was describing. These students can almost cer-</p><p>tainly decode print, and many can decode it quite well. This is a matter that</p><p>can be checked quite easily (by asking them to decode complex nonsense</p><p>words out of context). The problem these students have—if they do indeed</p><p>have a problem—is that they cannot comprehend the complex academic lan-</p><p>guage of college textbooks well. Such language is quite different from “every-</p><p>day” colloquial language and requires students to have heard and read a good</p><p>bit of it before they are very adept at doing so. The faculty member’s claim</p><p>has a chance of being true only if the word “read” is given a situated meaning</p><p>something like: able to understand text at a level that goes beyond mere decoding</p><p>and knowledge of the literal meanings of everyday words and phrases to an under-</p><p>standing of the specialist language of writing that is more technical than everyday</p><p>language.</p><p>Let me end this discussion of situated meaning with an example relevant</p><p>to science education, an example that will take us away from words toward</p><p>situated and embodied meanings for other sorts of symbols. The science edu-</p><p>cator Andrea diSessa has successfully</p><p>of</p><p>human variation. (The plasma that physicists deal with is not, as he told me, a</p><p>product from blood but a state of matter; when I asked him why he had not</p><p>brought any to the party, he explained to me that plasma is so unstable and</p><p>dangerous that if he had brought any, there would have been no party.)</p><p>Oddly enough, then, confronting what was, for me, a new form of learn-</p><p>ing and thinking was both frustrating and life enhancing. This was a state</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 5</p><p>6 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>that I could remember from my days in graduate school and earlier in my ca-</p><p>reer (and when I changed careers midstream). Having long routinized my</p><p>ways of learning and thinking, however, I had forgotten this state. It brought</p><p>back home to me, forcefully, that learning is or should be both frustrating</p><p>and life enhancing. The key is finding ways to make hard things life enhanc-</p><p>ing so that people keep going and don’t fall back on learning and thinking</p><p>only what is simple and easy.</p><p>My third realization followed from these other two. I eventually finished</p><p>The New Adventures of the Time Machine and moved onto Deus Ex, a game I</p><p>chose because it had won Game of the Year on many Internet game sites. Deus</p><p>Ex is yet longer and harder than Time Machine. I found myself asking the fol-</p><p>lowing question: “How, in heaven’s name, do they sell many of these games</p><p>when they are so long and hard?” I soon discovered, of course, that good</p><p>video games (like Deus Ex) sell millions of copies. Indeed, the video-game in-</p><p>dustry makes as much or more money each year than the film industry.</p><p>So here we have something that is long, hard, and challenging. However,</p><p>you cannot play a game if you cannot learn it. If no one plays a game, it does</p><p>not sell, and the company that makes it goes broke. Of course, designers</p><p>could keep making the games shorter and simpler to facilitate learning.</p><p>That’s often what schools do. But no, in this case, game designers keep mak-</p><p>ing the games longer and more challenging (and introduce new things in new</p><p>ones), and still manage to get them learned. How?</p><p>If you think about it, you see a Darwinian sort of thing going on here. If</p><p>a game, for whatever reason, has good principles of learning built into its de-</p><p>sign—that is, if it facilitates learning in good ways—then it gets played and</p><p>can sell a lot of copies, if it is otherwise good as well. Other games can build</p><p>on these principles and, perhaps, do them one step better. If a game has poor</p><p>learning principles built into its design, then it won’t get learned or played</p><p>and won’t sell well. Its designers will seek work elsewhere. In the end, then,</p><p>video games represent a process, thanks to what Marx called the “creativity of</p><p>capitalism,” that leads to better and better designs for good learning and, in-</p><p>deed, good learning of hard and challenging things.</p><p>It would seem intriguing, then, to investigate what these principles of</p><p>learning are. How are good video games designed to enhance getting them-</p><p>selves learned—learned well and quickly so people can play and enjoy them</p><p>even when they are long and hard? What we are really looking for here is</p><p>this: the theory of human learning built into good video games.</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 6</p><p>7v INTRODUCTION v</p><p>Of course, there is an academic field devoted to studying how human be-</p><p>ings learn best and well, namely the field of cognitive science. So we can,</p><p>then, compare the theory of learning in good video games to theories of</p><p>learning in cognitive science. Who’s got the best theory? Well, it turns out</p><p>that the theory of learning in good video games is close to what I believe are</p><p>the best theories of learning in cognitive science. And this is not because</p><p>game designers read academic texts on learning. Most of them don’t. They</p><p>spent too much of their time in high school and beyond playing with com-</p><p>puters and playing games.</p><p>And, too, there is a key place—though hardly the only one—where</p><p>learning takes place: school. So, we also can ask how the theory of learning in</p><p>good video games compares to how teaching and learning work in school.</p><p>Here we face a mixed bag, indeed. On one hand, the theory of learning in</p><p>good video games fits well with what are I believe to be the best sorts of sci-</p><p>ence instruction in school. On the other hand, this sort of science instruction</p><p>is rare and getting yet rarer as testing and skill-and-drill retake our schools.</p><p>In turn, the theories of learning one would infer from looking at schools</p><p>today comport very poorly with the theory of learning in good video games.</p><p>If the principles of learning in good video games are good, then better</p><p>theories of learning are embedded in the video games many children in ele-</p><p>mentary and particularly in high school play than in the schools they attend.</p><p>Furthermore, the theory of learning in good video games fits better with the</p><p>modern, high-tech, global world today’s children and teenagers live in than</p><p>do the theories (and practices) of learning that they see in school. Today’s</p><p>world is very different from the world baby boomers like me grew up in and</p><p>on which we have based many of our theories. Is it a wonder, then, that by</p><p>high school, very often both good students and bad ones, rich ones and poor</p><p>ones, don’t much like school?</p><p>This book discusses 36 principles of learning (individually in each chap-</p><p>ter and listed together in the appendix) that I argue are built into good video</p><p>games. From the way I opened this introduction, you already know that,</p><p>while this book deals with learning, it will most certainly deal with learners</p><p>(players) embedded in a material and social world. How could it be other-</p><p>wise? After all, they are playing a game. Video games—like many other</p><p>games—are inherently social, though, in video games, sometimes the other</p><p>players are fantasy creatures endowed, by the computer, with artificial intelli-</p><p>gence and sometimes they are real people playing out fantasy roles.</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 7</p><p>8 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>However, this book has another goal as well. It seeks to use the discus-</p><p>sion of video games to introduce the reader to three important areas of cur-</p><p>rent research and to relate these areas together. One of these areas is work on</p><p>“situated cognition” (i.e., thinking as tied to a body that has experiences in</p><p>the world). This work argues that human learning is not just a matter of what</p><p>goes on inside people’s heads but is fully embedded in (situated within) a ma-</p><p>terial, social, and cultural world. Another one of these areas is the so-called</p><p>New Literacy Studies, a body of work that argues that reading and writing</p><p>should be viewed not only as mental achievements going on inside people’s</p><p>heads but also as social and cultural practices with economic, historical, and</p><p>political implications.</p><p>Obviously, these two bodies of work have much in common, though their</p><p>advocates often disagree with each other over details. People in New Literacy</p><p>Studies often distrust psychology more than people working in the area of sit-</p><p>uated cognition. And, too, people working in New Literacy Studies tend to be</p><p>more “political” than people working in the area of situated cognition.</p><p>The third area is work on so-called connectionism, a view that stresses the</p><p>ways in which human beings are powerful pattern-recognizers. This body of</p><p>work argues that humans don’t often think best when they attempt to reason</p><p>via logic and general abstract principles detached from experience. Rather,</p><p>they think best when they reason on the basis of patterns they have picked up</p><p>through their actual experiences in the world, patterns that, over time, can be-</p><p>come generalized but that are still rooted in specific areas of experience.</p><p>This view of the mind is obviously one way to spell out what it means to</p><p>say thinking and reasoning are “situated.” I argue that it is one way to spell</p><p>out how and why reading, writing, and thinking are inextricably linked to so-</p><p>cial and cultural practices. I don’t actually</p><p>taught children in sixth grade and be-</p><p>yond the algebra behind Galileo’s principles of motion (principles related to</p><p>Newton’s laws) by teaching them a specific computer programming language</p><p>called Boxer.</p><p>The students write into the computer a set of discrete steps in the pro-</p><p>gramming language. For example, the first command in a little program</p><p>meant to represent uniform motion might tell the computer to set the speed</p><p>of a moving object at one meter per second. The second step might tell the</p><p>computer to move the object. And a third step might tell the computer to re-</p><p>peat the second step over and over again. Once the program starts running,</p><p>the student will see a graphical object move one meter each second repeat-</p><p>edly, a form of uniform motion.</p><p>Now the student can elaborate the model in various ways. For example,</p><p>the student might add a fourth step that tells the computer to add a value a to</p><p>the speed of the moving object after each movement the object has taken (let</p><p>us just say, for convenience, that a adds one more meter per second at each</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 88</p><p>89v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>step). So now, after the first movement on the screen (when the object has</p><p>moved at the speed of one meter per second), the computer will set the speed</p><p>of the object at two meters per second (adding one meter), and, then, on the</p><p>next movement, the object will move at the speed of two meters per second.</p><p>After this the computer will add another meter per second to the speed, and</p><p>on the next movement the object will move at the speed of three meters per</p><p>second. And so forth forever, unless the student has added a step that tells the</p><p>computer when to stop repeating the movements. This process is obviously</p><p>modeling the concept of acceleration. And, of course, you can set a to be a</p><p>negative number instead of a positive one, and watch what happens to the</p><p>moving object over time instead.</p><p>The student can keep elaborating the program and watch what happens</p><p>at every stage. In this process, the student, with the guidance of a good</p><p>teacher, can discover a good deal about Galileo’s principles of motion</p><p>through his or her actions in writing the program, watching what happens,</p><p>and changing the program. What the student is doing here is seeing in an</p><p>embodied way, tied to action, how a representational system that is less ab-</p><p>stract than algebra or calculus (namely, the computer programming lan-</p><p>guage, which is actually composed of a set of boxes) “cashes out” in terms of</p><p>motion in a virtual world on the computer screen.</p><p>An algebraic representation of Galileo’s principles is more general, basi-</p><p>cally a set of numbers and variables that do not directly tie to actions or</p><p>movements as material things. As diSessa points out, algebra doesn’t distin-</p><p>guish effectively “among motion (d = rt), converting meters to inches (i =</p><p>39.37 x m), defining coordinates of a straight line (y = mx) or a host of other</p><p>conceptually varied situations.” They all just look alike. He goes on to point</p><p>out that “[d]istinguishing these contexts is critical in learning, although it is</p><p>probably nearly irrelevant in fluid, routine work for experts,” who, of course,</p><p>have already had many embodied experiences in using algebra for a variety of</p><p>different purposes of their own.</p><p>Once learners have experienced the meanings of Galileo’s principles</p><p>about motion in a situated and embodied way, they have understood one of</p><p>the situated meanings for the algebraic equations that capture these princi-</p><p>ples at a more abstract level. Now these equations are beginning to take on a</p><p>real meaning in terms of embodied understandings. As learners see algebra</p><p>spelled out in more such specific material situations, they will come to master</p><p>it in an active and critical way, not just as a set of symbols to be repeated in a</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 89</p><p>90 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>passive and rote manner on tests. As diSessa puts it: “Programming turns</p><p>analysis into experience and allows a connection between analytic forms and</p><p>their experiential implications that algebra and even calculus can’t touch.”</p><p>diSessa knows what good video games know, but schools often don’t:</p><p>Meaning is material, situated, and embodied if and when it is useful. Abstract</p><p>systems originally got their meanings through such embodied experiences</p><p>for those who really understand them. Abstraction rises gradually out of the</p><p>ground of situated meaning and practice and returns there from time to time,</p><p>or it is meaningless to most human beings.</p><p>THE PROBE, HYPOTHESIZE,</p><p>REPROBE, RETHINK CYCLE</p><p>Because video games so nicely exemplify the nature of meaning as situated</p><p>and embodied, they are also capable of capturing—and allowing players to</p><p>practice—a process that is the hallmark of “reflective practice” in areas like</p><p>law, medicine, teaching, art, or any other area where there are expert practi-</p><p>tioners. Playing a good video game like Deus Ex well requires the player to</p><p>engage in the following four-step process:</p><p>1. The player must probe the virtual world (which involves looking</p><p>around the current environment, clicking on something, or engaging</p><p>in a certain action).</p><p>2. Based on reflection while probing and afterward, the player must</p><p>form a hypothesis about what something (a text, object, artifact, event,</p><p>or action) might mean in a usefully situated way.</p><p>3. The player reprobes the world with that hypothesis in mind, seeing</p><p>what effect he or she gets.</p><p>4. The player treats this effect as feedback from the world and accepts</p><p>or rethinks his or her original hypothesis.</p><p>In fact, if you don’t engage in this four-step process, you won’t get very</p><p>far in a good video game. For example, in a good but rather standard shooter</p><p>game (like, say, Return to Castle Wolfenstein), you can run around shooting at</p><p>things a bit without engaging in this process, but soon you will run out of</p><p>ammo and health and die, probably in the wrong place, all too close to where</p><p>you started. In a good video game you have to try lots of different things and</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 90</p><p>91v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>then you have to think about the results you get, try to make sense of what</p><p>they mean for you and your progress through the virtual world of the game.</p><p>In fact, you can’t get very far in any real-world practice either if you don’t en-</p><p>gage in this four-step process (say, in being a good teacher, musician, artist,</p><p>architect, businessperson, or athlete).</p><p>Some consider this four-step process to be the basis of expert reflective</p><p>practice in any complex semiotic domain. But it is also how children learn,</p><p>even very young children, when they are not learning in school. It is how</p><p>children initially build their minds and learn their cultures as they develop</p><p>early in life. In other words, this four-step process is central to how humans,</p><p>as biological creatures of a certain sort, learn things when learning is essential</p><p>for survival and for thriving in the world.</p><p>The human mind is a powerful pattern recognizer. In fact, humans are</p><p>quite adept at finding complex patterns where none actually exists (witness</p><p>astrology), a problem I will deal with in the next chapter. The young child</p><p>does something (this is the probe); for example, he or she tries to crush a</p><p>soft cloth book lying on the floor. The child, usually unconsciously, re-</p><p>flects on what he or she is doing while acting (“reflection-in-action”) and</p><p>after having acted (“reflection-on-action”). Such reflection involves listen-</p><p>ing to the world as it “talks back” to your action, giving you feedback</p><p>about the success or failure of that action in terms of your own goals and</p><p>desires.</p><p>Based on this feedback, the child forms a hypothesis (a guess) about a</p><p>pattern that may exist (a set of relationships), say: “Books are soft, they</p><p>squish, but don’t break.” His or her next action (the reprobe) is treated as a</p><p>test of this pattern—do things really work this way or not? Perhaps the child</p><p>now tries to crush a book made of paper laying</p><p>next to the cloth book on the</p><p>floor and finds that it doesn’t squish, but rips and tears. Based on this test, the</p><p>child reflects again in and on action, accepting or re-forming his or her hy-</p><p>pothesis about what the pattern is (say, now, hypothesizing, that cloth books</p><p>squish and paper ones tear).</p><p>The child, through action and reflection, becomes a “self-teacher,”</p><p>“training” his or her own mental networks of associations (the patterns the</p><p>mind stores). Here the network of associations is something like: book—</p><p>cloth—squish; book—paper—tear, a larger pattern made up of two smaller</p><p>subpatterns. Note that the child’s pattern already captures the fact that there</p><p>are two types of book. Indeed, the child may already have another subpattern</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 91</p><p>92 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>for book that is something like: book—cardboard—bends, doesn’t break, ex-</p><p>emplifying yet another category of book.</p><p>As the child forms more associations around the node book (e.g., with</p><p>things like fun, pictures, being read to by his or her parents, etc.), the child</p><p>builds up an interlocking set of patterns (call this all the “book pattern”) and</p><p>subpatterns (elements like book—cloth—squish, or book—parent—being</p><p>read to—feeling loved). Of course, subpatterns in the book pattern are also</p><p>subpatterns in other larger patterns to which they are linked. For example,</p><p>the subpattern book—cloth—squish is also a subpattern in the larger “squish</p><p>pattern” (the pattern that captures how squishiness works in the world).</p><p>This forming of associations is crucial not just to the development of the</p><p>child’s mind. It also constitutes aspects of the child’s emerging identity as a</p><p>cultured being of a certain sort connected to a certain sort of family, social</p><p>group, and community. For example, the six-year-old playing Pikmin in</p><p>chapter 2, when he was two, took his first hike in a forest. He saw a chipmunk</p><p>on a fallen tree and said “Henry’s forest,” referring to a chipmunk in a</p><p>Thomas the Tank Engine book he had at home, a book devoted to an animated</p><p>railroad engine named Henry who is helping to reforest an area after it has</p><p>burned in a forest fire.</p><p>What is happening here is that, as part and parcel of his embodied expe-</p><p>rience in the world, this child is creating a link (association) in his mental</p><p>networks (patterns) between “real” chipmunks and “book” chipmunks, be-</p><p>tween the real world and the world of books. If such episodes continue (and</p><p>they did, of course), the real world and books become integrally linked into</p><p>the same sets of associations or patterns for such a child. Books and the real</p><p>world don’t stand apart or opposed.</p><p>Since the initial patterns we form in life are a basis on which we form all</p><p>the rest of our later patterns (because they determine the hypotheses we orig-</p><p>inally make and revise, setting a certain trajectory to our mental develop-</p><p>ment), children like this have links between the real world and books as a</p><p>foundational part of who they are in mind, body, and culture. It is not sur-</p><p>prising that they often orient to books and literacy when they go to school in</p><p>powerfully different ways from children who have formed quite different pat-</p><p>terns of association and built their viewpoints on the world on that basis.</p><p>Of course, there is no simple deterministic story to be told here. People</p><p>can transform their mental associations when sufficiently powerful learning</p><p>experiences encourage them to do so. What I am referring to here is a certain</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 92</p><p>93v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>“set” or “direction” given to a child’s cognitive, social, and cultural develop-</p><p>ment. Nonetheless, for some children, who have failed to interlink literacy</p><p>into their embodied experiences of the world and their social groups, power-</p><p>ful learning experiences may be required in school to set some new directions</p><p>in respect to literacy. Unfortunately, such children are often the ones who get</p><p>literacy in school completely detached from anything otherwise meaningful</p><p>to them, as they are skilled-and-drilled to death on things like phonics.</p><p>As children build up their concepts—like their concept of book—as a set</p><p>of complexly interlinked patterns and subpatterns, they use these patterns to</p><p>situate meanings that are appropriate to specific situations. They pull out the</p><p>subpatterns that are appropriate (useful) for the situation they are in, adapt-</p><p>ing them to the current situation. If no such subpattern exists already, they</p><p>cobble together a new subpattern from bits and pieces of existing ones and</p><p>adapt this to the current situation.</p><p>For example, if a child wants something hard and flat to draw or color</p><p>on, he or she will situate a meaning for book something like hard flat surface</p><p>good for supporting a piece of paper, drawing on a pattern like “book—paper</p><p>pages—hard covers—covers won’t bend,” and others, and adapting them to</p><p>the current need. Of course, such adaptations, based on experiences in the</p><p>world, in turn form new subpatterns in the child’s mind. Our experiences in</p><p>the world build patterns in our mind, and then the mind shapes our experi-</p><p>ence of the world (and the actions we take in it), which, in turn, reshapes our</p><p>mind. Concepts are never set and finished. They are like a large tree that al-</p><p>ways seeks to rise higher (i.e., attain more generality) but that must always</p><p>send into the ground deeper roots (i.e., return to embodied experience).</p><p>This view of the mind, as I pointed out earlier, is quite different from the</p><p>traditional one in psychology. In the traditional view, concepts are like gen-</p><p>eral definitions in the mind (like definitions for words in dictionaries). In the</p><p>traditional view, the mind thinks through stored “facts” and grand general-</p><p>izations that are like statements in logic (like “All books have covers”). In the</p><p>view I am developing here, the mind thinks and acts on the basis of some-</p><p>thing like stored images (simulations) of experience, images that are com-</p><p>plexly interlinked with each other (thereby attaining some generality) but</p><p>that are always adapted to new experiences in ways that keep them tied to the</p><p>ground of embodied experience and action in the world.</p><p>These two viewpoints on the mind have different consequences for how</p><p>people think schools should operate. If you believe the traditional view, you</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 93</p><p>94 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>think schools should teach children to memorize facts and should overtly tell</p><p>them important generalizations. If you believe the other view, you think</p><p>schools must give children embodied experiences in and through which they</p><p>can form networks of associations that must continually be rechecked against</p><p>the world. Of course, as I show in the next chapter, in this view, children still</p><p>need active teachers who are guiding the hypotheses they make and the pat-</p><p>terns they form from their embodied experience. Otherwise children, ever</p><p>creative beings, may very well hit on wonderful patterns that, in the end,</p><p>don’t work in the semiotic domains to which they are exposed in school.</p><p>The four-stage probe/hypothesize/reprobe/rethink process that under-</p><p>lies the formation of the child’s mind is not different in kind from the process</p><p>by which expert practitioners operate. This four-stage process is, of course,</p><p>basic to good science, whether carried out by children in a good science</p><p>classrooms or “real” scientists in a lab, since science is one important form of</p><p>expert practice. Ironically, though, the process that is basic to young chil-</p><p>dren’s learning and to adult’s expert practice is usually discounted and unused</p><p>in school learning.</p><p>For example, it is currently fashionable, in some circles, to teach young</p><p>children to decode print via scripted direct instruction (so-called DI). This is a</p><p>return to a pedagogy that was popular in the 1960s. In this sort of instruction,</p><p>the teacher reads a written script and overtly tells children what they need to</p><p>know about decoding. The children</p><p>repeat the script over and over, drilling</p><p>on phonics. Though it may not sound like it, this sort of thing can be done</p><p>with enthusiasm, and children can learn to decode this way. There are now</p><p>even calls for such scripted direct instruction in areas like science and math.</p><p>The problem is this: Children in these sorts of pedagogies are not learn-</p><p>ing to discover and test patterns for themselves (which still, of course, re-</p><p>quires the guidance of a good teacher). They are learning to store discrete</p><p>facts and elements of knowledge, not deeper patterns. If all people have in</p><p>their minds is a list of facts, then, when they are faced with a new situation,</p><p>and nothing on the list applies, they must simply memorize another fact.</p><p>This fact, in turn, will apply, like all the others they have stored, only to situ-</p><p>ations just like the one that triggered it in the first place. If people have a pat-</p><p>tern in their mind, however, when they are faced with a new situation, they</p><p>can reflect on how this pattern can be revised to cover the new situation.</p><p>Now they have a new and more powerful pattern in mind, one that might ac-</p><p>tually cover novel situations the person has not yet encountered.</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 94</p><p>95v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>Let me give an example of this contrast between a list and a pattern,</p><p>though the discussion of a child building up the concept of a book already</p><p>makes much the same point. Say you knew that a bedroom could contain the</p><p>following things: a bed, lamps, tables, a chest of drawers, a carpet, and pic-</p><p>tures. What you have is a list. Now, say you see or hear about a bedroom used</p><p>by a college student with a hot plate and small refrigerator in it (perhaps it’s a</p><p>room in a large house rented by a group of students). If all you have is a list,</p><p>you just add this to the list: bedrooms can also have hot plates and small re-</p><p>frigerators in them. There is no real need to think about the matter, since</p><p>lists are, in any case, indefinitely extendable.</p><p>But, now, say that you start not with a list but with a pattern, a visual pic-</p><p>ture of a typical bedroom. Patterns in the mind are not actually pictures, of</p><p>course. They are systems of neural elements standing for things like beds,</p><p>carpets, lamps, and the like, systems that are associated with each other</p><p>through stronger or weaker links in terms of which each system (e.g., the one</p><p>standing for beds) more or less strongly activates the others (e.g., the systems</p><p>standing for chests of drawers and night tables). But mental patterns operate,</p><p>for our purposes, enough like pictures to make the point.</p><p>To make our mental pictures a bit more like neural patterns in the mind,</p><p>let’s imagine that elements in the picture can be more or less clearly focused</p><p>depending on how strongly or weakly they are associated with the main items</p><p>in the picture. So we could imagine that in the typical bedroom picture, the</p><p>bed is in clear and sharp focus, but there is a rather less well focused plant in</p><p>the room, thereby noting that plants are less strongly associated with typical</p><p>bedrooms than are beds. Perhaps, in your picture, a television is somewhere</p><p>in between in focus between the bed (very clearly focused) and the plant (not</p><p>so clearly focused).</p><p>If you have such a picture in mind when you see the college student’s bed-</p><p>room with a hot plate and small refrigerator in it, you have to revise your picture.</p><p>Perhaps you change your original picture to be one not of a typical bedroom but</p><p>the bedroom of a working adult. This amounts to associating “working adult”</p><p>with the other elements in your picture. Note, too, that this picture is not, like a</p><p>list, indefinitely extendable—it now can’t have a hot plate and small refrigerator</p><p>in it. Further, you create a new picture of a typical bedroom of a college student,</p><p>a picture that does have a hot plate and refrigerator in it.</p><p>If later you come across a similar bedroom, another one with a hot plate</p><p>and refrigerator, but now one used by a working adult, you will find that your</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 95</p><p>96 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>college student bedroom picture, by and large, fits. You need revise it only a</p><p>bit to be the picture of a financially strapped person, rather than just a college</p><p>student. You will then also revise your picture of the typical bedroom of a</p><p>working adult to be the picture of the typical bedroom of a middle-class-</p><p>working adult. You might even reflect on the fact that college students often</p><p>live like financially strapped persons even when they come from well-off</p><p>homes, a reflection that can lead to further mediation on the ways in which</p><p>class, age, and institutions interact in our society. Patterns prepare you for fu-</p><p>ture learning in a way that lists don’t.</p><p>What’s really happening here is that you are creating pictures (patterns),</p><p>subdividing them, and adding and subtracting things from them (and refo-</p><p>cusing items) as you confront new situations. You are, in reality, learning how</p><p>to situate the meaning of the word or concept “bedroom” to fit different situ-</p><p>ations, including situations you may not have seen before. Lists require no</p><p>such thinking and learning. Patterns are experiential theories (here a theory of</p><p>bedrooms) that we change with more experience, more probing and reprob-</p><p>ing of the world. Lists are just get bigger with time, taking more effort to re-</p><p>member, and making less and less real sense at any deep explanatory level.</p><p>APPRECIATIVE SYSTEMS</p><p>So far I have argued that the probe/hypothesize/reprobe/rethink cycle is typ-</p><p>ical of how both young children and professional practitioners learn and</p><p>think, though not necessarily how students learn and think in schools. But</p><p>what differentiates the young child learning from the expert practitioner</p><p>learning? What differentiates them, I believe, is the way what I call their ap-</p><p>preciative systems work.</p><p>When the child acts and reflects, probes the world and gets a result, on</p><p>what basis does the child determine the “significance” and the “acceptability”</p><p>of the result? The very form of this question makes it clear that children must</p><p>evaluate the answer coming back from the world, must determine whether</p><p>they “like” it or not, whether it is “good” or not from their perspective. Oth-</p><p>erwise, why use the answer in their reflections and subsequent interactions</p><p>with the world and, indeed, in their own minds as they build up their mental</p><p>networks of associations?</p><p>Children can determine what they “like,” what is a “good” result, only in</p><p>terms of an appreciative system, that is, their set of goals, desires, feelings, and</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 96</p><p>97v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>values in respect to the domain being engaged with. The appreciative system</p><p>is where affect and cognition merge and come together. The children revise</p><p>the hypotheses they have formed based on the goals, desires, feelings, and</p><p>values encapsulated in their appreciative system. Young children who are</p><p>thrilled by their power to destroy things will evaluate the tear of the brittle</p><p>page of a book as a good result and seek other brittle things to tear.</p><p>Expert practitioners in a given semiotic domain—whether teaching, sci-</p><p>ence, law, business, architecture, art, or what have you—have to form an ap-</p><p>preciative system relevant to that domain in terms of which they can evaluate</p><p>action (probes) in the domain. That is, they must form the sorts of goals, de-</p><p>sires, feelings, and values that “insiders” in that domain recognize as the sorts</p><p>members of that domain (the affinity group associated with that domain) typ-</p><p>ically have. This process is much more specialized than the everyday learning</p><p>a small child does. Furthermore, if learning in the domain is to be active and</p><p>critical, the learning process and the appreciative system to which it gives rise</p><p>must be open to a good deal more conscious reflection and critique than is typ-</p><p>ical of small children mastering their early worlds.</p><p>This is not to say that individuals do not</p><p>merge and color these “social”</p><p>goals, desires, feelings, and values (stemming from the affinity group associ-</p><p>ated with the semiotic domain) with their own personal idiosyncratic goals,</p><p>desires, feelings, and values. They most certainly do. They also merge and</p><p>color them with those connected to other semiotic domains of which they are</p><p>members and other identities, including cultural identities that they have in</p><p>the real world. The appreciative system, then, is the place where not only the</p><p>affective and cognitive merge and come together, it is the place where the so-</p><p>cial, cultural, and the personal merge and come together as well.</p><p>Nonetheless, the affinity group connected to the semiotic domain being</p><p>learned norms and disciplines what counts as an “acceptable” and “recogniz-</p><p>able” and “competent” appreciative system in the domain and what does not.</p><p>The newcomer learns what counts as competent goals, desires, feelings, and</p><p>values in the domain in terms of which he or she can properly evaluate the</p><p>results of his or her probes within the world of the domain. In a sense, the</p><p>learner is forming what we might call “taste” in the domain.</p><p>In any domain—whether playing video games or learning some branch</p><p>of science—the learner can learn in such a way that no real appreciative sys-</p><p>tem is operative. In this case, the learner just does what he or she is told in a</p><p>rote way. On the other hand, the learner can be actively enough involved in</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 97</p><p>98 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>learning the domain to form an appreciative system that norms and guides</p><p>his or her thought and action in the domain, but this system can remain</p><p>largely unconscious and not reflected on in any very overt way. This is active</p><p>but not yet critical learning.</p><p>In critical learning, the learner comes not just to form an appreciative</p><p>system through practice and interaction with the affinity group associated</p><p>with the domain but to reflect overtly on the goals, values, feelings, and de-</p><p>sires that compose this system, to compare and contrast this appreciative sys-</p><p>tem to others, and to make active and critical choices about the system. Of</p><p>course, these choices must either remain within the confines of what the</p><p>affinity group associated with the domain will recognize as acceptable or</p><p>transform what the group finds acceptable. In either case, the learner is tak-</p><p>ing on a projective identity—actively, reflectively, and critically interfacing, at</p><p>a metalevel, his or her real-world identities with the new identity being</p><p>formed in the new semiotic domain.</p><p>When a player plays a video game like Deus Ex actively and critically, the</p><p>player forms a viewpoint on what counts as playing well or not. It is not just a</p><p>matter of getting through a crisis or solving a problem, of just surviving to</p><p>get to the end of the game. The player cares about how his or her character</p><p>(his or her virtual self) has fared. As I played more and more of Deus Ex and</p><p>got better at the game, I found myself repeatedly playing scenes to do them</p><p>better—to have my character look better and to be able myself to look back</p><p>on the history of that character’s interaction in the virtual world with a cer-</p><p>tain pride (pride that I could feel both in terms of my virtual identity as the</p><p>character and my real identity as a player).</p><p>I was forming an appreciative system, one on which I could overtly re-</p><p>flect if and when I wished to. When I did engage in such overt reflection, ask-</p><p>ing myself why I cared about this or that outcome and what exactly my values</p><p>in the game world were, I learned a good deal about myself, about the virtual</p><p>world of the game, and about the design of this and other related games.</p><p>People do not usually form appreciative systems by themselves. Even in</p><p>my case, where I was playing alone and not in a multiplayer game, I formed</p><p>my appreciative system through multiple routes that went beyond my private</p><p>play. As I got into the game (one of the first I played), I read about it on a va-</p><p>riety of Internet sites. I looked at chat room sites devoted to the game and</p><p>saw how others talked and felt about playing it and games like it. I eventually</p><p>read magazines devoted to video games as well. I consulted several different</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 98</p><p>99v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>walkthroughs of the game, intrigued both by how the writers had played</p><p>through a given part and how they talked about such play.</p><p>And, of course, players who play with others, often on teams against</p><p>other teams, and often getting on chat rooms to talk about their play, have</p><p>their appreciative systems formed even more directly by the affinity group</p><p>associated with the game. My appreciative system in regard to games like</p><p>Deus Ex has changed and, I think, deepened as I have played more such</p><p>games and had more interactions with the affinity group associated with such</p><p>games via the Internet, magazines, books, and face-to-face verbal interaction</p><p>(e.g., I learned a good deal when I talked about and played the Xbox shooter</p><p>Halo with a young lawyer, a member of a generation that grown up playing</p><p>video games).</p><p>When players not only form but overtly reflect on their emerging and</p><p>ever-changing appreciative systems, they gain insight into and opinions</p><p>about the design of the genres of video games in regard to which they have</p><p>formed appreciative systems. It is not uncommon for players to voice these</p><p>opinions in reviews and in comments on Internet sites devoted to games. In-</p><p>deed, some players use software that often comes with a game to build their</p><p>own new extensions to the game or whole new games.</p><p>As I play shooter games now—games like Max Payne, Red Faction, Halo,</p><p>Return to Castle Wolfenstein—I find myself comparing and contrasting them. I</p><p>find myself, however silently, critiquing elements of the game as “nothing</p><p>new,” “nice touch,” “a nostalgic nod to Half-Life” (an earlier, vastly popular</p><p>shooter), “brilliant integration of graphics and action,” “problem well-inte-</p><p>grated into the plot line, not just a puzzle,” and a great many more (some ex-</p><p>pressed in language not printable here—especially in regard to the jumping</p><p>in Half-Life). My appreciative system is tied in an important way to knowl-</p><p>edge about and perspectives on shooter games as designed entities having their</p><p>own sort of “design grammar.” It is a “language” I am beginning to think and</p><p>speak, even to think and speak creatively in the sense that I can critique such</p><p>games and imagine new and different ones. In the end, then, while I don’t</p><p>have the skills to build a game, I think a good deal, while playing (reflection</p><p>in action) and afterward (reflection on action), about what new and better</p><p>games “ought to” look like.</p><p>It is my contention that active, critical learning in any domain should</p><p>lead to learners becoming, in a sense, designers. Some, like the players who</p><p>build their own extensions to games, will actually design new things. Others,</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 99</p><p>100 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>like me, will design in thought and talk and let it inform their play. But there</p><p>is no design and designing, in the sense I am talking about, without forming</p><p>an appreciative system for a given semiotic domain. And no appreciative sys-</p><p>tem is formed without probing, hypothesizing, reprobing, and rethinking</p><p>through embodied action in a domain in connection with the affinity group</p><p>associated with the domain.</p><p>I have said enough already, in this respect, about schools. But let me note</p><p>that talk about appreciative systems, design and designing, and reflection in</p><p>and on embodied action in association with an affinity group are matters that</p><p>hardly ever appear in discussions about school or in educational research.</p><p>Perhaps that’s one reason why so many young people learn to play complex</p><p>video games so much faster and better than they learn anything comparably</p><p>complex is school.</p><p>WRITTEN TEXTS</p><p>With all my talk of situated and embodied meanings, probing the world, and</p><p>designing</p><p>things, some will ask what has happened to good old-fashioned</p><p>printed texts. Video games have, I believe, a great deal to teach us about how</p><p>reading printed texts actually works when people understand—again, in situ-</p><p>ated, embodied, active, and critical ways—what they read.</p><p>A game like Deus Ex has a great many texts inside the virtual world it cre-</p><p>ates, texts you find along the way, like notes, e-mail, diaries, and messages</p><p>you have hacked from various computers. These texts help you not only to</p><p>piece together the ongoing story but to make decisions about actions you will</p><p>or will not take. In some games, such as Clive Barker’s Undying, the number of</p><p>extended texts you find gets quite large and is a central part of playing (and</p><p>enjoying) the game.</p><p>However, video games are deeply connected to written texts in a different</p><p>way as well. They are surrounded by a great many different types of written</p><p>texts. For instance, there are a large number of reviews of games in magazines</p><p>and on Internet sites. Furthermore, players often can and do add their own re-</p><p>views to the official review written for a particular Internet site (and players</p><p>appear to show no deference whatsoever to the official reviewers).</p><p>Games come with manuals (often, but not always, fairly small—the one</p><p>for Deus Ex is 20 pages). They also often come with a booklet, written as a</p><p>diary, or notes, or otherwise set as part of the virtual world of the game, that</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 100</p><p>101v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>give the back story or background information for that virtual world. For ex-</p><p>ample, American McGee’s Alice, a game where Alice has gone insane and re-</p><p>turned to a nightmarish Wonderland, comes with a booklet entitled</p><p>“Rutledge Private Clinic and Asylum Casebook,” which contains Alice’s</p><p>physician’s daily notes on her treatment.</p><p>For many games, publishers offer highly colorful and detailed strategy</p><p>guides that tell players all about the game (its characters, maps and geography</p><p>of the world, weapons, enemies, objects to be found, fruitful strategies to fol-</p><p>low, etc.). Such guides also give a complete walkthrough for the game. A num-</p><p>ber of Internet sites offer (usually free) a variety of different walkthroughs</p><p>written by players themselves. These sites also offer hints from players and</p><p>“cheats” for the games. (Cheats are ways to manipulate the game’s program-</p><p>ming to do things like give yourself extra life or more ammunition.)</p><p>These texts are all integrated into the appreciative systems associated</p><p>with the affinity groups connected to video games. Different players and</p><p>groups have different views about whether, when, and how to use these texts.</p><p>For example, consider walkthroughs. These documents often run to 70 or</p><p>more single-spaced pages and are written according to a tight set of rules</p><p>about what they should contain and look like (including a list of each date on</p><p>which the walkthrough was revised). Some players shun walkthroughs en-</p><p>tirely, though they may write them. Others argue that walkthroughs can and</p><p>should be used, but only to get a hint when one is thoroughly stuck. Indeed,</p><p>the writers of the walkthroughs themselves often recommend that players use</p><p>them this way. (Imagine producing a 70-page, single-spaced document and</p><p>advising people to look at it only when and where they are stuck.)</p><p>Of course, if children had walkthroughs in school when they studied</p><p>things like science, we would call it “cheating” (let alone if they had “cheat</p><p>codes”). But, then, imagine what a science classroom would look like where</p><p>learners wrote extensive walkthroughs according to strict norms and debated</p><p>when and how to use them, debates that became part and parcel of the learn-</p><p>ers’ growing appreciative systems about what it means to “do science (well).”</p><p>And, indeed, in a sense, real scientists do have walkthroughs. They know</p><p>(through talk with others and through texts) the case histories of how rele-</p><p>vant related discoveries in their field were made. They also have opinions</p><p>about how closely one should consult or follow these histories.</p><p>It is now a piece of folk wisdom that “young people” don’t read things</p><p>like manuals but just start playing games. To the extent that this is true, it is</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 101</p><p>102 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>partly because, I explain in the next chapter, video games are so good at</p><p>teaching people to play them by actually starting to play them. Yet I would</p><p>argue that these young people are reading and using print in the way it is and</p><p>should be used when people actually understand what they read in a useful</p><p>and situated way. Baby boomers—perhaps too influenced by traditional</p><p>schooling—often try to do otherwise to their regret and frustration, when</p><p>they insist on reading a manual before they have any embodied understand-</p><p>ing of what the manual is about.</p><p>Very often players quickly look over the instruction booklet that comes</p><p>with a new game before starting to play. Experienced players often can tell at</p><p>a glance how the controls will work and anything special they may need to</p><p>pay attention to as they start to learn to play the game by actually starting to</p><p>play it (or doing the game’s on-disk training, if it has one). If the game is a</p><p>new genre for them, they may have to pay a bit more attention. But, in any</p><p>case, the problem with the texts associated with video game—the instruction</p><p>booklets, walkthroughs, and strategy guides—is that they do not make a lot</p><p>of sense unless one has already experienced and lived in the game world for a</p><p>while. Of course, this lack of lucidity can be made up for if the player has read</p><p>similar texts before, but at some point these texts originally made sense be-</p><p>cause the player had an embodied world of experience in terms of which to</p><p>situate and spell out their meanings.</p><p>The same thing is most certainly true of the sorts of texts that show up in</p><p>learning content areas like science and math in school, especially in the later</p><p>grades, high school, and college. A biology textbook does not make a lot of</p><p>sense unless and until one has experienced and lived in the world of biology</p><p>as practice for a while. And again, this lack of lucidity is mitigated if the stu-</p><p>dent has already read a good many similar texts. However, at some point</p><p>these texts also originally made sense because the student had an embodied</p><p>world of experience (in reality or, at least, simulated in his or her mind) in</p><p>terms of which to situate and spell out their meanings.</p><p>When I give talks on video games to teachers, I often show them a man-</p><p>ual or strategy guide and ask them how much they understand. Very often</p><p>they are frustrated. They have no experience in which to situate the words</p><p>and phrases of the texts. All they get is verbal information, which they under-</p><p>stand at some literal level, but which does not really hang together. They</p><p>cannot visualize this verbal information in any way that makes sense or makes</p><p>them want to read on. I tell them that that is how their students often feel</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 102</p><p>103v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>when confronted with a text or textbook in science or some other academic</p><p>area if they have had no experiences in terms of which they can situate the</p><p>meanings of the words and phrases. It’s all “just words,” words the “good”</p><p>students can repeat on tests and the “bad” ones can’t.</p><p>When you have played a video game for a while, something magical hap-</p><p>pens to the texts associated with it. All of sudden they seem lucid and clear</p><p>and readable. You can’t even recall how confusing they seemed in the first</p><p>place. At that point, players can use the text in a great variety of ways for dif-</p><p>ferent purposes. For instance, they can look up details that enhance their</p><p>play. (I recently looked up information on the different guns in Return to Cas-</p><p>tle Wolfenstein and discovered I was using a less accurate one than I could have</p><p>been using, and I also got a crucial hint on how to keep the better gun from</p><p>overheating.)</p><p>Or they can fill out their knowledge of the places, creatures,</p><p>and things in the virtual world in which they are living. They can trou-</p><p>bleshoot problems they are having in the game, with the game, or with their</p><p>computer. They can get hints or compare their play to how others have done.</p><p>Let me take the booklet that comes with Deus Ex as an example of what I</p><p>mean by saying that texts associated with video games are not lucid unless</p><p>and until one has some embodied game experience in which to “cash out” the</p><p>meanings of the text. The book contains 20 small pages, printed in double</p><p>columns on each page. In these pages, there are 199 bolded references that</p><p>represent headings and subheadings. One small randomly chosen stretch of</p><p>headings and subheadings that appears at the end of page 5 and the begin-</p><p>ning of page 6 says: Passive Readouts, Damage Monitor, Active Augmentation &</p><p>Device Icons, Items-at-Hand, Information Screens, Note, Inventory, Inventory</p><p>Management, Stacks, Nanokey ring, Ammunition. Each of these 199 headings</p><p>and subheadings is followed by text that gives information relevant to the</p><p>topic and relates it to other information throughout the booklet. In addition,</p><p>the booklet assigns 53 keys on the computer keyboard to some function in</p><p>the game, and these 53 keys are mentioned 82 times in relation to the infor-</p><p>mation contained in the 199 headings and subheadings. So, although small,</p><p>the booklet is packed with relatively technical information.</p><p>Here is a typical piece of language from this booklet:</p><p>Your internal nano-processors keep a very detailed record of your condition,</p><p>equipment and recent history. You can access this data at any time during</p><p>play by hitting F1 to get to the Inventory screen or F2 to get to the</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 103</p><p>104 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>Goals/Notes screen. Once you have accessed your information screens, you</p><p>can move between the screens by clicking on the tabs at the top of the</p><p>screen. You can map other information screens to hotkeys using Settings,</p><p>Keyboard/Mouse.</p><p>This makes perfect sense at a literal level, but that just goes to show how</p><p>worthless the literal level is. When you understand this sort of passage at only a</p><p>literal level, you have only an illusion of understanding, one that quickly disap-</p><p>pears as you try to relate this information to the hundreds of other important</p><p>details in the booklet. First of all, this passage means nothing real to you if you</p><p>have no situated idea about what “nano-processors,” “condition,” “equip-</p><p>ment,” “history,” “F1,” “Inventory screen,” “F2,” “Goals/Notes screen” (and,</p><p>of course, “Goals” and “Notes”), “information screens,” “clicking,” “tabs,”</p><p>“map,” “hotkeys,” and “Settings, Keyboard/Mouse” mean in and for playing</p><p>games like Deus Ex.</p><p>Second, though you know literally what each sentence means, together</p><p>they raise a plethora of questions if you have no situated understandings of</p><p>this game or games like it. For instance: Is the same data (condition, equip-</p><p>ment, and history) on both the Inventory screen and the Goals/Notes</p><p>screen? If so, why is it on two different screens? If not, which type of infor-</p><p>mation is on which screen and why? The fact that I can move between the</p><p>screens by clicking on the tabs (but what do these tabs look like; will I recog-</p><p>nize them?) suggests that some of this information is on one screen and some</p><p>on the other. But, then, is my “condition” part of my Inventory or my</p><p>Goals/Notes—it doesn’t seem to be either, but, then, what is my “condition”</p><p>anyway? If I can map other information screens (and what are these?) to</p><p>hotkeys using “Setting, Keyboard/Mouse,” does this mean there is no other</p><p>way to access them? How will I access them in the first place to assign them</p><p>to my own chosen hotkeys? Can I click between them and the Inventory</p><p>screen and the Goals/Notes screens by pressing on “tabs”? And so on—20</p><p>pages is beginning to seem like a lot; remember, there are 199 different head-</p><p>ings under which information like this is given.</p><p>Of course, all these terms and questions can be defined and answered if</p><p>you closely check and cross-check information over and over again through</p><p>the little booklet. You can constantly turn the pages backward and forward.</p><p>But once you have one set of links relating various items and actions in mind,</p><p>another drops out just as you need it and you’re back to turning pages. Is the</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 104</p><p>105v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>booklet poorly written? Not at all. It is written just as well or as poorly as—</p><p>just like, in fact—any of a myriad of school-based texts in the content areas. It</p><p>is, outside the practices in the semiotic domain from which it comes, just as</p><p>meaningless, however much one could garner literal meanings from it with</p><p>which to verbally repeat things or pass tests.</p><p>Of course, you can say, “Oh, yeah, you click on F1 to get to the Inven-</p><p>tory screen and F2 to get to the Goals/Notes screen” and sound like you</p><p>know something. The trouble is this: In the actual game, you can click on F2</p><p>and meditate on the screen you see at your leisure. Nothing bad will happen</p><p>to you. However, very often you have to click on F1 and do something</p><p>quickly in the midst of a heated battle. There’s no “at your leisure” here. The</p><p>two commands really don’t function the same way in the game—they actually</p><p>mean different things in terms of embodied and situated action—and they</p><p>never really just mean “click F1, get screen.” That’s their general meaning,</p><p>the one with which you really can’t do anything useful until you know how to</p><p>spell it out further in situation-specific terms in the game.</p><p>When you can spell out such information in situation-specific terms in the</p><p>game, then the relationships of this information to the other hundreds of pieces</p><p>of information in the booklet become clear and meaningful. And, of course, it is</p><p>these relationships that are what really count if you are to understand the game</p><p>as a system and, thus, play it at all well. Now you can read the book if you need to</p><p>to piece in missing bits of information, check on your understandings, or solve a</p><p>particular problem or answer a particular question you have.</p><p>When I first read this booklet before playing Deus Ex (and having played</p><p>only one other shooter game, a very different one), I was sorely tempted to put</p><p>the game on a shelf and forget about it. I was simply overwhelmed with details,</p><p>questions, and confusions. When I started the game, I kept trying to look up</p><p>stuff. But I understood none of it well enough to find things easily without</p><p>searching for the same information over and over again. In the end, you have</p><p>to just actively play the game and explore and try everything. Then, at last, the</p><p>booklet makes good sense, but by then you don’t need it all that much.</p><p>There is much discussion these days about how many children fail in</p><p>school—especially children from poor homes—because they have not been</p><p>taught phonics well or correctly in their early years. But the truth of the matter</p><p>is that a great many more children fail in school because, while they can decode</p><p>print, they cannot handle the progressively more complex demands school lan-</p><p>guage makes on them as they move up in the grades and on to high school.</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 105</p><p>106 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>School requires, in respect to both oral and written language, forms or</p><p>styles of language that are different from and, in some respects, more com-</p><p>plex than everyday oral language used in informal face-to-face conversations.</p><p>The forms of language used in texts and discussions in science, math, social</p><p>studies classes, and other content areas, go by the general name of “academic</p><p>language,” though different varieties of academic language are associated</p><p>with different content areas in school.</p><p>Academic language, like the language in the Deus Ex booklet, is not re-</p><p>ally lucid or meaningful if one has no embodied experiences within which to</p><p>situate its meanings in specific</p><p>ways. For example, consider this academic-</p><p>language quote from a high school science textbook:</p><p>The destruction of a land surface by the combined effects of abrasion and</p><p>removal of weathered material by transporting agents is called erosion. . . .</p><p>The production of rock waste by mechanical processes and chemical</p><p>changes is called weathering.</p><p>Again, one can certainly understand this at some literal word-by-word,</p><p>sentence-by-sentence way. However, this is not “everyday” language. No one</p><p>speaks this way at home around the table or at a bar having drinks with</p><p>friends. But this language is filled with all the same problems the language of</p><p>the Deus Ex booklet was for me when I had not lived through any experiences</p><p>in terms of which I could situate its meanings. Without embodied experi-</p><p>ences with which to cash out its meanings, all the above academic text will</p><p>do—as the Deus Ex booklet did to me initially—is fill one with questions,</p><p>confusion, and, perhaps, anger.</p><p>For example: I have no idea what the difference is between “abrasion”</p><p>and “removal of weathered material by transporting agents,” which I would</p><p>have thought was one form of abrasion. What’s a “transporting agent”?</p><p>What’s a “mechanical process”? I am not really clear on the difference be-</p><p>tween “mechanical processes,” especially in regard to weather, and “chemical</p><p>changes.” And what chemicals are we talking about here—stuff in rain?</p><p>Since the first sentence is about “erosion” and the second about “weath-</p><p>ering,” I suppose these two things are connected in some important way—</p><p>but how? They must be two forms of “destruction of a land surface,” given</p><p>that this is the subject of the first sentence. But, then, I would have thought</p><p>that producing “rock waste” was a way of building, not just destroying, land,</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 106</p><p>107v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>since rock waste eventually turns into dirt (doesn’t it?) and thus, I would have</p><p>supposed, eventually into potentially fertile land. But this is a geology text,</p><p>and they don’t care about fertile land (or do they?). The word “land” here has</p><p>a different range of possible situated meanings than I am familiar with.</p><p>Of course, I can turn the pages of the book back and forth clarifying all</p><p>these points. After all, these two sentences are meant to be definitions—</p><p>though not of the words “erosion” and “weathering” in everyday terms but in</p><p>specialist terms in a particular semiotic domain.) And, of course, I do need to</p><p>know that they are definitions, and I may not even know that if I have had lit-</p><p>tle experience of specialists trying to define terms in explicit and operational</p><p>ways so as to lessen the sort of ambiguity and vagueness that is more typical</p><p>of everyday talk. Since they are definitions, they are linked and cross-linked</p><p>to a myriad of other terms, descriptions, and explanations throughout the</p><p>book, and I can follow this tangled trail across the pages, back and forth, los-</p><p>ing bits of the connections just as I need them and page turning yet again.</p><p>However, once I have experienced the sorts of embodied images, actions,</p><p>and tasks that engage geologists—including their ways of talking and debating,</p><p>their reasons for doing so, their interests, norms, and values—then the text is</p><p>lucid and useful. Confusion, frustration, and anger disappear. Given such under-</p><p>standing, everybody would pass the test and we couldn’t fail half the class and</p><p>reward a small set of “winners,”—people who can repeat back verbal details they</p><p>remember well when they don’t fully understand them in any practical way.</p><p>MORE LEARNING PRINCIPLES</p><p>Let me conclude this discussion by listing further learning principles that our</p><p>discussion of learning and thinking in video games in this chapter has impli-</p><p>cated. Once again, in this list, I intend each principle to be relevant both to</p><p>learning in video games and learning in content areas in classrooms. After</p><p>listing principles we have already discussed pretty thoroughly, I discuss a few</p><p>others that are related to them.</p><p>15. Probing Principle</p><p>Learning is a cycle of probing the world (doing something); reflect-</p><p>ing in and on this action and, on this basis, forming a hypo-</p><p>thesis; reprobing the world to test this hypothesis; and then accept-</p><p>ing or rethinking the hypothesis.</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 107</p><p>108 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>16. Multiple Routes Principle</p><p>There are multiple ways to make progress or move ahead. This al-</p><p>lows learners to make choices, rely on their own strengths and styles</p><p>of learning and problem solving, while also exploring alternative</p><p>styles.</p><p>17. Situated Meaning Principle</p><p>The meanings of signs (words, actions, objects, artifacts, symbols,</p><p>texts, etc.) are situated in embodied experience. Meanings are not</p><p>general or decontextulized. Whatever generality meanings come to</p><p>have is discovered bottom up via embodied experiences.</p><p>18. Text Principle</p><p>Texts are not understood purely verbally (i.e., only in terms of the</p><p>definitions of the words in the text and their text-internal relation-</p><p>ships to each other) but are understood in terms of embodied experi-</p><p>ences. Learners move back and forth between texts and embodied</p><p>experiences. More purely verbal understanding (reading texts apart</p><p>from embodied action) comes only when learners have had enough</p><p>embodied experience in the domain and ample experiences with sim-</p><p>ilar texts.</p><p>Now let us turn to four related learning principles, which are implicated</p><p>in the discussion of video games and learning in this chapter although they</p><p>were not discussed directly. The Intertextual Principle is concerned with the</p><p>fact that after players have dealt a good bit with a certain type or genre of</p><p>video game and the texts associated with them, they can begin to see these</p><p>texts themselves as a family or genre of related texts. They understand any</p><p>one such text (say a strategy guide for a fantasy role-playing game) intertex-</p><p>tually in relationship to other related texts they have read connected to such</p><p>games. Now they are “cashing out” texts not just in terms of embodied action</p><p>in the games they have played (they are most certainly doing that as well) but</p><p>also in terms of other texts they have read in the family or genre. Reading</p><p>“new” texts becomes easy.</p><p>The Multimodal Principle is concerned with the fact—clear in all of the</p><p>discussion about video games in this book so far—that, in video games, mean-</p><p>ing, thinking, and learning are linked to multiple modalities (words, images,</p><p>actions, sounds, etc.) and not just to words. Sometimes, at a particular point in</p><p>a game, multiple modalities support each other to communicate similar mean-</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 108</p><p>109v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>ings (e.g., “go in this direction”); sometimes they communicate different mean-</p><p>ings, each of which fits together to form a bigger, more meaningful and satisfy-</p><p>ing whole (e.g., “I have just entered an evil place, better be real careful”).</p><p>The “Material Intelligence” Principle is really a subpart of the Multimodal</p><p>Principle. In a video game, objects and artifacts store some of the thinking and</p><p>knowledge a player gains. So, in fact, does the environment the player moves</p><p>through. For example, in Deus Ex if you haven’t got a lock pick, you may have</p><p>to think a great deal to get into a given door. If you have a lock pick, the lock</p><p>pick stores your knowledge of how to get in the door, and you don’t need to</p><p>store the knowledge yourself. You can devote your thinking and problem-solv-</p><p>ing skills to other matters, thereby powerfully extending the amount of overall</p><p>thinking and problem solving that is being accomplished, since the lock pick is</p><p>doing some of it, along with lots of other “potent” material items.</p><p>In video games players soon learn how to “read” the physical environ-</p><p>ments they are in to gain clues about how to proceed through them. The</p><p>shapes and contours of the physical environment, and the objects lying</p><p>around, come to guide the player (of course, one can be fooled from</p><p>time to</p><p>time) in making good guesses about how to proceed. For instance, at one</p><p>point in American McGee’s Alice, you (playing as Alice) are lost among rocks</p><p>and wild streams. However, you can see far off at the top of a mountain a bit</p><p>of a mansion. Furthermore, the environment contains some contours of</p><p>rocks and hills that suggest ways up. And finally, shining on a few rocks ahead</p><p>of you are red jewels that you have already learned give you more health if</p><p>you pick them up. Their placement clearly suggests moving toward them.</p><p>The whole layout of the environment, then, helps you guess intelligently</p><p>about how to proceed.</p><p>It is certainly good you get this help from the material environment and</p><p>objects in it—good that the material environment and objects in it are part of</p><p>your intelligence—because all along the way you have more than enough to do</p><p>thinking about how to fight Wonderland’s now-deranged characters who want</p><p>to stop your progress (and about how to solve a good many other problems).</p><p>Of course, in good science instruction in classrooms, children should</p><p>come to see that, in science, too, objects, artifacts, and the ways in which the</p><p>environment is set up can store knowledge and power. This, in turn, can allow</p><p>them to think about other things and solve other problems that, when com-</p><p>bined with the knowledge and power stored in the material objects and envi-</p><p>ronment, truly extends their reach. Indeed, good teachers set up scientific</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 109</p><p>110 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>environments that guide learners and surround them with empowering ob-</p><p>jects that extend their individual efforts.</p><p>For example, just staring at and playing with pendulums in the real world</p><p>is not actually a good way to “discover” the laws of the pendulum’s move-</p><p>ment. Galileo actually discovered these laws not by staring at a swinging</p><p>chandelier, as the myth has it, but by using geometry and drawing, on paper,</p><p>arcs and circles and paths of movement along them and figuring our their</p><p>geometrical properties. Geometry is a powerful tool that stores much knowl-</p><p>edge and skill that the learner does not have to invent for him- or herself. So,</p><p>too, is the computer program diSessa uses to teach students Galileo’s theo-</p><p>rems about motion. Of course, we often expect children to learn science</p><p>without the tools, artifacts, and material guidance that actual scientists have</p><p>and have gained from the history of their science. There is real intelligence</p><p>built into geometry and diSessa’s Boxer program, as there is “player intelli-</p><p>gence” built into the objects and environments in American McGee’s Alice.</p><p>Finally, the Intuitive (Tacit) Knowledge Principle is concerned with the</p><p>fact that video games honor not just the explicit and verbal knowledge play-</p><p>ers have about how to play but also the intuitive or tacit knowledge—built</p><p>into their movements, bodies, and unconscious ways of thinking—they have</p><p>built up through repeated practice with a family or genre of games. It is com-</p><p>mon today for research on modern workplaces to point out that in today’s</p><p>high-tech and fast-changing world, the most valuable knowledge a business</p><p>has is the tacit knowledge its workers gain through continually working with</p><p>others in a “community of practice” that adapts to specific situations and</p><p>changes “on the ground” as they happen. Such knowledge cannot always be</p><p>verbalized. Even when it can be verbalized and placed in a training manual,</p><p>by that time it is often out of date.</p><p>Of course, conscious knowledge is important for critical learning, as I</p><p>have pointed out several times already. But, too often, unlike video games and</p><p>good workplaces, schools do not honor the tacit and embodied knowledge</p><p>people build up through practice and adaptation to change “on the spot” as it</p><p>happens amid practice (and not in pure speculation). Yet such knowledge is</p><p>crucial in a great many domains and is a large part of why learners feel compe-</p><p>tent in a domain and feel as if they share real membership with the affinity</p><p>group associated with a domain. The child learning science who has built up</p><p>no tacit knowledge—no “craft knowledge”—cannot really feel competent ei-</p><p>ther. But the child who has built up such knowledge is liable to be turned off</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 110</p><p>111v SITUATED MEANING AND LEARNING v</p><p>by school when such knowledge is not valued and mindlessly repeating facts</p><p>and numbers that one understands in no embodied way gains one an A.</p><p>I once helped run an after-school science club for middle-school students</p><p>who were quite unaffiliated with school and school-based learning and literacy.</p><p>We taught these children how to do science and how to talk about what they</p><p>were doing and discovering with each other. We taught them to act and talk</p><p>like knowers, not just passive observers. When we checked up on one of the</p><p>young boys who had flourished in our club (had even won a prize in his school’s</p><p>science fair), his high school teacher told us something quite interesting: “It’s</p><p>funny, he is really good at actually doing the science when we run an experi-</p><p>ment or do other things, but he has a bad grade, because he keeps failing my</p><p>multiple-choice tests.” This teacher did not value how much science this child</p><p>knew in a tacit way tied to practice. He could hardly leverage this knowledge—</p><p>and bring some of it to conscious and critical awareness—if he did not honor it.</p><p>When profit is on the line, good businesses no longer make this mistake.</p><p>Next I list the principles we have just discussed.</p><p>19. Intertextual Principle</p><p>The learner understands texts as a family (“genre”) of related texts</p><p>and understands any one such text in relation to others in the family,</p><p>but only after having achieved embodied understandings of some</p><p>texts. Understanding a group of texts as a family (genre) of texts is a</p><p>large part of what helps the learner make sense of such texts.</p><p>20. Multimodal Principle</p><p>Meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (im-</p><p>ages, texts, symbols, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.), not</p><p>just words.</p><p>21. “Material Intelligence” Principle</p><p>Thinking, problem solving, and knowledge are “stored” in material</p><p>objects and the environment. This frees learners to engage their</p><p>minds with other things while combining the results of their own</p><p>thinking with the knowledge stored in material objects and the envi-</p><p>ronment to achieve yet more powerful effects.</p><p>22. Intuitive Knowledge Principle</p><p>Intuitive or tacit knowledge built up in repeated practice and experi-</p><p>ence, often in association with an affinity group, counts a great deal</p><p>and is honored. Not just verbal and conscious knowledge is rewarded.</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 111</p><p>112 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>BIBL IOGRAPHICAL NOTE</p><p>The discussion in this chapter about thinking as founded in pattern recognition from</p><p>our embodied experiences of the world draws broadly on so-called connectionist</p><p>views of the mind. See P. M. Churchland 1989; P. S. Churchland 1987; P. S. Church-</p><p>land & Sejnowski 1992; Clark 1989, 1993, 1997; Margolis 1987, 1993; Rumelhart,</p><p>McClelland, and the PDP Research Group 1986. For related work that has deeply in-</p><p>fluenced me, see Barsalou 1999a, b; Glenberg 1997; Glenberg & Robertson 1999;</p><p>Hutchins 1995; Nolan 1994. The quote about comprehension being grounded in</p><p>perceptual simulations is from Barsalou 1999, p. 77. The quote about meaning being</p><p>about what a person can do is from Glenberg 1997, p. 3.</p><p>For the idea that abstract notions are rooted in metaphors for embodied experi-</p><p>ence, see Lakoff 1987; Lakoff & Johnson 1980. On situated and embodied meanings,</p><p>see Brooks 2002; Brown, Collins, & Dugid 1989; Clancey 1997; Clark 1997; Gee</p><p>1996, 1999b; Lave 1988; Lave & Wenger 1991; Rogoff 1990; and Tomasello 1999.</p><p>For Galileo’s use of geometry to solve the problem of pendulums and how chil-</p><p>dren are asked to engage in an actually harder task in school when they must solve the</p><p>same problem without geometry, see Edwards & Mercer 1987.</p><p>For diSessa’s work and</p><p>a discussion of Boxer, see diSessa 2000, quotes are from pp. 32–33, 33, 34. The probe,</p><p>hypothesize, reprobe, rethink cycle is deeply related to Donald Schon’s work, see</p><p>Schon 1987; see also Gee 1997. The discussion of “appreciative systems” (a term</p><p>Schon uses) was inspired by Schon’s work. On the idea that learners ought to be de-</p><p>signers, see New London Group 1996. The quote about the destruction of land sur-</p><p>faces is taken from a textbook quoted in Martin 1990.</p><p>Intertextuality is a major theme in Bakhtin’s influential work; see especially</p><p>Bakhtin 1986. Material relevant to the material intelligence principle and the intuitive</p><p>knowledge principle is discussed in diSessa 2000; the intuitive knowledge principle is</p><p>also much discussed in terms of how knowledge functions in modern workplaces; see</p><p>Gee, Hull, & Lankshear 1996. For multimodality, see Kress & van Leeuwen 1996,</p><p>2001.</p><p>05 gee ch 4 3/13/03 12:08 PM Page 112</p><p>5</p><p>TELLING AND DOING:</p><p>WHY DOESN’T LARA CROFT</p><p>OBEY PROFESSOR VON CROY?</p><p>OVERT INFORMATION</p><p>AND IMMERSION IN PRACTICE</p><p>IN TERMS OF HUMAN LEARNING, INFORMATION IS A VEXED THING.</p><p>On one hand, humans are quite poor at learning from lots of overt informa-</p><p>tion given to them outside the sorts of contexts in which this information can</p><p>be used. This problem can be mitigated if the learners have already had lots</p><p>of experience of such contexts and can simulate the contexts in their minds as</p><p>they listen to or read information. Humans tend to have a very hard time</p><p>processing information for which they cannot supply such simulations. They</p><p>also tend readily to forget information they have received outside contexts of</p><p>actual use, especially if they cannot imagine such contexts.</p><p>On the other hand, humans don’t learn well when they are just left to</p><p>their own devices to operate within complex contexts about which they know</p><p>very little. Children who know no physics and have no mathematical tools</p><p>but who are nonetheless left to discover Galileo’s principles of motion on</p><p>their own by mucking around with ramps and balls are likely only to be an-</p><p>gered and frustrated. In fact, since Galileo used his deep knowledge of geom-</p><p>etry to discover these principles, the children are actually being asked to</p><p>engage in a harder task than the one Galileo (a genius if there ever was one)</p><p>faced, since they lack both his prior knowledge and sophisticated tools.</p><p>The dilemma then is this: For efficacious learning, humans need overt in-</p><p>formation, but they have a hard time handling it. They also need immersion</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 113</p><p>114 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>in actual contexts of practice, but they can find such contexts confusing with-</p><p>out overt information and guidance. This is just the dilemma between overt</p><p>telling versus immersion in practice that has characterized educational debates</p><p>for years. Educators tend to polarize the debate by stressing one thing (telling</p><p>or immersion) over the other and not discussing effective ways to balance and</p><p>integrate the two. They tend to associate support for overt telling in education</p><p>with conservative politics and support for immersion in practice with liberal</p><p>politics. Needless to say, they have not solved the problem.</p><p>The makers of video games—good capitalists that they are—have no such</p><p>luxury. If they don’t solve this problem, no one is going to learn to play their</p><p>games. And if no one can learn their games, no one will buy them. If only for</p><p>good old “Darwinian” reasons (the survival-of-the-fittest theories of learning on</p><p>the market), the games that survive and flourish on the market have solved the</p><p>problem. Indeed, different games solve it in different ways. This is just a specific</p><p>example of a point I am trying to make quite generally in this book: Good video</p><p>games incorporate good learning principles, because otherwise there would be</p><p>no video games, because too few people would have purchased them.</p><p>In this chapter—through a discussion of two good video games—I take</p><p>up some of the ways in which video games deal with overt information and</p><p>guidance on one hand and immersion in practice on the other. Their solution</p><p>to our dilemma is to deny there are two hands here and to see overt informa-</p><p>tion and immersion in practice as two fingers on the same hand.</p><p>LEARNING TO BE LARA CROFT</p><p>Lara Croft, the heroine of the Tomb Raider series of games (and now a movie),</p><p>is one of the most famous video-game characters in the world. Lara is the</p><p>pampered aristocratic daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft, and she has</p><p>wanted for nothing in her (virtual) life. When Lara was a young girl, a lecture</p><p>by the noted archaeologist Professor Werner Von Croy triggered in her a</p><p>lifelong desire for travel to remote places in search of adventure. Some time</p><p>after hearing that lecture, when Lara was 16 and away at boarding school, she</p><p>came across a copy of National Geographic magazine that featured an article</p><p>by Von Croy. From the article, Lara learned that he was preparing for a new</p><p>archaeological tour across Asia.</p><p>Lara showed the article to her parents and demanded to accompany Von</p><p>Croy on his expedition. Lord Henshingly then wrote Von Croy offering him</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 114</p><p>115v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>financial assistance if he would let Lara join him. Von Croy replied that he</p><p>remembered Lara’s incessant but insightful questions at his earlier lecture.</p><p>Her company as an assistant was welcomed, as was the offer of financial sup-</p><p>port. Thus, Von Croy became Lara’s mentor. Tomb Raider games depict Lara</p><p>as an adult using the skills she learned as a young girl from Von Croy and</p><p>pursuing danger, knowledge, and adventure across the world.</p><p>Lara—one of the few female lead characters in video games—is one of the</p><p>most physically agile characters in the world of such games. The player can</p><p>manipulate Lara to engage in more physical maneuvers than most other he-</p><p>roes in adventure and shooter games. She can walk, run, do both standing and</p><p>running jumps, jump back, crouch, duck, roll, climb, cling to ledges and ma-</p><p>neuver along them, and even jump and swing on vines and branches. She (the</p><p>player) uses all these skills to defeat enemies and to explore the treacherous</p><p>landscapes of ancient tombs and temples, deserts, jungles, and foreign cities.</p><p>So far what I have described—the story of Von Croy and Lara—is only</p><p>back story, a story that gamers are told (in the booklet that comes with a</p><p>game or in bits and pieces they have learned while playing the games) but</p><p>haven’t experienced for themselves. However, Tomb Raider: The Last Revela-</p><p>tion, a game late in the series, returns to this back story as part of the game.</p><p>The first episode in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation shows Lara as a 16-year-</p><p>old being trained by Professor Von Croy after they have just broken into an</p><p>ancient and sacred royal tomb in Cambodia. The player now actually gets to</p><p>live and play Lara’s apprenticeship when she was a girl.</p><p>This first episode is a real part of the game. (An episode is like a chapter</p><p>in a book.) The player must search for treasures and avoid many pitfalls and</p><p>dangers, just as in any other episode, though things are easier here than they</p><p>are in the later episodes. At the same time, however, this episode is also</p><p>meant as a training module where the player is explicitly coached on how to</p><p>play the game. This coaching is done in a fascinating way. As Von Croy trains</p><p>Lara to be an adventurer, he is also simultaneously training the player to op-</p><p>erate the computer controls and play the game. While similar things appear</p><p>in other games, they are handled here in a particularly nice way.</p><p>After an opening video showing Von Croy bursting into the ancient</p><p>Cambodian tomb (a very large building with many levels and twisting paths)</p><p>and a display of the words “Cambodia 1984,” we hear Von Croy say, “And so</p><p>we breech the sanctum of the ancients, the first footfalls in this tomb for cen-</p><p>turies.” We then immediately see the young Lara next to him, looking</p><p>06 gee ch 5</p><p>3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 115</p><p>116 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>around in awe, and hear her say, “This place gives me the creeps, [pause]</p><p>after you.” This sort of not-so-respectful patter is typical of Lara, a rather</p><p>spoiled and self-satisfied young girl.</p><p>Von Croy proceeds to tell Lara to be careful, that not all is as it seems.</p><p>Concealed traps and pitfalls are everywhere. She is to stay close to him and</p><p>follow his instructions. Since good men have died for the information con-</p><p>tained in this tomb—and bad ones have “bartered the information for their</p><p>own ends”—Von Croy insists that “[f]or this we must respect it, we will not</p><p>deviate from its route and you will not deviate from my instruction.” Alto-</p><p>gether, Von Croy comes across as an intimidating and dominating professor.</p><p>But, of course, Lara is not cowered by him. She has, after all, just said that</p><p>he gives her the creeps even more than the old tomb itself. The game encour-</p><p>ages the player not to be too deferential to Von Croy either. Even though Von</p><p>Croy has told Lara (the player) to stay close and not deviate from the straight</p><p>route ahead, the only way that the player (Lara) can find hidden treasures (like</p><p>golden skulls) is to wander away from him and explore things a bit. In fact, as</p><p>Von Croy is commanding Lara to stay close, a willful player (as Lara) is prob-</p><p>ably looking behind a group of pillars to see if they hide anything interesting.</p><p>If players are not willful in this way, by the end of the episode they will have</p><p>missed lots of good stuff and probably will play it over again.</p><p>The player is placed, by the very design of the game, in the same psycho-</p><p>logical space as Lara—learning from Von Croy but not subordinating oneself</p><p>entirely to his old-fashioned professorial need for dominance. The game’s</p><p>design encourages the player to take on a certain sort of attitude and rela-</p><p>tionship with Von Croy—and, more generally, a certain sort of personality—</p><p>that represents, in fact, just the sort of person that Lara is.</p><p>When I played the game, I was a bit intimidated by Von Croy. Based prob-</p><p>ably on a lifetime of (trying to look as if I am) following the orders of authority</p><p>figures like deans, I found myself wanting to follow his orders to the T. But I</p><p>also wanted the treasures and found myself guiltily sneaking down paths off</p><p>Von Croy’s route and thereby becoming more like Lara and less like myself.</p><p>The game has a neat way to ensure that even inept players will dis-</p><p>cover that they can find good things if they are willing to disobey the pro-</p><p>fessor. For example, when I was playing the game, at one point Von Croy</p><p>ordered Lara to jump across a cavern; in doing so, she fell in the water</p><p>below, due to my ineptness in controlling her (via the computer’s keys).</p><p>She can climb back up again and try the jump again (indeed, she needs to</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 116</p><p>117v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>do this to follow Von Croy and eventually complete the episode). But, low</p><p>and behold, as I (Lara) swam toward land, I (Lara) discovered a golden</p><p>skull in the water. A player cannot help but think: What if I purposely dis-</p><p>obey orders and jump and climb other than where I am told? What other</p><p>good things will I find? Soon one is just a bit more like the willful and</p><p>spoiled Lara herself (and practicing yet more jumps and climbs). In such</p><p>video games, players get practice in trying out new identities that chal-</p><p>lenge some of their assumptions about themselves and the world. A good</p><p>science class should do the same.</p><p>STRANGE LANGUAGE:</p><p>VON CROY TEACHES LARA</p><p>HOW TO PLAY A VIDEO GAME</p><p>After Von Croy has told Lara to follow closely and has pushed a hidden stone</p><p>in a wall to lower a floor-full of sharp spikes ahead, they come to a small ob-</p><p>stacle. Von Croy says, “The first obstacle, a small hop to test your—how do</p><p>you say—pluck. Press and hold walk, now push forward.”</p><p>Now this is, if you think about it, a strange thing to say. However, it</p><p>does not seem the least bit strange when one is actually playing the episode.</p><p>Von Croy is talking to the virtual character Lara, a character who walks and</p><p>jumps in the virtual world but has no computer whose keys she can press,</p><p>push, or hold. However, the player who is playing as the character Lara does</p><p>have a computer and must learn to manipulate its keys to make Lara come</p><p>alive. (I played Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation on a computer, but Tomb</p><p>Raider games are also available, and probably more often played on, game</p><p>platforms, which, of course, have controls of their own—controls on a hand-</p><p>held controller—that the player needs to learn.) Thus, Von Croy’s remark</p><p>perfectly melds and integrates talk to Lara and talk to the player. This meld-</p><p>ing is part of what marries the player’s real-world identity as a player and his</p><p>or her virtual identity as Lara.</p><p>But things are even yet more interesting here. When Von Croy says,</p><p>“Press and hold walk,” he means for the player to press and hold the Shift</p><p>key on the computer, which is the key that makes Lara walk rather than</p><p>run. (When she walks she automatically stops at ledges; when she runs, she</p><p>runs past them and falls. It is easier to have her walk up to dangerous</p><p>ledges than to run up to them.) When Von Croy continues with “now</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 117</p><p>118 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>push forward,” he means for the player, who is now holding down the</p><p>Shift key, to press the Arrow key pointing up on the computer, which is</p><p>the key that moves Lara forward. When the player does this combination</p><p>of keystrokes, Lara walks up to the obstacle and automatically stops at its</p><p>edge. She is now ready to jump.</p><p>At this point Von Croy says, “Come, come, child, do not fear, this is</p><p>merely an appetizer for the perils ahead. Push forward and jump together.”</p><p>This tells the player to press the Up Arrow key (move forward) and the Alt</p><p>key (the key that makes Lara jump) together. When the player does so, Lara</p><p>easily jumps over the obstacle.</p><p>Here Von Croy is using the functional names for the keys, the actions</p><p>they carry out in the virtual world, actions like “walk,” “forward,” and</p><p>“jump,” rather than the computer names for the keys, things like “Shift key,”</p><p>“Up Arrow key,” and “Alt key.” So, then, how does the player know what</p><p>keys to press? A player knows this in three ways.</p><p>1. The player can do as I did and look in the booklet that comes with</p><p>the game. This means that when the player is listening to Von Croy,</p><p>he or she is simultaneously looking up the computer key equivalents</p><p>of his commands (another way in which the virtual and real worlds</p><p>are married).</p><p>2. The player can make intelligent guesses from having played other</p><p>Tomb Raider games or games like them.</p><p>3. The player can do as my child does in similar circumstances and press</p><p>all the keys until he or she gets the right result and thereby finds the</p><p>right key.</p><p>Throughout the first episode, Von Croy continues to talk this way,</p><p>telling the player (Lara) about even more complicated actions that he or</p><p>she (and Lara) can do, saying things like: “This gap is wider and the edge</p><p>is treacherous. First walk to the edge. Then press forward and jump to-</p><p>gether. When you are in midair, press and hold action. You will grab the</p><p>outcrop.” By the end of the episode, the player has both finished the first</p><p>episode of the game (and it’s a very long game, like most good video</p><p>games) and learned how to operate the basic controls. The player also has</p><p>learned some basic strategies of how to explore the virtual world and avoid</p><p>certain dangers.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 118</p><p>119v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>LARA AND LEARNING</p><p>Why is this “strange” language not actually strange when one is playing the</p><p>game? In a good many video games, players hear such language, language</p><p>that “confuses” the virtual world (e.g., “walk”) and the real world of the</p><p>player at the computer (e.g., “press the walk key”). Such language, in fact,</p><p>represents a very basic and crucial learning principle, one regularly ignored</p><p>in schools. Learners cannot</p><p>use the term “connectionism” in</p><p>the book; instead I simply talk about what it means to discover patterns in</p><p>our experience and what it means to be “networked” with other people and</p><p>with various tools and technologies (like computers and the Internet) so that</p><p>one can behave “smarter” than one actually is.</p><p>None of these three areas—work on situated cognition, New Literacy</p><p>Studies, and a pattern-recognition view of the mind—represents a viewpoint</p><p>that is universally agreed on. Many disagree with each one and, indeed, all</p><p>three. Furthermore, my “introduction” to these areas, via video games, is</p><p>highly selective. People who know little about these areas will pick up only</p><p>the big picture. People who know a lot about them will quickly realize that I</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 8</p><p>9v INTRODUCTION v</p><p>am developing my own perspectives in each of these areas, while many other</p><p>perspectives exist as well. Nonetheless, I believe that these three areas cap-</p><p>ture central truths about the human mind and human learning and that these</p><p>truths are well represented in the ways in which good video games are</p><p>learned and played.</p><p>These truths are often less well represented in today’s schools. And this</p><p>book is about schools as well. It is a plea to build schooling on better princi-</p><p>ples of learning. If we have to learn this from video games, and not from a</p><p>field with as boring a name as cognitive science, then so be it. I know that</p><p>many people, especially on the right wing of the political spectrum, will find</p><p>this idea absurd. So be that as well. (My book The New Work Order, written</p><p>with Glynda Hull and Colin Lankshear, is, in part, about why the old distinc-</p><p>tions between “right” and “left” don’t make much sense anymore in the mod-</p><p>ern global world of the so-called new capitalism.)</p><p>Let me end this introduction with a few short points. First, while I talk a</p><p>good deal about actual video games, I really intend to discuss the potential of</p><p>video games. The games get better and more sophisticated all the time and at</p><p>a rapid pace. Much of what I have to say here will simply get “truer” as the</p><p>games get even better. This is my consolation for the fact that any games I</p><p>mention will be, for some players, “out of date,” replaced by newer ones by</p><p>the time anyone reads this book.</p><p>Second, I am aware that many readers will not have played—or will not</p><p>currently be playing—video games, especially the type I discuss. I will try to</p><p>be as clear and explicit as I can about the games, so that all readers can form a</p><p>picture of what I am talking about.</p><p>Readers who want to explore the many types of video games, see pictures</p><p>from them, even download demonstrations of various games, and otherwise</p><p>find out more about them can log on to a wide array of Internet sites devoted</p><p>to video games. Any game I mention in this book can be thoroughly investi-</p><p>gated in this way. Here are some sites I can recommend, though there are</p><p>many others: gamezone.com, gamedex.com, pcgamer.com, gamepro.com,</p><p>gamespot.com, ign.com, MrFixitOnline.com, womengamers.com, and game-</p><p>critics.com. Joystick101.org offers up-to-the-minute articles and critical per-</p><p>spectives, beyond reviews, about games and controversial issues about games.</p><p>Third, I am not, in this book, meaning to imply that I think “old” baby</p><p>boomers like me ought to run out and start playing video games. Many will</p><p>find the games too hard and frustrating, without the personal payoff that</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 9</p><p>10 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>makes for continued practice. Nonetheless, we can learn a lot from those</p><p>young people who play games, if only we take them and their games seri-</p><p>ously. And, indeed, I am always struck by how many people, even some of the</p><p>liberal advocates of multiculturalism, readily decry and seek to override peo-</p><p>ple’s cultures when these cultures are popular peer-based ones centered</p><p>around things like video games. Let it be said, too, having mentioned multi-</p><p>culturalism, that a great many African Americans love video games, just as do</p><p>a great many Anglo Americans and everyone else in between. And, yes, poor</p><p>children and teenagers do play video games, even if they have to find a com-</p><p>puter or game console at school, in a library, or community center, or at a</p><p>friend’s house. There are important issues of equity here, though, and I dis-</p><p>cuss these at the end of the book.</p><p>Finally, there is this: Two issues have taken up the vast majority of writ-</p><p>ing about video games: violence (e.g., shooting and killing in games, depic-</p><p>tions of crime) and gender (e.g., whether and how much girls play, whether</p><p>and how video games depict women poorly). I have nothing whatsoever to</p><p>say about these issues in this book. They are well discussed elsewhere. I do,</p><p>however, discuss, in chapter 6, some very heated social and political issues</p><p>that arise when considering video games at a time when, thanks to free pow-</p><p>erful software, almost any group can design a sophisticated 3-D video game</p><p>to represent its own values and interests.</p><p>Though they are not important for the basic argument of this book, my</p><p>own views on the violence and gender issues are as follows: The issue of vio-</p><p>lence and video games is widely overblown (especially in a world where real</p><p>people are regularly really killing real people in wars across the world that we</p><p>watch on television). Debate over violence in video games is one more way in</p><p>which we want to talk about technology (or drugs, for that matter) doing</p><p>things to people rather than talking about the implications of people’s overall</p><p>social and economic contexts.</p><p>In any case, shooting is an easy form of social interaction (!) to program.</p><p>As realistic forms of conversation become more computationally possible (a</p><p>very hard task), I predict that shooting will be less important and talking</p><p>more important in many games, even shooter games. Even now, many shoot-</p><p>ing games stress stealth, story, and social interaction more than they used to.</p><p>Furthermore, there are many categories of very sophisticated video</p><p>games—simulations and some strategy games—that do not involve any vio-</p><p>lence at all. Nonetheless, I base my arguments in this book in part on shooter</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 10</p><p>11v INTRODUCTION v</p><p>games, precisely because they are the “hardest” case. It’s pretty clear that a</p><p>simulation game (like SimCity) involves important learning principles, if only</p><p>because many scientists themselves use such simulation techniques. How-</p><p>ever, it is easier to miss and dismiss the learning principles in other sorts of</p><p>games. But they are very much there, nonetheless.</p><p>As to gender: I have no doubt that video games, like most other popular</p><p>cultural forms, overstress young, buxom, and beautiful women in their con-</p><p>tent. Furthermore, with several major exceptions, these woman are often not</p><p>the main characters in the games. However, as more girls and women play</p><p>games, this will change. And, indeed, in role-playing games, you can design</p><p>your own character. In a game I am playing at the present time (Dungeon</p><p>Siege), I am an African American female, though I could only make my skin</p><p>light black and my body fairly shapely; wider choices will, I am sure, be avail-</p><p>able as time goes on. (I personally don’t want to play in a fantasy world as a</p><p>balding, overweight, aging white male, since I get plenty of opportunity to do</p><p>that in the real world, but, then, my identical twin was upset, when he was</p><p>designing his character for the game that he could not design such a charac-</p><p>ter as the hero.) Games, of course, reflect the culture we live in—a culture we</p><p>can change.</p><p>As to the issue of girls and women playing games, they are quickly catch-</p><p>ing up with the boys and men, though they often play different games (e.g.,</p><p>The Sims). Nevertheless, there are Internet sites devoted to women who play</p><p>the sorts of shooter games more commonly associated with males. When we</p><p>academics feel our interests define the world, we should keep in mind the fol-</p><p>lowing fact: The largest category</p><p>do much with lots of overt information that a</p><p>teacher has explicitly told them outside the context of immersion in actual</p><p>practice. At the same time, learners cannot learn without some overt infor-</p><p>mation; they cannot discover everything for themselves.</p><p>The solution is to give information in context and to couch it in ways</p><p>that make sense in the context of embodied action. Consider a simple real-</p><p>world example. Telling someone “When your car is skidding, turn the wheel</p><p>in the direction of the skid” works less well than saying “When your car is</p><p>skidding, look in the direction of the skid.” (Of course, when the driver looks</p><p>in that direction, he or she will turn the wheel in that direction.) The latter</p><p>formulation couches the information in a way that allows it to be integrated</p><p>with embodied action both in the learner’s mental simulation and in actual</p><p>action on the spot.</p><p>In good classroom science instruction, an instructor does not lecture for</p><p>an extended period and then tell the learners to go off and apply what they</p><p>have learned in a group science activity. The learners won’t remember most</p><p>of what they have heard. And, in any case, none of it will have made much</p><p>sense in a situated and embodied way that is actually usable. Yet good science</p><p>instructors don’t just turn learners loose to engage in activities with no help</p><p>at all.</p><p>Rather, as group members are discovering things through their own ac-</p><p>tivity, the good science instructor comes up, assesses the progress they are</p><p>making and the fruitfulness of the paths down which they are proceeding in</p><p>their inquiry, and then gives overt information that is, at that point, usable.</p><p>The instructor gives group members information that facilitates their further</p><p>movement down a fruitful path they are already on, or sends them down a re-</p><p>lated but more fruitful path than the one on which they have hit, or gets</p><p>them to think about an aspect of the phenomenon they are investigating that</p><p>they have not yet considered but for which they are ready and ripe. And, in-</p><p>deed, after such embodied inquiry, there are even times when learners need</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 119</p><p>120 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>and are ready for lectures. They are now able to give a good many of the</p><p>words and phrases in the lecture situated and embodied meanings through</p><p>the their own mental simulations of former and future actions.</p><p>However, there is more at stake in Von Croy’s “mixed” language—lan-</p><p>guage that mixes talk to Lara about the virtual world and to the player about</p><p>the game’s controls. Such language is one among many devices in a good</p><p>video game that encourages the player to relate, juxtapose, and meld his or</p><p>her real-world identity (actually, multiple real-world identities) and the vir-</p><p>tual identity of the character he or she is playing in the virtual world of the</p><p>game. Such a process also encourages the player to adopt what I called in</p><p>chapter 3 a projective identity.</p><p>I argued earlier that projective identities are the heart and soul of active</p><p>and critical learning. Children who take responsibility for the sort of class-</p><p>room virtual scientist they are and will become throughout the school year</p><p>and relate this proactively to their real-world identities (some of which may</p><p>have started as virtual identities in other play or school domains) are engaged</p><p>in real learning, learning as a refashioning of self. Of course, no child can do</p><p>this if no such virtual identity and world—a world of imagined scientists and</p><p>science enacted in words, deeds, and texts—is present in the classroom.</p><p>But let me return to our game. As is typical of training modules in good</p><p>video games, this first training episode of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation</p><p>does not tell the player everything he or she needs to know and do in order to</p><p>play the rest of game. All the episode does is give the player enough informa-</p><p>tion and skill to play and learn from the subsequent episodes. Since each</p><p>episode gets more difficult, the player is, in fact, always both playing and</p><p>learning. Indeed, the distinction between playing (doing the actual activity)</p><p>and learning is blurred in a video game, as is the distinction between master</p><p>and beginner, since players always willingly face new challenges as a game</p><p>progresses (games get harder as they progress) and as new games do new</p><p>things, make new demands, and get better and better at challenging players</p><p>in creative ways.</p><p>When the second episode of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation begins, Von</p><p>Croy challenges Lara (you) to put your newly acquired skills to the test in a</p><p>race against him through unfamiliar territory to grab a sacred stone in an-</p><p>other part of the temple. Unfortunately, after he says, “We will race for the</p><p>Iris, on the count of three: one, two,” he takes off without saying “three,” giv-</p><p>ing himself a good head start.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 120</p><p>121v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>If you’ve found and collected all eight golden skulls in the first episode,</p><p>Von Croy chooses the Path of the Heretical, a more difficult test. If you</p><p>haven’t found all the skulls, then he chooses the Path of the Virtuous, an eas-</p><p>ier test. This is typical of good video games and represents several of the</p><p>learning principles discussed earlier: A good video game adapts to the level of</p><p>the player, rewards different players differently (but rewards them all), and</p><p>often stays at the edge of the player’s regime of competence.</p><p>It is also interesting and an important fact that the game rewards the</p><p>player for finding the golden skulls. Finding them requires the player to dis-</p><p>regard Von Croy’s commands to stay close and follow his every command.</p><p>The player is encouraged by the very design of the game to be more Lara-</p><p>like—playful and willful—leaving behind his or her own fears and hesitations</p><p>about authority and the risks of exploration.</p><p>LEARNING IN A SUBDOMAIN</p><p>OF THE FULL DOMAIN</p><p>The third episode of the game starts with Lara, now an adult, off adventuring</p><p>in Egypt. Von Croy, older as well, returns from time to time in the story. By</p><p>now the player has learned and lived through Lara’s back story—even learned</p><p>where and how she got her famous backpack (indeed, the player playing Lara</p><p>as a teenager has picked it up). So, are the first two episodes “training”</p><p>(“learning”) or a “real” part of the game? They are, of course, both. In a good</p><p>video game, the player learns to play the game by playing in a “subdomain”</p><p>of the real game. This is an important learning principle and, again, one reg-</p><p>ularly ignored in school.</p><p>Many video games have an explicitly labeled training module. For exam-</p><p>ple, many shooter games (like Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Half-Life, Deus Ex, or</p><p>Max Payne) have such modules where instructors—sometimes sergeants</p><p>shouting at you, sometimes more gentle instructors, even peaceful-looking</p><p>female holograms as in the training module for Half-Life—talk to the player</p><p>just as Von Croy talked to Lara (you). These modules are not episodes in the</p><p>game, but the player moves through the same sorts of landscapes, performs</p><p>the same sorts of actions, and engages with the same sorts of artifacts as in</p><p>the “real” game (except the only way you can get killed in the training mod-</p><p>ule is by blowing yourself up while trying to learn how to use dynamite and</p><p>similar items, something I have done on more than one occasion).</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 121</p><p>122 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>Once the game proper starts, the first episode (sometimes several early</p><p>episodes) is almost always something of a training module, even though it</p><p>may not be labeled explicitly as such. In this episode, things are less hectic</p><p>and demanding than they will get later on. (This is not to say that things</p><p>aren’t hectic and demanding, enough to provide a feel for the game world</p><p>and what is to come). System Shock 2 provides a particularly good example of</p><p>this sort of first episode.</p><p>In the first episode, the player is rarely under any sort of time pressure and</p><p>generally pays only a small</p><p>price for mistakes. Usually no demanding enemies—</p><p>often none at all—attack the player. Furthermore, this episode usually offers a</p><p>concentrated sample of the most basic and important actions, artifacts, and in-</p><p>teractions that the player will need to deal with throughout the game.</p><p>Nonetheless, these early episodes are very much part of the game and its</p><p>story. Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation combines the training module and the</p><p>early episodes as places where demands are lowered enough so that lots of</p><p>fundamental learning can be done “on site” in the “real” world (i.e., in this</p><p>case, the “real virtual world”) of the game (and not, say, in books or through</p><p>lots of overt instruction out of context).</p><p>By saying that in a good video game, players learn to play the game by</p><p>playing in a “subdomain” of the real game, I mean that training modules and</p><p>early episodes, where fundamental learning gets done, are built as simplified</p><p>versions of the same world in which the player will live, play, and learn</p><p>throughout the game. Learning is not started in a separate place (e.g., a class-</p><p>room or textbook) outside the domain in which the learning is going to oper-</p><p>ate. At the same time, the learner is not thrown into the “real” thing—the full</p><p>game—and left to swim or drown.</p><p>Because good video games have training modules, early episodes as fur-</p><p>ther training in the fundamentals, and more advanced learning throughout as</p><p>one is ready, all done in the game’s virtual world, something interesting hap-</p><p>pens to the learner. Let me tell you a little story to make the point: Once</p><p>when I was giving a talk about video games and learning, there were two ex-</p><p>cellent game players (and computer experts) in their mid-20s in the audi-</p><p>ence—dragged to the talk by the academic whose research they assisted.</p><p>After my talk, this academic asked them publicly what they thought about</p><p>what I had said. Were the sorts of learning principles I had talked about re-</p><p>ally operating in these games? The two players both said that, yes, they were</p><p>aware that such principles were at work when they were playing video and</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 122</p><p>123v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>computer games, but that they had never thought of what they were doing as</p><p>“learning.”</p><p>This is what is magical about learning in good video games—and in good</p><p>classrooms, too—learners are not always overtly aware of the fact that that</p><p>are “learning,” how much they are learning, or how difficult it is. Learners</p><p>are embedded in a domain (a semiotic domain like a branch of science or a</p><p>good video game) where, even when they are learning (and since the domain</p><p>gets progressively harder, they are always learning), they are still in the do-</p><p>main, still a member of the team (affinity group), still actually playing the</p><p>game, even if only as a “newbie.”</p><p>TRANSFER AND BEYOND IN VIDEO GAMES</p><p>Of course, there are times in a video game where players recognize that they</p><p>are learning. These are the times—and, as the game progresses, such times</p><p>become more common—where learners see that their now-routinized mas-</p><p>tery, developed earlier in the game and in playing similar games, breaks</p><p>down. They face a new challenge for which their now-routinized skills don’t</p><p>work. In cases like this, a form of learning happens that is just the sort we</p><p>want to encourage in school but often have little success doing: transfer of</p><p>prior knowledge mixed with innovation. Let me make this point with an ex-</p><p>tended example from my own game playing.</p><p>By the end of the first-person shooter game Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I</p><p>had learned a strategy for killing Nazi “Super Soldiers” (robotlike, mechanically</p><p>and biologically enhanced beings who can take and give a great deal of damage)</p><p>of which I was quite proud. In fact, I had gotten quite good at this strategy.</p><p>Here is what I did: I positioned myself quite far from a Super Soldier, be-</p><p>hind good cover, and then sniped at him using a long-distance rifle with a</p><p>good scope, ducking below cover each time the Super Soldier fired back.</p><p>After many shots, the Super Soldier died, and I had suffered little or no dam-</p><p>age. Suffering little or no damage is important—it does little good to win a</p><p>battle but have so few health points left that you will easily die in the next</p><p>battle, even with a weak opponent, before you can find a health kit to heal</p><p>yourself. In a closer battle with a Super Soldier, even if I won, I tended to</p><p>take lots of damage, which left me too weak for the fights to come. However,</p><p>I do know other players who learned good strategies for defeating the Super</p><p>Soldiers up close without taking too much damage.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 123</p><p>124 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>At the end of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the player (playing U.S. Office</p><p>of Secret Actions’ Agent Major B. J. Blazkowitz—a very famous video-game</p><p>character, because he originally appeared in one of early first-person shooter</p><p>games, Wolfenstein 3D, a game some consider the “mother” of all first-person</p><p>shooter games) must face Heinrich I, an ancient deadly knight the Nazis have</p><p>risen from his grave through dark mysterious rituals. Heinrich is one heck of</p><p>a Super Soldier. He can cause zombies to rise from the ground to attack you</p><p>(Blazkowitz). Furthermore, he can cause a myriad of spirits to fly through the</p><p>air, find you wherever you are trying to hide, and attack you. If you get close</p><p>to Heinrich, he can cause rocks from surrounding pillars and arches to fall on</p><p>you; he can pull you in closer to him by swiping his sword on the ground; and</p><p>he can easily kill you with one blow of his massive sword.</p><p>Trying to hide behind cover and snipe Heinrich does not work—trust</p><p>me, I tried it many times. The flying spirits find you every time and kill you.</p><p>So, I discovered that my routinized strategy was no good. At this point, the</p><p>game forced me—at its very end, to boot—to try other things and learn</p><p>something new, or not finish it.</p><p>Of course, in such a situation, players can call on experiences they have</p><p>had in other games, adapting them to the current circumstances, or they can</p><p>try something entirely new. The first strategy, calling on previous experience,</p><p>is an example of what learning theorists call “transfer.” An example of trans-</p><p>fer at work would be a case where a student applies something he or she has</p><p>learned about reasoning in biology to a new problem faced in a social studies</p><p>class. Transfer does not always work and can be dangerous. (Maybe social</p><p>studies is better off not being done in the style of biological thinking; then</p><p>again, maybe not.) Transfer requires active learning and, if it is not to be dan-</p><p>gerous, critical learning.</p><p>At one time, cognitive psychologists considered transfer to be a fairly easy</p><p>phenomenon. Then they went through a stage of thinking that people were,</p><p>in fact, quite bad at transfer and it was, for all practical purposes, impossible to</p><p>trigger transfer in school learning. Now they believe transfer is crucial to</p><p>learning but not at all easy to trigger in learners, especially in school. Getting</p><p>transfer to happen typically requires making the learners overtly aware of how</p><p>two different problems or domains share certain properties at a deeper level.</p><p>That is, it requires thinking at a design level, thinking about how two prob-</p><p>lems or domains are structured or “designed” in similar ways, ways that may</p><p>be obscured by the more superficial features of the problems or domains.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 124</p><p>125v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>Facing Heinrich, and having failed many times, I decided to call on what</p><p>I had learned in playing other video games. I tried a strategy I had learned</p><p>from American McGee’s Alice when trying to kill “bosses” (particularly power-</p><p>ful enemies). I moved wildly around, zigzagging around and away from</p><p>Heinrich, stopping only quickly to shoot him a couple of times with my most</p><p>powerful weapons, moving again to avoid his fire and the zombies and spirits</p><p>he sent after me, all the while frantically searching for health</p><p>kits laying</p><p>among the fallen rocks and rubble that would repair the damage I was taking.</p><p>This strategy had worked to kill bosses like the Duchess, the Centipede,</p><p>and the Queen of Hearts in Alice. It almost worked here. I survived longer</p><p>than I had in all my other attempts. But, alas, Heinrich got me in the end. I</p><p>went down with more pride and dignity (remember, in my projective identity,</p><p>I care about such things), but I went down nonetheless.</p><p>Since some of the Alice strategy seemed to work, I needed to think about</p><p>what in it to keep and what in it to change. Here is where transfer marries in-</p><p>novation. In this type of situation, the player has to think of something new</p><p>(new to the player, at least; others may have already hit on it) in the context of</p><p>keeping what is useful from past experience. This is a key moment for active</p><p>and potentially critical learning. It is the place where previous experience is,</p><p>at one and the same time, recruited and transformed, giving rise to newer ex-</p><p>periences that can be used and transformed in the future.</p><p>Here is what I did. First I used another instance of transfer and did</p><p>something I have done in a good many shooter games: I ran out of a tunnel I</p><p>was in, quickly pounded Heinrich with four rockets from my rocket gun, and</p><p>then ran quickly back into my tunnel. Often in shooter games some of your</p><p>enemies will follow you into the tunnel or other such narrow space, and they</p><p>become easier targets, since they are not all spread out and you see them</p><p>coming at you in a direct line. Some of Heinrich’s key helpers (three Dread</p><p>Knights and the Nazi who had brought him back to life) ran after me, and I</p><p>easily killed them.</p><p>Heinrich was momentarily without helpers, though that would soon</p><p>change. Now I knew I had to run out and face him—he was not about to fol-</p><p>low me back to the tunnel and would have killed me there, in any case, by</p><p>sending his spirits at me from afar (his version of my sniping strategy). The</p><p>Alice strategy wasn’t going to work without some serious modification. What</p><p>to do? There is, of course, only one way to proceed: Think and try some-</p><p>thing. If you die, you go back to the drawing board.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 125</p><p>126 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>I figured that I had to do my wild moving-around strategy from Alice, but</p><p>closer in to Heinrich. If I stayed close, the flying spirits flew over my head for</p><p>the most part (since they are really a device to stop people from trying to kill</p><p>Heinrich from a distance). Yet if I stayed too close, he would draw me into</p><p>him by hitting the ground with his sword and then, as I flew toward him, he</p><p>would slay me with one blow. What seemed to be called for was a more con-</p><p>strained version of the Alice strategy, stressing moving toward and quickly</p><p>away from Heinrich in straight lines more than the wider and more circular</p><p>motion I had used in Alice. (Other players have had success with circular</p><p>strafing when fighting Heinrich, but I am no good at tightly controlled circu-</p><p>lar movements.)</p><p>I ran out of my tunnel and tried my new part-transfer, part-innovation</p><p>strategy. After four direct battles with Heinrich, interrupted by wild runs to</p><p>find health kits to repair my damage, I had him seriously weakened. Things</p><p>appeared to be working and I had gotten farther than ever before. But by</p><p>then I had just less than half my health, even after I had used the last health</p><p>kit to be found.</p><p>Then something happened that can be added to transfer and innovation</p><p>as a learning strategy: a lucky discovery. As I used the last health kit, I realized</p><p>I was out of ammunition for my Venom gun and switched to my Telsa gun,</p><p>which fires electric rays. I had found the last health kit behind some boxes</p><p>and, as I stood behind them, I noticed that the rather slow-moving Heinrich</p><p>was moving toward the boxes to finish me off. Thus, I ran quickly around the</p><p>boxes and around behind Heinrich, who was now staring over the boxes at</p><p>where I had been standing. His back momentarily turned to me, I ran right</p><p>up to him and blasted him from behind with the Telsa.</p><p>It was risky, but he had already taken enough damage that this finished</p><p>him off. He died in a rage and I immediately saw a cut scene (a short video).</p><p>The Super Soldier project and the Heinrich project had been Himmler ba-</p><p>bies. In the cut scene I saw Himmler looking through binoculars. He had ob-</p><p>viously been watching my battle with Heinrich from atop a far away hill.</p><p>Himmler says with dismay, “This American, he has ruined everything.” His</p><p>aide then says, “Herr Himmler, the plane is waiting to take you back to Berlin.”</p><p>Himmler is reluctant to go; he obviously does not want to have to explain his</p><p>failure to Hitler. The aide pushes him: “Sir, the Fuehrer is expecting your ar-</p><p>rival.” Himmler walks very slowly back to the car. It’s quite satisfying to have</p><p>finished off Heinrich and to have pissed off Himmler at one and the same time.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 126</p><p>127v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>Though this example may seem trivial—with its talk of Super Soldiers</p><p>and risen dead—it represents several components of one very important type</p><p>of active learning.</p><p>1. The learner realizes that a more or less routinized strategy does not</p><p>work and quits using it.</p><p>2. The learner transfers skills and strategies from previous experience</p><p>by seeing underlying similarities between that experience and the</p><p>current problem (American McGee’s Alice and Return to Castle Wolfen-</p><p>stein are, at the surface level, quite different games, though both are</p><p>shooter games—Alice is a third-person shooter and Wolfenstein is a</p><p>first-person shooter.)</p><p>3. The learner learns that, while school sometimes sets up problems so</p><p>that earlier solutions transfer directly to later ones, this rarely hap-</p><p>pens in real life. The learner adapts and transforms the earlier experi-</p><p>ence to be transferred to the new problem through creativity and</p><p>innovation.</p><p>4. The learner also uses (and is prepared to use) what he or she discovers—</p><p>often “by accident”—on the spot, on the ground of practice, while im-</p><p>plementing the new transformed strategy (as I did when I circled behind</p><p>Heinrich looking for me over the boxes). This requires reflection not</p><p>after or before action but in the midst of action. The learner remains</p><p>flexible, adapting performance in action.</p><p>SYSTEM SHOCK 2</p><p>System Shock 2, like Deus Ex, combines elements of a role-playing game with</p><p>a first-person shooter. As a story, it also combines genres, combining the sci-</p><p>ence fiction of star travel, the action of a war movie, and the horror of a</p><p>movie like Alien. System Shock 2 takes place in the same fictional world as the</p><p>original System Shock did, a universe in which humans have already colonized</p><p>the solar system. In the first game, a super-powerful artificial intelligence sys-</p><p>tem called SHODAN went crazy and killed many people onboard the</p><p>Citadel Space Station.</p><p>After SHODAN was stopped by the intrepid efforts of whoever played the</p><p>first game, the governments of Earth came together in the United National</p><p>Nominate (UNN). The UNN has struggled to control the megacorporations</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 127</p><p>128 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>that have held power for a long time—the largest of which, the TriOptimum</p><p>Corporation, was responsible for SHODAN’s creation. This power struggle</p><p>between government and the corporations has resulted in an uneasy truce in</p><p>which the UNN holds power officially, but the corporations still hold a great</p><p>deal of de facto power through their own armies and police forces.</p><p>Into this already tension-filled situation comes a new source of potential</p><p>problems: TriOptimum, despite government efforts to keep corporations out</p><p>of such projects, has built a new spaceship, the Von Braun, capable of faster-</p><p>than-light travel. Indeed, the Von Braun is making its maiden voyage far be-</p><p>yond the solar system. The new technologies aboard the Von Braun have not</p><p>been well tested and don’t work as they should. The major problem is the</p><p>ship’s central</p><p>computer, XERXES. XERXES is quite “buggy” and is having</p><p>all sorts of problems (shades of SHODAN). Furthermore, the crew, made up</p><p>of both UNN and TriOptimum personnel, has separated into two warring</p><p>factions that mistrust and hate each other.</p><p>When the Von Braun passes the Tau Ceti star system, it receives, and de-</p><p>cides to respond to, a distress call coming from Tau Ceti. At that point,</p><p>something goes terribly wrong on the ship. This is the disaster to which you</p><p>awake when you—a military officer frozen for the long voyage—are called</p><p>out of cyber-slumber to help solve the problem.</p><p>When you start playing System Shock 2, you start out a few years before</p><p>the Von Braun’s voyage. You arrive at a military recruitment station (in a</p><p>first-person view, so you can’t see yourself, just the world around you). There</p><p>you choose from one of three career paths: the Marines, the Navy, or the</p><p>OSA (a special service that teaches psychic powers). This determines the</p><p>basic statistics (e.g., how strong you are) and skills (e.g., how good you are at</p><p>hacking into computers) with which you will start the game. Marines are</p><p>weapon and combat oriented. Navy personnel are less skilled with weapons</p><p>and are more oriented toward technology and research. They have skills nec-</p><p>essary to hack security programs and to engage in research about the crea-</p><p>tures and objects they find. OSA personnel are sort of like a psychic CIA and</p><p>have developed psychic powers that allow them to do a variety of special</p><p>things (e.g., Kinetic Redirection, which allows you to pull distant objects to-</p><p>ward you, or Remote Electron Tampering, which deactivates all active secu-</p><p>rity alarms).</p><p>Overall there are nine different skills and five different statistics in System</p><p>Shock 2. Each character type starts with some of these and not others, differ-</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 128</p><p>129v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>ent for each type. The nine skills are: Hacking (makes you more effective at</p><p>breaking into enemy computers), Repair (allows you to fix broken items),</p><p>Modify (lets you add new features to your existing weapons), Maintenance</p><p>(helps you keep your weapons in working order), Research (lets you research</p><p>new technologies and enemy physiologies), Standard Combat (makes you an</p><p>expert in the use of conventional weapons like pistols and shotguns), Energy</p><p>Weapons (improves your use of energy weapons like lasers and EMP rifles),</p><p>Heavy Weapons (helps you use larger weapons like Grenade Launchers and</p><p>Fusion Cannons), and Exotic Weapons (gives you more skill with the special</p><p>bioweapons you discover during the game). The five statistics are: Strength,</p><p>Endurance, Psionics, Agility, and Cybernetic Affinity.</p><p>Having made your choice, you sign up for a four-year hitch. In each of</p><p>the first three years you are given a choice of different postings, different for</p><p>each character type, each of which will enhance your character’s skills and</p><p>stats in certain ways. You don’t actually play these initial postings but see</p><p>videos and read about what you have gained by each experience you have</p><p>chosen. Thus, by the time the game play starts in earnest, your own choices</p><p>have shaped the sort of character you are going to be.</p><p>Your initial choice of character and the three postings you have chosen</p><p>set your initial distribution of skills and stats, the ones with which you will</p><p>enter the first episodes of the game. Once you get into the game, you find</p><p>and are sometimes rewarded with (by other characters in the virtual world)</p><p>cybernetic modules. You can use these modules at upgrade units to buy im-</p><p>provements in your different skills and stats. The higher the skill level you</p><p>are attempting to purchase, the more cybernetic modules it costs you.</p><p>Since cybernetic modules are hard to come by, you can become a real ex-</p><p>pert in only a few areas (whether skills or stats or some combination). Thus,</p><p>you must pick intelligently rather than squandering modules on a little of this</p><p>and a little of that. Since some of the best items and weapons in the game re-</p><p>quire you to get the maximum score you can achieve in a specific skill or stat</p><p>before you can use them, if you spend all of your cybernetic module points</p><p>trying to become a generalist, you won’t be able to use these neat items or</p><p>weapons by the end of the game.</p><p>Once you have completed your first three postings, the game proper</p><p>starts. You are in your fourth posting and find yourself awakened from a</p><p>cryo-slumber on the Von Braun with no memory of recent events. You imme-</p><p>diately see that things have gone badly wrong. Pipes are broken, debris is all</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 129</p><p>130 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>over the floor. Bodies are scattered across the ground and you hear crashing</p><p>noises and screams everywhere.</p><p>You are soon contacted via e-mail by Dr. Janice Polito, the Senior Sys-</p><p>tems Analyst onboard the Von Braun, and told that you have been cyberneti-</p><p>cally enhanced so that you can receive messages from her and others on your</p><p>built in “PDA” (Personal Data Assistant). Your cyber-enhancements also</p><p>allow you to use special skills and tools. She tells you that everything has</p><p>gone wrong, though you get no details now. She says only that you need to</p><p>reach her as quickly as possible on level four of the ship. It is no easy task get-</p><p>ting there, since much of the ship is destroyed and XERXES appears to be</p><p>trying to foil your every attempt.</p><p>As you travel around the corridors of the ship, there are three ways</p><p>you learn more about the situation, and, thus, can begin putting the story</p><p>together.</p><p>1. You occasionally get messages on your PDA from Dr. Polito telling</p><p>you about things that have just happened and giving you advice on</p><p>what you must do next.</p><p>2. You find small computer disks scattered around the ship that hold the</p><p>log messages of the crew. As you pick these up and read them, the</p><p>story slowly unfolds and you also get more information on how to</p><p>proceed.</p><p>3. The cybernetic system that’s been installed in you can pick up psychic</p><p>signals. When your system comes in contact with these, it interprets</p><p>them as light and sound. The result is that occasionally, as you move</p><p>through the ship, you see “ghosts” of people in the actions they took</p><p>prior to their deaths.</p><p>Using these clues, you must figure out what has happened to the crew of the</p><p>Von Braun and how you’re going to stop the menace.</p><p>Whatever has taken control of the ship has found a way to infect the</p><p>crew and turn them into zombies. Other creatures you run into, as you move</p><p>through the ship, include giant spiders, cybernetic nursemaids, and stealthy</p><p>cyber-assassins. As you get to the higher decks of the ship, you encounter</p><p>giant security bots and gun turrets that can mow you down in seconds. All of</p><p>these creatures have been designed with AI that allows them each to behave</p><p>differently and seemingly intelligently.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 130</p><p>131v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>There are many different ways to approach the many fights and prob-</p><p>lems you face in System Shock 2. And, of course, you can play the game as dif-</p><p>ferent characters—Marine, Navy, or OSA—each of which can be designed in</p><p>different ways by your choices at the beginning and throughout the game.</p><p>So, in reality, there are even different types of Marine, Navy, and OSA char-</p><p>acters. Each different set of choices gives the game a different feel, so you can</p><p>play it a number of times as if it were a different game. While you will, on the</p><p>second go-round, know where many of the items are hidden, there’s still a big</p><p>difference between a Heavy Weapons expert blowing up whole groups of</p><p>foes, a Hacker bypassing security systems and doors rather than fighting, and</p><p>a Psi master using mind power to get through problems.</p><p>System Shock 2, like all good video games, recruits a number of the learn-</p><p>ing principles we have already discussed. Players make choices that allow</p><p>them to play the game according to their own favored styles or explore new</p><p>ones. There are multiple routes to solve problems. Players get</p><p>multiple and</p><p>multimodal sources of information to enable their own discoveries about the</p><p>story, the virtual world, and the problems they face. System Shock 2 also has</p><p>training modules and early episodes that, like Tomb Raider: The Last Revela-</p><p>tion, exemplify important learning principles.</p><p>TRAINING MODULES AND EARLY EPISODES</p><p>IN SYSTEM SHOCK 2</p><p>When you are at the recruitment station at the beginning of System Shock 2,</p><p>you can choose to go into several rooms that constitute the game’s training</p><p>modules. Here you hear talk much like the talk that Professor Von Croy ad-</p><p>dressed to Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. A disembodied</p><p>voice welcomes you when you enter the first training room and tells you that</p><p>you are about to engage in a virtual training course using a “simulated cyber-</p><p>interface identical to an actual military-grade cyber-interface.” The voice</p><p>then says: “Move the mouse, see how it changes where you look? That means</p><p>you’re in Shoot Mode. Hit the Tab key. This puts you in Use Mode where</p><p>you can use your mouse to interact with items in the world.”</p><p>Once again we see here a language that mixes references to you as a vir-</p><p>tual character in the virtual world of the game (e.g., “actual military-grade</p><p>cyber-interface”) and references to the computer in the real world on which</p><p>you, a real person, are playing the game. You begin to learn to play the game</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 131</p><p>132 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>by engaging in a language that already fuses your real-world identity and</p><p>your virtual identity. The training modules continue this way until you know</p><p>just enough, and not more, to start playing the game “for real” and thereby</p><p>continue your learning through actual game play. There is no attempt to</p><p>make you remember information ahead of time and outside embodied expe-</p><p>rience of specific situations.</p><p>When you start the game proper, you find yourself coming awake to a</p><p>disaster. Dr. Polito tells you to get out quickly before the chambers you are in</p><p>run out of oxygen. Then you must reach her. There is a great deal of commo-</p><p>tion all around you. You find destruction, smoke, burning steam, loose electri-</p><p>cal wires, and dead bodies everywhere as you seek a way out. You feel</p><p>panicked, but you come to realize there is no reason for real panic. This first</p><p>episode—as in many good video games—is both a real part of the game and</p><p>part of your training. It is not really timed and nothing very bad can happen to</p><p>you. You are meant to learn as you proceed. You get to experience the “feel” of</p><p>the game—in this case, the pervasive panic and dread that spreads through-</p><p>out—but without any bad consequences that will deter your learning.</p><p>One way you learn in this first episode and other early episodes of the</p><p>game is by coming upon Information Kiosks as you travel through the lower</p><p>levels of the Von Braun. Each of these is labeled “TriOptimum Information</p><p>Terminal” along the side and says “A service of the TriOptimum corporation,</p><p>presented for your convenience” at the top. When you highlight the kiosk by</p><p>placing your mouse cursor on it, a message at the bottom of the screen says:</p><p>“right click to use information kiosk.” When you right-click the mouse, the</p><p>kiosk opens up a message that gives you information about playing the game</p><p>related to where you are at that time and to actions you will need to take at that</p><p>point or very soon thereafter. This is just-in-time and on-demand information,</p><p>situated in the sorts of contexts in which it makes sense and can be used.</p><p>For example, one information kiosk contains the following information:</p><p>“Your PDA contains every email, log and info kiosk note you find onboard. It</p><p>also contains an automatic note-taking utility, which keeps you informed of</p><p>pressing tasks while onboard. You can access the PDA by left clicking on the</p><p>Log icon on the right info bar.” Very soon after reading this message, you</p><p>find a log on a nearby body with a code in it that you need to get through the</p><p>next door. Thanks to the Information Kiosk, you know how to access the log</p><p>and the needed code. During the early episodes, you gain a wide variety of</p><p>such situated information from these kiosks, though you can pass them by if</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 132</p><p>133v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>you feel you don’t need any more information and know how to use the basic</p><p>controls of the game. In essence, a game manual has been spread throughout</p><p>the early episodes of the game, giving information when it can be best under-</p><p>stood and practiced through situated experience.</p><p>Dr. Polito’s early messages also give you situated information about how</p><p>to play the game, and clues about the basic story. For example, when you</p><p>find a power cell on the ground, she sends you a message (which you hear</p><p>orally, thanks to your cyber-enhancements, and which is also written in a lit-</p><p>tle box on the screen) that tells you that the power cell is dead but that there</p><p>should be a recharger nearby. She then says, “Just use it and it will recharge</p><p>all the power-driven devices in your possession.” After you have recharged</p><p>the cell, Dr. Polito tells you that you can open a nearby airlock door by</p><p>plugging the recharged power cell into the power unit associated with the</p><p>door. She then says, “Be quick about it, the vacuum seals won’t hold up</p><p>much longer.” (Since this is the first episode, even if you are clumsy and</p><p>slow, you will still make it.)</p><p>When you do get out of the decompressing chamber—before all the</p><p>oxygen is gone—Dr. Polito praises you and rewards you with cybernetic</p><p>modules with which you can upgrade your skills and stats. She explains how</p><p>to do this at upgrade units that just happen to be in the very next room. She</p><p>also tells you to use your cybernetic modules carefully, that they are “hard to</p><p>come by.” In fact, she only gives you four modules, and you cannot upgrade</p><p>much with these. Thus even at the outset you must choose very carefully</p><p>what new skills or stats you want and then build on these.</p><p>Dr. Polito then gives you further messages that help you on your way to</p><p>find her. Of course, things don’t always work out as she says—for example,</p><p>XERXES has shut down the main elevator and closed certain exits. In these</p><p>cases, you and Dr. Polito have to change strategies and seek for new ways to</p><p>proceed. As you move on, things get progressively harder. You eventually</p><p>face enemies—zombies—that try to (and can) kill you. You engage in your</p><p>first fights, using strategies available to your character type and based on the</p><p>choices you have made about skills and statistics.</p><p>These early fights are easier than ones to follow, allowing you to ex-</p><p>plore different strategies and get better at your chosen strategies, so that</p><p>you can handle the more difficult battles. The game stays at the outer edge</p><p>of what I called in chapter 3, the player’s “regime of competence.” Things</p><p>are challenging, but not undoable. And, of course, you learn to save the</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 133</p><p>134 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>game at crucial points, so when you do die, you don’t have to start all over</p><p>again, just from the last saved point.</p><p>The early episodes of System Shock 2 also engage a number of other</p><p>learning principles that are typical of good video games. First of all, such</p><p>games order the sorts of situations and problems with which they confront</p><p>the player. It’s not just that easier ones come earlier. Even more crucially, ear-</p><p>lier situations and problems are designed to lead a player to discover and</p><p>practice fruitful patterns and generalizations in regard to skills and strategies.</p><p>These patterns and generalizations turn out to be useful ones both for play-</p><p>ing the rest of the game and as the basis for more complicated patterns and</p><p>generalizations later when one faces more complex situations and problems.</p><p>Too often in school—especially in progressive pedagogies that stress im-</p><p>mersing children in rich activities without a good deal of teacher guidance—</p><p>children confront cases early in their learning</p><p>that are not very helpful. Since</p><p>the children are in a rich environment with little guidance, nothing stops them</p><p>from starting with complex cases rather than easier and more basic ones. Such</p><p>complex cases, thanks to the fact that all children are powerful pattern recog-</p><p>nizers, often lead children to hit on interesting patterns and generalizations</p><p>that are, in fact “garden paths.” Such garden-path patterns and generalizations</p><p>are not fruitful for the future, however interesting and even intelligent they are</p><p>for the present. In fact, they may very well lead children to miss easier, more</p><p>basic and useful patterns and generalizations that would have facilitated finding</p><p>the correct patterns and generalizations later for more complex cases.</p><p>The issue here is not starting children (or game players, for that matter)</p><p>with easy cases. The issue is starting them with cases that are basic or funda-</p><p>mental in the sense that they lead the learner to discover and practice what</p><p>are, in fact, fruitful patterns and generalizations. Fruitful patterns and gener-</p><p>alizations are ones that allow the learner to make real progress in the domain</p><p>and that can serve as the correct basis for more complicated patterns and</p><p>generalizations that need to be discovered later by confronting more com-</p><p>plex and less basic situations and cases.</p><p>To take a simple example from System Shock 2, consider that the first en-</p><p>emies one confronts are zombies that can be killed by whacking them with a</p><p>crowbar. When the player later discovers that more powerful enemies are not</p><p>easily killed by using the crowbar, he or she quickly hits on a strategy of using</p><p>the crowbar to kill easier enemies, saving better weapons (and weapons wear</p><p>out in this game) and ammunition for more powerful ones.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 134</p><p>135v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>But now suppose the first enemies confronted were, say, the cyber-assas-</p><p>sins that leap and jump away from the player and shoot arrows from afar</p><p>while hiding behind objects. Not only would this frustrate the player early in</p><p>the game before he or she had developed much skill, but the player also</p><p>would have to use sophisticated weapons and movements. Should the player</p><p>learn how to engage in such tactics and then apply them to zombies—ene-</p><p>mies that are less powerful but that, in our current hypothesis, the player is</p><p>seeing later, after he or she has learned to deal with the cyber-assassins—then</p><p>the player will surely kill them, but will waste weapons and ammunition that</p><p>are in short supply. The player will feel successful and powerful. But this</p><p>strategy ultimately will lead him or her to a dead end when confronted with</p><p>other creatures more powerful than the zombies when the player is low on</p><p>good weapons or ammunition.</p><p>This is an all-too-simple case. In fact, games like System Shock 2 design</p><p>their early situations and problems in a quite sophisticated way to lead to</p><p>fruitful learning. When later the player is confronted by harder situations</p><p>and problems, he or she has just the right basis on which to make fruitful</p><p>guesses about what to do. This is not to say that these situations and prob-</p><p>lems are not hard or that the player hits on the “right” answers quickly or</p><p>without a good deal of thought and effort. (Remember, in a good video game</p><p>there are always several different “right” answers.) It’s just that the harder sit-</p><p>uations and problems are not, in fact, impossible, as they too often are in</p><p>school when children confront them with no basis or a very misleading one.</p><p>(Moral for teachers: Order your cases to subserve fruitful generalizations.)</p><p>Good video games do more than order the situations and problems the</p><p>player faces in an intelligent way, at least in the early parts of the game. They</p><p>also offer the player, in the early episodes, what I call a concentrated sample. By</p><p>this I mean that they concentrate in the early parts of the game an ample</p><p>number of the most fundamental or basic artifacts and tools the player needs</p><p>to learn to use and actions the player needs to learn.</p><p>This is much like creating a foreign language classroom in which the</p><p>teacher concentrates the most fundamental words, phrases, and grammatical</p><p>forms into the early lessons. These words, phrases, and grammatical forms ap-</p><p>pear in this classroom sample more often and more concentrated together</p><p>than they would be in the “real world.” This allows the learner to overpractice</p><p>the most basic and central parts of the language’s vocabulary and grammar,</p><p>setting a good foundation for later learning and learning in the real world.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 135</p><p>136 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>To take one simple example: Finding and using health kits, or otherwise</p><p>getting healed, is an important part of many shooter games. These kits heal</p><p>the damage the player’s character has sustained thus far in the game, return-</p><p>ing the character to full health or, at least, giving back health. Shooter games</p><p>are usually generous with health kits early on, allowing their discovery and</p><p>use to become rather routine and allowing the player lots of health with</p><p>which to learn by exploring and taking risks in the early part of the game.</p><p>Later they become much more scarce, but by then the player has become</p><p>adept at finding and using them.</p><p>Many times the early parts of games are replete with things to find,</p><p>places and situations to explore, and things to do that teach players the range</p><p>or types of artifacts to be discovered, places and spaces to be encountered,</p><p>and actions to be expected. Players gain a good “feel” for the game and its</p><p>controls. By the time they get past the early parts, they are more adept and</p><p>ready for more advanced learning. Further, against a background of knowing</p><p>what is normal or to be expected, players can assess and reason well about</p><p>new and more special cases they encounter later.</p><p>What all this means is that good video games have a special way of deal-</p><p>ing with what we would call in school the basics. When players start a new</p><p>genre of game—say a real-time strategy game after having played only</p><p>shooter games—they have no way of knowing what is a basic skill and what is</p><p>a more advanced one. They don’t yet know which skills will be used over and</p><p>over and combined with others to make more complex skills.</p><p>Players discover what are basic skills “bottom up” by playing the game</p><p>and others like it. Things they use and do repeatedly and combine in various</p><p>ways turn out to be basic skills in the genre—and these things are different in</p><p>different genres. Ironically, by the time new players are aware of what are</p><p>basic skills in a given type of game—what are the basic elements that are used</p><p>repeatedly and combined and often concentrated in the earlier episodes—</p><p>they have already mastered them. Players come to realize that basic skills are</p><p>simply the most common genre features of a game, learned by playing the</p><p>game. For example, the player learns that finding and using health kits (re-</p><p>gardless of what form they take) is a basic skill (and genre feature) in a</p><p>shooter game (and does not exist in “realistic” military games, like Operation</p><p>Flashpoint, where one shot maims or kills you for good).</p><p>But basic skills can be learned by playing the game—and not through de-</p><p>contextualized skill and drill—because the games are well designed in the</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 136</p><p>137v TELLING AND DOING v</p><p>ways in which they construct their training modules and early episodes and in</p><p>the ways in which they order cases and concentrate their samples early on.</p><p>Neither players of games nor children in school can learn by “playing” (i.e.,</p><p>immersion in rich activities) if they are forced to operate in poorly designed</p><p>spaces.</p><p>And the real world—that is, the world without game designers or good</p><p>teachers, themselves designers of virtual worlds in classrooms—is not in and</p><p>of itself well designed for learning. Leaving children to the mercies of the</p><p>real world by just letting them loose to think and explore is not education.</p><p>LEARNING</p><p>PRINCIPLES</p><p>The discussion has suggested a variety of learning principles that are built</p><p>into good video games. Here I bring these principles together. As in earlier</p><p>chapters, the order of the principles is not important. And, once again, I in-</p><p>tend each principle to be relevant both to learning in video games and learn-</p><p>ing in content areas in classrooms.</p><p>23. Subset Principle</p><p>Learning even at its start takes place in a (simplified) subset of the</p><p>real domain.</p><p>24. Incremental Principle</p><p>Learning situations are ordered in the early stages so that earlier cases</p><p>lead to generalizations that are fruitful for later cases. When learners</p><p>face more complex cases later, the learning space (the number and</p><p>type of guesses the learner can make) is constrained by the sorts of</p><p>fruitful patterns or generalizations the learner has found earlier.</p><p>25. Concentrated Sample Principle</p><p>The learner sees, especially early on, many more instances of funda-</p><p>mental signs and actions than would be the case in a less controlled</p><p>sample. Fundamental signs and actions are concentrated in the early</p><p>stages so that learners get to practice them often and learn them well.</p><p>26. Bottom-up Basic Skills Principle</p><p>Basic skills are not learned in isolation or out of context; rather, what</p><p>counts as a basic skill is discovered bottom up by engaging in more</p><p>and more of the game/domain or game/domains like it. Basic skills</p><p>are genre elements of a given type of game/domain.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 137</p><p>138 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>27. Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time Principle</p><p>The learner is given explicit information both on-demand and just-</p><p>in-time, when the learner needs it or just at the point where the in-</p><p>formation can best be understood and used in practice.</p><p>28. Discovery Principle</p><p>Overt telling is kept to a well-thought-out minimum, allowing ample</p><p>opportunity for the learner to experiment and make discoveries.</p><p>29. Transfer Principle</p><p>Learners are given ample opportunity to practice, and support for,</p><p>transferring what they have learned earlier to later problems, includ-</p><p>ing problems that require adapting and transforming that earlier</p><p>learning.</p><p>BIBL IOGRAPHICAL NOTE</p><p>On the issue of telling versus immersion, see the discussion and citations in Gee 2001.</p><p>For further discussion of this issue in relation to learning in real domains and subdo-</p><p>mains of real domains, see Beaufort 1999; Coe, Lingard, & Teslenko 2001; Dias,</p><p>Freedman, Medway, & Pare 1999; Dias, Pare, & Farr 2000. These works are also rel-</p><p>evant to the bottom-up basic skills principle developed in this chapter.</p><p>For accounts of transfer that fit the perspective on learning developed in this</p><p>book, see Beach 1999 and Bransford & Schwartz 1999. The incremental learning</p><p>principle plays an important role in some connectionist models of learning, see, for</p><p>example, Elman 1991a, b; see also Karmiloff-Smith 1992. The explicit information</p><p>“on-demand” and “just-in-time” principle has played a large role in writings on learn-</p><p>ing and thinking in modern workplaces, see Gee, Hull, & Lankshear 1996. On the</p><p>learning principles in this chapter generally, see Gee 1994 and the citations there.</p><p>06 gee ch 5 3/13/03 12:09 PM Page 138</p><p>6</p><p>CULTURAL MODELS:</p><p>DO YOU WANT TO BE THE BLUE SONIC</p><p>OR THE DARK SONIC?</p><p>CONTENT IN VIDEO GAMES</p><p>CHAPTER 2 DISCUSSED A CASE WHERE A GRANDFATHER SAID THAT A</p><p>six-year-old playing Pikmin was wasting his time, because he wasn’t learning</p><p>any “content.” But, of course, video games do have content. RollerCoaster Ty-</p><p>coon, for instance, is about building, maintaining, and making a profit from an</p><p>amusement park. Medal of Honor Allied Assault is about World War II and in-</p><p>cludes an absolutely hair-raising invasion of Omaha Beach, reminiscent of</p><p>the opening scenes of the movie Saving Private Ryan. Civilization III is about</p><p>world history and the dynamics of building and defending a society from the</p><p>ground up. A great many video games, such as Half-Life, Deus Ex, and Red</p><p>Faction, are about conspiracies where powerful and rich people or corpora-</p><p>tions seek to control the world through force and deception. In fact, the con-</p><p>tent of video games is nearly endless.</p><p>One of the things that makes video games so powerful is their ability to</p><p>create whole worlds and invite players to take on various identities within</p><p>them. When players do this, two things can happen: On one hand, their pre-</p><p>supposed perspectives on the world might be reinforced. For example, if</p><p>someone thinks war is heroic, Return to Castle Wolfenstein will not disabuse</p><p>him or her of this viewpoint. If someone thinks that the quality of life is inte-</p><p>grally tied to one’s possessions, The Sims (a best-selling game where you build</p><p>and maintain whole families and neighborhoods) will not disabuse him or her</p><p>of this perspective, either.</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 139</p><p>140 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>On the other hand, through their creation of new and different worlds</p><p>and characters, video games can challenge players’ taken-for-granted views</p><p>about the world. Playing through the invasion of Omaha Beach in Medal of</p><p>Honor Allied Assault gives one a whole new perspective on what a full-scale</p><p>battle is like. The movie Saving Private Ryan did this as well, but the game</p><p>puts the player right in the midst of the action, pinned to the ground, sur-</p><p>rounded by deafening noise and wounded, sometimes shell-shocked, soldiers,</p><p>and facing the near certainty of a quick death if he or she makes one wrong</p><p>move. As players make choices about people, their relationships, and their</p><p>lives in The Sims (and sometimes players have made real people, such as their</p><p>friends, into virtual characters in the game), they may come to realize at a</p><p>conscious level certain values and perspectives they have heretofore taken for</p><p>granted and now wish to reflect on and question.</p><p>This chapter is about the ways in which content in video games either</p><p>reinforces or challenges players’ taken-for-granted perspectives on the world.</p><p>This is an area where the future potential of video games is perhaps even</p><p>more significant than their current instantiations. It is also an area where we</p><p>enter a realm of great controversy, controversy that will get even more in-</p><p>tense as video games come to realize their full potential, for good or ill, for</p><p>realizing worlds and identities.</p><p>SONIC THE HEDGEHOG AND CULTURAL MODELS</p><p>Sonic the Hedgehog—a small, blue, cute hedgehog—is surely the world’s</p><p>fastest, most arrogant, and most famous hedgehog. Originally Sonic was the</p><p>hero in a set of games for the Sega Dreamcast game platform. However, now</p><p>that the Dreamcast has been discontinued, he has shown up on the Nintendo</p><p>GameCube in the game Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. Sonic can run really really</p><p>fast. He can go even faster—like a blurry blue bomb—when he rolls into a</p><p>ball. Either way, he can race around and through obstacles, dash into ene-</p><p>mies, and streak through the landscape, leaping high in the air over walls and</p><p>barriers.</p><p>The back story for Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is that the sinister Dr.</p><p>Eggman, while searching the remnants of his grandfather’s laboratory, un-</p><p>covers a dark form of his arch-nemesis, Sonic, namely a black hedgehog</p><p>named Shadow. Together the two conspire to unleash the Eclipse Cannon, a</p><p>weapon of mass destruction. The government, unable to tell the blue Sonic</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 140</p><p>141v CULTURAL MODELS v</p><p>from the dark Shadow (they look alike) arrests Sonic for Shadow’s evil do-</p><p>ings. Sonic escapes and has to free the world of Dr. Eggman and Shadow’s</p><p>evil to clear his name.</p><p>Players can play Sonic Adventure 2 Battle in two different ways. They can</p><p>be “good” and play as the blue Sonic, or they can be “bad” and play as Sonic’s</p><p>look-alike, Shadow. If they choose Sonic, they play as Sonic, together with his</p><p>friends Knuckles (a boy echidna) and Tails (a boy squirrel), trying to stop Dr.</p><p>Eggman and Shadow from taking over the world. If they choose Shadow, they</p><p>play as Shadow, together</p><p>with his friends Rouge (a girl bat) and Dr. Eggman,</p><p>trying to destroy the world. Players can switch back and forth, playing part of</p><p>the Sonic quest and then changing to play part of the Shadow quest.</p><p>The six-year-old from chapter 2 also plays Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.</p><p>When he originally got the game, he first played a few episodes from the</p><p>Sonic quest and then started playing episodes from the Shadow quest. When</p><p>he was playing as Shadow, he commented on the fact that “the bad guy was</p><p>the good guy”—an odd remark. What he meant, of course, is that when you</p><p>are playing as a virtual character in a video game, that character (you) is the</p><p>hero (center) of the story and in that sense the “good guy” no matter how bad</p><p>he or she might be from another perspective. This boy had never before</p><p>played a game where the hero (himself) was, in terms of the story behind the</p><p>virtual world, a bad or evil character.</p><p>Of course, video games are just as easy to design to allow you to play a</p><p>sinner as a saint. Indeed, this fact has generated a good deal of controversy.</p><p>While the video game world is replete with heroes who destroy evil, it also</p><p>contains games where you can be a mob boss, a hired assassin, or a car thief.</p><p>For example, in the notorious Grand Theft Auto 2, you play a budding young</p><p>criminal, striving to make a name for yourself in a near-future world filled</p><p>with drugs, guns, and gang wars. Your city is populated by three different</p><p>gangs, each of which runs a different section of the city. Each gang has a set</p><p>of pay phones that you can use to take on odd jobs stealing cars. The problem</p><p>is that a gang will assign you work only if it respects you. You earn this re-</p><p>spect by driving over to a rival gang’s turf and shooting as many of their</p><p>members as you can. Here you are certainly not a “good guy” in any tradi-</p><p>tional mainstream sense. (Grand Theft Auto 2 was followed by the highly suc-</p><p>cessful sequels Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.)</p><p>What our six-year-old discovered was that there are (besides still others)</p><p>two different models of what counts as being or doing “good.” In one model,</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 141</p><p>142 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>what counts as being or doing good is determined by a character’s own goals,</p><p>purposes, and values, as these are shared with a particular social group to</p><p>which he or she belongs. Shadow and his group (Rouge and Dr. Eggman)</p><p>have a set of goals, purposes, and values in terms of which destroying the</p><p>world is their valued goal.</p><p>If you want to play Sonic Adventure 2 Battle from Shadow’s perspective</p><p>you must act, think, and value (while playing) from this perspective, a per-</p><p>spective that makes Shadow “good” or “the hero.” After all, you are fighting</p><p>numerous battles as Shadow and feel delight when winning them and dismay</p><p>when losing them. It would be absolutely pointless to play as Shadow but</p><p>purposely lose battles because you disapprove of his value system. If you</p><p>played that way, Shadow would die quickly in the first episode and you’d</p><p>never see anything else in the Shadow part of the game.</p><p>In the other model, what counts as being and doing good is determined</p><p>by a wider perspective than just a character’s own goals, purposes, and values,</p><p>as these are shared with a particular social group. Rather, what counts is de-</p><p>termined by the values and norms of a “wider society” that contains multiple,</p><p>sometimes competing, groups as well as more or less generalized rules and</p><p>principles about behavior. In terms of this model, Sonic is fighting for social</p><p>order and the survival of the majority, things that are considered good from</p><p>the perspective of many different groups and in terms of rather general prin-</p><p>ciples of right and wrong.</p><p>By “models” of what it means to be and do good, I do not mean “profes-</p><p>sional” philosophical positions on ethics or theological ones on morality. I</p><p>just mean “everyday” people’s conceptions. The first model, which we might</p><p>call the group model, can be captured by something like the following: “I am</p><p>acting like a good person when I am acting in the interests of some group of</p><p>which I am a member and which I value.” The second model, which we</p><p>might call the general model, can be captured by something like this: “I am</p><p>acting like a good person when I am acting according to some general con-</p><p>ception of what is good and bad, a conception that transcends my more nar-</p><p>row group memberships.”</p><p>These two models regularly come into conflict in real life and cause all</p><p>sorts of interesting issues and questions to arise. Some people readily believe</p><p>that their group interests and values are or ought to be the general good.</p><p>Others think that general conceptions of good really just hide the narrow in-</p><p>terests of particular groups in a society that has cloaked them as general</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 142</p><p>143v CULTURAL MODELS v</p><p>goods. Yet other people believe their interests and values represent future,</p><p>rather than present, general conceptions of good and may see going against</p><p>current conceptions of good as a necessary evil for a greater future good.</p><p>And, of course, there are multiple ideas about what general conceptions of</p><p>good and bad are.</p><p>The six-year-old, in playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, has been confronted</p><p>with these two models. He has realized that when you act in (or think in terms</p><p>of) the role of someone else (even a hedgehog), this involves not merely taking</p><p>on a new identity but sometimes thinking and valuing from a perspective that</p><p>you or others may think “wrong” from a different perspective. He also has</p><p>learned that experiencing the world from that perspective (in one’s mind or in</p><p>a video game) does not mean that he accepts it in the sense that he wants, in</p><p>his real-world identity, to adopt the values and the actions that this perspective</p><p>underwrites.</p><p>These two models of what it means to be good are examples of what I</p><p>will call cultural models. Cultural models are images, story lines, principles, or</p><p>metaphors that capture what a particular group finds “normal” or “typical” in</p><p>regard to a given phenomenon. By “group” here I mean to single out any-</p><p>thing ranging from small groups to the whole of the human race with every-</p><p>thing in between. Cultural models are not true or false. Rather, they capture,</p><p>and are meant to capture, only a partial view of reality, one that helps groups</p><p>(and humans in general) go about their daily work without a great deal of</p><p>preplanning and conscious thought. After all, if many things were not left on</p><p>“automatic pilot,” we would spend all our time thinking and never acting.</p><p>So, for example, something like “People are good people when they are</p><p>acting so as to help their group (family, church, community, ethnic group,</p><p>state—pick your group)” is a cultural model for many different groups. It is a</p><p>version of what I called the group model of good. Something like “People are</p><p>good when they are acting according to general principles of morality (pick</p><p>your principles)” is another cultural model that many groups use, though they</p><p>may accept different cultural models about what are typical general principles</p><p>of morality. This is a version of what I called the general model of good. And,</p><p>of course, the two models can and sometimes do come into conflict.</p><p>Since cultural models are usually not conscious for people and since peo-</p><p>ple rarely, if ever, try to formulate them definitively and once and for all in</p><p>words, there is no exactly right way to phrase them. If forced to formulate</p><p>them, people will put them into different words in different situations. The</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 143</p><p>144 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>best researchers can do, then, is study people’s behavior and words when they</p><p>are acting as members of a certain sort of group and acting within certain</p><p>sorts of situations and eventually conclude that, given what they do and say,</p><p>they must accept a certain cultural model for a given phenomenon, a cultural</p><p>model we formulate in words the best</p><p>we can. Of course, when they are act-</p><p>ing as members of different groups in different situations they may not act</p><p>according to the cultural model we have hypothesized but in terms of an-</p><p>other one.</p><p>Social groups do not usually pay much overt attention to their cultural</p><p>models, unless one is threatened. Of course, when cultural models are chal-</p><p>lenged or come into conflict with other such models, then they can come to</p><p>people’s conscious awareness (even to the conscious awareness of the group</p><p>as a whole). If someone comes to think that the actions he or she is taking for</p><p>the family’s good conflict with general conceptions of morality (not even nec-</p><p>essarily the person’s own general conceptions), this can give rise to discom-</p><p>fort and conflict, discomfort and conflict that can be resolved in various ways.</p><p>A number of pervasive cultural models about gender have become con-</p><p>scious to people thanks to the fact that these models have been openly chal-</p><p>lenged in society. For example, a cultural model that holds that unmarried</p><p>women are unfulfilled “spinsters” because they do not have families has long</p><p>been challenged by feminists, single women with children, lesbian couples</p><p>with children, and perfectly fulfilled single women with good careers with</p><p>which they are satisfied. Of course, all these people existed before, but as</p><p>long as they did not speak out and make themselves visible, they were easily</p><p>rendered invisible and marginal by traditional cultural models. Once they did</p><p>speak out, those models and the social work they did came to people’s con-</p><p>sciousness and had to be overtly defended or changed.</p><p>The world is full of an endless array of ever-changing cultural models. For</p><p>example, what do you think of a teenage child who tells his or her parents to</p><p>“F_ _ _ off?” Perhaps you apply a model like “Normal teenagers rebel against</p><p>their parents and other authority figures” and are not too concerned. Perhaps</p><p>you apply a model like “Normal children respect their parents” and conclude</p><p>the teenager is out of control. Who is to say what a “normal” or “typical”</p><p>teenager is or does? Different cultural models hold different implications.</p><p>What do you make of a toddler who throws a tantrum when you, in a</p><p>hurry to get your chores done, open a heavy car door that he or she wants to</p><p>try to open, no matter how long it takes? Perhaps you apply a cultural model</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 144</p><p>145v CULTURAL MODELS v</p><p>like “Young children go through sometimes-difficult ‘stages’ in their urge for</p><p>growing self-reliance and independence” and conclude your child and the</p><p>situation you are in is quite “normal.” Perhaps you even encourage the child.</p><p>Or perhaps you apply a model like “Young children are naturally willful and</p><p>selfish and need discipline to learn to get along with and cooperate with oth-</p><p>ers.” Again, you would conclude you have a “normal” child, but one in need</p><p>of discipline.</p><p>When you see a beggar on the street, your first reaction might stem from</p><p>a cultural model like “People are responsible for themselves and when they</p><p>fail it’s their own fault” and go on your way, ignoring the person’s pleas for</p><p>money. Or you might apply a model something like “Down-and-out people</p><p>are victims of problems that have overwhelmed them in a harshly competi-</p><p>tive society” and give the person some money. Or you might apply a model</p><p>like “Giving people money just encourages them to seek more help from oth-</p><p>ers rather than seek to help themselves” and give the beggar an address of a</p><p>foundation that can help him or her get a (probably quite bad) job.</p><p>When you have an argument with someone, do you apply a model some-</p><p>thing like “Arguments are a sort of verbal conflict” (helped along in this case</p><p>by metaphors in our language like “I won the argument” or “I defeated her po-</p><p>sitions”)? When you are in a romantic relationship, do you apply a model</p><p>something like “Relationships are a type of work” (helped along in this case</p><p>by metaphors in our language like “I’ve put a lot of work into this relation-</p><p>ship” or “He has worked hard to be a good lover”)? When you talk about peo-</p><p>ple’s jobs, do you apply a model something like “Working with the mind is</p><p>more valuable to society than working with one’s hands” and find yourself</p><p>valuing even an academic who debates how many angels can sit on the head</p><p>of a pin over your plumber? Perhaps the answer is no in all these cases, in</p><p>which case you operate, at least sometimes and in some places, with different</p><p>cultural models.</p><p>There are several important points to be made about cultural models.</p><p>They are not just in your head. Of course, you store images and patterns in</p><p>your head that represent cultural models, but they are also represented out</p><p>there in the world. For example, the cultural model that said that “Young</p><p>children go through sometimes-difficult ‘stages’ in their urge for growing</p><p>self-reliance and independence” exists in a lot of self-help guides on babies</p><p>and childrearing. The words and images of the magazines, newspapers, and</p><p>other media all around us represent many cultural models. The models also</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 145</p><p>146 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>are represented and acted out in the words and deeds of the people with</p><p>whom we interact and share memberships in various groups.</p><p>Different cultural models are associated with different groups in the</p><p>larger society, though some are also shared widely by many, perhaps all,</p><p>groups in that society. For instance, the cultural model about children going</p><p>through “stages” toward independence is associated more closely (though</p><p>not exclusively) with the modern middle class, and the cultural model that</p><p>said “Young children are naturally willful and selfish and need discipline to</p><p>learn to get along with and cooperate with others” is associated more closely</p><p>(though not exclusively) with the traditional working class.</p><p>Cultural models, which cannot be stated in one definitive way, are stories</p><p>or images of experience that people can tell themselves or simulate in their</p><p>minds, stories and images that represent what they take to be “normal” or</p><p>“typical” cases or situations. In this sense, they are like theories, theories</p><p>about things like children, childrearing, relationships, friendship, being and</p><p>doing good, and everything else. These theories are usually unconscious and</p><p>taken for granted. However, like all theories, even overt ones in science, they</p><p>are not meant to be detailed, blow-by-blow descriptions of reality. Reality is</p><p>too complex to be described accurately in every detail. Rather, cultural mod-</p><p>els and formal theories both are meant to capture general patterns in such a</p><p>way that we can do things in and with the world, whether this is to accom-</p><p>plish a goal with others or to make successful predictions in an experiment.</p><p>Cultural models are picked up as part and parcel of acting with others in</p><p>the world. We act with others and attempt to make sense of what they are</p><p>doing and saying. We interact with the media of our society and attempt to</p><p>make sense of what is said and done there, as well. Cultural models are the</p><p>tacit, taken-for-granted theories we (usually unconsciously) infer and then</p><p>act on in the normal course of events when we want to be like others in our</p><p>social groups. People who have no cultural models would have to think</p><p>everything out for themselves minute by minute when they attempt to act.</p><p>They would be paralyzed. And they certainly would not be social beings,</p><p>since part of what makes us social beings is the set of cultural models we</p><p>share with those around us.</p><p>Cultural models can be used for many different purposes and they can</p><p>sometimes conflict with each other. For example, the anthropological psy-</p><p>chologist Claudia Strauss found that working-class men she studied behaved</p><p>in their daily lives according to what she called a bread-winner model. This</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 146</p><p>147v CULTURAL MODELS v</p><p>model can be phrased something like this: “Men take care of their families</p><p>even</p><p>if this means sacrificing their own interests.” On the other hand, Strauss</p><p>found that many upper-middle class people operate with a cultural model</p><p>that stresses their own self-development over the interests of those around</p><p>them, including their own families. When such people were faced with mov-</p><p>ing to take a new and better job, they often did so, even if this damaged their</p><p>families and relationships. The working-class men Strauss studied, when</p><p>faced with the same choice, gave up the new career opportunity for the bene-</p><p>fit of their families.</p><p>These working-class men also used what Strauss and others have called</p><p>the success model to judge their own behaviors. This model says something</p><p>like “In the United States, anyone can get ahead if they work hard enough.”</p><p>The working-class men saw that they did not hold jobs the wider society</p><p>considered successful and used this model to condemn themselves, saying</p><p>they had not worked hard enough or weren’t smart enough. They used the</p><p>success model to judge themselves negatively even though this model exists</p><p>in some degree of conflict with the bread winner model on which they led</p><p>their lives in action, a model that would not let them take the “selfish” steps</p><p>often required by the success model.</p><p>Since this conflict did not surface to consciousness for these men, it did</p><p>not come out into the open. They simply felt bad about themselves, at least</p><p>when forced to think about themselves in relation to the society as a whole.</p><p>In other settings, of course, they may have felt quite differently—remember,</p><p>people take on different identities in different situations and all people are</p><p>members of many different groups.</p><p>Are cultural models, then, “good” or “bad”? They are good in that they</p><p>allow us to act and be social in the world without having to constantly reflect</p><p>and think. They are bad when they operate so as to do harm to ourselves or</p><p>others but go unexamined. Certain circumstances can, however, force us to</p><p>think overtly and reflectively about our cultural models. We certainly don’t</p><p>want or need to think overtly about all of them. But we do need to think</p><p>about those that, in certain situations or at certain points in our lives, have</p><p>the potential to do more harm than good.</p><p>Sonic Adventure 2 Battle forced the six-year-old overtly to realize and</p><p>confront two different, and sometimes conflicting, cultural models of what</p><p>constitutes being and doing “good.” Of course, this realization was only be-</p><p>ginning. Many other experiences, not the least in video games, will give this</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 147</p><p>148 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>child other opportunities to think more about these two models. And, in-</p><p>deed, they are models that bear a good deal of thinking about, since they have</p><p>done and have the potential to do a lot of harm in the world.</p><p>UNDER ASH</p><p>The sort of thing that the six-year-old experienced can go much further and</p><p>deeper. Consider the case of Arab children. After the terrorist attacks of Sep-</p><p>tember 11, 2001, a number of video games came out, initially on the Internet</p><p>and thereafter as packaged games, featuring U.S. soldiers killing Arabs and</p><p>Muslims. These games, for obvious reasons, were not entirely palatable to</p><p>Arab children. In response, the Syrian publishing house Dar Al-Fikr de-</p><p>signed a video game called Under Ash. Its hero is a young Palestinian named</p><p>Ahmed who throws stones to fight Israeli soldiers and settlers. The game, of</p><p>course, involves the player deeply in the Palestinian cause and Palestinian</p><p>perspectives.</p><p>In the game, Ahmed initially must reach Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, an</p><p>important Islamic holy site, avoiding or fighting Israeli soldiers and settlers</p><p>along the way. Once he reaches the mosque, Ahmed has to help injured</p><p>Palestinians, find weapons, and expel Israeli soldiers. There are many other</p><p>episodes to the game, including ones where Ahmed infiltrates a Jewish settle-</p><p>ment and where he serves as a guerrilla warrior in southern Lebanon. As is</p><p>typical of such video games, Ahmed only attacks those he does not consider</p><p>“civilians.” (In this case, occupation forces, settlers, and soldiers do not count</p><p>as “civilians.”) “Civilians” (all others) are left unharmed.</p><p>Of course, it is clear that in video games who does and does not count as a</p><p>“civilian” is based on different perspectives embedded in the game’s virtual</p><p>world. I was originally surprised (which shows I was operating with a different</p><p>cultural model) that settlers (since they are not in the army) didn’t count as</p><p>civilians. But then I realized that this game accepts a cultural model in terms</p><p>of which the settlers are seen as the “advance” troops of an occupation army.</p><p>The general manager of the company that produced Under Ash, Adnan</p><p>Salim, considers the game, one that is violent in just the way many U.S.</p><p>shooter games are, “a call for peace.” In an Internet site devoted to the game,</p><p>Salim says that “Slaying and shedding blood have been the worst of the</p><p>Human’s conducts [sic] since the beginning of creation.” I got Salim’s views</p><p>from Google’s (a search engine) cache of www.underash.com/emessage.htm.</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 148</p><p>149v CULTURAL MODELS v</p><p>(A cache is a snapshot that the people at Google took of the page as they</p><p>“crawled the web.”) This site, like several others devoted to Under Ash, no</p><p>longer exits. Opponents of the game have destroyed many sites devoted to it.</p><p>I have no idea whether this was true of this site or not. Salim goes on to say</p><p>that “[i]n spite of the Human’s endeavor and struggle to get rid of the crime</p><p>of murder since he appeared on Earth, Israel has been practicing collective</p><p>killing and eradication.”</p><p>On the other hand, he claims that:</p><p>Under Ash is a call to humanity to stop killing and shedding blood. After all</p><p>its awful experience and global destructive wars, the whole world has be-</p><p>come aware of the fact that wars never solve problems. . . .</p><p>Under Ash is a call to dialogue, coexistence and peace. Justice is the</p><p>deeply-rooted human value that God Almighty enjoined . . . On the other</p><p>hand, nations perish, states stabilize and civilizations collapse according to</p><p>the amount of aggression, injustice and harm they practice. . . .</p><p>Under Ash is a call to justice, realizing truth, preventing wronging [sic]</p><p>and aggression. God made all mankind as equal to each other as the comb</p><p>teeth. . . .</p><p>Such is the philosophy of Under Ash. The idea on which it was based</p><p>repulses violence, injustice, discrimination and murder, and calls for peace,</p><p>justice and equality among people.</p><p>This idea, accompanied by the best available technology, is still handy</p><p>to our youth, trying to dry up their tears; heal their wounds; remove all the</p><p>feelings of humiliation, humbleness and wretchedness from their souls, and</p><p>draw the smile of hope and the sense of dignity and efficiency on their faces.</p><p>If you find these remarks odd in regard to a violent video game (remem-</p><p>ber that there was no outcry in the United States over shooter games where</p><p>the enemies were Arabs), that is because these remarks and the game itself</p><p>take for granted a number of cultural models foreign to many Americans (just</p><p>as American games and remarks about them take for granted different cul-</p><p>tural models). For example, consider that Salim says that, after having experi-</p><p>enced the violence of global wars, the world: “turned back to the patient</p><p>dialogue around the table of negotiation which resulted in the establishment</p><p>of a European Union among nations which previously hated one another and</p><p>went on fighting for centuries. Then they agreed to coexist peacefully within</p><p>a union under whose authority none is harmed and every one benefits.”</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 149</p><p>150 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>One cultural model that seems to be at work here is something like this:</p><p>“The experience of violence will make people seek peace.” In terms of this</p><p>model, we can see the guerrilla fighter as trying to push more powerful enti-</p><p>ties (i.e., states), entities</p><p>of video-game players are middle-age</p><p>women playing video card games alone and together on the Internet. I have</p><p>nothing here to say about card games. That just shows that we academics still</p><p>have much to learn about the “real” world. I guess that’s why we keep trying.</p><p>BIBL IOGRAPHICAL NOTE</p><p>In order not to clutter the text with references, I will not insert references directly</p><p>into the text of each chapter but will instead give citations to the literature in a biblio-</p><p>graphical note at the end of each chapter.</p><p>Poole 2000 and Herz 1996 are good analyses of the design of video games and</p><p>their role in our culture. Poole 2000 discusses the statistics on who plays what video</p><p>games, as well as the fact that the video game industry makes more money in a given</p><p>year than does the movie industry. Kent 2001 is an entertaining history of video</p><p>games. Greenfield 1984 and Loftus and Loftus 1983 are good early discussions of</p><p>the role of learning and thinking in video games. King 2002, prepared for a</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 11</p><p>12 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>museum exhibit on video games, contains a wide array of interesting articles on all</p><p>aspects of the games.</p><p>Pinker 1999 is a good, basic introduction to cognitive science. For more on cog-</p><p>nitive science, especially as it applies to schools and learning, see Bransford, Brown, &</p><p>Cocking 1999; Bruer 1993; Gardner 1991; and Pelligrino, Chudowksy, & Glaser</p><p>2001. These sources discuss work on situated cognition, as well as a number of other</p><p>areas. For additional work on situated cognition, see Brooks 2002; Brown, Collins, &</p><p>Dugid 1989; Clark 1997; Gee 1996; Lave 1988; Lave and Wenger 1991; Rogoff 1990;</p><p>and Tomasello 1999. The fact that botanists and landscape architects classify and</p><p>think about trees differently is taken from Medlin, Lynch, & Coley 1997.</p><p>For a discussion of good, conceptually based science instruction in schools, see</p><p>Bruer 1993; Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt 1997; and diSessa 2000.</p><p>For introductions to the New Literacy Studies, see Barton 1994; Gee 1996; and</p><p>Street 1995. For work on connectionism and the human mind as a pattern recognizer,</p><p>see Clark 1989, 1993; Gee 1996; Margolis 1987, 1993; and Rumelhart, McClelland,</p><p>& the PDP Research Group 1986.</p><p>02 gee ch 1 3/13/03 12:05 PM Page 12</p><p>2</p><p>SEMIOTIC DOMAINS:</p><p>IS PLAYING VIDEO GAMES</p><p>A “WASTE OF T IME”?</p><p>L ITERACY AND SEMIOTIC DOMAINS</p><p>WHEN PEOPLE LEARN TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES, THEY ARE LEARNING</p><p>a new literacy. Of course, this is not the way the word “literacy” is normally</p><p>used. Traditionally, people think of literacy as the ability to read and write.</p><p>Why, then, should we think of literacy more broadly, in regard to video</p><p>games or anything else, for that matter? There are two reasons.</p><p>First, in the modern world, language is not the only important commu-</p><p>nicational system. Today images, symbols, graphs, diagrams, artifacts, and</p><p>many other visual symbols are particularly significant. Thus, the idea of dif-</p><p>ferent types of “visual literacy” would seem to be an important one. For ex-</p><p>ample, being able to “read” the images in advertising is one type of visual</p><p>literacy. And, of course, there are different ways to read such images, ways</p><p>that are more or less aligned with the intentions and interests of the advertis-</p><p>ers. Knowing how to read interior designs in homes, modernist art in muse-</p><p>ums, and videos on MTV are other forms of visual literacy.</p><p>Furthermore, very often today words and images of various sorts are jux-</p><p>taposed and integrated in a variety of ways. In newspaper and magazines as</p><p>well as in textbooks, images take up more and more of the space alongside</p><p>words. In fact, in many modern high school and college textbooks in the sci-</p><p>ences images not only take up more space, they now carry meanings that are</p><p>independent of the words in the text. If you can’t read these images, you will</p><p>not be able to recover their meanings from the words in the text as was more</p><p>usual in the past.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 13</p><p>14 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>In such multimodal texts (texts that mix words and images), the images</p><p>often communicate different things from the words. And the combination of</p><p>the two modes communicates things that neither of the modes does sepa-</p><p>rately. Thus, the idea of different sorts of multimodal literacy seems an im-</p><p>portant one. Both modes and multimodality go far beyond images and words</p><p>to include sounds, music, movement, bodily sensations, and smells.</p><p>None of this news today, of course. We very obviously live in a world</p><p>awash with images. It is our first answer to the question why we should think</p><p>of literacy more broadly. The second answer is this: Even though reading and</p><p>writing seem so central to what literacy means traditionally, reading and writ-</p><p>ing are not such general and obvious matters as they might at first seem.</p><p>After all, we never just read or write; rather, we always read or write something</p><p>in some way.</p><p>There are many different ways of reading and writing. We don’t read or</p><p>write newspapers, legal tracts, essays in literary criticism, poetry, rap songs,</p><p>and on through a nearly endless list in the same way. Each of these domains</p><p>has its own rules and requirements. Each is a culturally and historically sepa-</p><p>rate way of reading and writing, and, in that sense, a different literacy. Fur-</p><p>thermore, in each case, if we want to “break the rules” and read against the</p><p>grain of the text—for the purposes of critique, for instance—we have to do so</p><p>in different ways, usually with some relatively deep knowledge of how to read</p><p>such texts “according to the rules.”</p><p>So there are different ways to read different types of texts. Literacy is</p><p>multiple, then, in the sense that the legal literacy needed for reading law</p><p>books is not the same as the literacy needed for reading physics texts or su-</p><p>perhero comic books. And we should not be too quick to dismiss the latter</p><p>form of literacy. Many a superhero comic is replete with post-Freudian irony</p><p>of a sort that would make a modern literary critic’s heart beat fast and confuse</p><p>any otherwise normal adult. Literacy, then, even as traditionally conceived to</p><p>involve only print, is not a unitary thing but a multiple matter. There are,</p><p>even in regard to printed texts and even leaving aside images and multimodal</p><p>texts, different “literacies.”</p><p>Once we see this multiplicity of literacy (literacies), we realize that when</p><p>we think about reading and writing, we have to think beyond print. Reading</p><p>and writing in any domain, whether it is law, rap songs, academic essays, su-</p><p>perhero comics, or whatever, are not just ways of decoding print, they are</p><p>also caught up with and in social practices. Literacy in any domain is actually</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 14</p><p>15v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>not worth much if one knows nothing about the social practices of which that</p><p>literacy is but a part. And, of course, these social practices involve much more</p><p>than just an engagement with print.</p><p>One can know a good deal about a social practice—such as arguing be-</p><p>fore the Supreme Court, carrying out an experiment in nuclear physics, or</p><p>memorializing an event in gang history through graffiti—without actually</p><p>being able to participate in the social practice. But knowing about a social</p><p>practice always involves recognizing various distinctive ways of acting, inter-</p><p>acting, valuing, feeling, knowing, and using various objects and technologies</p><p>that constitute the social practice.</p><p>Take something so simple as the following sentence about basketball:</p><p>“The guard dribbled down court, held up two fingers, and passed to the open</p><p>man.” You may very well know what every word in this sentence means in</p><p>terms of dictionary definitions, but you cannot read the sentence with any real</p><p>worthwhile understanding unless you can recognize, in some sense (perhaps</p><p>only in simulations in your mind), guards, dribbling, basketballs, open men,</p><p>and basketball courts. But to be able to recognize these things is already to</p><p>know a</p><p>that the guerrilla cannot defeat outright, to settle</p><p>their differences through negotiation rather than war. A cultural model some-</p><p>thing like “The experience of overwhelming violence will make less powerful</p><p>entities give up and give in to more powerful entities” seems at play in both</p><p>some U.S. video games and much U.S. media devoted to warfare in the mod-</p><p>ern world. Note that like all cultural models, these are not “true” or “false.”</p><p>(History is replete with examples and counter-examples to both.) They are</p><p>meant to help people make sense to themselves and others and to engage in</p><p>joint activity with others with whom they share these cultural models.</p><p>Now, you might very well not want to play Under Ash. If you did play the</p><p>game, you would be placed in a situation where you took on the virtual iden-</p><p>tity of a character whose cultural models about many things are different</p><p>from yours. If you not only adopted this virtual identity while you played but</p><p>took on what I called in chapter 3 a projective identity vis-à-vis your virtual</p><p>identity (Ahmed), you would surely come to understand what it feels like to</p><p>be among those angry young people who are “trying to dry up their tears;</p><p>heal their wounds; remove all the feelings of humiliation, humbleness and</p><p>wretchedness from their souls, and draw the smile of hope and the sense of</p><p>dignity and efficiency on their faces.”</p><p>Would this mean you would, all of a sudden, want to kill Israeli settlers or</p><p>even that you would support the Palestinian cause over the Israeli one if you had</p><p>not before? Certainly not. But it would mean that, far more interactively that</p><p>you could in any novel or movie, you would have experienced the “other” from</p><p>the inside. Even more interesting, since the cultural models built into the game</p><p>are not yours, you would be able to reflect on them in a more overtly conscious</p><p>way than young Arabic players for whom the models are taken for granted (as</p><p>U.S. game players take for granted different models that fit their own sense of</p><p>reality). In turn, this might make you contrast these models to ones you have</p><p>taken for granted and bring them to consciousness for reflection.</p><p>What if Under Ash allowed you to play through the game twice, once as</p><p>Ahmed and once as an Israeli settler, just as Sonic Adventure 2 Battle allows</p><p>you to be Sonic or Shadow, or Aliens vs. Predator 2 allows you to be a Marine</p><p>fighting off the Aliens and Predator or either an Alien or Predator trying to</p><p>survive by killing the Marines? My guess is that if you had taken on both the</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 150</p><p>151v CULTURAL MODELS v</p><p>projective identity of you as Ahmed and you as Israeli settler, you would find</p><p>the whole thing much more complex than you do now and would be a bit</p><p>more reluctant to take the death of either side for granted. Such complexity</p><p>is bad, I admit, for people and states trying to wage war.</p><p>Video games have an unmet potential to create complexity by letting</p><p>people experience the world from different perspectives. Part of this poten-</p><p>tial is that in a video game, you yourself have to act as a given character. As</p><p>you act quickly, and not just think leisurely, and as you (while playing) cele-</p><p>brate the character’s victories and bemoan his or her defeats, you must live in</p><p>a virtual world and make sense of it. This making sense of the virtual world</p><p>amid not just thought but also action in the world amounts to experiencing</p><p>new and different cultural models. Furthermore, you may experience these</p><p>models much more consciously—and render some of your own previous</p><p>models conscious by contrast in the process—than is typical of our daily lives</p><p>in the real world. In the next section I turn to an example that is less esoteric</p><p>for Americans than Under Ash.</p><p>I am well aware that this potential of video games—if and when it is more</p><p>fully realized—is liable to be very controversial. An Israeli or Palestinian who</p><p>has lost a loved one to violence is not going to want to play both sides of my</p><p>make-believe Under Ash game. Indeed, the Israeli and Palestinian may each</p><p>revel in playing “their” side and getting virtual revenge. Each may think it im-</p><p>moral to “play” the other side, to take on such a perspective on the world even</p><p>in play. I, too, think that certain perspectives are so repugnant that we should</p><p>not take them even in play. But who decides? And if we are willing to take</p><p>none but our own side, even in play, then violence would seem inevitable.</p><p>We do not have to imagine games that most of us would find entirely re-</p><p>pugnant, regardless of our political perspectives. Such games actually exist.</p><p>For example, a game called Ethnic Cleansing, put out by the Virginia-based</p><p>National Alliance, has players killing African Americans, Latinos, and Jews as</p><p>they run through gritty ghetto and subway environments. The game is quite</p><p>sophisticated technologically. (It was built using free game development soft-</p><p>ware called Genesis 3D.) Hate groups like the National Alliance have long</p><p>recruited members through the use of web sites, white-power music, and</p><p>books and magazines. However, there is concern, for just the reasons we have</p><p>discussed, that interactive media like video games are a more powerful device</p><p>than such passive media. But if they are, then they are potentially more pow-</p><p>erful for both good and ill.</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 151</p><p>152 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>Whether we like it or not, new technologies make it easy to design real-</p><p>istic and sophisticated video games that allow players to be almost any sort of</p><p>person or being living in almost in sort of world that any designer can imag-</p><p>ine. Eventually this capacity will be used to allow people to live and interact</p><p>in worlds where violence plays no role and is replaced by conversation and</p><p>other sorts of social interactions. (The Longest Journey, a game whose lead</p><p>character is an 18-year-old woman named April Ryan, is one such game;</p><p>Siberia, whose protagonist is a female lawyer wandering around a town full of</p><p>automatons, is another.)</p><p>The same capacity that will allow us to enact new identities and learn to</p><p>act according to new cultural models can also allow us to renew our hate or</p><p>even learn new models of hate. In the end, who is to decide what identities</p><p>you or I can enact and whether enacting them will be a good or bad thing for</p><p>us? Publicly the issue usually is couched in terms of children and teens,</p><p>where parents surely bear a major responsibility, but the average video-game</p><p>player is in his or her late 20s or early 30s. I don’t want politicians dictating</p><p>what identities I can enact in a virtual world. At the same time, I worry about</p><p>people who play Ethnic Cleansing. But any attempt to stop the flow of identi-</p><p>ties that new technologies allow presents the danger of locking everyone into</p><p>their most cherished identities, and that has brought us a great deal of ethnic</p><p>cleansing of its own. I have no solid answers to offer, only the claim that</p><p>video games have the potential to raise many such questions and issues.</p><p>GOING TO WAR</p><p>Both Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis are</p><p>shooter games played out in military settings. Castle Wolfenstein is a first-per-</p><p>son shooter. (You see only the weapon you are holding, unless you look in</p><p>something like a mirror when you then see yourself.) Operation Flashpoint can</p><p>be played either in the first-person or in the third-person (where you see</p><p>your character’s body as if you were just a bit behind him). In Castle Wolfen-</p><p>stein you play Major B. J. Blazkowitz in World War II fighting against the</p><p>Nazis. In Operation Flashpoint you start the game as Private David Armstrong,</p><p>though you (Armstrong) go up in rank during the game. Private Armstrong is</p><p>involved as a U.S. soldier representing NATO in a war against a resistance</p><p>movement on an island nation.</p><p>07 gee ch 6 3/13/03 12:10 PM Page 152</p><p>153v CULTURAL MODELS v</p><p>While all this makes these two games sound similar, they are in a great</p><p>many respects entirely different. In Return</p><p>good deal about basketball as a game, that is, as a particular sort of so-</p><p>cial practice. The same thing is equally true about any sentence or text about</p><p>the law, comic books, a branch of science, or anything else for that matter.</p><p>We can go further. One’s understanding of the sentence “The guard</p><p>dribbled down court, held up two fingers, and passed to the open man” is dif-</p><p>ferent—in some sense, deeper and better—the more one knows and can rec-</p><p>ognize about the social practice (game) of basketball. For example, if you</p><p>know a good bit about basketball, you may see that one possible meaning of</p><p>this sentence is that the guard signaled a particular play by holding up two</p><p>fingers and then passed to the player the play left momentarily unguarded.</p><p>But then this brings us to another important point. While you don’t need</p><p>to be able to enact a particular social practice (e.g., play basketball or argue</p><p>before a court) to be able to understand texts from or about that social prac-</p><p>tice, you can potentially give deeper meanings to those texts if you can. This</p><p>claim amounts to arguing that producers (people who can actually engage in</p><p>a social practice) potentially make better consumers (people who can read or</p><p>understand texts from or about the social practice).</p><p>A corollary of this claim is this: Writers (in the sense of people who can</p><p>write texts that are recognizably part of a particular social practice) potentially</p><p>make better readers (people who can understand texts from or about a given</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 15</p><p>16 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>social practice). Note that by “writers” here I do not mean people who can</p><p>just write down words appropriate to a particular practice such as field biol-</p><p>ogy. I mean people who can write a text that field biologists would recognize</p><p>as an acceptable text within their family of social practices.</p><p>Why do I say “potentially” here? Because there is a paradox about pro-</p><p>ducers. On one hand, producers are deeply enough embedded in their social</p><p>practices that they can understand the texts associated with those practices</p><p>quite well. On the other hand, producers are often so deeply embedded in</p><p>their social practices that they take the meanings and values of the texts asso-</p><p>ciated with those practices for granted in an unquestioning way. One key</p><p>question for deep learning and good education, then, is how to get producer-</p><p>like learning and knowledge, but in a reflective and critical way.</p><p>All these claims are pretty obvious. It is, thus, fascinating that they are so</p><p>often ignored in schools. In school, many times children are expected to read</p><p>texts with little or no knowledge about any social practices within which those</p><p>texts are used. They are rarely allowed to engage in an actual social practice in</p><p>ways that are recognizable to “insiders” (e.g., field biologists) as meaningful</p><p>and acceptable, before and as they read texts relevant to the practice.</p><p>Indeed, children are regularly given reading tests that ask general, fac-</p><p>tual, and dictionarylike questions about various texts with no regard for the</p><p>fact that these texts fall into different genres (i.e., they are different kinds of</p><p>texts) connected to different sorts of social practices. Children often can an-</p><p>swer such questions, but they learn and know nothing about the genres and</p><p>social practices that are, in the end, the heart and soul of literacy.</p><p>Schools will continue to operate this way until they (and reading tests)</p><p>move beyond fixating on reading as silently saying the sounds of letters and</p><p>words and being able to answer general, factual, and dictionarylike questions</p><p>about written texts. You do have to silently say the sounds of letters and</p><p>words when you read (or, at least, this greatly speeds up reading). You do</p><p>have do be able to answer general, factual, and dictionarylike questions about</p><p>what you read: This means you know the “literal” meaning of the text. But</p><p>what so many people—unfortunately so many educators and policymakers—</p><p>fail to see is that if this is all you can do, then you can’t really read. You will fail</p><p>to be able to read well and appropriately in contexts associated with specific</p><p>types of texts and specific types of social practices.</p><p>For example, consider once again our sentence about basketball: “The</p><p>guard dribbled down court, held up two fingers, and passed to the open</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 16</p><p>17v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>man.” A typical reading test would ask a question like this: “What did the</p><p>guard do to the ball?” and give “bounce it” as one of the choices. Unfortu-</p><p>nately, you can answer such general, factual, dictionarylike questions and re-</p><p>ally have no idea what the sentence means in the domain of basketball. When</p><p>we see that the same thing applies to sentences from science or any other</p><p>school subject, we immediately see why so many children pass early reading</p><p>tests but cannot learn later on in the subject areas.</p><p>This phenomenon is so pervasive that it has been given a name by re-</p><p>searchers: “the fourth-grade slump.” It is called this because, in the past, the</p><p>first three years of school were largely devoted to learning to read (in the</p><p>sense of being able to decode print and get the literal meanings of texts), and</p><p>fourth grade was where children began to read to learn (in the subject areas).</p><p>However, very often today children are being asked to read to learn things like</p><p>science and math from first or second grade on, at least in affluent schools.</p><p>However, let’s leave school aside, and return to our main question as to</p><p>why we should be willing to broaden how we talk about literacy. I can now</p><p>note that talking about literacy and literacies in this expanded, nontraditional</p><p>way (as multiple and connected to social practices) leads us at once to an in-</p><p>teresting dilemma: What do we want to say of someone, for instance, who</p><p>can understand and even compose rap songs (words and music), but cannot</p><p>read or write language or musical notation?</p><p>Of course, in traditional terms, this person is illiterate in terms of both</p><p>language and musical notation. But yet he or she is able to understand and</p><p>compose in a language style that is distinctively different from everyday lan-</p><p>guage and in a musical form that is distinctively different from other forms of</p><p>music. We might want to say that the person is literate in the domain of rap</p><p>songs (as a distinctive domain combining language and music in certain char-</p><p>acteristic ways), though the person is not print literate or musical-notation</p><p>literate.</p><p>Cases like this display the limitations of thinking about literacy first and</p><p>foremost in terms of print. We need, rather, to think first in terms of what I</p><p>call semiotic domains and only then get to literacy in the more traditional</p><p>terms of print literacy. “Semiotic” here is just a fancy way of saying we want</p><p>to talk about all sorts of different things that can take on meaning, such as</p><p>images, sounds, gestures, movements, graphs, diagrams, equations, objects,</p><p>even people like babies, midwives, and mothers, and not just words. All of</p><p>these things are signs (symbols, representations, whatever term you want to</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 17</p><p>18 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>use) that “stand for” (take on) different meanings in different situations, con-</p><p>texts, practices, cultures, and historical periods. For example, the image of a</p><p>cross means Christ (or Christ’s death) in the context of Christian social prac-</p><p>tices, and it means the four points of the compass (north, south, west, and</p><p>east) in the context of other social practices (e.g., in some African religions).</p><p>By a semiotic domain I mean any set of practices that recruits one or</p><p>more modalities (e.g., oral or written language, images, equations, symbols,</p><p>sounds, gestures, graphs, artifacts, etc.) to communicate distinctive types of</p><p>meanings. Here are some examples of semiotic domains: cellular biology,</p><p>postmodern literary criticism, first-person-shooter video games, high-fash-</p><p>ion advertisements, Roman</p><p>Catholic theology, modernist painting, mid-</p><p>wifery, rap music, wine connoisseurship—through a nearly endless, motley,</p><p>and ever-changing list.</p><p>Our sentence about basketball—“The guard dribbled down court, held</p><p>up two fingers, and passed to the open man”—is a sentence from the semiotic</p><p>domain of basketball. It might seen odd to call basketball a semiotic domain.</p><p>However, in basketball, particular words, actions, objects, and images take on</p><p>distinctive meanings. In basketball, “dribble” does not mean drool; a pick (an</p><p>action where an offensive player positions him or herself so as to block a de-</p><p>fensive player guarding one of his or her teammates) means that some defen-</p><p>sive player must quickly switch to guard the now-unguarded offensive player;</p><p>and the wide circle on each end of the court means that players who shoot</p><p>from beyond it get three points instead of two if they score a basket.</p><p>If you don’t know these meanings—cannot read these signs—then you</p><p>can’t “read” (understand) basketball. The matter seems fairly inconsequential</p><p>when we are talking about basketball. However, it quickly seems more conse-</p><p>quential when we are talking about the semiotic domain of some type of sci-</p><p>ence being studied in school. Equally here, if you don’t know how to read the</p><p>distinctive signs (words, actions, objects, and images), you can’t read (under-</p><p>stand) that sort of science.</p><p>If we think first in terms of semiotic domains and not in terms of reading</p><p>and writing as traditionally conceived, we can say that people are (or are not)</p><p>literate (partially or fully) in a domain if they can recognize (the equivalent of</p><p>“reading”) and/or produce (the equivalent of “writing”) meanings in the do-</p><p>main. We can reserve the term “print literate” for talking about people who</p><p>can read and/or write a language like English or Russian, though here, still,</p><p>we will want to insist that there are different ways to read and write different</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 18</p><p>19v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>things connected to different social practices so, in that sense, there are mul-</p><p>tiple print literacies. Thus, the rap artist who could understand and compose</p><p>rap songs but not read print or musical notation is literate in the semiotic do-</p><p>main of rap music but not print literate.</p><p>In the modern world, print literacy is not enough. People need to be lit-</p><p>erate in a great variety of different semiotic domains. If these domains in-</p><p>volve print, people often need the print bits, of course. However, the vast</p><p>majority of domains involve semiotic (symbolic, representational) resources</p><p>besides print and some don’t involve print as a resource at all. Furthermore,</p><p>and more important, people need to be able to learn to be literate in new</p><p>semiotic domains throughout their lives. If our modern, global, high-tech,</p><p>and science-driven world does anything, it certainly gives rise to new semi-</p><p>otic domains and transforms old ones at an ever faster rate.</p><p>This book deals with video games as a semiotic domain, actually as a</p><p>family of related, but different domains, since there are different types or</p><p>genres of video games (e.g., first-person shooter games, fantasy role-playing</p><p>games, real-time strategy games, simulation games, etc.). People can be liter-</p><p>ate, or not, in one or more of these video-game semiotic domains. However,</p><p>in talking about learning and literacy in regard to video games, I hope to de-</p><p>velop, as well, a perspective on learning, literacy, and semiotic domains that</p><p>applies more generally to domains beyond video games.</p><p>However, if we want to take video games seriously as a family of semiotic</p><p>domains in which one can learn to be literate, we face an immediate problem.</p><p>Many people who don’t play video games, especially older people, are sure to</p><p>say that playing video games is “a waste of time.” In the next section, I sketch</p><p>out one version of what I think this claim often amounts to, using a specific</p><p>example involving a six year old child.</p><p>LEARNING AND THE PROBLEM OF CONTENT</p><p>To spell out what I think the claim that playing video games is a waste of time</p><p>often means, I need first to tell you about the game the six-year-old boy was</p><p>playing, a game called “Pikmin.” Pikmin is a game for the Nintendo Game-</p><p>Cube, rated “E,” a game acceptable for all ages.</p><p>In Pikmin, the player takes on the role of Captain Olimar, a small (he’s</p><p>about the size of an American quarter), bald, big-eared, bulbous-nosed space-</p><p>man who crashes into an unfamiliar planet when a comet hits his spaceship.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 19</p><p>20 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>Captain Olimar (i.e., the player) must collect the spaceship’s lost parts, scat-</p><p>tered throughout the planet, while relying on his spacesuit to protect him</p><p>from the planet’s poisonous atmosphere. Thus, the player must carefully</p><p>monitor the damage done to Captain Olimar’s suit and repair it when</p><p>needed. To make matters more complicated, the spacesuit’s life support will</p><p>fail after 30 days, so the captain (the player) must find all the missing parts in</p><p>30 days (each day is 15 minutes of game-time play). So the game is a race</p><p>against time and represents the rare case of a game that one can play to the</p><p>end and still “lose.”</p><p>However, Captain Olimar gets help. Soon after arriving on the strange</p><p>planet, he comes upon native life that is willing to aid him. Sprouts dispensed</p><p>from a large onionlike creature yield tiny (they’re even smaller than Captain</p><p>Olimar) cute creatures that Olimar names “Pikmin” after a carrot from his</p><p>home planet. These little creatures appear to be quite taken with Olimar and</p><p>follow his directions without question. Captain Olimar learns to raise Pikmin</p><p>of three different colors (red, yellow, and blue), each of which has different</p><p>skills. He learns, as well, to train them so that each Pikmin, regardless of</p><p>color, can grow through three different ever stronger forms: Pikmin sprout-</p><p>ing a leaf, a bud, or a flower from their heads.</p><p>His colorful Pikmin following him as his army, Captain Olimar uses them</p><p>to attack dangerous creatures, tear down stone walls, build bridges, and explore</p><p>a great many areas of the strange planet in search of the missing parts to his</p><p>spaceship. While Captain Olimar can replace killed Pikmin from remaining</p><p>Pikmin, he must, however, ensure that at no point do all his Pikmin perish—an</p><p>event called, by the game and by the child player, “an extinction event.”</p><p>It is quite a sight to watch a six-year-old, as Captain Olimar, lead a multi-</p><p>colored army of little Pikmin to fight, build, grow more Pikmin, and explore</p><p>a strange landscape, all the while solving multiple problems to discover and</p><p>get to the locations of the spaceship’s missing parts. The child then orders his</p><p>Pikmin to carry the heavy parts back to the ship. When this child’s grandfa-</p><p>ther watched him play the game for several hours, the grandfather made the</p><p>following remark, which I think captures at least one of the common mean-</p><p>ings of the playing video games is a waste of time theme: “While it may be</p><p>good for his hand-eye coordination, it’s a waste of time, because there isn’t</p><p>any content he’s learning.” I call this the problem of content.</p><p>The problem of content is, I believe, based on common attitudes toward</p><p>school, schooling, learning, and knowledge. These attitudes are compelling,</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 20</p><p>21v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>in part because they are so deeply rooted in the history of western thought,</p><p>but, nonetheless, I think they are wrong. The idea is this: Important knowl-</p><p>edge (now usually gained in school) is content in the sense of information</p><p>rooted in, or, at least, related to, intellectual domains or academic disciplines</p><p>like physics, history, art, or literature. Work that does not involve such learn-</p><p>ing is “meaningless.” Activities that are entertaining but that themselves do</p><p>not involve such learning are just “meaningless play.” Of course, video games</p><p>fall into this category.</p><p>A form of this viewpoint has long existed in western culture. It is akin</p><p>to</p><p>the viewpoint, held by Plato and Aristotle, for example, that knowledge, in</p><p>something like the sense of content above, is good in and of itself. Other pur-</p><p>suits, including making practical use of such knowledge—pursuits that do not</p><p>involve learning and reflecting on such content in and of itself outside the</p><p>realm of practical applications—are lesser; in some sense, mundane and triv-</p><p>ial. Such a view, of course, makes the grandfather’s remark about the child</p><p>playing Pikmin seem obvious.</p><p>The problem with the content view is that an academic discipline, or any</p><p>other semiotic domain, for that matter, is not primarily content, in the sense</p><p>of facts and principles. It is rather primarily a lived and historically changing</p><p>set of distinctive social practices. It is in these social practices that “content”</p><p>is generated, debated, and transformed via certain distinctive ways of think-</p><p>ing, talking, valuing, acting, and, often, writing and reading.</p><p>No one would want to treat basketball as “content” apart from the</p><p>game itself. Imagine a textbook that contained all the facts and rules about</p><p>basketball read by students who never played or watched the game. How</p><p>well do you think they would understand this textbook? How motivated to</p><p>understand it do you think they would be? But we do this sort of thing all</p><p>the time in school with areas like math and science. We even have politi-</p><p>cians and educators who condemn doing math and science in the classroom</p><p>instead of drilling-and-skilling on math and science facts (“content”) as</p><p>“permissive.”</p><p>There is, however, an alternative way to think about learning and know-</p><p>ing that makes the content view seem less obvious and natural. I turn to de-</p><p>veloping this viewpoint in the following sections. Under this alternative</p><p>perspective it will become less clear that playing video games is necessarily a</p><p>“a waste of time,” though it will be a while until I can return to that claim and</p><p>answer it directly.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 21</p><p>22 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE</p><p>ON LEARNING AND KNOWING</p><p>The alternative perspective starts with the claim that there really is no such</p><p>thing as learning “in general.” We always learn something. And that some-</p><p>thing is always connected, in some way, to some semiotic domain or other.</p><p>Therefore, if we are concerned with whether something is worth learn-</p><p>ing or not, whether it is a waste of time or not—video games or anything</p><p>else—we should start with questions like the following: What semiotic do-</p><p>main is being entered through this learning? Is it a valuable domain or not?</p><p>In what sense? Is the learner learning simply to understand (“read”) parts of</p><p>the domain or also to participate more fully in the domain by learning to pro-</p><p>duce (“write”) meanings in the domain? And we need to keep in mind that in</p><p>the modern world, there are a great many more potentially important semi-</p><p>otic domains than just those that show up in typical schools. I return to these</p><p>questions later in regard to the child playing Pikmin.</p><p>Once we learn to start with such questions, we find that it is often a</p><p>tricky question as to what semiotic domain is being entered when someone is</p><p>learning or has learned something. For example, consider college freshmen</p><p>who have taken their first college-level physics class, passed it with good</p><p>grades, and can write down Newton’s laws of motion. What domain have</p><p>they entered? It will not do to say “physics” and leave the matter at that,</p><p>though the content view would take this position.</p><p>Lots of studies have shown that many such students, students who can</p><p>write down Newton’s laws of motion, if asked so simple a question as “How</p><p>many forces are acting on a coin when it has been thrown up into the air?”</p><p>(the answer to which can actually be deduced from Newton’s laws) get the</p><p>answer wrong. Leaving aside friction, they claim that two forces are operat-</p><p>ing on the coin, gravity and “impetus,” the force the hand has transferred to</p><p>the coin. Gravity exists as a force and, according to Newton’s laws, is the sole</p><p>force acting on the coin when it is in the air (aside from air friction). Impetus,</p><p>in the sense above, however, does not exist, though Aristotle thought it did</p><p>and people in their everyday lives tend to view force and motion in such</p><p>terms quite naturally.</p><p>So these students have entered the semiotic domain of physics as passive</p><p>content but not as something in terms of which they can actually see and oper-</p><p>ate on their world in new ways. There may be nothing essentially wrong with</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 22</p><p>23v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>this, since their knowledge of such passive content might help them know, at</p><p>some level, what physics, an important enterprise in modern life, is “about.” I</p><p>tend to doubt this, however. Be that as it may, these students cannot produce</p><p>meanings in physics or understand them in producerlike ways.</p><p>They have not learned to experience the world in a new way. They have</p><p>not learned to experience the world in a way in which the natural inclination to</p><p>think in terms of the hand transmitting a force to the coin, a force that the coin</p><p>stores up and uses up (“impetus”), is not part of one’s way of seeing and operat-</p><p>ing on the world (for a time and place, i.e., when doing modern physics).</p><p>When we learn a new semiotic domain in a more active way, not as pas-</p><p>sive content, three things are at stake:</p><p>1. We learn to experience (see, feel, and operate on) the world in new</p><p>ways.</p><p>2. Since semiotic domains usually are shared by groups of people who</p><p>carry them on as distinctive social practices, we gain the potential to</p><p>join this social group, to become affiliated with such kinds of people</p><p>(even though we may never see all of them, or any of them, face to</p><p>face).</p><p>3. We gain resources that prepare us for future learning and problem solv-</p><p>ing in the domain and, perhaps, more important, in related domains.</p><p>Three things, then, are involved in active learning: experiencing the world in</p><p>new ways, forming new affiliations, and preparation for future learning.</p><p>This is “active learning.” However, such learning is not yet what I call</p><p>“critical learning.” For learning to be critical as well as active, one addi-</p><p>tional feature is needed. The learner needs to learn not only how to un-</p><p>derstand and produce meanings in a particular semiotic domain that are</p><p>recognizable to those affiliated with the domain, but, in addition, how to</p><p>think about the domain at a “meta” level as a complex system of interre-</p><p>lated parts. The learner also needs to learn how to innovate in the</p><p>domain—how to produce meanings that, while recognizable, are seen as</p><p>somehow novel or unpredictable.</p><p>To get at what all this really means, though, I need to discuss semiotic</p><p>domains a bit more. This will allow me to clarify what I mean by critical</p><p>learning and to explicate the notions of experiencing the world in new ways,</p><p>forming new affiliations, and preparation for future learning a bit more.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 23</p><p>24 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>MORE ON SEMIOTIC DOMAINS:</p><p>S ITUATED MEANINGS</p><p>Words, symbols, images, and artifacts have meanings that are specific to par-</p><p>ticular semiotic domains and particular situations (contexts). They do not</p><p>just have general meanings.</p><p>I was once a cannery worker; later I became an academic. I used the word</p><p>“work” in both cases, but the word meant different things in each case. In my</p><p>cannery life, it meant something like laboring for eight straight hours in</p><p>order to survive and get home to lead my “real” life. In my academic life, it</p><p>means something like chosen efforts I put into thinking, reading, writing,</p><p>and teaching as part and parcel of my vocation, efforts not clocked by an</p><p>eight-hour workday. In the domain of human romantic relationships, the</p><p>word means something else altogether; for example, in a sentence like “Rela-</p><p>tionships take work.” Later I will point out that a word like “work,” in fact,</p><p>has different meanings even within a single</p><p>domain, like the cannery, aca-</p><p>demics, or romantic relationships, meanings that vary according to different</p><p>situations in the domain.</p><p>But here we face one of the most widespread confusions that exists in re-</p><p>gard to language and semiotic domains. People tend to think that the mean-</p><p>ing of a word or other sort of symbol is a general thing—the sort of thing</p><p>that, for a word, at least, can be listed in a dictionary. But meaning for words</p><p>and symbols is specific to particular situations and particular semiotic do-</p><p>mains. You don’t really know what a word means if you don’t carefully con-</p><p>sider both the specific semiotic domain and the specific situation you are in.</p><p>We build meanings for words or symbols “on the spot,” so to speak, so as</p><p>to make them appropriate for the actual situations we are in, though we do so</p><p>with due respect for the specific semiotic domain in which we are operating.</p><p>What general meaning a word or other symbol has is just a theme around</p><p>which, in actual situations of use, we must build more specific instantiations</p><p>(meanings).</p><p>To understand or produce any word, symbol, image, or artifact in a given</p><p>semiotic domain, a person must be able to situate the meaning of that word,</p><p>symbol, image, or artifact within embodied experiences of action, interac-</p><p>tion, or dialogue in or about the domain. These experiences can be ones the</p><p>person has actually had or ones he or she can imagine, thanks to reading, dia-</p><p>logue with others, or engagement with various media. This is what our col-</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 24</p><p>25v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>lege physics students could not do: They could not situate the components of</p><p>Newton’s laws in terms of specific situations and embodied ways of seeing</p><p>and acting on and within the world from the perspective of the semiotic do-</p><p>main of mechanical physics.</p><p>Meaning, then, is both situation and domain specific. Thus, even in a sin-</p><p>gle domain, the meaning of a word varies across different situations. Let me</p><p>give an example of what I am talking about by taking up again the example of</p><p>the word “work.” In semiotic domains connected to academics, the word</p><p>“work” takes on a range of possible situated meanings different from the range</p><p>possible in other semiotic domains (e.g., law, medicine, manual work, etc.).</p><p>In one situation I might say of a fellow academic, “Her work has been</p><p>very influential” and by “work” mean her research. In another situation I</p><p>might say the same thing, but now in regard to a particular committee she</p><p>has chaired, and by “work” mean her political efforts within her discipline or</p><p>institution. To understand the word “work” in these cases, you need to ask</p><p>yourself what you take the situation to be (e.g., talk about contributions to</p><p>knowledge or about disciplinary or institutional political affairs) and what</p><p>semiotic domain is at stake (here academics, not law offices).</p><p>The same thing is true in all domains. Even in the rigorous semiotic do-</p><p>main of physics, one must situate (build) different specific meanings for the</p><p>word “light” in different situations. In different situations, one has to build</p><p>meanings for the word that involve thinking, talking about, or acting on dif-</p><p>ferent things like waves, particles, straight lines, reflection and refraction,</p><p>lasers, colors, and yet other things in other situations. Even in physics, when</p><p>someone uses the word “light,” we need to know whether they are talking</p><p>about waves or particles, colors or lasers, or something else (perhaps they are</p><p>talking about the general theory of electromagnetism)?</p><p>In a different domain altogether, the same word takes on yet different</p><p>meanings in different situations. For example, in religion, one has to build</p><p>meanings for the word “light” that involve thinking, talking about, or acting</p><p>on and with different themes like illumination, insight, life, grace, peace,</p><p>birth, and yet other things in other situations.</p><p>If you cannot even imagine the experiences and conditions of an aca-</p><p>demic life, you really can’t know what “work” means, either specifically or in</p><p>terms of its possible range of meanings, in a sentence like “Her work was very</p><p>influential.” Of course, you don’t have to be an academic to imagine aca-</p><p>demic life. But you do have to be able to build simulated worlds of experience</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 25</p><p>26 v WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US v</p><p>in your mind (in this case, the sorts of experiences, attitudes, values, and feel-</p><p>ings an academic might have), however unconsciously you do this. And, per-</p><p>haps, you can do this because of your reading or other vicarious experiences.</p><p>Perhaps you can do it through analogies to other domains with which you are</p><p>more familiar (e.g., you might equate your hobby as an artist with the acade-</p><p>mic’s research and understand how “work” can mean, in a certain sort of situ-</p><p>ation, efforts connected to a vocation).</p><p>Why I am belaboring this point? For two reasons: first, to make clear</p><p>that understanding meanings is an active affair in which we have to reflect</p><p>(however unconsciously) on the situation and the domain we are in. And, sec-</p><p>ond, because I want to argue that learning in any semiotic domain crucially</p><p>involves learning how to situate (build) meanings for that domain in the sorts</p><p>of situations the domain involves. That is precisely why real learning is active</p><p>and always a new way of experiencing the world.</p><p>Furthermore, I want to argue later that video games are potentially par-</p><p>ticularly good places where people can learn to situate meanings through</p><p>embodied experiences in a complex semiotic domain and meditate on the</p><p>process. Our bad theories about general meanings; about reading but not</p><p>reading something; and about general learning untied to specific semiotic</p><p>domains just don’t make sense when you play video games. The games exem-</p><p>plify, in a particularly clear way, better and more specific and embodied theo-</p><p>ries of meaning, reading, and learning.</p><p>MORE ON SEMIOTIC DOMAINS:</p><p>INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VIEWS</p><p>There are two different ways to look at semiotic domains: internally and ex-</p><p>ternally. Any domain can be viewed internally as a type of content or exter-</p><p>nally in terms of people engaged in a set of social practices. For example,</p><p>first-person shooter games are a semiotic domain, and they contain a partic-</p><p>ular type of content. For instance, as part of their typical content, such</p><p>games involve moving through a virtual world in a first-person perspective</p><p>(you see only what you are holding and move and feel as if you yourself are</p><p>holding it) using weapons to battle enemies. Of course, such games involve a</p><p>good deal more content as well. Thus we can talk about the typical sorts of</p><p>content we find in first-person shooter games. This is to view the semiotic</p><p>domain internally.</p><p>03 gee ch 2 3/13/03 12:06 PM Page 26</p><p>27v SEMIOTIC DOMAINS v</p><p>On the other hand, people actually play first-person shooter games as a</p><p>practice in the world, sometimes alone and sometimes with other people on</p><p>the Internet or when they connect several game platforms or computers to-</p><p>gether. They may also talk to other players about such games and read maga-</p><p>zines and Internet sites devoted to them. They are aware that certain people</p><p>are more adept at playing such games than are others. They are also aware</p><p>that people who are “into” such games take on a certain identity, at least</p><p>when they are involved with those games. For example, it is unlikely that</p><p>people “into” first-person shooter games are going to object to violence in</p><p>video games, though they may have strong views about how that violence</p><p>ought to function in games.</p><p>I call the group of people associated with a given semiotic domain—in</p><p>this case, first-person shooter games—an affinity group. People in an affinity</p><p>group can recognize others as more or less “insiders” to the group. They may</p><p>not see many people in the group face-to-face, but when they interact with</p><p>someone on the Internet or read something about the domain, they can rec-</p><p>ognize certain ways of thinking, acting,</p>
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