REPLAYING HISTORY: LEARNING WORLD HISTORY THROUGH PLAYING
CIVILIZATION III
Kurt D. Squire
submitted to the faculty of the School of Education
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Instructional Systems Technology Department
Indiana University
January 2004
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Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
_______________________________________
Sasha A. Barab, Ph.D.
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Thomas Duffy
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Lee Ehman
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Henry Jenkins
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COPYRIGHT PAGE
c (2004)
Kurt D. Squire
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Kurt Squire
Replaying History: Learning World History through playing Civilization III
Digital games is an emerging entertainment medium that an increasing number of
educators are examining as tools for engaging learners. Yet, few models exist for how to
use contemporary gaming media in formal learning environments. A commercial
historical computer strategy game such as Civilization III is an intriguing artifact to
examine in classroom contexts because of its wide appeal, design sophistication, and
unique affordances as a world history simulation. Civilization III represents world history
not as a story of colonial domination or western expansion, but as an emergent process
arising from overlapping, interrelated factors.
The purpose of this study is to explore what happens when Civilization III, a complex
computer game developed in entertainment contexts enters formal learning environemtns.
This dissertation presents three naturalistic case studies in which Civilization III was used
as the basis for a unit on world history in urban learning environments. I examine how
the game engaged players, the social interactions that occur, how understandings emerge,
and what role game play serves in mediating students’ understandings.
In all three cases, engagement was a complex process of appropriation and resistance,
whereby the purposes of game play was negotiated among students’ identities, classroom
goals, and the affordances of Civilization III. Civilization III engaged each student in
unique ways, and this engagement affected the kinds of questions students asked of their
games, the kinds of conceptual understandings that arose through game play, and the
interpretations they made about history. History and geography became tools for game
play and successful students developed conceptual understandings across world history,
geography, and politics. These cases suggest the potential for using simulation games in
world history education, but also the significant, unsolved challenges in integrating such
a complex game within classroom settings.
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Dedication
Dedicated to James Douglas and Janet Kretschmer, two people who taught **
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Table of Contents
I. Introduction
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II. Game-Based Learning in World History
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III. Methodology
IV. Case 1: The Media School
V. Case 2: Media Summer Camp
VI. Case 3: After-School Computer Club
VII. Conclusions
VIII. Implications
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Chapter I: Introduction
Statement of the Problem
A growing number of researchers and scholars are acknowledging the cultural
impact of digital games (Gee, 2003; King & Borland, 2003; Poole, 2001). Digital gaming
is now an $18 billion global industry that many media scholars see as being a dominant
"lively art" in the upcoming decades (Jenkins, in press). As Jim Gee (2003) argues,
games are not only pushing the creative boundaries of interactive digital media but also
suggesting powerful models of next-generation interactive learning environments. Those
in the “edutainment” industry, as well as the teachers and students who support it, appear
to agree. Year after year, social studies edutainment games such as The Sims, SimCity,
Age of Empires, Railroad Tycoon and Civilization dominate the PC gaming sales charts
(Squire, 2002). Many social studies teachers seem eager to exploit this new medium, as
simulation games such as SimCity are installed on school computers throughout the
country and thousands of teachers download the SimCity 3000 teacher’s guide
(Bradshaw, 2002; Teague & Teague, 1995).
Despite the commercial success of — and educators' growing interest in — games
like Pirates!, SimCity 3000 or Civilization, very little is known about how such games
might be used as tools for learning. Although a growing number of educators, industry
leaders, and political leaders have suggested that SimCity or Civilization could be used in
social studies classrooms (Berson, 1996; Hope, 1996; Kolson, 1996; Lee, 1994; Prensky,
2001; Teague & Teague, 1995), there are to date no empirical research studies examining
their effectiveness in classroom environments. Important questions persist about how
teachers might use such simulations and how learners come to understand them. How
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might we leverage these games for use in formal or informal learning environments?
What happens when you bring a complex world history simulation game such as
Civilization III into the classroom? Does such a complex game — one that often positions
players in situations where “academic” knowledge and understanding can be leveraged
for real use in problem-solving — provide opportunities for supporting new kinds of
learning? Or might the simplifications (hence distortions) inherent in any simulation
reinforce, or even cause misconceptions about important historical, cultural, or
geographical phenomena?
That simulation games can potentially distort the phenomena they are meant to
model has been widely acknowledged. In his critique of SimCity, city planner Kenneth
Kolson (1996) notes that SimCity distorts the powers of a mayor in public planning,
discounts the historical importance of race and ethnicities in the evolution of cities, and
overestimates the appeal of public transportation to most Americans. Similarly, Barkin
(2001) notes that in attempting to capture, quantify and operationalize the dynamics of
culture, Civilization III offers an ostensibly problematic concept of culture drawn from
French and German theories of culture that is foreign to any anthropologist. This problem
of simplification/distortion of “reality” in games is exacerbated by the fact that
edutainment products are typically developed and marketed as entertainment products
first, and then appropriated for use in classrooms second. Other tensions, such as the
tension between playing the game as a bounded semiotic system versus reflecting on the
game as a model representing some more substantial phenomena in the world beyond it,
may very well be endemic to the medium.
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Civilization III, developed by Firaxis and published by Infogrames in 2001,
provides unique opportunities for thinking about the role of games in world history
(Squire, 2002). World history is an emerging area of scholarship and teaching which
seeks to understand broad patterns in human activity — patterns that cut across
traditional anthropological, geographic, historical, and disciplinary boundaries. From this
perspective, the entire world is included, eschewing Eurocentric or colonialist
perspectives that have historically characterized similar research. Contemporary world
historians such as Jared Diamond, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer for Guns, Germs, and
Steel, are excellent examples of such interdisciplinary scholarship.
Likewise, in
Civilization III, the entire world is again incorporated into the game. In it, the player
leads a civilization from 4000 BC to the present, managing the civilization’s natural
resources, finances and trade, scientific research, cultural orientation, political policies
and military. I believe that Civilization III makes a particularly intriguing tool for
studying world history in that it allows students to examine relationships among
geography, politics, economics, and history over thousands of years and from multiple
perspectives.
Contemporary digital gaming models such as that underlying Civilization III are
potentially powerful learning tools that are understudied as a viable educational resource.
Studying learning in digital games might teach instructional technologists valuable
lessons about how to design interactivity, support online collaboration, or engage users.
Understanding how such games are used in formal learning environments might
productively inform the design of educational games (Games-to-Teach Team, 2003). At
the very least, educational technologists could benefit from paying closer attention how
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players are already interacting with such “edutainment” games and how they are being
used in classrooms (Squire, 2003).
Despite the lack of formal inquiry into the potential for digital games to support
learning, there is a long tradition of using paper-based games and simulations in social
studies classrooms (e.g. Clegg, 1991). Unfortunately, most uses of games have been
atheoretical; rarely, if ever are they tied to contemporary notions of how people learn or
the broader goals of social studies education. Digital games, which bring with them new
affordances, possibilities, and potential problems, have yet to be seriously studied in
classroom contexts.
Building on this past research in (largely paper-based) games in social studies
education, I argue that educators need to examine not just the game – player system, but
the broader social contexts of game play. Cooperative and competitive social
arrangements frame game play activity. In some cases, the social context of game play –
the kinds of reflection activities, discussion, collaboration, and competition that emerge
in game play are as important as the game itself in determining what activity emerges and
what learning occurs. Prior research has assumed a priori what the learning goals and
outcomes of game-based learning environments should be, treating games as content
transmission systems as opposed to tools to think with. I argue that games might be more
conducive to constructivist instructional approaches, whereby learning is an inferential,
interpretive process and learning outcomes are intricately tied to the goals, intentions, and
motivations of the learner (e.g. Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy & Perry, 1996).
Indeed, if the activity outside of the game (discussions, research, knowledge
sharing) are as important as the game itself, then educational game researchers need a
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theoretical model which accounts for both student-game interactions and student-student
interactions. I argue for a cultural-historical approach to understanding learning in gamebased learning environments, as it allows researchers to examine not only the role of the
game in learning, but how social structures mediate activity.
Theoretical Foundation
Underlying these debates about the potential of games to support learning are
theoretical questions central to instructional design, educational technology, identity and
learning, teaching world history, and the learning sciences more generally. Both
proponents and critics of digital game-based learning have habitually assumed objectivist
epistemologies and transmission models of learning, whereby the game contains fixed
meanings which are broadcasted to a passive game-playing recipient (e.g. Prensky, 2001;
Provenzo, 1991). How players infer meanings from game play, construct understandings
about game worlds, and then relate these experiences to non-gaming experiences is not
entirely clear; where do players draw lines between fantasy and reality? How do players
know when a game is realistic and when it is not? How do players explore game worlds
as systems and how do they treat these understandings of game systems?
Most educational game research has treated game play as isolated psychological
phenomena, ignoring the broader social contexts of game playing and social relationships
that envelope most gaming experiences (e.g. Grossman, 2000, Malone, 1981). Treating
the learning context as an interaction between an isolated player and a game as an
isolated system is problematic on several levels; games are frequently competitive
endeavors where players test skills against other players, cooperative exercises where
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players work together to solve problems (whether it be in single player or multiplayer
games), or simply excuses for friends and families to socialize. Minimally, game play as
social practice can be characterized by the social purposes it serves, the social
relationships which become folded into game play, and the formal and informal
communities that arise in support of game play.
For educators interested in harnessing the power of games to support learning
(e.g. Games-to-Teach, 2003; Media X, 2003; Prensky, 2001), this challenge of how to
account for both the person-tool interaction and the broader social contexts in which
gaming is situated and game meanings are created is crucial (Squire, 2002). Elsewhere
(e.g. Squire, 2002), I have argued for adopting a socio-cultural learning perspective to
understand gaming (In What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and
Literacy, Jim Gee also draws from socio-cultural learning theory in describing how
learning occurs through gaming). Socio-cultural learning theory (defined more precisely
in the theoretical section) offers game-based educators several insights into learning
through game play: (1) Knowledge is described not as facts to be memorized but as tools
which mediate activity (Barab, Hay, Barnett, & Squire, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978); (2)
Socio-cultural learning theory encourages researchers to view game play not as purely a
human-computer interaction phenomena, but as a socio-cultural one mediated by
classroom microcultures and broader social contexts, including classroom culture; (3)
Socio-cultural learning theory provides a framework for understanding students’ goals
and intentions and how these contribute to trajectories of students’ identities, and (4) a
language (a theory of signs, or semiotics) for thinking through how knowledge is
represented in games and how this knowledge develops in a learning environment. Of
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particular interest to me is how socio-cultural learning theory might provide a language
for examining classroom practice mediated by game play and situated within classroom
cultures.
Activity theory, a neo-Vygotskian socio-cultural theory emerging from the
Russian School of psychologists offers a particularly interesting lens for educators
interested in examining game-based learning environments. Activity theory takes human
work as its unit of analysis. For activity theorists, work is organized by an object, which
shapes activity and reciprocally is influenced by human actors, as mediated by tools and
social institutions. By taking work as the unit of analysis, activity theorists examine the
tools, signs, and language which mediate human interaction with object, as well as the
social structures, including community norms and divisions of labor which frame
activity. As such, activity theory takes the person performing in social contexts, including
the social and political environs in which they are situated as the minimal meaningful unit
of analysis. Importantly, activity theorists regard humans and the objects of their activity
in dialectal relations, shaping and reshaping one another through time.
Activity theory is an intriguing theoretical framework for understanding gaming
because it focuses researchers’ attentions not only on how a tool such as Civilization III
mediates learning of social studies, but also focuses researchers on how game play is
mediated by social structures, which might include school cultures or informal groupings.
Given that games are profoundly social experiences (King & Borland, 2003), it is critical
that game researchers focus not just on human and computer interactions, but on how
emergent game cultures shape gaming activities and the impact that these activities have
on cognition. By examining the object, or focus of activity, activity theorists are also
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interested in how participants view and understand activity, particularly participants’
objects, goals, or motives. Emerging theory in game studies suggests that gamers
approach games in unique ways, and one cannot assume a priori to know a player’s goals
and intentions while gaming (e.g. Bartle, 2003).
Influenced by Hegel and Marx, activity theorists are very interested in the
material conditions of work, and adopt an historical approach to understanding activity
(Engeström, 1999). Humans, their tools, signs, and language – as well as the community
norms and structures in which they are situated – are understood historically by
investigating their use in actual settings, frequently through traditional ethnographic,
historic, or qualitative case study techniques (Engeström, 1999). Activity theorists enter
activity settings, observing and interviewing participants and generating narratives of
what activity emerges (e.g. Engeström, 1999). Critical to an activity theory approach is
understanding how activity systems are viewed from multiple vantage points and teasing
out contradictions among differing activity systems, particularly the contradictions that
emerge when activity systems overlap.
One might anticipate several contradictions, such as contradictions between using
games for enjoyment vs. using games to master social studies, or collaborative
communities of inquiry vs. competitive gaming structures. Game-based Educational
technologists working in other settings (e.g. Barab, Barnett, Yamagata-Lynch, et al.,
2002) have used contradictions to understand change and innovation in a system, finding
that contradictions can be a useful tool for refining design experiments.
Research Questions
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Specifically, this dissertation examines what classroom practices emerge and how
learning occurs when Civilization III is used as the basis for learning about world history
in two learning environments (1) an Humanities enrichment course in a Media and
Technology Charter School (Media case) and an after-school computer club program.
Using qualitative case study techniques, I examine the following five research questions:
1. What practices and contradictions emerge when games are brought into
formal learning environments, particularly, how do gaming practices (e.g.,
competition, learning through failure) intersect with the practices and
culture of formal schooling?
2. How does Civilization III engage players in formal learning
environments?
3. How does learning occur through game play, specifically, how does
playing Civilization III remediate students’ understandings of history?
4. What are the pedagogical potentials (affordances) of using games
(specifically Civilization III) in world history classrooms?
5. How should we design learning activities and environments when using
games in formal learning environments?
Dissertation Overview
Consistent with Cobb and colleagues (Cobb, Stephan, McClain, & Gravemeijer
2001), this study is a design experiment designed to examine what happens when
Civilization III is used as the basis for learning world history in three contexts. The first
case is a month-long unit on world history, as a part of a ninth grade humanities class at a
Media and Technology Charter School in inner-city Boston. In the second case, a subset
of these students participated in a week-long, half-day computer camp investigating the
potential of using Civilization III to learn about social studies. The third case is an afterschool computer club sponsored by the YWCA but occurring at a suburban, working
class Boston middle school. All three cases were convenience samples, chosen for their
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willingness to participate in this experimental program and ability to illuminate research
issues, and each case involved approximately 20 hours of instructional time.
I use Stake’s (1995) case study techniques to address these research questions.
Stake’s case study technique is particularly useful because it is responsive to the
particularities of a case, including the unintended consequences. With no real empirical
research on what happens in game-based learning environments, little is known as to
what will happen when games enter classrooms, let alone what types of learning occurs.
There are other important questions about how classroom cultures will appropriate
gaming media, how non-gamers react to game-based learning units, how games compete
with other learning activities for students’ attention, or how girls take to game-based
learning environments (See Cassell & Jenkins, 1998 for a discussion of gender and
gaming). Stake’s methodology emphasizes the importance of not over-prescribing data
collection and research procedures, but of allowing data collection to emerge in response
to emerging themes. I use Stake’s case study methodology (1995) for each, using
observations, interviews, and document analysis to build narrative accounts of each
classroom.
In each case I was a direct participant. Although I had planned to participate in
each case as little more than an observer, local needs demanded that I play an active role
in shaping classroom activity. As a result, I hired a research assistant to assist in data
collection and analysis. Consistent with Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, and Schauble,
(2003), I approach this design experiment equally as a teaching experiment, whereby
interacting with participants and the case yields fruitful data about the design of learning
environments. Researchers can modify the learning environment (e.g. introducing new
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learning materials, manipulating social arrangements) in order to illuminate research
themes. In this these cases, I try to make this cycle of manipulating the environment and
examining results as explicit as possible, so that the reader can perhaps vicariously
experience some of the decision making process I experienced. Negotiating this role was
often tricky, and I try to give the reader a sense of these struggles in each case study.
Because the research questions involve examining what practices emerged when
Civilization III was brought into the classroom, as opposed to directly comparing a gamebased learning environment to a traditional environment, this study avoids some of the
more obvious threats to validity, such as “tainting” the research environment. At the same
time, my participation in the case makes the applicability of these findings to other
contexts somewhat limited, as I am not the typical teacher. These limitations are explored
further in the next section.
Limitations of Study
This study is designed to examine what happens when Civilization III is used as
the basis for a unit in learning world history. Very little is known about what happens
when a game as complex, abstracted, and simulation-based as Civilization III is used to
study world history, and although myself and others have argued for different models for
thinking about how games can be used to support learning, little is known about how
these approaches play out in practice. Importantly, this study examines one game
(Civilization III) being used for select purposes in three very specific settings. As such,
this study has limited applicability how other games (such as Europa Universalis,
Patrician, or 1602 AD) might be used in world history, how games such as Colonization
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might be used in colonial history, or how games such as Hidden Agenda might be used in
modern history. I believe that these cases should provide useful insights for educators
exploring such models, but caution against extrapolating too far from these results.
Contexts of the case studies
One of the biggest limitations of this study is the samples chosen. These samples
were chosen for convenience – specifically, for accessibility and willingness to
experiment with an innovative unit. All of these cases involved students from workingclass backgrounds, populations of students who are known to resist learning history
(Loewen, 1995). Many of the Media students were highly resistant to authority, creating
some tense moments as teachers and researchers tried to require outside learning
activities. Whereas students in traditional, middle-class or upper-class contexts might be
expected to engage willingly in outside research, readings, or discussion activities,
students in the Media case were reluctant to engage in such activities (See Chapter IV).
At the same time, this case is particularly illuminative of the tensions between students’
and teachers’ intentions; as the case study shows, students who were not interested in
playing the game – or more interested in playing the game than studying history – were
quick to make their opinions known to researchers. Consistent with the case study
approach (Stake, 1995), I attempt to highlight the particularities of this case and support
the reader in generalizing my findings to his or her own learning contexts as deemed
appropriate.
In the after-school case, game players were perhaps more amenable to
augmenting game play with other learning activities, but having students do readings or
other activities would have run contrary to the purposes of the camp. At the same time,
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these participants were unlike participants in many after-school environments. They
attended regularly, had little choice among other activities, and seemed to adopt the
social mores of school, perhaps because the camp occurred on school grounds and in a
computer lab. Designers of after-school settings such as Boys and Girls Clubs may find
that the social mores of this case bear little resemblance to those they face, and that there
is little transferability from this case to their situations.
Role of researcher
In both cases, I played an active role in shaping the learning environment. I
devised activities, offered help on game play, devised just-in-time lectures, and tried to
connect students’ games to historical events. I have spent thousands of hours playing
Civilization III and nearly that same amount thinking through this dissertation. It is
unreasonable to expect that a typical teacher would have the experience or energy to do
the same. I have attempted to capture what I learned from these experiences in unit plans
and through suggestions for designing curricula with Civilization III (see Appendices A
and B for sample unit plans using Civilization III in other areas of world history);
nevertheless, if the teacher is a critical component of a game-based learning environment,
then my role needs to be accounted for. (This issue is further explicated in design
research in general in Barab & Squire, in press).
Curricular Integration
At the same time, I came into each of these cases as an outsider to the school or
camp cultures and was disadvantaged in terms of integrating the game into school and
classroom cultures and anticipating how game play would meet students’ needs. One can
imagine that a world history teacher who plays Civilization III may be able to better
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integrate game experiences into the curriculum, anticipate students’ misconceptions, or
understand how to negotiate moment-to-moment classroom interactions. In truth,
permanent school faculty would have a much deeper knowledge of how to integrate the
game in such ways.
Time limitations
Each of these cases was a fairly substantial unit, lasting 4-6 weeks and including a
minimum of 20 teacher-student contact hours. At the same time, Civilization III is a
complex game to learn and a single game can take dozens of hours to play. These
limitations on contact hours and students’ inability to take games home to play meant that
students had relatively little time to experiment with the game. A dedicated Civilization
III player might spend 20 hours playing Civilization III in a weekend; these students had
relatively little time to learn the game interface, experiment with alternative strategies, or
explore the game more generally. One can imagine how a unit that lasted the duration of
a semester, a learning environment with more flexible time allotments, or educational
programs where students had laptops or access to home computers where they could play
the game, might develop differently.
Particularities of Civilization III
There is a tendency for many researchers to treat “games” or “game-based
learning environments” as a meaningful category or variable with little respect to the
specific games or game genres that are being studied. Civilization III is a turn-based
resource management strategy game where players exploit natural resources, build
civilization and city improvements, set tax rates, and negotiate with other civilizations.
Civilization III is an open-ended game meant to be played in a multitude of ways and
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support multiple game strategies. As an emerging medium, games are often treated
monolithically, as if the practice of playing Quake, a first-person action game is the same
as playing Civilization III, a relatively slow-paced strategy game (See also Games-toTeach Team, 2003). Much the same way that one would not want to do a case study of
students learning to read with the Bible and then generalize to books in general, one
would not want to take this study and generalize the findings to games in general.
Summary and Overview of the Dissertation
Chapter II provides a background for using Civilization III to support learning in
world history. I examine the practical, intellectual, and theoretical issues behind studying
world history. I cover the history of research of using games and simulations in social
studies education, and present a theoretical argument for the potential benefit of using
games in world history education, using activity theory as a lens for discussing how
learning might occur through game play and how game-based learning environments can
be investigated.
Chapter III presents my methodology. I describe the structure of the design
experiment, discussing the role of the researcher and the affordances of Civilization III as
a tool for studying world history. I also detail my methodology for generating case
studies and the analysis procedures I used for generating assertions and analyzing activity
systems.
Chapters IV, V, and VI present the three case studies. In Chapter VII, I offer my
conclusions, and Chapter IX presents my proposed implications for the design of gamebased
learning
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environments.
Chapter II: Digital Games in World History Education
Monotheism, monarchy, or metallurgy may not seem like commonly understood
concepts for 12-14 year old kids, but they are for the millions of gamers who play the
Civilization series. In Civilization III, players lead a civilization through 6000 years of
history, exploiting natural resources and managing the civilization’s economy, social
structure, technological advancement, and diplomacy. The game contains 233 game
concepts, spanning from the invention of writing to democracy.
Most importantly,
Civilization III ties together complex and intersecting intellectual domains within one
game: players have opportunities to explore relationships among geography and politics,
economics and history, or politics and economics – interdependencies that can be
difficult to discern through more conventional means.
At the same time that thousands of high school students play Civilization, many
report “hating” social studies. Social studies is widely considered “boring,” usually
coming in last when students are asked to rate their favorite academic subject (Loewen,
1995). Not surprisingly, a number of educators have suggested using commercial games,
particularly Civilization III, as an inroad for understanding history (Berson, 1996; Hope,
1996; Kolson, 1996; Lee, 1994; Prensky, 2001; Teague & Teague, 1995). In this chapter,
I pose a speculative framework for how simulation games – Civilization III, in particular
– might be used in world history classrooms. Most educators have argued for using
games in absence of any real theory of learning or domain expertise. This chapter
provides an argument for the usefulness of simulation games in world history education
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based on the contemporary domain of world history and history pedagogy in middle and
high schools.
Perhaps justifiably, other educators may balk at the idea of bringing computer
games into the classroom. Computers games such as Civilization are very complex
artifacts. Game players develop expertise and mastery of the game system only after
hundreds of hours of game play. Further, even a very popular game such as Civilization
III does not appeal to everyone; questions persist about how non-gamers (or non-strategygamers) might appropriate such a complex system of rules and symbols and how the
game, in return, recruits its players. Game play is a socially-mediated activity, and games
frequently engender both cooperative and competitive behaviors. How the social
dynamics of game play intersect with school cultures is unknown. Gamers quickly form
affinity groups and rely on them to achieve mastery over the game (Gee, 2003). Past
research on bringing digital technologies into schools shows how local cultures have the
power to reshape technologies, twisting and reforming them as they are accommodated
into classroom cultures (Squire, MaKinster, Barnett, et al., 2003). How a digital artifact
such as Civilization III, developed in commercial gaming contexts to be enjoyable, is
shaped by and reshapes schooling practices is unknown. This study examines what
practices emerge when Civilization III is brought into two learning environments. It is an
issue of theoretical interest that extends beyond world history educators to educational
technologists in general who are interested in appropriating games, gaming technologies,
or game design attributes to support learning.
I close this chapter by introducing activity theory, a cultural-historical approach to
understanding activity rooted in Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of social learning. I argue that
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activity theory is a useful lens for understanding game play as it describes the reciprocal
relations among subjects, tools, the objects of their activities, and mediating social
structures. In the case of gaming, activity theory allows us to examine how tools mediate
our conceptions of phenomena while acknowledging how social and community
structures also remediate this process. Bringing commercial entertainment games into
formal learning environments means crossing two very different (if not conflicting)
activity systems – that of gaming versus that of formal schooling.
The notion of
contradictions within/among activity systems (Engeström , 1999) gives us a theoretical
model for talking about how the alignments and tensions between these two systems of
activity emerge and unfold. Finally, activity theory’s notion of outcomes is useful for
describing what learning emerges from activity systems (e.g. Barab et al., 2002).
Research on Games and Simulations in Social Studies Education
Despite the long tradition of games and simulations in social studies education
(e.g. Wentworth & Lewis, 1973), very little is known about the impact of games on
learning (Clegg, 1991). Despite the popularity of games such as Europa Universalis,
Patrician, or Civilization III which offer opportunities to study world history, little is
known about how game play remediates understandings of history. Research on digital
or computer games has been remarkably consistent with findings from research on paper
games, role-playing games, and board games as predicted by Clark (1983). Specifically,
games can be engaging but frequently learners have difficulty making connections
between the game system and the referent social/material system the game is intended to
represent (Clegg, 1991). While there has been extensive use of models and simulation to
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support science learning, there is little compelling research on the benefits of using
educational games and simulations in social studies education. As Margaret Gredler
(1996) describes in her review of research on educational games and simulations, there
has been little consensus on what a game or simulation is, what their role in instruction
might be, or what educational goals they might be used to support.
Like many researchers, Gredler (1996) distinguishes between games and
simulations as “experiential” forms of instruction compared to more traditional forms of
instruction that are, presumably, not experiential. Gredler offers neither evidence nor
explanation for how or why games might be considered experiential whereas a lecture by
a Nobel Prize winner or a well designed set of exercises is not. Digital games are also
purported to be “faster-paced,” more interactive, and more engaging than other
instructional forms (e.g. Prensky, 2001) even when it could be argued that a good debate,
discussion, or collaborative project-based learning exercise could be equally, if not more,
interactive or “flow-inducing” than most digital games (cf. Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). The
goals of this section are to re-examine existing research on the use of games and
simulations for learning and to suggest an alternative theoretical framework for how
games might be reconceptualized as an educational resource. First, I describe the existing
research on games and simulations in social studies education. Next, I develop a rationale
for games and simulations in world history by drawing together matches between issues
within the domain and the affordances of games (keeping in mind their limitations as
well). Finally, I suggest activity theory as a useful framework for the study of games in
social studies education.
Educational Technology Research on Games and Simulations
25
The terms games, simulations, and simulation games are frequently used
interchangeably to discuss “interactive” activities that are mediated by rules or materials
that shape behavior. Heinich and colleagues (1996) offer what has become the classic
distinction between games and simulations from an instructional technologists’
perspective:
A game is an activity in which participants follow prescribed rules that
differ from those of real life as they strive to attain a challenging goal. The
distinction between play and reality is what makes games entertaining…A
simulation is an abstraction or simplification of some real-life situation or
process. In simulations, participants usually play a role that involves them in
interactions with other people or with elements of the simulated
environment (Heinich, Molenda, Russell & Smoldino, 1996, p. 326-329).
Heinich et al. describe simulation games as activities that combine both. Gredler (1996)
fleshes out this distinction further, arguing that games and simulations differ in three
fundamental ways according to their deep structures: (a) games are competitive exercises
with scoring mechanisms to differentiate performance, whereas simulations tasks require
that players take on “responsible roles” or “professional tasks,” (b) games are linear
whereas simulations are branching, and (c) games represent consequences of activity
through rules and penalties, whereas the outcomes of simulations are a function of the
dynamic interactions among “variables that (i) change over time and (ii) reflect authentic,
casual processes, the consequences of which are represented in the activity.” (p. 523).
While Gredler’s distinctions are helpful, they quickly break down when one
examines most contemporary digital games, particularly edutainment games. First, many
contemporary games, across genres (i.e. strategy, role playing, massively multiplayer,
action / adventure, adventure, puzzle) have abandoned or devalued scoring mechanisms,
use “roles” as backstory, metaphor for game play, or as a means of conveying interactive
26
storytelling. In games such as Quake, Thief, Deus Ex, or even Monopoly, players progress
through levels playing as a particular role. Most consider games by definition a nonlinear medium as game play is the emergent creation of players’ activity within boundary
rule sets.
Finally, most games are rooted in some metaphor of reality and the
consequences of activities are communicated through that metaphor, as in the standard
role-playing game genre where a player has health, intellectual strength, and endurance.
As Janet Murray argues in Hamlet on the Holodeck (1997), the information is presented
in an emergent and non-linear fashion and individual, interacting characters are defined
through rule sets that govern behavior.
A second problem with these definitions of simulations and games is that they
focus on the properties of the simulated system rather than on the interactions between
the simulation and the phenomenon that is being represented.
Thiagarajan (1998)
provides a useful framework for thinking about simulations.
For Thiagarajan, a
simulation is “a representation of the features and behaviors of one system through the
use of another” (p. 35). Thiagarajan reminds instructional designers that simulations are
never “accurate” reflections of reality but, rather, reflect someone’s model of reality. A
simulation of a management system might look very different depending on who is
building the simulation: A behavioral psychologist might create independent agents
responding to stimulants and reinforcers. A sociologist might emphasize organizational
roles and norms. An artist might emphasize the seemingly endless treadmill of work and
superficial rewards of some corporate work through a game like Doom (Young, 2001).
Thiagarajan’s framework foregrounds the fact that any simulation is an artifact created by
27
a particular someone in response to some particular features of the system at hand. Every
simulation, in other words, has a particular point of view.
While the notion that Doom is a corporate simulation may have some perverse
appeal, it also threatens to render the definition of simulation too meaningless to be of
use: If we accept little to no correspondence between referent and thing referred to in
order to count something as ostensibly a simulation, then everything is a simulation of
everything else and the concept is rendered ineffective. As a solution, Thiagarajan
(1998) argues that simulations can be characterized along a continuum ranging from
high- to low-fidelity. High-fidelity simulations attempt to capture every interaction of a
system in a physical manner that is consistent with their real world analogs. Low-fidelity
simulations, on the other hand, “focus on only a few critical elements and use a
simplified model of the interactions among them. The physical artifacts and the
environment do not correspond to what is being simulated in any detail.” (Thiagarajan,
1998, p. 37) Distinguishing between high and low-fidelity simulations is useful for
instructional designers as it opens possibilities for thinking about simulations not as direct
physical embodiments of physical systems but rather as interpretations of portions of
reality modeled through a symbolic system.
Further, if one assumes that the unit of analysis is not the game activity narrowly
defined, but rather the interactions among the player, the simulation, and the phenomenon
being simulated, all within a cultural context, then a new array of possibilities opens.
While a designer may create a game or simulation as one particular interpretation of a
given phenomenon, players of the simulation might very well draw their own related but
different, idiosyncratic interpretations from the gaming experience, based on their own
28
prior knowledge and experience in the world, that may be completely unintended by the
designer. As the Doom case suggests, a player might find consistencies between a violent
shooter game and his experiences in a corporate environment and thereby gain insight
about his workplace.
Consistent with constructivist and pragmatist semiotic
epistemologies, this notion of simulation as activity conceptualizes the game playing
experience – in essence, the meaning making process itself – not as a simplistic coupling
of the player and the simulation but rather as a dynamic interaction between aspects of
the player’s prior experience and the simulation itself such that the idea, action, or artifact
resulting from game play is its meaning.
To a certain extent, the necessity of considering simulations within their actual
use and in the context of the player’s experience has long been recognized by
instructional technologists. For many instructional designers, the debriefing activities
surrounding game play have been regarded as possibly more important for engendering
learning than the game-playing itself (Heinich, Molenda, Russell, & Smaldino,1996;
Livingston & Stoll, 1973; Thiagarajan, 1998). Heinich et al. (1996) recommend a fourstep debriefing process following game play involving the following questions: (1) How
did you feel while playing the game? (decompressing – feelings); (2) What happened
during the game? (describing – facts ); (3) How does this activity compare to other
phenomena? (drawing comparisons – enhancing transfer); (4) What might you plan to do
differently in future activity? (deriving lessons – application). While Heinich et al.
advocate these activities so that learners can “appreciate the meaning or significance of
the activity” (p. 336), Thiagarajan suggests that instructional designers be open to
learners exploring the unintended consequences of games. Rather than conceptualize the
29
goal of the simulation as to communicate information in the simulation, thus privileging
the associations and intentions of the instructional designer, Thiagarajan suggests that
designers think of gaming activities as experiences through which lessons can be learned.
As a rule-based artifact in which the player plays a role in interacting with a
simulated, dynamic system that is usually represented through actual or metaphorical
representations, most any interactive application can be thought of as a simulation.
However, there is an important distinction to be made between simulations and drill-andpractice games or “frame games” where the primary gaming activity is recalling factual
information within a game framework that is independent of the content. Lloyd Reiber
(1996) also makes this distinction, differentiating between endogenous games where the
“content” is inseparable from game play and exogenic games where the game play is a
reusable format that is layered on top of game content, as in crossword puzzles, matching
games, or trial-and-error games (e.g. Hangman). To make this distinction is not to
critique the value of such games in particular contexts or to deny the possibility of a
creative game designer or player using such a game as a simulation. Rather, it is to
highlight one typical genre of games and distinguish between it and games that might be
thought of as simulating aspects of reality.
Contemporary Theorizing of Game/Simulation Technologies
As computer gaming increases in sophistication, it is becoming evident that to
some extent, distinctions between simulations and games may be as much a matter of
socio-cultural construction, social purpose and context of the activity as it is any
underlying “deep” structure inherent of the artifact (Gredler, 1996). Indeed, a growing
number of researchers and game designers acknowledge that games encompass such a
30
broad category of activities that the term “videogame” may have outlived its usefulness.
For example, familiar activities such as Tic-Tac-Toe, Kick-the-Can, Monopoly, Risk,
Quake, SimCity, Everquest, Final Fantasy X, Civilization III, The Sims, and Spades are
all activities commonly referred to as games despite the absence of
any common
underlying structure. Some of these games have scoring, some do not. Some have real
win conditions (e.g. Monopoly), some do not (e.g. The Sims 1 ). Some have real lose
conditions (e.g., Quake), some do not (e.g., all single-player adventure and role-playing
games where as the player can always resume playing from where he or she left off).
Most players continue until they “finish,” although, in a game like Baldur’s Gate II,
which has over 1000 hours of potential game play, the likelihood of ever finishing the
game (here, the story) is slim at best. Similar examples exist for pen and paper-based
role-playing games. In addition, many game designers have argued that multi-player
games like Everquest are really virtual communities and should be treated as virtual
societies, communities, or worlds, but not as “games.” Finally, thousands of games such
as The Sims or Railroad Tycoon either ship with no rules, or have rules that players
ignore outright in using the games to build virtual systems. Although all of these
activities are commonly referred to as games, it is obvious that they do not all share
common elements and that there may be drastically different reasons behind what makes
them compelling for players.
Will Wright (2002), designer of The Sims and SimCity argues that digital games
might be fruitfully divided into three overlapping activities: contests, hobbies, and
1
In reality, it turns out that there is a win-condition for Pac Man. There is only one known instance of someone
accomplishing this fear. On July 3, 1999, Billy Mitchell successfully cleared 256 levels without “losing a man” while
also gaining each and every power-up along the way. Mitchell’s game took over 6 hours (For more, see:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,20607,00.html).
31
interactive stories (See Figure 2.1).
Contests are interactive experiences where
competition, winning, and losing are key elements of the experience. Wright cites Unreal
Tournament, Madden Football and Quake as typical of such games and compares them to
other competitive activities such as sports. Hobby games involve creating, collecting,
and sharing creations with other hobbyists. The Sims, SimCity, and RailRoad Tycoon are
examples of such games. It is worth noting that, in a “hobby” game, playing the actual
game is only a minimal part of the experience as building characters or scenarios,
publishing them on the web, and experiencing other players’ creations are all a critical
part of the experience. Finally, there are what Wright calls interactive story games,
where the game experience is about participating in an interactive story, such as in Final
Fantasy X, or Baldur’s Gate. Wright also acknowledges that there is overlap among
categories and that different users might play games differently. So, whereas Unreal
Tournament may be a contest activity for most who play the game, a significant number
of players also build skins, characters, levels, or mods. From this perspective, playing
Unreal Tournament might be seen as more of a hobbiest pursuit. Playing Civilization III
falls between a hobbyist pursuit and a competition for most players. Civilization is a very
competitive game; just keeping the game going involves fending off ruthless computercontrolled civilizations that attempt to control and conquer your civilization. At the same
time, however, Civilization III ships with robust scenario building tools and has a robust
fan community in which players create scenarios and modify the game for their own
expressive ends. A large percentage of Civilization III players debate the historical
accuracy of the game and modify its parameters accordingly. In fact, the map being used
32
in this study was created by a fan dissatisfied with the accuracy of the standard map and
modified by a second fan to make the map historically more accurate.
Hobbies
The Sims
Civilization
Unreal Tournament
Final
Fantasy
Contests
Interactive
Stories
Figure 2.1: Wright’s (2002) typology of contemporary games
Wright’s framework suggests that advocates of digital game-based learning might
benefit from being more specific about the types of activities that unfold through game
play. Restated, when defining game genres, it may be more profitable to examine game
play activity rather than the game itself. The activity of playing a contest-oriented game
like Number Munchers might be very different than a hobbyist-based game / digital toy
such as The Sims where a compelling part of the gaming experience is creating and
trading artifacts. Even in a more contest-based game such as Civilization III, the gaming
experience is largely a social one, where players compete against one another for high
scores, create and share maps, critique the rules embedded in the simulation, and modify
these rules to create more compelling gaming experiences.
33
Games as Motivating Contexts for Learning
One of the most intuitive appeals of games is their ability to engage learners.
Historical strategy games such as Civilization III sell millions of copies and game
“hobbyists” spend thousands of hours playing games, developing strategies, mastering
arcane historical facts, critiquing game play, creating game scenarios, and arguing for the
historical accuracy or inaccuracy of scenarios in gaming communities such as
Apolyton.net. Civilization III is not unique in this regard: similar games that engage their
players in comparable ways include Rise of Nations, Pirates!, Gettysburg, Patrician, Age
of Empires, 1602 AD, and Europa Universalis. How these games engage learners and
how play remediates players’ understandings of world history, however, is hitherto not
understood.
Since almost the inception of video games, psychologists have tried to understand
how they engage or motivate learners. In 1981, Tom Malone’s dissertation (working
with Mark Lepper) examined how Atari games engaged players, finding that fantasy,
control, challenge, and curiosity were the primary features that mattered most. Malone
and Lepper (1987) refined this model to include collaboration and competition as well.
More recently, Cordova and Lepper (1996) have used this model for developing
instructional materials, finding that giving students choice in fantasy – effectively letting
them create their own pleasurable context – led to increased enjoyment and learning.
Cordova and Lepper’s study, however, used a relatively simple Apple II mathematics
game originally designed for the Plato system, “How the West was Won,” that
emphasized the recall of math facts rather than the use of mathematics for complex
problem-solving (e.g. Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1993). Recent
34
advancements in gaming technologies, particularly the increased simulation capacity of
games, has dramatically reshaped gaming, leading to the kinds of hobbyist and interactive
story games that Wright (2001) describes rather than the simple “drill-and-practice”
games of Cordova and Lepper’s day.
Cordova and Lepper’s (1996) framework of “motivation,” while useful in helping
psychologists distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, offers little help for
educators trying to develop endogenous educational games, games where the fantasy
game context and game goals overlap directly with educational practices. Recall Rieber’s
(1996) distinction between exogenous games, in which the fantasy context is largely
separated from the problem of the game space and is essentially interchangeable, and
endogenous games, in which the gaming context is inextricably linked to the game play.
Cordova and Lepper’s research was conducted on the exogenous game “How the West
was Won”; Civilization III, on the other hand, is an endogenous game: The academic
“content” is inextricably linked to game play.2 That the “content” of the game and the
game play itself is mutually constitutive is important: As I have argued previously (e.g.
Squire, 2002), the biggest potential of games as an educational medium lies in using
games to create a rich context for thinking and activity – one where the game induces
2
The critical reader might note that total conversion modifications of Civilization, such as a Star Wars rendition of
Civilization exist, suggesting that the line between endogenous and exogenous games is more slippery than Rieber
would suggest. The blurring of endogenous and exogenous games in the case of Civilization III can be thought of in at
least three ways: 1) The game has malleable rule sets that designers can adapt, suggesting that they are in fact creating
new games through changing game rules; 2) Even if the game rules are not substantially changed, the core focus of the
game remains the same. In this case, the game is largely about marshalling geographic resources, deciding among
social objectives (i.e. science, military), and diplomacy; and 3) Simulations are always flexible entities which can be
thought of along a continuum of low to high fidelity. Indeed, one can imagine thinking of this Star Wars game as lowfidelity or satirical historical simulation. The upshot of this discussion is that the flexibility of contemporary game tools
suggests that Rieber’s distinction may not be as hard and fast as once considered, although I believe that it is still a
useful distinction for educators.
35
contextuality for the learner so that the learner is solving authentic, complex problems in
the game space.
Underlying this notion of endogenous games as a motivating context for solving
complex problems is a socio-cultural model of motivation, one that views motivation not
as a static variable but rather as an emergent property between learner and context. From
this situated view, all learners are motivated; they just may not be motivated in the ways
that educators want them to be. Learners are active, goal-driven constructors of meaning.
This socio-cultural perspective ecologizes the learner. The problem of motivation is not
framed as a matter of high / low, intrinsic / extrinsic, but rather as a social-psychological
problem of engaging learners in activity when there are competing or differing goals and
intentions (e.g. Barab Cherkes-Julkowski, Swenson., et al., 1999). Problems of extrinsic
motivation might be reframed as issues with authority or differing agendas, of developing
differing goals, or of failing to detect paths toward meeting their goals in the
environment. From a cultural view, learning goals may not be compelling to learners or
may be at odds with their identities as learners (e.g. Scollen, 1981). Learners’ goals and
intentions are socially and culturally situated, and understanding learners’ goals and
intentions is a complex process that is fruitfully studied by examining relationships
among identities, communities, learning culture and practice (Wenger, 1998).
Within gaming discourse, a number of massively multiplayer designers have
begun adopting Bartle’s (1996) framework for understanding what motivates people to
game by characterizing game play as a social practice (Figure 2.2). Through qualitative
observation of gamers, Bartle finds that players can be divided along two axes: (a) acting
vs. interacting, on (b) the world vs. other players. Bartle labels these four roles “killers”
36
(acting on players), “socializers” (interacting with players), “achievers” (acting on the
world) and “explorers” (interacting with the world). Walking the reader through the
behavior of each player type, he argues that these four ways of playing are states that
players adopt while in game that are based on their current motivations. For Bartle, it is
the interactions among these differing players that give game world’s their life. Other
game designers seem to agree: Raph Koster, creative designer of Ultima Online and the
newly released Star Wars Galaxies, remarked that Bartle’s modes of play also hold up in
single-player games with “explorers” more motivated to play role-playing games and
“achievers” more motivated to play hyper-competitive games, particularly first-person
shooters (Kim, Koster, & Vogel, 2001).
By foregrounding the fact that gaming is
thoroughly a social practice, Bartle’s framework is insightful for educators because it
helps specify the particular reasons that participants game in the particular ways they do.
Returning to Wright’s notion of different game genres, there are often large distinctions
between game types and it may not even be sensible to talk about the practice of playing
Quake, for example, in the same way that we talk about the practice of playing
Civilization III. Educators hoping to use games in education need to understand different
game genres, game practices, and modes of game play in order to effectively leverage the
unique affordances of specific games to situate learners in academically valuable contexts
(Holland, Jenkins, & Squire, 2003; Squire, 2002).
37
Figure 2.2 Bartle’s (1996) taxonomy of motivation in multiplayer gaming.
Games in Social Studies Education in General
Digital games such as Civilization III open new opportunities to support learning
as players manipulate complex systems, test their assumptions about geography by
building virtual empires, and compare the unfolding of their Civilization with the
historical record.
While such experiences may seem unprecedented to some (e.g.
Prensky, 2001), there is a long tradition of games and simulations in educational
technology and social studies specifically that provides some guidance for how a game
such as Civilization III might be used to support learning.
In his review of research on games and simulations in social studies, Clegg (1991)
makes the following observation:
Students using computer simulations demonstrated increases in affective
outcomes such as interest, motivation, enjoyment, sense of personal control, and
willingness to persevere in completing learning tasks. Cooperative strategies with
38
computer games increased both lower and higher order learning and tended to
benefit female students more than males (p. 527).
Indeed, there seems to be strong agreement among researchers that game playing can lead
to increased enthusiasm, cooperative learning strategies, and goal-directed behavior
(Becker, 1980; Ehman & Glenn, 1987; Gredler, 1996; Livingston & Stoll, 1973). Most
researchers studying players’ attitudes toward playing games have found that that, on
average, players prefer game play activities to traditional lectures or homework activities.
For example, Garvey and Seiler (1966, cited in Wentworth & Lewis, 1973) reported that
players preferred playing Inter-Nation Simulaton to traditional lecture and homework
exercises. Wentworth summarize a number of other studies examining other games
resulting in similar findings (Baker, 1966; Cohen, 1970; Cordtz, 1970; Dooley, 1969;
Stadsklev, 1969; Wing, 1966). These studies, all of which fit the pattern of what
instructional designers commonly call “smile tests,” are somewhat useful for gauging
students’ interest in using specific games and simulations in specific gaming contexts but
do little to illuminate how game-playing affects players’ attitudes toward subject matter
or disciplinary abilities.
Instructional games and simulations in social studies may have hit their zenith in
the 1970s when dozens of studies were conducted examining the impact of most pen and
paper educational game playing on learning. In the majority of these studies, games fared
no better nor worse than other learning experiences in terms of their effect on student
achievement (i.e. paper and pencil scores)” (Wentworth & Lewis, 1973, p. 435). Six
studies were the exception: Monroe (1968, cited in Wentworth & Lewis, 1973) found that
students playing a history game performed worse on content scores than those in control
groups. Wentworth (1972) found similar results with students playing a game called
39
Marketplace, although the game-playing students did perform better than the control in
understanding system dynamics. Duke (1964), Monroe (1968), Baker (1966) and Allen,
Allen, and Miller (1966) found conclusive evidence in support of using games; however,
as Fletcher (1971) and Wentworth and Lewis (1973) argue, the methodological issues
and lack of quality controls in each studies raise serious questions about the validity of
the assertions generated from the data. Within this generation of research, Boocock
(1968) is the only study that generated statistically significant differences between games
and simulations and other instructional exercises.
In a few studies where researchers have examined how game-playing experiences
shape attitudes toward or within a subject area (e.g. attitudes toward economics or
political science), they have again failed to find any changes in attitudes among students
(Clarke, 1970; Lloyd, 1970; Wentworth, 1972). The difficulties and problems with this
line of research might best be illuminated through a brief consideration of a set of studies
Livingston (1970a; 1970b) conducted using the game Ghetto to teach about urban
poverty. Ghetto is a turn-based board game where players role-play as participants in a
“ghetto" community. They make decisions about whether or not to attend high school,
pursue employment, or engage in illegal activities. The game is weighted so that it is very
difficult to succeed. Players toil in low-income jobs and are then enticed into high risk,
high reward criminal activities. Other players become the victims of this crime, leading to
chaos. The typical game lasts about two hours. The game designers recommend a
standard briefing process and include reflection questions with the game. The game’s
potential to offend goes without saying.
40
On the surface, Ghetto may seem like a promising educational tool: Players learn
about the difficulties and hopelessness of poverty firsthand as they make choices in the
game. In my own experiences, I have found that players quickly realize that the game is
biased against them and that there is very little chance of succeeding. This experience can
give rise to conflicting emotions that can provide the fuel for fruitful discussion; yet, in
each of Livingston’s studies, he failed to find compelling evidence that playing Ghetto
shifted participants’ attitudes toward the poor, even with solid debriefing exercises. For
example, Livingston and Stoll (1973) found that low-ability students had much more
difficulty making connections between their gaming experiences and urban poverty than
high ability students. Livingston and Stoll argued that low-achievers learn to play the
game rather than learn from the game.
This series of studies illuminates the difficulties in using one-shot gaming
experiences to change students’ attitudes through game playing. To think that a two-hour
gaming session would cause a dramatic shift in players’ attitudes – attitudes built over a
lifetime of experience – toward a topic as emotionally and politically charged as poverty
is naïve if not impudent. The game world of Ghetto is clearly an artificial, constructed
world designed to elicit emotions. The game is not modeled on any particular community
or setting, so, without any clear grounding in particular historical contexts, players are
asked to make connections between the game and reality on a leap of faith. With topics
as emotionally charged as urban poverty, most instructional designers would devote
considerable time to its consideration, combining several methods of instruction in order
to make overt connections between concepts of poverty and how poverty is experienced
in specific historical situations. Good teachers might also use videos, case studies,
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interviews with urban dwellers, or field trips to flesh out students’ own experiences with
urban poverty. Most research studies on games, however, isolate game play as a variable
in its own right in order to compare it directly to other instructional approaches rather
than examining intact activity systems involving game play.
Despite instructional
designers’ acknowledgement that the use, context, and activity surrounding gaming is
critical to learning, none of the research on games and simulations investigates how
different activities can be used in concert with gaming exercises to produce a robust
learning environment.
Digital Games in Social Studies Education in Particular
Although most of these early studies on game-based learning employed paperbased or face-to-face role-playing games, a few studies did examine computer-mediated
games (e.g. Hetzner, 1972, cited in Clegg, 1991). As might be predicted by Clark (1983),
thus far there has been no real distinguishable differences between computer-mediated
and non-computer mediated games research. As Clegg (1991) notes, “Although the
advent of the microcomputer in the 1980s markedly changed the potential of games and
simulations as classroom tools (Patterson & Smith, 1986), there has been little research
on their use” (p. 524). The paucity of research on computer games continues today. As
mentioned earlier, many educators, political pundits, and marketers extol the virtues of a
game like SimCity to help students learn, for example, city planning, but there has yet to
be a single published study examining how learning unfolds through playing edutainment
games such as these. The little research that does exist is inconclusive but cautions
against over-enthusiasm for the potentials of gaming to transform social studies
education.
42
In one of the first studies of games and simulations in social studies classrooms,
Hetzner (1972), cited in Downey & Levstick, (1991), found that secondary school
students who played a political computer simulation had statistically significant higher
mean scores on tests of interest, goal-directed behavior, and application of principles
related to career development than students in a conventional class in career information.
More recently, Vincent (1986) used the computer-based simulation Foreign Policy: the
Burdens of World Power with sixth grade classes in Massachusetts. Vincent reported
greater increase in motivation and intellectual curiosity when using game-based
instruction than when using other instructional models.
However, the study was
published in a practitioner journal without data, evidence for validity of the assertions, or
peer review. More recently, Sawyer and colleagues have begun using the game Virtual
University with college administrators (Prensky, 2001); they have yet to publish any
research on this work, however.
The most compelling research to date on learning through digital gaming has
focused on the social interactions that occur in the context of game play. Johnson,
Johnson, and Stanne (1985), (cited in Ehman and Glenn, 1987) argue for the importance
of cooperative learning strategies over competitive and individual ones in using computer
simulations, locating much of the learning experience in social interactions and in off-line
learning activities. Consistent with standard instructional practice, Johnson et al. argue
that collaborative and cooperative exercises allow learners opportunities to reflect on
their understandings, articulate their ideas, and refine them through discussion exercises.
Despite the usefulness of studies such as Johnson et al. (1985), taken altogether as
a coherent body of work, the current research on digital games and simulations, like
43
earlier research on paper-and-pencil games and simulations, is sporadic, questionably
designed, and inconclusive. Reflecting on the lack of research in this area, Ehman and
Glenn (1991) write “There are so few studies that bear on the question of the impact of
interactive technologies on the social studies teacher’s role that it would be presumptuous
to conclude that we understand this area. More naturalistic studies utilizing in-depth
classroom observations, open-ended interviews with teachers and students, and survey
and test data are needed” (p. 515).
Implications for Future Research
I find three themes from past research on game-based learning social studies
education that can guide future research:
The interdependence of gaming and other instructional strategies.
At the
educational game design session of the 2002 Game Developer’s Conference (Squire,
2002), Marc Prensky and others argued for the systematic study of learning environments
comprised exclusively of gaming activities; in other words, situations where players sit in
front a computer, play a game, learn from the game, and then walk away. Jon Goodwin
responded that, from such an approach, a game would not only be required to provide a
robust, compelling context for learning activities but also would need to be able to adjust
to individual players’ abilities and preferences, provide just-in-time explanations and
background material, present divergent problems, include opportunities for reflection,
and track user behavior in order to assess learning and then adjust learning experiences
accordingly. The claim that any game can (or should) accomplish all this is dubious at
best. In fact, the body of research on non-computer-mediated games suggests that,
although players enjoy gaming experiences, game-play alone may actually lead to
44
decreased academic performance. Designing learning environments
comprised
exclusively of gaming activities and nothing else appears to be rather short sighted.
Of course, the importance of the activity structure in which a given tool for
learning is embedded has long been recognized in the field of instructional technology.
For example, for decades, instructional designers have recognized the crucial role of
debriefing exercises following game play; perhaps educational researchers would be well
advised to forgo attempts to isolate the effects of gaming and instead focus on
researching the outcomes of intact pedagogies for learning through game play.
Educational designers need not start from scratch; goal-based scenarios (Schank, 1994),
problem-based learning (Savery & Duffy, 1995), cognitive apprenticeships (Brown,
Collins & Newman, 1991), and modeling (Barab, Barnett, & Hay, 2001) all provide
pedagogical models in which student-directed activity is the focus of the activity system
and instructional supports are folded into the context of student-directed activity.
The limited value of traditional experimental research. Thus far, research on
games in social studies has mostly been conducted using classic positivist experimental
methodologies where a game-based experimental condition is created and then compared
to a control group. In most cases, only students’ perceptions of the experience and
attitudes toward social studies are the measured outcome variables. Such approaches
deny researchers the opportunity to examine how specific instructional strategies – alone
or in combination – support learning in specific ways.
For example, instructional
strategies such as just-in-time lectures having been found to enhance learning when
combined with student-directed activities (CTGV, 1993; Barab, Squire & Barnett, 1999);
the research reviewed above, however, offers nothing that might bear on similar
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pedagogical designs, designs that, in truth, are far more similar to actual instruction in
real classrooms. Moreover, these prior studies offer little explanation as to why various
approaches succeed or fail or how they might be improved.
Along these lines, Ehman and Glenn (1991) argue for more in-depth naturalistic
cases of how interactive technologies can be used to support learning in social studies.
Design experiments (Brown, 1992) and teaching experiments (e.g. Cobb et al., 2001) are
two models for how educators might create pedagogical models for game-based learning
that are grounded in theory, practice, and empirical research. In both methodologies,
researchers collaborate with practitioners to create instructional contexts and then study
how learning unfolds within them. Using a variety of techniques including ongoing,
dynamic assessments, researchers are then able to gain a better understandings of how
students are learning in the environment and therefore can suggest specific changes to the
environment in order to improve its impact on learning. Such experiments frequently lead
to what Robert Stake calls “petite generalizations” (1995). Petite generalizations do not
hold true for all people in all contexts but can be taken up by others and applied to their
own contexts as they deem appropriate. Certainly controlled comparison studies would
have some value in highlighting the different affordances of various learning
environments; however, until social studies educators have a compelling rationale for
using games and a sound pedagogical model for implementing them, such comparisons
make little sense. Until the details of how such learning environments might be designed
are better articulated, there is little rationale for presuming one variable more important
than another.
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The importance of social interactions in the gaming experience. Both common
instructional design practice and empirical research on gaming suggest that the social
interactions that envelop the formal game structures may be more important to learning
outcomes than the game itself (Clegg, 1991; Heinich et al., 1996; Johnson, et al., 1985;
Thiagarajan, 1998). Clegg (1991) notes that:
There has been virtually no research on such intervening variables as
interpersonal relations, leadership, team membership, and the decisionmaking process. Although there has been much theory and research in
psychology and organizational development on these topics, there has
been no carry over into the studies on simulation in social studies
classrooms. Too often debriefing at the end of the game only gets scant
attention … (Brooker, 1988) suggested that careful discussion and
analysis of the issues during debriefing are as important as playing the
game itself (p. 528).
While most researchers are quick to recognize the socially situated nature of game play
and the pedagogical allure of competitive and cooperative scenarios, most research
designs have ignored the social dimensions of gaming. Instead, gaming is treated as a
purely 1:1 interaction between the player and the game. Most often, the game is given
ontological primacy in this situation and is assumed to transmit its values or embedded
knowledge to players who are passive recipients throughout the learning process. The
role of players’ goals and intentions are rarely, if ever, addressed and the social and
cultural contexts of activity are not described. Indeed, Johnson et al.’s findings (1985)
that cooperative game-play is more effective than competitive game-play underscores the
importance of examining gaming’s social dimensions.
Rethinking Digital Games and Simulations in World History Education
47
Over the past ten years, a new generation of edutainment games like SimCity and
Civilization has become available for social studies educators, redoubling interest in
using these applications in formal learning environments (Berson, 1996; Hope, 1996;
Kolson, 1996; Lee, 1994; Teague & Teague, 1995). The increased graphical,
communication, and computational power of desktop computers, combined with the
increased design sophistication of computer games and simulations, creates new
affordances for supporting learning. Digital games and simulations allow the player to
examine the development of social systems in four dimensions (across three-dimensional
space plus time) and to participate in such systems from otherwise unattainable
perspectives – for example, from the perspective of an all-powerful emperor or the czar
of a small island country in Tropico (Squire, 2002). Studies of how such simulation
games remediate learners’ understanding of social studies phenomena are now more
necessary than ever.
Despite the intuitive appeal and growing grassroots popularity of using complex,
information-laden, and robust simulation games such as Civilization III in social studies
classrooms, little work has been done to connect the affordances of such games to
contemporary issues in the learning sciences, particularly issues in the emerging field of
world history education (e.g. Stearns, Seixas, & Wineburg, 2000).
This section
highlights several central concepts in history education, providing readers not familiar
with the current discourse within the domain some sense of what issues and ideas have
recently emerged. The main argument I make in this section is that historical simulation
games such as Civilization III have the potential to address many of these issues. This is
not to argue, however, that Civilization III – or any game for that matter – holds all the
48
answers for history education. There are important concerns that social studies educators
ought to consider about the properties of games as instructional media. The discussion
advanced here is intended to pose questions and open debate informed by world historyspecific pedagogical issues central to contemporary theory and practice, not to offer some
panacea for history education in contemporary classrooms.
Engaging the Identities of Learners in the Study of History
In the past, history has been presumed to be an apolitical enterprise and learning
history a linear developmental process whereby students enter the classroom as naïve
thinkers and gradually acquire facts in order to eventually become skilled (Downey &
Levstick, 1991). After reviewing the literature, Downey and Levstick (1991) suggest that
the shallow “cultural literacy” approach to teaching history leads to misconceptions about
the nature of the domain and drives students away from its study (see also Barnett, Barab,
Schatz, & Warren, 2000; Goodlad, 1984; Greene, 1994; Loewen, 1995; Perkins, 1992;
Seixas, 2000). Wineburg (2001) echoes these sentiments, arguing that most
psychologically-inspired research in social studies has not been grounded in any
recognizable model of expert practice or domain-specific reasoning and problem-solving.
Seixas (2000), goes one step further, arguing that what passes as history – the
memorization of a collection of facts, causal explanations and sanctioned narratives –
might better be described as the construction of myth or heritage than doing history in
any real sense.
Indeed, critics of the "best story" approach have noted how little this process of
“learning history” reflects how actual historians engage in historical inquiry (e.g. Stearns,
Seixas, & Wineburg, 2000). Whereas students read textbooks, memorize facts, and recite
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“ready-made” knowledge, academics, curators, journalists, and social activists consider
research topics of theoretical and/or practical importance, consult original sources,
produce arguments, interpret data in dialogue with existing theory, and negotiate findings
within social contexts (Counsell, 2000; Greene, 1994; VanSledright, 1998). Wineburg
(1992; 1999) argues that American students are presented the results of historical inquiry
without any appreciation for the tentativeness of contemporary historical claims or the
contentiousness of current debates in the field. As a result, the majority of students
perceive history as the meaningless recitation of names, dates, and facts established by
authorities and fail to understand the methods and practices through which historians
construct and judge historical arguments (Seixas, 2000). Not surprisingly, most students
dislike studying history, frequently listing history as "the most boring" of all 21 subjects
studied in school (Loewen, 1995).
Providing Marginalized Students Pathways into World History
The most damning implication of this approach can be found where scholars have
explored how marginalized or oppressed peoples negotiate these officially sanctioned
histories with their lived experiences, family histories, and own interpretations of social
conditions. Jim Wertsch and others have found that, even when students “learn” officially
sanctioned school histories, they do not necessarily believe it. In the 1990s, Wertsch
(2000) did a series of studies interviewing Estonian citizens about their understanding of
the USSR’s annexation of Estonia in 1940. Surprisingly, Estonians knew both official
and unofficial histories of how Estonia became a part of the Soviet Union, with most
citizens knowing far more of the “official” historical account taught in Soviet schools. At
the same time, most citizens disregarded this history as false, and instead subscribed to an
50
alternative history that challenged official historical narratives – one that developed
through families, folklore, and underground channels. American educators from the
critical pedagogy tradition have made similar claims about the teaching of race in
American schools, noting that many American students learn officially sanctioned school
history but retain their pre-existing beliefs about American history or contemporary
culture (Ehman, 1980; Loewen, 1995; McLaren, 1994; Spring, 1991). Drawing on sociocultural theory of learning outlined in Mind as Action (1998), Wertsch distinguishes
between students learning history and students appropriating historical texts, arguing that
texts serve as “identity resources” that are mastered and employed according to
situational demands. Noting Seixas’ (2000) work in Native American schools, Wertsch
argues that people in less politically charged environments are frequently less aware of
their duplicitous views of history and often call on a variety of historical narratives as
needed when interpreting situations.
As Wertsch’s study of Estonians would suggest, students come to history with
lived histories and social and political identities. Loewen (1995) argues that, when
presented with government-sanctioned history, students react in complex ways: On the
one hand, many students reject school histories; on the other hand, students also
incorporate parts of the received history into their identities. For example, Loewen
describes how African-American students in rural Mississippi frequently adopted beliefs
(which were reinforced in popular myth and media) that African-Americans were wholly
responsible for their relatively impoverished living conditions in the rural South due to
laziness, immorality, or stupidity. Critical theorists call this process of adopting the
oppressive beliefs of a dominant culture hegemony, and argue that hegemonic histories
51
are one of the ways that social order is maintained. Schools, then, are one of the main
social institutions that reify hegemonic structures.
A challenge to history educators, then, is how to provide spaces where students
can work through these issues of race, power, class, and identity. If Loewen (1995) is
correct, then history educators cannot simply ignore prevailing stereotypes, myths, and
historical accounts. Students need opportunities for exploring and confronting them,
negotiating their lived identities with those promulgated in schools. How to go about this
process is not exactly clear: If students come to school disinterested in, skeptical of, or
even rejecting school-sanctioned histories, how do we engage students in the hard and
painful work of engaging in identity politics – the processes of seeking out and engaging
with multiple histories, practicing introspection, and exploring one’s own (multiple)
identities? Within a world history context, how do we honor students’ desire to affiliate
themselves with cultural traditions (whether European, Native American, Asian, or
African) with the very real politics of colonial history? How do we help American
students who identify themselves as of European descent understand historical events in a
way that enables them to confront their historical and social position in a constructive
manner? How do we engage students who identify themselves as having descended from
colonized populations in the painful processes of confronting their social and historical
positions while in dialogue with school-sanctioned narratives?
Providing Background Knowledge
An emerging body of research in social studies education shows that students
frequently lack the background knowledge necessary to understand even the most basic
history texts (Beck & McKeown, 1989). In an important study of how elementary
52
students encounter texts, Beck and McKeown found that concepts that teachers and textbook writers might take for granted, such as the fact that 1765 was about 250 years ago or
that the colonists descended mostly from England (or even the fact of where England is,
for that matter), were often confusing to students in the most basic ways. Students
frequently lack knowledge of basic geographic facts, broad timescales, or familiarity with
precise vocabulary (VanSledright, 1998). That students might not know specific names
and dates might seem obvious, but Levstik and Barton describe how elementary and
middle school world history students might not understand common terms such as cargo,
voyage, exploration, encounter, or exchange – terms that litter social studies texts
throughout. In reviewing studies of students’ pre-existing understandings of history,
VanSledright (1998) concludes that the way in which students’ particular, experiences
and unique socio-cultural factors mediate their understandings of history may very well
render predicting students’ prior knowledge impossible. VanSledright writes,
“these studies demonstrate the vastness of the range of understanding and
the broadness of possible influences. To be sure, deriving generalizations
from the data these studies produce might one day be possible if this
research continues. But for the present anyway, the eccentricities of
students’ prior knowledge appear to be the rule; that is, the ideas and
images students bring to the learning context vary more than they are
similar.” (1998, p. no page)
A challenge for history educators, then, is finding ways to acknowledge the differing
identities, backgrounds, and experiences that students bring to studying history while also
designing learning experiences that meet students on their own terms.
Levstik and Barton’s (2001) Doing History describes several approaches to
engaging students in the study of history, including personal histories, family histories,
using popular media as the basis for investigating history, examining current events in
53
historical contexts, creating history museums, or examining historical artworks. Levstik
and Barton expand notions of history education to include modes of inquiry that cut
across several fields, including material history, architectural history, cultural history,
social history, and political history. One key feature of this approach to history education
is respecting both the positionality of students and the activity of historical inquiry itself
as socially-mediated intellectual enterprises (VanSledright, 1998). Historians do not ask
questions or conduct history in a vacuum: History is always temporally situated through
the perceiver’s questions, modes of inquiry, social purposes, and encompassing
discursive communities. Levstik and Barton (2001) go one step further, reminding
educators that there is no one “field” of history, and that documentarians, military
historians, academic historians, preservationist historians etc. each approach their work
differently. Depending on the purposes of the historical investigation and the
communities of inquiry in which the history is framed, what counts as history might
wildly differ. Thus, a challenge for world history educators is how to scaffold students in
ways that allow students genuine inquiry.
Games as Historical Simulations
Models and simulations are commonly used as methods of inquiry in the physical
sciences but are only recently being used in the social sciences (Wolfram, 2002). Most
often, advocates of modeling and simulation in education emphasize the importance of
having students build their own models and simulations rather than use pre-packaged
models or simulations (Feurzig & Roberts, 1999). Creating models (and simulations)
engages students in iterative cycles of inquiry whereby they ask questions, observe
phenomena, construct representations of those phenomena, compare these representations
54
with observed data, construct arguments, and negotiate them within a community of
inquiry (e.g. Barnett, Barab, & Hay, 2001). For many science educators, the value of
modeling and simulation is not in the content per se but in the modeling-building process
itself. As constructed models, digital games such as Civilization III contain
representations of phenomena, embedded language, relationships, and ideas that students
can explore. As a result, playing model-building and simulation games are a practical
way to provide students opportunities to engage in more complex inquiry-based activities
than traditional curricula materials provide (Klopfer & Squire, 2003).
Simulation games allow players to participate in virtual social systems and to
adopt perspectives that they normally may never have access to. In the role-playing
simulations Hidden Agenda or Tropico, for example, learners can assume the position of
a political leader in a Central American country, learning about economics, history,
politics, sociology, and culture in the process. Getting students to adopt such alternative
perspectives is a core facet of learning to think historically (Downey & Levstick, 1991;
Wineburg, 1992), yet is often difficult to achieve in traditional learning environments. In
contrast, games like Civilization III allow students to explore unfolding geographical
processes, to investigate the interplay of factors causing social phenomena, and even to
view global social systems over thousands of years of time by simply altering the model’s
time scale – something not easily accomplished by other means.
Simulation games like Civilization III are dynamic visualization and hypothesistesting tools that provide students windows into various causal sequences that are
typically obscured. The user can dramatically shifts time scales, for example, speeding up
processes that are normally spread out over thousands of years so that long-term
55
consequences of decisions can be not only predicted and also, and crucially, inspected as
well. Because Civilization III also serves as an interactive map, players can also examine
the interactions of physical features (e.g., waterways, mountains, natural resources) with
cultural factors (e.g., trade routes, colonization patterns, war and peace). Their interplay
is dramatically highlighted in such games: Cultural boundaries emerge in response to
physical boundaries and, in turn, physical geography is shaped by cultural and political
forces. In effect, players can experience the interactions of broad factors such as
geography, culture, and politics at both the local- and systemic-level, rendering
discernible relationship among factors such as natural resource scarcity, international
trade, and local politics.
Simulation games such as Civilization III, and SimCity allow players to explore
the behavior of complex systems that emerges from simple local rules (Resnick, 1994). In
Civilization III, players are encouraged to find links between economic, political,
geographical, and historical structures as they construct viable strategies for their
civilization to flourish by manipulating variables such as tax rates, luxury spending, form
of government, or scientific research and observing the results. In SimCity, players learn
that there is no one thing that they can do to drive down crime rates, revive an
economically struggling system, or raise the standard living of a city as such variables are
the product of many complex systemic interactions. Understanding social phenomena
from such deep, systemic perspectives in these ways might help students see beyond
common stereotypes, scripts, or simplifications of complex historical phenomena.
This kind of approach to studying history suggests that games could remediate
students’ experience of history in fundamental ways. History is presented not as a body
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of facts to be memorized but as one unfolding of events among many possibilities.
Certainly, game playing is not the only such technique: local histories, family histories,
and interpretation of primary documents are techniques that can be used toward similar
ends. However, Civilization III may be unique in opening up the annals of history for
players to replay history from different angles. As players build a test civilization of their
own, developing theories about how their civilization should grow and change. Each
choice a player makes for their civilization represents a road not taken, raising questions
about how and why historical events may have played out differently. Other strategy
games – for example, Antietam or Gettysburg – attempt to simulate historical events with
greater fidelity and derive their fun in part through encouraging players to pose
hypothetical questions to the game system: Is there some way to lead General Lee to
victory at Gettysburg? What might have the impact been on the war had Lee won? In
such cases, games provide students opportunities to develop insights about the
constructed nature of historical narratives, especially when the retelling happens to be of
the history of player’s own real-world civilization.
Critiquing the Positionality of Texts
All games and simulations are authored texts and, as such, all games and
simulations make assumptions and contain biases. As Thiagarajan (1998) reminds us,
simulations never can represent reality in an impartial way: they reflect their designer’s
conception of reality. Most players become aware of these biases very quickly since they
can be manipulated to win the game. For example, SimCity is biased toward public
transportation over roadways, reflecting author Will Wright’s fondness for public
transportation (Herz, 1997). Of course, all social studies artifacts are texts authored from
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some particular cultural-historical perspectives. Games, however, unlike textbooks or
films, encourage players to identify these biases in order to exploit them. Encouraging
players to compare game simulations with their own personal understanding of the
phenomena that the game system purportedly represents is one way to encourage
reflection on their own life experiences in a framework of alternatives. In such ways,
educators can capitalize on a simulation’s bias and inaccuracies in order to foster critical
reflection. How students encounter games as authored texts is still largely unknown, yet,
regardless of whether an educator embraces world history simulation games or ignores
them, they will, in all likelihood, continue to teach students already influenced by such
texts.
Learning Through Play: Transgressive Play and Liminal Spaces
As Gredler (1996) points out, there has been a noticeable lack of any clear
connection between educational games and disciplinary theories of knowing – between
game design and some coherent underlying theory of learning. The earliest educational
games research were mostly based on behaviorist models of learning left implicit or on
no underlying theory of learning at all (Gredler, 1996). More recently, Rieber (1996)
drawing heavily from Pelligrini’s notions of play (1995), suggests that games might be
understood within a constructivist frameworks of learning. Briefly, Rieber describes four
lenses for how play might be construed as tools for learning: (a) Play as progress, (b)
Play as power, (c) Play as fantasy, and (d) Play as self. While these lenses are useful for
thinking about play in terms of different social and psychological aspects, what play “is:
remains highly ambiguous. As Brian Sutton-Smith’s (1979) edited interdisciplinary
volume on play illustrates, anthropologists, developmental psychologists, and
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sociologists all define play in terms of their own fields. Even within fields, definitions of
play tend to flow from the encompassing theoretical system from which they spring: To a
Vygotskian, play may look like a culturally-mediated activity that functions as a tool for
mediating childrens’ appropriation of “objectives, motives, and norms of the relations in
adult activity” (El’konin, 1971). To a Piagetian, on the other hand, play might look like a
cognitive challenge whereby the child is playing through developmental stages, testing
out possible new understandings of the world around them much. Consistent with an
activity theory approach, I treat play as a cultural-historical activity, grounded in
particular historical trajectories of activity and embedded in specific cultural contexts
(Hakkarainen, 1999). Drawing from Rieber’s (1996) discussion of play and examining
digital gaming as cultural-historical activity, I argue that there are two defining aspects of
digital game play activity worth explicitly addressing: (1) transgressive play and (2)
liminal spaces.
Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen (2003) describe one of the primary satisfactions
of game play as its transgressive nature – that is, the way that games allow us to
temporarily adopt a fantastical set of rules, some of which may be contrary to the rules of
every day life. In Civilization III, I can experiment with imperialistic strategies in a
socially sanctioned manner since my activity is bounded within the social space of
gaming and it is understood that I might experiment with different ideas (or even
identities, e.g. Turkle, 1995). Given known issues with marginalized students resisting
dominant historical narratives (e.g. Loewen, 1995), it seems quite possible that digital
games could provide intriguing learning opportunities for engaging learners otherwise
left outside the predominating narrative and pedagogy. As simulations, games allow
59
learners to ask hypothetical historical questions, such as “Under what conditions might
Native Americans have colonized Europe?” or “Under what conditions might the
Americas have been ‘Africanized?”. As such, perhaps it is important to look at
Civilization III as a culturally-mediated object (or medium) and not merely another
technology (Games-to-Teach Team, 2003).
This notion of transgressive play suggests that the proper way to think about game
spaces is not as information conduit spaces but as experimental spaces, spaces where
learners can take on new identities. These spaces might be described as liminal spaces,
drawing from anthropologist Victor Turner’s (1969) notion of liminality, which are
chaotic, ritual spaces such as pilgrimages, walk-abouts, or retreats that exist between
reality and other-worlds and where social norms are suspended. The suspension of
conventional mores creates a hybrid social space where participants can reflect on society
and themselves within it. As such, liminal spaces are sites for learning; they are cultural
spaces where identities may be formed and transformed. Game designers such as Warren
Spector (cited in Au, 2001) have already recognized this potential.
The preceding discussion of issues in world history education and how they
intersect with the affordances of digital games is meant to be provocative rather than
conclusive: Research on how such games align (or misalign) with students’ development
of a historical understanding is, in truth, largely absent. Until such work is successfully
underway, there is no justifiable basis on which to claim that digital games are or could
be a solution to challenges history educators face. Historical simulation games such as
Civilization III have the potential to support learning in social studies. Like all
educational technologies, however, they also have their limitations and drawbacks.
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Limitations of Games as Learning Tools
Despite their potential to support learning, game-based environments also have
pose serious limitations. As the preceding review highlights, the research on games in
social studies, though largely inconclusive, does suggest that game playing can be less
effective than more traditional pedagogies in particular ways and in particular contexts.
For example, students sometimes fail to build meaningful connections between
simulation game activity and the real-world phenomena the simulation is meant to
represent. Games can also sometimes foster ruggedly competitive cultures among
players, thereby stifling cooperation and collaborative peer learning. And for learners
adverse to that kind of rivalry, such competitive contexts can be downright alienating. In
the following section, I examine some of these drawbacks and limitations.
Oversimplification in game systems. By their very nature, simulation games
simplify reality (as do historical narratives, case studies, or documentaries).
Simplifications themselves are not inherently bad: They allow researchers or students to
remove extraneous variables (noise) in order to reveal the most important variables and
central features of the system (Colella, Klopfer, & Resnick, 2001; Roughgardner,
Bergman, Shafir, & Taylor, 1996). However, simplification in simulation games are
peculiar in that they abstract complex systems such as monetary reserves into
hypothetical units such as gold. In Civilization III, multiple agricultural production
systems are abstracted into “food” production, and knowledge production is abstracted
into “science.” How students interpret such simplifications is not clearly understood,
particularly in a simulation game as dense and complex as Civilization III, which
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attempts to capture multiple complex variables within a single simulation and, as a result,
necessarily abstracts out important levels of complexity.
The semiotics of game play. Clegg (1991) identifies a pattern of students not
using knowledge developed in game playing contexts in other contexts. From a semiotic
standpoint, this phenomenon might be understood as players learning the symbols of the
game system but being unable to tie those symbols back to their real world referents. One
way of countering this is to supplement game play with learning activities in which
players explicitly examine the actual referents of the social phenomena represented in the
game. Teachers can accomplish this by supplementing game play activities with case
studies, videos, primary documents, or just-in-time lectures. Minimally, researchers need
to ask whether players are only learning the representational system within the game or if
they are, more crucially, learning about the historical system the game is intended to
represent. Are players merely becoming adept at manipulating the game’s sign system or
are they also developing understandings of the phenomenon depicted by the simulation?
Competitive structures: Engaging or stifling? Not all students are motivated by
competitive structures; in many cases, competition can even be counter-productive to
fostering learning. In their study of game players, Johnson et al. (1985) find that
competitive structures were less successful than cooperative and collaborative structures
in supporting learning. Games such as Civilization III have win conditions, lose
conditions, and high scores make students’ progress public. In some instances such public
display of performance can be motivating (e.g. Schwartz, Lin, Brophy, & Bransford,
1999); in other instances, such competition and reward can stifle students’ interest in
learning (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973). Even in one player games such as
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Civilization III, the existence of high scores and win/lose conditions can feed competitive
interactions among players. Johnson et al.’s work reminds researchers that competitive
structures do not affect all players evenly: frequently the populations adversely affected
are non-competitive players (Provenzo, 1991) which, in American contexts, have
historically been predominantly women.
Cultural assimilation of tools. Most research on games and simulations has
treated the social contexts of game play as if they were purely a function of the game
itself. Research in the use of other instructional materials, however, suggests that existing
classroom cultures are powerfully persistent and can easily assimilate new tools into the
present activity system. Case in point: My colleagues and I (Squire et al., 2003) examined
how teachers used a project-based, online learning environment that employed modeling
and simulation activities in four classroom contexts. The curriculum was designed to
afford collaborative learning activities and to be used with collaborative communities of
inquiry. However, the existing classroom cultures persisted through the month long units,
assimilating the new tools and resources into the predominant activity systems. Such
research suggests that investigators studying game play need to acknowledge the primacy
of local context and activity systems in shaping the cultures of play that emerge when
games are used in classrooms. Minimally, we need to acknowledge the fact that learning
contexts are created through activity and therefore are not purely a function of a
particular tool. Rather, classroom contexts are created by students and teachers actively
engaging in particular activities which include interactions with texts, media, and
conceptual frameworks that extend out into (or are reflective of) the broader school,
community, political and cultural contexts (Engeström , 1993).
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Complexity of games. Computer games such as Civilization III are complex
artifacts that have evolved over decades of interactions between designers and users ; as
such, they embody a good deal of complexity and require substantial relevant knowledge
and skill. Contemporary strategy games contain dozens of interface controls and screen
elements that, combined, can take several hours to master. Much of the learning occurs
through failure as players form goals, devise strategies, see the outcomes of their play,
and then revise strategies. Although most have tutorials and contextual help, such games
are meant to be complex systems that require hours of trial-and-error experimentation and
complex problem-solving to be learned. As Jim Gee (2003) notes, games are designed to
be difficult, to provide novel experiences. Game players have devised a number of
strategies in reaction to this complexity, relying on affinity groups, tutorials, fan sites,
and even player-created models to understand game systems. Just learning to play the
game, then, can be a consuming part of any game-based learning unit. Providing students
adequate scaffolding while, at the same time, allowing them to explore and learn game
dynamics on their own, can be a balancing act. Yet some claim such tempered assistance
is a fundamental part of the appeal of games and what makes them effective tools for
learning in the first place (Gee, 2003). Regardless, few educators (or researchers, for that
matter) would be satisfied with students learning game mechanics at the expense of
domain content.
Gaming cultures vs. school cultures. My final caveat may very well be the most
serious: Game practices and game culture may very well be at odds with predominant
schooling practices. Gamers frequently collaborate, compete, share information, swap
stories, and compare games. The lock-step, ‘everyone at once’ nature of most educational
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environments means that teachers have little flexibility in creating novel learning
environments, even if and when those environments have been shown to be more
conducive to learning. In the case of games such as Civilization III, gamers frequently
play for multiple hour stretches. A teacher wanting to use the game as a tool for learning
in their own course faces the decision of either struggling to arrange some two or three
hour stretch of time for students to game or running the risk of pulling students out of the
activity right when they are finally settling in. How the culture of gaming translates to
educational contexts – and the types of practical challenges (and solutions) that emerge as
a result – is in dire need of further examination if games are ever to constitute a viable
alternative to textbooks and, at (multimedia, interactive) best, film.
Summary
In the introduction to this chapter, I argued that computer games such as
Civilization III are a powerful but untapped resource for supporting learning in social
studies. Already, millions of players are exploring digital representations of social
phenomena through games like Pirates!, Sim City, and Civilization III. Despite a lack of
interest in games from current educational researchers, numerous other varied interest
groups – teachers, students, community leaders, journalists, and even political leaders –
are very intrigued by the possibility of using games to support learning. The research on
games and simulations in the 1960s and 1970s, however, suggests that some social
studies educators’ trepidation toward games is well founded. Studies conducted
throughout this era fail to show any significant learning gains from gaming and, likewise,
fail to produce any compelling rationale or theoretical framework for using them in the
first place. However, contemporary educational research appears to be revitalizing this
65
area of research, suggesting new theoretical motivations for using games, more robust
pedagogical models for supporting learning through game play, and new research models
for developing and evaluating these models.
On a final note, a word or two should be said about the alternative option to using
commercially available games to support learning: developing games explicitly designed
for education. The primary challenge to the development of explicitly educational games
from the ground up is that most contemporary games have development budgets in the
millions. Our preliminary research from the Games-to-Teach project (Squire, Chisholm,
& Jenkins, unpublished) indicates that, if educational games were to ever succeed, they
would need to produce products of the same technological caliber as those found on the
market today. Expecting students to be engaged by shoddily produced educational games
with flawed designs or questionable graphical, auditory, and interactive quality is much
like expecting students to be enthusiastic about watching grainy, illegible, and muffled
filmstrips. 3 Generating the capital to develop and support such games, however, is
difficult without a strong business model in addition to a strong underlying pedagogical
model and game design. In contrast, commercially available edutainment games (i.e.
entertainment games with pedagogical potential) such as Civilization III are readily
available for implementation in classrooms. Moreover, whereas university or government
funded products are frequently doomed to short-term use limited to research settings,
often abandoned once the funding dries up, educational resources produced for
I am not suggesting that students are turned off by simple games or low-budget games. In fact, “classic” games such
as Super Mario Brothers and Tetris were very popular among our respondents. However, students frequently shared
stories of poorly balanced, aesthetically unappealing, buggy educational games and argued vehemently for the
production of quality edutainment games in their stead.
3
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entertainment such as the Bell Labs Science Films, Donald in Mathemagicland, or Nova
are commonly used in classrooms for decades.
Game Play as Cultural-Historical Activity
As I described previously, most prior research on the use of games and
simulations to support learning within social studies classrooms is not organized within a
coherent theoretical framework. As Margaret Gredler (1996) points out in her aptly-titled
chapter “Educational games and simulations: A technology in search of a research
paradigm,” on the whole, advocates of game-based learning have avoided connecting the
use of games and simulations to theories of learning and building a theoretical rationale
for using games. Instead, appeals to game-based learning have been made on pragmatic
grounds such as common-sense assumptions that gaming environments might appeal to
learners (Prensky, 2001). However, embedded in these implementations are implicit
assumptions about what constitutes knowledge, learning, and effective instruction. Most
often, these studies have drawn on objectivist traditions of knowledge (see Dick, 1991 or
Duffy & Jonassen, 1991 for a critique of this position). More recently, Rieber (1996) has
attempted to connect game play to play in general, drawing from developmental
psychological, sociological, and cultural notions of learning. However, play is such a
broad (and perhaps self-referential) way of thinking about game play that it has thus far
failed to yield any immediate suggestions for how learning might be facilitated through
games and simulations.
In the previous section, I suggested how games might be used to address a variety
of issues of concern to social studies educators. To be sure, these critiques of
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contemporary social studies education have not developed in a theoretical vacuum;
rather, they have grown out a broader concern in recent educational research regarding
students’ inability to use information supposedly learned in school in their daily activities
(Gardner, 1991; Resnick, 1987) based, according to the recent literature, on two main
factors: the contextually impoverished nature of most learning environments (Salomon,
1993), and the severance of school activities from legitimate participation in social
practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Such concerns are grounded in constructivist notions
of knowing and learning, notions that are historically rooted in the pragmatic philosophy
of Dewey (1938; c.f. Duffy & Cunningham, 1996).
For the purposes of this dissertation, learning is conceptualized as participation in
activity (Lave & Wenger, 1991). From this perspective, knowing is not the assimilation
or absorption of information but rather an emergent, situated phenomena constructed
from moment to moment and indelibly tied to local immediate goals, constraints, and
contexts (Whitson, 1997). From this perspective, knowing and doing are inextricably
linked. As Dewey (1929) argues, “We are so accustomed to the separation of knowledge
from doing and making that we fail to recognize how it controls our conceptions of mind,
of consciousness and of reflective inquiry” (p. 22). From this perspective, concepts are
tools created for and constituted by the processes of every day activity (Barab, Hay,
Barnett & Squire, 2000). So too from this perspective, examining learning becomes less a
process of measuring isolated facts and skills in highly controlled laboratory settings, and
more a matter of examining how humans actually perform in rich, authentic, purposeful
contexts.
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Game-Based Activity
The few researchers who have studied patterns of game consumption in everyday
contexts report results that some may find surprising. In 1985, Mitchell gave twenty
families new Atari 2600 gaming consoles and found that game systems had positive
impact on family interactions. Most families played the game systems together, using the
game as a mediating artifact for shared leisure activity. Instead of leading to poor school
performance or strained family interactions, video games were a positive force on family
interactions, “reminiscent of days of Monopoly, checkers, card games, and jigsaw
puzzles” (Mitchell, 1985, p.134). Indeed, most game designers acknowledge that digital
game playing is fundamentally and thoroughly social. With roots in board games, face-toface role-playing games, sports, and arcades, many games are conceptualized by
designers from their very inception in terms of “memorable moments” that can be shared
with other players (Jenkins, in press; Salen & Zimmerman, 2003). Again, video game
play is more than simply a human-machine interaction; such play is embedded in social
and cultural interactions that are perhaps more important in determining the type of
activity – hence, learning– that emerges than the game itself.
Examining cultural-historical activity in dynamic settings demands that
researchers recognize and capture the cultural patterns operating in a given learning
environment and query how such patterns mediate experience. Therefore, in this
dissertation, I explore not only how the game Civilization III functions as a tool
mediating players’ understandings of social/historical phenomena but also (and just as
crucially) how the context of game play affects the learning that occurs. Perhaps an
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example scenario illustrates this best: Imagine a situation where a student playing
Civilization III is struggling to develop her civilization and, toward that end, decides to
attack another civilization. As a researcher, I am very interested in understanding the
player’s experience with Civilization as a designed object, particularly in how she
experiences the events happening within the game, how she reflects on these experiences,
and what, if any, consequences this activity has on her understanding of how and why
nations wage war. At the same time, however, the student’s local culture will mediate
what understandings she makes of her in-game experiences – what meaning they are
ascribed – perhaps by eschewing global military domination or by encouraging victory at
whatever cost. One might also imagine how, ideally, a reflective community of inquiry
might arise within the classroom in which students are encouraged to use the game selfconsciously as a means of exploring and reflecting on social phenomena constantly ongoing dialog with the teacher and their peers.
Socio-Cultural Learning Theory
As the title of Gredler’s piece suggests, game theorists have long struggled to
develop a theoretical vocabulary for understanding games. In this study, I adopt a sociocultural, neo-Vygotskian framework for understanding learning. From this perspective,
learning is a social process, arising through social practice. Vygotsky (1981) argued that
language develops in children first as a social enterprise – as a means of communicating
over shared actions with adults. In his "genetic law of cultural development," Vygotsky
claimed that language first appears interpsychologically (in interaction between people)
and only later as an intrapsychological (internal, personal) achievement. In a bold move,
Vygotsky proclaimed that, "social relations or relations of people genetically underlie all
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higher functions and their relations" (1978, p. 163). Vygotsky also introduced the notion
of the “mediating artifact” – cultural symbols, tools, or signs that serve as the means by
which we interact with the environment and one another (Figure 2.3), arguing that mental
functioning arises as a means of interacting with and understanding the environment and
that language arises as a symbol system for interacting with and understanding one
another.
From this perspective, consistent with more recent socio-cultural formulations of
learning (e.g. Lave & Wenger, 1991), learning is conceptualized as a socialpsychological problem as opposed to a psychological one alone. How to educate learners
is not seen as how to build representations in the head, but how to engage learners in
social practice. Knowledge, from this social perspective is socially and culturally
situated, meaning that knowledge arises from social needs, fulfills social functions, and is
inherently tied with cultural conditions, as cultural artifacts in the form of language,
symbols, and scripts constitute our cognition (Cole, 1996; Gee, 2003). Knowledge is thus
tied to and rooted in specific social groupings (commonly called communities) (Wenger,
1998). Thus, learning is not just a process of mastering facts, or even doing complex
tasks, but rather, participating in social practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Participating in
social practice demands that learners develop identities in relation to these communities.
The issue of identity in learning has come under increasing interest in educational
psychology and cognitive science circles (c.f. Gee, 2000-2001). Wenger (1998) argues
that learning, practice, participation, community, and identity are all overlapping,
entwined concepts, any one of which one cannot speak of without invoking the other. To
learn means to engage in a social practice of some sort (whether it be taking a physics test
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or designing a rocket), and any display of this practice is to participate in communities.
Gee (2000-2001) argues that identity and social groupings are central to learning, but
perhaps psychologists have rushed to assume that such participation always demands any
“community” in any traditional sense of the term. In any one point of time, we participate
in several overlapping social groups, or in Gee’s terms, affinity groups. Affinity groups
are collections of people who gather around specific practices or tasks. Gee contrasts
affinity groups with communities, which, in anthropological terms, include very specific
social organization, including (multi-generationality) methods for initiating new
members. The main point of invoking Gee is not only to avoid problems in tying all
learning and practice necessarily to established communities, but also to highlight the
importance of grounding notions of learning and identity in real settings (as opposed to
the idealized or abstract).
Adopting a socio-cultural approach to examining learning through a single player
game may seem odd, but I believe that it is a useful (and perhaps necessary) step in
examining learning through games. A socio-cultural approach expands the investigation
to not just look at the student playing a game, but to the purposes behind game play.
game play is viewed not as a purely human-computer interaction, but as a socio-cultural
phenomena mediated by classroom microcultures and social contexts, including
classroom culture. Socio-cultural theory points us to examining students’ goals and
intentions in game play, including their developing identities as game players and
students, and forces us to consider how these identities interact with learning. As a result,
knowledge is conceptualized as tools for doing work in the world.
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One way to consider learning from a socio-cultural perspective is through activity
theory, a theory of activity (and hence learning) that grew out of the social psychology of
Leo Vygotsky who was interested in the social roots of cognition. In this chapter I
propose activity theory as a useful theoretical lens for understanding game play in that it
provides researchers a theoretical framework for understanding how human activity is
mediated by both tools (such as games) and cultural context (such as classroom
microcultures or affinity groups) (Engeström, 1987; 1993; Leont’v, 1989; Squire, 2002).
Activity theory is a social psychology theory with roots in three distinct traditions: 1)
German philosophy (i.e. Kant, Hegel), particularly the notion of the Hegelian dialectic, 2)
Marxist historical sociology, and 3) Vygotskian psychology. As Engeström (1999) and
other activity theory scholars have noted, activity theory also has affinities with other
intellectual traditions, particularly American pragmatic philosophy, Wittgenstein, ethnomethodological research, and self-organizing theory. Activity theory is a useful starting
point for understanding games because it provides a language for discussing the role
games play within the social context in which they are situated, in particular focusing
analysis on how competing forces drive change in within a system.
Artifacts and Tools
Subject
Object
Figure 2.3: Artifacts and tools as mediational forms.
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Knowledge as Tools
From a social-psychological perspective, knowledge is a tool used to mediate our
relationships with the world around us. Consistent with a pragmatic epistemology
(Dewey, 1929), knowledge does not exist independent of use and cannot be separate from
how and why it develops. For example, Barab and colleagues (2001) examined how
learning occurred in two modeling environments, showing how knowledge developed as
a tool for activity and arguing that separating “knowing” from “doing” is essentially
meaningless. “We are so accustomed to the separation of knowledge from doing and
making that we fail to recognize how it controls our conceptions of mind, of
consciousness and of reflective inquiry” (Dewey, 1929). Like Barab and his colleagues,
socio-cultural theorists are now, to a large extent, simply reclaiming and developing on
this legacy of Dewey (e.g. Gee, 1992; Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Conceiving of knowledge in this way also challenges common conceptions of its
structure. As Barab and his colleagues (2001) argue, knowledge severed from its
functional use value in the world is not really “knowledge” at all. Tackling traditional
notions of concepts, Barab et al. describing how this fundamental unit of knowledge in
traditional cognitive psychology cannot be treated as isolated entities cleaved from the
contexts from which they arise:
We believe that the treatment of concepts as disembodied entities separate
from practice and particular environments leads to circular relations in
which meanings become self-referential; that is, their meaning is
dependent on the internal structures and relations among characteristics of
the concept itself as opposed to relations with the environmental
conditions that the concept was meant to characterize… In contrast, we
view concepts as intellectual tools that are best understood in terms of the
learner practices in which they are actualized and in terms of the
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intertwined relations among the concept and local environmental
conditions. Said succinctly, concepts both constitute and are constituted
through situated activity. (p. 52).
Consistent with Hutchins (1995), concepts are therefore rooted in and distributed across
the situations in which they arise. Because knowledge is inescapably linked to context, a
central project of educational psychologists ought then to be understanding contextuality
– examining the boundaries of context and its relationship to knowledge itself (Barab &
Kirschner, 2001).
If concepts are intellectual tools, then knowledge can be understood as a process
of appropriation – the process of coming to not only understand how to use a tool but
also the purposes for which it was originally intended (Wersch, 1998). As Wertsch
(1998) points out, one cannot assume that just because an individual uses a tool that they
therefore have appropriated it: “Cultural tools are not always facilitators of mediated
action, and agents do not invariably accept and use them; rather, an agent’s stance toward
a mediational means is characterized by resistance or even outright rejection” (p. 144).
Central to Wertsch’s notion of appropriation is that subjects not just understand how to
use a tool, but that they appropriate tools for specific purposes – they know how and
when to use a tool. Building on the work of de Certeau (1984), Wertsch argues that
consuming a tool is itself a productive act in that users of tools are always, in some sense,
remaking the tool as they make it their own. Thus, learning or appropriation of tools is
fundamentally a creative act, an act of invention. Invention, typically seen as a hallmark
of Piagetian psychology, is therefore also present in the socio-cultural research inspired
by Vygotsky (Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1998).
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Mediating Tools and Artifacts
In the final years of his life, Vygotsky wrote, “the central fact about our
psychology is the fact of mediation (1982, p. 166, cited in Cole & Wertsch, n.d.).
Mediational processes are those involving the potential of tools to shape action (Wertsch,
1998). One way to think about the role that tools (including knowledge) play in cognition
is using this notion of “mediating artifacts ” – tools and artifacts that shape our
experiences of the world, creating opportunities for (inter)action. Vygotsky (1982, cited
in Cole & Wertsch, n.d.) explains some of the primary implications of mediating means
in the following way:
The inclusion of a tool in the process of behavior (a) introduces several
new functions connected with the use of the given tool and with its
control; (b) abolishes and makes unnecessary several natural processes,
whose work is accomplished by the tool; and alters the course and
individual features (the intensity, duration, sequence, etc.) of all the mental
processes that enter into the composition of the instrumental act, replacing
some functions with others (i.e., it re-creates and reorganizes the whole
structure of behavior just as a technical tool re-creates the whole structure
of labor operations) (1982, pp.139-140).
This notion of mediating tools and artifacts is useful for thinking about the use of games
in world history as it provides a theoretical language for talking about the new kinds of
intellectual insights that can be gained by studying world history through the prism of
gaming. Central questions for this research project, then, become: How does mediation
occur? What are the implications of Civilization III as a mediating artifact? What are the
effects of its inclusion on activity, and what learning emerges from Civilization IIImediated activity.
A computer game such as Civilization III is an intriguing mediating artifact in
that, when brought into educational contexts, it can serve as a low-fidelity simulation of
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world history (Thiagarajan, 1999). Civilization III obviously cannot model the entirety of
human experience from 4000 BC to the present with any high degree of accuracy;
therefore, gross simplifications are introduced.
Important questions persist on how
students make sense of such simplifications and how they connect game play experiences
to the domain of world history more broadly. Educators and media scholars alike need to
better understand students’ processes for making sense of their game play experiences
and how such games, as mediational means, shape those processes. Toward this end, we
need a theoretical language for understanding the potential meanings of games – the
semiotic patterns that they make possible – which honors both the complex symbolic
systems that constitute the game as well as the fundamentally constructive, interpretive
nature of (learning through) game play.
When considered as a simulation, Civilization III is what Marx Wartofsky (1973,
cited in Cole, 1996) calls tertiary artifacts, a special class of artifacts “...which can come
to constitute a relatively autonomous 'world', in which the rules, conventions and
outcomes no longer appear directly practical, or which, indeed, seem to constitute an
arena of non-practical, or 'free' play or game activity” (Wartofsky, p. 208). Engeström
(1990, cited in Guy, 2003) maps Wartofsky’s notion of artifacts onto Leont’ev’s (1981)
three-level hierarchy of activity: Primary artifacts are tools used to directly mediate
subject-object relations (such as a computer simulation mediating understandings of
world history). Secondary artifacts are used to remediate the use of primary artifacts
(such as a Civilization III user’s manual). Tertiary artifacts are imaginary or visionary
artifacts that give “identity and overarching perspective to collective activity systems”
(Engeström, 1990, p.174). From this perspective, Civilization III is a primary artifact
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when used as a tool for game play and a tertiary artifact when used to remediate
understandings of world history.
Tertiary artifacts – imagined worlds – can mediate our understandings of the
actual world, functioning as a tool for changing practice within it: “modes of behavior
acquired when interacting with tertiary artifacts can transfer beyond the immediate
contexts of their use” (Cole, 1996, p.121. Collins, Shukla, and Redmiles (2001) identify
four primary ways that such artifacts mediate objects. Tertiary artifacts can mediate (1)
what happens (contributing to a means of achieving the object), (2) how mediation
happens (understanding how to achieve the object), (3) why mediation occurs (motivating
the achievement of an object) or (4) where-to (motivating the evolution of all elements of
an activity system). One might argue that, from Engeström ’s framework, the key in
designing learning activities is to use a tool such as Civilization III not only as a primary
artifact for game play but also, and perhaps more critically, as a tertiary artifact for
reflecting on history as a whole. While I agree with Cole’s optimism about how tertiary
artifacts might change practice, in the case of Civilization III at least, there is also the
chance that the meaning making that happens within the game world remains there, never
connected up to real world events and experiences beyond it. Even if students appropriate
Civilization III as a tertiary artifact, there is no guarantee that they will interpret game
symbols in the manner that educators hope; for example, students may not spontaneously
make connections between the game economic system and the economic processes of
“real life.” Peirce’s semiotics provides one lens for examining how this might occur.
Peircean Semiotics
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Peirce’s
semiotics
(1897/1985)
provides
a
theoretical
framework
for
understanding the potential meanings embodied in games and a broader language for
describing the cognitive processes of mediation that avoids dualisms between subjects
and objects, readers and texts, and potentially, consumers and producers. 4 Peirce
describes all thought interactions as semiosis, the production of signs. For Peirce, the sign
(or representamen) is “something that stands to somebody for something in some respect
or capacity” (1897/1985; p. 5). Meaning might be thought of as the dynamic relationship
among the object (that which is stood for), the interpretant (the creator or interpreter of
the sign), and the referring sign itself. As Houser and Kloesel write, “(For Peirce) the sign
relation is fundamentally triadic: eliminate either the object or the interpretant, and you
annihilate the sign” (P. xxxvi). Key to Peirce’s semiotic is the notion that the sign
mediates the relationship between the interpretant and the object.
Peirce’s semiotics enables theorists to recognize that meaning is inherently
inseparable from the purposes and the conditions from which it arises and grounded in
both the objects and the interpreters, avoiding traditional intellectual dualisms between
the knower and the knowable by recognizing that a cognitive representation is neither a
direct representation of an object, nor wholly ungrounded in reality. His semiotics
suggests a logical and theoretical framework for avoiding the dualistic conundrum facing
media theorists and educators who struggle with locating meaning in readers’
interpretations or in the text themselves. In terms of games, Peirce provides a language
for talking about at least two inter-related semiotic processes: (1) How game designers
(subjects) create game signs (the signs produced) meant to embody real world
4
It is worth noting that I am avoiding the Sausserian, or European notion of semiotics, which Whitson (1997) and
Cunningham (1992) characterize as dualist in origins.
79
phenomena (the object which is represented), and (2) How game players (subjects)
produce meaning (the sign) from game systems and (objects which are represented).
Educators using games hope that students will eventually make the semiotic leap of
making inferences about the world (i.e. world history) through the game as a mediating
artifact that produces signs about the world (See Figure 2.4.)
Historical
Referents
Game designer
Civilization III
Students
Figure 2.4 Semiotic Relations in Civilization III
In the case of Civilization III, a theory of signs provides a language for
understanding how meaning is created through game play, suggesting that meaning
making is a process distributed across the player (subject), the game (both the sign and
the object), and world history (the object). Signs are created through game play as
players, for example, observe a civilization located in North America flourishing due to
ample food resources, creating a sign denoting the relationships between food production
and civilization growth. A new chain of semiosis may occur as players observe the
relationship between food production and civilization growth, but then go on to question
why Native American civilizations did not resist Old World colonialists. Civilization III
itself contains complex semiotic relations; game designers represent everything from
physical objects (e.g., mountains) to complex social processes (e.g., agriculture) through
iconic symbols (the properties of Civilization III as a mediating artifact are discussed
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further in Chapter III). The main point of this discussion, however, is to underscore the
fact that game symbols are the product of a triarchic relationship, not purely a property of
the game but rather of processes crucially including the player (interpretant) as well.
Civilization III, like any game, holds multiple potential interpretations depending on the
player as well as the availability of potential objects to which it might refer.5
For Peirce (and Vygotsky), knowing and thinking (intrapsychological processes)
are, at root, processes of manipulating signs. Although Peirce certainly examined the
semiotic process, articulating and classifying types of signs, he was also interested in the
inter-relationships between signs and their mediating role in thought and communication.
Peirce noted that the product of one semiotic process, such as the intepretation of a text,
could become the object of another sign process, such as interpretation of that
interpretation, which, when mediated by signs and an interpretant, could yield further
signs. Therefore, consistent with Johnson et al. (1985), a semiotic perspective suggests
that the successful game-based learning environment produces far-reaching chains of
semiosis where players think beyond the game context to consider specific examples,
patterns, and relationships between history phenomena. The propensity of such
environments resides not in the game itself but in activities that occur within and in
addition to the gaming experience as well as the culture of the game-playing environment
itself. In short, the context of the game play is an integral part of the game play activity.
From a pedagogical perspective, the culture of the game environment may be far more
important than the game itself in producing inferences about history. Researchers
attempting to examine how game play supports learning must consider how game playing
This last notion – that the range of potential objects affects the signs that can be produced – may seem counterintuitive; however, one can imagine how the emergence of the field of world history changes the potential meanings
that Civilization III has as a mediating artifact.
5
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actions remediate understandings of phenomena, but they must also attend to the cultural
contexts that situate these actions. Cultural historical activity theory in valuable for such
research in that it provides a lens for examining how a game like Civilization III
remediates players’ understandings of social studies phenomena without subscribing to a
transmission model of communications that denies human agency, assigning the game
primacy in directing human activity, or ignoring the critical importance of context in
shaping game-playing activities.
Activity Theory
If culture mediates activity and thinking, then it is useful to understand how these
broader contexts shape activity. Activity theory is one model for looking at human
activity in social context. Consistent with the work of Vygotsky, activity theorists argue
that understanding the social organization of work and labor is central to understanding
cognition. Activity theorists take human activity – understood within its mediating social
and economic contexts and encompassing humans’ use of mediating artifacts including
tools, language, and one another – as the minimal meaningful object of analysis. Building
on the work of Vygotsky, activity theorists attempt to account for both the role of
mediating artifacts as well as broader social and cultural structures in activity and hence
cognition. The activity system triangle, the visual depiction of an activity system which
has been used as a visual representation and organizer for thinking about activity, takes
Vygotsky’s basic triarchic relation among subject, object and mediating artifact and adds
a second level of mediation, that of socio-cultural mediation (See Figure 2.4). Most
activity theorists acknowledge that cultural mediation is central to Vygotsky’s thought
and see this addition as an acknowledgment of the role of culture in Vygotsky’s thinking.
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Activity theory explicitly extends Vygotsky’s model to human activity systems, drawing
on several intellectual traditions, perhaps most notably Marxist social-historical
approach.
Central to activity theory is the notion of object – that purpose, goal, or need that
organizes activity. An object might be a sick patient undergoing health care, a student
sitting in a class being taught history, or an historical question which is the object of
inquiry (Engeström , 1987). Leont’v (1978) notes that the notion of object is inherent to
that of activity: it is impossible to have activity without an anticipated outcome, goal, or
other organizing purpose. He also distinguishes among three levels of analysis: 1)
activities which communities carry out toward objects or motives, 2) actions which
individuals conduct toward their goals, and 3) operations which humans or machines
routinely carry out depending on the conditions in which the action is performed. The
object of a system, such as teaching students world history, makes certain goals and
actions possible, such as students listening to a lecture or play an educational video game.
The particular conditions of this action – for example, playing the video game – create
specific operations, such as clicking on the mouse, reading books, or discussing historical
facts. Activity theory provides a framework for understanding the broad social forces that
shape activity, actions, and operations, and how these social needs manifest themselves in
local activity.
For an activity theorist, the minimal meaningful context is the dialectical relations
between human agents (subjects) and that which they act upon (objects) as they are
mediated by tools, language, and socio-cultural contexts (Engeström 1987; 1993). A
generic activity theory system is portrayed in Figure 2.5. Subjects are the actors who are
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selected as the point of view of the analysis. Objects are that "at which the activity is
directed and which is molded or transformed into outcomes with the help of physical and
symbolic, external and internal tools" (Engeström, 1993, p. 67, emphasis in the original).
As such, objects can be physical objects, abstracted concepts, or even theoretical
propositions. Tools are the concepts, physical tools, artifacts or resources that mediate a
subject’s interactions with an object. The community of a system refers to those with
whom the subject also shares transformation of the object; the cultural-historical
communities in which a subject’s activity is situated. Communities mediate activity
through division of labor and shared norms and expectations.
Artifacts / Tools
Subject
Rules (formal and informal)
Outcomes
Object
Community
Division of Labor
Figure 2.5: Visual Depiction of an Activity System
Understanding the basic components of an activity system can be a useful way of
mapping and categorizing key components of experience. However, for activity theorists,
it is not the presence of these components in isolation that make for meaningful analysis
but rather the interactions among these components. Engeström (1993) refers to such
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relations as primary and secondary contradictions respectively. Primary contradictions
are those that occur within a component of a system (e.g. tools), while secondary
contradictions are those that occur between components of a system (e.g. subjects and
tools). In a situation where Civilization III is used in formal learning environments, one
might imagine tensions between winning the game and learning social studies as the
object of an activity system, depending on whether the student or the teacher is the
subject of the activity system. Predicated on Hegelian / Marxist philosophy, activity
theory suggests that the synthesis and resolution of such contradictions brings change and
evolution to the system, Characterizing the tensions of an activity system, then, can help
participants understand and react to its changes.
Activity theorists are centrally concerned with understanding human activity in
terms of its broader cultural-historical contexts, seeking to understand and represent
activity systems from multiple points of view and from the points of view of multiple
participants. It is fundamentally an historical mode of inquiry whereby analysts examine
the historical trajectories of participants, social structures, and the object of activity. As
Engeström (1999) describes, a critical aspect of activity theory is its “…historiocity,
understood as concrete historical analysis of the activities under investigation…” (p. 25).
As such, activity theorists are interested in the historical modes of work, what purposes
the activity has served, and what sorts of historical trajectories participants bring to the
activity. Such theorists typically immerse themselves in contexts, using a range of
methods to understand the historical context for the activity of interest, the components of
the activity system, and the contradictions that emerge within it. In the next section, I
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explore two different types of approaches to using activity theory as a lens for
understanding learning environments.
Activity Theory as a Lens for Understanding Learning Environments
A growing number of educational researchers are turning to activity theory as a
socio-cultural framework for analyzing learning through participation in social practice
(e.g. Brown & Cole, 2002; Engeström , 1999). As previously discussed, it is a useful
analytic framework for characterizing social systems within cultural-historical contexts
while avoiding traditional knowing / doing dualisms (Barab et al., 2001). While
traditional cognitive science has conceptualized knowing as separated from social
practice, activity theory avoids such dualisms by providing a theoretically grounded
language for understanding how humans create contexts for their activity and how these
contexts influence social practices. Hakkarainend (1999) uses activity theory as a
framework for understanding play environments, focusing on how the theory allows
researchers to reframe the problem of motivation (e.g. Rieber, 1996; Sutton-Smith, 1979)
by considering play as a transformative cultural-historical activity. In a different setting,
Brown and Cole (2002) find activity theory a useful framework for understanding afterschool environments since it recognizes the centrality of context, the importance of goal
formation, the discoordinated nature of social change, the role of “leading activity” in
initiating such settings and the central function of tools and communities in mediating
participants’ experiences of within them.
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Unit of Analysis in Activity Theory
In studies using activity theory, such as those described above, the typical object
of study is the classroom with broader social and cultural contexts equally taken into
account. Activity theory is somewhat flexible in this way: While some researchers (e.g.,
Barab et al, 2001) have used it to examine interactions in classrooms, others (e.g.,
Engeström , 1999) apply it to interactions in the workplace that, at times, cut across more
varied contexts. Regardless of the context of its use, activity theory highlights the need to
capture the activity of interest holistically – examining actors, their objects, their
mediating tools, and their community structures. Activity theorists examine activity
systems from multiple angles, viewing the system from the point of view of different
participants in order to gain this holistic view of the system and to understand the
contradictions that drive change within it.
As with other analytic approaches that attempt to capture knowledge making in
situ, one important challenge of doing activity theory analysis is capturing how
understanding occurs in context (Barab & Kirschner, 2001). One option would be to
complete a given unit of instruction and then administer post-tests, surveys, or dynamic
interviews (some of which I do). These approaches, while useful for gaining some
perspectives on what students learned, obscure others. Students working alone and
without tools on tests or in interviews are sequestered from the tools, resources, and
social relationships in which cognition is embedded. This is not to suggest that there is no
value whatsoever in assessing what students know or can do on their own without maps
or resources. It is to say, however, that we need to understand the (lack of authentic)
contextuality of such performances and frame our assertions in ways that account for it.
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In other words, post-tests or interviews can yield some useful data but in no way can they
capture the full range of students’ cognitive abilities.
Given that the activity system is the unit of analysis in activity theory studies,
most researchers have looked for data that sheds insight into what the outcomes of the
activity system are, broadly defined. Outcomes can be understood by examining evolving
activity, particularly how artifacts are appropriated into tools, how these tools remediate
understandings, and how knowledge flows through activity systems. Consistent with
Cobb et al. (1999), I focus my data collection and analysis on understanding the “taken as
shared” norms and understandings that emerge in each case (see Chapter III,
Methodology). The remaining two sections describe two approaches to understanding
activity systems – each tied to a particular kind of context that is consequential for how
the theory is applied and what kinds of conclusions one may draw from it – and explores
some of the theoretical issues of each.
Activity Theory in Informal Learning Environments
Michael Cole’s Fifth Dimension Project (e.g. Cole, 1996) is one of the best
researched examples of using activity theory to describe learning. The Fifth Dimension
project is an educational project that attempts to mix activity systems of formal education
and play to create learning opportunities in after-school centers. At Fifth dimension sites,
educators, researchers, children, and community members gather to engage students in
academically-valuable activities. Children move through a game-like maze of activities
which are linked to educational software and endeavors; their progress is mediated by a
central governing body including a fictitious wizard who creates challenges, awards
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points for completing them, and settles disputes.6 Each Fifth Dimension site also pulls in
university faculty and students who serve as role models and tutors for the children,
instantiating Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development by engaging in
activities with more knowledgeable and others. The centers allow researchers to bridge
theory and practice by instantiating the learning principles central to activity theory in
applied exercises and community structures, including participation in the social
improvement of the broader communities to which the students belong.
Over the past fifteen years, The Fifth Dimension Project has generated nearly 100
academic papers and presentations (Fifth Dimension website). Evaluation reports show
that, through participation in Fifth Dimension, students develop academic skills that can
be used across a variety of contexts (Blanton, Moorman, Hayes, Warner, 1997; Mayer,
Quilici, Moreno, et al., 1997). In a study of the project’s implementation in after school
centers, Nicolopoulou and Cole (1993) described how game play as an activity is not
purely a function of the game and the player, but is profoundly shaped by local cultural
contexts. The authors show how the local Fifth Dimension cultures were a mixture of the
designed Fifth Dimension culture plus the culture of the overlapping institutions. These
emergent, hybridized cultural conditions of each setting might be described as a local
microculture within the broader culture. This microculture mediates the activities taking
place in the environment, crucially affecting the kinds of learning outcomes that result.
When considering the implementation of the game Civilization III in a similar
informal, after-school context, several important considerations arise. First, as discussed
previously, there is the potential that winning the game becomes the focus of the activity
6
The wizard is said to live on a computer somewhere in Miami although in reality he is played by Fifth Dimension
Staff.
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at the expense of reflective play. Winning the game, having an enjoyable experience, or
simply the game itself might become the very object of the activity rather than the study
of world history itself. One can easily imagine scenarios where players compete for high
scores or dominant civilizations potentially at the expense of using Civilization III to
learn about real-world social phenomena. One might predict that students might compete
against one another for high scores, resulting in a very pronounced division of labor and
little collaboration among peers. In such a scenario, cheats or hints on how to win the
game might become the predominant tools and artifacts used rather than historical texts
or maps. Here, the outcomes might be, at best, nothing more than an piqued interest in
history or geography, or at worse, markedly differentiated social status and far less
participation in authentic social studies practice itself. On the other hand, one can also
easily imagine scenarios, reminiscent of naturally occurring “gaming” cultures, where
students share expertise and tips, jointly negotiating the meaning of social studies
concepts such as colonialization as it is embodied in the game and, perhaps even,
instantiated in the real world beyond. Given both possible scenarios, an intriguing
research question becomes: What kinds of game communities emerge around playing
Civilization III in informal learning environments situated in quasi-academic contexts?
What are the outcomes of such an activity system?
Whereas formal learning environments tend to be highly individualistic,
frequently having grade-seeking cultures (e.g. Squire et al., 2003), after-school
environments provide added opportunities for collaboration, allowing flexibility in how
students are grouped. Given the fundamentally social nature of game play and
pedagogical importance of cooperation in game-based learning environments (e.g.
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Johnson et al., 1985), informal learning environments offer intriguing opportunities for
exploring game-based learning. Further, the organization of after-school environments –
including flexibility in scheduling, long blocks of time that could be used for extended
game play, and fewer curricular pressures – make after-school environments an intriguing
site for experimentation. Activity theory provides a lens for describing such aspects of the
social order of after-school spaces including the disparate macro-contexts that situate
microcultures and the inter-relationships between multiple subjects, objects, mediating
artifacts, and social organizations (Nicolopoulou & Cole, 1993).
Activity Theory in Formal Learning Environments
In contrast to Michael Cole’s work in informal learning environments (Cole,
1991), researchers such as Engeström (1987) and Barab et al. (2002) use activity theory
to examine more formal environments in order to understand the contradictions in various
activity systems and, therefore how change is made possible (and, at times, how such
change might be guided in productive directions). Engeström , after characterizing the
focal activity system in terms of its contradictions, then develops and shares
representations of the system with the participants themselves. In a similar manner, Barab
and colleagues (2002) also use contradictions to characterize activity within experimental
learning programs in formal learning environments, showing that contradictions are
useful tools for guiding the evolution of the learning environment. In their study of an
astronomy-modeling course, Barab et al. used trace the interplay between learning
astronomy and building 3D digital models, arguing that model-building activities coevolved with and frequently overlapped astronomy-learning activities. By identifying
inter-play between “prespecified, teacher-directed instruction versus emergent, student-
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directed learning” (p. 77), Barab et al discerned particular contradictions within the
activity which then enabled them to help the curriculum evolve– for example, by
developing tools to reduce the identified tensions between model building and learning
astronomy, by implementing curricular structures that encouraged students to use
astronomy concepts as tools, or by developing course expectations that tacitly reshaped
the classroom divisions of labor. In this way, activity theory’s notion of contradictions, a
concept deeply rooted in Marxist philosophy, enabled the researchers to unpack studentteacher power dynamics and to predict how teachers’ and students’ roles would evolve
over time.
Activity theory is also useful for the study of formal learning environments in that
it takes into account the outcomes of an activity system – the results of the subjects’
transformation of objects –in order to understand how learning occurs through it. Central
to this notion is an emphasis on understanding activity systems and outcomes from the
point-of-view of participants rather than from the point-of-view of an outside observer.
Researchers do not set expectations a priori; rather, they try to understand the
transformations occurring within the given learning environments, regardless of whether
that transformation is intended or not. For example, in a separate study of a college
Astronomy course, Barab and colleagues (2000) examine how students’ building models
of solar systems produced understandings of astronomical phenomena. Unlike earlier
activity theory studies (e.g. Engeström, 1996), Barab and colleagues examined both the
broad patterns of activity in the classroom and how these activities related to students’
conceptions of specific phenomena. Specifically, they trace how specific tools were first
the object of activity (i.e. students’ goals were merely to build models), then became
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primary artifacts (i.e. models became tools to learn and understand in and of themselves),
and then, ultimately, by the end of the term, became tertiary artifacts (i.e. artifacts for
thinking about astronomy more generally). Activity theory provides a useful way to
understand just this trajectory, one which readily characterizes what happens when
artifacts such as games are imported from one activity system (casual game playing, in
which the game is a primary artifact) into another (a formal learning environment, in
which the game is a tertiary artifact).
Finally, activity theory sheds insight into the import of the formal learning
environment on the learning process. Early studies of game-playing activities in
classrooms confirm the importance of understanding classroom contexts in shaping
gaming activities, suggesting that the context of game playing may have a larger impact
than the formal game in shaping learning (Clegg, 1991; Johnson et al., 1985).
Researchers looking at learning through game play in formal learning environments have
found that classroom cultures, particularly the type of student-student interaction
occurring across ability levels, affects how learning occurs through game play. For
example, as Squire and colleagues (2002) found in their study of high school earth
science classes, grade pressures, classroom groupings, or inter-class competition can all
affect classroom activity in profound ways, thereby affecting the outcomes of the
learning activities themselves. In an examination of elementary students playing a
mathematics game, Guberman and Saxe (2000) find that different classroom ability
groups resulted in unique divisions of labor in students playing games with the most
fruitful learning opportunities occurring when students of different ability levels played
together. Using activity theory as a lens for game play allows researchers to examine
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these relationships among game players, the game, and the community as well as the
divisions of labor (e.g. groupings) that mediate and co-constitute them.
Summary
Activity theory is a valuable framework for understanding game-based learning
environments in particular for several reasons. First, it gives researchers a way to theorize
how game play is mediated through tools, whether those tools are curricula, game
magazines, cheat codes, websites, or game jargon / terminology (e.g. “conceptual tools”).
Second, it requires researchers to understand the objects of activity and how they may be
very different in a casual game setting, where players strive to transform their social
status or relationships in some way, than in a learning environment, where teachers and
students strive to transform their understandings of academic content. Third, it gives
researchers a lens for describing how games are actually used and appropriated by
subjects and how discrepant objects of activities (e.g., earning good grades versus
learning social studies versus expression of identity) shape that appropriation. Fourth, it
prompts the researcher to investigate how the activity is shaped by different (formal or
informal) contexts which, in turn, are shaped by the communities in which they are
embedded. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, an activity theory framework emphasizes
the socially mediated nature of human activity systems, obliging game researchers to look
beyond simple human-machine interactions and recognize the wealth of other practices
that constitute game play activity. It requires researchers to consider how game playing is
mediated by fan, friend, or family communities both through interactions at the point of
play as well as through interactions away from the immediate game-playing environment,
such as on the playground, via Internet chat, and during dinner table conversations.
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Indeed, research on games and simulations in social studies classrooms suggests that it is
in such unofficial, off-location conversation that the most powerful transformations of
players’ understandings actually occurs.
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Chapter III: Methodology
This study is a naturalistic case study (Stake, 1995) of two design experiments
(Barab & Squire, in press) in which Civilization III was used as the basis for a unit on
world history. The purpose of these design experiments is to explore what happens to
classroom culture and learning when a complex computer game such as Civilization III is
used as a tool for learning. In particular, I am interested in the social interactions that
occur, how students learn, what students learn, and what the role of the game is in
mediating students’ understandings. Working with practicing teachers, I designed gamebased curricula for teaching world history used in three separate contexts or cases. The
first case is a world history unit implemented in an interdisciplinary humanities / world
history course for high school freshmen. In the second case, I work with a subset of these
same students for a week-long summer camp unit. The third and last case is a month-long
after-school computer program for middle school students (See Table 3.1).
Case
1.Media School
2.Media “camp”
3. YWCA After School
Setting
Urban High School
Urban High School
Working class urban after school
program in school building
Age
Grade “9 XY”
Grade “9 XY”
Grades 6-7
Class size
18 Students
5 students
10 students
Time
18 hours (6 weeks X 3 18 hours (3.5 hrs x 5 20 hours 8 sessions x 2 ½ hour
50 min class periods)
days)
enrichment class
Teacher /
Researchers
1 Teacher, myself,
paid researcher
Myself, video
camera
Myself, paid researcher
Table 3.1: Overview of Study Contexts
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In all three cases, I was a participant-observer and in two cases, I employed a
second researcher to gather data and help ensure the trustworthiness and credibility of the
data and analysis (Guba & Lincoln, 1983). Using Stake’s (1995) case study methodology,
I wrote a case study for each context (Chapters IV, V, and VI), which I then shared with
both the hired additional researcher and the teacher from each context in order to elicit
differing interpretations of what transpired. In chapter 7, I present my conclusions that
cut across all three cases. This study is not a controlled experimental study, nor is it a
direct comparison of how learning occurs in each setting. Rather, the purpose of this
study is to understand how learning occurs in each context and to generate “petite
generalizations” (Stake, 1995) that can have both experience-distant and experience-near
relevance (Barab & Squire, in press; Geertz, 1983; Stake, 1995). Restated, I generate
assertions about learning and instruction through game play as it occurs in these three
contexts – assertions that may then be useful for designing and understanding other
contexts. Consistent with qualitative research in general (e.g. Guba & Lincoln, 1983) and
design research methodologies (e.g. Barab & Squire, in press) in particular, a second
intent of this research is to add to the emerging body of theory on designing game-based
learning environments. Specifically, my research questions include the following:
1. What practices emerge when games are brought into formal learning
environments? In particular, how do gaming practices (e.g., competition,
learning through failure) intersect with the practices and culture of formal
schooling?
2. How do games engage players and operate as motivating learning
contexts?
3. How does learning occur through game play? Specifically, how does
playing Civilization III remediate students’ understandings of history?
4. What are the pedagogical potentials of using games in social studies,
specifically in history classrooms?
5. How should we think about the role of games in a formal learning
environment, and how might they best be leveraged to support learning in
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such contexts?
In this chapter, I outline my approach to case-based design-based research and provide a
description and analysis of the affordances of Civilization III as a tool for learning world
history. Next, I briefly describe the three specific contexts of my research and outline the
data collection procedure used within them. I then present my analysis procedures.
Design Experiments as a Research Framework
Over the past decade, a growing number of learning scientists have been adopting
what have come to be known as “design experiment methodologies” as a way of
developing research findings which not only uncover and extend theoretical issues but
also result in tangible educational programs or artifacts which can be used in other
contexts (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992). From this design perspective, the validity of
research results is determined not only through traditional validation procedures but also
through examining the consequences of putting the theories and ideas it generates into
subsequent use. Elsewhere, I have argued that this framework, despite the fact that it may
seem foreign or novel, is in line with contemporary thinking in validation research and is
grounded in the widely known pragmatic inquiry of Peirce and Dewey (Barab & Squire,
in press).
Designing Contexts for Learning
Theoretically, design experiments emanate from the growing acknowledgement
of the role of context in cognition (e.g. Barab, et al., 1999; Cole, 1996; Gee, 1992;
Hutchins, 1995; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Salomon, 1993;
Wertsch, 1998). One can think about how context is part and partial to cognition in
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several ways: Context provides the language by which we organize and formulate
thoughts (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Cultural contexts provide scripts that organize our
behavior in social settings and tools that remediate thoughts (Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1998).
Physical tools open up possibility spaces and therefore remediate our relationships with
objects (Salomon, 1993; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1998) as well as the contours of the
possibility spaces in which we operate (Barab et al., 1999). Faced with the challenge of
understanding (such complex, distributed, and multifaceted) cognition in context,
researchers have been adopting and adapting a variety of naturalistic research
methodologies to better understand how humans perform in complex social and material
settings. Design experiments and design-based research strategies are a family of
methodologies that fall within this approach to understanding cognition.
Merely understanding cognition, however, is rarely the end goal of our work as
educational researchers. More commonly, we have transformative agendas where our
goal is to not just understand a community or culture as an ethnographer might but rather
to create social change. Education is an applied field and learning scientists typically
bring practical goals to their research – for example, seeking to better engage students in
the making of science, hoping to create real online communities for professional
development, or struggling to create history classrooms that confront students preexisting beliefs about race, gender, or class. Such “research with practical intent” is, by
definition, design research, which has several potential benefits: research results that take
the role of social context into account and therefore have greater potential for influencing
educational practice, tangible products and programs that can be adopted elsewhere, and
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conclusions validated through the consequences of their use, providing consequential
evidence for validity (Messick, 1992).
A
core characteristic of design experiments is their pragmatic orientation,
consistent with the pragmatic epistemology of Dewey (1938) and Pierce (1877) (Barab &
Squire, in press). Design experiments attempt to “develop a class of theories about both
the process of learning and the means that are designed to support that learning, be it the
learning of individual students, of a classroom community, of a professional teaching
community, or of a school or school district viewed as an organization” (Barab & Squire,
p. 10). Design experiments are interventionist in that they attempt to instantiate and test
theoretical conjectures within classroom contexts. They are not only confirmatory but
also explore the limitations of the findings they produce as well. As Cobb et al. (2003)
highlight, they are iterative – never complete but in constant revision and
reimplementation – and, as such, are crucial to the development and refinement of
instructional designs – instructional interventions and theories geared at understanding
not just which instructional interventions are useful but also the conditions under which
they work as well. Again, design experiments are definitely pragmatic, based on a sense
that, if a theoretically based instructional design is not working for the researcher or the
teacher, then it lacks validity.
Such design-based approaches to research also produce several challenges for
educational researchers. How do we account for the role of the researcher in the design
experiment and the associated threats to validity that they bring with them? If the
researcher is intimately involved in the conceptualization, design, development,
implementation, and investigation of a pedagogical approach, how can we ensure the
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findings are credible, trustworthy, and valid? How involved should researchers be? For
example, those working in schools often face difficult ethical choices. Do they stand idly
by and watch a teacher struggle to use their curricula or should they intervene in order to
provide additional support? Should they share information on struggling students with
teachers in order to enable them to change instruction accordingly, or should they take a
“hands-off” approach in order to minimize their influence on to-be-studied phenomena?
Cobb and colleagues (Cobb, et al., 1999) describe an approach they call “teaching
experiments” in which researchers enter an instructional context with specific goals,
manipulating the local context to achieve the desired ends. They describe this method as
a recursive process of theory building and instructional interventions. Rather than remain
detached from the research context, researchers are implored to intercede where possible,
using interventions as opportunities to examine core theoretical issues, to improve the
instruction when necessary, or simply to explore the learning taking place in greater
depth. While skeptics contend that such interventions “taint” the research context, Cobb
and his colleagues argue that effective instructional models develop through such
interventions and their subsequent refining and testing. Design experiments allow a
researcher to identify how an instructional design fails to meet classroom needs, to make
the necessary changes in the design, and then to examine how those design changes
actually play out in the classroom. Thus, data about how teachers or researchers modify
instructional designs are valuable data sources for the development and refinement of
theory.
Such a flexible approach is particularly useful in an exploratory study such as the
one presented here. I am interested in how a game such as Civilization III can be used as
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a tool for learning in world history classrooms, but, in studying this phenomenon, there
are multiple unknowns, including (but not limited to) the affordances of the game as a
tool for learning, the trajectory of even one students’ understanding of history throughout
the game, or simply how a given group of students and their teacher will react to its use
in formal instruction in the first place. There are few naturally occurring opportunities for
studying instruction based on a game such as Civilization III. Although a growing
number of teachers have imported similar simulation games into their classrooms, finding
instruction in which the game is taken seriously – for example, where the teacher is using
the kind of outside materials used within authentic gaming communities, where peer
collaboration is not only tolerated but promoted, or where the game is used as a tool for
learning rather than a reward for good behavior or a baby-sitter for students with time on
their hands – is somewhat difficult. In spring of 2002, I found two teachers interested in
using Civilization III in the classroom. Because using such a game for instruction was
new to both, we collaboratively decided to brainstorm a variety of instructional
approaches and then intervene by changing the activity as deemed necessary or in the
students’ best interest. Cobb’s design/teaching experimental methodology was, therefore,
especially appropriate.
Because refinement and reiteration is at the core of the design research enterprise,
researchers working under this paradigm are constantly and iteratively designing and
testing new instructional strategies and new theories, using sites of change as data sources
toward understanding theoretical and practical issues. For Cobb and colleagues (2003),
theory is a tool designed to do practical work – namely, to illuminate pedagogical issues
and guide practice. Yet, as Jenkins, Squire, & Tan (in press) argue, design research can
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take up different forms at differing points in the design process. At times, researchers
might build prototypes; at others, they might do direct comparisons in order to tease out
differences in instructional approaches. Because of the paucity of theoretically grounded
research on digital games in social studies classroom, this study is necessarily an
exploratory study. Because so little is actually known about what variables might be
important in an activity such as this one (other than the social interactions surrounding
game play) or which joints such an activity should be carved at (other than what activity
theory, a priori, suggests) or even what instruction designed to capitalize on the
affordances of a game such as Civilization III might possibly look like in the fist place, I
chose to prototype a reasonable instructional design using Civilization III as the basis of
an instructional unit on world history, implement it in three disparate contexts, and then
examine the shape and trajectory of the learning and activities which emerged in all their
messiness. In so doing, I seek to uncover the theoretical and practical issues behind using
a complex commercial computer game such as Civilization III to teach world history and
to suggest some models for thinking about how Civilization III can be used to support
learning.
Role of the Researcher
In each case study, I participated as both a researcher and an instructor in a
manner consistent with the design/teaching experiment approach. Although the teachers
at both sites (The Media School and the YWCA) had agreed to hold classes based on
Civilization III, in each case, it quickly became apparent that, due to the teachers’ time
constraints and minimal experience with the game itself, I would need to play a central
and active role in organizing the unit and shaping the activity in situ.
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1
Given that participants in the first two cases would not allow audio- or
videotaping and the fact that I had to serve as both data collector and instructor at one, I
hired an additional trained researcher to help with data collection and analysis. 2 She
attended each class but one throughout the first two cases (at both the Media School and
the YWCA). During the Media Summer case, I was the only researcher present; however,
I wide-angle videotaped each class period, capturing all student activity within the
classroom.3
Each researcher played a distinct role during the activities, oftentimes on opposite
sides of the room. I directed activity, opening and closing class, giving just-in-time
lectures, prompting reflection, and handling class management issues (these activities are
described in greater depth in each case, presented in Chapters IV, V, and VI
respectively). During each session, I took notes, when possible, on my observations. The
second researcher played a more consistent observer role, taking field notes on all
classroom activities and interactions, attending especially to individual actions, social
exchanges, and broader patterns of activity within the classroom that I might likely miss
given my active role in the class. For example, she took field notes on less engaged
students and patterns of interaction between myself (as instructor) and students in the
class (e.g., which students I interacted with most frequently and when). We also used log
sheets to augment our data (see Appendix C) in all but the YWCA case where following
each student’s game play was much easier and log sheets were therefore not necessary.
1
In the case of the Media School, the first week was spent explicitly negotiating roles, a complex process explained in
greater depth in the case study (Chapter IV). Rather than gloss over these issues in partnering with local schools, I
chose to include them in order to illustrate the complexity of doing design research in school environments.
2
The researcher hired to assist is a state certified and experienced teacher with prior experience with both data
collection and analysis; in addition, she played Civilization III for approximately ten hours prior to the study in order to
become familiar with concepts and issues relevant to the game.
3
This was made possible only by the smaller class size of this case. (There were only five students present).
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After each session, we met (along with the students’ regular teacher, when possible) to
compile our observations, explicate our shorthand field notes, and discuss/debate what
transpired in class.
Contexts
Case Study 1. Civilization III in a High School Humanities Enrichment Class
In the first case, I created and enacted a world history unit using Civilization III
during a six-week (three times per week, 45 minutes per class) period in a high school
classroom at a Media and Technology Charter School designed to cater to inner-city
Boston youth. Eighteen students participated in the study. Participants played Civilization
III as a part of an interdisciplinary course on the study of human cultures. Students also
read supplementary articles, discussed issues in class, consulted maps, globes, and
timelines, and presented what they learned about social studies through playing the game
to their peers. The school does not specifically teach world cultures or world geography,
instead folding social studies into humanities and technology courses.
This site was selected because the school regularly uses emerging media in
instruction and is committed to using project-based learning approaches where
appropriate. Although I was not informed of this until mid-way through the unit, the class
was comprised entirely of students who had failed ninth grade the previous year and were
being held back for a year before advancing to tenth grade. Roughly 75% of the students
were African-American, 15% were Latino, and 10% were of European descent.
The unit was designed in collaboration with partnering teachers. Initially, we
planned to have students develop research questions that they would collaboratively
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answer in groups of 1-3 students. The original unit plan also included a number of
reading and discussion activities. However, most of these design features were
abandoned early in the unit. The complexity of Civilization III and a host of other factors
(detailed in Chapter IV) caused us to abandon this approach early on.
Case Study II. Civilization III in a Summer Media Studies Camp
In the second case, I created an after-school camp program for students in the
Media School (Case I) who enjoyed playing Civilization III and wanted to continue
playing into the summer. Although not formally tied to the instruction during the school
year, most students in the school attended a summer camp of some form, all of which
involved media of some form, ranging from recording songs to photography. Our camp
focused on having students investigate the potentials of Civilization III for learning
history. The one-week camp met every day for 3.5 hours each day. Five students, all from
Case I, attended. The students’ final deliverable was to deliver a ten-minute presentation
to their peers about what they learned about history through the game. Students in other
camps made similar presentations.
Case Study III. Civilization in an After-School Computer Club
In the third case study, I again created and enacted a world history unit using
Civilization III during a five-week period in a Boston-area YWCA after- school
“enrichment class” that served a multi-ethnic working class community in suburban
Boston. Twelve students volunteered to participate in the unit with the understanding that
they would be playing an educational game that would help them become more familiar
with technology, although only nine students attended regularly. Consistent with previous
research in informal learning environments (Nicolopoulou & Cole, 1993), this after-
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school community of Civilization III players was designed with the expressed purpose of
supporting "constructive play" rather than rigorous academic activity. The class was quite
diverse; there were African-American, Haitian-American, Chinese-American, Latino,
Creole, and a variety of European-descent students in the class. One third of the students
were from European-American households, one third were bilingual, and most students
identified themselves as belonging to several ethnic groups.
This site was chosen both as a convenience sample and because after school
centers provide unique opportunities for studying the intersection between game playing
and learning in an informal context. Informal contexts are important since, in such
settings, experimental pedagogical techniques can be employed with less pressure to
conform to state or national content standards as well or local constraints (Nicolopoulou
& Cole, 1993). Detailed information on how this case developed is included in the Case
III (see Chapter VI).
Rather than describe each curricular unit as it was initially designed, I treat the
activities that emerged as historical phenomena, something that is not determined a priori
and can only be understood through enactment (See also Squire, et al., 2003). In order to
shed light on what emerged in each setting, I next describe the properties and affordances
of Civilization III itself, which obviously provided the fulcrum about which student and
teacher (inter)action centered at each site. This description and analysis is intended to
provide a backdrop against which the emergent classroom practices at each location (as
described subsequently in each case study) might be understood.
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Civilization III: A Tool for Remediating Understandings in World History
The Civilization series was invented and designed by Sid Meier, who is frequently
credited as a founding father of computer strategy gaming. Sid Meier's Civilization (the
game’s full name) was designed with Bruce Shelley and first released in 1991 by
MicroProse Software. Civilization builds on the appeal of historical empire building in
his earlier Railroad Tycoon, but takes on a much broader time scale, attempting to
simulate the growth of a civilization over its entire 6000-year history. Civilization and
the sequel, Civilization II (1996) are both widely considered as two of the most
compelling and significant games ever produced. The third installment in the Civilization
series, Civilization III, was released in October of 2001 and has also been met with
critical praise and strong sales figures.
Developed by Firaxis and published by Infogrames, Civilization III is a turn-based
strategy game where the player commands a civilization over the course of its 6000 year
history, managing its natural resources, finances and trade, scientific research, cultural
orientation, political policies and military. Significantly, the Civilization series gives the
player control over a band of people for its entire civilized history, placing her in the role
of a supreme leader for which there is no historical analog. As such, Civilization, on the
one hand, enables the player to ask and pursue tantalizing historical trajectories across
broad time-scales, while, on the other, risks producing and fostering misconceptions
about politics or history. The original Civilization manual introduces the game in the
following terms:
Civilization casts you in the role of the ruler of an entire civilization through many
generations, from the founding of the world's first cities 6,000 years in the past to the
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imminent colonization of space. It combines the forces that shaped history and the
evolution of technology in a competitive environment … If you prove an able ruler,
your civilization grows larger and even more interesting to manage. Inevitable contact
with neighbors opens new doors of opportunity: treaties, embassies, sabotage, trade
and war” (Shelley, 1991, p. 7, quoted in Friedman, 1999, p. X).
Although some educators have argued that Civilization might be an interesting
tool for studying social studies, the game was originally designed as an entertainment
product and has yet to be studied seriously as an educational resource. Friedman’s (1999)
study of Civilization is the most serious academic consideration of the game to date. In it,
he argues that much of the allure of Civilization comes from the player mastering the
rules that define the game. Insomuch as the rules embodied in the simulation reflect
accurate models of social phenomena, it would seem that even casual players can develop
understandings of the game world that have analogs to phenomena in the real world.
Unfortunately, however, there have been no studies examining this, let alone the
suitability of such a game for use in educational settings.
Game Play
The game play behind the Civilization series is notoriously complex; Civilization
III ships with a 231-page manual. A single game can take over twenty hours, and an
expert player can easily log thousands of hours of game play. The game play is robust
enough to support multiple strategies, and players approach the game quite differently
according to their own idiosyncratic values and tastes. For example, some players prefer
to dominate the world through a powerful military, others prefer to build strong
economies, technological superiority, or a strong intelligence, while others simply build
dominant cultures in order to colonize others. There are numerous different strategies a
player might adopt to win the game, and most players enjoy experimenting with different
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approaches. Civilization III is designed for such divergence, including at least six
different win conditions: (a) conquering all rivals, (b) constructing a spaceship and
successfully colonizing Alpha Centauri, (c) dominating the world through controlling a
vast majority of the planet’s land, population, and resources, (d) controlling the United
Nations and being voted the victor, (e) culturally dominating the world through cultural
hegemony, and finally (f) achieving the highest score if no other win conditions are met.
The player loses the game if her civilization is wiped out through military force or
another civilization attains a win condition.
Most of the game play involves planning the geographic growth and evolution of
the civilization; securing, developing and exploiting natural resources; building and
maintaining military forces; waging war; conducting trade and political negotiations;
budgeting; directing scientific efforts; choosing an appropriate type of government;
maintaining civic happiness; and, perhaps most importantly, managing each cities’
production. For each turn, the player must decide whether to focus production on
building military forces, creating workers or settlers that can help develop the
civilization, implementing civic improvements (e.g., libraries, factories, banks, or
cathedrals), or even developing one of the Great Wonders of the World, (e.g., The
Pyramids or Darwin’s Voyage). Each structure so produced has a resulting effect on the
“performance” of the civilization, modifying the civilization’s food, economic, scientific,
industrial, or cultural production. In addition, players also manage armies that can be
used to explore uncharted territories, to defend against attacking civilizations, or to attack
other civilizations. Finally, players can use settlers, workers, and engineers to irrigate
fields, build roads, clear forests, build railroads, or construct fortresses. Thus, in
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Civilization, by controlling the food production, natural resource gathering and
production, taxation, cultural production, economic policies, military policies, domestic
priorities, and foreign policies of an entire civilization from the year 4000 BC to the
present, player learn about the fundamental yet complex conditions under which
civilizations endure.
Starting the Game
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The player begins the game in an unknown corner of the globe. For the purposes
of this study, all players use maps based on the Miller projection of Earth, although
players can choose to use maps of fictitious planets in regular game play. The player must
first choose where to build a city (See Figure 3.1), forcing the skilled player to consider
several variables contributing to the strategic geographical location of a city, including
relative access to food sources, potential for exploiting natural resources, access to
navigable waterways, and strategic land barriers. The player also begins the game with a
basic worker unit who can irrigate fields, build roads, or explore new territories.
Figure 3.1: The beginning of the game.
Once the player has established a city, she begins to manage her civilization’s
natural resources, which are abstracted into four primary game economies: food, natural
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resource production (shields), trade, and culture. Each one is an abstraction of several
"real-world" production processes that vary across geography and time: Food production
includes fishing, subsistence farming, hunting, herding, and the domestication of animals
for food. Production (shields) includes both the production and refinement of goods.
Trade refers to the generation of all goods or services that can be traded for profit which
the player may then allocate toward gold (hard currency), knowledge (scientific
discovery), or luxuries (See Figure 3.2). Finally, and perhaps most controversially,
Civilization III (unlike earlier Civilization games) attempts to model "cultural growth and
production by assigning value to cultural institutions, such as libraries, schools, churches,
or works of art. Much of the game play involves balancing cities’ production so that each
of these functions (population growth, production capacity, financial solvency, scientific
discovery, citizen happiness, and cultural growth) are met, enabling the civilization to be
competitive with other civilizations. In Civilization III, more than its predecessors, no one
civilization can dominate the game along all axes simultaneously. Rather, civilizations
depend on one another for strategic and luxury resources, for trading scientific
discoveries, and occasionally even for financial support. Negotiations and trade are
critical components of game play (See Figure 3.3)
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Figure 3.3.Negotiation Screen
Once the player has built her first city, discovered one or two technological
advancements, developed one or two military units, and possibly built a city
improvement such as a temple, she might build a second. As the game continues, other
complex variables come into play: Players must control political corruption, interact with
other civilizations (played by the computer), secure strategic resources (such as
aluminum, uranium, or oil), and even monitor global warming. These many factors create
conditions under which no two games are exactly alike.
Modifying Civilization III for Classroom Use
Working from a world map developed by the game community at Apolyton.net, I
created a unique game scenario for this unit. My goal was to design a scenario that would
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be an idea model for examining world history. As such it had to help students gain
insights about social phenomena while also being usable within a learning context
(Colella, Klopfer, & Resnick, 2001). My goal was not necessarily to construct a model
accurate enough to predict historical events but rather one that would elucidate important
social studies concepts. The main changes I made to the game design as shipped,
therefore, included (a) substituting historically non-plausible civilizations for plausible
ones (e.g. taking out the Americans and adding the Incans), (b) adding groups that the
students would want to play (the Bantu4), (c) adjusting geographic bonus resources to
more accurately reflect the technical and cultural advantages of particular civilizations
and regions (e.g. giving the fertile crescent added food bonuses), (d) disadvantaging
civilizations that were less developed as of 4000 BC (e.g. removing technologies from
the Aborigines), (e) reducing randomness in combat, and (f) making the game more
playable for novices (enhancing technological discovery rates, and giving additional
starting bonuses). I used Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel for much of this intellectual
work – for example, determining which peoples were poised to potentially invent
agriculture at 4000 BC. In order to balance the game for novices, I read through posts
about developing game modifications at Civilization III at apolyton.net and spent
approximately 40 hours, play testing various modifications, including trial runs on the
school’s Pentium II 300 machines (64 MB RAM). Finally, working with the MEDIA
School technology coordinator Norm Eng, I installed Civilization III and its
4
Deciding how to deal with African civilizations was particularly difficult. The Bantu are a large language group
extending across sub-Saharan Africa. Few historians or archeologists would argue that the Bantu are a unified group in
any way, or that any of Bantu-speaking settlements were positioned to begin building cities by 4000 BC. The most
logical candidate for a sub-Saharan African civilization probably would have been located in Mali or Ghana (Seed,
personal communication). However, archeologists find new signs of ancient sub-Saharan African civilizations
regularly, and it is theoretically possible that a Bantu-speaking civilization existed in a sub-Saharan African river valley.
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accompanying patches on the school machines, loaded my modifications, and debugged
the installation, which took approximately ten hours because of the school’s network
controls.
Civilization III as an Historical Simulation Tool
Although Civilization was designed as an entertainment game, the historical,
geographic, and political simulation elements of Civilization III make it an intriguing
educational resource. Success in the game demands that players "master" geography
through such strategies as focusing food production in agriculturally advantageous areas,
using physical boundaries as natural borders, and securing natural resources. Players
confront political dilemmas such as whether to pursue isolationist politics, enter complex
alliances for protection, or gain precious resources through military force (which may
also mean waging war to protect an ally). Finally, players can view how their history
grows and evolves over time, exploiting the visualization tools included in the game (i.e.,
maps, charts, and graphs) to view how their civilization grows culturally, geographically,
scientifically, and politically. In this section, I explore the pedagogical possibilities of
Civilization III as a tool for studying world history. How the game is actually used by
students in classroom settings, given the paucity of research in this area, is difficult to
predict (and, indeed, the point of this study); therefore, the following discussion outlines
the potentials of using Civilization III for learning rather than offering some definitive
argument for its usefulness.
There is no “one” way to win Civilization, which makes game play an open-ended
task that leads to divergent outcomes. One player may attempt to win the game through
military domination, building a strong economy and strong military; another may be very
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peaceful and attempt to win primarily through political ends. From an educational
standpoint, this open-endedness is interesting because it may dissuade players from
competing against one another. After all, different players with different tastes will set
different constraints for themselves and therefore will (purposefully or not) use the game
to explore different ideas (e.g., trying to win the game without waging war). That people
play Civilization III differently creates opportunities for educators to use contrasting
gaming experiences as the basis for critical reflections and debriefing, enabling players to
analyze not only what strategies work in the game and why but also for what ends.
The critical reader may question the notion of using a simulation to study world
history, when very few historians engage in this kind of enterprise. 5 In the physical
sciences, models and simulations have long been used as a part of inquiry. The idea of
observing some phenomenon, building a mathematical model to represent important
aspects of it, and then testing it against reality is centuries old in the physical sciences;
physicists and astronomers have been building mathematic representations of systems at
least as long ago as Copernicus and Newton.6 More recently, Wolfram (2002) has argued
that the digital affordances of computers are revolutionizing science so that scientific
inquiry can be thought of as a process of observing phenomena, defining rules, and
building and testing models rather than one of defining and testing hypotheses through
controlled experiments. Charles Sanders Peirce (1878/1986) refers to this recursive
process of observation, model generation, and evaluation of the predictive capacity of the
5
A noteworthy exception to this pattern is world historian Pat Seed, who teaches a course at Rice University on
Spanish and Portuguese Colonization as depicted through computer games. I am indebted to Pat for her intellectual
guidance.
6
Although one might not be accustomed to thinking of mathematical and paper-based models as simulation systems,
the abductive process of observing physical systems, building mathematical formula to account for those observations,
and then testing the formula against other observations is essentially the same as computer-based modeling processes.
See Peirce (1878/1986) for an excellent description of this inquiry process.
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model as abductive inquiry. Such abductive inquiry, uncommon in history, is more
commonly employed in political science, economics, and increasingly, anthropology
(Edmonds & Hales, n.d.; Wolfram, 2002).
As opposed to textbooks, which contain one state-sanctioned narrative,
Civilization III is an open-ended sandbox, a possibility space wherein players can explore
and actualize any one of several different narrative outcomes. To be sure, Civilization III
is a rule-bounded space that represents physical, social and cultural systems in very
specific ways. For example, Flood plains produce 150% more food than grasslands;
grasslands produce 200% more food than hills. Democracies have less corruption and
produce more efficient workers than monarchies. Listing the number of rules and
relationships encoded into Civilization III is beyond the scope of this dissertation, let
alone this chapter.
Emergent Properties of the Game System
Using Civilization III as a simulation tool changes the method of studying history
from one of memorizing facts and mastering sanctioned narratives to one of defining the
terms and rules of the system (either similar to or contradictory with those thought to
describe events in real life) and then exploring its emergent properties. One of the more
intriguing aspects of Civilization III as a learning tool is that no two games are alike.
Early decisions in the game might have important ramifications hundreds of game years
later. The specific trajectory of events comprising any one game may have no analog in
real life history; however, the rules binding the game – the core variables included in the
model, the interrelationships among political, economic, and geography systems – allow
players to gain insights into each of these areas and therefore the unfolding of history
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itself. On the other hand, sometimes players’ games do simulate actual historical events
(and as reported in Case VI, such as the barbarian ransacking of China (as well as
Europe) in the first millennium AD, the building of the silk road in China, French
colonization of Canada, or the relatively late discovery of Aborginal Australia.
Regardless, the interplay of underlying causal variables (rules) within the game reveal
important aspects of how history “gets made.” In the next section, I explore Civilization
III as an historical possibility space, highlighting several properties of the game that merit
deeper consideration. I follow with an exploration of the implications of using such a tool
in social studies education.
Problems with Civilization III as a Learning Tool in History (and a Few Solutions)
Because Civilization III is intended to be an entertainment product, it is designed
to support good game play rather than good historical simulation. For example, if a
player builds the Pyramids, she receives a free granary in every city. There simply is no
real historical analogy. Native populations (called “Barbarians” in the game) are dealt
with questionably as well, presented overwhelmingly as warring tribes with no real
“culture” to speak of. At the same time, however, other cultures that one might consider
native (e.g. Aztecs, Iriquois, or Zulus) are treated as “real” cultures. Notably, Civilization
III also attempts to operationalize cultural influence as a game mechanic, giving players’
points for creating institutions that add to a culture’s influence. As Barkin (2002) points
out, this notion of culture is theoretically problematic as it combines French definitions of
culture (as in “to become cultured”) with traditionally German definitions of culture (as
collective ways of being).
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Characterizing and operationalizing each civilization is also potentially
problematic. Distinguishing features of civilizations are distilled down into relatively
simple game mechanics. For example, Americans receive industrial and expansion
bonuses, including special fighter jets – and each civilization begins with roughly the
same resources at roughly the same time (6000 BC). Obviously, “America” was utterly
meaningless as a concept until 5600 years later, in at least the late 16th century. Less
obviously, it was also well into the 17-18th centuries before a notion of a “France” or a
“Germany” developed. In response to these conditions, I modified the starting
civilizations to only include the Incas, Iroquois, Aztecs, Egyptians, Bantu, Persians,
Carthaginians, Oceanic peoples, the Chinese, Russians, Indians, Japanese, Babylonians,
Celts, Saxons, and Goths. I intentionally included civilizations historically thought of as
Barbarians (such as the Celts and the Goths) in order to help counter misconceptions
about such tribes as well as to raise the question, “What does it mean to be ‘civilized’ and
what does it mean to be ‘barbaric’?”
Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1999) persuasively argues for the
importance of food packages7, particularly agricultural, in giving rise to specializations in
the division of labor, the creation, collection, and trade of goods, population densities,
and, ultimately, the growth of civilization. Diamond analyzes how agriculture emerged
through the careful cultivation of crops that are suitable for domestication, the nutritional
value of various crop packages, the native animals available for domestication,
differences in local climate’s capacity for supporting agriculture, and the comparative
advantage or disadvantage of other hunting options. To aggregate these many factors into
7
Food packages are combinations of foodstuffs. Diamond uses this concept to compare civilizations that continued and
abandoned hunter-gathering lifestyles.
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one variable, the “food production of land” as Civilization III does, glosses over many
important local conditions and technological discoveries that gave rise to agriculture.
However, by beginning the game at the onset of agriculture and assuming that all
civilizations began at 4000 BC, the game avoids the problem rather than addressing it. In
Civilization III, one simply assumes that each civilization created a food package that
meets its nutritional needs and therefore only accounts for advantages or disadvantages
from civilization to civilization by assigning those in especially fertile areas extra food
production bonuses. While nothing is inherently inaccurate in such a depiction of
agriculture, the black-boxing of so many variables into the simple notion of “agriculture”
or “geographical production bonuses” may be misleading.
Moreover, while most texts agree that agriculture emerged at between 10,000 BC
and 13,000 BC, Civilization III begins at 4000 BC and presumes adequate agricultural
production within each civilization by this time. To compensate for the “headstart” of
civilizations such as the Egyptians or the Phoenicians, who formed into civilizations
relatively early, I gave those civilizations bonus workers and settlers. In addition, I
awarded river valleys where such agricultural technologies originated extra crop bonuses.
I also adapted the map so that horses and cattle can only be found in historically
appropriate areas cotton is also represented as a natural resource. Many critics have noted
that sheep, an historically important livestock, are not included in the game.
Unfortunately, I have yet to make any modifications in the game to rectify this
inaccuracy at this time.
One of the more interesting intellectual problems with Civilization III is that,
because the game includes an historically accurate model of how civilization advances
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occurred, every game is tied to the same set of technological advancements. Restated,
technological advancements are linear and predetermined. Although no two games are
alike, particular discoveries – such as the wheel, monarchy, or horseback riding – are
present in every game, always in the predetermined sequence, and always, therefore,
shaping each civilization’s simulated evolution over time. On the one hand, some (for
example, Diamond) argue that the affordances of some inventions (particularly the
wheel) are so apparent and so reproduced across multiple civilizations in time that they
ought to be treated as at least highly probably if not inevitable. Other improvements, such
as communism or atomic theory, may seem less so. Others have argued (e.g. Barkin,
2002) that there may have been other hypothetical paths not taken: For example, imagine
that a Native American civilization remained the dominant culture occupying North
America. Under such circumstances, there could easily be different technological forms
developed and distributed globally. Such questions are not problematic; rather, they are
central questions within the domain and suggest the very reason that Civilization III is an
intriguing historical resource. Playing Civilization III tends to recruit deep, intellectually
valuable ways of thinking about world history and to produce the kind of social structures
that nurture and sustain such discourse.
Finally, there are several minor simulation biases that can be raised about the
game. For example, some game fans believe that the historical importance of tin is
overlooked, or that militiamen are not given adequate fire-power. Other long-standing
debates hinge on whether or not it is theoretical possibility for primitive battle units to
defeat technologically advanced ones. For example, it is inevitable that at some point in a
game an ancient war unit, such as a group of axe-wielding warriors, defeats a modern
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military unit, such as a battleship. Critics chastise the game for such moments,
considering them inherent limitations to the historical simulation; Meier and others, on
the other hand, argue that such improbable events can and do, in fact, occur (as in
Afghanistan) through superior execution of strategy, equipment malfunction, or
sometimes, just luck. I argue that such simulation errors present fruitful learning
opportunities for students. A primary goal of using a game like Civilization III is to
engage students in critique and deconstruction of the game. Moments of failure or
surprise can become “teachable moments” that encourage students to critically reflect on
how history is written, recorded, and modeled. Encouraging students to critically evaluate
the simulation’s design and assumptions in this way is, for example, one of the primary
goals of the instructional unit used in this study.
Building a World History Curriculum for Civilization III ***
A driving question behind this dissertation is what role might a game such as
Civilization III play in a world history classroom and what instructional strategies are
useful in supporting learning through game play with a game such as Civilization III.
Although no real research exists on how games might be appropriated within school
contexts, findings from other similar approaches (e.g. VR modeling and simulation,
Barnett, Barab, & Hay, 2001) suggests that how the software is used, specifically how it
supports and affords students’ inquiry and is simultaneously appropriated by local
cultures needs to be studied (Squire et al., 2003). Consistent with this theoretical
approach, I examine game play (and education) as cultural historical practice, and I am
reluctant to suggest a “instructional design theory” in the abstract before examining how
it is appropriated in several contexts. Thus, a central commitment to this research is that it
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is far more useful to build such an emerging pedagogy based on empirical studies of the
software in actual use than to design instructional programs and theories a priori.
Having said that, that viewing learning as a socio-cultural enterprise in the
tradition of Vygotsky and through the lens of activity theory (and informed by existing
educational research) suggests certain instructional approaches over others. Although I
had no set instructional design in mind, and in fact consistent with collaborative models
of curriculum development strove to design materials, activities, and unit plans in
collaboration with teachers. How these attempts at collaboration unfolded is detailed in
each case; in the following section, I describe my initial best guess at what might make
an effective game-based learning unit (See Table 3.2). In the conclusions, I will compare
the findings from the case studies against this framework.
Days
1-3
Game Play
Set up the game, do tutorials
4-8
Play on realistic maps
Activities
Read and discuss
information
Generate questions
9-12
Purposeful game play
Research, create maps, timelines
13-16
Recursive play
17-18
background
Examine outcome of simulations,
compare
to
history,
create
presentations
Finish games
Discuss presentations, aggregate
findings across games
Table 3.2 Suggested Curricular Outline for Civilization III
Days 1-3: Setting up the game as a problem space, learning the game tutorial. In
the first week of activities, students’ game play will focus on learning to play the game.
They will start by doing the tutorial (with simpler maps and scenarios), then, by the end
of this period, move on to custom-made maps (which are more complex). This game play
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would be augmented through readings on ancient civilizations which provides additional
background information, seeds students with questions for further research, and
foregrounds issues they will wrestle with (See Appendix F). These readings could be
used as homework, introductory exercises, back-up lessons in case computers fail, or as
activities during downtime. Given the engaging nature of Civilization III, it is not
unreasonable to expect a few students to even seek out information on their own in
encyclopedias or through the web in order to augment their game play (i.e. learn where
civilizations grow the quickest). The focus of these first few days will really be learning
to play the game, and the teacher will be largely consumed with structuring activities (i.e.
the tutorial) to help students learn the game and then by answering questions.
Days 4-8. Game Play and Question Generation. By day four, students should be
confident with the basic controls and will be ready to use Civilization III as a tool for
inquiry into world history. Students should be familiar enough with game concepts to
begin using a full, realistic map and game scenarios (which are more complex than the
tutorial). I expect that Civilization III will still be opaque to some, and the game’s
complexity overwhelming, so these first few days will also include plenty of time for
students to explore the game interface and concepts, perhaps using the Civilopedia.
I expect that students will have many questions about the game and history. I
hope to encourage and capitalize on this curiosity by encouraging students to ask
questions which can become the seeds for their research projects. I will lead structured
question-asking activities which should draw out students’ questions, facilitate
knowledge sharing, and scaffold their inquiry process. Specifically, I will distribute note
pads, encouraging students to write down questions about the game and about history.
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Using butcher paper, we will compare and organize and students’ questions. My hope is
that this question-generation process will encourage a culture of inquiry and pique their
curiosity in specific historic events or concepts. As a class, we will discuss these
questions, suggesting how they might be studied and which ones captivate students’
interest. If authentic question-asking is at the heart of any meaningful inquiry-based
learning project (Barnett, et al. 2000), then a crucial function of this component of the
unit is to encourage students to ask questions that are generative, that lead to deep
questions central to the study of world history that are also meaningful to them.
Engendering such a culture of inquiry and question-asking is notoriously difficult;
however, my hope is that Civilization III might serve as a vehicle for supporting
question-asking.
Days 9-12. Purposeful Game Play and Research. By Days 9-12, student should
be comfortable with the game controls and concepts, begun to create and identify goals in
the game (and strategies for achieving those goals) and beginning to make connections
their game play and existing knowledge of history. For example, a student playing as the
Iroquois might note that he or she is more isolated than those students playing in the
Middle East. Some students may have reached as far as 1000 AD, and having started over
the game a few times (which is common practice), perhaps is developing a broad sense of
historical timescales, particularly in regards to Great Wonders or technological
improvements. Between Days 9-12, I imagine students creating maps and timelines of
their games and comparing them to world history charts. For example, a player playing as
the Iroquois might be surprised that his civilization has grown quite large, and decides to
create a map of his civilization, and then compare it to historical maps and figures. Or, a
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student interested in technology might make a timeline of technological discoveries,
comparing the years that technologies were discovered in his game with the actual dates
in history. I envision students using the Internet for much of this research, but particularly
Hyper History Online (http://www.hyperhistory.org), a website with over 2000 files
(including maps, charts, and timelines) on world history. These tasks should flow
organically from students’ questions about the games (i.e. a question about discovering
technologies more quickly might lead to questions about which civilizations discovered
which technologies). I envision some class time being devoted to working on these
projects, although they seem best fit for homework assignments.
Days 13-16. Recursive Game Play, Simulated History, and Creating
Presentations. By the fourth and fifth weeks, students should have a mastery over the
basic game concepts and already begun using the game as a springboard for studying
history through generating questions and comparing their game play to history. Now, I
imagine students beginning to play recursively, that is failing in the game, generating
hypotheses about the game system (and possibly history) and then restarting their games
under new conditions to test these theories. I envision my role as that of helping students
articulate how their theories about the game that they are exploring (e.g. it is easier to
play in the Middle East) may reflect underlying theories of world history (i.e. playing the
game in order to achieve technological victory may be easier in locations geographically
conducive to trade). A challenge during this phase will be to help students play the game
on two levels: to at one time become involved in their game play and at the same time
thinking about history more broadly.
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One way that I hope to structure students’ activities so that they engage in
historical thinking is by requiring them to make a 7 minute presentation at the end of the
course addressing one of the questions that they identified earlier in the unit. Sample
projects might be the role of the Nile in Egyptian history, the historical importance of the
silk road in China, or disease and population growth in the Americas. My hope is that
students would not just look up information in books or charts, but that they would use
their games as simulations to explore these ideas, recursively asking questions to the
game system, examining historical data, and then eventually forming historical
arguments. This kind of historical thinking, historical thinking in terms of arguments
bolstered by simulations and multi-media owes some intellectual debt to Wineburg
(2000) as well as “hypothetical history” as an emerging mode of inquiry (c.f. Cowley,
1999), but is also quite unique and hitherto unexplored in relation to games and as a
pedagogical model.
Days 17-18: Discussion within Communities of Inquiry. As students create their
presentations, I hope to create a community of inquiry whereby students ask questions,
share information and present work to their peers. Time and space allowing, I would like
to gather students who played as the game civilization (i.e. the Iroquois or Egypt) and
have them create an artifact (posterboard or presentation) about their civilization. My
goal would be to have students reconcile their experience of their civilization with other
students’, creating an artifact that spans each of their games. Students will analyze one
another’s games, exchange theories of history, and negotiate meanings. Consistent with a
pragmatic approach, the goal of these activities will be to have students articulate
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understandings, negotiate meanings, and expose their ideas to others’ within a
community of inquiry.
Summary. This section suggests one possible pedagogical model for using
Civilization III in world history classrooms. Central to my approach (and my philosophy
of education in general) is that the key to producing meaningful learning is to engender a
community of inquiry whereby students ask personally meaningful questions, guided by
teachers and other students. As described in Chapter II, I ascribe to a socio-cultural view
of learning, taking learning as social practice and learning can very much be thought of as
a process of enculturation. The pedagogical model suggested here is rooted in this sociocultural approach to learning and pulls from several other complimentary pedagogical
approaches, including modeling-based constructionism (e.g. Barnett, Barab, & Hay,
2001), knowledge building communities (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994), goal-based
scenarios (1994), and project-based learning (Barron et al, 1998). Central to the project is
the notion that bringing commercial games into classrooms may create unanticipated
consequences and result in the need for very particular instructional approaches, although
a good deal can be learned by building on existing understandings from the learning
sciences (Squire, 2002). The next section explains my approach to collecting data in
order to investigate these issues.
Data Collection
Within a design experiment framework, I use a combination of naturalistic,
qualitative methods to address the research questions listed above. Drawing from Stake’s
case study methodology (1995), I develop narrative descriptions of each case in order to
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give the reader a sense of how events at each site unfolded, particularly what factors went
into any design changes made. Consistent with Cobb et al. (2003), I present the case in
terms of turns in classroom practice with each case chunked by shifting classroom
dynamics.
Stake’s case study technique is particularly useful in studies exploring contexts
such as the ones investigated in here, where the very circumstances in which the research
is conducted are unstable: Which students are in class on any given day is unpredictable
and the extent to which those who do attend are willing to participate in the research (and
in what ways) must be tacitly negotiated throughout each and every class period. Entering
such an environment with a detailed and inflexible agenda and pedagogical design would
be unwise. Not only would you alienate (if not lose entirely) most of your voluntary
participants but you would also overlook emergent needs, patterns, activities, behaviors,
and issues within the very context and activity structure you had hoped to understand.
Stake’s case study methodology is most suitable in such contexts because it is responsive
to emergent findings, emphasizing the importance of not over-prescribing data collection
and research procedures but rather allowing data collection to follow emerging themes
(cf. Stake, 2003). He writes,
“Initial research questions may be modified, or even replaced in mid-study
by the case researcher. The aim is to thoroughly understand [the case]. If
early questions are not working, if new issues become apparent, the design
is changed. Malcolm Parlett and David Hamilton (1976) called it
progressive focusing.” (Stake, 1995, p. 9)
Through progressive focusing – changing a design in ways responsive to emergent
findings – researchers are particularly apt to catch the unintended (and not just intended)
consequences of an educational intervention. Stake writes, “the real business of the case
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study is particularization, not generalization” (1995, p.8). For him, the purpose of case
research is interpretation of the local, followed by development (when necessary) and
application of research methods and techniques that are in response to the needs of the
case.
In the work presented here, I take a fairly moderate stance on researcher
intervention and interpretation. On the one hand, as an educator and not just a researcher
in each setting, I felt obligated to modify and, at times, even remove wholesale various
elements or aspects of the instructional activities when and where it seemed in the
students’ best interest. In order for my instructional design to be responsive to local
needs in this way, I had to act as interpreter within the field. On the other hand, whereas
Stake’s methodology relies heavily on the continuous interpretation of the researcher in
situ, I attempted to minimize my role as interpreter while in the field in order to protect
the integrity of the original data. Generally, my more moderate solution was to structure
on-site field notes around straight observations and then, after triangulating and
supplementing our observations among the teacher(s), the hired researcher, and myself, to
then use these observations to generate cases (cf. ethnomethodological approach,
Silverman, 1993). Each primary case document – including unmitigated observations,
interviews, and student artifacts – then became the basis on which any inferences were
made. Because case documents were compiled after each day on site, I was able to use
the observations as the basis for making pedagogical decisions. Inferences beyond that –
ones which bore on the research questions themselves – were made during the data
analysis phase subsequent to data collection (see the Data Analysis section below). A
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description of the specific observation, interview, and student artifact collection methods
follows.
Consistent with Stake’s (1995) case study approach to data collection and
reporting, I use observations, interviews, and document analysis. Stake (like many
qualitative researchers) argues that researchers should use multiple data sources to
generate more trustworthy and credible data. This process, frequently called triangulation
(Denzin, 1989), thereby increases the degree of validity of the assertions generated by the
research, as the researcher builds arguments based on less “contestable data” (Stake,
1995). A description of these specific method and the inter-relationships among them
follows.
Observations
Because I played an active role as a participant-observer in each environment, I
ran risks of both becoming vested in the project and missing important interactions
occurring away from me. In order to ameliorate this potential source of bias, I employed
a trained researcher to attend each class, take field notes, and discuss emerging findings
between and after sessions. My original intention was to have the second researcher
videotape the classes; however, such data collection became unfeasible as students
resisted the intrusion (as in the Media case) or participant consent could not be secured
(as in the YWCA case).
Data collection focused on two objectives: 1) Capturing students’ game play
activities, including what year they were in, what civilization they were playing as, and,
crucially, what game practices they engaged in, and 2) capturing social interactions,
including the content of the talk among participants, the character of the social
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interactions surrounding the game play, how knowledge was shared among them, what
meanings became taken-as-shared with in groups of players, instances when players use
Civilization III to discuss understandings of other social phenomena (and instances when
they didn’t), and occasions when cooperative or competitive play emerge.
Both researchers adopted an active stance as educators in the classroom, choosing
to probe students’ understandings with questions and observations. We made regular use
of informal interviews to query and clarify observations and learn more about players’
own understandings of their activities and context. Such regular participation as
facilitators/instructors in student’s activities “risks” engaging players in reflective
activities known to promote learning and therefore seriously compromising the
generalizability of any findings. However, given the exploratory nature of this research
and the double role we ended up needing to play, I chose to err on the side of the
students’ benefit and simply be diligent and systematic in recording our participation in
student activities so that, in later generating inferences and conclusions, I might be able to
at least partially disentangle the effects of our presence from the shape and trajectory of
the naturally occurring activities overall. I then purposely wrote the cases in a manner
that might allow readers to accomplish such disentanglements when and where I was
unable, making explicit note of when and how we intervened in activities and shaped
students interactions with each other and/or the game.
Interviews
Students were interviewed throughout the study in order to probe researcher
observations and hypotheses and to gain participants’ views in order to triangulate their
interpretations against our own. Both researchers asked frequent formal and informal
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questions to students, often eliciting explanations of students’ actions – both what they
were doing and why. In addition to frequent informal interviews, nine participants from
the Media case(s) and four students from the YWCA case were given semi-structured
interviews following the unit that included performance tasks. We queried interviewees
about their attitudes toward social studies and probed their conceptual understanding of
social studies phenomena, using both discussion and performance tasks dealing with
historical timescales, maps and texts (see Appendix D for the interview protocol). We
also gave students dynamic assessments (Brown, 1992), including novel historical,
geographical, and political scenarios in order to understand their thinking on related
topics that they had not yet encountered. All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed.
Whereas researchers coming from objectivist epistemologies might treat
interviews as socially neutral, I view these interviews as social discourse – co-constructed
dialogues between researcher and participant. This social perspective acknowledges that
both parties have profound impact on how an interview unfolds as both shape responses
and adapt to one another based on gestures, intonations, and language in a struggle to
develop and maintain intersubjectivity. Thus, I did not hold back from nodding or
commenting on students’ responses, although I did try to avoid leading them toward
specific answers. Aware of the possibility that students may try to please (or resist) me, I
framed the interviews as opportunities for students to help me understand what they
learned (or didn’t) through playing the game. The interviews were not constructed as tests
or assessment situations, and students did not seem to approach them as such.
Student Artifacts
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Each day, I collected students’ log sheets (See Appendix C) and inscriptions
created in support of their game play. On most days in the unit, participants wrote a short
description of what happened that day in a journal, noting in particular any major game
decisions they had made. We tried a variety of activities in each case, ranging from
student timed-writings to having students submit questions on post-it notes in order to
support learning. The relative success of these activities are detailed in the cases;
regardless of their pedagogical success, however, they did generate documents that were
particularly useful for triangulating researcher/teacher observations and students’ actual
goals and activities.
Data Analysis
For each case, observations, transcribed interviews, and student artifacts were
combined into a primary case document. In this way, I use multiple data sources for each
case as a way to generate more trustworthy and credible data. Information gleaned from
one source was checked against and used to supplement other sources – a process
frequently called triangulation (Denzin, 1989) – in order to increase the degree of validity
of the assertions generated. First, I translated each primary case document, roughly 300
pages on average, into a coherent narrative flow of events by combining chronologically
relevant data from multiple sources together and removing redundancy. Working through
several iterations, I then reduced the text by removing extraneous or theoretically
uninteresting occurrences 8 – what Stake (1995) calls winnowing and sifting the data.
The text that was removed largely consisted of descriptions of failure or factual reports of students’ blow-by-blow
progress in the game such as what they built or what technologies they were discovering.
8
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Incongruent text which did not match my study objects were noted and included in the
case for the reader to examine.
I kept these reduced primary case documents in narrative form, consistent with an
historical-cultural approach, in order to report, in a contextualized fashion, what practices
emerged and how learning occurred within the environment. As such, the reader can
vicariously experience (Stake, 1995) the decision-making processes involved in the cases,
perhaps using this experience as the basis for drawing generalizations toward other
contexts. Narrative-based research methods allow the researcher to uncover and share the
many design decisions that went into the study, hopefully illuminating the practical and
theoretical issues in using gaming technologies to support learning. Following Stake’s
(1995) work, each case narrative is based on incontestable observations, observations
that most any ordinary observer might agree with if present, as closely as possible. I then
shared each case narrative with both the second researcher and the local teacher from
each case as a way to verify the accuracy. Typically, the second researcher had
substantive feedback while the case’s teacher had little beyond a few minor factual
corrections.
Using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), I analyzed each
case based on emergent themes and patterns that bear on the original research questions,
scanning the data for counter-factual evidence and competing contradictions and
informally verifying the inferred patterns with the second researcher as they were
established. Specifically, the analysis focused on: (1) the everyday gaming and social
practices that emerged in each classroom, (2) moments of engagement or lack thereof, (3)
students’ displayed understandings of historical phenomena and how the game might (or
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might not) be remediating those understandings, (4) the affordances and constraints of
Civilization III as a tool for learning within each educational context, and (5) how the
game aligned or misaligned with schooling practices already in place at each site.
I
apply two distinct theoretical lenses to each case narrative in order to make tease out
subtle yet significant patterns in the data that might bear on these five issues: Cobb et
al.’s (1999) notion of “taken-as-shared meanings” and activity theory.
Taken-as-Shared Meanings
Consistent with Cobb and colleagues (1999), I searched for taken as shared
meanings that arise in each case narrative. Taken-as-shared meanings are knowledge
arising from activity that participants accept as understood and use as tools for solving
problems. The notion of taken-as-shared meanings embodies a socio-culturalist
epistemology in which knowledge is viewed as socially constructed and arising through
use. If knowledge is something results through interaction in the world as mediated by
social structures, then research learning needs to focus on sites where communities
generate and accept shared meanings as sites for learning, taking particular note of spaces
in which knowledge is taken as understood and is used as the basis for solving future
problems. For example, in their studies of mathematics classrooms, Cobb and colleagues
(1999) identify places where students use mathematical principles for solving more
complex mathematical problems. Cobb looks for places where meanings are articulated
and reified, and then discussed in problem solving. In this study, I examine places where
understandings emerge through participation in game playing communities and examine
how these understandings are used to inform game play as well as other learning tasks.
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Consistent with Cobb, I look for places where knowledge is taken as shared, situations I
attempt to probe further in interviews.
Activity Theory Analysis
Consistent with earlier work characterizing activity systems (e.g. Barab et al.,
2002), I analyzed the cases through an activity theory framework, using this framework
to characterize the tensions in each activity system, and suggest ways that the system
might evolve to support more robust learning exercises. Activity theory analysis is an
ideological approach to data analysis, one that takes an existing social theory and then
analyzes data through that lens. Such ideological approaches (feminist or Marxist theories
are other examples of ideological approaches) offer the researcher powerful tools for
gaining insight into a phenomena, saving the researcher work in having to retheorize
situations in each setting. By basing an analysis on a particular theory, researchers can
build on existing theory which can then be used to better understand human behavior.
Ideological approaches also risk steering the researcher in an ideologically-driven
direction, biasing the researcher toward seeing particular relationships or where there are
none. In this study, I consciously chose to write my case studies before doing the activity
theory analysis so as to minimize ideological bias.
Consistent with Engeström
(1999), I developed depictions of each activity
system. Using these depictions, I identified primary and secondary contradictions in the
activity system. These activity system analyses serve to illuminate issues in the design of
game-based learning environments and help educational designers understand the
problem space of designing game-based learning environments. In reporting my analysis,
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I foreground the reporting of contradictions, as the tools, resources, and social structures
are considered in the case studies.
Using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), I developed
characterizations of each activity system, scanning the data for counter-factual evidence
or competing contradictions. I shared these contradictions with the second researcher who
agreed that these were primary contradictions driving activity in each situation. The only
substantive difference was in the YWCA case, where both researchers had difficulty
generating contradictions and felt that the analytic frame of activity theory may have
created contradictions where there were none.
Developing Conclusions
After developing an interpreted narrative for each case, I examined learners’
experiences across cases to develop assertions about how practices emerged across
settings, the role of social interaction in mediating activity, how engagement developed in
each setting, and what role gaming played in learning. Because there were substantial
differences across cases (as opposed to cases matched on all but one or two variables), I
treat them as collective case studies (Stake, 1995) – multiple case studies combined in
order to illuminate a broad range of research themes. In effect, collective case studies
allow the researcher to see past the particularities of a single case.
I use the constant comparative method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) to develop
conclusions – qualified, data-driven statements that address research questions and have
theoretical and / or practical importance (Mabry, 1999). As in developing the case
studies, I searched for disconfirming evidence or counter-evidence to the claims provided
here. As I developed conclusions, I iteratively scanned both the primary case documents
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and the interpretive narratives of each case. Consistent with the exploratory nature of this
research, I attempted to delineate how Civilization III worked as an effective instructional
resource as well as where it was problematic. My conclusions attempt to account for the
variety of students’ experiences both within each case across cases. Places where the
instructional unit failed to capture students’ interest or produce understandings are noted
alongside locations of productive learning. Drawing from Cobb’s notion of iterative
design, the goal of this study is not to argue for Civilization III as a resource in world
history classrooms; rather, the purpose is to understand the properties of these
instructional designs and illuminate underlying theoretical and practical issues in
developing game-based learning environments.
Petite and grand generalizations. The conclusions of this study should be
regarded as petite generalizations – generalizations about the activity in these particular,
situated cases that may (or may not) have direct import for the reader’s own contexts. As
Lincoln and Guba (1985) suggest, qualitative case studies cannot generate findings or
assertions with universal applicability; instead, their power lies in situating the reader
within narratives that allow the reader to make inferences about her own situation. Case
studies are simply not well suited to producing generalizable results as the uniqueness of
the case always persists. Still, as Stake (1995) argues, case studies can, in some instances,
suggest problems with, or productive modifications to, broader theories, often suggesting
productive avenues to explore in future research or caveats to those in the field.
Although I do suggest places where these data suggests holes or modifications in
existing theory, the conclusions contained herein are petite generalizations, not grand
ones. Consistent with Stake (1995), I believe that methods other than the case study are
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necessary for actually causing modification to grand theories rather than merely
suggesting what their direction might be. Within the design experiment paradigm, I have
argued that differing methods need to be employed at different times in order to
understand design space, and that we are most likely to see advancements in theory
through sustained research efforts across multiple contexts (Jenkins, Squire, & Tan, in
press). Stake (1995) makes a similar argument, referring to the use of multiple research
traditions or the collaboration of multiple researchers on one data set as triangulation of
methodologies. This study is but a first step in understanding how digital game-based
learning environments might function, particularly in world history, in order to provide a
foundation for further research and theory in this emerging field.
Theory triangulation. By using several different theoretical approaches to a data
set, one can get deeper, richer understandings of both practical and theoretical issues at
play in a case. Stake (1995) calls this theory triangulation. In this study, I draw from two
distinct research traditions: (a) Stake’s responsive case study approach, and (b) activity
theory. Each offers unique perspectives and ways of looking at the data. Because
ideological research approaches such as activity theory can be theoretical blinders,
masking important trends in data and organizing the research toward certain conclusions,
I developed my case studies before performing my activity theory analysis. 9 After
developing each case and then examining each context from an activity theory point of
view, I generate conclusions, petite generalizations that draw from both the case studies
and the activity theory analysis. Combining these two approaches not only yields a
deeper, richer understanding of the data but also suggest differences in each theoretical
9
I acknowledge that the theoretical language of activity theory, particularly the notion of contradictions, probably
entered my thinking during the case studies; however,
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approach, giving future researchers perhaps a more nuanced appreciation for how each
theoretical system works and what each reveals and obfuscates. I close the dissertation by
suggesting implications of this study. In particular, I try to tie these experiences to the
emerging discourse on gaming and learning.
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Chapter IV: Media Case Study
The Media and Technology Charter (MEDIA) School is a public charter school
designed to help inner-city and at-risk students learn academic skills through creative
expression with media and technology. Opening its doors in 1999, MEDIA serves mostly
(about 80%) African-American students. Most students commuted from Roxbury, a
lower income and historically African-American inner-city Boston neighborhood.
Attendance was highly sporadic; it was not uncommon to have 30% of the students
absent on any given day. The school runs from grades 6-10. Joel Cook, an Algebra
teacher who teaches a unit using SimCity 2000 and was interested in using Civilization
with his mathematics class, wanted to teach a unit with Civilization III. I explained my
interest in using Civilization III to teach social studies, so Joel introduced me to two
Humanities teachers, Sandy Mitrano and Lisa Carter who had an interest in teaching
world history. Over the next two weeks, we worked on building a curriculum that would
address issues important to students, meet school learning objectives, and be feasible
within this school’s constraints. The next section describes this process in order to situate
the reader in the case. The remainder of the chapter describes the events that unfolded.
Building the Collaboration and Creating the Curriculum
I met with Joel, Lisa, and Sandy two times in the early Spring of 2002 to explore
how playing Civilization III could be the basis of a unit on world history. Lisa
immediately drew connections between the game and Jared Diamond’s best selling
history of civilizations Guns, Germs, and Steel (1999). Sandy said that students neither
liked nor did well in world history. She thought that the chance to “replay” history from
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African or Native American perspectives might engage her students, who were largely
turned off from history. As the teachers reviewed my human subjects forms, they were
concerned about phrasing that gave students a choice of withdrawing from the unit. Lisa
said that “A number of them will opt-out just to be antagonistic.” I went back and forth
with the Human Subjects Committee several times over this language, but in the end, it
remained.
Addressing Poor Attitudes Toward World History
Sandy explained that the MEDIA School did not even formally teach social
studies classes because the principal believed that disadvantaged students were better
served by developing basic academic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. Finally,
and probably most importantly, social studies is not covered on the Massachusetts State
Exams, the high stakes exams that all Massachusetts students must pass in order to
graduate. As a result, world history and geography were folded into other humanities
courses, such as world literature.
An interview with Andrea, one of the students, about her attitudes toward social
studies illuminates the issue. Andrea was deeply resentful of how she had been taught
social studies.
Interviewer:
Andrea.
Do you like social studies?
I never really liked social studies... I don’t like learning about
American history every year. I’m like, “Why don’t we do
something else?” If you’re going to have social studies class, make
it besides the wars or something. Like the Holocaust. Why should I
have to learn about the Holocaust? I do it every year. It’s boring.
And then they only talk about the Jews when they talk about the
Holocaust. That makes me upset too. You know, if I was alive
back then, I’d be dead. I was like, ‘Can we talk about me for a
second? I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, so I would have been dead
anyway because of my religion.’ And we have to learn about
American history from the same textbook… I’m just now realizing
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Interviewer:
Andrea:
that there’s a whole bunch of stuff that they don’t even write in the
textbook. So they should have us do projects on what we think
isn’t written in the textbooks. We should do a huge project on that
or something. I think it would be better if you did a lot of hands-on
stuff instead of reading and taking tests, because basically that’s all
that social studies has been. It’s not like science or English where
you can be creative. You read it, you memorize it, and then it’s
over. If you did projects, like build landscapes or build what you
think the world was like it back then, it would be more interesting.
If it wasn’t so boring, I would like it.
So it’s not social studies but it’s how it’s taught in schools
Yeah – how it’s taught in school is boring. I think African
American history is left out of schools. I think Hispanic history is
left out of schools. And I think that for schools that are so diverse
in culture, they only teach one side of history, and I think that’s
wrong. So if you’re going to have schools all filled with a bunch of
black people, why are you going to teach them all about white
history and not teach them anything ‘bout black history? Why have
a school all about white history? That’s why people don’t like
social studies. Social studies is boring.
Echoes of Wineburg (2001), Gardner (1991), and Loewen (1995) float through Andrea’s
critique of her social studies education in which she argues that her identity is not
represented in class and which she summarizes as “social studies is boring 1 .” Most
students in the Media case had similar reactions to social studies.
We discussed how to supplement Civilization III with other curricula. I suggested
that the game be used within an inquiry framework, having students develop questions,
use Civilization III as a simulation, do additional outside research, and then develop
artifacts representing their understandings (See also Barab, Barnett, Yamagata-Lynch, et
al., 2002; Frederickson & White, 1998). Sandy and Lisa explained that most students
read at between the 4th and 9th grade reading level and would struggle doing an
The commonalities between Loewen’s (1995) critique and Andrea’s critique are striking. Loewen begins his book
Lies My Teacher Told Me, “HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS HATE HISTORY. When they list their favorite subjects,
history invariably comes in last. Students consider history “the most irrelevant” of twenty-one academic subjects
commonly taught in high school. Bor-r-ring is the adjective they commonly apply to it.” (p. 12)
1
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independent research project. I gave each teacher a copy of the game to take home and
play, and we agreed to reconvene to discuss more curriculum ideas.
Defining Learning Objectives and Designing the Curriculum.
Three weeks later, I met again with Joel, Sandy and Lisa to design the curriculum.
None of the teachers had played their games, so I demonstrated Civilization III. All three
teachers found the game overwhelming and confusing; none of them had played strategy
games before. The teachers thought that students could probably play the game with
coaching. Sandy asked if I would be willing to teach the unit if necessary. I said I could if
necessary.
After seeing the game, Lisa thought that students might learn about the variables
affecting the growth and decline of civilizations. She also thought that students would
enjoy learning about ancient civilizations, building civilizations, and sharing their
successes. Again, I suggested that students make maps, timelines, and a culminating
project as a way to reach instructional objectives such as understanding historical
timescales, how geography works as a process, how technologies build on one another, or
how geography, politics, and economics affect history. Lisa joked that if students could
even locate Egypt on a map, the project would be a success. The teachers were
enthusiastic about the unit’s ability to engage students who were currently uninvolved in
school and asked me if I’d be interested in running the unit starting two weeks, during the
school day from 2:00-3:00 on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesdays for six weeks.
The remainder of the chapter details these events, which are organized into
clusters of days by themes and tied together into a case narrative. Within each cluster of
days, activities are broken out into themes in order to situate the reader in an unfolding
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narrative, a summary of which is provided in Figure 4.1. One of my objectives in this
approach is to address the first research question: what practices emerge when
Civilization III is brought into formal learning environments. A second is to preserve the
representativeness of the data and let the reader vicariously experience the ebbs and flows
of the unit. My hope is that providing a detailed narrative will be of use to educators and
instructional designers engaged in similar design activities.
What Happened?
Why am I doing this?
Replaying
History
This game isn’t bad…
emergence of game talk
Purposeful Game
Play
“Recursive gaming”
Day
1
4
8
12
17
Figure 4.1: Visual outline of narrative
DAYS 1-4: Experimenting with curricular models, and learning to play the game
The first four class periods were marked by chaos, disorganization, and students’
struggles to understand basic game concepts. On the first day, I hoped to introduce the
research project, explain the purpose of the unit, and allow students to explore the game
for a few minutes. As Lisa introduced me as a researcher coming from MIT to teach a
class on civilizations, I realized that there were some sharp cultural divides between
myself and the students. These students, 80% of whom were African-American, came
from the roughest areas of Boston. Teachers and students had strong relationships, and I
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sensed that the school was held together through a delicate balance of trust. I was nervous
about how I, as an outsider, would fare in this environment.
The computer lab itself was in a small classroom designed to seat twenty
elementary students, not 18 teenagers, so we were packed in uncomfortably. It was a very
hot day and there was no air conditioning. Voices from outside came in through an open
window, and several students called out to people on the street. Eighteen of the twenty
computers were working.
Introducing the Unit
Lisa and Sandy calmed down the class down and introduced me as “Kurt,” a
researcher from M.I.T. teaching a unit on civilizations using the game Civilization III.
Lisa asked students to give me their attention, announced, “Take it away, Kurt,” and we
began. I described the game and explained that my research was examining what, if
anything, they learned about world history through playing it. I told a quick story about
my own experiences sailing through a Caribbean History unit in high school after playing
the computer game Pirates!. I had intended on describing Civilization III in greater detail
and what they might learn through playing the game, but they were clearly uninterested.
Only three students made any eye contact with me during the entire seven minute
introduction; the other twelve talked or checked email. Lisa and Sandy handled
classroom management, disciplining students, and confiscating contraband.
I wanted to demonstrate the game with the projector but it was broken, so students
played the tutorial instead. Most of the machines did not load the game correctly, so
many students sat staring at error screens. After thirty minutes, students were finally into
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the game, but the class was on the verge of chaos because students had entered the game
at different rates and barraged us with questions.
Exploring the Game
By 2:40 the class had settled, but four or five students, all of whom were women,
were still not playing the game at all. One student slept in front of her computer. Four
others talked, walked around the room, or sat and did nothing. The other 12 students
worked through the tutorial. The teachers said that this was actually a large number of
students to have on task at one time. By 2:50 something from the game had captured the
interest of each student. Some students wanted to find civilizations to interact with.
Others wanted to build an army, go to war, and rule the world. Others just wanted to
build up their cities.
Andrea, one of the women actually playing the game, looked frustrated. She
shouted, “Where are the women in the game? I explained how the workers and settler
units represent both men and women since historically men and women both worked in
these eras. Andrea grunted, and nodded, looking unconvinced. “They don’t look like
women.” For Andrea and Erica, two students playing together, the scouts, settlers,
workers, and warrior icons all looked male and the lack of women in the game was a turn
off. They were playing as the Egyptians, whose leader was Cleopatra.
The first day was characterized by chaos, confusion, and a difficulty in
communicating the purpose of playing the game. Students frequently asked, “Why are we
playing?” or “What is the point of this?” Few students were familiar with strategy game
genre conventions and none had played turn-based strategy games. Eventually, most
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students found something about the game that intrigued them. However, we were still
uneasy that the class could easily lose interest, which could result in more chaos.
Failed Introductions
On the second day, we tried an introductory “Do Now” 2 activity to help me learn
students’ names. Students were uncooperative. Before the activity began, we kicked
Tammy and Bill out of class for talking. Several students (Dwayne, Shakira and Shirley)
would not turn around to look at me, and two students refused to even give me their
names. Several others refused to be on video camera, causing us to abandon videotaping
class sessions entirely.
Next, we tried to administer the pretest (See Appendix E). Only a few students
even tried the survey and only one student, Jason, attempted the timeline item. Midway
through the survey, Sandy reminded the students that they were being graded on the unit,
but this had no noticeable impact on behavior. While doing the survey, Andrea, one of
the strongest students in the class, asked, “What’s the difference between B.C. and
A.D.?” I asked her to guess, and Andrea commented, “Maybe that’s why we’re doing this
unit.” We hoped that the survey would help students understand the purpose of the unit,
but the exercise only seemed to alienate students further.
Retrying the Game
Most students ignored the in-game tutorial. Four students, all of whom had played
computer strategy games previously, were starting to understand the purpose of the game
and its basic interface. For example, Tony (Babylonians)3 explored his continent with his
“Do Nows” were short activities designed to activate prior knowledge or stimulate reflection, as well as to get
students on task.
3
The (civilization, date) notation following a students name indicates who they are playing in the game and what year
their game is in.
2
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warriors. He read through the city improvement screens, carefully weighing the
effectiveness of whether to build military units, granaries, temples, or workers. Jason also
approached the game methodically, carefully reading each word and thinking about
decisions. Dwayne, who had earlier refused to give me his name, played the game
intently throughout class, talking with no one. He struggled with whether to sell his
technologies for gold because he feared that other civilizations would attack him. Later I
learned that Dwayne was one of the brightest students in the school yet was failing all of
his classes for the second straight year and most likely would not advance to 10th grade
for the third year in a row. Deborah, who was not a strategy gamer, enjoyed negotiating
with other civilizations. She read through the negotiation screens carefully, using her
mouse as a pointer to highlight difficult words. 4 Dwayne, Tony, Dan, and a few others
kept on playing the game after dismissal time. By the end of class, the three students who
had played real-time strategy games before (Tony, Jason, and Dwayne), were able to
negotiate the interface without problems.5
About half of the students were completely confused. For example, Kathy was
starving her civilization and was completely bankrupt but unaware of what she was doing
wrong.6 Others did not play at all. Bill called for help several times but could not be heard
As Deborah built her cities, she used the “city view,” a little-used feature that allows the player to view his city’s
houses, shops, roads, improvements, and wonders. Kathy looked on as Deborah switched views, and tried it for her
city. Soon, Dan was looking at his cities, as well. Many students also enjoyed the “palace view.” The students who
earned “We love the king days” reveled in this reward as well.
5
Many students were confused about Civilization III’s turn-based format. Whereas in a real-time strategy game,
players click on units and the units begin moving to a new location automatically, in Civilization III, players direct units
and then must wait for turns to go by before the units move. I anticipated this issue and explained the difference
between real-time and turn-based gaming several times, but it took each of them at least four hours of game play before
they understood the difference.
6
Kathy ordered all of her laborers to cease working and become entertainers (and had no idea that she had done so).
Kathy was confused because entertainers are represented by colorful icons, and so the visual feedback suggested that
turning a laborer into an entertainer was a good idea: Meanwhile, her civilization starved and went bankrupt as they
entertained one another rather than producing food, gathering natural resources, or engaging in commerce.
4
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over the din. Kent spent most of the time walking about the room, looking over students’
shoulders. Eventually Kent became engrossed in other students’ games. At one point,
Sandy threatened him with detention for being out of his seat, but Kent replied, “Kent
will go home when Kent wants to go home.” Four girls talked or checked email.
I was busy the entire period, moving from student to student answering questions.
Most questions were general, such as “How do I play the game?” or “What is the game
about?” Even after the second day, several students wondered aloud what the point of this
unit was. None of the just-in-time lectures explored social studies concepts; they were all
explanations of controls or how the game works. The most vocally frustrated students
were those whose computers were crashing, suggesting that the frustration may have
been due to technical issues as much as any lack of understanding of the game.
Rethinking the Unit
Sandy, the second researcher, and I debriefed after class. We were concerned
about classroom management issues and Sandy suggested that we divide into two groups
to make the classroom more manageable. On alternating days, one group could do
activities (i.e. discussions) while the others played the game. We decided to require
students to pick one of four civilizations to study and have students vote on which
civilizations they would play – encouraging them to do background readings on
civilizations prior to the vote. Overnight, I put together a readings packet introducing
each civilization for the exercise (See Appendix F).7
Dividing into Groups
Where possible, I drew on the text from the Civilization III Civilopedia for this text. However, Sandy’s initial take on
the Civilopedia was that it was written above these students’ reading level, so I simplified language. I also had to add
text for several civilizations that are not included in the game, including the Aborigines, Bantu, Celts, Incans, and
Polynesians.
7
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We started class on the third day with a whole group discussion before we divided
into groups. I passed out a paper with eight quotations about civilization covering a
variety of historical and philosophical perspectives (see Appendix G).8 Five minutes into
class, many students were being disruptive, and three students were removed from class.
Sandy instructed students to read the eight quotations about civilization and write
a reflection on one that was meaningful to them. One student asked, “What if you didn’t
do it [i.e. read the sheet]?” There was talking and laughter; students jeered. Sandy tried to
regain their attention and reminded the class that they were being graded on the unit.
Sheila refused to do the sheet and was also removed from class.
Dwayne, of all students, had actually read the quotes. There was some mumbling
as students seemed surprised that Dwayne had read the sheet. Dwayne defended himself.
“I did it because I’m probably the only person in the room who can understand and
comprehend the paper….Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary
necessities.” Dwayne explained that he chose the quote because it
emphasized,
“Unnecessary things. That’s what civilization is built on. Things we don’t need.
Computers, supermarkets, corporations, government…” Dwayne, who was the most
troublesome student and flunking all of his classes, was also, by the teachers’ estimation,
the most intellectually gifted in class. The discussion lumbered along, with Sandy doing
her best to connect the activity to students’ interests, such as Native American culture.
The discussion was labored, far from the engaging discussion and debate I had imagined.
Mini-Demonstrations and Engagement
8
I hoped that the questions alleviate tension by communicating that questioning assumptions about the concept of
civilization is acceptable, draw in skeptical students, and give me a chance to learn more about their thoughts and
attitudes toward social studies.
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On days 3 and 4 we divided into two groups. Sandy’s class discussed and voted
on civilizations while my group played Civilization III.
In the computer room, I
demonstrated the game to small groups. Students listened for a few minutes and then
asked questions of their own: “What do I do in the game? What does the worker do?
What does the settler do?” Students were especially confused about military and domestic
units (i.e. settlers, workers) and their differing purposes. As students began playing, they
encountered their first complex, multi-variable problem: the problem of maintaining
happiness in their cities. We opened their city screens and investigated the economy of
each city. We looked at the amount of food, production, and commerce being generated
by each city. We compared the productivity of grasslands, river valleys, hills, and
mountains. We compared the effects of irrigation, mining, and building roads on the
carrying capacity of the land and on the commerce of each city, which would lead to
increased revenue and luxuries. I also showed them how they could encourage citizens to
become entertainers rather than laborers, which would mean less food, production and
trade, but more luxury goods. For the first time, students saw how they faced choices that
could have an impact on how their civilization evolved and history unfolded
By day 3, several students became engaged in the game, each for unique reasons.
Dwayne, Chris, Andrea, and Jason stayed to play after class and I had to struggle to get
them out of the classroom. I asked what they liked so far. Dwayne would not answer me,
but he seemed to enjoy building an empire. Chris liked exploring the map. Jason rattled
off several parts of the game that he enjoyed – the chance to build cities, going to war,
talking to advisors. Andrea laughed when I ask her what she liked about the game,
saying, “I hate this game!” Andrea was constantly at war. She laughed again and then
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said, “No, but it’s really fun, even though it’s frustrating." Kent and Norman also came
up to me after day 4 to say how they liked the game.
Although a growing number of students engaged in playing the game, many were
still overwhelmed by its complexity. Even though students had gone through the tutorial,
sat through three introductions, and played the game for three hours, the game’s learning
curve was still so steep that some students were overwhelmed. Conversations focused on
questions such as: How do I gain more money? How do I stop cities from rioting? What
do I control? After class, I tried to do a pre-interview with Dwayne. Although Dwayne
gave his opinions about the game, he refused to participate in any performance tasks. I
asked him what he thought of the unit, and Dwayne said that he thought it was a good
idea, but that students could develop misunderstandings of factual information, such as
who built the Pyraminds.
Even though the class dynamic was improving and I was establishing some trust
with students, Dwayne still did not feel safe enough to show me his understandings of
history. Obtaining valid pretest data was still not possible.
Voting on Civilizations
In Sandy’s room, students were handed the introductory packets on civilizations
(see Appendix F). Bill read the overview of Civilization III aloud, stumbling over one or
two words. Kent read the paragraph about the Aborigines. Sandy asked if any of the
students had heard of the Aborigines. No one had. She asked four students this question
again, one by one, to make sure that they were really paying attention. No one had heard
of the Aborigines. When they moved on to the Aztecs, a few students reported having
heard of them, although none gave any specific information. Jenny mentioned that they
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were in the Americas. Kent added that they had “Ill houses, made of mud and stones and
stuff.” Students read through the remaining civilizations, most of which students had not
heard of. Sandy underscored that if they wanted to start as an African civilization, they
could be the Bantu9. This opening activity reveals that, while I hoped that students would
come to understand the complex interaction of variables behind the evolution of
civilizations, I might need to spend more time introducing simple concepts, such as who
the aborigines were and where they came from, than I had anticipated.
Next, students voted on which civilizations they wanted to play (ballot in
Appendix I). Sandy emphasized that part of this decision was choosing what continent
they would start on. Students read through their packets and voted on four civilizations.
Students were much more engaged in researching and discussing civilizations, deciding
which ones they would play than they had been before. No students talked, walked about
the room, or touched one another.
Discussing (or Not Discussing) Civilizations
On Day 4, Sandy led a more structured discussion of civilizations. Sandy wrote the “Do
Now”: “Write what you know about Egyptian civilization.” Sandy asked, “What grade
did you study Egypt in?” Jason replied, “All my life!” Sandy explained that students
would vote for four civilizations to play and that some classes would meet outside the
computer lab for discussion.
“Will we be graded?” Rica asked.
I realize that choosing the Bantu as a plausible “civilization” in 4000 BC is contentious. The Bantu are essentially a
language group which originated in Western Africa and spread across Africa, mingling with other civilizations. Jared
Diamond argues that sub-Saharan Africa’s environmental resources made it unlikely that agriculture, and hence
“civilization” would develop among the Bantu peoples. There is some evidence of ancient African civilizations,
beginning around 200 BC; however relatively little is known about ancient African civilizations. As a result, I weighted
the game play against the Bantu – giving them less access to food resources and adjusting their cultural bonuses – to
reflect their geographically and historically disadvantaged status.
9
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“Of course,” said Sandy.
Andrea drew a concept map at the board. Students periodically yelled out facts
about Egypt. Egyptians were the first do brain surgery. Egyptian Gods were part animals.
Egyptians invented hieroglyphics. Egyptians made beer. Egyptians pulled the brains out
of the nose of their dead during mummification. Overall, students named about a dozen
facts related to Egypt. Andrea wrote down several more facts between comments. Sandy
described connections between Egyptians religious beliefs and their burial practices.
Sandy then led a jigsaw reading activity where the eight students read about
different civilizations and discussed them in groups. Students were half-heartedly
engaged in the activity, clearly bored by the ritual display of knowledge about Egypt.
The smattering of facts on the board underscored two sides to Jason’s comment. On the
one hand, these students had studied Egypt to the point where they could meet most any
content standards of factual knowledge of Egypt, but on the other hand, students seemed
bored with further study of Egypt, a civilization these students had studied repeatedly as a
part of teachers’ efforts to create curricula relating to African history.
Back to the Drawing Board
I met with the researcher and Sandy for an hour after class to revisit the unit plan.
We were all concerned about classroom management issues. I was frustrated because
students were spending much of their time learning the game and not much thinking
about academic issues. We considered seven or eight different curriculum projects. These
ranged from having students film commercials for their civilizations to having them do
full-scale research projects. The biggest constraint was that we only had twelve classes
left, and there was no way to fit in ten to twenty hours of game play given the time it
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would take to do a research project. Sandy was concerned with logistical problems.
Nearly every idea I had for using the game as a context for outside research (e.g. compare
your game to the actual historical situations) involved going between the computer lab
and the classrooms or using materials the school did not have.
The layout of the room was the most critical design constraint at this point.
Having a bigger room, tables in the center to use for creating maps and timelines and for
placing resources, or a working projector for teacher and student demonstrations would
have changed our options considerably. In my journal, I wrote,
Much of our difficulty lies in just how complex learning Civilization III is.
Here we are, after three hours of game play, and the students are just now
familiar with the most basic of concepts, and still hours and hours away
from any sort of fluency. They do not understand how to play the game,
let alone use it as a tool for understanding world history. There is a lot to
understanding these symbols, game terminology, concepts, and systems.
And, I had not appreciated how difficult it would be to get these students
to do structured activities. They will not do anything that they do not want;
grades are no motivator. Perhaps learning world history in the context of
game play is all that we can do. This would mean abandoning the
complementary activities I value (i.e. timelines), but I am not sure that
these students would do them anyway. I will focus the rest of the unit on
four objectives I hope students can learn through playing the game: (1)
Make connections between political and physical geography (geography
as processes), (2) Get a broad sense of how time flows – a framework for
understanding the broad events of history, (3) Learn factual stuff about
what is where on a map, (4) Understand how technologies build on one
another.
DAY 5-7: Getting into Game Play
Creating a Context For Game Play
I arrived early to debug computer problems and reorganize the physical classroom
space. I rearranged the chairs so that they faced me. Next, I drew a large map of the Earth
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on the white board which I could use for a mini-lecture. My goal was to introduce the
game and clarify connections between the game and world history.
Jason and Chris did not believe that I drew the picture myself freehand and
debated the accuracy of the map among themselves. Chris thought that there was no way
I draw such a large map freehand and believed that I traced the picture. Trying to
capitalize on their interest, I explained that I did draw it freehand, and they could tell
because there were at least two errors in the map. Tony noted that I didn’t draw Puerto
Rico (where his family is from). Dwayne noticed that the Bering Strait was drawn
incorrectly. While these students may not have known much about geography, they did
have knowledge of geographical features that pertained to them. Ironically, of all the
complex technologies in the classroom, it was a hand-drawn a map on a whiteboard that
piqued these students’ interest in geography.
I started the lecture by acknowledging Dwayne’s observation that students could
develop some misunderstandings through the game, so I asked, “What was the Earth like
one million years ago?” There were a lot of questions about whether it was Pangea or not.
Then I asked what it was like 15,000 years ago. The students thought that there were
thriving civilizations in North America. I realized just how little they knew about ancient
history or prehistory. I talked about the invention of agriculture and how it influenced the
growth of civilizations. I explained how the ice ages ended around 15,000 BC, and how
people probably entered America by coming down through the Bering Strait.
Students were only marginally interested in this activity, and I felt that I was
losing them quickly. Jason and Dwayne now had their backs turned, as did most of the
class. I switched topics. This example is the first instance of what would later become a
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predominant pattern; students quickly became disengaged when information was not
directly relevant to their own game activity.
“Let’s share the results of the civilization tally,” I announced. Immediately,
several students turned around. I explained that the winners were, in order, The
Egyptians, Aztecs, Iroquois, and then Bantu. I called on student volunteers to show on the
board where each civilization started. There was at least one student in the class who
could pinpoint where each of these civilizations originated, but students could not locate
China, India, or Babylon on the map.
The discussion shifted to the idea of replaying history – using the game to explore
hypothetical historical scenarios. I asked, “If you want to play in the Americas, who
would you play as?” The students said, “Europe,” assuming that they would have to play
as the civilization who actually settled the area in real life. I tried to explain that, within
the game, the player determines who settles America, not real life history, unless of
course the player decides to do so, and that students could play as the Iroquois or any
another civilization and still try to settle the Americas if they chose. I explained that if
they wanted to colonize the Americas, they would have to deal with Native American
populations. “You can choose how you want history to be played. You can try to make
the Americas African, if you like.” Students did not seem to understand. Lisa explained
the concept another way. “Guys – what languages do they speak in South America?” The
class responded, “Spanish and Portuguese.” Lisa continued, “Exactly. Why? That’s
where the people who settled there came from. You could play as any civilization that
you want and settle North America. Or, try to settle Europe with Native Americans.”
Until this point, students had been treating the game as an interactive narrative with pre-
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defined, scripted beginnings and endings rather than as a simulation that can be used to
explore historical hypotheticals. Kent said “cool,” as did a few others. Several students
turned around in their chairs. Seeing that they could have some power and autonomy
intrigued several students and there was a shift in the room as students realized that they
could affect the outcome of history within the game.
Game Play Provoking Questions about World History
For the first time, students’ questions in class were related to world history. Dan
(Iroquois) was attacked by a horde of barbarians and asked who they were and where
they came from. I explained that the barbarians represented nomadic Native American
tribes; “that’s part of the difficulties playing as the Iroquois. They have a lot of other
tribes to contend with.” Andrea asked Lisa about the Colossus. Kent asked what irrigate
meant. Other students asked about specific civilizations and where they originated. These
questions suggest that students were starting to get beyond simply understanding the
interface and beginning to ask questions about what was happening in their games,
seeking information about basic concepts in world history to enhance game play. Over
the course of the unit, students each asked dozens of questions designed to illuminate
what was happening on screen.
Dwayne (Japan) explained why he wanted to play Japan even though it was not
one of the choices, “I want to reverse thousands of years of Chinese oppression on the
Japanese peoples.” I decided to let Dwayne keep playing Japan despite the fact that it
wasn’t on the list given his lack of interest in school but enthusiasm for Japanese culture.
He goal was to weaken the Chinese by drawing them into war with rivaling civilizations.
Dwayne used embargoes, treaties, and trade to play three or four civilizations off of one
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another. Dwayne’s civilization was also the most advanced, as he discovered Literature
and built The Oracle, Pyramids and Great Library.
Game failure, not to be confused with technological problems because of older
computers, provided students problems to solve. Yet, because students had insufficient
resources for analyzing what went wrong, they relied on me for help. Several students
had questions related to in-game failures, such as: How do I prevent civil unrest in my
cities? How do I defend against barbarians? How do I get more money? Several students,
particularly Deborah and Andrea, were constantly at war and, because of it, had problems
with cities in civil disarray. They wanted help repairing their civilization. The
Carthagianians attacked Bill, and he asked, “Why can’t they invent some guns?” I
explained that he could – if he discovered the right technologies. As with many students,
Bill’s questions emanated from his failure in the game. I tried to link his goals of gaining
better weaponry (the military game system) to the game’s technology system, a
connection that was difficult for Bill and others to make. Despite (or perhaps because of)
these game challenges, 16 of the 18 students were on task and involved in playing the
game.
Maintaining Domestic Peace
Most students’ cities went into civil unrest because they were exploring or
building warriors instead of focusing on domestic issues. Few students had built an
infrastructure for commerce, implemented city improvements, negotiated with
civilizations to bring in luxuries, or considered military spending very carefully. I
suggested that students (such as Tony and Deborah) keep their defenses up but also build
new cities and infrastructure which would create more trade and, in turn, would boost
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their economy which could then support a strong defense. I also suggested that they
explore their respective continents to find friendly tribes that they might trade with. From
a pedagogical perspective, these struggles are interesting insomuch that they encourage
students to consider the trade-offs between taxes, public happiness, publicly funded
exploration, and a large military.
Balancing Guns and Butter
How to build a robust economy and yet maintain a strong military to fight
barbarians or rivaling civilizations was an issue for most students. Norman (Iroquois, 500
BC), who proudly held off the barbarians, showed off his defense network of spearmen
and warriors to the researchers. Unfortunately, Norman’s defense was also putting him in
debt. Norman explained to the researcher that he was using his workers to build roads
that would, in turn, strengthen his economy and make his people happy. Norman was
starting to follow my previous advise, a suggestion that I hoped might expand the
problem space out so that, instead of considering only two or three variables, he (and
others) would consider broader interacting variables (here, how civic structures could
influence the development of a civilization). Still, no students were building marketplaces
and libraries, which would help build their economy, make more luxuries available to
their peoples, and raise their rate of scientific discovery. Students were quick to adopt
simple strategies – manipulating one simple variable such as raising taxes or building
roads – to solve their problems but were much slower to address deeper systemic causes
of failure.
Andrea (Egypt, 1 AD) was constantly at war with other civilizations, which
drained her economy. She lagged behind other civilizations, and her population was
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stagnating. Laughing at her demise, Andrea asked me to give her another walk through of
the game. Noting the problems with managing civil unrest, I stopped the class to explain
that building temples would alleviate civil unrest in cities. I suggested that students build
a temple in each city over size “four”. Up until now, I avoided giving formulaic hints for
the game, but I figured that a few tips would save a lot of grief. Students had been
experiencing a lot of failure up to this point that was causing frustration, and we were
concerned that more failure might both alienate students as well as prevent students from
ever confronting more complex parts of the game.
Beginnings of Recursive Play and History as a Tool
Game failures led to recursive play, play where students devised a strategy,
observed its consequences, and then tried another strategy. This process is a form of
hypothesis testing where they observe phenomena, analyze its causes, and implement
solutions. It is core to playing Civilization III and has implications for understanding
world history more broadly. Jason began playing as the Egyptians and was quickly
concerned about the encroaching Babylonians. I explained that he might want to start a
settlement on the Sinai Peninsula because it is historically a strategic area due to its
location between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. I encouraged him to use history as a
guide for his game play.10 Jason nodded and started making a settler to colonize the land.
Later, Jason restarted his game and began playing as the Iroquois 11. He explained why he
started over, stating “I think I declared war too early, and my cities were too close
He later did by colonizing Alaska in order to “replay” Steward’s Folly.
Restarting games is a very common practice among casual players because recovering from failed strategies can be
very costly. This recursive process of trying strategies and restarting games is a common way that Civilization players
learn the game system.
10
11
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together and too close to other civilizations. I want to play in North America where I can
spread out.”
I asked Jason where his cities started. He knew that he was somewhere in Canada.
We looked at the map together.
“Do you know where that is?” I asked, pointing toward Michigan. I was trying to
help Jason make connections between actual geography and the game. Whether it was my
prompting or Jason’s general interest in geography, he began using geography as a tool
for his game play, now looking into the value of exploring Greenland.
“Ummm. Michigan?”
“Yes. Look at all of those resources in the Midwest. You can see why they call
that the breadbasket. There’s some great farmland there. You might think about growing
that way.” At the end of the unit, in post-interviews, Jason called “looking for resources
and trying to become stronger so I wouldn’t become invaded” his favorite part of the
game.
Isolated Civilizations vs. Warring Empires
Two major themes arose in students’ games, depending on their starting location.
Those in North America were isolated from other civilizations and students were
concerned that they were not a part of global trade networks; those in the Middle East
were constantly at war with neighboring civilizations. Many students were entering 1000
AD and beyond, and were now trading technologies. Students playing in the new world
were concerned that they were isolated and unable to trade with other civilizations. Jason
restarted his games several times, switching back and forth between Egypt and the
Iroquois. As the Iroquois, Jason felt too isolated from other civilizations. As Egypt, he
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was constantly having to fight off encroaching civilizations, such as the Greeks who
founded a city in Northern Libya. Most every player who played as Egypt dealt with this
problem of Greece or Rome starting cities in modern-day Libya, an interesting historical
simulation of the expansion of Greek and Roman empires. The second researcher noted,
“Jason is intense! Focused, riveted. His posture…everything, riveted. I decided not to
interrupt him.”
Persistent Confusion
Some students appeared very engaged in the game, yet some remained confused
about even its most basic aspects. For example, the researcher asked Kathy what
civilization she was playing, what year it was, what government she was in, and what
technology she was pursuing, but Kathy could not answer any of the questions. Deborah
spent most of her day wandering around the map and explained that her goal was to find
other civilizations. Deborah switched back and forth between playing as the Bantu and
Egyptians, restarting her game a few times during the class after losing or becoming
frustrated. Yet, by the end of class, 11 of 13 students present that day were involved in
the game (everyone except Anna and Takia).
Reflecting on the Unit so Far
After day 5, the teachers and I decided to abandon PowerPoint presentations and
focus on giving just-in-time lectures in the context of game play, as we were having
increasing success supporting game play with discussion activities. Bringing in authentic
maps enabled me to give much richer game advice, weaving geographical terms or
historical anecdotes into the explanations. Through lectures, we introduced concepts that
could be immediately mobilized as tools for game play. All of the students playing the
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Egyptians, for example, quickly met the Babylonians and were forced to consider trading,
going to war, or possibly giving gifts to keep the them at bay. At this point, conceptual
tools such as isolationism, trade, or the geography of the Middle East, could be leveraged
via informal just-in-time lectures, just when the concepts would be most useful for
students’ ongoing activities.
Fewer students now asked, “How do you play?” yet most were far from fluent in
the game. After trying to answer all of their questions about playing the game, the
differences among units, fending off barbarians, generating commerce, and problems
with civil unrest, I realized that I learned much of these strategies and concepts through
time-consuming trial and error, pouring through the manual, talking with friends who
played Civilization III, and reading the Civilopedia after failing. To use Civilization III in
classroom contexts with new players who are playing not of their own volition but
because they are required, may mean designing the activity in ways that manage the
amount of failure students must face. Moreover, students did not have much time to learn
the game on their own or outside of class and relatively little peer learning has occurred
in the class so far. Designing instruction to speed up the amount of time it take to learn
game play unrelated to learning objectives and to encourage greater peer collaboration
might prove fruitful in future implementations, but might also reduce the complexity of
the game space to a point where it would no longer be engaging.
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DAY 8: “This game isn’t so bad”: Frustration, Failure and Eventual Appropriation of
Civilization III
Today was the first day back after a week of MCAS testing.12 My goal for the day
was to initiate a daily routine in which student would complete daily log sheets, save
games, and answer reflection questions.
MCAS Frustration, Technology Failures, and Withdrawing from the Unit
Unfortunately, the students were punchy after a week of testing. Immediately,
Takia was kicked out of class for sitting on Bill’s lap. A “Do Now” on the board asked
students to review their log sheets. Most students played on their computers, not paying
attention to the assignment at all. I reminded them that their log sheets were their “tickets
out of here” today. The students laughed, either because I said “ticket out of here” rather
than the school lingo “Ticket to Leave” or because they knew that they could leave
whenever they wanted and had no intention of filling it out. A few students questioned if
they had to play the game if they elected to withdraw from the study. Others had
problems starting the game due to technology failures. Lara, for example, wanted to play,
but the game had been uninstalled from her machine. She sat alone, waiting for help, but
I was caught helping other students. After a few minutes, she slumped in her chair;
technology issues had killed her slight curiosity. Meanwhile, I went from student to
student answering questions. Students needed help getting their cities out of civil
disorder. Other students had forgotten how to load their saved game files. Finally, I
realized that the H: drive, the networked disk drive that held students’ saved games, had
crashed. Within a minute, all of the computers froze. Rebooting the computers took about
12
MCAS are the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams, a high stakes testing exam that will
prevent students from graduating from high school should students fail.
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five minutes and by 2:40 several students no longer showed any interest in playing.
Others did homework or passed notes.
These technology failures had a significant impact on class morale. Sandy and
Lisa pulled five girls (Lara, Takia, Jenny, Sheila, and Anna) out of eighteen students in
the class who had been visibly disengaged for a conference after class. Each student had
different issues. Jenny just had a baby. Lara slept most days. Sheila was frequently
absent. Takia seemed hostile from the beginning. Anna was confused by the game and
was writing notes in class. Interestingly, most of these girls were friends and an
agreement had emerged among them that playing Civilization III was boring. Sandy
reported that the five students were unhappy in the unit and wanted to withdraw. She
agreed to allow the students to withdraw if they wrote a one page letter about their
experiences in the unit addressed to me. I agreed that this seemed fair.
The hand-written letters were each about a half-page in length. All of the five
letters said that the game was not interesting, too complicated, or too frustrating. I tried to
interview Takia on why she did not like the game but she was quiet and withdrawn,
answering, “I don’t’ know” to most of the questions. In the post interviews, I talked with
Andrea who was friends with many of the girls who withdrew from the study. She gave
her perception of what happened.
(At first) I wasn’t interested because I didn’t know how to play the game. I
think the only reason that I became interested because I learned how to
play. I think that’s why a lot of people gave up on it. They were like “I
don’t know what I’m doing I don’t want to play this no more.” But, since I
had to be there anyway, I just learned how to play the game. It’s ok when
you get used to it.
The consistency across these sources suggests that, for these students, the game held little
immediate appeal, was frustrating, and complicated.
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Debriefing
After class, Lisa said that she overheard three students talking about how much
they enjoyed the unit. From Lisa’s perspective, the unit was going great. Many students
who were not participating in their other courses were fully engaged in the unit. She
commented, “For someone like Dwayne or Kent, this may be the only reason they even
come to school. I noticed that they are both a little bit happier. There is at least one thing
that they can look forward to in the day.”13 Seeing my surprise, Lisa continued, “Keep in
mind that most of these kids are flunking several classes. Some of them are flunking all
of their classes. Remember that 9XY (this grade level in charter school) is all students
who flunked ninth grade. We discussed the impact of teaching a class where every single
person in the group – even those with obvious academic talents – had failed at least one
course the previous year.” In this light, it was not surprising that they were resistant to
education, adverse to failure, and so easily brought off task.
Indeed, most students were becoming more and more engaged with the game and
the unit. Several students started their games over today, hoping to improve on their
successes. Goals included building a thriving capital, building roads, gathering luxuries to
create a strong economy, scouting the continent for resources, mapping out the geography
surrounding their starting location, and meeting other civilizations.
Warring was a prominent feature in many games, but many students who had
been defeated felt a bit trounced. Most students had mastered the basic game flow and
now felt some control over the basic game steps. Bill (Bantu) wanted to start war with the
Egyptians but, by the end of the day, he saw the effects of war on his civilization and
Later, Sandy made similar observations, remarking that this unit was “one of the few things that Dwayne showed up
for all term.”
13
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changed his mind. On his daily log sheet, he noted, “I need to make peace with the
foreign dudes.” Chris (Aztecs) was at war with the Iroquois and wanted to expand into
the Mississippi River basin. Norman (Iroquois, 590 AD) fought the much less advanced
Polypenesians.
The Log Sheets
The log sheets were a mixed success. Students perceived them as busy work and
most needed to be cajoled into filling them out. As a formative assessment tool, however,
they were effective in that they revealed gaps in students’ understandings. For example,
they made clear that none of the students had ever heard of despotism and only a few
could determine what year they were in. A few students had even forgotten what
civilization they were playing. For example, as Bill began filling out his log sheet, he
asked the second researcher, “Who is my civilization again?”
At the end of class, the second researcher interviewed students to gauge their
progress given the hectic day. She asked students what civilization they were, what year
they were in, and what their government was. About half of the students still could not
answer these questions. Kathy, Bill, Jenny, and Deborah did not know how to determine
their government type and year, which was surprising given their prominence on the
screen (See Figure 4.2). We decided to make the practice of polling the class on the basic
facts of their games a regular research and instructional strategy.
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Figure 4.2: Screenshot from a Typical (Chris’) game
DAYS 9-13: The Emergence of a Game Playing Culture
By day 9, the five female students who had opted out of playing the game were no
longer in the room and immediately the class ran more smoothly. Thirteen students
participated for the remainder of the unit, and Sandy was in the room far less frequently.
For the rest of the unit, students loaded games and were playing within the first five
minutes of class. They seemed much more committed to trying to learn the game and by
now they had all developed their own goals within the game. For many students, the
motivation to play Civilization III was, in large part, social. Dwayne, who was
charismatic and popular with many of the boys, was by far the most successful student
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and completely absorbed in the game. Bill, Kent, and Chris constantly compared their
games with Dwayne’s and simply liked being around him. Meanwhile, Dan, Shirley, and
Sheila socialized amongst themselves. Students’ decision to stay in the class was
undoubtedly the result of many overlapping factors but both researchers agreed that the
social interactions surrounding the game were as least as important as the game itself in
engaging (or disengaging) players.
Several game playing clusters emerged over the next few days few days based, it
seemed, on a combination of game playing goals and existing social networks. Teasing
out whether these clusters were a result of game goals, social relationships, or even the
arrangement of the room was difficult as social groups and gaming goals emerged in
tandem and tended to mutually reinforce one another. Those students interested in
geography tended to be friends, sit together, and play as Native America tribes, whereas
students interested in warring tended to play as Egyptians. These patterns reinforced one
another and emergent social groupings persisted through the rest of the unit (and indeed
through most of the camp). There was very little knowledge flows between these groups,
but extensive knowledge flow within them.
Building Civilizations in the Americas
Tony, Jason, Norman, and Chris, all located in the new world, focused game play
on expanding their civilizations to exploit natural resources and trying to find ways to
trade with the old world. Each player was comfortable with the basic game mechanics
(food, production, and commerce), had eliminated the barbarian threat, and was now
expanding his civilization. Game play consisted of analyzing the map to identify natural
resources and then planning how to expand their civilization to best utilize these
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resources. Next, they built roads between cities, irrigated plains, and mined natural
resources. They scouted South America to meet tribes, map the terrain, and hopefully,
meet another civilization.
Tony, Jason, and Chris discussed strategies in between turns. Tony watched his
territory grow from three to six cities, now filling most of the Eastern United States. In
between turns (which were now taking 30-40 seconds), he walked about the room and
observed others playing, particularly Chris and Jason who also played in North America.
Jason explained to Tony my advice about settling in central Michigan to take advantage
of its lumber and then growing up into the Upper Peninsula for its ore deposits. Tony saw
that other players were advancing more quickly than he was, so he restarted his game to
better utilize such resources. This time, he started building roads to bring wine and gems
to his people. In post interviews, Tony described what he learned from losing: “Playing
the game forces you to learn about the material. It actually forces you to learn about other
civilizations in order to survive.” Similarly, Jason (Iroquois 2230 BC) restarted his game
because he was not satisfied with his cities’ development. He asked Tony what
technology he should pursue first and Tony suggested the alphabet. Throughout the day,
these three used the time between turns to analyze one another’s games, offer advice, and
learn from one another’s mistakes.
Jason was very interested in maximizing resources. He discussed his civilization’s
infrastructure with me in detail. I explained how to maximize each city’s production by
noting natural resources, creating cities to serve as production centers (much the way that
Kansas City was a cattle hub), and then building specific city improvements to capitalize
on those goods. He also asked about core concepts and city improvements, such as
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aqueducts, libraries, and temples, which I explained. 14 Jason’s favorite class with
mathematics, and he, more than any other student tried to mathematically optimize his
game play and master the formal game system.
Colonial Imperialism as Shared Understanding
As students began sharing strategies within their gaming groups, “taken-as-shared
understandings” began emerging, particularly in regards to imperialist colonization.
Norman, Chris, and Tony all met the Polynesian civilization and struggled with whether
to ally or conquer them. On one hand, each was eager to trade technologies and goods
with other civilizations in order to keep up with old world civilizations. On the other,
conquering rival civilizations was tempting and possibly just as productive.
For example, Norman invented a language of colonial imperialism to justify
conquering smaller countries, which was later taken up by Chris, and then a few days
later, Tony. Norman met the Polynesians, a small, weak civilization who were exploring
South America. Norman realized that they had neither technology nor money and decided
to conquer their settlements. He explained, “It is for their own good, really. Look how
much more I have. They will be happier living as Iroquois.” Chris and Tony laughed at
this rationalization for imperialist behavior. I offered, “It’s up to you, Norman. They
might be more good to you as a separate civilization, if you could ally and trade
technologies.” Norman shrugged and attacked anyway. Seeing this, Chris, using
Norman’s game as a tool for thinking about his game, was curious if his game would
replicate similar findings. Chris immediately sent warriors in his game to where the
14
One day after class, I sat next to Jason on the subway after school. We mapped out how to strategically build cities in
North America in order to take advantage of natural resources (i.e. coal, iron, cattle grazing lands). We drew a map of
North America on the back of Jason’s notebook and plotted how he could build a string of cities across the Midwest
that would be as industrial production centers of various types (i.e. raw goods, irrigation, and commerce).
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Polynesians were in Norman’s game to see if an exploring Polynesian civilization
emerged in his game as well. Chris found them and was shocked at how “uncivilized”
they were. Building off of Norman’s joke, Chris decided that he too should do them the
“honor” of conquering their civilization. Chris made this knowledge public, adopting
Chris’s rhetoric as he moved to conquer the Polynesians.
A few days later, Tony, just like Norman, also met the Polynesians and decided to
“help” them by taking over their cities and privileging them to life as Iroquois citizens.
Briefly, Tony did try to help the Polynesians by trading them technologies and sending
them military units. However, he decided that it was “safer” for him just to take over their
city and defend their people as a benevolent imperialist force. Tony used Norman’s
rhetoric in describing his game and took delight at appropriating colonial rhetoric in the
service of Native American domination. I smiled at Tony’s mock concern for the
Polynesian citizens and joked that he had a firm intuitive grasp of American foreign
policy.
Exploring Geography
Chris (Aztecs, Republic, 1700 AD) was more interested in exploring new worlds
than in building his civilization and used his knowledge of geography, particularly of the
Bering Strait, to attempt to settle Asia. In post-interviews, Chris reported that
“conquering all the other lands and civilizations and finding where resources were on
specific continents” were his favorite aspects of the game. Chris had but a few cities and
roads, yet he did have two galleys that he sailed about the Americas, looking for
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barbarians to conquer or civilizations to trade with.15 For Chris, it was now really just a
waiting game, preparing for contact with the new world. He was shocked that no
Europeans had made contact with him even though it was already 1814 AD in his game. I
suggested that he send a galley up across the Bering Strait toward Asia. I explained, “See,
you have the advantage of knowing what is over there. The Aztecs probably would not
have tried that because – why would you row all the way to Alaska through all of that
cold water if you don’t even know what is on the other side? But, you know that China’s
over there.”
About twenty minutes later, in 1840 AD, Chris discovered the “old world” by
sailing a galley across the Bering Strait and into Siberia. He called over to me excitedly,
“Kurt, I found it. I’m in Asia. There’s no one here though.” I rushed over, trying to
generate some attention for Chris and to advertise to others that they too could use their
knowledge of geography to “cheat” the game. Tony, Kent, and a few others looked over.
I suggested that, as bizarre as it seems, it was theoretically possible. After all, the Vikings
rowed over to America from Norway. I reemphasized that the most unrealistic part was
probably that Chris had a reason for rowing across the Bering Strait. If someone tried to
row to Alaska from Mexico without any prior knowledge of what was on the other side or
clear incentive for doing so, they would probably be seen as crazy. Twice before I had
seeded discussion with the idea of using real history as a strategy for game play, but no
one had taken the bait until now.
Exploring the world was also a hook for Dan and Tony, and gradually it drew
Shirley into the game as well. Shirley (Egypt in 2670 BC) enjoyed exploring continents
15
Chris rediscovered the Polynesian civilization in Brazil after conquering them a first time in Peru. I explained how
the game can “restart” civilizations that have been conquered since groups of conquered people might escape to form
new cities or cities might spring from groups of people coalescing into agricultural communities.
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and spent most of her first few weeks of the unit exploring Africa and Asia with her
warriors. She defined her goal as “to explore the world,” and, sure enough, she spent
nearly all of her time producing warriors and exploring in order to accomplish this.
Unfortunately, as a result, she did not manage her cities’ production, worry about which
technologies to discover, build an infrastructure, or negotiate with other civilizations. In
fact, on day 9, Shirley still did not know where to find her civilization’s year or
government on the screen, indicating that she had little interest in anything other than
exploring and that she probably was not drawing strong connections between her game
and history. By day 10, however she readily recalled this information for researchers,
indicating that she was learning the game interface and even paying attention to
interacting variables, namely, her technologies and economy. Over the next few days,
Shirley started attending to more than one or two variables, realizing that, in order to
support a large army of workers, she would need to build a stronger economy. “I don’t
get why I don’t have more money,” she complained. “I have a servant. Look at him
digging and digging.” I laughed, agreeing that Shirley’s “servants” (workers) seemed to
be working hard. I explained that she would need to generate more commerce if she
wanted to have such a large army and showed her how to optimize food, trade, and
industrial production by strategically locating cities near resources. By Day 12, Shirley
was very invested in the game. She told researchers, “I want to take home my saved game
and play it. I think a friend of mine has a copy of the game.” Shirley’s interest in
Civilization III grew out of an interest in geography, and within three days, she became
so interested in the game that she wanted to take home a copy.
Changing the Course of History
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Dan, more than any other student, was intrigued by the idea of trying to “rewrite
history”. His goal was to build a strong military for defense against new world colonists
so that Native Americans held on to their own lands. When asked his goals for the game,
he became very animated, saying, “I’m going to build a huge empire and hold off all
those Europeans. Bring it on!” Dan and I discussed the challenges of trying to make new
discoveries when there was no one for the Iroquois to trade technologies with. I explained
that the Egyptians were probably making discoveries much more quickly since they could
trade with the Romans, Babylonians, Bantu, and Carthaginians. He looked at me
worriedly, realizing that his fate may rest not just in his ability to build a defense but to
also keep up in the technology race. However, in post-interviews, an interviewer asked
Dan about the historical forces behind colonization, and Dan attributed colonization to
population density and cultural issues, omitting the issue of technology altogether when
explaining the forces behind colonization.
Over the next several days, Dan’s primary struggle was figuring out how to
support an army large enough to hold off European colonists while also building an
economic infrastructure. He hoped to control North and South America before the
Europeans come to colonize the Americas. When they arrived, he tried to quickly trade
for horses to eliminate the colonists’ military advantage. At that moment, one of his
friends walked into the classroom and asked what him was doing. Dan responded,
“Changing the course of history.”
Waging War
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Simply waging war was a motivator for a few students. Dwayne (Japan,
unrealistic map16, 1200 AD) wanted help generating more income to compete with the
Chinese. This was the first time that he had asked for help all term. I could not figure out
what the problem was, noting that Dwayne was much wealthier than most students.
Dwayne had built roads, irrigation, and mines across the entire civilization and was using
his resources to their maximum efficiency. He explained that he used money to buy
technologies from other civilizations rather than trading. His strategy was to ally with the
Chinese against the English. He used the Chinese to weaken the English. In the
meantime, he would build reserves near the Chinese boarder. When the Chinese were
also weakened, he would enter a peace treaty with the English and ally against the
Chinese, his ultimate enemies. Everyone within earshot marveled at his Machiavellian
instincts. Dwayne bragged how he had been reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War, which he
found helpful for the game. For the first time in the unit, a student had used history as a
tool for understanding his game play without my prompting.
Soon, Dwayne had built trading and military outposts across the globe. I
commented on how this strategy was similar to 20th century U.S. military strategy in the
South Pacific, providing him an inroad for using the game to think about history and
modeling other ways that real history could be used as a tool for game play. He updated
me on his delicately balanced alliance with the English, Indians, and Chinese, shaky
global alliances that kept leading to war. I compared this to the “entangling alliances”
that historians cite as a cause of World War I. Dwayne rubbed his chin and said that
maybe he could a similar strategy to get back at China. Dwayne was scrutinizing history
16
Dwayne ended up on an unrealistic map because he refused to play on the historical scenarios provided. In the first
few weeks of class, we decided to let him play the game he wanted rather than constrain him to our scenarios.
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for causal patterns in order to achieve his game goals – namely to lead the English into
war against China.
Dwayne’s game play soon became a tool for other players. Bill, Kent, Chris, and
Tony periodically came over to watch his game, particularly when there was an event,
such as Dwayne’s capital city celebrating “We love the King Day” or his civilization
entering a “Golden Age” 17 . Tony and Chris listened as Dwayne and I discussed the
benefits of Golden Ages. Dwayne explained how he stayed ahead of other civilizations
by trading away older, non-militaristic technologies such as astronomy to the Germans
before the other civilizations did. “See, I buy technology off of China and then sell it to
the Greeks. Or, I conquer an English city, gain their incense, and then sell it to the
Chinese.” He then explained how he was going to war with England for dyes and fur in
order to “control the luxuries and make my people happy.” I joked, “It’s interesting that
you’ve decided to go to war for luxuries, for natural resources. You guys really are
American.” Tony, Chris, and Dwayne laughed. I had drawn a direct comparison between
real history and the game and the students had understood it, evidenced by their laughter.
After Dwayne, Andrea was the only student who spent most of the time fighting
wars. Andrea (Egypt, 925 BC) was at war with the Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, and
Carthaginians. As I walked by, she shouted, “Someone plopped a city in my territory!”
(The Romans had built a city in what is now western Egypt). Immediately, Andrea sent
two warriors and a spearmen unit to capture the city.
“What are you doing, Andrea?” I asked.
“They can’t just come in here” she said, with a hint of swagger.
“Golden Ages” are the game’s way of modeling especially productive eras in a culture’s existence. When players
build a “Wonder of the World” that is aligned with their civilizations’ culture (e.g. militaristic civilizations build a
militaristic wonder of the world), the civilization may enter a Golden Age that earns it bonus resources.
17
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I laughed, “No wonder you’re always at war.”
You’ve got that right. You don’t mess with me.”
Andrea was worried that the Romans would take over her capital. I advised her to think
about building a stronger economy through settling the upper Nile. She finally explored
the rest of the Nile and found fertile river valleys, plentiful gold deposits, and ample
horses and incense, but was concerned about defending her civilization. We discussed
how to balance the competing needs of expansion versus defense. Andrea was protective
of her peoples and hostile toward whoever threatened them, but she still was not
considering relationships among geography, economics, and politics. Although clearly
invested in the game, she was preoccupied with defending her civilization against
invaders instead of examining the multiple interacting variables that crucially shaped the
growth of her civilization.
By day 11, Andrea (Egypt, c. 970 AD), had realized the importance of these
major variables. She began to realize that her infrastructure was weak because she had
spent all of her resources over the past 4000 years at war. She had only discovered
mathematics by 1000 AD, putting her far behind other civilizations in technology.
Andrea was down to three cities, her economic infrastructure had collapsed, and her cities
were in civil disorder. I suggested that keeping her cities from rioting might be
worthwhile. On day 12, Andrea attempted one last attack on the Romans and then finally
gave up her war-trodden game to start over. During this subsequent game, Andrea asked
me for regular advice. I showed her how to manage her city production and citizen
happiness for the third time. She began asking me about concepts such as map-making,
harbors, and galleys. It was the first time that Andrea had shown any interest in learning
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historical game concepts, reading the Civilopedia or building city improvements. Finally,
these concepts had become tools for her to solve a problem that she cared about, namely,
protecting her people.
Socially-Mediated Play
Both Kent and Bill played their games in relation to other players more explicitly
than any other students. Bill (Bantu 775, BC) noted that Dwayne was doing much better
than him and asked how to get an empire like Dwayne’s. Dwayne, who was something of
a loner, was far too engaged in his game to notice Bill, let alone help him. I gave Bill
several mini-lessons that described the concept of luxuries and suggested that he look for
other luxuries when choosing where to build cities. I showed him how to build roads to
bring dye back to his city, which would make people happy and increase trade. I gave
him hints on defending his civilization. He was at war with the Russians, Egypt,
Germans, and Romans, but now had created peace and was building more cities. By Day
10, he learned to strengthen his infrastructure, build roads, and gather dyes in order to
“expand his empire to be more like Dwayne’s.” As I left class, Bill commented to me,
“You know, I didn’t really like it at first, but now that I get it, this game is pretty cool.” In
post interviews, Bill explained what he learned playing as the Bantu:
Interviewer:
Bill:
Interviewer:
Bill:
What did you learn about starting in Africa?
That it (colonization) wasn’t just luxuries. Everything was there (in
Africa). Egypt had like the horses and my people just traveled on
foot. It wasn’t like horse and carriage or something like that.
What were the challenges to starting in Africa?
I had to stay in this little peninsula (sub-Saharan Africa). I wanted
to go across the water. Going across the water. I wanted to go past
stuff but I couldn’t. We had not boats or nothing like that.
Here, Bill is interacting with predominant theories of Africa as the dark continent. Bill
realized that sub-Saharan Africa was indeed full of riches and natural resources, but there
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was also relatively little farmable land, and no domesticable animals, such as horses. Bill
did not seem to see the Sahara and Kalahari deserts as natural barriers, but he did
experience feelings of isolation, complaining that he could not build boats or
communicate with other tribes.
Kent spent much of the class helping other students, advising them on what
technologies to pursue despite the fact that he was not one of the stronger players in class.
Kent was particularly fond of acquiring mathematics technology because it led to
catapults and engineering. At one point, Kent stumbled over the word “contemptible.” He
asked Dwayne “What does contemptible mean? Russia thinks my peace terms are
contemptible.” Dwayne responded, “That means they don’t like it.” Other times Kent
asked questions, made comments, or analyzed different strategies for playing the game
while watching Dwayne. For Kent much of the fun was getting to collaborate with
friends.
Reflective Game Play Affinity Groups
Chris, Dwayne, and Bill stayed after school to play Civilization III. I stayed
behind as a supervisor, observing games and giving advice. Obviously, we had come a
long way since the first few days of the unit when students were largely unwilling to even
play the game. Now, students had clear game goals and were using me as a tool for game
play. Chris asked what strategy I would use to avoid wars on multiple fronts. I showed
him how he could be more efficient by balancing his cities’ production and more
productive by building an infrastructure of mines and roads. I drew historical analogies to
the economic and military impact of superhighways in Germany and the United States.
Dwayne asked me, “What do you hope people learn through this?”
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Bill interjected, “It is better than reading books.”
Recognizing that students were going out on a limb for me, giving the game a chance and
now staying after school to play, I met them half way, explaining my goals for the unit. I
tried to make my next example one that would make a direct link between success in the
game and learning about history. “Well, for example, those of you who played in
America, were there horses in North America?” Students looked at their maps and
realized there were no horses indigenous to the Americas. I asked them to imagine that
they were the Iroquois or Aztecs, who have no horses, and imagine how much slower
exploration would be and how much weaker their military would be. I described the
historical importance of cavalry, using the examples of Spanish conquistadors battling the
Incans. “One thing I think you’ll get from the game,” I explained, “is a real appreciation
for the impact of geography on history.”
Next I showed them the technology chart in the Civilopedia that shows how all of
the technologies are linked together.
I explained that grasping the broad flow of
technological discoveries is difficult and that, hopefully, the game could help them tie
together such concepts. I added that playing Civilization III might give them a framework
for understanding when and where, for example, the Egyptians lived and how they
compared to the Greeks or the Romans. Although I was doing all of the reflection here, I
thought that modeling how the game could be used both to stimulate questions about
history and to provide a tool for thinking through world history issues.
Dwayne was no longer paying attention, so I focused on Bill’s game more
specifically. I gave an example that I thought might intrigue Dwayne as well, testing my
emerging hypothesis that students would listen to information if it direct pertained to their
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game play. “Take your game as the Bantu, Bill. One thing you will have to deal with is
the geographic isolationism of the Bantu. There is no one for you trade with. Where are
you going to grow? On the North, you have the Sahara Desert to contend with. It takes
forever to walk across there.” Using the game as a communication device, I scrolled
across Africa, noting the size of the Sahara and the natural resources in Africa. “Now,
one thing that is unrealistic about the game is that you, as the player, can learn from
history. You know that there are other civilizations out there to keep up with in
technology. You know that Europeans or other Africans might colonize your lands if you
don’t build up your civilization.” I paused a moment, giving them a chance to think it
over. Then I pointed out that thinking about these issues might just be a pretty good way
to learn geography.
Bill went back to his game. He told Dwayne that he “struck peace with the
Cleopatra lady (Egyptians) and discovered the ‘technology with the curtain’” (literature,
represented by an icon of a curtain). I began to realize how little most students integrated
game vocabulary into their conversations without my prompting. They talked about
discoveries that they were already familiar with but were far less likely to use words such
as despotism, monarchy, or literature. Whether this was a matter of not understanding the
underlying concept or just not knowing the term was ambiguous, but a goal of mine was
to enable students to develop a familiarity with these terms, and it was clear that students
were not taking up such a vocabulary very readily.
Instructor Practices
I used the last five minutes of class to give just-in-time lectures based on the day’s
events. Noticing that students paid little attention to lectures decontextualized from their
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gaming activities, I tried to base my comments on events that I saw happening in
students’ current games. On day 12, I gave a mini-lecture on the importance of resources
and geography in game play. I drew a chart on the board listing students’ civilizations
and several key factors, such as available luxuries, access to horses (y/n), and
technologies being discovered. I polled students as they played, filling in the chart with
data from four games (2 Egypt, 2 Iroquois). Six people turned around and gave me their
attention at the board – a record for this unit. I asked them what they noticed about the
chart. Kent called out, “Egypt is the only one that has horses.” I asked the class, “People
playing the Iroquois, do any of you see horses in North or South America?” Tony and
Chris answered, “No.” We used these aggregated game statistics (See Table 4.1) to
identify patterns in game play. My goal was to give students a broader data set to make
inferences from.
Student
Jason
Andrea
Tony
Chris
Kent
Civilization
Year
(AD)
760
1040
1020
1878
580
Government
Gold
/ Technology
Income
Egypt
Republic
200 / + 10 Engineering
Egypt
Despotism
196 / -6
Mathematics
Iroquois
Monarchy
598 / +18 Monotheism
Aztecs
Republic
684 / -4
Banking
Egypt
Despotism
1575
/ Construction
+10
Table 4.1: Aggregating statistics from students’ games.
Horses
Luxuries
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Incense
Incense
Iron, furs
Wine
Incense
I continued, “How do you think this will affect your game?” Jason answered that
they will develop more slowly. Dan mentioned that it would make fending off the
Europeans more difficult. Tony observed that the Iroquois are located near great iron
deposits. Dan, Jason, and Tony all mentioned that the biggest difference playing the
Iroquois was that they were severed from the global trade of Africa, Europe, and Asia.
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The following day I noted several students trading with other civilizations, so I
led a group discussion about isolationism versus alliances. I wrote two columns on the
board and had students call out the advantages of each. Students pointed out that trade
had helped them gain technologies faster but had also left them at risk of being attacked
with their own technologies. Isolationism, on the other hand, was safer in the short run
but made it harder to stay ahead in technology. In Jason’s words, “Isolation is bad
because you have to do everything yourself. You move very slowly.” Dan countered that
“they can use your technologies against you if you trade.” Norman, Kathy, and Bill, all of
whom had computer problems, left before the discussion ended, obviously frustrated with
their games. I stayed after to help a few students (including Dan, Tony, Chris, and
Dwayne). I noticed that the students who stayed late the previous day (Bill, Jason, Chris,
Tony, and Dwayne) were much more comfortable with the game than their peers and
were making greater progress. I offered to stay after school to help students on whatever
days the lab was open and used the time to observe students’ games. Three or four
students stayed after on most days, and soon others realized that those who played after
school were progressing much more rapidly.
Technology Failures
Technical issues continued to create frustration for some students. However, there
was perhaps one positive consequence of these technical failures: A few students who
hadn’t taken up the practice of playing the game recursively on their own were now
forced to do so, trying out strategies, seeing how they played out, and then retrying a new
strategies. On the 13th day, for example, Andrea and Bill each lost about 10 hours of
work. Bill lost the better part of two days of game play which he had spent mapping out
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Africa, clearing jungle around Congo, and building a small infrastructure around four
cities. When he realized that he had to start over again, he shouted in anger, “I’m about to
hate this game!” I had noticed Bill struggling with his economy, so I showed him how to
sell off technologies like Dwayne had. Bill recovered the following day, explaining that
his goal for the day was to “do the same as yesterday….only better.” He added, “I’m
thinking of declaring war on the Egyptians. I don’t like what they’re up to up there.” Bill
showed me where the Egyptians are located on the map, noting their Southward progress
into sub-Saharan Africa.
Jason (Egypt, 760 AD) also suffered from continual technical problems. When his
computer crashed, he used this as an opportunity to change games. He oscillated between
playing the Iroquois and Egypt, alternately giving up on the Iroquois because “being
isolated in North America was too hard” and then the Egyptians because “fighting the
other civilizations in Egypt was too difficult.” Today he returned to his Iroquois game
(650 AD). Although he was still just researching mathematics, he was quite wealthy, but
unaware that he was falling behind technologically. We discussed how his major
challenge was that he had no one to trade technologies with: “Remember when you were
the Egyptians. You could trade with other civilizations, gaining all kinds of technologies
through trade. Imagine what is going to happen when your civilizations meet.”
Unpacking Realism
Jason was more concerned about the immediate threat posed by hordes of
barbarians, who were coming down from Canada on horseback, than about his long-term
survival. About 17 units appeared (an ungodly number), and we both agree that this was
both unfair and probably unrealistic. I explained to Jason that the barbarians were meant
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to represent other Native American tribes, so the idea that they might attack his
civilization was not totally unjustified; in fact, the scenario was designed to show this
dynamic. However, that fact that these Native American populations had already
obviously obtained horses was dubious. Later, I observed Jason studiously examining the
technology tree, a concept map which depicts the history of technologies starting with the
alphabet or bronze working and leading up to rocketry, lasers, and the cure for cancer.
Jason’s interest in the technology tree was surprising, if only in that he was the first
person in class to show any interest in reading it. Most veteran Civilization III players
find the technology tree strategically useful and intellectually intriguing. I made a mental
note to show the technology tree to more players.
Remaining Failure and Confusion
Kathy and Miranda still struggled with the initial stages of game play, such as
saving games or preventing civil disorder – game problems that other students mastered
in the first few days. Miranda was frequently absent. At my request, Dwayne showed
Miranda how to fix several of her problems. Kathy (Aztecs, 430 BC) attended class
regularly but still wrestled with game problems, forgot how to build new cities, and did
not know how to change cities’ production – all very basic procedures. Sandy, who
helped Kathy on days when she could, handed her a real map and asked her where her
civilization was on the map. Kathy did not know, but with prompting, guessed “North
America?” and pointed to Venezuela. Her civilization was in Mexico. Sandy and Kathy
went to the next room to look at a map more carefully. I tried making several connections
between the game and social studies, for example, explaining how to generate more
income by creating more commerce. I walked them through a thought experiment:
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“Imagine if Boston had no roads coming in or out, so that every time a farmer wanted to
sell corn, pottery, or jewelry, she had to carry them in without any roads. Roads allow
food to get in more quickly and create more trade.” I worked with Kathy for several days,
but she sounded overwhelmed and tired. I asked Sandy about Kathy’s difficulties, and
Sandy asserted that although Kathy performed relatively well in school, she was better at
memorizing facts than thinking conceptually. Although Civilization III was a engaging
for most students, it wasn’t for all. Finding ways of engaging Kathy would remain a
challenge.
DAYS 14-17: Mixed Success and Failure
By now, most students could play autonomously and were either finishing up
their first main game or early into their second. The initial problems of cities in civil
disorder and economies failing were gone. The quiet and order within the classroom
allowed me to shift my focus from getting and keeping students’ attention to helping
them use the game as a tool for learning social studies. I now spent most of my time
observing students’ activities, providing hints and feedback, and devising just-in-time
lectures.
Reflection Activities in Support of Game Play
I now began classes with structured activities when possible. On Day 14, I began
class by asking students to write three unrealistic things about the game, using Jason’s
complaints about the Native American barbarians as an example. About half of the class
filled out their post-its (See Table 4.2).
Name
Shirley
Unrealistic “things” about the game
1) Can they really burn your town?
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2) If this game was true, can it start world peace?
Norman 1) French are building cities next to my city in North America.
2) People love me one year, burn my city the next.
3) My people are starving.
Jason
Tony
1) The Iroquois learned Republic.
2) The Iroquois had harbors.
3) The Iroquois were about to take over South America.
1) The years are off.
2) The colonization is off
3) The amount of people (is unrealistic).
Table 4.1: Students’ perceptions of unrealistic game features.
By and large, students were more able to perceive factual inaccuracies than to
detect underlying biases in the rule set of the game. Students readily identified incorrect
emergent events within the simulation such as the absence of important real-world
historical events or the existence of an Iroquois Republic (although one might argue that
the Iroquois had a democracy of sorts). Shirley then hinted at a conflict-driven model
underlying the game whereby most civilizations are fundamentally aggressive. Kent also
questioned the conflict-driven nature of the game, complaining that it was impossible to
survive while “staying neutral.” Curiously, students also thought that some realistic
products of the simulation, such as Celtic / French settlements in Canada were
unbelievable. These comments belie that students were wrestling with the properties of
Civilization III as a simulation. Students tended to detect only those biases that had a
direct impact on their game play, such as the absence of Columbus in 1492 or the
conflict-driven nature of the simulation. Their comments demonstrated that they did, in
fact, “know” things about history, particularly, what governments Native Americans had,
who settled North American and in what year, and roughly speaking how colonization
occurred; however, what students knew was typically only activated through
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conversation with other students or in relation to events happening in game, patterns
noted by other researchers working with minority students (Brown, Campione, Webber,
& McGilly, 1992).
Mastering the Game and Recursive Play
Several students started new games during the last few days. Chris and Jason
switched to the Egyptians because they were convinced that the Iroquois were too
isolated and, as a result, were technologically behind the European civilizations. Dwayne
simply grew tired of his game and wanted to play as Africa. Bill, on the other hand, was
being dominated by the Babylonians and, convinced that they had an inherent strategic
advantage, wanted to try playing as them instead. Students were beginning to devise
hypotheses about which civilizations stood a better chance of surviving through history
and switched games based on this knowledge.
As students started new games, it was clear that most had mastered the aspects of
the game that they had struggled with earlier during the unit. For example, Andrea
restarted her game out of frustration over her war with Greece. Within five minutes, she
created two cities in Egypt, irrigated the flood plains, and built roads to bring incense to
her people – all strategies that she had failed to use beforehand successfully. Likewise,
her cities were perfectly placed to balance food production, trade, and the utilization of
luxuries. Kent’s work was similar: He restarted his game so that he could better plan his
cities’ growth and quickly built cities up the Nile River valley. Both Kent and Andrea,
students who were slow to learn the game and who did not stay to play outside of
required class time, had now mastered the game controls and were beginning to
understand the underlying game system as well. Despite such progress, however, a few
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game intricacies remained opaque. Norman, for example, was confusing entertainer and
research icons and had wasted much time and energy trying to figure out why his city
was revolting18. Shirley was still learning to manage her cities, and I spent five minutes
walking her through production management.
Investment in Her Civilization
Andrea became increasingly invested in protecting her people, a unique “win
condition” not necessarily rewarded by the game itself. Over the past few days, Andrea
began reading city improvement screens carefully and asking me questions related to it,
such as what an aqueduct was for and how happiness worked as a game mechanic. Her
questions pleasantly surprised me as, up to now, she had asked very few specifics, despite
being generally receptive to help. Andrea explained that she was interested in how
happiness worked so that she could please her people. The game’s flexibility had
provided an opportunity for Andrea to become engaged on her own terms by it allowing
her to create her own goals. Like Wright’s (2001) “collector / hobbyist” type, Andrea’s
pleasure was creating a civilization and taking care of it’s needs.
As Andrea became more invested in her civilization, she devised strategies for
saving her people from war. She studied the geography of Africa, found natural resources
in Kenya, and decided to build her civilization up the Nile rather than compete with
civilizations over control of the Arab peninsula. She also started building a network of
peaceful allies to fortify herself against the Babylonians and Greeks. Andrea, more than
the others, really appreciated the humor in the political negotiations. She laughed out
loud when taunted by other civilizations, sometimes repeating their lines out loud for
others (e.g. “Shame that little civilization you have is in our way”). She wanted to avoid
18
In effect, he was creating a community of nothing but research scientists without laborers or any form of leisure.
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war but found dealing with aggressive civilizations difficult. The Greeks had once again
established a city near her western front (Northern Libya) and were threatening war if she
did not pay tribute.
“180 Gold !?!? They must be out of their mind…. Greece! Again? Why are they
always coming to get me?” she scoffed.
I said, “Gee, I wonder why? Weren’t you just attacking their city up in Libya?”
Andrea laughed, “Yeah, well they’re coming into my territory. I can’t let them do
that.” For Andrea, the game was initially a simple contest between warring civilizations.
Eventually, however, it became about building a civilization of contented people. Still, it
did not take much to send Andrea back into conflict.
Contact with the Old World, or Here Come the Celts!
By Day 16, the students playing civilizations in the Americas (Tony, Dan, and
Norman) had mapped out most of the territory and were anticipating contact with other
continents. Tony was building his infrastructure, Dan was building an army, Chris was
exploring China, and Norman had no plan other than to build his civilization and wait for
the arrival of the Europeans. When I asked Norman his long-term plans for the game, he
shrugged.
A highlight of the unit occurred when Dan (Iroquois) made the first trans-Atlantic
contact with another civilization. In 1914, the Celts reached the shores of Nova Scotia
and founded a city only a few moves away from Dan’s capital (near Montreal). Dan
called out in shock as he noticed the Celtic settlement so close to his capital, “How did
they get here?!” As he watched the cavalry disembark from the Celtic frigates, he
realized that he was in trouble. Dan immediately reached peace terms with the Celts
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(thankfully) and set about figuring out how to catch up to them. Within moments, the
Carthaginians also landed along the eastern shores of North America. To Dan’s surprise,
he discovered theology, then construction, and then technology after technology until he
had discovered 15 technologies in one turn. He had built the Great Library (which gives
its owner any technology learned by two known civilizations). Andrea and I watched
with amazement as Dan’s civilization leapt generations ahead in technology.
“Imagine how far behind you would be if you didn’t have the Great Library,” I
said.
“I’d be dead,” Dan replied.
I explained to the onlookers that Dan was behind the other civilizations in technology,
probably because he had no other civilizations to trade with. He would need to catch up
quickly, trading for horses and upgrading his units so that he would not be drastically
overpowered by the Celts. Dan’s first goal was to trade for horses now that he had
navigation. None of the known civilizations were willing to trade horses, however. Dan
was very concerned that the Celtic cavalry would overpower his spearmen, so he decided
to build a galley and sail to Europe. Other students thought this was an interesting idea:
What if the Native Americans had done something similar? Under what conditions might
the indigenous populations have explored Europe?
Dan, Tony, Chris, and I briefly discussed these questions. Tony, Chris, and Dan
all saw the primary issue as one of population density. Looking at their maps, it was clear
that the European and Asian countries were all battling over land and resources while the
Native Americans had no incentive to expand. Students noted Native American’s
geographical isolation and the fact that they had opportunity to trade technologies with
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other civilizations as a secondary issue affecting colonization. These responses, while
much more general and abstracted than most historians might frame them, are quite
consistent with many modern readings of colonization (e.g. Diamond, 1999).
Eventually, the Celts and Carthaginians both attacked Dan. The Celts had three
cities in Canada now, and the Carthaginians settled in the Caribbean. By 1952, Dan
became caught in a battle between them and was being crushed. The Celtic cavalry
moved right through his spearmen and warriors and it became obvious that they would
overpower his army in a matter of turns. He decided to restart his game from a previous
day, hoping to make peace with the Celts by giving them a city before war started. This
kind of move – retrying different strategies to examine their impact – is a common
Civilization III strategy, one that encourages players to consider how their games could
have played out differently as a result of different decisions. Dan traded maps with the
Carthaginians and was stunned to see how big the other civilizations were. Most
civilizations had 15-25 cities, whereas Dan had six. Seeing the entire globe populated,
and seeing how expansive the Celtic civilization had become, was awesome to Dan (See
Figure 4.3). Tony and Jason ran over to watch. Both were stunned at the size of the other
civilizations and realized what this might mean for their games. Because Dan was 100
years ahead of them, they thought that they might still survive, so they stuck with their
games. It was clear, however, that their small civilizations of 5-10 cities would be no
match for the Europeans. News of Dan’s experiences meeting the new world colonists
quickly spread among students playing as Iroquois, as they realized the ill fate his game
portended. Tony and Jason quickly modified their game play, appropriating Dan’s game
as a tool for reflecting on their own.
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Figure 4.3: Screenshot from Dan’s Game
In the post-test interviews, I asked Dan several questions about the colonization of
the Americas to probe how the game might have mediated his understanding of history.
He described the causes behind European colonization as an amalgam of forces yet
privileged the peacefulness of Native American culture as the primary reason that Native
Americans did not colonize Europe.
Interviewer:
Dan:
After Columbus reached the new world, the Europeans colonized
the Americas as opposed to the other way around. Why do you
think this is?
Because the Europeans had more than the Native Americans did.
They weren’t as civilized. I’m not going to say as civilized. But
they were pretty much peaceful. They were focusing in on their
land for themselves not going around the world trying to focus on
everything else… having everything nice and calm.
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In discussing colonization, Dan’s immediate response was largely uninformed by his
game playing experiences. He did describe how the Native Americans were not as
“civilized,” balking at the use of the term, but then quickly shifted his focus to European
colonial greed and Native American pacifism. The interviewer probed this tension
between cultural and philosophical readings of history further.
Interviewer:
Dan:
So were their reasons behind colonization more a matter of
philosophy or geography?
Probably more of a philosophy thing. They didn’t want to go
anywhere because they were happy with where they were. They
didn’t have any troubles with any animals. They were killing them
using them for fur or food or whatever. They had everything they
needed, whereas Europe got overpopulated. So they needed more
land.
Dan first describes the difference between Native American and European civilizations as
one of “philosophy,” but then brings back geographical considerations – namely, the
shortage of land in Europe.
Interviewer:
Dan:
Do you think that natural resources had anything to do with it as
well? Horses, iron gold, diamonds?
It probably does. But, like I said the Native Americans probably
didn’t pay any attention to it because they were happy. They didn’t
have anything to worry about. They were pretty much peaceful.
The only people they had to worry about were enemy tribes. No
disease, nothing like that.
Here, the interviewer introduces a concept central to Civilization III – the role of natural
resources in the success of a civilization – to see how these might affect Dan’s reading of
history after playing the game. Dan holds on to a largely cultural interpretation of history,
however, describing Native Americans as a singular, largely peaceful, people, although
he also mentions the lack of diseases in Native American tribes, perhaps drawing from
earlier discussions in the unit of the role of smallpox in colonial conquests. Next, the
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interviewer introduces the notion of Asian colonization of the Americas to probe how
Dan compares Chinese civilization with the Europeans.
Interviewer:
Dan:
Why do you think it is that an Asian country like China didn’t
settle North America first?
I have no idea. I was going to say the same thing I said for Native
Americans then I thought about it but they were probably just not
prepared to actually settle somewhere else?
Considering the case of China posed a problem for Dan. Dan’s only explanations so far
for colonization were population density and cultural pacifism. The Chinese did not fit
either condition, leaving him with little basis for theorizing why the Chinese would not
have colonized the Americas, so he speculates that the Chinese perhaps were not
“prepared” for explorations.
Dan’s interpretation of historical forces was complex. At times he draws from
earlier readings of history, particularly descriptions of Native American as peaceful
peoples. At other times, he uses more materialist, geographical concepts. Several
interacting variables are captured in Dan’s conceptual model of the colonization of
America but their relationships are unclear. It is also curious that Dan did not cite the lack
of technological innovation as a major cause, given that this was a source of his own
demise when playing a Native American civilization. The lack of pretest data makes it
difficult to argue what parts of his conceptual model come from game play and what
parts were already there, but clearly Dan did not buy into the game’s materialist,
geographically-based logic wholesale. Rather, he had specific ways of reading the game
in terms of history. For Dan, the game was a useful simulation for material processes but
less so for cultural ones. This finding should give educators some encouragement that
game playing students do not necessarily buy into one particular model wholesale, but, in
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this instance at least, use existing understandings to think about their game play and vice
versa. Perhaps further extension activities, particularly a more diverse range of game
experiences, would have better prepared Dan for understanding the complexity of
colonization.
Norman encountered the Europeans next (in 1836). By day 15, he had crossed
paths both the Romans and Celts who sailed to the New World, built outposts on islands,
and declared war on his Iroquois. We speculated as to just how far behind he was in
technology and what he might do to catch up. I suggested he send explorers to find
civilizations to trade technologies with, explaining how, although he was currently
technologically behind, he could use his furs and negotiation strategies to catch up.
Tony (Iroquois, 1818) planned to catch up by mimicking Chris’s voyage to Asia
across the Bering Strait19 in the hope of making contact with other civilizations and
trading technologies and perhaps even luxuries. His attitude was “if they are not going to
come to me, then I’m going to them.” Tony now had over a dozen cities and was very
excited about expanding his map. In between turns (which now took about 20 seconds
each as slow computers calculated moves for ten different civilizations or more), Tony
hopped out of his chair and checked Bill’s, Chris’s, and Dan’s games. He compared his
progress to the others’ and appropriated their strategies from his own game. The down
time between turns combined with the relevancy of other students’ games to his own
gave Tony a strong incentive for studying other game play. He was interested in meeting
other civilizations, which seemed to spark his imagination. When asked about his favorite
part of the game, Tony replied, “My favorite part of playing the game would have to be
getting in first contact with other civilizations and exploring (when) I found new stuff.”
19
Chris’s boat eventually sank
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By day 16, Tony had made it to Asia. He scouted the eastern coast but found only
barbarian hordes. Tony talked to other students, researchers, teachers, and even himself
as he played, commenting on geographical features. As Tony sailed to Asia, he, Chris,
and I speculated about where he was on the map and discussed where the Chinese
civilization may have settled. Based on what we knew about the model, we tried to
predict how China might have evolved, but we still could not track them down. Debates
arose about whether or not we20 were in fact in China given the prominent geographical
features and then what other civilizations we might find in Southeast Asia. I suggested
that he unload an explorer and cut across Asia in search of Russia. We all figured that
someone must have colonized Asia unless it had been overrun by barbarians (placed in
the Mongolian Highlands to simulate Genghis Khan and the Mongolian horde). I myself
was curious about how the other civilizations developed in the simulation.
Tony did not find any civilizations, but he did discover navigation, which meant
that he could sail his galleys across the open waters and trade resources (namely horses)
at ports, assuming he could find a friendly one. In the meantime, back in the Americas,
Tony’ explorers in South America encountered the Polynesians. Tony again decided to
“integrate the Polynesians into his civilization.” He enjoyed their newly created
euphemism, continuing on for several minutes about his “moral obligation to share his
standard of living with them.”21 By the end of the week, back on the Asian front, Tony’s
galley (Iroquois, 1858) had finally met the Chinese. They had little to trade, but at least
they were behind Tony’ Iroquois. He was disappointed, however, that he could not get
At this point in Tony’s game, I think the students and I all felt that we were in that boat together.
I found fascinating the extent to which a ninth grader with an arguably weak academic background who was failing
most of his classes had mastered the rhetoric of colonialism and the sophistication with which he joked about it. The
fact that he not only “got” the irony but could also play with it adeptly was impressive.
20
21
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horses from them to use against the hypothesized (thanks to Dan’s game) incoming and
more advanced Celts.
Abandoning the New World, Learning More Game Concepts, and Recursive Play
Some students began asking questions about specific aspects of the simulation.
On Day 17, Chris, who had switched to Egypt because he thought that Native American
civilizations were too isolated and therefore doomed to failure, asked me,
“What
happens if you irrigate?” I was surprised to hear Chris ask about such a seemingly basic
concept, but it turned out that he wanted to know in detail how irrigation affected the
game economies. Chris, like most students, had already developed a very general sense of
how the game systems worked (e.g. irrigation causes more food); he was now beginning
to decipher how these rules fit together (e.g. plains generate 2 food without irrigation,
which is enough to support one citizen). After playing the game for a few weeks, Chris
became interested in actually examining the conceptual relationships among variables. It
was no longer sufficient to know a trick or useful rule of thumb (i.e. build roads
everywhere); rather, he now wanted to better understand more complex properties of the
simulation. Because Chris had played as the Iroquois, who were isolated, he had little
experience trading with other civilizations, so I showed him how to buy and sell
technologies. He then spent considerable time exploring the negotiation aspects of the
game. I had not anticipated that students playing civilizations in the Americas would have
little opportunity to engage with trade; in future iterations of this simulation, I would
strengthen other tribes native to the Americas in order to ensure students who choose to
play such groups a broader range of gaming experiences.
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Jason, whose civilization was now in the 1700s, could not believe that no one had
sailed across the Atlantic yet to colonize the new world. This historical inaccuracy
concerned him and he began to question the validity of the game. I explained that
Civilization III is a simulation based on initial conditions plus a set of rules. I emphasized
that no events are scripted; rather, the game works more like a top that is wound up and
then let free to go. Eager for action, he decided to try to sail to Europe across Greenland.
Earlier I had explained how the Vikings probably sailed to North America along the
Southern shore of Greenland and into Newfoundland. Jason had decided “Why not just
reverse the direction of travel?” He then began peppering me with questions about
Greenland: “Is there oil in Greenland? Are there other resources there? Do people live
there now? How many?” A strategic question in the game, “Is there oil in Greenland” led
to a series of questions about the history of Greenland. Knowledge of Greenland (not
something covered in many classes) became something very important for Jason to put to
immediate use in his game play.
Jason then began using his own prior knowledge of history as a tool for
understanding his game. He began outlining the reasoning behind his questions. He knew
that there were valuable oil reserves in Alaska (which he would soon colonize); perhaps,
he reasoned, Greenland contained similar resources. He knew that the United States
purchase of Alaska from Russia was one of the best land deals ever made (referring to
Seward’s Folly). Therefore, he explained, he planned to replay history by claiming
Alaska first and then using its oil for global industrial domination hundreds of years later.
Whether or not Jason’s line of reasoning regarding his strategy within the game in turn
enabled him to elaborate his understanding of real history outside of it is an open
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question, but the fact that he was now drawing connections between history in the game
and history as he understood it was encouraging.
By day 16, Jason gave up on the Iroquois and started playing as the Egyptians. He
was amazed at the differences between playing as the Iroquois, who started in a
woodland forest, and playing as the Egyptians, who were in the Nile River valley. “Look
how fast they cities grow!” he remarked. I asked him if he knew why. He commented,
“Well, yes, the Nile River Valley.” He went on, “Before, I didn’t like the Egyptians
because they got all trapped up here,” pointing to the Mediterranean, the Sahara, and the
Red Sea. Renewed with the possibility of building a thriving civilization, Jason became
nearly obsessed with the elegant expansion of his civilization, plotting carefully how to
maximize the production of each city by strategically placing it in the optimal location,
much as a mathematician might enjoy elegant mathematical solutions. He was also
learning some of the subtler concepts in the game. He read through the technology
advances in the Civilopedia and decided to become a Republic in order to “get more
technology and more people are happy.” Now that Jason understood the game basics, he
was able to use the Civilopedia to answer his questions about the game.
Jason was developing a strong working knowledge of the game system. He seem
to enjoy exploring how to exploit its properties and then critiquing emergent behavior
where he found it unrealistic. Jason’s plans were complex. He decided to build three
cities in the Upper Nile to gather incense in the region. He would build one on the coast
of the Red Sea to take advantage of the horses that inhabit the foothills of modern Kenya
and then use this city as an outpost against the Nubian barbarian tribes. Then, he would
gradually build cities up and down the Nile to take advantage of gold deposits. He was
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giddy with the possibilities and had many questions. “Why are there so many barbarians?
Have you beat the game before? Why can’t I build huge armies?” Jason’s critiqued the
game’s portrayal of barbarians as unrealistic and wanted to see barbarians portrayed as
“minor tribes,” to more accurately describe their settlements. He argued that the game
marginalized nomadic peoples and did not sufficiently model how such populations
interact with “civilized” peoples and eventually form civilizations. Critiquing the game
reversed Jason’s relationship to historical texts, placing him in a position of authority. In
this way, the game gave him space to critique established views and develop his own
theories of history.
Unfortunately, the Greeks built a city in the western half of Egypt. Jason asked
me if he should go to war. I suggested that he might ally with them, trading technologies
and avoiding the difficulties he had as the Iroquois: “It’s like you split up the work with
the Greeks. You discover one, they discover one, then you trade.” Ever the protectionist,
Jason commented, “No way, I’m not giving them horseback riding.” I explained the
likelihood that they would learn horseback riding through trading with other civilizations,
but Jason was concerned about giving away military technology to a civilization making
a foothold so close to his capital.
Periodically Jason would go back to his Iroquois game to see how it ended. He
ran an experiment befriending the Polynesians, giving them technologies to see if he
could build them up as an ally. We discussed how he might discover technologies twice
as quickly through trading with the Polynesians than he might otherwise. Perhaps, he
reasoned, they could ally one another in the event of (the presumed impeding) war with
the Celts (as seen in Dan’s game).
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Costly Wars and Hypothetical History
Dwayne was one of the few students who stayed competitive in the game through
the middle ages. Like Andrea, Dwayne was frequently at war yet was the only student to
successfully conquer a major superpower. The other students looked on respectfully as
Dwayne defeated England. Even so, winning the war had been too costly for him and he
restarted his game, asking me if he could try playing as the Bantu. He wanted to see what
it is like playing in Africa and whether or not the Africans could conquer the world. He
loaded the game and started playing as the Bantu on an accurate map this time. Given
Dwayne’s resistance to formal schooling, school-based history, and African-American
background, it is reasonable to guess that Civilization III became a context for Dwayne to
explore identity issues.
By the second day, Dwayne (Bantu) made it to 790 AD. He had quickly mapped
Africa and sent emissaries as far North as Germany. I asked him about his plans, and he
explained that he was going to build cities along the shores of Africa, taking advantage of
its rich resources. His stratagem was to establish his borders along each corner of subSaharan Africa and then build an African empire that would rival the other great empires
in history.
I complimented Dwayne on his strategy. Playing as the Bantu was particularly
difficult: The capital city was surrounded by jungle leaving no real farmland, the Sahara
Desert cut off any expansion to the North, and the South brought more jungle, the
Kalahari Desert, and plenty of rival tribes. Dwayne had avoided each of these pitfalls by
planning for his empire to span across the entire continent from the beginning, tapping
into Africa’s broad resources.
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“Wow,” I commented. “It really makes you wonder what history would have been
like had Africa been unified.”
Dwayne quietly said, “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”
This question, of course, presumes an historical hindsight, as well as several unlikely
historical scenarios. However, given these caveats, the question itself was an interesting
one to many of the students as well as myself – one that emerged through watching
Dwayne’s game play.
On day 16, Dwayne called me over with several questions, still a relatively
unusual event for Dwayne who rarely acknowledged needing help. He explained that he
wanted to discover iron working before the other civilizations and use his military
superiority as a leveraging point in negotiations for technologies, luxuries, and money.
More than any other student, Dwayne traded with other civilizations, using the
negotiation screens as a way of getting feedback on his game. If other civilizations had
technology that he did not, he knew he was falling behind. Also unlike other students,
Dwayne preferred to buy technologies when possible. He explained that gold was not as
valuable as knowledge. Without a doubt, Dwayne had the fullest mastery of the political
components of the game. I asked him where he learned these skills and he reminded me
that he read Sun Tzu’s text, Art of War.
By the end of his penultimate day, Dwayne had made it to 1350 AD and had built
up the interior of Africa successfully. Kent, Bill, and others watched as Dwayne showed
off his empire. I suggested that he build more libraries to increase his rate of
technological discovery.22 At the end of class, I noticed that Dwayne, now in the year
22
How players interpret the appropriateness of what specific structures and institutions is included in the game and
particularly what is omitted (i.e. schools) may be worth further study.
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1545, had discovered navigation and had sent a galley to colonize South American in
order to establish access to its rich resources. I called Tony, Dan and a few others to take
a look.
Dwayne was successfully replaying history in broad sweeps. He held back a smile
as he bragged about how he was going to make the Americas African. I suggested that
the other students look at Dwayne’s game and analyze how he had built his
infrastructure. Sandy, who had lived in Mozambique in real life, was eager to use the
game as a way to talk with Dwayne about African civilizations. Dwayne described how
developing technologies, unifying Africa, and exploiting its resources now positioned
him to dominate the world. He was the first student to cross the Atlantic and make a
permanent settlement and was proud of his Bantu civilization, which was now making the
Americas African and stood a strong chance of winning the game.
Frustrations
Bill, seated next to Dwayne, looked frustrated. Tired of losing, he did some
research on civilizations in the Civilopedia and settled on the Persians as a good
civilization to play. However, he was soon at war with Egypt and the Babylonians over
control of the Arabian Peninsula. Bill focused all of his resources in military production
and taxing income, investing nothing in his domestic infrastructure or scientific research.
As a result, his civilization was falling behind neighboring ones, especially those in
Europe. Bill watched Dwayne play with increasing frustration with the fact that he could
not build a similarly successful empire. Yet, he did not understand the game system and
was much less knowledgeable about geography than Dwayne; whereas Dwayne could
talk about different geographical features, Bill was lucky to even know the names of the
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civilizations he was warring. Post-interviews confirmed this: Bill could not locate Egypt
on a map. Whether or not better geographical knowledge would have helped his game is
difficult to discern, but it was clear that he was much less reflective and brought fewer
conceptual tools to bear in his game play.
Chris had mastered most game controls and was fairly successful as the Iroquois,
but playing as the Egyptians presented new challenges. He was repeatedly attacked and
restarted his game several times throughout the last few days. Playing as Egypt, he
quickly found out when he fell behind in technology, finances, or military because he was
overrun by other civilizations. Chris rushed through the game more than other students,
spending less time observing other students’ games or reading the Civilopedia.
Introducing Concepts Through Game Play
Over the last three days, several students asked questions about monotheism,
theology, and polytheism – all new concepts to them. In order to unpack how the game
addressed religion and art, I led a class discussion on how the game models religion.23 I
acknowledged that simulating religion into a part of human societies is problematic and
then explained the basic terminology of the game. I asked students what their first
religious discovery (or technology) was.
Jason answered “Mysticism?”
“Close,” I answered. “Ceremonial Burial. What do you think ceremonial burial
is?” Perhaps recalling earlier conversations with Lisa, someone explained how it was
burying your dead to prevent the spread of disease. Someone else added that it was the
23
As I describe in the methodology section, Civilization III does not deal with religion, art, or culture in a particularly
sophisticated manner. Although each plays into the game in raising a civilization’s culture and affecting citizen’s
happiness, these are clumsy inclusions at best. At its heart, Civilization III is a materialist-geographical representation of
history.
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belief in spirits. I explained how ceremonial burial naturally led to mysticism, which, in
Civilization III, is defined as the set of beliefs connecting nature, divinity, and the spirit. I
explained how, as these belief systems became more formalized, they evolved into
monotheism and polytheism. I wrote both terms on the board and asked if they notice
similarities between the words.
Tony called out, “Theism.”
“Exactly,” I explained. “Any guesses as to what it means?”
Tony called out again, “Religion?”
I then walked them through the meanings of “mono” and “poly,” both of which they
knew from math class. My sense was that they were listening more out of kindness (i.e.,
humoring me), than any real interest. While many had encountered these concepts,
understanding them was not crucial to game play. The effects of religion was basically
the same regardless of type (i.e., each religious discovery builds on the last and makes
new wonders possible), so students showed little interest in their distinction. In my
journal, I admitted that, when I first started playing the game, I treated these distinctions
in a similar manner. The game throws so much at you that you could not really learn it all
the first time around. In some respects, however, the lecture achieved its goal: to
reinforce the importance of religion in the game and emphasize that it should be
considered in any model of culture or society.
Wrapping Up
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By the close of the unit, each student created their own personal goals for playing
the game – from meeting other people to expanding their civilization – and everyone but
Kathy was pursuing these objectives with little outside help. Even though the pace of the
game was slower later in the unit, students were just as enthralled. The less frenetic pace
gave more opportunities for introducing just-in-time lectures, and it finally felt like I
could introduce extension activities, such as mapping exercises or timelines. As with the
discussion of resources in students’ games would suggest, activities that fed directly into
students’ game play, that produced knowledge that students could immediately use as
tools or strategies within for their games, held their interest. Providing background
geographical information on rival civilizations, discussing historically important
technologies which might help their game play, or telling just-in-time lectures about
historical events which could help them play were productive.
Over the next two days, the researcher and I interviewed four students who could
not participate in the Media camp due to other commitments (Dan, Andrea, Jason, and
Deborah)24. Common themes in the interviews were that playing the game (1) required
students to pay closer attention, read closer, and think harder than in typical classes; (2)
led to geographical background information about where their civilizations started, the
prominent geographical features of the region, and where competing tribes originated; (3)
helped them understand how geography has an impact on why some civilizations
developed more quickly or last longer than others; (4) provided background information
about technologies and civilizations; (5) produced general understandings in ordinal
relations among time, history, and technologies; (6) was unrealistic in portraying students
ability to lead a civilization. Consistent with observations of students’ behaviors,
24
A few other students are not described in the cases due to inconsistent attendance.
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Deborah commented, “playing the game made you pay attention and read everything.”
Students were frequently observed carefully reading passages, asking students for help
understanding passages, and in particular, discussing the potential meanings of passages
in negotiation.
Students performed best on tasks that covered information required to succeed in
their games, most of which is useful background information (some of which are core) in
studying world history. Each student discussed a handful of concepts (unique to each
student) that were important to their games. Andrea’s were primarily military, as she
discussed the catapult, war chariots, musketmen, and aqueducts. Dan’s were the strategic
importance of horses and the Republic, and Jason’s (who spent a lot of time reading the
Civilopedia) ranged from mathematics to atomic theory. Students also all identified
where civilizations and tribes started (including competing civilizations). Success in the
game meant identifying who rival civilizations were and where they were located on the
map, and
this knowledge developed easily for most students. All of the students
discussed how geography had an impact on their games and on civilizations more
generally, particularly in regards to colonization. Again, Jason had the most robust
explanations for historical events; Jason explained how colonization was affected by
European trade with global trade networks, the production capabilities of European cities,
and open sea-going technologies. Andrea discussed the difficulties of playing in an
archipelago (a game concept): The archipelago setting was more difficult. You were
really closed in until you discovered things…until you had certain knowledge or
information. Pangea was easier because you wouldn’t have to cross over rivers or water
or anything to get what you wanted.” Importantly, Students also all described how their
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games were unrealistic in that there was no historical analog for their activity; each
described in detail how they micro-managed their civilization in ways that kings,
republics, or presidents never would.
Students were less uniformly adept on tasks that were not central to game play.
Jason and Dan could describe despotism, monarchy, and how each affected their
civilization, while Deborah and Andrea had partial explanations for each. Students were
also less uniformly adept at drawing connections between geographical features and their
games. Students such as Jason drew many direct comparisons between their games and
geography (and history), and they freely discussed the importance of oil in Alaska, or the
geography of Greenland, the latter of which was a particularly novel understanding.
Andrea on the other hand was not sure how her game compared with history, and
expressed confusion at how her borders would have compared with historical borders of
Egypt.25 On timeline exercises, students showed a wide range of understandings; most
knew that mathematics, bronze working and the alphabet were ancient technologies, and
many could pin down ancient wonders (i.e. the Pyramids to ancient eras). However, most
were confused about more recent technologies.
Over the last few days, students’ game play became more reflective, students’
questions became more complex, and students began displaying a curiosity about making
connections between their games and world history. Students started building models of
how the game system worked, and most students started experimenting with different
strategies (such as trading away technologies to allies) as they developed more robust
understandings of the game system. Chris’s game became a virtual simulation of the
25
Andrea felt, and the researcher agreed that more maps would have been helpful to geographically and historically
situate her game play.
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impact of geography on civilizations. Students were interested in the role that religion
played in the game and wanted to know more about the these terms they were learning.
Unfortunately, the class did not hit this rhythm until the second to last day of the unit.
Several students asked if they could play the game in social studies next year and had
their own suggestions for how it could be integrated into courses. We decided to invite
those students who were available the following week for “Media Week” to do a unit
with me playing Civilization III. Our goal was to leverage these emerging understandings
of the game system as a basis for drawing connections to world history.
As the class ended, I thanked the students for participating in the study, and said
that they could take home a copy of the game. Few students had home computers capable
of playing Civilization III, but most of the students understood how to play and wanted a
copy to take with them regardless.
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Chapter V. Civilization III Camp Case Study
At the end of the unit on civilizations in the Media School, the teachers asked me
if I would like to hold a weeklong camp using Civilization III taking a subset of students
from the previous unit as a part of the school-wide “media week” program. Media week
takes place the week after school lets out and gives students hands-on opportunities to
work with media technologies. The teachers and I thought that the camp would allow
students interested in the game to continue playing and allow me to experiment with
some different instructional strategies given the smaller group size. Five students – Kent,
Dwayne, Chris, Tony, and Norman – signed up for the camp. Several other students –
Andrea, Dan, and Jason – also wanted to be in the Civilization III camp but were already
committed to participating in a youth peace leadership camp off-campus.
DAY 1: Creating a New Classroom Culture and Entering the Industrial Age
From the moment I walked into the class, it was clear that a new classroom
culture had emerged. These students were serious about playing Civilization III. I arrived
to school twenty minutes late but, by the time I walked in, students had all installed the
game on the computers in the teacher’s lounge (where we would be working) and had
started playing without any assistance. When I finally arrived, students jumped out of
their seats and demanded that I find their saved games so that they could resume their
games from last week. I could not help but compare this first day of camp to the first day
of the unit six weeks ago, when Dwayne refused to even tell me his name. Perhaps most
surprisingly, all of the students, including Dwayne, agreed to be videotaped this time,
signaling that I had finally earned their trust.
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Setting the Context
I explained that the point of this week’s camp was to examine if Civilization III
could be used for learning world history. On Friday, students would present their
thoughts on the issue to other campers. This project topic was based on Lisa and Sandy’s
original curriculum ideas. I told students that we would spend the first day playing
Civilization III. On the second day, we would examine the game as a simulation by
looking at the modification tools that designers used to build the game. The last three
days would be a mix of game play and preparing a presentation for the other camp
groups 1 . The longer time periods for game play, greater familiarity with the game,
voluntary participation, and perhaps most importantly, trust between myself and the
students created a more amenable classroom dynamic. Over the course of the week, I
tried several different discussion activities. Even though this was a camp context and
students were not being graded, students were willing to try a broader range of activities
than before.
Prompting Reflection and Just-In-Time Lectures
With the smaller class size and more confident game players, I had more
opportunities to observe students and make just-in-time lectures based on students’ game
play. For example, seeing Dwayne about to trade metallurgy to the Germans, I intervened
and asked Dwayne if he knew what metallurgy was, since he did not like to trade away
technologies with military capacity. When Dwayne learned that metallurgy was good for
making cannon and armor, he declared, “No way I’m giving them that!” Another time, I
noted that Chris was situated next to the Carthaginians, and so I asked, “Do you know
who the Carthaginians were?” I described who they were and mentioned historical
1
Presentations were a standard requirement across all camp sessions.
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debates about whether they colonized the Americas. My hope was not that Chris would
necessarily remember all of the facts of my mini-lecture, but rather that I might
communicate to him the sense of historical uncertainty that has always drawn me to
ancient history in the hope of piquing his curiosity as well. Consistent with earlier
patterns of play, students attended much more closely to concepts and discussions that
were in the service of their game play.
Questions about New Game Concepts
As students progressed into new areas of the game, they encountered new
concepts, prompting a barrage of questions. For example, Norman created a leader, Ivan
the Terrible, and called out, “Ivan the terrible? What is he doing in the game?!” Leaders
are special units developed through battle or other exceptional achievement. I explained
how the game designers created leaders to try to account for important people in history,
such as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, or even Ivan the
Terrible, by giving players a “leader” after completing a special event. I acknowledged
that it was a somewhat clumsy kludge for modeling the role that leaders play in history
and then showed him how to look up more information on leaders in the game manual, a
practice that never caught on among students during the classroom unit. Even though,
later in the unit, we did talk specifically about biases in the game, surprisingly, the lack of
important individual people in Civilization III (i.e. “great man” theories of history) was
not a concern to these students.
Dwayne’s game was moving fast and he asked about a dozen or so concepts,
including coastal fortresses, mutual protection pacts, the corporation, refining, espionage,
and cavalry, as well as if threatening other civilizations had an impact on diplomacy, and
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what happened when the game ran out of names for new cities. Tony asked about
theology, steam power, and free artistry. Kent wanted to know about “wealth” and if he
could stay at peace without having to give away his money. “These people ask for too
much freaking money,” he complained. He also asked me what embargoes were and what
astronomy did. Students’ games were progressing quickly now and they had even more
questions than ever as they became more and more engaged in the game.
Game Discussions
Students discussed their games more today than they had in past days. Kent and
Tony both left their seats several times to watch Dwayne’s game. As before, Dwayne sat
quietly “in the middle,” although he was more aware of Kent's game than in the past. In
some respects this was an extension of how they played before. Chris and Tony
compared games, and Tony continued to walk from computer to computer between turns
examining others’ play. Like before, Kent regularly spent five or ten minute chunks of
time watching other games. Here, the layout of the room itself was more conducive to
collaboration; students sat in a small circle and could lean over to see anyone’s game.
With a more manageable group of knowledgeable players, I also encouraged more
knowledge sharing among them.
In one such case, Dwayne asked me if Japan was on the game map. I explained
that it was, and Dwayne declared that he was going to send a frigate to Japan to make it
African.2 After listening to my conversations with Dwayne, Kent asked how to build a
frigate so that he could also explore islands and trade with tribes, specifically Native
American tribes across the Atlantic who he hoped to ally with in a war against the
Dwayne’s fascination with Japanese history continued to manifest itself in his game play and became a running joke
in the class, as we chided Dwayne for not being able to even find Japan on a map.
2
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Romans. We discussed how Kent would need magnetism and navigation to build frigates,
which would take hundreds of years for Kent to discover at the rate he was discovering
technology. Kent asked why I did not tell him about getting technologies to build frigates
before. I replied, “Because you wouldn’t have listened, Kent.” The students all laughed,
in recognition that few of them listened to any information that did not have a direct
impact on their immediate goals. After pausing for a few seconds, Kent asked if “his guys
could swim” (thinking that he might send warriors swimming across the Mediterranean)
and was frustrated to learn that they could not.
Building Colonies
Dwayne (Bantu) continued to colonize South America. He was still dominating
his game, but now three of his cities in South America were being contested by Iroquois,
who were also settling in South America. Dwayne saw this and shouted, “Wait, where are
all of these people coming from colonizing my areas? I was supposed to own America!”
Further, because other civilizations began trading technologies while he focused on
investing heavily in military, Dwayne had fallen behind others in scientific discoveries. I
showed him how to adjust his tax and science rate, but he was still concerned about his
progress. His army was easily the strongest on the planet and he did not want to lose.
Even successful students such as Dwayne had a lot to understand about the game,
particularly balancing the different game systems (military, domestic, economy).
Learning was continuous and frequently prompted by a failure to achieve desired goals –
even for the most savvy of students. Still, discovering major features of the game system
20, 30, even 100 hours into game play is not uncommon in Civilization III playing.
Having learned from others’ games, Tony (Iroquois, 1880) tried many strategies
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to keep up with the Europeans, eventually settling on building a South American colony
as the most viable one. First he tried trading for resources. As Tony entered the industrial
age, he paused to scan newly available technologies and develop a plan to compete with
the Europeans. He decided to pursue navigation, magnetism, and astronomy so that he
could trade resources, especially horses, with civilizations on other continents. He
eventually traded for technologies, maps and horses, which was a big moment for Tony,
as he believed that access to horses would eradicate the Europeans’ military advantage.
However, seeing other civilizations’ maps revealed that he was behind in several ways
and needed to catch up. Horses alone would not make him competitive with the old world
empires.
Tony decided to colonize South America and build an economically robust
civilization spanning both continents that could withstand a European assault. We
examined the geography of South America, identifying natural resources and weighing its
attributes against the challenge of building a civilization on a continent so filled with
jungle. Tony knew that jungles were bad farmland and susceptible to disease, so I
explained how the game models diseases, emphasizing ways in which the game is
accurate and ways in which it is not3. Tony traded with the Polynesians, giving them
democracy in the hope that they would be an ally against the Europeans. Tony was
beginning to see the interrelationships between game systems, realizing that merely
obtaining horses or saving money would not make him globally competitive; rather, he
would need to build a strong infrastructure, develop his own research program, and ally
From an historical point of view, Civilization III’s modeling of disease may be one of its most problematic features.
The game accounts for how particular geographic regions (i.e. swamplands) generate disease, but it does not account
for the role of mingling populations in its spread, such as when European colonists met Native Americans and brought
them small pox.
3
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wisely with neighbors. Tony was beginning to build system-level understandings of the
game, understandings that he would later use to discuss historical concepts.
Studying the Game as a Simulated System and Still More Questions
Now that he had navigation, Tony sent a frigate across the open seas to explore
the world and perhaps meet new people. Maybe the most interesting game play moment
of the week occurred when his civilization reached Australia in the late 1800s and
“discovered” the Aborigines. He was the first to make contact in the class, and it turned
out in his game that the Aborigines had gone for 5800 years without making contact with
any other civilizations. They had five small settlements and no technologies to speak of. I
explained that, when the game starts, all of the civilizations are relatively even, but,
because the Aborigines were isolated and had no resources, they did not grow as a
civilization. Tony opened his foreign advisor screen to examine the differences in
civilizations. He scanned their location, government, and treasury. We discussed how the
game weighted differences among civilizations (e.g., how “scientific” civilizations got
particular bonuses). Tony did not draw any conclusions about the relative advantages of
different civilizations at this point; he was more curious about the outcomes of the game
as a simulation.
Tony found pleasure in sailing across the world, examining the outcomes of the
simulation and spent much of the next few hours sailing around parts of the map that he
was not familiar with. Tony discovered hordes of barbarians living in Madagascar. Tony
could not imagine what Madagascar was; he had never heard of it before. I explained that
Madagascar was settled by descendents of Australians, back when the islands were
linked. I explained that they had not made contact with Africans until relatively recently.
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We both marveled at how strong the barbarian groups had become and Tony stated that
he thought it was a relatively accurate outcome of the simulation. Discovering islands
such as Madagascar prompted Tony to ask many questions about world history which
would be considered unusual for most history classrooms, such as who settled
Madagascar, where did they come from, and to what ethnic group do they belong. On
subsequent days, Tony discovered other Polynesian islands and began asking historical
questions, such as: Who lives on these islands today? What native populations are left?
Or what year did Europeans make contact with New Zealand? For Tony, much of the fun
was comparing the outcomes of his game with history and, through it, thinking about
history in new ways.
Geography as a Tool
Dwayne overheard the discussion and wondered if the game included people on
Iceland. I explained that I placed barbarians in Iceland to model Vikings settlements.
Kent yelled across the room asking if there were any other islands in the Atlantic. I said
yes, there were the Azores, but they might not be large enough to be included in the
game; they could explore with a frigate to try to find them. Dwayne then asked if I could
help him find Japan. Kent offered to help instead: “Hey, do you want me to help you find
Japan?” Dwayne laughed, since Kent’s geography skills were generally the weakest in
the group. Kent then pointed to Russia and asked me who the inhabitants were. I was not
sure. As students moved into the industrial age, they began building frigates and
exploring the world, prompting them to ask many questions about geography. As the only
link between the game simulation and history, I ended up answering many of these
questions myself. A lack of other resource such as almanacs and atlases also contributed
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to this impoverished information landscape, although I did have an historical timeline and
a globe available which students rarely, if ever consulted. Students were most interested
in understanding how to achieve their goals in the game and the underlying properties of
the simulation. Students displayed curiosity about history and geography through their
questions and listened closely to my explanations, but ultimately they wanted information
that would link these domains, which only I could provide.
Students continued to explore the properties of Civilization III and the differences
between an historical simulation and a scripted interactive narrative. Late in the day,
Dwayne angered a neighboring civilization, and said to Kent, “I think I might start World
War I.” A few weeks earlier, I had explained the causes of World War I to Dwayne,
which he planned to turn into strategy for use against the Chinese. Now, in a different
game, Dwayne realized that he might have set off a chain of events that would lead to
world war. Kent was still struggling to understand the game as a simulation as opposed to
an interactive narrative, and asked, “Kurt, does the game have World War I in here?” I
explained that there were no pre-scripted events, but that they could start their own World
Wars through alliances. I gave Kent a version of the lecture that I gave Dwayne, this time
using Dwayne’s game as another example of entangling alliances. Using the foreign
relations screen, I showed him how two civilizations in his game had mutual protection
pacts similar to Dwayne’s prior situation. “So, if you attack either of them, they’ll go to
war with you. That’s a bit like how World War I started.” Dwayne had appropriated my
explanation of World War I, now referred to the war about to ensue in his current game
as World War I, which in turn prompted a discussion of simulated systems and
interactive narratives. Both Dwayne’s and Kent’s games became artifacts mediating their
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developing understanding.
Kent struggled in the game and was becoming increasingly frustrated, so I
suggested using knowledge of geography as a tool to catch up to other civilizations. Kent
said, “These people (the other civilizations) make me sick. I’m in 1752 and I can’t make
my ships go no where… minus three (gold) per turn. Christ!” Just as frustrating, other
civilizations would not even trade maps without asking for hundreds in gold. I suggested
that Kent “catch up” by sailing to North America using a galley, much like the Vikings
did. I explained how he could go from England to Ireland to Iceland to Greenland and on
to Canada. He got excited about this idea and set out for the new world. I tried to suggest
to Kent (as I did earlier to Jason) that players could use their knowledge of geography as
a “cheat” for succeeding in the game, by anticipating passage routes and the location of
natural resources.
Socially-Mediated Play
Kent watched Dwayne’s game closely, deriving strategies from his play. Dwayne
bragged about how his powerful boats intimidated the other civilizations and, soon after,
Kent asked me how to build “big boats like Dwayne.” Later, Kent saw that Dwayne had
submarines and shouted, “Yo, he can build a submarine. What did he discover to build
that?” Dwayne answered, “industry,” which was incorrect. It became more and more
apparent that Kent’s own goals, strategies, and interpretations of the game were shaped in
important ways by his reading of Dwayne’s play.
When Kent and Dwayne discussed the relative merits of communism, emergent
shared understandings became more political. Dwayne had the opportunity to begin
researching communism. Kent said, “Communism? I’d never go for communism!”
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Dwayne agreed that communism was not desirable. I intervened, explaining that,
regardless of their opinion of communism, as an idea, it led to social improvements, such
as Social Security and new city improvements. Once Kent found out that he could learn
the “technology” of communism without switching governments, he thought that
pursuing it was a good idea, and Dwayne agreed. Kent’s evaluation of Dwayne’s choices
in the game give Dwayne pause for consideration, first admonishing him for studying
communism but then reinforcing his position, in the end agreeing that “discovering”
communism was acceptable as long as Dwayne’s people did not become communist. I
tried to mediate their conversation, explaining the role of communism in the game and in
United States social history and making links between the two.
I ended the class with a quick wrap-up of the day’s activities and tomorrow’s
plans. I distributed game manuals and had each student turn to pages giving the
explanation of each civilization’s advantages. I explained that the game is a simulation of
how civilizations evolve, and a very imperfect one at that. I said, “Anything that tries to
simulate the entire history of the world is bound to leave some things out.” I asked them
if they thought that the differences between the Germans and the Bantu could be reduced
to an extra army or a free technology difference. They answered, “No,” and then I
explained that these slight differences could end up in very different game experiences,
which is typical of a simulation. I brought up the case of the Aborigines, who had less
access to resources, which resulted in them remaining a very small, struggling civilization
in each game. I mentioned that, at the same time, “We noticed that in 1800 most of us
hadn’t even crossed the seas yet, which is not very realistic. So tomorrow, we’ll talk more
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about the nature of simulations.” They listened to the lecture half-heartedly, but overall, I
was pleased to have introduced the concepts.
DAY 2: Unpacking the Simulation
The goal for today was to use the game editing tools to “lift the hood” and
examine the properties of Civilization III as a simulation. After about 30 minutes of
playing, I announced that we would take a break and then discuss their games. Kent
laughed and asked, “A break from what? This is a break.” The class nodded in agreement
and continued.
New Tools and New Strategies
Norman, still playing on a “fake” world, was mostly exploring with warriors,
mapping unknown territory, and searching for barbarians and other civilizations. He
planned and built his cities and secured natural resources quickly and without difficulty,
in a routinized and skilled way.
Kent (Egypt, 1000 AD) still wanted to create a civilization to be like Dwayne’s
and tried using negotiations to his advantage. Early in the day he met Greece and then
spent a fair part of the rest of the day at war with them. He lost and restarted the game. In
his next game, Kent befriended the Greeks and traded technologies with them. Several
times throughout the day he sang their praises, calling out, “I love these people” and so
on. He signed right of passage agreements with them and used his workers to build their
infrastructure, making Kent’s alliance with the Greeks the closest alliance that would
arise all week. Later, the Romans threatened to attack. Thinking that the Greeks would
protect him, he did not give in, which started another war. Quickly Rome attacked and it
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was evident that Kent would lose again. As we watched Roman cavalry riding across
Turkey, I asked Kent what he might do differently next time. I hoped to encourage him to
reflect about parts of the game systems (economics, infrastructure) that he had been
ignoring.
Kent looked at me incredulously and countered, “Build a bigger military?” I
pressed him further, but he only answered, “I don’t know…build more stuff?” So I asked
if he had thought of investing more in researching new technologies,
“Not really,” he replied.
For Kent, there was no real relationship among infrastructure, economics, exploring
technologies, and his military in the game. I showed him how to save his game each turn,
so that he might try different strategies and go back and replay the game. Although Kent
wanted to build a civilization like Dwayne’s, it was clear that he had far less mastery of
the game system. All of Kent’s strategies were single variable solutions, focusing only on
the military or befriending other countries for example. In contrast, Dwayne attended to
political, economic, military, domestic issues, and their interactions all at once.
Kent turned to Dwayne and asked, “Where is Rome? Do you know where Italy
is?” presumably, so that he might launch a pre-emptive strike against Rome. Dwayne
showed him where Rome was on his game. By the end of class, it was clear that Kent
would be defeated by the Romans. He reluctantly continued the war, saying out loud to
no one in particular, “I don’t like confrontation, but if someone just comes in, that’s what
I have to do.” Kent continued with his plans to send immigrants to the Americas, which
he now saw as much as an escape route as any chance to colonize. Knowledge of Europe,
the Atlantic, and the Americas were tools that Kent used for his game play: knowledge of
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Rome (mediated by Dwayne), knowledge that he could sail across Iceland and Greenland
to the Americas without navigation, knowledge that the Americas were less densely
populated and full of natural resources. Curiously, the promise of the Americas and the
importance of colonization took on near epic importance as both Kent and Dwayne
thought that colonizing another continent would insure economic prosperity. While
hypothetically possible, colonization is not exactly the guarantor of success in
Civilization III that students seemed to think. Faith in this strategy seemed based more on
real history, especially colonial narratives such as America as the land of promise or of
American manifest destiny in settling the West, than on anything within the game. How
their understandings of real world history were mediating their game play became clearer
to me.
Exploring Game Concepts and Exploring History
As they entered the industrial age, students encountered new concepts such as
democracy, espionage, or replaceable parts. I discussed each with them, trying to
historicize the concepts by describing them in terms of the particular eras in which they
arose. Tony switched to democracy, and noticed how much it helped his economy and
science. In the post-interviews, Tony recalled these effects as particularly important,
describing democracy as his most important technological discovery.
Interviewer:
Tony:
What were the effects of being in a democracy?
At first I was in monarchy but my currency wasn’t going so
well. It was hard for me to expand more in my civilization.
Once I switched to democracy, a whole new door opened. I
went from 10 gold to 145 per turn – 156 was highest. I
became the richest civilization. I was able to bring my
science up to 60 and make people happy, which gave me
10% other bonuses… I think they were military related.
Switching to democracy meant that I gave it all (freedom,
decision making) to the people. The people chose me,
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Interviewer:
Tony:
which helps my government be more organized, compared
to a king doing all of the work (as in monarchy). With a lot
of money (in democracy), I can buy lots of luxuries, I can
make my city grow, more people come in, which means my
civilization is growing. It’s a big circle.
Is this realistic?
Yes, close enough.
Playing Civilization III gave Tony a richer sense of the effects of technologies or social
advancements compared to the particulars of that technology. From a pragmatic
perspective, where concepts are known by their consequences, this pattern is not
problematic. Still, the game did sharply mediate students’ thinking about history. As with
the game, Tony’ game-mediated understanding of democracy has a decidedly materialist
bent, demonstrated in the above example as he describes democracy in terms of its added
efficiency. Still, Civilization III tied together disparate areas of history for him and
allowed him to use historical ideas as tools for game play. His explanation during postinterviews of why the game would be a useful learning tool in school illustrates.
Tony:
Well, it [Civilization III] should be used. This game is
perfect for learning. This game has everything in a history
class all at once. While you play the game the teacher can
tell you about things that happened in real life. Then, you
use it to take advantage in the game.
Discussing Simulation Bias
At 10:30, I instructed the students to save their games and quit so that I could
show them the game editor. Students protested, but after three minutes and much
prodding, they left their games and turned their attention to me. I explained that we
would be learning “How these games are actually made…what goes on inside the game.”
I asked them if they could recall what a simulation was. No one spoke, so I explained the
textbook definition of a simulation: Taking one real life system and portraying it through
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another symbol system – like modeling the way civilizations grow and evolve and by
showing them on the computer. I emphasized that Civilization III does not try to simulate
absolutely everything about history, but rather only a few key aspects– especially
relationships between geography and history. I asked them what they thought was
missing from the model.
Dwayne answered, “Japan.” I asked them why Japan was not in the game.
Chris answered, “Because they came from another civilization.” I asked them if
this had happened in any of their games: Had people revolted and started their own
civilization? All of the students said no. I compared the forming of Japan to the American
Revolution, commenting that the American Revolution could also not possibly be
simulated with the game. I started a list of problems with the game, writing on the board,
“You can never ‘start’ a new civilization.”
Chris added, “No one bothered the new world. The Iroquois haven’t been
conquered.” We discussed what this meant, and I wrote down, “Did not predict the way
the new world was colonized very well.” I explained how Civilization was not a
predictive simulation. “Say that you want to predict what would happen if you bomb
somebody – if we bomb Afghanistan. Would you use Civilization to predict what is going
to happen in the next 1000 years after attacking the Taliban? Hopefully not. But it might
help you learn things about civilization. For example, has anyone met the Aborigines?
What were they like?”
Dwayne answered, “They have three cities. Aztecs have like ten.” I asked them if
they knew why, and no one answered. I explained how the Aborigines were in the desert
and had no nearby civilizations to trade with. They also must compete with other tribes,
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who are modeled as aggressive barbarians. I asked if they had any cities with similar
problems. No one answered so I asked those with cities in the jungle what happened.
Dwayne answered, “The cities just sat there.”
I compared that to the Aborigines. “Much like how the Aborigines’ settlements
‘just sat there on an island.’ Because they would have to sail half way across the ocean to
meet anyone, they developed in isolation.”
I turned their attention to the barbarians. “Some of you found barbarians on
deserted islands. Was that realistic?” They thought that this was realistic.
Kent commented, “Yeah, but the Aztecs were considered barbarians.”
I asked, “Who were the barbarians?”
Dwayne responded, “Nomads.” I explained how historically most every
civilization has called civilizations other than their own “barbaric” (e.g. To the Romans, a
barbarian was anyone who was not Roman. To the Chinese, it was anyone not Chinese). I
discussed this tension between nomads and barbarians in terms of the Vikings, who were
a lot like barbarians but evolved into mercantilist societies. On a map I had brought to
class we looked at Viking settlements in North America and western Europe during the
Middle Ages. For the first time since I began working with these students, we focused
attention explicitly on the properties of Civilization III as a simulation. Dwayne and Tony
had already started asking questions about the game as a simulation through their game
play. This discussion allowed us to open up these concepts and share them with a broader
group. Despite the successes of this conversation, it was clear that students still did not
have a deep understanding of the emergent properties of the simulation, as evidenced by
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their inability to explain why aboriginal settlements stagnated while others flourished. I
decided to discuss the simulation rules more explicitly.
Lifting up the Hood
Next we opened the game editing tools, tools that allow designers to change the
rule set underlying the simulation. Students found this exercise very confusing. I
explained how they could use the editing tools to change the rules underlying the game,
such as how much food it requires to make new cities. I explained how the tools would
let them change anything that they saw on screen; in fact, they could convert the entire
game to a Star Wars universe, creating a new planet, new military types and so on.
Surprisingly to me, none of the students seemed intrigued by this at all, so I turned to
their games specifically. I explained how I edited their scenarios to make them more
realistic, removing horses from North America or uranium where it did not belong. I
explained other minor changes I made, such as increasing the number of moves that units
could make in order to speed the game along. The students still looked confused. The
point of this exercise, to expose them to the properties of the model in order to make the
game transparent and thereby make experimenting with the game both more fun and
more pedagogically productive (e.g. Starr, 1994) seemed to be lost on the class.
I had them open up a map of the earth to make the discussion more concrete.
Students immediately raised questions about icons they had not seen before. Norman
asked about the oil icon in Alaska; Chris asked about aluminum and saltpeter in
mountains. I showed them how to add bonus resources, such as wheat or horses. I
explained that they could give North America horses if they wanted. Next I showed them
how to alter their maps, creating islands, lakes, or oceans. Students quietly experimented
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with the controls for about five minutes. Seeing the Earth on the map, including where
resources were located, was like seeing “the answer sheet” to some and they took great
interest in seeing what geographic features were included and what resources were
available.
I showed them how to change the basic game rules. I chose rules that I thought
would be obviously unrealistic, such as how they could change the rules so that
entertainers would create increased science as well as happiness. This example was
confusing, so I showed them how they might add wool to the game by creating a new
“sheep” icon, linking wool to a technology, and then setting the bonuses so that it would
create food and / or commerce. Basically, I led them through the interface, explaining
what each element did, but the entire exercise continued to confuse them. They kept
struggling to grasp what I was trying to explain.
Although educators and researchers (e.g. Starr, 1994, Turkle, 1997) have long
argued for the importance of “opening the hood” to simulations – giving learners access
to the rules underlying simulations in order to better understand the rules by which the
simulation runs, helping students understand the “positionality” of the simulation and
remove interpretive barriers to understanding game rules – for these students in this
context, seeing the rules underlying the simulation was too overwhelming. Even after
playing the game over twenty hours, most students still had relatively little reference
point for understanding the rule set presented in this raw format. This may seem
surprising, even disappointing to some, but examining just how complex the Civilization
III rule set and editing tools are may explain part of the issue. The “rules” tabbed
interface (see Figure 5.1) contains 16 different tabs (ranging from unit type to
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improvements and wonders). Each tab might control 5 to 25 different choices (i.e.
different unit types or different improvement types). There are on average over 12
independent attributes to set for each type, which in turn can have 20 or more different
levels or factors to consider. As a result, there are literally thousands of combinations that
could result 4 . Changes as simple as adding “elementary schools” to the game might
require fifty or sixty choices. Many of these choices themselves embody concepts
relatively complex for many students, including bonus percentages, multipliers, or ratios.
Eventually, most of the students found some intellectual hook in the editing tools.
I showed Chris how the prerequisites work – using outlandish examples that he seemed to
appreciate. We changed the rules so that players needed to discover the printing press
before they could ride horses. Then, we created a natural resource for “books”, so that
books would appear on the map after discovering the printing press. Chris asked about
several other settings, such as how culture, espionage, civil disorder and the artificial
intelligence of other civilizations worked. Kent asked if he could create his own
civilizations and then play it. I said that he could, and I helped him build a Native
American civilization. Kent immediately took to this activity, perhaps because he had so
much difficulty playing the game under normal settings. I noticed that he was endowing
North America with bountiful resources, perhaps trying to increase his chances of
winning. Kent asked about several features, including the preferred and shunned
governments, cossacks and ironclads. Perhaps, given our discussion of communism, he
4
At minimum, 16 x 5 x 12 x 20 = 19,200. At maximum, 16 x 25 x 12 x 20 = 96,000.
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appreciated that the designer could set government types so that civilizations gravitated
toward specific types. Norman also found this interesting, so I showed him how to
change these settings as well.
I tried to make links between issues they struggled with in the game and the game
editor tools, helping them see how opening up the hood to the simulation might help them
in the game. We went back to the government screen, and I explained that they could use
the editor screens to learn about the advantages of democracy. We compared democracy
to anarchy, examining factors affected by governments: war weariness, trade bonuses,
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efficiency, espionage, resistance to espionage, military penalties. I continued to explain
how they use certain variables, such as having the Americans never go into communism,
in order to have the game behave realistically (See Figure 5.2). I also tied the editor tools
to issues that they had struggled with during the term, such as slow technological
development. We discussed reducing the cost for discovering advancements or ways of
increasing trade. Grounding the discussion in terms of students’ games raised their
general curiosity and connecting the discussion to issues that arose during their game
play brought a few more students into the activity. Using the editor to understand
relatively complex issues such as civil disorder became fruitful. Kent and Chris asked me
if they could save their scenarios because they wanted to play them.
Brainstorming for the Presentation
We used the last 10 minutes of class to brainstorm ideas for their presentation. I
suggested dividing the presentation in several sections: (a) Things you could learn about
geography; (b) Things you could learn about foreign relations; (c) Things you could learn
about history; (d) Things that are not realistic about the game; (e) Things we would
change in the game; and (f) Other activities that could help you learn world history. 5 I
mentioned globes as an example, pointing to Dwayne’s problems finding Japan on the
map and suggesting that using globes might be helpful for learning and game play (other
activities to help learn world history). I tried to model this idea and draw on Dwayne’s
interest in Japan. I used the globe to explain how, in 400 AD, immigrants came to Japan
from China. I suggested that they could alter the starting civilizations, adding Japan if
they liked (ways to change the game). I asked if there were any other sections that they
Following Sandy’s advise, I decided to scaffold their presentations through this outline rather than have them develop
their own.
5
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wanted to have, but students had no suggestions. I encouraged Chris, who had played as
both the Egyptians and the Aztecs, to compare the experiences. “Egypt had a lot of gold.”
Students were silent, and the class ended. Tony was the most intellectually curious
student at this point, offering several thoughts that we would build on later. Otherwise, it
was evident that I would have to guide students through the presentation more heavyhandedly if we wanted to finish by Friday.
DAY 3: What Did we Learn?
By Wednesday, an informal gaming culture began to emerge. Kent, Chris, and
Norman oscillated between playing games and playing with the editor. Norman was quiet
most of the day and seemed to want to be left alone, so the students and I respected this
wish. There was quite a bit of joking today and game play was peppered with random
commentary from other players and jeering from across the room. We also started
working on the presentation today, which marked the first time that students began to
reflect explicitly on the viability of Civilization III as a tool for learning world history.
Students were now entering the late industrial / early modern age, bringing new
challenges.
Entering the Modern Era and Testing the Game System
While Kent and Norman experimented with the editor, Dwayne and Tony
continued playing their civilizations, which were now entering the modern era. Dwayne
wanted to wage war on the Chinese (continuing his Japanese / Chinese fascination) and
went about finding ways to attack China from Africa. Dwayne discovered flight (as did
Tony) and was busily conducting espionage missions on other civilizations (as was
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Tony). Dwayne asked me about marines. I explained that marines could launch
amphibious attacks as in the movie “Saving Private Ryan.” I encouraged Dwayne to look
in the Civilopedia, and he spent the next several minutes looking at military units. He
even started up a very slow computer next to his desk so that he could read the
Civilopedia in between turns. Dwayne called out, “They [the game] have tanks!” and
asked me if tanks bombarded or attacked. I was surprised that he had a conceptual
understanding of the differences between bombarding and attacking. He continued, “I
think I’m about to take over the world. I have fighters and bombers, man. I’m beautiful.
Can I send them across the sea?” After learning about aircraft carriers, Dwayne decided
that he would use carriers to dominate the world. “I don’t see any of y’all building
carriers,” he taunted. He sold gems to other civilizations to finance his military. For
Dwayne, the game was largely a military struggle at this point, although he was using
understandings of other systems to build his military. Now that Dwayne was wrapped up
in the game, he also found the Civilopedia a valuable resource, and enjoyed learning
about military technologies.
Tony was also being dragged into war. The Russians settled in South America
next to his expanding empire and the Celts landed in Nova Scotia. He had reduced
corruption in his South American cities and was excited about trading technologies with
them, but he was concerned that the Russians might attack his fragile South American
settlements. Tony and I studied his civilization carefully, examining his cities and
creating a strategy for defending both continents at once using harbors and railways,
which would also increase trade. Soon the Celts began building cities in Nova Scotia,
which frustrated him. He considered attacking the Celts out of sheer curiosity as to how
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the other civilizations would react. Testing the game’s political system intrigued him, but
he certainly did not want to give up his game, which he was quite invested in.
Chris (Iroquois) was in the year 1990, and rapidly approaching the end of the
game. Seeing that a victory was unlikely, Chris quit his game and started another as the
Egyptians in order to compare how different geographies affected the growth of a
civilization how that, in turn, affected the game. He asked several questions about
specific terrain types, such as the jungle, the sea, and the ocean, how they affected a
city’s production, and how bonus resources (i.e. fish, dolphins, and whales) affected the
base rate of production. For the rest of the period, Chris played his new game in order to
“analyze how geography affected the growth of his civilization.” Although Chris’s game
play was driven mostly by game concerns as opposed to historical ones, his interest in
using the game as a simulation to compare the role of geography in shaping civilizations
surprised me, as it took on an almost scientific quality.
This spirit of curiosity could even be found in Kent’s play on his newly modified
game scenario. Kent made his warriors extremely powerful, created ironclads that could
fly, and loaded his territory with gems, furs, iron, and horses. Kent later realized that even
with his bonuses, he was not all-powerful. Units on horses could outrun him, and other
civilizations could steal his resources. Kent asked me more questions about how I
modified the game for the class. I explained how I took horses out of North America
since the Native tribes had to fight the Europeans without horses. I also explained how I
disadvantaged the Iroquois, Bantu, and Aborigines to model how they probably did not
have large settlements in 4000 BC and how I advantaged the Babylonians as they were
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probably the oldest civilization. Kent listened intently, apparently interested in the
interplay between game design and emergent phenomena.
Brainstorming What We Learned
At 9:45, we began brainstorming for the presentation. Because turns were taking
so long on these slow computers (often 30 seconds per turn), they could keep their games
going during the discussion and participate in between turns. No one was close to
finishing their game and students only had five hours of class time left, so I tried to
squeeze as much game time as possible. I went around the room, asking students what
they thought were most important discoveries and events in the game. I started with
Tony.
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Tony, What were the most important discoveries or events in your
game?
I discovered that all the barbarians went to Australia.
Why was that important?
It’s important because, well, it just seems interesting that they
would all be in Australia.
Any discoveries inventions, or resources?
Invention. Democracy.
To me it seemed like your trading technologies were big. Is that
true?
Yes, that and being rich.
Tony approached the question as an academic one, answering in terms of what was the
most important thing he learned through the game. Of all the students, Tony was the only
one to examine events emerging from the simulation and describe them as “interesting”
or worth considering in terms of what they could teach us about history.
I questioned Dwayne about his game, but Dwayne was very reluctant to
participate in the conversation. He talked about the importance of flight, amphibious
mobility, dyes, and rubber in his game, but these were all recent discoveries, the
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consequences of which had not played out yet. These comments seemed to function more
to brag about what he had accomplished than to reflect on what was actually important in
his game. As before, Dwayne was reluctant to talk about his game unless it was asking
me questions or bragging to his classmates.
I moved on to Chris, who, perhaps not surprisingly, described the role of
geography in his game.
Kurt:
Chris:
Kurt:
Chris:
Chris what are your most important technologies, discoveries or
events?
Well, the game depends on where you’re sitting.
Ok, geography. Give me an example.
In Egypt you become rich because their geography has a lot of
gold.
For Chris, the most important discovery was no particular invention or discovery, but
rather that the game was fundamentally about the interplay between geography and the
evolution of civilizations. Chris’s gaming had become a study of how geography affected
the growth of civilizations. Chris was picking up on the materialist orientation of the
simulation and beginning to systematically unpack how geography affected particular
civilization.
Norman’s game play, in contrast, was still relatively simplistic. In part, this was
because he faced frequent computer problems and was often starting over. On the other
hand, he also wrestled with some of the most basic issues. such as defending a city
against barbarians or maintaining domestic peace.
Kurt:
Norman:
Norman, what was important in your game?
Barbarians.
Norman seemed reluctant to participate, so I reframed the question.
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Kurt:
Norman:
Kurt:
Norman:
Kurt:
Norman:
Do you have advice for someone playing the game?
Build a good defense. Build spearmen early.
How about where you built your cities?
I often tried to build them around animals, gold, near water.
What would it do? Why build cities near water?
Because of fish. There is usually food around there to hunt.
For Norman, the game was mostly a management simulation. He described the things he
learned as “How to spend and save money and what technologies you should discover
first because some might be more useful in the end.” He thought that winning was a
matter of discovering the right technologies. He attributed his losses to not building
enough spearmen or not pursuing technologies other than navigation and falling behind
as a result. He explained that the game was good for learning how to manage
civilizations, particularly tax rates.
I asked Kent what he discovered. Kent had not yet had much success and was
reluctant to analyze how his game went.
Kent:
Kurt:
Kent:
Kurt:
Kent:
Kurt:
Kent:
I didn’t discover things. They did. I lost.
What would you have done differently?
Technologies. Gotten more technologies.
What about geography? You put those horses and gems on your
map.
The gems I put in so I could sell them.
Any other lessons you learned in the game?
Location is important. Playing in America was easier.
Kent acknowledged the role of technology in his games, particularly his own lack of it. I
prompted him to think about the connections between his geographical location and his
technological production, hoping that he will discuss the growth of his civilization or
perhaps the importance of trading. His only response was that he had put gems in the
game territory near his civilization in order to sell them, suggesting that he was not
making any deep connections between these systems. He was able to explain how starting
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in America was easier, perhaps due to fewer competing civilizations. In this discussion as
in earlier ones, however, it was evident that Kent was making few connections among
variables or systems of variables.
I still felt like students were not digging deeply enough into some of the
intellectual issues their games raised, so I rephrased the question in terms of lessons that
they learned through the game. I asked, “What lessons have you learned? What strategies
would you tell someone if they’re playing the game?” Immediately, students came up
with some common rules of thumb.
Tony:
Chris:
Tony:
Kurt:
Dwayne:
Kurt:
Dwayne:
Kurt:
Dwayne:
Kurt:
Tony.
Dwayne:
Make as many roads as possible. Helps with traveling.
Always put 2-3 defense in every city.
Yes, protection is a key.
Dwayne, how about you?
I don’t know.
Anything about science?
No.
What do you build in your cities?
I don’t know.
Tony, you mentioned keeping a good bank account.
Yes, being filthy rich is fun.
I’m getting 200 gold per turn. (Tony ran over, curious about how
Dwayne could earn so much money). It’s good to build up your
money for when you get espionage so you can steal technologies
rather than trade.
Dwayne was now silent during discussions, even antagonistic toward the researcher.
When I tried to reframe the question toward economics, he seized the conversation in
order to display how much money he had earned.
Discussion with students flowed much better when it emerged organically with
their games serving as a starting point and then building into issues of what worked for
them and, from there, generalizing up to more abstracted principles. Tony described how
he was building roads in one term because of increased efficiency now that he was in
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democracy and had discovered advantageous technologies. "Laborers work better under
democracy, and technologies like replaceable parts help.” I was surprised that Tony could
give this description so readily – he had combined information on democracy that he had
read in the Civilopedia with my discussion of replaceable parts earlier in the week, and
could now spontaneously use it to make sense of his game.
I decided to push along the presentation, as I was nervous that they would lose
interest in this part of their activity and not work on it at all.
Kurt:
Dwayne:
Tony:
I am going to help us set up the presentation. If we can get five
things about geography, five on politics, five on history, and so on,
then I think we will have the presentation. Are there things you
learned about geography?
Cities flourish around oceans.
Yes, definitely.
I wrote down this comment on a post-it note and stuck it on the board.
Kurt:
Kent:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
How about biases in the game?
What do you mean? (Rest of class is silent).
One big bias I’ve heard is that it’s biased toward technology.
Because if you have technology, you end up winning the game,
because you have money, technology and military. But that leaves
out art and religion which aren’t as important in the game. Another
bias might be as a ruler you can do whatever you want. As a
president can you make all of these decisions?
No.
So a bias may be that it assumes that it would ever be possible to
have this much control over a civilization.
Although students were mastering the game controls and exploring the game as a system,
few could begin critiquing the simulation for its underlying biases. I raised examples,
hoping that students would latch on to these predispositions built into the game and
discuss them further, but conversation ended.
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Game Talk and Engagement
Tony and Dwayne collaborated on their games. They examined the civilizations
in one another’s games, discussed other civilizations’ income and technology, analyzing
which had what kind of income and technology. Dwayne asked Tony, “Should I go with
computers or what?” Tony nodded. Meanwhile, he was skimming the options of what
cities he could build, pausing to admire the Hoover Dam. Tony noticed that the Celts just
built a city in his territory. Chris encouraged him to go to war, although Tony wanted to
spare the Celts.
Chris:
Tony:
Chris:
Tony:
Chris:
Tony:
Chris:
Dwayne:
Bomb them.
They’re just building little towns.
Hello! They may be little towns, but they could grow.
Who cares? They’re real people, man.
Is that the Celts?
I am stronger than everybody.
Espionage! Oh my God, you have espionage!
Why deal when you can steal? Steal technology from all of them.
This interaction shows several things about the culture that emerged. First, students
display familiarity and comfortability with one another; they feel free to agree, disagree,
make requests, or debate each other’s claims wholesale without embarrassment or fear.
Second, an intellectual discourse emerged among them, one that including publicly and
collaboratively analyzing problems, asking for help, and negotiating out solutions. Here,
Tony shows concern for the Celts, declaring that they are “real people” and deciding not
to bomb them, before engaging in some braggadocio about his strength. Chris is both
mocking and appreciative, first riding Tony for being afraid to attack the Celts then
appreciating Tony’ technical superiority. This interaction also demonstrates how shared
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game strategies emerged. Here, for example, using espionage emerged as an ideal
strategy for avoiding war while still remaining technologically dominant.
Still Learning the Game
As games entered the modern era, still more questions arose. These ranged from
the conceptual (e.g., What are barracks, catapults, the Colossus, the attitude advisor,
treaties, libaries, city improvements, the forbidden palace, embassies?) to deeper
questions about the game system (e.g., How does the artificial intelligence work?).
Dwayne was particularly interested in understanding the game system. He wanted to
know how the industrial production, food, and culture systems worked in detail. We
discussed how to build city improvements (e.g., factories, power plants), and cultural
improvements (e.g., temples, libraries, cathedrals) and increased food capacity (e.g.,
irrigating, harbors). I tried to foster more student-to-student help, but a few still had a
fairly flimsy grasp of the game concepts. In a few instances, however, students were
beginning to develop theories about the game and concepts more generally and were
beginning to articulate and defend their theories about specific aspects of the game. Chris
and Tony, for example, launched an extended debate of the merits of building embassies.
DAY 4: Building the Presentation and Making Interdisciplinary Connections
I managed to arrive on time today, but again, lost the first half hour of class to
fighting computer problems. A teacher was using one of the computers he had lent to our
group, so we had to find one for Norman. Eventually, we just sent him down to the
computer lab on his own. Because we could not get Norman’s saved game to the lab, he
had to start over for yet another day. In post-interviews, Norman commented that he
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enjoyed playing Civilization III, and didn’t even mind losing the game, which increased
his interest in the game “kept wanting to win every time (I lost) until like the tenth time,
and then I just had enough.”
Reviewing the Underlying Game Variables
An hour into class, I called students’ attention to the front so we could continue
brainstorming for the presentation. Today we specifically discussed the rule set behind
Civilization III as a simulation. Students quickly identified the three main variables
(food, resources, and commerce) and even Kent was able to join in the conversation.
Next, we discussed factors affecting these basic variables. Students quickly identified that
irrigation and geographical location affected food production. Through playing as
different civilizations, students knew that river valleys generated the most food, and
tundra the least. Perhaps not surprisingly, the students had clearly picked up on the three
main variables behind the simulation and understood the factors affecting food
production quite clearly.
I turned the conversation to production (represented by shields). We had not
talked much about shields, and not surprisingly, they had little sense of what affected
their production.
Kurt:
Chris:
Kurt:
Dwayne:
Kurt:
Dwayne:
Kurt:
Kent:
Norman:
Where were your cities that had the most shields?
The ones that had a lot of luxuries?
Check one of your games. Who had a city with a lot of shields?
Mine.
What made them have the most shields?
The ones with roads.
I think you’re thinking trade. To affect shields, you want to build
factories, coal plants, or mines. Whose cities made stuff the
quickest? Where are they located? (There were some mumbles).
Take a look at your cities.
Mountains.
You’re wrong. (We went to Kent’s game).
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Kurt:
Kent:
Kurt:
Kent:
Kurt:
Kent:
Kurt:
Tony:
Look – where do they come from?
Mountains.
See Kent was right, forests, mountains and hills. Trade. Where did
that come from? Where are your cities that are rich? I bet you guys
know this one. Think back. When you were Egypt were you poor
or rich?
Rich.
Why?
I was near water.
People trade along the water. How can you make more trade?
Build roads…they also help you move faster.
I closed the discussion with a small talk about superhighways, discussing about how they
enable commerce and comparing the experiences of students with lots of roads to the
experiences of students who had few. Even though I had mentioned the four game
variables in the abstract at the beginning of the term and students had been interacting
with them throughout the unit, the factors contributing to these variables (particularly
shields) were still opaque. Students were far better at understanding parts of the
simulation model that were depicted visually and had an immediate impact on their game
play. They understood how roads and airports affected movement and they knew which
cities grew quickly and which ones generated trade, but they didn’t grasp yet the
interdependencies between these two features.
Cultural Influence
Lastly, I brought up culture. Students had even vaguer notions about what
contributed to their civilizations’ cultural influence.
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
The last is culture. What is culture? What things lead to culture?
Just about everything.
Does geography?
In some ways.
How?
I forgot. (Five seconds of silence).
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Tony, who was very aware of the materialist orientation of the game, guessed that
geography had an impact on culture. In reality, culture was the one (and probably only)
thing in the game not affected by geography. I explained how culture (as a game variable)
is a distinctly human variable, and that the game simulated culture through structures and
wonders, which biased the game against cultures that did not build large permanent
structures. Students did, however, understand the impact of cultural influence on the
game play.
Kurt:
Tony:
Kent:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
If you have an influential culture, does it help, does it hurt?
You can win the game.
Your territory expands.
Excellent. It makes people happier, and sometimes it makes other
people join your civilization.
Culture flip?
Right. So that’s how the game works. Your cities make four
things: food, shields, trade, and culture. And the whole game
grows out of that.
Students’ notions of culture were tied closely to those game functions that they used most
often. No one could say what culture was or what in the game led to culture, although
each of them knew the effect of culture on their game. Tony even recalled “culture
flipping,” the term we used for when a city’s residents were impressed by another
culture’s influence and switched to another culture.
I was a little surprised, however, that students did not infer more about the
underlying simulation. Their ensuing questions then reminded me of how little
background knowledge some brought to the unit.
Norman:
Kurt:
Norman:
Tony:
Is North and America and South America considered the same
continent?
No.
Doesn’t a bridge separate them?
I don’t think they’re connected.
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Several things about this conversation surprised me. First, it was curious that Norman did
not know that North and South America were separate continents and that he thought that
there was some sort of bridge between them. I was also surprised that Tony, who had
been playing on North America and traveling to South America all week, believed that
they were not connected at all. It reminded me that, if the game could minimally help
them learn new social studies vocabulary, even that might be an academically valuable
experience for many of them. I explained what continents were and gave a brief
explanation of the Panama Canal. I used their games to show how they could build a port
connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The Cold War Revisited or Always Beware of the Damned Russians
Tristan, a student in another class who was interested in Civilization III, walked
into the classroom and started asking questions. He noticed that Dwayne was in 2003 and
Tony was in 2020. He challenged Tony, trying to goad him into an arms race:
Tristan:
Tony:
Tristan:
Tony:
Dwayne:
Tristan:
Tony:
Kent:
Dwayne:
Why is Dwayne going into space and you don’t even have
battleships? And wait, they’re still riding horses and stuff. That
makes no sense. Why don’t you have jet fighters? Why don’t you
bomb a neighboring country? Damn I’m sweating in here. Why
don’t you build tanks?
Tanks? I don’t need tanks.
Tony, Tony, Tony. Why don’t we go by America’s principles?
Build as many weapons as you can even though you don’t need it,
“just in case war breaks out.” (The United States had just attacked
Afghanistan, a war that most of these students were suspicious of).
Isn’t that a little overkill?
No.
What was the cold war about – building as many weapons as you
can, just in case Russia starts something? Build enough weapons to
destroy the earth 10 times over just because “The Russians.”
But I don’t need tanks.
Always have tanks.
Always beware of the damned Russians.
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I was surprised to see that these students, who were not sure if North and South America
were even considered different continents, had such sophisticated, critical views on the
causes of The Cold War. Tristan, Tony, Dwayne, even Kent all joked about military
escalation during the Cold War and the fact that the United States might have overspent
on military for a threat designed to generate fear in the populace was taken as a given.
Tristan looked on as Tony played.
Tristan:
Tony:
Tristan:
Tony:
Tony, you still haven’t reached Africa yet? Isn’t the object to take
over people with the military and rule the world?
Yeah, kind of, but you don’t have to do it with military. It’s almost
impossible to do it just with military.
Really? Huh? Why?
It would just be really hard. Hey! I have a missile.
Tony was beginning to see the game as an interconnected set of systems and how military
superiority alone was not enough to win the game. As several times before, he
“recovered” himself after taking a pacifist stance by declaring that he did, in fact, have a
missile. Sandy entered the class to call Tristan out of the room.
Interdisciplinary Connections
We resumed work on the presentation. I started reading through the post-it notes
of students’ ideas of what they learned through game play. Our goal was to read them and
organize them by theme. The activity broke down, leading to the most significant
learning moments of the unit. I continued calling out students ideas of what they had
learned.
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Kent:
Kurt:
Tony:
Democracy makes more money and more science.
Bias, because some people believe that technology will win the
game.
Cities grow slower in mountains and slower in forests.
Geography.
Discovering democracy helped my civilization.
Politics.
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Kurt:
Dwayne:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Technology of flight. How did that help?
Military superiority.
Discovery of flight helped my military.
Politics?
It could also be history.
Tony was beginning to see that there were multiple lenses for viewing technological
advances, that each variable lie at the intersection of several interacting systems. I read
one of their comments about the Nile River generating food and trade. Tony was making
more and more connections among money, technology and politics.
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
You could say that you realized how as soon as people discovered
flight that changed history. Nile River creates food and trade.
Money allows me to buy technology, so Politics. When you have a
lot of money you can do whatever you want. When you’re rich you
can buy off other countries.
Have you heard of the US selling fighter planes to other countries?
No.
Yeah – the US sells military to countries like Israel.
Soon, Tony saw the problem with this activity: Because geography, politics, economics,
and history are all connected (in Civilization III and in life), it is difficult to know where
one domain begins and another ends. He was beginning to understand that it was
impossible to talk about the importance of the Nile River without talking about
economics, which then had political implications. This became clearer as the discussion
then turned to amphibious warfare.
Tony:
Kurt:
Could be bias…could be history and politics. In a way it’s
history…it allows you to bombard other countries. But politicswise you can demand stuff now.
Let’s put it in the middle. Ok, next. Luxury resources create
happiness.
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(Tony stood up, thinking. I transitioned to a topic more directly related to Dwayne’s
game, trying to bring him into the conversation. Tony quickly regained his train of
thought.)
Kurt:
Dwayne:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Unifying Africa made us powerful. Dwayne, where would you put
that?
Politics and geography. I got all of these resources then I could
trade them with other countries. So it made my politics stronger.
It makes more production. Everyone can work faster and more
efficiently.
Where should we put that, in what pile?
Well, in some ways, they’re all related to each other. (General
nodding)
That could be one thing we learned. How would you write that?
Well, money is the key… money is the root to everything. With
money you can save yourself from war, and that also means that
politics…with
money,
that
ties
everything
together.
Tony argues that money relates all these factors, perhaps prodded by my encouragement
to find a single unifying theme, perhaps due to his own interpretations of the game,
perhaps from his own personal beliefs. I encouraged the class to think more about
connections between geography and politics. At this point, the majority of our topics –
amphibious warfare, luxuries, geography, uniting Africa – were all in the middle of the
chart connecting history, geography, and politics.
Kurt:
I want to suggest a change here. One thing we learned is that
history geography and politics are all related. Why?
Tony:
Luxuries buys you money and money buys you everything. The
right location gives you luxuries gives you income more income
gives you technology which affects your politics. It all connects.
Chris and Kent, who were listening closely, seemed to also grasp these connections that
Tony was making. A taken-as-shared moment was emerging within the group.
Chris:
Kent:
Tony:
Dwayne:
Yes.
Geography affects your diplomacy because it gets your more
resources and affects how they treat you.
Geography can affect the growth of your civilization.
It affects your war.
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Tony seemed to have an epiphany about how the game helped him see interconnections
between geography, economics, and politics. His idea then spread through the class. In
closing interviews, he expounded further on these relationships:
Interviewer:
Tony:
Interviewer:
Tony:
Interviewer:
Tony:
Do you think that playing Civilization taught you anything about
social studies?
I think it did. I always knew that certain locations helped certain
people but with this, I have a better understanding of it. In some
ways I have a better idea of like if you’re in the middle of a forest.
Sure there’s a lot of things there, but your civilization doesn’t grow
that quickly and money is hard to come by. That affects
population, the mood of your civilization and food…
In class, you said that geography affects politics which affects
history. Could you talk more about that?
Well, if you’re next to the ocean, that’s a good place to any city to
be. It has food, water, the climate would be moderate, and that’s a
good place for a city to flourish. If you have luxuries around water,
that brings in trade – brings in money that you can talk with other
Civilizations. If you have enough money you can buy a lot of
things and you can sell a lot of things.
How does that affect your foreign policy?
You make a lot more friends if you have a lot more stuff.
Everybody
wants
everything.
For Tony, the most educationally valuable thing about the game was the way it helped
him see connections between disparate areas and how basic social studies concepts (e.g.
river valleys have better food production) affect an entire civilization. Tony had studied
some of these concepts before, particularly where resources where located, but he now
saw how and why they were important and how these issues deeply affected one another.
Particular features of Civilization III may have been fruitful for enabling Tony to
construct this understanding. For example, information encoded into maps (such as
natural resources, rate of agricultural production) was put directly in the service of
solving problems.
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Later in the interview, I asked Tony if he detected any biases in the game.
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
The form of government, democracy has been the best…any form
of government could work for any civ, in some ways the ways
technology works in the game is very true, like how we are now. I
remember in history books they talk about how there was an arms
race… the more technology we had the more powerful we should
be, and there was a race to go to the moon or outerspace at least. I
guess the more power you have in technology, the better you are in
the game.
So it might be realistic – at least it’s reasonable?
Yes close enough.
I have heard the same thing about geography. What do you think
about that?
Geography is the main game. Because if you’re in the
mountains…in my other game I started next to the mountains and
next to the water as well, and the water was the only thing
sustaining me was in the water. I’m secluded from everything else
but the barbarians snuck in, and everyone else sort of hates us
because we’re weak people and they won’t share whatever they
have. They only come in when I find something good. Then they
start calling me. Do you want to trade this?
Is that an unrealistic bias to you?
In some ways, yes.
Tony struggled with whether the game’s bias toward democracy and technology were
problematic, in that he attributed much of the United States success to just these factors –
its democracy and technology (and resulting wealth). What did strike Tony as a bias was
that other countries were disrespectful to him due to his economic weakness, and they
would only trade with him for their own material gain, which also might be considered a
materialistic game bias.
We decided that this was enough to get us started on the presentation. Norman
volunteered to take the post-it notes listing students’ comments and turn them into a
Powerpoint presentation. He went to work on the deck while I occasionally looked on.
DAY 5: Finishing up Games and Building the Final Presentation
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The students quickly and quietly got to work. Norman continued working on the
PowerPoint presentation while Tony, Dwayne, Chris, and Kent finished their games. I
thought of pulling everyone from their games, but I wanted them to have the chance to
see their outcomes. Students played quietly for about thirty minutes. In between turns,
Tony opened up the game on another computer and took screenshots for the presentation.
Tony suggested that we get images of war and images from multiple cultures in addition
to diplomacy and city screens.
Chris was finishing his game. Tony looked over, saw that Chris had a thriving
city, and suggested that Chris capture a screenshot of his city. He nodded and did. Chris
spent most of the last day starting games in different areas and testing the relative
advantages of each. Chris described some of what he learned through these experiments:
“For Egypt it wasn’t a really good idea to have war with other cultures. They
grew fast but there were so many around you – the Greeks, the Babylonians, the
Romans, and Bantus – they were just around you. The Egyptians had a lot of gold,
so they might try to gang up on you. As the Aztecs it was harder to be rich, but it
was good to trade with other countries. They had less reasons to invade you.”
Chris’s comparisons were a productive starting place for teasing out how geography had
an impact on the growth of a civilization. Having students do similar experiments – or at
least having students examine one another’s games more formally – seems a productive
way of using Civilization III to stimulate inquiry. Students were very willing to compare
games and, from them, could infer the games rules, systems, and biases. Comparing
multiple games acted much like contrasting cases might for students in problem-based
learning environments. By examining multiple cases they began to see patterns of deeper
structure in the simulation, a feature of learning environments that is believed to lead to
deeper learning (i.e. Bransford & Schwartz, 1999). Meanwhile, Dwayne was still in
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search of Japan. He had two boats sailing about Asia in search of it. His final goal for the
unit was to find and colonize Japan as the Bantu. I handed him a globe to help.
Polishing the Presentation
In reviewing their comments, I noticed that students did not suggest many
changes to the game. I called out, “Ok, changes we’d make to the game…to either be
better or better in a classroom situation.” There was silence. Ok, “What about pacing?”
The students all called out, “yes, yes, definitely. The beginning moves too fast.”
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Tony:
What about the barbarians?
Yeah, they’re barbarians, but they’re still people. It seems to me
that they should still be learning technologies.
Should they just be slow, the way the aborigines were?
Just
put
they
need
to
be
more
active.
Tony, like many students struggled with the representation of nomadic groups in the
game. Many felt that barbarians were marginalized as peoples and insufficiently
considered by the simulation in that they could not develop technologies or cities.
Students also called out for a variety of minor changes in the scenario, such as giving
scouts defense strength. Students found many inaccuracies in the game rules, the scenario
properties, and the unfolding events of the game and enjoyed critiquing them, suggesting
that a powerful use of Civilization III for learning is in raising questions about historical
accuracy and then having students examine what those inaccuracies might be, and
possibly even create more accurate scenarios. At minimum, such activities tease out what
students understand and believe about history. As it turns out, they often have far richer
theories than we sometimes anticipate and gain through standard assessment
mechanisms.
Tony continued creating screenshots for the presentation. We discussed what
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images would best show the cultures of different civilizations, the variety of natural
resources, and the building aspects of the game. Meanwhile, Norman fleshed out the
slides. Overhearing Norman and I discussing “How learning in the game was different
than learning other ways” Tony called out, “For one thing it’s more interactive. Playing
the game forces you to learn about the material. It actually forces you to learn about other
civilizations in order to survive.”
I read off their comments about politics, “Don’t fight too many people at once.” I
connected this to the adage “Don’t’ fight a war on too many fronts.” I struggled to
organize the presentation. My original scheme was failing, which led to further
discussion about what students felt they had learned.
Kurt:
Kent:
Norman:
Kurt:
Kent:
Norman:
Kurt:
Tony:
Kurt:
Norman:
Tony:
How should we do it (the presentation)? It starts with the
introduction then explains the game. Then it jumps to what it
taught us. Politics, history, geography, technology. Maybe we
shouldn’t divide it. What if we went for the four most important
things we learned from the game? What would those be?
We’re mostly learning about government. Like how some forms of
governments are better than others.
We’re learning about managing civilizations.
Let’s talk about managing, then. What parts are you managing?
Resources…money, treaties, alliances,… you know…politics.
You worry about how much you spend on science compared to
how much on money…
Most people go through geography and think it’s just a bunch of
facts – it’s more important to know where it is on the map than
anything about it. What were the differences between being
isolated and having people to trade with? What were the
differences playing as the Iroquois compared to Egypt?
Well, when you’re isolated it’s good and bad. In some ways it’s
good because you don’t really have any enemies, you flourish, it’s
kind of bad because you develop at a slower pace.
Do you agree with him, Norman?
Yes (nodding his head).
Yeah, as the Iroquois, I was doing fine…then I met the other
people.
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While most students were able to talk about coming to the kinds of understandings that I
originally had in mind when conceiving of the use of Civilization III in social studies
classrooms, such as seeing connections between disciplines or seeing geography as a
process, they also believed that they learned as much about “managing civilizations” as
they did about history. Some of these understandings make interesting loose analogies to
different policy agendas, such as comparing investment in military spending and basic
research, but I was a little concerned that students overgeneralize understandings given
that the game probably functions as a poor “civilization management simulation”
whatever that would even be.
Norman entered the information into the presentation and Tony returned to his
game. He asked Chris questions about SAM missile batteries and hydro plants. Dwayne
asked about the SETI program. I tried to turn their focus back to the presentation. “What
about history?”
Tony responded, “No matter how history plays out in this game, it’s all based on
the same rules – kind of like in real life.” I asked Tony to reiterate his comment for the
class, to make sure that they understood this concept. Everyone nodded. The idea that
history could be represented through a set of rules – an idea that might strike historians as
odd or unusual – was completely acceptable to these students who had been playing
Civilization III.
Dwayne shot up out of his chair, interrupting the discussion. He had lost the
game.
The Agony of Defeat
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Dwayne shouted, “What, you’re kidding me?!” Students started asking questions.
“Who was it? How did they win?” Dwayne was far ahead of everyone and had been
building a space ship. He believed that he was on the road to an easy victory. If Dwayne
lost, no one stood a chance. Tony asked, “Did they build a spaceship?”
I answered, “No it would have been some other way…maybe the UN?” As the
group crowded around Dwayne, he vented the frustration common to losing a game of
Civilization. “I was at the top of the world record, what the heck? Look at my culture for
Christ’s sake. What the hell? I’m more powerful than all these bastards.” I explained that
another civilization might have built the UN and held a vote. I explained how “If you’re
in good standing, they will vote for you. So if you’ve been good to civilizations, giving
away technologies and stuff, then they’ll vote for you.” Dwayne went back to a saved
game and the rest of the class continued theirs. Dwayne had decided to strike back. He
explained, “I’m going to put nuclear subs all up and down their coasts and blow up those
bastards… They wanted advanced flight (an advanced technology). They’re not getting
it.”
I refocused the discussion on the presentation. “How do roads and an
infrastructure contribute? What did you learn about that?” No one had any answers. I
explained how irrigation and roads could be seen as infrastructure. “For example, what
are the advantages of US having good highways?”
“The military moves faster.”
I looked at Tony’ game. “See, yours is almost connected because it has airports.
So imagine trying to send troops across America with backroads. Imagine how we would
have sent troops across the country without superhighways or planes.” A few students
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nodded their heads.
Wrapping Up the Presentation
Tony polished the PowerPoint presentation while the other students finished their
games. Each student volunteered to take one slide, except for Dwayne. I assigned a slide
to Dwayne, but he gave no indication that he would participate in the presentation.
An hour after class, students gave the presentation in a large cafeteria before the
rest of their school (about 200 students). The students’ presentation went smoothly;
students basically read from the slides, (see Appendix H). The other students were
surprised that Norman, who is shy and does not like to talk in front of other students,
actually read his slide. Tony read Dwayne’s slide for him, as Dwayne sat quietly in the
back of the room refusing to stand in front of the group. The Civilization group compared
favorably with the other groups, who made documentaries about local neighborhoods,
recorded pop songs, or edited and shot other videos. Whereas most groups focused on
production, the civilization campers also confronted academic content.
I stayed for the whole end-of-year ceremony. Watching the school celebrate,
applauding students’ successes, sharing joy for Jenny and her young baby, mourning the
loss of a student who was shot – it was moving to myself as well as other students and
teachers. The students bought me a gift certificate to a local board games store. During
the ceremony, I bid farewell to all of the students I had worked with over the past month
and we made plans to try to connect over the summer or to play the multiplayer
expansion to Civilization (Civ III: Play the World) next fall.
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Chapter VI. YWCA After-School Context
Longfellow Middle School is a suburban, working-class middle school outside of
Boston Massachusetts. The community is made up mostly of blue collar working
families, many of whom are recent immigrants. Historically, the community has
supported education more than many neighboring communities although economic
hardships of the 1980s did affect the school district1. In the past five years, the district has
tried to “catch up” with wealthier suburbs, applying for state and federal funds to
improve its facilities. This case occurred at The Longfellow school, a mathematics and
science magnet school which resulted from one of these grants.
Only a few years old, Longfellow was very well kept and still looked new.
Although the school was a technology magnet school, most teachers did not use computer
technology in their day-to-day teaching, according to Earnie Fitzpatrick, the school
science and technology coordinator and designated “pedagogical change agent. ” A
former industrial arts teacher at the school, Earnie’s role now was to partner with other
teachers to tackle projects such as building greenhouses in science classes, architectural
models in mathematics classes or robots and solar-powered bicycles in after-school
programs. The YWCA camp occurred in Earnie’s computer lab.
My relationship with Longfellow and the YWCA arose from a phone call from
Laureen Scibinico, the executive director of the YWCA. She was looking for innovative,
technology-enhanced educational programming for grades 5-8. The next week I met
Laureen and two other program coordinators to discuss teaching an after-school unit with
Civilization III. We decided that Civilization III would be both entertaining and
academically challenging for these students. We met two more times before the unit
1
Interview with Laureen Scibinico and Kristen Repoza, May 2002.
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began to discuss the YWCA’s goals, the students it serves, and curriculum ideas. Both of
these meetings included Earnie Fitzpatrick. We decided to frame the unit as “computer
enrichment camp,” which would mean that we would not expect outside reading or other
homework. Students could come and go as they pleased, although we could expect
regular attendance. They reminded me that, as participants in a computer camp, students
would expect to have mostly “hands-on” time with computers. Everyone agreed that
“hands-on” activities where students could be creative usually worked best for engaging
students. I drafted a letter to the parents of children who attended Longfellow but were
members of the YWCA which is how we recruited participants. Twelve students signed
up for the camp.
DAY 1: Introducing the Game
It was another nerve-wracking first day today. The second researcher and I
installed Civilization III on as many computers as we could before class, but several
computers malfunctioned or never worked correctly at all, so setting up the computers
spilled over into game play time. Students were patient and quiet, and most students
could sit at their own computer. There were 12 students in all, with two high school aged
teaching assistants from the YWCA and another student’s sister, who was not
participating, but just “watching.” The YWCA participants had warned me that these
were not the most academically gifted students, but they were angels compared to the
Media students. They all listened to our instructions and quickly and quietly sat down as
we invited them into the room.
Setting Ground Rules and Introducing Game Concepts
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Earnie introduced me and the research project, and spent several minutes laying
down the ground rules for the lab. We were using Earnie’s private lab, apparently the
only lab in the district where we could install our own software. There was no mistaking
that the lab was Earnie’s domain, and it was a gorgeous lab indeed. When Marvin, one of
the students, walked into for the first time, his mouth dropped wide open, he looked
around and said, "Wow!" Interestingly, these were only Pentium IIs, but the room was
clean, the chairs were quality, rolling office chairs, and each computer was set in its own
spacious carrel, giving the room an elegant appearance that the students reacted to
immediately.
I had each student write his or her name on a post-it note and then introduced the
game. I described the purpose of my research, highlighting that Civilization III is a
commercial game that most people play for fun (anticipating issues about the game’s
enjoyability that we encountered at the Media School). I covered the main four ways to
win the game: (1) military domination, (2) political victory, (3) cultural domination, and
(4) space race. I avoided two of the less obvious ways to win the game; my objective was
to give students a very clear sense of the game goals and why they were playing, hoping
to avoid the problem we had at Media with kids not perceiving the point of the game.
I introduced the basic game play in terms of four phases: (1) building / managing
armies, (2) building infrastructure, (3) building cities, and (4) managing foreign policy.
The projector did not work for the game demonstration so this explanation was probably
too abstract for students. Next, I wrote a few goals on the dry erase board in an attempt to
help these students develop clear goals: (1) build two cities, (2) build roads and irrigate,
(3) build a defense to defend from barbarians, and (4) meet another civilization. I left
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these goals on the board in case students felt lost. While students may not have entirely
understood this introduction, they seemed to at least understand the point of the camp.
After this 15 minute presentation, students started playing. Most of the students
with working computers were generally curious about the game and began of their own
accord. Many computers crashed, however, and I spent much of the first hour trying to
get the game working on a few computers so that everyone could participate. I explained
the basics of the game – how to make units, what each unit did, how to change city
production, and how to build new cities to students individually. Within fifteen minutes,
students encountered problems with civil unrest in their cities. I stopped the class to
describe the city resource window again. Some students asked about natural resources, so
I introduced the concept of luxuries, explaining that students could use dyes, incense,
silks, or gems to make their citizens happy. Computer failures and failures with the
projector continued to prevent us from getting a smooth start.
Starting Game Play
During this first 20 minutes of play, despite my attempts at providing a clear
introduction and the students’ general cooperativeness, most students were not as
enthusiastic as I had hoped about playing. They played through the tutorial, clicking
around the map with hesitancy. I had somehow expected them to bubble over with
excitement about the chance to play. Whether it was the game’s packaging, my
introduction, how the program was advertised, or just their own expectations about the
program, I am not sure, but they definitely approached it more as an “educational
program” than as a “top-selling computer game” that one might pay $50 for and play in
her spare time. I tried to sell the idea of “ruling the world” to the students. Seven of the
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twelve students in the class were girls. To appeal across gender lines, I tried to highlight
the creative appeal of the game, the idea that students could create a civilization that
reflected their values (i.e. military vs. artistic vs. scientific vs religious). Despite their
lack of enthusiasm, students worked on the game with very little complaining; no
students were refusing to play, standing up in their chairs, or trying to leave the room as
had happened in the Media case. After observing two groups learning the game, I started
to think that both the Media students and this group’s hesitancy was because the game
was so complicated. There is a lot of text on screen, the action is slow at first, and
learning the game demands some thinking. For the next ninety minutes, I moved from
student to student, hoping to establish more personal relationships with each of them,
learn more about them as people, help them get engaged in the game play, and develop
strategies for integrating lectures with game play.
Meeting the Students, Meeting the Game
Social gamers. By the second half of class, most students were engaged in game
play. Alisha, Miranda and Vicky were all on one computer. Vicky kept getting computers
that did not work. She, like Jordan, was being extremely patient and was very eager to
play the game. So she patiently sat with the other girls and talked about the game,
contributing her opinions and laughing aloud with Alisha and Miranda. All three girls
reported being at least somewhat interested in social studies. All three are also second or
third generation immigrant students: Alisha is Portugese and Latino-American, Miranda
is Chinese-American, and Vicky is Haitian-American. At the height of their collaborative
game, they had three cities, but two were conquered by China. They had three roads, and
one irrigated area. Miranda explained, "First everyone admired us, now everyone hates us
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because we conquered them." They used their workers to build infrastructure, their
warriors to visit other civilizations, and their cities to create more units. Although the
girls all expressed an interest in having their own computer, they did not seem to mind
collaborating. The three girls chatted as they played their game, quickly creating the first
affinity group of gamers in the classroom (Gee, 2003).
Sandy was a seventh grade girl who considered herself an average or poor social
studies student, and as the second researcher later described, “was not the most curious of
students.” She seemed more interested in social relationships than learning but was rarely
defiant or rebellious; rather, she came off as guarded and more interested in “blending in”
with other students. Sandy frequently looked over to Vicky, Amy and Miranda while she
played, indicating that perhaps she wanted to be a part of their social circle. After only a
few minutes of playing, she was already at war with a neighboring civilization. She spent
most of the day playing as Egyptians battling the Babylonians, which she seemed to
enjoy. She built the Colossus which looks quite impressive on screen and eventually
excited her with the game. After the first hour or so, she was making a peace treaty and
thought that she had one city, but was not really sure.
Willing gamers. Marvin was a sixth grade student of Haitian and Dominican
background who reported having an “A average” in social studies. He was eager and
enthusiastic about playing the game and was a frequent contributor to class discussions.
He quickly jumped into his game and within minutes was engaged in very focused play.
After thirty minutes, Marvin restarted his game so that he could play as Egypt, declaring,
"I love Egypt." He read the dialog boxes carefully, speaking the words quietly as he read.
He was obviously weighing the decisions carefully, frequently asking me for advice on
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what units to build, technologies to pursue, or strategies to use in dealing with other
civilizations. He had many intriguing theories about the rise and fall of Egyptian, Roman,
and Greek civilizations and was happy to share them with us throughout the term.
Kevin was a sixth grade African-American boy who came across as thoughtful
and conscientious. Kevin listened intently during the initial lecture, smiled and joked with
peers, and was quick to help other students or answer discussion questions. He was very
excited about playing the game and was eager to talk with the researchers. Kevin
carefully read the dialog boxes, consulting with all of his advisors before making
decisions. He took their advice very seriously. At one point, Kevin conquered a Russian
city, St. Petersburg. His military advisor asked if he wanted to raze St. Petersburg. Kevin
asked what “raze” meant; when I explained that it meant "burn it to the ground," Kevin
looked relieved that he had made the other more peaceful choice. There was a lot to learn
in the game for Kevin. For example, at one point, his financial advisor told him he was
running low on money, and he decided to get more money by researching “Bronze
working," a logical move that actually would be of little help. Further, he was not sure
how many cities he had. Overall, Kevin was engaged in the game and interested in
talking to us and participating in outside activities.
Jamal was also a quiet, conscientious sixth grade African-American boy. Because
of the shortage of working computers, Jamal sat and watched Kevin as he played for the
first 30 minutes of class and then got his own computer to play. Jamal and Kevin seemed
to be friends, but each was still very interested in playing his own game, to the point
where Jamal did not interrupt Kevin while he played. When Jamal did get his own
computer, he became quickly engrossed in the game. Jamal sat with his eyes just inches
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from the monitor, focused intently on the action. This approach to play could be
contrasted with the girls, who gladly played together. For the girls, talking about their
game seemed to be a large part of the experience, whereas Jamal and Kevin, for example,
wanted to play silently on their own.
Ricky was a seventh grade Latino boy who said that he did poorly in social
studies and did not like school. He was quiet, even despondent most days and often
refused to answer interviewers’ questions unless they were about video games. He played
a lot of video games, and enjoyed talking about Diablo, Grand Theft Auto, and Starcraft.
Ricky brought game manuals to class, and often spent his free time reading through game
manuals or drawing pictures of game characters. He seemed antagonistic to authority and
as if he could be a “troublesome” student, which Earnie later confirmed. He was
cautiously enthusiastic about playing Civilization III. Although he had not played it
before, he had heard of it, and was a fan of real-time strategy games such as Age of
Empires. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was very confused early on, wondering why units
would not move in real time like they would in a real-time strategy game. I noticed that
he had lined up five warriors to form a wall around his city – a strategy common in realtime strategy games but of limited value in a turn-taking strategy game such as
Civilization III. I explained that the warriors would be more valuable staying in cities
both for protection and to help control civil disorder. Ricky nodded, but did not change
his strategy, perhaps trusting his own experience with real-time strategy games more than
my advice. He was very focused on his game, reading the dialog boxes and moving his
units carefully. He gave short answers, and both researchers had difficulty engaging him
in conversation as he wanted to be left alone to play his game.
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Jordan was a gregarious sixth grade Caucasian student who loved games. His
computer did not work right away, so he spent the first twenty minutes of class trying to
debug the game or waiting for assistance. He kept asking, "How much time do I have left
to play?" and was clearly disappointed about losing so much playing time. When Jordan
finally did start playing, he was full of questions and comments. He wanted to know
whether units could build on the water and if they could build boats, why his units were
disappearing (he was convinced that his units were mysteriously disappearing from the
game), and why he could not see his units “closer up.” By the end of the day, Jordan had
one city and wanted to know, "How do you get food?" He was very curious, talking
loudly about his game, asking questions, calling for researchers’ attention, and trying to
capture my attention whenever he could. Like Jason from the Media school, Jordan
probed me to learn about the game and freely shared his frustration about its turn-based
format; Jordan also had played Age of Empires and wanted the units to respond to his
orders in real time as they did there. He voluntarily filled out post-it notes commenting on
his thoughts about the game.
The confused. Nadya was a shy, quiet sixth grade Haitian-American student
(Haitian French-Creole was her first language). She quietly played her game, cooperating
with researchers when offered the chance, but not actively seeking out their assistance.
Nadya built a city but didn't know how to build a road, nor what irrigation meant. She
was not especially interested in the game, frequently pausing between turns to sit and
stare into space. It was not clear that she could read the instructions in the tutorial. Still,
she managed to move her units around the map and could change her city’s production.
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Although Nadya was not particularly engaged in the game and learned more slowly than
some, she still remained positive and cooperated with researchers.
Alice and Tara, who were sisters, were the most confused and the least engaged of
the students. Tara (age 11) had difficulty reading the text and was unable to understand
the choices she was making about technologies, the advice she received from advisors,
and the basics of diplomacy. Both girls complained about the game, rolled their eyes, and
put their heads down on their desks. Tara had several questions about basic game
concepts, such as pottery and irrigation, both of which were terms she had never heard
before. The second researcher helped Tara get started; yet, even with significant
coaching, Tara could not do many basic game tasks, such determine what types of land
could be irrigated.
Alice, Tara’s sister, had a better grasp of the game and was engaged for a little
while. She had one city and was trying to build another. I noticed that she had several
entertainers in her city. When I came by Alice to help her, I quickly realized that she had
little, if any, understanding of the basic controls or concepts in the game. I tried to give
her an overview of how the resources worked, but getting her up to speed was a daunting
task. She kept saying how hungry she was, asking for the time, and looking out the
window for her parents. Both Alice and Tara had difficulty reading the game text and
were visibly disinterested in the activity.
Near the end of class, Nadya had abandoned her game, so Vicky took over
Nadya's computer and started playing. Vicky had been waiting patiently for over an hour,
and Nadya did not seem to care at all, so we did not stop them from trading.
Unexpectedly, there were two high school-aged “teaching assistants” in the class who
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spent most of the time talking with one another. We tried to think of ways to get them
involved in teaching, but they did not understand the game very well (nor the “content”
either, so it seemed), so for today we just let them sit and watch students.
Consolidating What We Learned
At the end of the (150 minute) session, I pulled the group together for a fifteenminute discussion. They were understandably a little tired by this point; it was 5:00,
meaning they had been in a full day of school plus two hours of intensive game play. I
began by asking, “What kinds of things did you build?” They mentioned workers,
settlers, warriors, temples, spearmen, and the Collossus. I asked what each structure did,
and students called out answers, such as “build roads”, “build new cities,” or “make
people happy.” Miranda, Marvin, Vicky, Jamal, and Kevin paid the closest attention
during the discussion. Miranda and Marvin offered responses for nearly every question
and seemed to have a firm grasp on the game. Ricky, Sandy, Amy, and Nadya could offer
vague answers for some of the questions. Amy and Tara had no idea what we were
talking about.
As students called out units and functions, I wrote their responses in two columns
on the board. Recalling the confusion at the MEDIA school, I tried to make clear
connections between the units and their function, highlighting specifically how each
structure or unit helps them. As I led the discussion, I tried to be as specific as possible.
For example, in describing temples, I said that building temples helps the practice and
spread of religions, which makes unhappy people in your city happy. I also reiterated the
functions of workers: building mines to increase production, irrigating land to increase
food, and building roads to increase commerce. My hope was that constantly explaining
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concepts in terms of the four basic game variables would reinforce these basic concepts
for students and make game play clearer faster than it was at the Media School.
The second researcher noted that, despite the successes of the first day, there was
still a lot of confusion due to the game’s complexity. Game terms, such as Bronze Age,
irrigation, and despotism, presented obstacles for many players. Indeed, there was so
much reading in the game that it was almost worthwhile for these students as a reading
lesson alone. The second researcher also commented that, as a reading teacher, she was
impressed by how motivated these students were to read, pouring over every word,
carefully weighing the meaning of sentences, particularly those that involved negotiation
between their civilization and others in the game. Thus, although the class got off to a
slow start, we were encouraged that students were willing to learn the game system and
that there seemed to be many opportunities for students to learn world history concepts
through game play.
DAY 2: Adopting Goals and Mastering the Basics of Civilization III
The plan for today was to introduce the lesson, do a quick timeline exercise, and
then administer the survey. The pretest and survey went well; unlike at the Media School,
these students actually seemed to read the questions and filled in their survey. Students
had mixed opinions about social studies. Marvin was clearly the most interested in the
topic, describing social studies, geography, and history as all “fun.” Marvin responded
similarly on the Likert items, scoring a 4.0 on the “attitude toward social studies” scale.
Jamal, Miranda and Sandy also reported liking social studies but to a lesser degree. Only
Ricky thought that social studies was boring. Clearly, we had much more “buy-in” with
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the program than we did with the Media School students. Students sat when asked,
listened (for at least a few minutes) to what I said, and seemed genuinely curious in the
game now. Even though the program was not for a grade, they were open to doing
structured activities such as the survey. Seven of the twelve students attending today were
girls.
Building Civilizations
Standing the test of time. Marvin was very engaged in the game. His goals were to
build a “huge” infrastructure, discover more civilizations, make allies and build big
mines. He enjoyed talking to the researchers, reporting that we taught him how to talk to
his advisors, read more difficult aspects of the interface, gauge his scientific research
progress and use the Civilopedia. Marvin figured out how to solve most of the basic game
problems and was now building mines, roads, city structures. He shared with us his
biggest problem with the game: He wants to see lots of individual soldiers on screen
instead of one unit representing a large army. Seeing his units would provide him visual
feedback on his progress and further live out the fantasy of replaying history. He enjoyed
history and playing Civilization III was a way for him to participate in it.
Earning money. In contrast, Jamal just wanted to make more money. Like many
students, he struggled with making enough money to support an army and fend off
barbarians. He approached the game strictly as a military conflict and had not built many
roads, so there was little commerce in his civilization. I noticed that few students were
building roads at all and, as a result, their cities were isolated, unable to trade luxuries.
Further, students could not defend their civilizations easily, as moving military units took
several turns. Like Jamal, most students approached game situations (i.e. barbarians) as
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isolated problems and did not discern how bigger cities, a stronger economy, or increased
production capacity were all interrelated and would ultimately lead to a stronger defense.
Exploring geography. Much of Amy’s (Iroquois) initial play was about exploring
geography; She had three warriors exploring North America but her civilization of two
cities was not doing very well. She was broke, her population was stagnating, and she
constantly battled with barbarians. She wanted to create workers to build more roads, but
her cities could not support them. By midway through class, she had started a new game
because she “had a sad little city with not much going on.” She did not seem to mind
failing and starting again. I showed her how to create roads, defend her workers from
barbarians, and manage her cities’ production. This time, her civilization thrived. She
protected her workers from barbarians and built more cities with more roads. Most of all,
she enjoyed exploring the geography with her warriors, quickly learning that she would
need to devise strategies for improving her civilization’s economy, infrastructure, and
defense in order to support such exploration.
Stewarding her people. After a day of watching Miranda play, Vicky was hungry
to play the game on her own. Vicky (Egyptians) was all smiles and eager to talk with
researchers whenever we visited. “My game is going well. Things are good. My people
are happy.” She spent the day exploring the controls, moving and building units, and
experimenting with the city screens. After seeing how quickly Vicky picked up the game
after watching Miranda, I thought that having students watch the game on a projector
might be a good idea. The second researcher disagreed, thinking that Vicky would have
been confident and positive regardless. For her, the fun of the game was creating a
civilization and making her people happy through her strong leadership.
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Forging relationships. Miranda (Iroquois) was also very involved in her game and
eager to chat with researchers. Most of Miranda’s game played focused on relationships
with other civilizations. She explained how the Aztecs were polite or the Babylonians
were at war, using the exact terminology from the negotiation screens. After her first day
of warring, staying in the good graces of other civilizations became very important for
Miranda and she could go on in detail about who was being nice to her, who attacked her,
the last time she was at war, and how she made peace. Miranda frequently called leaders
by name and asked researchers about the historical leaders of each civilization. She
explained how she learned to examine city resources, including the amount of food,
resources, and trade her city had. She also had a seemingly endless parade of questions
about game vocabulary: “What is an archer? What does ‘pillage’ mean? What does
‘irrigate’ mean? What are the rockpiles (mountains)? What do they do? How can I make
civilizations less angry with me? How many people are in your city?” Miranda, more
than any of the others, was interested in comparing her game to “real life.” She wanted to
know how big her cities’ populations were in actual size, which I showed her. She
enjoyed talking with researchers; in fact, we had to be careful not to spend all afternoon
answering her questions. For Miranda, the game was about meeting other civilizations
and socializing with the virtual characters, specifically making treaties, going to war, and
making “friends” with allies.
Orienting to Civilization III as Gamers
Jordan and Ricky sat in the back of the room and talked about their games
throughout the day. Both students oriented to the game first as gamers and only second as
a students engaging in a history simulation. Ricky had difficulty reading some of the
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words in the game and asked Jordan a lot of questions as a result. He also asked Jordan
about general strategies, such as, “Should I build spearmen or archers?” Jordan counseled
Ricky and gave him tips such as “learn map making and build galleys,” although it was
not entirely clear where Jordan was getting these strategies.
Jordan was both critical and excited about the game. Jordan ranted against the
turn-based game format and complained about his cities in disarray, but then would ask
get excited about the game after seeing the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China: “They
have the Pyramids!! Will you show me how to build that?” He was an adept game player
and learned the game system with little help. Later, Jordan asked if he could keep the
game. I told Jordan that he could after the unit if he participated regularly, and so he said,
“Well, if not, then I’ll buy a copy,” and returned to reading the dialog boxes.
Interestingly, Jordan did not return to the class for several weeks, apparently, because he
had downloaded the game from Kazaa and was playing at home.
At the beginning of the day, Ricky was indifferent toward the researchers but
eventually he opened up as he saw that I could be a very useful resources for helping his
game play. By the end of the day, he had a stream of questions for me any time I was in
the area: “How do you get ivory into your cities? How can I defeat these barbarians?
How do I stop my cities from rioting?” Given that Ricky “hated” social studies and
reported being a poor student in the subject, it was interesting to see him so curious about
the game. He was interested in building an army and going to war, much as one might in
a real-time strategy game. Ricky clearly identified himself more as a gamer than as a
student. I helped him whenever I could, encouraging him to think about game problems
as the result of interacting complex systems rather than as a series of isolated problems,
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but he was more interested in quick fixes that would get him into battle than approaching
problems systemically.
Indifference and Restlessness
Nadya had one city. She was laid back, if not indifferent toward the game. On the
one hand, she was one of the first students to begin playing, and she quietly played
throughout most of the period. We asked her several questions, trying to probe her
opinions about the game, but she sat quietly, shrugging, nodding, or giving one word
answers. Like yesterday, she also spent a fair amount of time staring into space or
looking at other things. Although Nadya was learning the interface she still did not find
anything about the game especially compelling.
At 4:15, Amy stood up and said, “I give up. This is too hard,” and dropped out of
the program. She and Monique (one of the high school teaching assistants) had been
playing the game and lost. Amy read at about second grade level; as a result, she had
absolutely no idea how to play the game. Earnie told me that she and her sister are
inclusion students and have some severe learning disabilities. He said that their parents
typically enroll them in programs as a form of day care. In reality, the game probably was
too complex for Amy or Tara to find too enjoyable.
Wrapping Up and Consolidating What We Learned
By the end of the day, most students had between two and four cities. Most
understood how to create entertainers, how to build roads and irrigate land, and how to
build new cities. Students met other civilizations today, which they seemed to find very
inspiring. By far, students were most engaged in the game when they met other
civilizations. I spent much of my time answering questions about specific terms or
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functions, such as “What is irrigation” or “How do I get ivory?” Most students were
taking to the game. Sandy, Marvin, and Ricky all told us how much they liked the game.
The teaching assistants were much more involved today. They helped students
read and answered whatever questions they could. More often, they spent much of their
time alerting us that students needed help. A few times, I saw them take the mouse over
from students; I was not sure exactly what they were doing as they clearly did not
understand the game.
Table 6.1. Students compiled list of problems in the game and their shared solutions.
Problem
Increasing Money
Increasing Food
Increasing Happiness
Solutions
 Build roads from every angle going into cities
 Build bigger cities
 Increase cities’ production to build city
improvements.
 Build marketplaces.
 Sell luxuries to other civilizations
 Irrigate squares
 Build cities in river valleys, flood plains,
grasslands
 Build Temples and coliseums
 Create entertainers
 Find luxury resources
 Connect cities with roads to increase trade
How do you increase defense?


What are the effects of natural 
resources
and
different 
geographical areas?

Keep two defense units in every city.
Explain attack / defense / movement
Incense, Dye, and Furs are luxuries
Horses, iron, and coal
Natural resources can be traded
How do I build stuff faster 
(increase production)?

Build mines in cities
Choose the terrain carefully (hills)
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At the end of class, we held a 15 minute discussion on “How to solve your
problems in Civilization III.” I went from student to student, listing their game problems
on the board. Students shared solutions to these problems with the class. Marvin and
Miranda were the most active participants. An overview of these problems and solutions
is listed in Table 6.1. I tied this discussion back to the four primary game variables in
order to reiterate the basic structure of the model underlying the game.
DAY 3: Social Gaming and Recursive Play
Class began with a short discussion designed to help them recall our activities
from the previous week (the class met twice per week) and develop strategies for dealing
with the most common problems with the game. I asked them to recall the point of the
game, and Marvin answered, “To take over the world.” Miranda called out, “build big
cities.” Others called out, “make people happy build culture, and conquer enemies.” I
added building spaceships through researching technologies. Students all recalled the
game’s multiple win conditions and most students had appropriated Civilization III as a
game for some pleasurable purpose. Different students were finding different aspects of
the game engaging. All together, five girls and two boys attended today, and the girls
were every bit as engaged as the boys were.
I asked what strategies they had for winning the game and students called out
ideas: “Keep people happy, make food, use entertainers, keep two military in every city,
build warriors, use spearmen for defense, build temples and cathedrals, built forts and
armies.” 2 I wrote these items on the board under their respective categories. I then
reviewed the differences between workers and settlers and explained how settlers build
2
Some of these elements were notably absent from students’ games at this point in the activity.
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cities and workers build roads, irrigate fields, and mine hills. Nadya observed that roads
increased trade by two, a close observation which surprised me. These students had more
or less mastered basic game strategies and could solve common game problems. New
questions cropped up as they delved deeper into the game.
Game Questions
After this fifteen minute review, students began playing. A number of students
had questions, but Miranda (Aztecs) monopolized the researcher’s attention through a
barrage of questions: What is a galley? What is a barracks? What is American despotism?
What do the 5.5.0 symbols next to American despotism mean? What is the difference
between workers and settlers? Miranda tended to grab the researchers as soon as she
could and was eager to talk about her game for as long as they would listen. I explained
all of these concepts, although I was a little concerned that Miranda, who seemed to
understand the game as well as anyone did not know the difference between workers and
settlers (a relatively elementary game concept).
Kevin (Russia, 430 AD) was still being overrun by barbarians and losing money
because he was only attending to one or two variables rather than addressing game
challenges systemically. Kevin realized that one problem was that his cities were not
growing quickly enough (because he was building cities in hilly and forested regions
rather than near river valleys and grasslands). I helped Kevin decide where to build cities,
showing him how to place cities near waterways and natural resources. I suggested that
Kevin build roads to luxuries to help his economy. By the end of class, Kevin’s treasury
was “dangerously low,” which created some anxiety. Unlike Miranda or Marvin, Kevin
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did not reflect much on his play. He was unable to solve even basic game problems (such
as what locations are good for building cities) without assistance.
Self-sufficient Play
A number of other students were becoming self-sufficient players; they developed
goals in the game, understood how to solve basic game problems, and perhaps most
importantly, were willing to work through problems independently. Vicky (Egypt), for
example, played quietly most of the class. Vicky played thoughtfully and purposefully,
carefully reading the dialog boxes while following word by word with her mouse.
Vicky’s civilization was quite advanced; she scouted areas for their natural resources,
strategically placed cities on the map, built mines and colonies to access natural
resources, connected her cities with roads and strategically place defensive units in
mountains to defend against barbarian and encroaching civilizations. In post interviews,
Vicky described in detail where Romans, Bantu, and Nubian (barbarian) civilizations
were on the map. Vicky analyzed patterns in her game, noticing what cities were growing
quickly and which ones were not. Vicky optimized resources by using cities that were
production centers to build defensive units which Vicky used to defend her civilization.
Marvin (760 AD, French) was also self-sufficient, although he spent the first two
days at war with other civilizations which impeded his progress. Midway through the
day, the English began conquering Marvin’s cities, and he hoped to build a “getaway
boat” to sail to Africa. Within minutes, Marvin had lost the game and restarted again.
This time, he focused on building his infrastructure. He built mines, roads, and colonies,
but was still attacked by other civilizations. Marvin’s computer was very slow, so he used
the down time to talk with other students, monitor other games, or ask the researchers
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questions. At one point, Marvin saw that Sandy had 230 gold and called out, “Look, she
has 230 Gold! How did you do that?” Sandy and Marvin talked more about their games
for several minutes, although we were unable to catch the details of the conversation. In
fact, Marvin spent about half of his time walking around the room, and a researcher
easily could have been busy just following Marvin. For Marvin, the game was a very
social experience, and he enjoyed watching others play and learning from their different
play styles.
Social Play
Marvin spent much of the class moving from game to game, watching game
unfold between his turns (like Tony in the MEDIA case). About midway through class,
Miranda and Sandy started playing collaboratively. They looked at each other’s cities,
switching from computer to computer. Marvin became interested in their talking and
listened for a few minutes before joining Kevin and watching his game. Kevin explained
that he was Egypt and Egypt was powerful. Marvin asked, “How do you know?” Marvin
was skeptical as he thought that military power was historically determined (as opposed
to the result of a simulation), and that the Romans were the most powerful, the Greeks
were the second most powerful, and the Egyptians were even less powerful, because the
Romans conquered all three civilizations. This pattern was holding true across all of the
games that Marvin was watching, as well. Marvin was also studying the Romans in
school and was eager to expound upon the many virtues of Roman civilization –
particularly Roman legions and Roman military strategy. Marvin told Kevin that when
his computer restarted, he was going to play the Romans because in his opinion, they
were the most powerful civilization in the game.
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Recursive Play
Now that they understood the basics of the game, several students started new
games today. Amy (Iroquois) started over so that she could build more settlers, scouts,
and colonies. Amy had a good understanding of the game; she could recall her
civilization, year, and the functions of settlers and workers. Later in class, Amy lost
again. Amy restarted for a third time, vowing to build a better defense. She explained that
she lost her other games because barbarians attacked and she was not prepared. Her plan
was to exploit the luxuries near her, including silk, ivory, and gems to support a stronger
military. Amy announced, “This time, I have more in the city. My city is bigger.” Like
Marvin and Vicky, Amy was able to make connections between class discussions and her
game. When Amy lost, she reflected on why, developing causual inferences and then
developing new plans to rectify the situation. The ease with which Amy restarted her
games suggests that she was quickly learning the interface. In post-interviews, Amy
commented that she liked the game because she “liked that you played in the world and
you could change history.”
Late in the day, Miranda lost a game she had been working on for a few days
because she could not appease a rival civilization. Miranda complained, “They keep
attacking my cities. I made a peace treaty but then a couple of minutes later they went to
war.” Miranda was visibly frustrated, but not dejected. Miranda went back to another
saved game and made it to 1700 AD. This experience only further cemented in Miranda’s
mind the importance of careful negotiations. For Miranda, losing had become a necessary
part of the game play and learning, and she used failure as an opportunity to learn about
the game system, altering her concept of the game system and then trying new strategies.
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By the time the researcher visited Nadya (France), she had already lost one game.
Nadya explained how she lost her first game: “I had to abandon Paris. I had to lose. I
couldn’t make workers because my population was not growing.” Apparently, Nadya had
been reading a fair amount of the on screen text. In fact, Nadya also had a good grasp of
the game; she was creating warriors and knew of the functions that workers and settlers
performed.3 Nadya did struggle with the common problems of an unbalanced economy
and civil disorder. I showed her how to adjust her tax and luxury rates, and she continued
playing.
We gave the two teaching assistants tasks to do today (loading games, etc.). Half
way through class, Monique started playing the game herself. Monique, who an 18 year
old high school drop out who worked for the YWCA was immediately engrossed in the
game and read through the text on the different civilizations very carefully and took the
game very seriously. Monique explained that she read each description because she likes
to read, and chose England because they had the wheel and the alphabet. By the second
researcher’s suggestion, Monique shared with the class what she found out about
different civilizations and encouraged students to read through the Civilopedia.
The class ended with a quick debriefing about the day’s events, and we focused
discussion on commonly experienced problems, such as balancing budgets and building
strong economies. After two hours of playing, the students all looked fairly spent. Only
Marvin really participated in the discussion, and even he was distracted. The researcher
noted that I spent the most time today with Marvin and Miranda. The two most vocal
students, Marvin and Miranda both had dozens of questions for whomever would listen
3
Nadya did have a few interesting misconceptions about the game. For example, she wanted to know how players
“collect” gold on the screen, akin to how one would collect gold coins in Mario 64.
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and were eager to share their feelings about their games, tell stories about their game or
share theories of history.
DAY 4: Civ III as a Simulation
Today we used the “real” maps. I set an agenda on the board with the following
directions: (1) load a saved game, (2) Play Civilization, and (3) 4:40 discuss. Jordan and
Kevin were absent. Jamal dropped out of the program. There was a new student, Joey,
today. I spent about ten minutes getting Joey up to speed. I explained the three major
phases of the game, the major game concepts, and how to control units. He seemed to
grasp the basics, but after I left he stared blankly at the computer for about a minute
before trying the game. All of the other students (8 students: 3 boys, 5 girls, 2 highschool aged assistants) were quickly engaged in the game (aside from Monique, who also
had problems). I began class by moving from student to student, noting their progress and
asking questions about their games. I showed Vicky (Egypt) her government screen,
explaining that her government is in despotism. Miranda (Aztecs, 870) asked what the
numbers by the city names meant.
Barbarians and Civilization III as an Historical Simulation
Marvin (Rome) tried to use history as a guide for his game and believed that
lessons he was learning in social studies class could be directly applied to the events on
his screen. He had four cities packed closely together because, he explained, “Rome fell
because it had spread out too far.” Marvin also kept huge cash reserves. As I was
interviewing him, a list of “top civilizations” popped up and Marvin cheered excitedly
because Roman civilization was the strongest in the world. “See that!” His goal for the
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day was to expand his cultural influence and create more religious structures. He
explained, “That always helps out,” but would not get any more specific. Marvin’s game
play continued to be mediated by history, which led Marvin to keeping strong borders,
maintaining a strong economy, and attending to people’s happiness.
Later, Marvin (Roman, 400 AD) called out excitedly. “I lost 300 men in war so
far, but I’m doing good. Taking it over little by little.” Marvin, who wanted to see each
individual soldier represented visually on the game board, thought of each military unit as
representing hundreds of men, and insisted on referring to his units that way. “Oh my
God! Germans, Greeks, Iroquois, America… all about to attack me! The Aztecs are
saving me.” These civilizations all surrounded him, effectively creating a buffer between
him and the other civilizations. Marvin explained that his strategy was to try to convince
Egypt to join his side and then hopefully chip away at the forces allied against him. “I
need to build more cities, too,” he added as he instructed his science advisor to research
the code of laws. Marvin approached the game systemically, attending to nearly every
aspect of the game, ranging from military to economics to foreign negotiations. As he
learned that it was impossible to take on the world alone, he became fascinated by
negotiating.
Ricky (China, 1 AD) struggled to expand his civilization beyond two or three
cities and to fend off the barbarians who attacked him from the North. Every time he tried
to build roads to access the dyes and horses around his cities, barbarians would attack. As
a result, his civilization was militarily overmatched, economically stagnant, and
domestically in shambles (constant civil disorder). I showed him how to protect his cities
and colonies against barbarians and helped him devise a strategy for expansion. Later
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(920 AD), Ricky shouted in frustration as hordes of barbarians surrounded his city and
ransacked his capital. He carefully showed me where each one of the five barbarian
uprisings originated on his map. He felt that being stormed by barbarians was unfair,
saying, “Where do they all come from? Do they have cities? And how do they discover
horseback riding and have horses when I don’t?” Ricky pointed to his civilization. “I
have roads, I have cities. How do they get 15 horsemen without any cities?”
Ricky and I discussed whether or not it was “fair” that the barbarians had
advanced technologies such as horseback riding or whether it was a flaw in the game
logic. We discussed the differences between barbarians and civilizations (the former
nomads, the latter living in settlements) and how it might be possible that nomads
develop horseback riding. I explained how some barbarian groups in reality were quite
rich and powerful and that, in about 600 AD, barbarians did in fact invade China, even
ransacking its capital. I pointed to Ricky’s map, showing him how barbarian tribes came
from the north and the west in his game, just like in history. Ricky nodded, although the
historical accuracy of the scenario was little solace for the fact that his civilization had
been nearly overtaken by barbarians. Here, I am encouraging Ricky to see connections
between his game and history, encouraging him to examine his game play as historical
simulation. Unlike Marvin, who took delight in this relationship and turned to maps and
eventually history books as resources, Ricky was more just interested in beating the
game.
Whenever I walked by Ricky’s desk, I was barraged with questions. For example,
at one point he asked,
“What does pillage mean? And why do they keep telling me what the
other civilizations are doing? I don’t care what the French are building.
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And how do we know what age we’re in? I heard you telling Miranda
that she was in the Iron Age. How do you know that?”
I showed him how to open up the technology tree– a tool that became quite important at
the Media school – to see what era he was in, as well as what technologies he needed to
enter the next era. Although still frustrated about his failing game, he was perfectly
willing to discuss what was happening with whoever would listen.
Amy (Iroquois) sat in a relatively isolated corner of the room, playing her game
quietly. Occasionally she would chat with the other girls. Amy explained that her goal
was to “make it into the 2000s,” a goal that we may have seeded by emphasizing how far
along she was in the game. I asked her what strategies she had for making it into the 21 st
century. She replied, “Making money, keep the people happy, build a defense.” She did
not mention researching technology or science. In terms of allocating her civilization’s
resources, Amy’s primary focus was on military instead of urban development, luxury
goods, and economic infrastructure. As a result, she had only three cities, and was far
behind other civilizations in the game. For Amy, the point of the game was to last as long
as possible, so she only addressed issues which she saw as having an impact on her
immediate survival. Each problem was treatable by affecting only one or two variables at
a time. In part, Amy may have failed to realize that she was falling behind other
civilizations because her civilization was isolated in North America and she had no
opportunities to trade with other civilizations. Unwittingly, her geographic isolation had
led to less feedback on the consequences of her decisions, since little competition was
nearby to take advantage of weaknesses inherent in her civilization’s development.
Despite her civilization’s geographic isolation (or perhaps because of it) Amy sent out a
settler on a boat to find other civilizations and explore distant areas to see if she could
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“see something interesting.” For the first time, I realized that students playing in more
populated areas receive more immediate and ongoing feedback on the consequences of
their decisions. Without the capacity for failure, it seemed, students received less
feedback and therefore predictably held onto less-than-ideal strategies (and perhaps lessthan-accurate understandings) longer than others.
Students began investing in their own goals within the game. For example, the
primary goal for Nadya and the other girls was to see who could survive the longest. Like
Ricky, Nadya was attacked by Mongolian barbarians on horseback. She asked for help
making horsemen so that she could fight back. She also asked why the Chinese were not
listed as one of the largest countries in the world when the list of “top civilizations”
appears. This omission concerned her because, if the Chinese were the biggest
civilization in the world, she thought that the game should portray that accurately. I
explained that the game did not necessarily represent history exactly but rather modeled
some of the underlying factors behind it. So, playing as China, she might grow one of the
largest civilizations in the world because of plentiful river valleys and China’s large
natural borders. She struggled to understand what I was trying to say about rule-based
simulations and emergent properties.
Mastering Civilization III
By mid-class, most of the students in the room had established personal goals for
themselves within the game, understood the basic mechanics, and were well on their way
toward achieving their aims. Miranda (Aztecs, 990 AD) had become particularly adept
with the controls, navigation, and various windows. She read through screens and made
decisions very quickly. In fact, I had to slow her down to follow what thought processes
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and game activities she was engaging in. Miranda had been fighting barbarians for the
better part of the first few days and, in response, had decided to build up a horde of
warriors to defend her cities. Her economy was now in shambles because she could not
afford to pay all of her warriors. Earlier, I showed her how to build more roads and
marketplaces to expand her economy. She recalled the strategy and tried it out, but it
failed, so she decided to disband warriors for money. Driven by her desire (she was
failing) to build a strong economy, Miranda was now trying several game strategies,
examining the relationships between different systems (i.e. building an infrastructure and
military spending) trying different strategies and even bucking researcher advice, when
Miranda believed that her civilization could not support a large military.
Confusion with Game Concepts
A few concepts in the game caused students confusion. Vicky (Egypt 1200 AD)
discovered monarchy and was confused as to whether or not she should “revolt,” stating
that she “likes her people” and did not want to have a revolution. I explained that despots
ruled through force and fear, whereas monarchies ruled by the general populace’s belief
in her divine right to govern, meaning that her civilization would be happier and more
efficient under a monarchy. She decided to revolt. Amy (Iroquois Republic, 1765 AD)
struggled to manage her economy with cities that were frequently in disorder. Some
students’ confusion arose from bad interface or confusing terminology, others were from
misunderstandings related to game play. As in the MEDIA case, I spent considerable
time helping students. In many cases, this help was in analyzing and understanding how
they were not reaching their goals, whether it was making money, generating research,
keeping their citizens happy, or generating a defense. In these instances, students lacked
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the conceptual tools to understand their game play, and I was a tool for analyzing events
and creating explanations for what happened.
Collaborative Play
Sandy, Vicky, Miranda, and to a lesser extent Amy, spent the second half of the
day playing separate games but developing strategies collaboratively. It began with Vicky
getting up to take a look at Sandy’s game in the middle of class. She wanted to see how
Sandy, who was also the Egyptians, was doing. When Vicky came back, she decided that
her cities are too crowded and she needed more. Vicky had packed each of her three
cities along the lower Nile, and was convinced that building cities further apart would
help because some of her citizens were unhappy because the cities were “too crowded.”
In reality, Vicky’s people were unhappy because the city was growing in size and social
classes were emerging. I explained the difference to her, but then also emphasized that
spreading out was a good idea so that she could take better advantage of natural
resources. I suggested that she expand into the Arabian Peninsula to take advantage of the
incense and horses and perhaps gain control of the Red Sea. I briefly explained the
historical importance of the Suez Canal and showed how whoever controlled the Canal
would control the Red Sea. As I left, Vicky opened up her Civilopedia and started
reading about horses and chariots. She explained that she’s “interested in horses” and
would like to get some. This experience altered Vicky’s game somewhat; she had little
interest in military strategy or controlling territory, but she was motivated to protect her
civilization through horses and bring them more luxuries. As a result, she refocused her
game on settling the Upper Nile Valley.
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Sandy’s (Egypt, 1305 AD) goals were to create new cities and stay alive, but
unfortunately, she lost her game. As she reloaded her game, Sandy yelled out across the
room, “Amy, what year are you in?” Amy was in 1765, the furthest of any students.
Sandy kept a running tab on everyone’s games, reacting to their progress vocally. This
discussion spurred a competition among the three girls to see who could last the longest
in the game. Sandy competed with Miranda and Amy, monitoring their games and
reacting to their progress.
Miranda frequently initiated conversations by asking questions, at times as a way
of comparing her progress to others (and perhaps showing off a bit). After founding a
new city, she asked how many cities Sandy had (she had six). After entering a “Golden
Age,” she publicly (and with a proud display) asked what that was. She queried other
girls for game facts, such as what an aqueduct was or if any other girls had the code of
laws rather than simply look up the information in the Civilopedia. Overhearing the
conversation, Nadya rolled her chair over to the other girls so that she could “get some
tips” from them. Amy sat to the side, spinning in circles. The girls joked and laughed.
The tone of this emergent competition was generally friendly, and rather subtle; most of
the boys had little sense that this competition was occurring. It did however have a
powerful effect on students’ games. Amy became increasingly concerned with only
making it to the 21st century and Sandy’s play became about keeping up with the other
girls. This shift made the activity about competing with one another rather than with the
game system itself, reshaping game practices away from mastering the game system and
toward adopting whatever practices would most quickly advance them in years.
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Miranda was less affected by this competition, as she effectively reframed the
terms of the competition in order to make it winnable.
At one point, Sandy tried
bragging about her game. “I get horseback riding in three turns,” Sandy said.
Miranda answered, “So, I get 26 per turn.”
“26 what?” Sandy asked, as she rolled her chair over to Miranda’s desk (It was 26 gold
per turn). They both looked at Miranda’s game and then scooted over one more seat to
look at Vicky’s game as well, as they were now curious about Vicky’s game. Vicky
showed Sandy and Nadya her civilization, highlighting how she had planned and
organized her cities so that her people were happy. Vicky was supposed to leave early but
became so engrossed in the game that she forgot all about it. Later, Sandy lost her game.
As she waited for it to reload, she asked Miranda, “What are you working on?”
Miranda immediately responded, “Code of Laws. Great library.” Sandy then
decided to play as the Aztecs, perhaps influenced by Miranda’s success as the Aztecs,
which Sandy often made public with other students.
Amy (Iroquois 1804 AD) went back to her chair and continued playing. She
explained her game to the researcher. “I’m down in Mexico right now. I went all the way
around South America (via a galley).” Her goals were to explore the rest of the Earth and
find a passage to Africa or Europe by boat. Because Amy did not have any other
civilizations to trade with, the game was primarily about exploring. Amy’s goal was to
simply last as long as possible, and as a result did not see value in building a larger
network of cities for scientific research or additional production. Without being forced to
fail and start over, Amy did not have to grapple with multiple aspects of the game system.
Debriefing
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The teaching assistants, Tammy and Monique, spent the day helping students and
playing the game. Tammy played Civilization III most of the period while Monique
watched. Occasionally, Tammy asked questions, such as what “automating” meant; I
explained it to her. In the last ten minutes of class, we broke for discussion. I wanted to
help students draw connections between their game events and history, so I drew a
timeline on the board going from 4000 BC to 1835 AD. Ricky had asked about the
ancient and middle ages, so I then added them to the board. Sandy and Miranda
volunteered that they were in the Middle Ages. I wrote in 1 AD to reinforce the BC / AD
distinction. I asked students clarifying questions on topics that seemed to confuse them or
areas of the game where they were confronting continuous failure. Ricky explained his
barbarian problems. Miranda joined the discussion, adding that she had problems trading
technologies. This discussion showed how students were frequently willing to share
frustrating failures, and that whole group discussions (in this case) could be used to
support learning the game.
DAY 5: Digging Deeper into the Game
As students dug deeper into the game, distinctive play styles emerged and affinity
groups became more pronounced. Sandy, Miranda, and Vicky periodically talked as they
played. All three also spent a lot of time interacting with other civilizations. Miranda and
Vicky were tackling more complex goals, such as how to build a robust civilization and
how to keep their peoples happy. Sandy and Amy’s goals were much simpler and they
approached their game challenges as simple problems with one or two solutions. Marvin
continued to read the game off of history. Although Jordan’s game was effectively
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modeling several aspects of the history of Chinese civilization, he was making little
connections between his game and history.
Building Civilizations and Complex Problem Solving
Miranda wanted to build a bigger civilization and she was very interested in
maximizing her use of resources so that her cities would grow. I showed Miranda the
effects of irrigation and roads on cities’ production. We compared one of her cities which
was along the Rio Grande with one in the jungle and examined their food production.
Next we consulted her domestic advisor and looked at her budget. Eventually, Miranda
decided that she needed to disband her warriors to get her budget back under control.
Over the second half of class, Miranda spent most of her time trading with other
civilizations in an effort to gain money. She was especially interested in meeting and
negotiating with the historical characters, and she said that Joan of Arc was her favorite.
Miranda facilely navigated through the different game systems, examining the effects of
her economy on her civilization, anticipating how her city might grow, and weighing the
advice of advisors. The problem space of the game was becoming increasingly complex
for Miranda, who was using strategies across different systems to achieve her goal of
building a formidable civilization.
Vicky also focused on building a civilization, but her primary goal was “to make
her people happy.” Vicky was very protective of her people, and she built walls around
each of her cities before anything else. I asked Vicky to explain this, and she said,
“security for my people.” Caring for her little people seemed to be a primary motivation
for Vicky. In the post interviews, Vicky explained her favorite parts of the game as
“getting to build cities, make friends, and go to war Vicky also built workers to mine gold
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so that her people would be happy. All of this happy-making drove Vicky to read the
Civilopedia, carefully consider what improvements to build, and study geography to
locate resources for her people.
Simpler Goals, Simpler Problems
Amy (Iroquois) was still wresting with basic game functions: battling barbarians
and preventing civil unrest. Her goal was to build more settlers and hence more cities.
Amy had several questions about the governments, so I explained the social systems of
the Middle Ages, tying in game concepts of feudalism and monarchy. I was not sure if
she grasped the differences between despotisms and monarchies. Although the game gave
students a good framework for understanding relationships between government and
religion, the lack of specific cases, such as the English crown, makes all of these concepts
abstracted from their historical antecedents. In the post-interviews, Amy did recall some
basic information about governments, stating that a “monarchy is when you have a king
or queen and republic is when you elect a ruler.” In regards to historical concepts, the
game was a good introduction to technological concepts for Amy, and helped her make
some connections between historical concepts which could be useful in later studies, but
did not produce deep understandings. Amy engaged in little recursive play. Because her
goal was simply to last as long as possible and she was in contact with no other
civilizations, she experienced no failure. She had no reason to stop, analyze her game,
and try new strategies.
Sandy was losing frequently, and began restarting her game more frequently, but
rarely did she analyze the causes of her failures and try to build new strategies. At one
point, Sandy had three cities in Egypt, but was attacked by the Greeks and lost her game.
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I showed Sandy how to reload her saved game, which she liked because it meant that she
could keep in the “race to last the longest”. As Sandy’s game reloaded, I gave her, Vicky,
and Miranda the same just-in-time lecture about feudalism and monarchy that I gave to
Amy. Sandy paid relatively little attention, as she read the causes of her failure as of
making the wrong decision (i.e., going to war / not going to war, trading technology / not
trading technology). Like Amy, her goal was to make it as long as possible, so she had no
incentive to restart her game and try different strategies.
Using Game Resources
Marvin was enthralled with nearly every aspect of the game. The early part of the
day Marvin struggled with barbarians who attacked his workers continuously. Next, it
was the other civilizations. He was at war with Egypt and building political alliances in
an attempt to survive. “I want to build alliances so they won’t kill me,” Marvin explained.
I showed him the technology tree (to show him what new technologies he could
research), which he then read through them in some detail. He seemed very interested in
nearly every aspect of the game and spent a lot of time reading the Civilopedia. In the
post interviews, Marvin recalled what he learned through playing the game, drawing on
information in the Civilopedia.
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Did playing the game teach you about history?
In a way it does. For instance, it shows you the date or year where
they wheel was made or the alphabet was discovered. I didn’t
know that the alphabet was discovered around BC. I forgot what
year, but I remember it’s like 2000 BC. I thought it was like the
1500 or around the (the age of) knights and kings.
Who do you think invented the alphabet before you played this
game?
The English, because back then they were the classiest and
smartest.
Now who do you think invented the alphabet?
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Marvin:
Probably the Egyptians with the hieroglyphics. It was the first
writing
to
be
done.
Marvin took a generally intellectually curious approach to the game, which often
manifested itself in observations in game and comparisons to history, such as in what
year the alphabet was discovered. Most students got a general sense of these dates, but
Marvin, who read through the Civilopedia and technology tree closely explored these
facts more deeply and made connections between these facts and his game. For Marvin,
who enjoyed reading the game as a simulation of history, reading the Civilopedia and
learning about different inventions was part of the fun. The game created a context for
Marvin to ask questions such as in what year was the alphabet invented and think about
the flow of knowledge across cultures.
The Costs of War
Marvin lost his war and then went back to an earlier saved game, determined to
use his allies better (an example of recursive play). He created allegiances again, but
unfortunately, these entangled allegiances got him into war again. For Marvin, much of
the game was about politics and war. In post-interviews, Marvin shared with researchers
how playing the game, particularly how experiencing the consequences of decisions,
taught him about politics and war.
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
What else did you learn through playing the game?
Inventions, the wheel, alphabet. Also that war isn’t always the
way.
Why?
Because it doesn’t…if you always wanted to win it wouldn’t be the
outcome.
Why?
Something will happen; it will turn on you. It’s like a strategy
game. You have to know when you want to do a move. You have
to think about it before you actually do it. I learned that the hard
way.
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Interviewer:
Marvin:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Oh yeah, how did that happen?
I went to war with the Aztecs, and they had a treaty with everyone
against me.
Did you start the war?
No. They did because they threatened me, and I said, “No take
your threats somewhere else.”
Could you have signed a treaty with the Aztecs?
No.
You had to go to war with them?
Yeah. They were in a difficult position, but I thought I was going
to win.
They made an alliance with everyone against me.
What do you think about the United States being in wars? Does it
change your views?
Yeah. In modern times if you become strongest nation out
there…they should always be peace.
Why?
War always leads to destruction and lost armies.
You thought this before the game?
No. afterwards.
You lost a lot right?
Yes
(sadly).
For Marvin, the political components of the game taught him about the responsibilities of
political power. The Aztecs were a warring tribe and much more powerful than his
civilization. They threatened him for strategic resources or political gains, which
frustrated him Soon he learned that he could not compete with the Aztecs who were
backed by global political alliances. Marvin saw his game in terms of complex interacting
variables and systems, but also understood the interconnections among civilizations; (in
his game at least), no one superpower could dominate the entire globe without allies. He
saw connections between the political power of the Aztecs and the contemporary United
States and, playing as an underpowered civilization, drew a lesson from this experience,
specifically that war leads to destruction and loss and that strong nations have an
obligation to maintain peace.
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Jordan had watched Marvin’s game closely and was now afraid of the barbarians.
He wanted to learn from Marvin’s mistakes, so I suggested that Marvin give him tips.
Marvin explained that you should have two spearmen in every city and also use spearmen
to protect workers. Jordan asked about luxuries, and Marvin explained them as well.
Marvin and Jordan were learning from one another, using each other’s games as
contrasting cases for understanding the underlying game system. Although Marvin and
Jordan talked (and the girls frequently talked), there was much less sharing of
information and comparisons across games in this case than in the MEDIA case. In the
MEDIA case, every student followed at least one other game and most students watched
at least two games. This cross-case analysis of games seemed to lead to deeper
understandings about the game system and, potentially, about world history.
Attack of the Barbarians, Failure and Frustration
Ricky (China) struggled with starving cities and invading barbarians. I tried to
help Ricky, but I could barely get in a word edgewise, as he interrupted me with more
questions. Ricky was more frustrated with the game than any student I had seen up to this
point. While frustration due to losing occasionally motivated students, today, it was
obviously getting the best of Ricky. I was a little surprised that Ricky, the most
experienced gamer in the group was having the most difficult time dealing with game
challenges, although the amount of reading in the game and the complexity of game
problems might have favored stronger students. Still, the fact that Ricky was not a strong
student but identified himself as a gamer may have made these losses all the more
painful. Most girls in the class were finding more success than him.
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Ricky started complaining to me, “I like faster games. This is too slow.” I
empathized with him. “It’s frustrating when you have to sit back and watch yourself
getting attacked, isn’t it?” He agreed. Wave after wave of barbarian continued to come
after Ricky. At one point, 60 barbarians were attacking. They came from Russia,
Thailand, central Asia, everywhere. I explained to Ricky how the Mongolian horde
wreaked havoc on most of the world after the turn of the century, but he was not
impressed with how the game faithfully modeled the barbarian attacks. Adding to his
frustration was that he became locked in a race for control over Thailand and Cambodia
but the Indians settled there before him. Over and over again, Ricky narrowly missed
achieving his goals because the computer AI built a settler before him or a group of
barbarians attacked him before he could defend himself. As Ricky struggled more and
more with the game, his identity as a gamer became at odds with his failure, and he began
resisting the game, suggesting that it was too slow, essentially not a real game.
DAY 6: Social Play
Today, I wrote a list of goals on the board that students could choose from: (1)
become a democracy, (2) build a railroad between two cities, (3) enter the industrial age,
or (4) choose your own (develop a personal goal and share it with the researchers). My
goals were to introduce some new concepts that students were attending to, create more
purpose to their games, and encourage them to consider parts of the game they might
have overlooked, such as government, infrastructure, or technological advancement. I
passed out a worksheet describing each unit’s attributes and a print-out of the technology
tree. The second researcher noted that few of the students seemed to pay any attention to
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the discussion. Marvin called out, “Can we just play the game?” Another asked, “Can’t
we just start?” None of the students made any of these goals or showed any signs of
giving them any concern during the day. Marvin read the “democracy objective” (number
one) and said “I already have that” (which was incorrect).
Overall, students were just eager to play the game and rejected this activity as
interfering with their game play. Students appropriated Civilization III as a tool for
several different purposes. The encompassing camp activity system gave students this
freedom; students goals and intentions of playing the game were in line with the rules of
the camp, and students knew that they could continue playing by their own goals. For
some students (Marvin, Vicky, and Miranda) this contradiction was not problematic at
all; in the case of Marvin his play was about reading the game off of history, a goal that
was producing desirable practices and (as I will argue later) useful understandings.
Vicky’s goal of making her people happy forced her to consider several interrelating
systems of game play and consider geographic issues (i.e. where are luxuries located) and
game issues (is Monarchy good for her people) in order to fulfill her fantasies of pleasing
her people. Miranda’s game play was also complex, as her desire to build a civilization
meant that she had to juggle several game systems in building a defense, an
infrastructure, and an economy. For students’ with simpler goals, who were not wrestling
with the complexities of the game systems and treating game systems as simple, single
solution problems, learning was much simpler, typically confined to algorithmic solutions
to dealing with problems rather than generating deep understandings of inter-related
game systems.
Religion, the Republic, and the Industrial Age
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Marvin, Vicky and Miranda all were comfortable with the game concepts and
achieving success. Marvin’s game (Rome, 50 AD) was going much better than last time
and his plan for the day was to not make the same mistakes again. He described those
mistakes as trading away horses to his enemies and going to war. Marvin’s next plan was
to support religion, which would make his people happier. I asked Marvin why religion
was important to people; he answered, “I don’t know.” He now had 14 cities, and had
built harbors in each seaside city. Marvin maneuvered his archers to maintain a defense,
counting the total number of archers he had and multiplying that number by 100 so that
he could imagine how many troops there were. Next, Marvin wanted to build the Great
Wall for even more protection. I explained that he needed to discover construction to
build it, and that he ought to invest in science and technology if he wanted to stay
globally competitive. Later, Marvin explained to the second researcher that he was
building libraries in every city. “I did what he told me. I’m not holding back on science.”
Marvin was convinced that staying out of war was the key to victory, and eager to build a
civilization that mixed happiness, military power, technological advanced and culturally
superior.
Vicky’s game (Egypt, 1375 AD, Monarchy) also began to take off, which caused
Miranda to take notice. Vicky had only five cities, but her economy was booming (1571
gold +15 per turn), and she was even about to discover the Republic. I explained to Vicky
the differences between Republic and Monarchy. “In Republics, people elect a Senate
who represent them. They started in Greece and Rome. Only free men could vote,
though. But for those people, they had more political power than under a Monarchy,
where there was an all powerful king.” Vicky listened attentively, nodded, and declared
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that she would research Republic to make her people happy. Vicky used the Histiograph
to gauge her progress compared to other civilizations. In the post-interviews (which
occurred the following week), the researcher asked Vicky about governments.
Interviewer:
Vicky:
Interviewer:
Vicky:
Interviewer:
Vicky:
Interviewer:
Vicky:
What is despotism?
It’s like kind of a government that you are.
Would you want to live under despotism?
No. I think I had despotism though. I’d rather have
monarchy.
Why?
You only have one God. And people are saying that it’s
good.
Do you know what a monarchy is?
It’s like almost like you get to rule better and people
look at you as a God.
Vicky was somewhat familiar with concepts such as despotism and monarchy, offering
monarchy as a more preferably type of government to despotism. Vicky also made
general associations for the features of these governments, such as linking divine rule
with monotheism.
Miranda (1300 AD, Aztecs) moved her chair over to watch Vicky’s game. In the
race to the future, Vicky was in 2nd place. Miranda was in a despotism and decided to
study The Republic after hearing my talk with Vicky. She had five cities, and was
building up her infrastructure to better balance her economy, religion, technology, and
military. Like Marvin, Miranda wanted to build a balanced civilization. This goal of
building a balanced civilization situated Miranda in a deeper problem-solving space than
the other girls, who simply wanted success along one axis (such as longevity). As a
result, Miranda engaged in deeper analysis and problem solving than these other girls.
Social Play
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Sandy (Egypt, 1465 AD) took more and more interest in the game itself. For the
first time she sought out help from the researchers. She asked about geographical
features, such as iron, or why it took so many turns to build palaces. Sandy was still
technologically quite primitive, but she was experiencing some success and talking-up
her peers and the researchers. She began asking researchers questions about game
systems such as production, and began building libraries and city walls in her cities.
Sandy even started reading the Civilopedia, which pleased us because Sandy was not as
strong a reader as some students, and frequently struggled to pronounce game terms such
as despotism. Sandy started the unit disinterested in the game, but appeared to continue
with the unit in order to be a part of a social group. She continued to ask Nadya and
Miranda what years their games were in and make random announcements such as, “I
have so many warriors I am going to make barracks!” (which was particularly interesting
because barracks served no such function). Being part of this group was a central
component of Sandy’s play throughout the unit and she continued to push social play, but
more and more aspects of the game itself struck Sandy’s curiosity.
After a few days of frustration, Ricky finally held off the barbarians, located their
camps, and chased them from the Mongolian highlands. As he discovered new lands, he
“right mouse clicked” on the land to learn more about its carrying capacities. In between
turns, Ricky slid over to watch Miranda and Vicky’s games; in fact, he spent a lot of time
with Vicky and Miranda today. They talked about their games, gathered around Vicky
and Miranda’s computers. Vicky and Miranda showed off their games, and this group
demanded a lot of attention. Ricky’s participation in this group was striking, if for no
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other reason than he was acknowledging that he had things to learn from other students
(girls).
Shaka’s Got New Clothes: Fashion as a Sign of Social Progress
Sandy initiated some of the most interesting game talk of the unit when she made
connections between the leaders’ dress and social progress. Sandy noted that Hammurabi
dressed a lot like Lincoln and developed a theory that the more advanced civilizations
had more advanced clothing. Sandy looked at her screen and pointed to Greece: “See,
it’s because this other guy changed…and Shaka Zulu…and Joan of Arc. Maybe they
have more technology and stuff.” Sandy, Miranda, and Vicky looked at the pictures of
their advisors, comparing their outfits with those of the other leaders. The girls were very
intrigued by the differences in outfits between leaders and spent several minutes debating
as to what it might mean. They realized that there were connections between trade,
technology, and attire, and eventually realized that entering new eras caused changes in
outfits.
Soon, Marvin joined in the conversation, asking, “When am I finally going to get
to change clothes?” Marvin was hoping to enter the industrial era and excited about the
prospect of changing his clothing as well. This class paid attention to the leaders’ outfits,
both as a sign of progress and as an intrinsically exciting aspect of the game. Indeed, in
post interviews Miranda commented that if there was one thing she would change about
the game, she would like to be able to change the color of her leader’s clothes. It is not so
surprising that a girl, Sandy observed that the game represented social advancement
through fashion, given how fashion and clothing are usually associated with girls’ play.
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Perhaps more surprisingly, Marvin was equally intrigued by the changing of the clothes.4
This interaction suggests that using fashion creatively – such as to show progress or
status could be a way of drawing a more diverse range of players to gaming.
Querying the Researchers and Fighting for Attention.
Vicky, Marvin, Ricky, and Miranda enjoyed showing off their civilizations to
researchers and frequently seemed to be asking questions about their game just to strike
up conversations. Vicky (1070 AD) also had several questions for the researcher, some of
which seemed obvious, such as “What does the load button do (to load into ships)?
Others may have been more functional (i.e. Will you help me decide where to place
cities?”). But most of the time, she wanted to share her work with the researchers. She
enjoyed giving tours of her cities, showing off the different structures such as aqueducts
using the “eye view.” At one point, Miranda pulled the researcher aside to announce that
she built two more cities and was now up to five. This mildly competitive play seemed to
engage the girls by adding an extra layer to the game experience, a meta-game by which
they discussed their games.
By the time I came to Ricky (China, 1030 AD), he had several questions, such as
why could he not build the Great Library. He read that he needed aqueducts for his cities
to grow, and his plan was to explore Asia and meet other civilizations to trade with. Thus
far he had not explored much beyond China’s borders (due to the barbarian threat). He
had horsemen exploring Europe and India, but he had not explored Indonesia, Africa, or
the other continents. Curiously, this isolation mirrored China’s own cultural isolation for
thousands of years. Similarly, Ricky was building a road to connect his cities through
4
Many game critics have noted similar patterns in massively multiplayer game play, where players will go through
great lengths to get special clothing or matching outfits.
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central China and connect up his silk and dye resources which closely mirrored the silk
road that was built in real life for just that reason. We discussed these features of his
game in depth, which Ricky found interesting, although these facts did not reappear in
any discussions or post-interviews. He also had a lot of questions: Why do some cities
grow so slowly (they were surrounded by tundra)? Why can horses only move one square
per turn (they are in the mountains)? Ricky seemed almost hungry for information now –
a stark contrast to earlier in the unit when he was quiet and despondent. Now that he had
some successes, he was much more open to the researchers and the unit in general. It
could be said that Ricky had now appropriated the researchers as a tool for game play.
Game Challenges and Language and Literacy
Nadya (1675 BC, China) came in at 3:15 and was still very quiet. Recalling that
Ricky had a lot of problems with barbarians in China, I asked Nadya if she had problems
with Barbarians; she answered yes. I asked her who the barbarians were and she
responded, “Indians.” She showed increased awareness of several game concepts; she
knew the date of her civilization, the technologies she was studying, and her type of
government. Tammy, who sat with Nadya most of the time, asked Nadya if she would
like to do this in History class. Nadya said, “Yes.” Later, Nadya went to Sandy’s desk to
see how she was doing, signs that Nadya was engaging in social play and desiring to
learn more about the game. Of all the students, Nadya was perhaps the most difficult to
pin down. As a native French speaker, Nadya struggled with much of the language in the
game. At times, it was difficult to know if she was paying attention to the game at all; at
others, she made intriguing insights about the game.
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The example of Nadya is instructive in that it points to the challenges in playing
Civilization III for such a young student, particularly the reading demands that the game
places on students. Whereas students in the MEDIA case had been exposed to many
game concepts (some repeatedly), most of the 233 different concepts were new. These
students had some familiarity with the concept of Egypt, China, or Rome, as evidenced
by their comfort in selecting these civilizations. Basic military units (i.e. warriors) and
basic technologies (iron working, mathematics) were also graspable and about within
their reading level. But consider some of the other early concepts that students confronted
in the military: hopilite (Greek warrior), legionary, musketman, catapult), in technology:
Ceremonial burial, masonry, mysticism, construction, currency, philosophy, literature,
polytheism, code of laws, in government: despotism. Again, what was most demanding
about these concepts was that success in the game demanded that students not just
recognize these terms, but understand their meanings, and anticipate their consequences
to students’ games. In game resources designed to support game play are all textuallybased. Consider the following entry for “warriors”:
The warrior is late Stone Age infantry, armed with stone axes and clubs.
The earliest military forces were simply the citizens of the city, armed
with whatever implements they could use as weapons. Although a militia
made up of warriors was inexpensive, they were no match for organized
armies. Warriors were usually used as stopgap measures while waiting for
superior units to be trained, or to defend a city that had been temporarily
cut off from military support. In a crisis situation, an assembly of warriors
is better than no defense at all.
This explanation situates the warrior unit in historical terms, drawing from historical
concepts (the Stone Age) and military terms (infantry). For a sixth grade student, many of
whom may be struggling with inferring meaning from text if they are reading at a third
grade level, this passage is quite complex. Consider even the basic vocabulary and
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concepts in this passage that could be difficult for a sixth grade student with below
average language students: military forces, citizens, implements, stopgap measures, crisis
situation, or assembly.
And this passage suggests the potential obstacles just in the Civilopedia and basic
game moves. Consider the main map, city, advisor, and negotiation screens. In the map
screen, students’ government, year, cities (and foreign cities), and technologies are
represented textually. On the city screens, city improvements and items under
construction are represented through text, as are the headers for the different game
systems (luxuries, strategic resources, production, food, commerce, pollution, and
garrison). Consider the negotiation screen (Figure 6-1, which includes the foreign
advisor). Obviously, the items up for trade are all represented through text. The advisor
gives different facial expressions, signaling the general tenor, but more specific
information is conveyed through text, as when in the MEDIA case, Kent asked Dwayne
what “reprehensible” meant. Perhaps most importantly, feedback from the other
civilizations are conveyed through text, as is the general status of the relationship (polite).
In post-interviews, Marvin, Miranda and Vicky recalled these terms specifically. Gamecritical information is revealed both through visual icons and through text and success in
the game demanded that students read and interpret complex texts.
These students employed diverse strategies for inferring meaning from the game
and generating game strategies. Everyone learned some through trial and error and
through querying researchers. Most everyone turned to the Civilopedia at least
periodically, skimming the text or even reading it thoroughly. Students inferred meaning
through context or tone, as well. The second researcher, a trained reading teacher, was
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most impressed at how game play recruited complex reading practices, as students
wrestled with new vocabulary, negotiated meaning with peers, and compared text with
meanings from game play. For these students, reading and interpreting texts were
common, challenging practices that had a big impact on game play, and there was a direct
relationship between those students’ reading skills and game success.
Tammy and Monique, both of whom were high school students with stronger
reading skills were both totally caught up in the game today. Monique tried playing as
several civilizations, including India, Rome, Egypt and France. Monique lost again for
the third time, but kept playing. More than any of the younger students, Monique read
through the full text information, trying to make decisions on all the civilizations. She
enjoyed reading through the Civilopedia and using it as a resource for game play. Seeing
Monique’s success in the game and fascination with its complexity reminded the
researchers that the language and reading demands of the game were significant, and that
the game’s complexity frequently appeals to adults as much as middle school students.
DAY 7: Religion, Culture, and Wrapping Up
I started class today with a discussion of culture points and religion. I tried to
address students' questions or problem areas. Marvin, Jamal and Jordan were very
attentive, Marvin especially. I explained how in previous versions of the game, culture,
religion, and the arts were entirely left out of the game and that the game designers added
the variable of “cultural influence” to model how emerging cultures exert influence over
an area. I explained how the game represents cultural influence through the size of the
border around their cities and how cultural influence increases the chances that other
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cities would join your civilization. Next I explained the role of temples and religion in
making citizens happy and the effects of building temples, oracles, and cathedrals on city
happiness. Students listened and were attentive, but aware that this was their last day to
play, students were more interested achieving their specific game goals.
Winning the Race
For Sandy (Egypt, 1766 AD), who had two cities, the game was a race to see if
she could last as long as Miranda and Amy. She noticed that she had less money, less
technology, and fewer luxuries than her peers but was very pleased when she met other
civilizations, announcing to the class when she met Joan of Arc or Alexander of the
Greeks. Unfortunately, Sandy eventually lost a city to the Greeks and another to the
Babylonians, leaving her with no gold and only one city left. After another 30 minutes of
struggling with her one remaining city, Sandy lost and restarted her game. This time,
Sandy “let the Greeks come over if they wanted.” Sandy, who was publicly competing
with other students to last as long as possible into the future chose to frame the question
as a relatively simple one of an enemy attacking. How Sandy was engaged by the game
(as a context for social play) had a direct impact on how she responded to losing.
Whereas losing sent Miranda or Marvin into recursive play cycles of problem analysis
and experimentation, it simply motivated Sandy to click on something different.
Amy (Iroquois, 1912 AD, Republic) was easily the furthest along in the game.
She built a galley and was exploring South America. The boat made it to Brazil before
sinking. Amy built another one and resumed exploring. Her goal was to map out all of
South America. Eventually, the long turns and lack of other civilizations to interact with
frustrated Amy. Amy pulled Moby Dick out of her bag and read in between turns. She
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paid little attention to her four cities and made no effort to strengthen her civilization in
order to stand up the Europeans. Although she built a cathedral in one city, she more or
less ignored her cities and civilization, using cities to build more warriors and spearmen.
After a few turns, several of Amy’s cities were rioting or in disarray, but Amy did not
seem to care. Amy’s responses in post interviews reveal to what extent this goal of
surviving to the end mediated Amy’s game play.
Interviewer:
Amy:
Interviewer:
Amy:
What it would have been like to play as China?
I’d have more luxuries. I would have lasted longer.
Was that the main goal of yours? To last long?
Yes, I wanted to make it to the future.
For Amy, the game play was almost exclusively about preserving her civilization until
the 21st century, to see if she could build a Native American civilization that survived into
the future. Because she had no contact with other civilizations, she stopped worrying
about her economy or domestic infrastructure. Whereas before Amy read through screens
carefully and weighed the importance of decisions, she now just clicked through screens
haphazardly.
Finally, the Celts landed in Nova Scotia in 1968, and Amy immediately started
trading with them. The Celts were much, much more advanced than Amy’s Iroquois.
They had battleships and tanks and quickly began colonizing North America. Amy did
not seem bothered by this in class, but in interviews, described how she felt. The
interviewer read the quotation critiquing the United States abuse of power in American
foreign policy.5
“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the
object of envy and resentment. Our real test in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will
permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not to deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of
5
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A lot of people did gang up on me and I didn’t do anything to
them. I just walked through their territory because I had to get to
one of my cities. When the Celts came over they had battleships. I
felt scared because I didn’t want my people to die.
Interviewer: Do you think they could have killed you at any point?
Amy:
Yeah.
Interviewer: How did you react?
Amy:
I put people and along the shorelines so they couldn’t get people
in. Then they ended up killing everyone on the shorelines. So then
I put a lot of people inside my cities to defend them.
As Amy described, soon the Celts attacked her Iroquois nation. Amy felt scared for her
Amy:
people, and sad that there was nothing she could do to intervene. We were surprised to
see this reaction – particularly in response to the reading on American foreign policy.
While I anticipated that some students would draw connections between power and their
games, we did not anticipate that students would be shaken up by the experience.
Later in the interview, the interviewer probed Amy further to understand to what
causes she attributed this disparity between the Iroquois and the Celts.
Interviewer:
Amy:
Interviewer:
Amy:
Interviewer:
Amy:
Why did the Celts colonize North American instead of the Iroquois
colonize Europe?
Because they could get different inventions from the Romans,
Chinese, and different people so they could make a boat to sail
across. I had only myself to get the inventions…I couldn’t discover
things fast enough. Then, I did keep discovering things and they
wouldn’t trade with me. They wouldn’t take my money.
Did you meet anyone else?
Persia. I think that’s it. And the Aztecs.
Why didn’t someone like China come over?
Because they (the Celts) are greedy. They had a big army and were
strong. And they thought they could wipe me out.
Because Amy had such little feedback during the game, she had little idea how far behind
she was in her game. She had no other students to compare games with (as students did in
the Media School) and as a result, was literally shocked when the Celts settled North
America with battleships. Not until it was too late did Amy see that she was behind in
altruism and world benefaction – unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and
democratization.”
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technology, and perhaps even worse, she did not see any way that she could catch up. By
saving and restarting her game, Amy did hang in the game until 2012, meaning that she
reached her goal of making it to the future. Perhaps not surprisingly, Amy recalled the
exact ending date of her game in the post-interviews.
Miranda (Aztecs, 1530) withdrew from the race to last the longest and now sought
to “make her people happy.” She had seven cities and was planning to build an eighth on
Cuba. Her civilization was thriving; she just discovered engineering and had 1200 gold.
She explained that her primary goal was to make her people happy. Miranda had several
questions around game concepts such as “engineering” and vocabulary such as “convey.”
Quietly, Miranda withdrew from the main social group and became more invested in her
civilization. She took great pride in what she had created and enjoyed showing it to
researchers. Miranda’s game play was much more complex than most students, and this
game play evolved in reciprocal relation with her game goals.
Using the Game to Learn Historical Concepts and Using History as a Cheat
Jamal started up a new game and, after hearing my discussion of religion in the
beginning of class, decided to study ceremonial burial first. Jamal and Marvin wanted to
know what polytheism and monotheism were, so I went to the chalkboard. I broke down
the words monotheism and polytheism into their root words and explained the meaning
of mono and poly. We then brainstormed which civilizations we thought belonged in
each category. I reiterated how religion played a part of a civilization’s “cultural
influence” and citizens’ happiness. Students were struggling with some of these concepts
but they had a stake in understanding these concepts and their impact on game play given
their game goals. After missing several days, Jamal had difficulty with some basic game
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concepts and asked questions about unit strength or changing cities’ production. He had
only two cities, one of which was rioting, but he did not seem to mind as he was caught
up in a battle with the Romans. Although it was late in the unit, students were still
interested in learning about these concepts and enjoyed using the game as a context for
learning historical concepts.
Marvin (Rome, 740 AD) entered a new era, the Middle Ages. He had begun being
attacked by barbarians and was concerned that they might topple his empire. He brought
his textbook in today and asked if he could use it. “Is this cheating?” Marvin asked. I said
that no, it was acceptable for him to use a History textbook to help play the game. I asked
him why he would use it and he explained that he wanted to see what the historical
boundaries of the Roman Empire were and how he might avoid being destroyed by
barbarians like the Romans were. He examined the map to see where different
civilizations were located, how their borders evolved throughout history, and how he
might use this information to improve his own game. Marvin planned to use mountain
ranges as natural borders, and try to see where and when the Roman civilization became
too spread out. In this instance, Marvin was using history as a tool for mediating his game
play. That a student considered using a textbook (which most students have to be bribed
or threatened to open) “cheating” in order to play a the computer game struck the
researchers as quite ironic and suggests a potentially powerful way of using texts in the
service of game play. Whereas many want to pit one media versus the other in the design
of learning environments, this instance shows that the real power is in finding ways that
they overlap and intersect, finding ways of engaging students in game play to a point
where they want and need information stored in texts for solving problems.
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Marvin turned back to his game and noticed that he was the “weakest” civilization
on the list. He asked how to strengthen his civilization. I explained how he might try to
build up his economic infrastructure rather than concentrating only on military. He
became concerned that he was losing gold every turn. He built “wealth” to try and bolster
his economy but noticed that he was falling further in debt despite it. He called me over
to help. I showed him how to make marketplaces to build his infrastructure. I was
surprised that Marvin, who seemed to understand most aspects of the game, had not yet
learned about marketplaces. Later, Marvin explained to the researcher how his goal was
to build more cities in order to build up his cultural influence and “take over other cities.”
Marvin also had several questions about new game concepts such as legionnaires or Sun
Tzu’s Art of War. The advisors were a useful form a of feedback to Marvin, encouraging
him to reflect on his civilization and examine his game more closely. After learning that
he was the weakest civilization, Marvin and I analyzed his military, saw that he needed a
more robust economy to support a military, and then went about improving his economy.
Thus the game feedback prompted Marvin to analyze his game systemically and identify
patterns across systems. 6 For Marvin, a bidirectional understanding between the game
and history was emerging. In the post interview, Marvin expounded on this relationship.
Interviewer:
Marvin:
Interviewer:
Marvin:
6
What would help you learn more about social studies?
Playing the game. At the top left corner there is an AA that stands
for encyclopedia (Civilopedia), it shows you when things actually
happened. Things that you never knew about or things you never
think about. It tells you what wars and who discovered this.
Did you ever looked at it? I know some kids never did.
I did. Because for construction I wanted to build a cathedral.
Because if you build your culture, it will spread and become more
great.
This same feature could possibly be used to help more isolated civilizations.
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Marvin, like many of the students thought that social studies was about memorizing facts,
but he saw the game, which includes the Civilopedia, as an information-rich space that
would be ideal for learning social studies.
Using Other Civilizations as Feedback
Ricky (China, 1630 AD) learned from his earlier mistakes with barbarians and
was expanding his infrastructure as he grew. He now had five small cities, all linked by
roads, and his goal was to make more cities and expand his empire. He sent a group of
horsemen into the mountains of Mongolia to find the remaining barbarians. These
horsemen eventually made it to Europe, and he began trading with the Romans at around
1645 AD. Once he met all of the other civilizations, he finally had a context for
comparing his progress against other civilizations. He saw how behind he was in
technology but also reasoned that at least now he could trade with other civilizations and
perhaps catch up quickly. Meeting other civilizations made Ricky feel a part of the global
trade network, and he now had feedback on his progress and felt clued into the greater
game processes. Turns took almost 30 seconds to complete, so Ricky read a Gran
Turismo game manual between turns.
Differing Play Styles
Jordan (Egypt) returned today for the first time in weeks. He downloaded
Civilization III from Kazaa (a file sharing program) and had stopped coming to camp so
that he could play at home. He had hoped that by coming today he could get a free game.
Jordan and I discussed some questions he had about the game, particularly about
revolution and government. He suggested that Marvin attack the other civilizations more
aggressively. “If you take them over right away, you do better.” Having been playing the
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game on his own, he had developed a different, more aggressive play style than the other
players. Whereas students in the YWCA case played according to the “rules” of school,
not aggressively, avoiding war, being kind to other civilizations, Jordan was fairly
ruthless in his approach. Marvin, who was averse to going to war, decided to watch
before trying this risky strategy. “Do it Joe, then I’ll watch.” Jordan attacked the Greeks,
which caused the Babylonians to attack him as well. When Jordan tried to make peace,
both civilizations refused to acknowledge his envoy. Even though Jordan was willing to
give the Greeks his entire treasury to end the war, the Greeks refused. Jordan commented,
“Uh Oh. I’m in trouble. They won’t even talk to me.” By 4:30, the Greeks had destroyed
him. His computer promptly crashed, and Marvin said that he thought the computer was
making a point. As discussed earlier, for Marvin, the biggest lesson learned from playing
the game was that “war isn’t always the way.” Game play styles arose as an combination
of several factors, including students’ ethics, goals, classroom culture, and the
affordances of the game (particularly its balancing).
Concluding the Unit
I closed the unit by showing students how to retire from the game. I wanted to
show them how the game projected key statistics about their civilizations. Marvin and
Miranda were particularly interested in these statistics, such as their civilization’s literacy
rate but most students had little clue what these statistics were or meant and the class ran
out before I could explain them in any real depth. I thanked students for attending the unit
and made arrangements to meet with them for post-interviews.
We conducted interviews over the following two days. Five students came to
post-interviews (Marvin, Amy, Miranda, Vicky, and Ricky). As in the Media case,
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students, all developed understandings of where civilizations and barbarians originated.
All of the students also discussed the importance of different kinds of geography in
influencing the growth of their civilizations. As described in the case, students developed
differing understandings of governments and technologies. Miranda, Vicky, and Marvin
could discuss concepts such as monarchy, whereas Amy and Ricky had more
impoverished understandings.
The interview with Miranda, a strong student who succeeded in the game was
particularly telling.
Miranda:
Interviewer:
Miranda:
Interviewer.
Miranda:
Interviewer:
Miranda:
I don’t like social studies.
What in school would help you learn more and like it?
Just have a different teacher. Other years I like it.
Are you good?
Yes. I always take notes.
After Columbus reached America, European countries colonized
America. Why did Europeans colonize America instead of Native
Americans colonizing Europe?
Because the Indians didn’t have the transportation…maybe they’re
not good at making some kind of boat or something. Or they didn’t
get along with the Europeans enough to ask them for a ride over to
Europe.
This excerpt highlights just where some of these children were coming from. Just out of
elementary school, liking school and learning were matters of having the right (nice)
teacher. Of course, as middle school students, they were now expected to take notes, and
good students were those who took the right notes in class. In terms of learning in school,
Miranda was just entering a phase where the locus of learning was expected to be hers,
and not just the teacher’s. Miranda’s response to the question about colonization shows
both how her game was not about colonization, but also, just how playful her own ideas
were. Miranda’s idea (and phrasing) of the Indians “didn’t get along with the Europeans
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enough to ask them for a ride to Europe” reminds us that these kids are, afterall, eleven
and twelve years old.
Initially, Miranda reported “little” from the experience, as she was not taking
notes or mastering facts, but she later came up with some things she learned through play.
The later facts she recalls also reminds the reader of her age.
Interviewer:
Miranda:
Interviewer:
Miranda:
Interviewer:
Miranda:
Interviewer:
Miranda:
Interviewer:
Miranda:
What were the most important discoveries in your game?
Printing press, writing, and the alphabet and math. Because the
printing press is writing a book. You didn’t have anything to stamp
over and over so you had to keep writing over and over. With the
alphabet you couldn’t write like words, and math you have to have
measurements.
Where did you get these ideas? School?
No, I asked Kurt for some of these.
Well what did you think? (As opposed to Kurt).
I like the printing press.
What are the most important discoveries of all time, not just in
your game?
Ummm shoes. Clothes.
Any others, maybe 2 more.
Maybe chairs, beds, TVs.
These comments reveal the playfulness in Miranda’s thinking and game play. The
printing press had little discernable impact on her civilization as any “tangible” game
reward, but in terms of her imagined civilization, giving her people books was quite
important. This play was mediated by the instructor (Kurt) who provided just-in-time
explanations to augment her play. These comments also reveal a lack of historiocity, as
each of these discoveries are items important in her own life as well. Most students had
similar kinds of responses; they recalled particular concepts from their game play
(usually mediated through the instructor) and formed theories of history informed
strongly by their own lives. However, few of the remarks were as endearing and honest
as Miranda’s.
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Chapter VII: Conclusions
The purpose of this study has been to examine (a) what practices emerge when
Civilization III is brought into formal educational environments; (b) how Civilization III
engages players when used in learning environments; (c) how learning occurs through
playing Civilization III in different contexts; (d) the affordances of using games
(specifically Civilization III) in world history education; and (e) how should we think
about designing learning environments that include games. Importantly, this study does
not try to argue for or against using Civilization III in any particular learning
environment.7 Instead, I offer a framework for thinking about Civilization III as a tool for
world history education. Admittedly, this framework is far-reaching, exploring the
potentials for using games in formal learning environments, making connections between
game play and the emerging discipline of world history and justifying a somewhat
unusual approach to world history education. Previous chapters described the practices
that emerged in three disparate contexts where Civilization III was used to support
learning. In this chapter, I readdress the initial research questions and core theoretical
issues, examining data from all three cases.
The following chapter is a cross-case analysis of the practices that emerged, the
ways in which Civilization III engaged students (or didn’t), and how learning unfolded, in
three learning environments. 8 The case narratives (Chapters IV, V, VI) detail the
practices that emerge when Civilization III is used as a tool for learning history;
7
Such a value judgment is beyond the scope of any one study. What to teach and how to teach are intricately tied to
local instructional goals, needs, constraints, and opportunities (Reigeluth, 1999). The teachers participating in this study
all valued the units with Civilization III and expressed interest in continuing with similar studies; however, such
considerations would situate this study in the realm of curricular theory, a philosophical enterprise which brings with it
social and political considerations beyond the scope of this study.
8
Questions (d) what are the pedagogical potentials of games (specifically Civilization III), and (e) what pedagogical
models are useful for thinking about games (specifically Civilization III) in learning environments, are explored in the
next chapter (Chapter VIII Implications).
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conclusions about those practices run through each. However, the first two main
conclusions of this chapter – discussions of how Civilization III was appropriated (or not)
as a tool for understanding history and the socially and culturally mediated nature of
game play – speak to this issue specifically. I argue that game play is not purely a humancomputer interaction but rather one mediated by social relationships (particularly evident
in how and why students appropriated Civilization III). Both of these issues are deeply
tied to issues of engagement, which I also discuss in this chapter, highlighting it as a
social phenomenon indelibly tied to appropriation and learning. Last, I discuss how
domain learning unfolded across the cases, arguing that game play provided students
background knowledge and, for some, a nascent systemic level understanding of world
history. Civilization III was an effective instructional resource when it provided a context
whereby geography and history could be used as tools for play. Learning world history
through a simulation changed the way that some students viewed history in fundamental
ways: By the end of the units, many saw history as emergent phenomena arising from an
underlying rule set. Although most students could articulate that rule set at least in part,
few understood the materialist and managerial biases of the game itself.
These assertions are tied to these particular cases and should be seen as petite
generalizations, generalizations that the reader may or may not find applicable to other
situations in which they are familiar. Although I do not offer any grand generalizations,
generalizations that can be applied beyond these cases, where possible, I have drawn
connections between the phenomena at work in these cases and existing theoretical
claims. In the implications chapter (Chapter VIII), I explore some of these theoretical
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issues further, particularly implications for the design of educational games and gamebased learning environments.
Appropriation of Civilization III
The process of learning to use Civilization III can be described as one of
appropriation (Wertsch, 1998), whereby participants learn not just how to use it but why
– in effect, making the tool their own. Central to this notion of appropriation is that
subjects not just understand how to use a tool, but that they come to understand and adopt
the purposes for which it was intended to be used. These cases suggest that there is
potential in using Civilization III for educational purposes in schools, but the
contradictions that emerged remind educators that it is a complex tool, one developed for
entertainment purposes and designed to be learned over dozens, if not hundreds, of hours
of use. In this section, I discuss students’ struggle to learn how to play the game and the
tensions between learning the game and learning world history. I then discuss students’
appropriation versus resistance of the goals of the unit in the settings examined and
contradictions that emerged between the tool’s commercial purpose (entertainment) and
its repurposing as a learning tool within the units. In a way, these two purposes were
fundamentally at odds, creating tensions for both students and teachers – tensions deeply
tied to the culture of schooling and the nature of standard classroom practice.
Civilization III can indeed provide a context in which geography can become tools for
exploration and play, yet the extent to which students took these possibilities up varied
dramatically by context. Next, I discuss students’ active consumption (de Certeau, 1984)
of the game – how students “made the tool their own” by repurposing it for their own
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goals and activities. I argue that, in each case, students’ engagement in the activity was
deeply tied to their appropriation of the tool.
Learning to Use the Tool
Civilization III is an artifact created through the games industry and used by
gamers for entertainment. It is quite a complex achievement, involving hundreds of
thousands of man-hours of work and providing hundreds of hours of entertainment. As
the third game in the series, Civilization III builds on existing game genre conventions
and previous game designs, 9 giving avid gamers a leg up on understanding the game
interface and dynamics. Still, players normally spend several hours learning how to play
the game and how to use related resources (i.e., game manuals, game guides, the
Civilopedia) as tools for learning. More importantly, they learn from one another –
sharing hints, tips, and strategies either face-to-face or via web communities such as
Apolyton.net. These resources mitigate the steep learning curve of figuring out how to
simply play Civilization III. In the contexts examined in this study, however, students
faced this daunting learning curve in controlled educational settings, which turned out to
be impoverished contexts for learning how to play the game.
In both the Media and YWCA settings, students did not directly appropriate
Civilization III as a means for studying world history; they first had to struggle with
merely learning how to use the tool. Contrasting the learning trajectories of these two
settings highlights the complexity and variability in how a tool is taken up and used. For
the Media students, it took several class periods for students to understand even the most
basic elements of game play, and 8-9 class periods before most could play fluidly. Some
9
In some respects, the interface and game play of Civilization III is simpler than that of Civilization II. Some of units
and elements from Civilization II were stripped away for Civilization III in order to appeal to broader audiences.
328
students withdrew from the unit before even making it this far, and a handful of the
students who stuck with it until the end were still confused with basic concepts and had
only a cursory understanding of the game fundamentals. 10 In the YWCA case, these
struggles to merely learn how to play the game were far less pronounced. Students were
briefly confused at first but soon were able to diagnose and solve their own problems
within a few hours. Students had more prolonged interactions with the game interrupted
by fewer technology failures and rudimentary confusions about, for example, how to
navigate the interface. That the YWCA students took to Civilization III much quicker and
more easily than the Media students might be surprising given that the YWCA students
were younger, not required to participate in the unit, and not graded on their failure or
success. At both sites, however, it is hard to overstate the mismatch between students’
game skills and the game’s complexity; even late in the unit, students in both contexts
still had questions about fundamental concepts used in the game (e.g., irrigation). One
place this mismatch became most apparent (and most disadvantageous to learning) was in
moments of failure.
Failure is endemic to any game; it is through trying a strategy, watching it fail,
figuring out where and why it went wrong, and then modifying it accordingly and giving
it another go that players become engaged in and adept at a game’s underlying rule
systems.
Across both instructional contexts, students’ biggest difficulty was in
unpacking why they lost. When a student’s city revolted, they had difficulty making
connections between their citizens’ happiness, their economy, tax rates, and the amount
of goods and luxuries available. Students looked for “easy fixes,” places where they
could adjust one variable to reverse their fortunes. Yet, playing Civilization III is a much
10
Recall that, in the case of one student, the Media teachers felt the game was simply too complex for her to grasp.
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more complex activity where players must learn to think systemically about several
different interacting factors affecting a civilization’s growth at once. Students needed
support in interpreting the causes of their failure, making inferences about the game
system based on it, and then devising solutions. Most Civilization III players do. The
difference here, however, is that, in these contexts, the students relied heavily on
instructors 11 for help rather than game manuals, the Civilopedia, online fan-sites, or
(crucially) other gamers. Students rejected the tutorials and game manuals outright, yet
also lacked a rich enough repertoire of game concepts and strategies to either interpret
their failures in the game in meaningful ways or assist their peers in doing so. There were
inadequate materials (i.e. tutorials, cheat sheets) for supporting game play within the
classrooms studied, and thus a contradiction emerged between the students’ novice ability
to play Civilization III and the lack of resources available for them to learn the game.
Better resources for remediating students’ understanding of and facility with Civilization
III as a tool might speed its appropriation and reduce students’ difficulty with the unit.
Buying Into the Purpose of the Tool
The first week or two of activity at the Media School were full of contradictions,
marked by anxiety for the researcher and confusion for students as they negotiated the
boundaries of the emergent activity system. The researchers were foreigners entering a
close-knit school culture with an agenda of using Civilization III, a complex computer
game, in order to help students learn world history. Many students at the Media School
initially rejected this activity, much as they rejected school-based history education or
most any externally-mandated activity that was not perceived to be in their immediate
best interests. Even for those students who were gamers, it took a few days before
11
As the collaborating teachers did not understand the game, I became the primary resource for game assistance.
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Civilization III was appropriated as a tool for gaming, let alone as a tool for learning
history. In addition to feeling that the game was too complex and difficult, many students
did not see how it could help them in school or real life.
The shift in classroom culture toward the end of the second week in the Media
class (case one) demonstrates the importance of understanding and “buying into” the
purpose of the tool. After drawing the map of the world on the board, explaining where
students’ in-game civilizations were on the map, and making links between the
curriculum and the game explicit, students finally started to find value in the game. For
many students, it appeared that part of this new revaluing of Civilization was discovering
that it could be used as a tool for hypothetical history. Other students never quite made
this connection. By late in the unit (case one), however, game play and historical inquiry
had become enmeshed. Students began asking historical and geographical questions in
the context of game play, using geography and history as tools for their game, and
drawing inferences about social phenomena based on their play.
Throughout the research conducted with the Media students (case one and two),
these complex activity patterns in which historical inquiry and game play fed into one
another became more and more prevalent. Nevertheless, it was not until very late in the
formal school unit (case one), or perhaps even into the week of summer camp (case two),
that students began appropriating Civilization III as a tool for studying world history.
Even then, not every student appropriated the game for this purpose of learning
about world history. Those students who did not see Civilization III as a useful tool for
understanding history resisted, even rejected, its use. For example, students rejected
classroom discussions, debriefings, and using log sheets. In the subsequent summer camp
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(case two), the demands of the presentation drove students toward reflecting on and
learning from their play activities; however, the game still competed with the
presentation activity over students’ attention. In Wertsch’s (1998) work, he describes
how one cannot assume that just because an individual uses a tool that they have
appropriated it. He writes, “Cultural tools are not always facilitators of mediated action,
and agents do not invariably accept and use them; rather, an agent’s stance toward a
mediational means is characterized by resistance or even outright rejection” (p. 144).
Given the game’s steep learning curve and the level of commitment it therefore exacts
from those just learning how to play it, it is not surprising that some students resisted it
outright, either playing it only for pleasure or completely withdrawing from the activity.
Moreover, the broader context of the game unit was one in which history itself was not
taught, not included in the examinations, and therefore framed as a topic of little value,
particularly in terms of graduating from school. Thus, there was an implicit contradiction
between investment in learning to play the game to (eventually) learn something about
history and the broader curricular goals within the school. This, in part, caused a tension
between the students’ goals and the goals of the instructor and researchers. The purpose
of the instructor’s just-in-time lectures and discussions was to resolve this contradiction
by creating opportunities for learning within the context of game play.
In the YWCA case (case three), Civilization III more easily fit into the
encompassing activity systems and students showed much less resistance to appropriating
it.,12 not just as a tool for entertainment but, more critically, as a tool for learning. That
this same group showed less trouble appropriating how to use the tool seems no
12
Comparing the academic achievement of students in these two groups would be difficult. I believe that they read at
similar reading levels; both groups could read most of the words in Civilization but stumbled over bigger words.
Students in the YWCA class had stronger identities as students, however.
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coincidence. As Wertsch (1998) might suggest, being able to use the tool and buying into
its purposes seem to go hand in hand. While students still struggled at times with the
game mechanics or understanding the causes of their failure, they did not resist the
encompassing activity system or the primary purpose of playing the game as a way to
learn world history. Because the camp was a computer enrichment camp, there was no
contradiction for students between the large investment that learning to play the game
required and the broader program purpose. Still, there were contradictions between the
students’ goals and the instructors’ goals with the former focused on learning to play the
game and the latter pushing students to use the game as a way to learn about history. For
example, many of the questions students asked were about how to play the game, as
opposed to questions about history. On the one hand, the curricular demands and
students’ expectations of an after-school enrichment camp were less than those of the
Media students (cases one and two), and therefore the contradiction was less powerful in
driving activity. On the other hand, students still resisted guided game play, discussion,
or reflection activities, as evidenced when one students shouted, “Can’t we just play the
game?” As in the Media case (cases one and two), this contradiction was partially
diminished by the instructor creating opportunities for learning in the context of game
play through just-in-time lectures and discussions.
Making the Tool Your Own
Building on the work of de Certeau (1984), Wertsch argues that appropriation of a
tool is a productive act in that users of tools are always remaking them by repurposing
them for their own use. For these students in these cases, appropriating Civilization III
also meant making it their own, but it was not until a few days into the instruction that
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students began developing their own goals within the game and, in so doing, repurposing
and fully appropriating the tool.
Students developed unique goals and reasons for playing Civilization III that
shaped the practices that they engaged in and the understandings that emerged from them.
In the Media School (case one), with the exception of few students who were already
strategy game players, the students were initially uninterested in playing Civilization III.
Despite the intuitive appeal of playing a popular commercial computer game as the basis
for a unit, students were not engaged in the activities and even less successful in
navigating its problem space. It was not until the students mastered the controls and
basic game concepts, and then developed their own specific goals related to the game
play13 that they became engaged in play.
Students became engaged in the game once they established their own
particularized goals within the game space, thereby repurposing the tool in a myriad of
distinct ways. Within all three cases, engagement emerges as a process of goal formation
and adoption, whereby students learned to find goals in the game playing experience that
were worth pursuing. Different students gravitated toward different affordances of the
tool, capacities that gave them a “way in” or “hook” and therefore made them “sticky.”
For some of the more advanced students, the most engaging part of the game was that it
allowed them to replay history, to play-out historical hypotheticals, such as: “Why did the
Europeans colonize the Americas as opposed to the Chinese, Incans, or Iroquois
colonizing the Americas?” Other students became engaged in the game as a tool for
exploring geography. One student simply enjoyed building her civilization and nurturing
and protecting as one might a pet, becoming peeved when other civilizations threatened it
13
In addition to an understanding of how the game could help them learn world history.
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and engaging in long, contested battles over strategic territories. Two others who also
took great pride in their civilizations had similar goals of nurturing their people. Other
seemed more engaged in the social aspects of the activity, describing their goals as, for
example, “Keeping up with Dwayne,” and “playing with my friends.” Some students, as
they became more adept at the game, found themselves interested in it as a system and
tested various strategies. Still others were primarily engaged by the competitive nature of
the game (and seemed to be somewhat agnostic of content) and chose various win
conditions for themselves as goals (e.g., to be the strongest civilization on the globe, to
make it to the modern era, etc.).
How students repurposed the game and for what end goal varied not only across
students but also over time and with social interaction. Students’ goals continuously
evolved while playing Civilization III. These goals were not simply a matter of studentgame interactions; rather, they developed in relation to student-student practices and
teacher-student practices as well. As such, they should be understood as socially situated
phenomena. For example, as one group of students played Civilization III and started to
understand its underlying logic, they began using the game as a simulation to test how the
game system worked and explore differences between the impact of geography on old
world and new world civilizations. This work was wholly collaborative and its fruits
were a joint product of each student’s work.
When the game was an effective learning tool, the practices of playing
Civilization III and learning world history became entwined. The following section
explores in greater depth the nature of the activities that arose when Civilization III was
brought into the three learning environments, developing assertions about common
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practices across them and the necessity of understanding game play as a sociallymediated phenomena.
Game Play as Social Practice
Game play needs to be studied and understood as a social phenomenon rather than
a purely human-computer interaction. In all three cases, the game Civilization III was
only one component of the emergent activity; classroom norms and cultures, students’
intentions, and communal participant structures were equally if not more important in
shaping how the activities unfolded. Students appropriated Civilization III or resisted its
appropriation not as individuals, but as members of social networks that were activated
through several factors, including individuals’ identities and the affordances of the game.
As students decided to participate, withdraw, or reshape the activity to meet their goals,
the social construction of the game also changed in dynamic relation with the game
affordances. One might expect that local cultures would affect how game play transpired,
yet the activity systems that actually emerged were much more complex than I had
anticipated.
Mediating Cultural Norms
At the Media School (case one), the individualistic classroom culture was
intolerant of externally-mandated activities, and students rejected reading, discussion, or
even gaming assignments that did not interest them. On the first day, most students
ignored my introduction to the unit, and a third of the students decided not to
participate.14 Students refused to take the pretest, to participate in group discussions, and,
14
Recall that the regular instructor of this group had warned that some of the students would refuse to participate if
only to be “antagonistic.”
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at times, to tell me even their names. Just a few days into the unit, several students were
all kicked out off class for disruptive behavior while we discussed the readings, and those
who did participate in the activity did so with reluctance and resistance. Participating in
externally-mandated activities was not the cultural norm, and it was clear that, in this
context, we would have to lower our expectations about the power of Civilization III to
attract students’ attention and serve as an anchor for other activities.
In contrast, at the YWCA, students flocked to the game immediately and after 20
minutes all of the students were engaged in game play even though the unit was not a
mandated school activity. Throughout the case, students willingly shared information,
answered questions, and even brought in outside resources, such as textbooks, into the
classroom. One reason that these students’ more readily appropriated the game may have
been because their participation in the camp was entirely voluntary, suggesting a greater
commitment to the program and presumably a belief that the activity had relevance to
their own lives. However, many of these students were enrolled in the program by their
parents, and one could have just as easily predicted that students attending an after-school
program on their free time would be less likely to participate in structured school-like
activities, not more.
In each case, the cultural norms of the given context mediated how students
played the game. In the Media School (case one), students showed few inhibitions in their
game play. They used dominant, even aggressive, strategies. Their goals were to rule the
world, conquer other civilizations, declare war on weaker civilizations, or even eradicate
entire civilizations of people. Media students were not at all apologetic for these goals
and even discussed them in terms of historical precedent, using American imperialism as
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justification for their activities or deliberately trying to change the course of history to
advantage historically disadvantaged peoples. Consistent with the more “middle class”
style of interaction, the YWCA students were generally less combative. Students adopted
goals such as protecting their people, surviving to 2000, or discovering a new world.
Females dominated the game talk in the room, and the game at times became a
mechanism for negotiating social relationships. Students in each case oriented to the
game in different ways, and this orientation was mediated by the intersection of personal
goals, game affordances, and social relations.
Mediating Social Structures
Even though Civilization III is a single-player game, few students actually played
the game in solitude. In all three cases, students followed one other’s games closely. In
the YWCA setting (case three), most students devised meta-games – activities that
spanned across different games, tying together their activity. By the end of the Media
school unit (case one), most students in class were intimately familiar with one other
student’s game and at least casually familiar with two or three others. Students would
examine particularly successful (or unsuccessful) games of their peers, looking for
information on how colonization was unfolding and what this might mean for their own
civilization. The affect of such sharing was, at times, dramatic. Players, for example,
sometimes completely restarted their games after seeing how a peer’s game was going,
deciding to switch civilizations for better access to resources or strategic geographic
locations or wanting to try someone else’s strategy.
One group of three students in the Media school setting is an interesting case in
point: Tony, Jason, and Chris, all of whom sat next to one another, played as the Iroquois.
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Across all three games, students focused primarily on building a civil infrastructure and
exploring their continents for resources. In part, this activity was shaped by the particular
challenges to playing as a North American civilization: fewer opportunities for trading
technologies, resources, or goods. However, their game play activity was equally shaped
by their own individual goals and the joint collaboration taking place. Chris and Tony
both reported being “interested in geography” and hence spent significant time exploring
their continents. Jason was more interested in mastering the game system itself and
therefore spent much of his time calculating the relative strengths and weaknesses of
geographic areas and approaches to expanding his civilization. While these individual
goals gave shape and direction to each student’s play, their collaboration with one
another likewise played a significant defining role. All three students pooled their
knowledge about the geography of North and South America and experiences within the
game, allowing each to “learn lessons” from the others as when Tony learned from Chris
that he could meet other native tribes and profitably fold them into his civilization. This
strategic knowledge flowed across the group in the form of colonial imperialist rhetoric,
entailing a particular partiality towards certain elements of the game (i.e. power) over
others (i.e. humanity) and, therefore, a set of some means and ends over other
alternatives.
Other students in the same classroom (i.e. Dan and Shirley) engaged in discourse
designed to display social solidarity rather than share knowledge or strategies per se.
Though they might play together in casual ways, monitoring one another’s games and
sharing general tips and strategies, such pairings typically engaged in a kind of “parallel
play” making their games a topic for talk whose underlying function is not to advise but
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to socialize. Partly, this might be due to students confronting very different challenges
within their games, although in such interactions there was little evidence to suggest that
they were interested in learning from one another per se. Instead, such talk was more
social in nature, designed to maintain social contact.
Students’ activities also clustered around observation of each other’s game play.
In some more or less stable social groups in the classrooms, clear leaders emerged. At the
Media school and camp (cases one and two), one group of mostly boys clustered
together, informally sharing game experiences, with Dwayne clearly at the center of this
group and others sitting beside him watching him play. Another student frequently
commented that his primary goal was to “keep up with Dwayne.” When Dwayne changed
his goals, others followed: When Dwayne started trading luxuries, Bill wanted to trade
luxuries; when Dwayne played as the Bantu, Bill wanted to play as the Bantu. In this
same context, one student (Kent) who, perhaps more than any of the others, enjoyed
watching others’ activities, frequently served as a conduit between groups, sharing
information and helping the other students. In fact, the student was such an effective
means of spreading information and strategies throughout the class that, within a week or
two, both researchers began seeding him with information to share with other students
who needed help.
There was a strong positive relationship between belonging to an informal game
playing group and understanding how to play the game: Across both cases, those students
who learned to play the game most successfully were a part of informal game playing
group within the classroom. Students in such groups used the time in-between turns to
watch others play, learning information about how to play the game (e.g., building roads
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with workers), specific strategies (e.g., using horsemen to scout territory and eliminate
threats from hostile tribes), and general strategies (e.g., colonizing South America for
luxuries) from other students. In the YWCA case, the three students who profited the
most from the game were those who played socially, calling out to other students and
getting out of their chairs to observe other students’ games while they waited between
turns in their own. Students who were lost, still struggling with the most basic game
functions weeks into the unit, were those who sat alone and did not talk to many other
students.
Perhaps the strongest example of an emergent game affinity group that fostered
intellectually productive play was in the Media case where Chris, Tony, Jason and
Norman learned from Dan’s experience being overrun by the Celts. Students in this group
repeatedly examined each other’s games, noting the consequences of others’ actions in
order to circumvent failure in their own. Tony in particular learned from other games
quite readily, drawing lessons on the necessity of exploring continents, capitalizing on
natural resources, and trading technologies from the outcomes of other people’s actions,
not his own. Several taken-as-shared meanings emerged about the importance of trading
with other civilizations or strategies for meeting other civilizations. These shared
understandings included the importance of horses in colonization, the pitfalls of being
isolated in the Americas and unable to trade technologies with other civilizations and the
importance of colonization in a civilization’s growth and evolution.
Competitive Groups
Interestingly, the most competitive group in these cases may have been the group
of middle school girls – Vicky, Miranda, Sandy, Amy – who were all interlocked in
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competitions to meet other civilizations, make friends, and make it to the year 2002.
Miranda was both physically and socially the center of this competition. She acted as the
communication hub, with the other girls either asking her about others or reporting to her
their progress. The exact rules of this competition evolved over the course of the term.
Initially, Amy, Miranda and Vicky played collaboratively, adopting the goal of meeting
as many civilizations as possible. When the girls got their own computers, each girl
retained this goal of befriending as many other civilizations as possible, which became
the basis for the initial competition. This competition evolved into a race to see who
could make it to the modern era. When it became apparent that Miranda was not going to
make it to the modern era, she opted out of this competition, revising her goals to
“making her people happy.” Consistent with theories of girls’ competitive play (See
Laurel 2002), these girls adopted much more subtle forms of competitive play than the
boys. Whereas Bill explicitly wanted to “play like Dwayne,” Miranda, Amy, Sandy, and
Vicky constantly formulated and then reformulated their goals as a part of the social
game play process.
Engagement, Gameplay, and Formal Learning Environments
One of the intuitive appeals of using games in formal learning environments is the
hope that they will engage learners, motivating them to do academic activities through
using fantasy context, curiosity, challenge, and choice (or agency) (Cordova & Lepper,
1996). In these cases, motivation was a complex phenomenon, perhaps better understood
as a process of developing and realizing goals than simply one of motivation. Each
student in these cases came to the unit with distinct motivations, whether it be to preserve
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an identity in the face of authority or socialize with peers. Some students were never
engaged by the game and rejected Civilization III as both a tool for gaming and a tool for
learning. How each student appropriated Civilization III was mediated both by personal
goals and by encompassing social contexts. Students’ engagement in the game could be
described in a variety of ways, ranging from desire for transgressive play to desire to
socialize with peers. When examined in social contexts, these motivations map closely to
Bartle’s (1996) model of player types, highlighting the diversity of ways that Civilization
III engaged players and suggesting that perhaps motivation is better conceptualized as a
series of goals rather than as a single descriptive factor. Most importantly for educators,
how students appropriated Civilization III as a means for their own ends within the
overarching classroom activity had a profound impact on the kinds of practices and
learning that emerged in this unit.
Replaying History
Civilization III provided students resistant to authority or to studying world
history pathways into domain understanding. For example, Dwayne (cases one and two)
enjoyed playing as civilizations that he believed were oppressed, using his knowledge of
geography, history, and military strategy to rewrite history. First, he played as the
Japanese trying to colonize China; later, it was the Bantu trying to colonize South
America. This game play focus – trying to reverse history – caused Dwayne to ask
historical hypotheticals in support of his game play. Under what circumstances might a
pan-African civilization thrive? What strategic resources would need to be harnessed to
support such a civilization? How did particular geographical features (i.e. the Sahara
desert) affect the History of Africa?
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Dan also played the game in order to “reverse history.” Dan was completely
disengaged and uninterested in playing Civilization III until day five when he learned
that, not only could he play as the Iroquois, but he could also potentially reverse history
by conquering Europe instead of the other way around. Dan’s focus was almost
exclusively on preparing the Iroquois to defend themselves against the impending
invaders; on several occasions, Dan was asked what the game was about and he
answered, “overthrowing the colonial forces.” He played the game purely as a military
struggle between the Iroquois and the Europeans, focusing his efforts on building
warriors and spearmen rather than a robust civilization that might rival the European
colonizers along several axes. In the post-interviews, Dan reported that he learned very
little about “what actually happened” and instead, learned about specific geographical
regions, negotiating with other civilizations, and strategies for defending his cities. It is
ironic that Dan walks out with a nascent understanding of important causal factors in
“what actually happened” in history believing he learned little, presumably because it
was not information in the recognizable form of descriptions, dates, and facts.
For these two students, a critical component of the game playing experience was
the opportunity for what Zimmerman and Salen (2003) call transgressive play. For them
the appeal of Civilization III was largely how the game could be used as a tool for
playing through fantasies of alternative histories where traditional power structures are
challenged and historical outcomes are overturned. Interestingly, this hypothetical study
of history is increasingly popular among historians as a way of developing deep
understandings of historical phenomena (cf. Cowley, 1999).
Exploring Alternative Histories
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Tony (case one and two) reported being interested in social studies and seemed to
enjoy reading the game off of history and history off of the game perhaps more than any
other student in these case studies. By the end of the camp, Tony emerged as a leader in
the class, making several key observations about history and geography based on his
game play, including observations on the role of luxuries in shaping history and how
these luxuries (a product of geography) affected economics and politics. In fact, it was
connections among history, geography, and the game that first attracted Tony to
Civilization III. His favorite parts were exploring the globe, studying geography and
meeting other civilizations. Tony found it particularly interesting to examine how and
why different civilizations evolved in relation to their geographical location. As such, he
was not primarily motivated by a goal of “overturning history”; rather, he played as the
Iroquois primarily because he wanted to start with the geography of North America and
secondarily because he liked studying Native American civilizations.
Tony frequently read the game as an historical simulation and noted interesting
phenomena that one would not expect. He found pleasure in playing as the Native
Americans and seeing how his game unfolded compared to history, particularly how the
game forced him to weigh considerations such as conquering other tribes or expand into
new continents. He was curious about the underlying simulation properties and became
fascinated with studying what patterns of civilization growth emerged, such as the
stunted growth of the Aboriginal civilizations. Gradually Tony’ play became more and
more historical-question driven as he explored the game world as a simulation of
historical events, examining what occurred and why.
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Chris was also interested in geography and played as a Native American tribe, but
Chris eventually became interested in relations between geography and the evolution of
civilizations much more explicitly. Chris spent several hours running experiments to
examine how geography had an impact on the evolution of civilizations. Chris learned
that Egypt’s geographic location made it grow quickly and quite wealthy, but it also
made Eygpt a desirable region to occupy and left Egypt open to attacks. Chris shared
these results during group discussions and included screenshots in the group presentation.
Playing Civilization III piqued Chris’s interest in geography, and Chris found pleasure in
using it as a tool for exploring the impact of geography on history.
Whereas Tony and Chris read the game as a simulation, examining how the rule
sets produced emergent action, Marvin approached the game as a much more literal
representation of history. His play was mediated by his prior knowledge of ancient
civilizations, particularly Rome. For Marvin, playing Civilization III was a chance to be
one of the civilizations from his textbook and he used his textbook as a “cheat” for
playing the game. Marvin believed that understanding causes of the fall of Rome would
help him in the game, particularly as he wrestled with issues of imperial expansion and
the defense of his territories against barbarian attacks. He used the text to predict how
other civilizations might expand or where natural resources were located. Marvin wanted
an even more accurate game, one that would let him try his hand at leading an accurately
simulated, historically known civilization. Whenever he could, he reinterpreted the game
to meet these needs, calculating the exact size of his army or imagining how his Roman
legions were organized.
Building a Civilization
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For many students, including Jason and Miranda, building a civilization in and of
itself was a primary motivator and the predominant game practice. In the YWCA class
(case three), Miranda was at the center of a competitive group of girls. During the unit,
she reported finding many aspects of Civilization III intriguing: meeting other
civilizations, interacting with other leaders, seeing leaders’ clothing, and exploring the
globe. Later in the game, Miranda became divested from this group and focused more on
building a rich, powerful, and technologically advanced civilization, which meant
attending to her infrastructure, trade, and management of natural resources. When asked
to describe her favorite part of the game, Miranda said, “I liked to build the cities and
change my cities to making people happy.” This response was not surprising given the
consistent focus in her game play on just these activities, her frequent checks to see how
big her cities were in actual numbers, and her boasting about her civilization to the
researchers.
Jason also derived satisfaction from building a civilization, which manifested
itself in Jason’s concern with maximizing natural resources. He frequently started and
restarted games because he was not satisfied with how he was using natural resources.
For example, early in the term Jason struggled over control of the farmland, timber, and
resources of Michigan; later, Jason planned his cities very meticulously, making sure that
he was maximizing the amount of production from every city. More than any of the other
students, Jason employed a very mathematical approach to the game, calculating in
numbers the amount of resources he gathered from the land. Although all of the
“builders” placed special emphasis on irrigating land, building roads, and developing
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mines, Jason was unique in his frequent mathematical calculations and assessments of the
most effective use of resources.
Protecting your Civilization
Andrea (MEDIA case) also was interested in building and conquering, although
her play stemmed more from a territorial desire to protect her inhabitants than any
outwardly aggressive stance toward dominating the globe. Andrea’s war mongering
started early in the unit when civilizations moved into her territory to found cities. By
Day 6, she could accurately claim, “I guess I’ve been fighting most of the time.”
However, Andrea also ran her economy and civilization into the ground from the constant
battling with civilizations. Yet, she took this all in stride, laughing at her misfortune and
joking about her troubles. She seemed to take pride and pleasure in these battles,
bragging to the researcher, “You’ve got that right. You don’t mess with me.” By days 10
and 11, Andrea took more interest in building her civilization, asking me for help
understanding the game’s economic and cultural systems (and not just military).
Vicky (case three), who started the unit playing with Miranda, had similar goals.
In the post-interview she reported that she liked, “getting to build cities, make friends,
and go to war.” During her play, Vicky showed a particularly strong interest in protecting
her cities and her peoples. She placed multiple defenders in each city, built city walls for
protection, and put barracks in. Rarely was Vicky attacked and, when she was, she
defended her cities capably. In class, Vicky said that her goal was “to make people
happy” by immediately providing “security for my people.”
Beating the Game
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Like Dan or Dwayne, Ricky was also interested in fighting and ruling the world,
although he did not read his game off of history like they did and did not show any
particular concern for protecting his people or making them happy. Ricky’s primary goal
was to beat the game. On a micro level, Ricky struggled to fend off barbarians, build a
civil infrastructure, and meet other civilizations. Much of his game play was about
building the silk road so that he might trade with Europe. He frequently lost the game and
had to start over. Ricky was frequently frustrated and struggled more than most other
students with survival. Part of this may been that Ricky played as the Chinese, a
civilization whose geopolitical position is somewhat disadvantaged unless the player
understands the properties of the underlying simulation (or perhaps Asian history).
Although the Chinese have strong natural borders, plentiful resources and fertile river
valleys, they are exposed to barbarians in the North and isolated from other civilizations.
Ricky’s game resulted in many emergent phenomena surprisingly similar to history,
including the formation of natural borders similar to China’s, the barbarian ransacking of
his capital in 600 AD, a silk road for trading luxuries, and thousands of years of
development in relative isolation. Ricky found little solace in these emergent phenomena.
By the last day of class when it was clear that Ricky was not going to win the game, he
became increasingly interested in reading the manual to Grand Theft Auto III in class
between turns and when teachers were attending to other students. Pulling out a Grand
Theft Auto III manual in class allowed Ricky to not just kill time, but also display
himself as a gamer before his peers.
Civilization III as a Race
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For many students, particularly Amy, the game was about trying to last as long as
possible. Amy’s primary goal was to make it to the year 2002. This goal of making it to
the present day arose from the group of girls (Amy, Sandy, Miranda, and Vicky) that had
formed a competitive group at the YWCA site, and at one point or another each girl
adopted this goal. Amy held on to it until the end, taking pride in the fact that her
civilization made it the longest. She did not seem to care that she lacked a strong
infrastructure, was not the most powerful civilization, had a largely unhappy citizenry,
was behind in technology, or was clearly not going to win the game. She was not even
particularly concerned when the Celts landed on her shores in Nova Scotia. For Amy, the
game was all about making it to the present day. She even began disbanding troops
because they took too long to control and were not in the service of her goals. The
students took interest in Amy’s game and ran over to see her game when they learned that
she had made it to the present day.
While each student played the same Civilization III game, their actual activities
were radically different. They adopted unique game goals and participated in very
specific game practices. On the surface level, many students shared similar low-level
goals, such as building a civilization or defeating an enemy, but these low-level goals
stemmed from very different meta-goals and in very different game play experiences.
While Jason closely examined the natural resources surrounding cities in order to
maximize production or agriculture, Miranda closely monitored her people’s happiness,
checking the number of content in each location, changing luxury rates and creating
cultural structures. While Vicky was defensive, even downright protective, of her people,
Dwayne concocted elaborate schemes to dominate global politics. These divergent cases
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underscore that game play is an emergent phenomena, by which simple rules produce
complex outcomes depending largely on the game player and her goals (Johnson, 2002).
As Doug Church (2000) argues, authorship of a gaming experience is one part game
designer and one part game player, and game play resides at the intersection of these
systems.
Social Play
Bill, Kent, and Sandy all were very social players who did not have much success
with the game and whose primary interest in the activity seemed to grow out of the social
relationships that it fostered and helped maintain. All three students had difficulty
learning the game and were frequently lost. For most of the unit, all three had goals
directly related to another’s play (i.e. build a civilization like Dwayne’s, last longer than
Miranda). Not until relatively late in the unit did they develop more interest in the game
itself, as evidenced by their later questions about the underlying game system and its
emergent properties. There was little evidence showing that any of these three students
learned much about social studies or world history through the activities. Even by the end
of the unit, these students were still confused about basic game concepts, where their
civilizations were located, and how the game operated as a simulation.
Bill’s game was mediated by his relationship with Dwayne. He only developed
goals in the game after he sat next to Dwayne and saw what Dwayne built. He frequently
checked in with Dwayne to see what he could learn about the game and used him as a
way of seeing the possibility space of the game, developing goals and picking up
strategies for achieving them. This is not to suggest that Bill was indifferent to the game:
He liked properties such as conquering and building, and getting feedback about his
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progress in the form of “building his own spot” (i.e. his own castle). However, for Bill
game play was by and large a social activity.
Kent was also a very social gamer. In the first several days of the unit, Kent rarely
sat down, instead walking about the room observing games. He served as a conduit of
information, learning from others’ play and spreading tips and strategies among them.
Throughout the unit, Kent was aware of several other games and spent considerable time
watching others play. Part of his reluctance to play may have been that the game was too
difficult for him; Kent frequently needed help reading the text and had difficulty playing
the game. Even at the end of the unit, he was still confused with the game, unable to lead
a civilization into the Middle Ages and not really sure where his civilization was on an
actual globe.
Sandy was another player whose interest in the game appeared to be mostly
social. Sandy also had difficulty learning and understanding the game, and it was not
until relatively late in the unit that she started asking for help understanding the basic
game systems. Most of Sandy’s talk involved announcing her successes to Miranda or
Vicky or asking how they were doing (i.e. what year were they in, whether or not they
had discovered a given technology, how many friends they had in the game). Sandy was
very competitive with other students and seemed to have a strong desire to show that she
could fit into their social circles. By the last days of the unit, she was starting to take a
more active interest in the game itself, even noticing that leaders’ attire changed as they
entered new eras. This knowledge became a focal point for discussion and quickly spread
across the room.
Understanding Motivation
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In these cases, goal formation or motivation were socially mediated processes. At
one point or another, nearly every student was inspired by someone else’s game, coopting the goals, strategies, and practices of other players in order to win the game. In the
case of the YWCA girls (case three), a fairly close-knit game-playing group emerged, in
which the girls were competing with one another along multiple axes at any given time. It
was interesting to watch how the group would form around one goal, such as making it to
the present day, and then how students would peel away from the group and articulate
other goals, such as meeting other civilizations, making friends, making their people
happy, or “getting rich.” There was a competitive element to this talk, and girls would
frequently revise goals when they saw another girl with similar goals. A classic example
of this occurred when Sandy asked the other girls a series of questions with competitive
undertones (i.e. What year are you in? How many cities do you have? How many friends
do you have?). This exercise can be thought of as a process of querying the group until
she finally found an axis by which she was achieving relative success.
For these students, motivation was a complex phenomenon, occurring at the
intersection of personal goals and fantasies, the possibility space of Civilization III as a
simulation, a desire to learn world history through the game, and at times, the social
pressure to complete the presentation for the other classes. This multi-dimensional view
of motivation closely resembles Cordova and Lepper’s (1996) proposed framework of
fantasy (or context), control, challenge, and curiosity. However, the social situatedness of
this activity – the way that the social context of the school and the camp played a role in
students’ motivation and the way that students’ goals shifted and changed throughout the
activity in response to the context – suggests that framing students’ practice not as
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motivation, but as goal-driven activity may be fruitful. For these students, Civilization III
was an endogenous historical game; studying and replaying history was part and parcel of
the fun.
These cases also suggest that no one type of game or game play activity is going
to appeal to all players. Richard Bartle (1996) describes how MUD (Multi-User
Dungeon) players come to game experiences with wildly different goals, differentiating
among socializers, achievers, explorers, and player-killers (or direct competitors). Raph
Koster (2001) ties this notion to single player games, suggesting that player killers are
frequently drawn to competitive first person shooters (e.g. Quake), while explorers might
more likely take to first-person stealth games (e.g. Thief). I would extend this argument
further, arguing that the case studies examined here demonstrate that popular games are
playable via many different play styles, not just a few. Civilization III held these students’
attention, in part, by being playable several different ways, making the game play
experience customizable. Jason might begin by wanting to build a civilization and win
the game, but then eventually become more interested in maximizing resources. For Tony
and Chris, the game eventually became a tool for simulating ideas – mostly toward the
goal of becoming more skilled game players but also, in part, to devise and test theories
about history. The ways that gamers customize their experiences through personal goalsetting, means-seeking, and novel problems-solving is not entirely idiosyncratic but does
suggest that taxonomies that only include one or two dimensions or axes along which
players might be typed are too simplistic to capture the range of ways that students might
become engaged in learning through game play. In the next two sections, I turn to the
ways in which Civilization III facilitated or impeded learning world history, then to the
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constellation of affordances and constraints of the game that appear to contribute to this
pattern.
Learning Through Gameplay
Success in Civilization III demanded that students master some basic facts, such
as who the Babylonians were and where they originated from, as well as understanding
relationships among geographical, historical, and economic systems. Playing Civilization
III and talking about their games on even on the most basic level meant that students
were introduced to new terms and concepts. As Tony commented, students were “forced”
to master some basic concepts for even rudimentary success in the game. For example, if
a student did not know who rivaling civilizations were or where they came from, it was
often difficult to survive even a few thousand years.
For those students who were successful in game play, knowledge of history and
geography became tools that players used to achieve game goals. As students failed in
their games (which they often did), they were forced to go back, analyze their games, and
see where they went wrong. This debugging-of-strategy process involved constructing an
explanation of what went wrong (i.e. losing a war due to a weak economy) and then
devising strategies to remediate it the second time around. Analyzing game failure was
difficult for students, and the teacher’s role was frequently to help students interpret why
they failed and to make analogies between their games and real history as a way of
understanding game play. The few students who did become adept at analyzing games
and identifying patterns across traditional disciplinary boundaries began using
Civilization III as a simulation tool for examining broader questions, such as what is the
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role of geography in influencing the development of civilizations. Here, distinctions
between learning the game system and learning world history broke down as students
used the tool and used interpretations of history reciprocally.
Background Knowledge
For the majority of students in these cases, the basic terms and concepts employed
in Civilization III were new. A few students simply learned to read or pronounce these
terms; others learned their rudimentary definitions and could point to an example but
could do little more than that. Still other started to draw connections between game
systems and historical systems, and still others developed genuinely robust
understandings for what each meant. In one somewhat unanticipated outcome, students
reported learning many geographical facts, such as where Egypt, Nova Scotia, or
Greenland are on a global map. Some of these labels were names that I introduced, as I
tried to give students basic geographical terms as tools for talking about each other’s
games. Who the Celts were and where they came from was a common question for
students playing in the North America. Egyptian players had to deal with the Babylonians
and Greeks. Asian and European players frequently asked about the barbarians. Because
political geography is not explicitly covered in the game, we did not assess students’
knowledge of it. Closer examination of students’ pre and post-knowledge of political
geography would likely be useful for teasing out what understandings emerged through
game play.
Taken-as-Shared Meanings
Several taken as shared meanings arose in the Media case, as students played their
games and asked one another for advice, examined the consequences of decisions, and
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predicted how events from one game might relate to the unfolding of others. In the Media
case, several students came to see their long term survival depended on colonizing the
new world for resources. This pattern was influenced by several factors, including a
scarcity of resources for those who were playing in the old world, an awareness of the
relatively unsettled lands in the America, and perhaps a mobilization of historical
understandings of the Americas in colonial European history. Perhaps surprisingly, not
one student questioned the importance of colonizing the Americas, and most every
student who survived beyond 1000 AD planned to colonize the Americas in order to gain
resources or land to accommodate their growing population. The lack of horses in the
Americas and the importance of horses in military history was a second taken as shared
meaning to emerge across the group. Both just-in-time lectures and lessons from
students’ game play emphasized the military importance of horses, as students playing in
the Americas went to great lengths to gain a supply of horse. These two taken as shared
understandings were mutually reinforced from several angles, including classroom
discussions, just-in-time lectures, and experiences in game play.
Two more key understandings emerged among students playing in the Americas.
The first was that American tribes could attempt to pre-empt European settlement of the
Americas by reaching the old world first and making contact with several civilizations,
allowing them to trade technologies and gain a supply of horses. At first, most students
playing in the Americas simply wanted to build a civilization, particularly a defense to
hold off colonizers (who most students assumed would be Europeans). Once the Celts
landed on the shores of Nova Scotia in Dan’s game, students realized that they would
need to gain technologies and trade for horses if they hoped to survive. As a result,
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students realized that they could reach other continents by “reverse engineering” either
the Native American migrations across the Bering Strait or Viking voyages across the
North Atlantic (along Greenland). Students playing as the Iroquois paid close attention to
each others’ games as they played out these game experiments (and this information did
not flow to Kent, who was playing as the Egyptians and not attending to other games by
late in the week). Eventually, they learned that such voyages were hypothetically
possible, but that gaining horses or trading technologies alone were not enough to
compete with the Europeans.
A second taken as shared understanding was colonial rhetoric as a means of
justifying colonial expansion in South America. As students wrestled with how to treat
the Polynesians, an argument emerged for liberating the Polynesians from their backward
way of life: their lives would improve as a result of being Iroquois. Students took a
perverse joy in the thought of Native American tribes conquering other civilizations and
justifying it as benevolent. Central to this understanding was students’ reflexive
awareness of what they were doing and saying. Tony joked and shared in this talk,
although eventually he and Jason both tried to spare the Polynesians in order to trade with
them. Both had also learned that trading with other civilizations was a critical factor in
obtaining technologies, gaining resources and the eventual colonization of the Americas.
Limitations in Facilitating Conceptual Understandings
Civilization III was effective for introducing students to related geographic and
historical concepts but not as good at facilitating deep conceptual understandings of
them. Evidence of this pattern abounded; throughout the units and in post-interviews,
researchers would ask students what particular concepts meant (e.g., monarchy); most
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students were able to do little more than describe its basic features, such as “it is a type of
government.” Vicky is a prime example of this. In the post interviews, she could recall
that “despotism” was a kind of government and that she had started her game with it but
wouldn’t want to live in one. She did, however, know that “monarchy” was another form
of government and accurately described how it involved organized religion. Yet, her
understanding was hybridized and she mistook “monarchy” to be a church-state. This
kind of spotty familiarity with some game concepts (but not others) was common: though
they had nascent understandings of some game terms, particularly of those aspects related
to their game success or failure, few grasped such concepts with any depth. Tony recalled
very specifically that Sun Tzu’s Art of War helped his army by improving his fighting;
other important technologies, including iron and bronze working, meant little to him.
Marvin, who read the game as an historical simulation and spent a lot of time reading the
Civilopedia, recalled a number of facts from the game, including that writing appeared
before the birth of Christ.
That students did not develop robust understandings of these concepts should be
somewhat obvious. The exact nature of most of these concepts (e.g., monarchy) are less
important in the game than what you can do with them. In other words, students do not
need to know what monarchy was or have any sense of what the specific socio-political
arrangements were that we have come to label as monarchy. They do need to know
monarchy’s effects on their civilization (i.e. decreased corruption, increased trade
capacity).
In part, this is because most concepts represent new game capacities, and are
introduced with very little historical explanation. The Civilopedia describes these terms,
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but ultimately they are cleaved from the historical referents from which they arose (See
Figure 7.1). This explanation is a generally accepted definition, basically a simplified
encyclopedia entry and not far from a standard middle school textbook definition. A few
words, such as sanction, alleviate, or ameliorate were difficult for these students to
comprehend.
Teacher, students’ games, Civilopedia
vs
Maps, historical texts, primary documents
Students
vs
Adults / Organizers
Shared Trust; NonSchool norms
vs
Constructive Play,
School norms
Increased social status
vs.
Understanding social
studies
Civilization III
vs.
Social Studies Phenomema
Friendly Factions
vs
Collaborative Communities of
Inquiry
Individualist,
Competitive
vs
Collaborative Inquiry
Figure 7-1 Contradictions that emerged in Media Case
A second factor worth mentioning is the sheer number of concepts that players
must have at least some cursory understanding of in order to understand the game. The
simulation includes six governments (anarchy, despotism, monarchy, communism,
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republic and democracy), 76 civilization improvements ranging from social orders (e.g.
feudalism) to types of religious systems (e.g. theology, monotheism, polytheism) to
technological advancements (e.g. metallurgy, atomic theory), and 34 “wonders of the
world” (specific institutions, structures, or events based on key historical events such as
The Pyramids, Magellan’s Voyage, or the Cure for Cancer). The list goes on. There are
29 city improvements, 64 different military units (each with 5 variables), 13 types of
terrain (each with 11 different possible ways of affecting game processes such as food
bonuses, movement bonuses, etc.), and 22 types of natural resources (each of which
might affect 3 game variables and many of which require discovering a technology). This
means that the problem space includes 233 different game concepts, many of which have
multiple levels and interact in complex ways. Even allowing for the fact that some of
these terms were already familiar to students, this means that, in order to successfully
play the game, students would have to confront (and arguably master) 233 concepts all of
which interact as variables and affect game play. Though students demonstrated little
more than a cursory (and at times problematic) understanding of some of these concepts,
the sheer fact that each was able to negotiate some semi-successful path through the
game’s problem space indicates that, at least in terms of what the concepts are good for,
students did gain facility with some significant subset of the conceptual knowledge the
game requires.
Overwhelmingly, the most common student practice in each setting was asking a
teacher or researcher about game concepts. In one twenty to thirty minute period in the
Media summer case (case two), I was asked about: theology, steam power, free artistry,
coastal fortresses, mutual protection pacts, wealth, the corporation, embargoes,
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astronomy, refining, espionage, and cavalry, as well as if threatening other civilizations
had an impact on diplomacy, and what happened when the game ran out of names for
new cities. These questions ranged from simples queries about terms (e.g., What is the
Colossus?) or geographical facts (e.g., Is there oil in Greenland?) to functional questions
(e.g., What are the effects of democracy?) to procedural questions (e.g., How do I
improve trade?) to questions about the game as a simulation (e.g., Does the game include
World War I?). In the Media case (case one) in particular, the teachers and I were
encouraged by the sheer volume of sincere questions that students posed – a stark
contrast to their typical behavior in school.
Very rarely, however, did students ask “why” questions about history (with a
notable exception being Marvin, who brought his book to class to find out why the
Roman Empire fell). More often, I would introduce historical narratives, such as the
colonization of the Americas or the causes of World War I, as tools providing insights
into their games. These situations allowed me to interject new understandings or
information into the activity system. In combination with answering the volume of
question the students posed, however, these activities placed great demands on my time.
Finding ways to embed more of this information into students’ artifacts, environment,
and activities – for example, rewriting the Civilopedia, creating job aids, or doing more
formal question asking and answering activities — would be advantageous.
Failure Fosters Conceptual Learning
Much of this impetus for learning game concepts came through failure. Failure to
generate trade, balance budgets, or perhaps most importantly, anticipate an opponent’s
move forced many students to confront gaps or flaws in their current understandings. As
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Tony explained, “Playing the game forces you to learn about the material. It actually
forces you to learn about other civilizations in order to survive.”15 For Tony, this meant
understanding who the Celts were, where they came from, what resources they were
likely to have, and how he might exploit his natural resources in North America in order
to compete. Students across both cases confronted similar challenges. Recall Andrea’s
struggles to fend off the Greeks and subsequent exploration to find out who the Greeks
were and where they originated, or Jason’s exploration of Greenland, or Ricky’s hunting
Mongolian barbarians, or Dwayne’s sailing for Japan, or Bill’s exploring Africa for
resources, or Kent asking Dwayne about Rome, or Marvin’s exploration of Europe to
anticipate where other rival civilizations originated. Learning through game play
occurred through a process of identifying problems, analyzing their causes, marshalling
resources to bring to bear on the problem, implementing solutions, examining the
consequences of those solutions, and then trying new strategies.
One of the clearest patterns among students was a general movement away from
simple, one variable solutions to problems (i.e. create entertainers to make citizens
happy) that require more complex solutions that incorporated several variables. Learning
occurred through cycles of problem identification, developing causal interpretations of
events (such as what caused a student to lose a game), brainstorming possible solutions
(possibly drawing from knowledge of history or geography), implementing solutions,
examining results, and repeating. Solutions to these problems became more and more
complex as students started perceiving domestic happiness issues as the result of more
Bill made a similar comment: “When barbarians took over my cities I learned how to defend myself with archers and
spearmen. (It made me more involved) because I knew how to rectify the situation, make my failures a success, learn
from my mistakes
15
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and more factors (available luxuries, entertainment, luxuries, religion, and economics).
The more that students played the more that they saw these problems as resulting from
several inter-related forces. Long-term success in the game demanded that students
examine the causes of game events as determined by several game systems and devise
solutions that leveraged the affordances of each game system. Restated, students realized
that they could not get far addressing problems one at a time, but instead needed to
design elegant solutions that addressed multiple needs. B y the end of the Media camp,
students all agreed that a major understanding to emerge was that “you can’t separate
geography from economics from politics.” As Chris said, Civilization III prompted these
students to see how different systems fit together.
There was a direct connection between students’ learning and participation in
what I have called recursive play, that is, play where the student analyzes her game play,
develops new strategies, and evaluates their effectiveness. Students who tried numerous
strategies developed systemic level understandings more often than those students who
simply played through their games uncritically, or who did not go back and try new
strategies. Trying multiple strategies forced them to commit to hypotheses about the
game system and then experience the consequence of decisions. Recursive play seemed
to be a pre-condition to systemic-level game understandings, which then in turn,
frequently led to connections between world history and their game play.
Playing Prompt Questions about Geography and History
Playing Civilization prompted students to ask questions about geography and
history. Asking questions about game concepts was one of the most prevalent student
practices across all three cases. Some of these questions were relatively simple and
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straightforward, such as when a student asked about particular game concepts such as
frigates, invention, astronomy, or leaders, or how to achieve certain goals (what
technologies do I need to build galleys or submarines?). The range, complexity, and shear
number of these questions impressed teachers as in the Media case, where students rarely
asked questions and were usually goaded into participating in class. Students who could
not have cared less about despotism or monarchy were asking about them with urgency.
These concepts became tools for game play and the contexts of their use affected how
students’ understandings of them developed.
Shifting a concept such as astronomy from a basic discovery to a tool for game
play situates the learner to consider the effects of the discovery on the evolution of
civilizations rather than just its basic meaning. Not surprisingly, several students could
discuss the consequences of these advancements on the development of their
civilizations. Vicky discussed how shifting from a despotism to monarchy made her
people happier and increased their productivity. Dramatically, a week later, Tony recalled
exact figures of how his civilization and its economy expanded under democracy. As
previously discussed, students recalled much less information about these specific
advancements, although in reasoning through tasks in the post-interviews, students did
use a number of concepts, as when Chris recalled that currency was a discovery that
enabled him to make marketplaces, which helped his economy.
Game play fostered a number of interesting questions about geography and
history, as when Jason asked if there was oil in Greenland, Tony asked about what
Madagascar was and who populated it, when Ricky asked about the barbarians, when
Kent asked if the game had World War I, or Marvin asked what the borders of the Roman
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Empire were during different portions of its history. In these instances, semiotic chains
arose where students observed a property of the game system, related it to what they
already knew or did not know, and then asked questions about how this would impact
their games. These questions ranged from the factual (is there oil in Greenland?) to
systemic (does the game have World War I?). They ranged from directly applicable to the
game (what civilizations had horses?) to less directly related to game goals (who
populated Madagascar and why?). The way that playing Civilization III engendered
question-asking was perhaps the most pleasant pedagogical surprise of the unit; teachers
and researchers alike agreed that the moment that this group of students were asking
these kinds of questions, the unit was a success.
World History as a Tool for Problem-Solving
Knowing what natural and strategic resources were available was a common
thread for most students, and world history served as a tool for anticipating what
resources were likely to be valuable. For Marvin, failures were about his
misunderstandings of history. He consulted his history texts, using them as a “cheat” for
understanding the game, particularly for where natural resources were located and how
civilizations grow and evolve. Other examples included Jason’s goal to take Alaska and
his questioning if there was oil in Greenland due to its similar latitude. In the Media class
(case one), the lack of horses in North America emerged as a taken-as-shared meaning
late in the unit, and several students organized their game play around securing a supply
of horses. The quest for resources turned many students to examining South America, a
continent that few students knew much about. In response, several students spent days
mapping South America and an interplay emerged between the joy of exploring a new
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world and learning what resources might be available in South America. Tony reported
that how geography and natural resources affected his civilization was the most important
thing he learned in the unit, stating, “I always knew that certain locations helped certain
people but with this (game) I have a better understanding of it.”
Failures in problem-solving – most notably cities in disarray, barbarian attacks,
poorly balanced economies, and ineffective uses of natural resources – caused students to
restart their games periodically. Early in the game, these failures were routine and
predictable but caused a lot of frustration. Students were not prepared for this kind of
failure and frustrations ran very high. At this point, most students had not established any
goals, did not understand the game controls, and frequently perceived their failures as the
result of bad game design rather than as a consequence of their own actions. Consistent
with classic attribution theory (Bandura 1976; Stipek, 1993; Weiner, 1986), many
students perceived the causes of failure as outside of themselves and became quite bitter
by failure. When a student such as Bill felt that failure was not the game being “unfair”
but reacting to one of his decisions and he could think of a possible solution, he kept
playing. Future implementations would profit from anticipating these problems and
offering more tools such as learning aids to support students’ play. Later in the units, I
began sharing gaming heuristics that most advanced civilization players discover the hard
way (e.g. putting a temple in every city over population size four to avoid civil unrest),
and, as I began to better understand the social dynamics of each context, I started
encouraging students to help one another (e.g., asking Marvin to help Jordan since
Marvin had a solid grasp of game basics). Fostering more reciprocal teaching is another
possibility for scaffolding students’ work while also promoting reflection.
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Later in the unit, causes of students’ failure became more complex and we used
the game as a context for discussing variables contributing to a civilization’s growth or
decline. Students readily recapped game events and developed theories about why their
civilization collapsed, such as a poor defense or economy. At times they still called on
me to help diagnose their game problems, which entailed analyzing the health of their
civilization and frequently interpreting global geo-political dynamics. Helping students
construct narratives – for example, when I explained what was happening when the Celts
colonized North America, as happened in numerous games – became one of my primary
functions. Devising strategies, such as generating trade or gaining technologies by
finding trade routes to other civilizations, brought knowledge of geography or history as a
tool for game play. Unfortunately, this approach puts much of the onus of problemsolving analysis and of interjecting history into the classroom on the teacher’s shoulders.
Allowing opportunities for students to write their own narrative accounts of game events
might be preferable. In the armed forces, trainers use “replay action recall” techniques
whereby the player and the instructor review game play together. Through such practices,
game play becomes data to be analyzed and the subject of deeper scrutiny. The log sheets
implemented in the Media case (case one) were designed to capture students’ game play
in order to then make it into the basis for reflection, but, in this context at least, they were
ineffective for this purpose.
Comparing Game Play to History
Many students played Civilization III as an historical simulation and derived
pleasure from comparing game play to history, developing powerful ideas about history
in the process. For many students, Civilization III was an historical simulation and
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playing the game in order to change the outcome of history or test their wits against other
historical civilizations was a primary motivator. Marvin learned that war did not pay,
partly through his own game play and partly through watching other games. He became
very adamant about this lesson, listing it as one of the most important things he learned
from the game. He argued this point with Joey, and when Joey lost his game and had his
computer crash after declaring war, Marvin argued that the computer was teaching Joey a
lesson.
Many students across cases turned the game into a colonial simulation,
investigating the forces contributing to cross-Atlantic colonization. Several students in
the Media case read colonization in their games off of history, and in post-interviews
discussed the role of technology or resources in shaping colonial history. Students
playing as Egypt also saw colonial expansion as the answer to their problems with
shrinking borders, failing economies, or insufficient natural resources. Although this
Civilization III scenario was not designed to be a colonial simulation per se, many Media
students appropriated it as such, beginning with their finally taking the game up on days 4
and 5 and continuing through their fascination with the arrival of the Celts, or, for the
Egyptian players, by their efforts to discover sailing technologies and find a route to the
Americas. Turning Civilization III into a colonial simulation affected the kinds of
questions students asked, observations they made about their games the technologies they
focused on, and the solutions they posited to problems. Students mostly read their game
events off of pre-existing notions of colonization or geography, expanding and modifying
their understandings of colonization in the process.
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Students’ emergent understandings of factors behind colonization were an
amalgamation of several factors. In post-interviews students said that colonization was
the result of a combination several interacting factors (with each student having his own
particular take) : population density, access to strategic resources (specifically horses),
relations with other civilizations, and access to global trade networks. Dan also included
culture in his model of colonization; Chris privileged geography more. Bill, who played
as the Bantu learned that sub-Sahara Africa was full of luxuries (ivory, gems) but lacking
farmland and removed from global trade by the Sahara desert. Interestingly, Bill’s
proposed solution (mediated by Dwayne’s game) was to colonize the Americas,
suggesting that he framed colonization as way to gain resources and participate in global
trade.
Tony derived particular pleasure in comparing his game to history. Tony spent the
last few days of camp sailing about the world, examining how history played out in his
world. Of particular interest to Tony was how isolated civilizations (i.e. Aborigines)
developed and how barbarians (nomad populations) thrived in remote islands and went
undiscovered into the 19th century. Tony deduced from these exercises that access to
resources (farmable land and other natural resources) and geographical proximity to other
civilizations was a critical factor in how a civilization developed. It is critical to note that
this game practice emerged only after Tony had played for some 30 hours, and there were
significant comparisons to be made between his game play and history. Unfortunately,
Tony relied on relatively few resources (mostly me) in drawing these analogies to history.
Other timelines, atlases, and almanacs may have been useful for comparing game data to
history.
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Understanding the Interplay of History, Geography, Politics, and Economics
In the Media summer camp (case two), some of the most powerful learning
moments occurred outside of the game itself, when students developed system-level
understandings about the interplay of history, geography, politics, and economics. As
students prepared their presentations, they attempted to classify lessons that they learned
by discipline. Tony identified a problem with this activity, drawing connections between
material conditions, economics, and politics. Reflecting on game play, particularly
reflecting on what they learned through the game, drew students to system-level
conclusions about the game and about history. Dwayne started the conversation by
noting that geography affected his politics (via resources and trade), which Tony then
connected to a civilization’s capacity for building an infrastructure. Tony first
commented that economic, political, and geographic systems are all connected, and then
posited a theory that money connects all of these systems. Other students add that
geography affects diplomacy (natural borders), the growth of a civilization, and its
capacity for waging war. Tony, perhaps inspired by my prodding to find a unifying theme
in the game, argued that money (or material goods) is the consistent theme across these
factors. Tony then made a critical, materialist reading of the game, arguing that the game
is ultimately about the accumulation of wealth which is geographically driven. In class
Tony observed that, “Well, money is the key… money is the root to everything. With
money you can save yourself from war, and that also means that politics you can
influence civilizations with money. (Money) ties everything together.” Tony came to this
realization by noting that “With a lot of money, I can buy lot of luxuries” and “Luxuries
buys you money and money buys you everything. The right location gives you luxuries
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gives you income more income gives you technology which affects your politics. It all
connects.” This kind of reading of the game is actually quite sophisticated, akin to
developing a Marxist, feminist, or “great man” theory of history.
Students latched on to Tony’ idea that Civilization III helped them see relations
among system components. Kent, Dwayne, and Chris all joined in the conversation,
discussing how aspects of one game system affected the rest. Even Kent, who struggled
with much of the game could articulate this idea: Geography affects your diplomacy
because it gets your more resources and affects how they treat you. Kent had mostly been
on the losing end of this equation, but he still detected this pattern in the game system
through his play and watching others. Over several hours of game play and game
discussions, students in the camp developed sophisticated understandings of the game
system and drew parallels between the game and world history.
Importantly, there was little evidence to suggest that such system-level
understandings emerged in the in-school Media context or in the YWCA case where
students had less time to play the game, there was less informal game talk and
comparison across games, and fewer reflection activities examining what they learned
through the game. It took most students 20 to 30 hours to even begin to see game
problems as systemic issues. Examining relations among game systems and how they
related to world history emerged mostly through in class discussions, where students
were charged with (and bought into) the task of presenting what they learned through
playing the game. These cases suggest that looking across games to identify emergent
themes in games (as in the discussion activities) and then comparing these to world
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history (something we did not do that much of formally) are fruitful ways for using
Civilization III to support learning world history in formal learning environments.
“No Matter How History Plays Out it Plays by the Same Set of Rules”
In the Media case, game play mediated how players thought about history in
significant ways, as evidenced by Tony’ proposal of – and students’ acceptance of – the
notion that “No matter how history plays out, it plays by the same set of rules.” Tony’
discovery of this idea was significant not just because it suggests that playing Civilization
III remediated how he thought about world history, but because it was accepted as a
taken-for-granted idea. When Tony proposed this claim as one of the most important
things he had learned in the unit, students overwhelmingly agreed. No one thought that
the claim was novel or surprising; they accepted it as natural that one might study history
by defining an underlying set of rules and then exploring the patterns that might emerge
as a result of them.
While Steven Wolfram (2002) might agree with this assertion, most historians
would not. As described in Chapter Two, history is a discipline characterized by
narrative. Few, if any historians build models to test historical theories. Yet, there is some
precedence. This non-linear approach to understanding world history is clearly evident in
the work of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1999), a work that seeks to explain
history not just as narrative but as relationships among interacting systems – particularly,
geographical and material systems and culture. When Diamond calculates the carrying
capacity of land or speculates on the necessary conditions by which civilizations form
and evolve, he is outlining the rule sets by which we might build historical simulations.
Civilization III operationalizes many of these ideas (albeit at a courser grain).
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Tony’ observation that “No matter how history plays out, it plays by the same set
of rules” evokes Marshall McLuhan’s famous saying that “The medium is the message.”
Playing Civilization III and participating in this unit remediated Tony’ understanding
about what history is and how it could be expressed in fundamental ways, suggesting that
there may be other valid ways of investigating history besides traditional, linear narrative
accounts. This is not to suggest that students derived this principle entirely on their own;
on two separate occasions we discussed models and simulations, focusing on the nature
of games as rule-based systems that produce emergent behavior. Students in the Media
case (case one and two) in particular seemed to have developed an understanding of the
notion of non-linear systems16 through their game play. Perhaps surprisingly, none of the
students perceived this non-linear model of history as potentially biased toward some
variables over others.
Detecting Biases in the Game Play (But Not in its Representation of History)
Students were adept at detecting biases within the game system but less adept at
detecting biases with in how the game represented history. In the Media case, we
discussed the ways in which the game was biased and students readily picked up on a
number of them, particularly the game’s bias toward technology and democracy. Most
Civilization III players would agree that the current rule set is weighted toward these two
concepts, although there is debate as to whether these are unrealistic biases or simply
features of the game as a simulated system. To be sure, I prompted students to think
about potential biases during the unit, both in individual and large group discussions.
Tony suggested that the game was biased toward democracy and students readily agreed,
Will Wright recalled that he was reading a lot of Jay Forrester’s work on non-linear systems as he created the
simulation game Sim City and that one of his goals in designing the game was to expose a broader public to the idea of
emergence and non-linear systems.
16
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yet he recounted this bias in the post-interview and added that he thought the real bias
was toward the rational, materialist behaviors of other civilizations whereby they would
only trade for specific technologies.
Some students noted the materialist orientation of the game, but did not
necessarily consider it a bias. Late in the unit at the Media camp (case two), we discussed
the ideas that students felt they learned in the unit and attempted to classify these ideas by
topic (geography, history, politics). Tony noted that money was frequently contingent on
geographical location (i.e. riches around the Nile and opportunities for trade) and that
“money allows me to buy technology, so (geography can be categorized as affecting)
politics. When you have a lot of money you can do whatever you want. When you’re rich
you can buy off other countries.” So, we categorized access to luxuries as something they
learned about politics. Later, Luis commented that they (politics and geography) are “all
related to one another.” When asked to elaborate, he commented, “Well, money is the
key… money is the root to everything. With money you can save yourself from war, and
that also means that politics…with money, that ties everything together.” The game
fostered in Tony (and other students, it seemed) a materialist orientation to history – that
is, the idea that strategic and luxury resources, as well as access to material goods, drove
history.
In closing discussions, I tried to emphasize the geographical bias of the game,
which most students did seem to grasp. In their final presentation at the Media summer
camp (case two), students reworded this finding to be “geography and politics are more
important than culture.” Like Dan, who held on to his belief that the Iroquois did not
colonize Europe for cultural reasons, these students accepted that Civilization III was
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biased toward a materialist reading of history. They framed the game as a simulation of
the geo-political factors shaping the history of civilizations, learning from it what they
could but rendering it useless for answering questions of culture or religion. Most
certainly, this appropriation process was mediated by instructor practices, which
consistently reinforced this idea.
This kind of realization – that history could be depicted according to different
underlying theories (i.e. feminist history, Marxist history, cultural history) – is a subtle
and important kind of distinction rarely discussed in secondary classes. That students
understood the materialist, geographical nature of the game and were able to not only
articulate it but debate it outright suggests that one powerful way of using Civilization III
(as well as other simulation games) might be as an inroad to understanding differing
theories of history. Indeed, this is how historian Patricia Seed at Rice University uses
games in her course on colonial expansion in the Americas (2002, personal
communication). Whereas some educators fear that students will fail to pick up the bias
and “authorship” of simulations (e.g. Starr, 1994), these cases suggest that perhaps
learning through games makes some of the assumptions and perspectives that go into
building representations of events more transparent.
On the other hand, students did not detect some more subtle biases, namely the
management orientation of the game. All of the students interviewed in both cases
realized that the powers they exercised in the game were unrealistic and that there was no
direct historical analog for the figures they played in history. Students did not, however,
see the management orientation of the game as problematic from a an intellectual
standpoint. In fact, on their slide entitled “how is learning social studies through games
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different than through other media,” students wrote, “Civilization 3 teaches you how to
manage a civilization.” For these students, the management-orientation of Civilization III
was a feature, not a bug, and therefore did not question how this emphasis in the game
might bias those playing it in particular (perhaps erroneous) ways.
This finding suggests that students are actually quite adept at detecting specific
biases within the simulation, namely, because interacting with the game students bump
up against simulation assumptions and biases all the time. There was hardly a student in
these cases who could not discuss the conflict-driven nature of the game, or the way that
geographical and materialist factors drove much of the action. Part of this may have been
because I, as the instructor, emphasized these biases, but it is also possible that game
players just become very good at understanding the biases of the game system. Perhaps it
is no wonder that everyone who has ever written on the Sim City series notes that the
game is biased toward public transportation. Participating in a game system bumps the
player up against its emergent properties very quickly, and if players have any experience
of those properties, they seem to be good at detecting what those biases are. What
students in these cases were less good at was understanding how representing historical
systems through a resource management game biases representations of history in
particular ways.
What is striking about this last bias, a bias endemic to the medium, is not so much
that Civilization III (or any game for that matter) has it, but that critics (e.g. Starr, 1994;
Turkle, 2003) imply that such biases do not exist in other media. Sins of omission and
inclusion are endemic to any medium, but the affordances of media themselves also
mediate the way we understand phenomena. Just as we ask what is the significance of
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representing world history through simulated systems, we need to investigate the
significance of representing history through oral stories, books, plays, or film.
Representing phenomena in each one brings affinities and proclivities, and perhaps the
questions that educators (and scholars) should be asking are how to mix these resources
to produce deep understandings.
Summary
One final way to think about the affordances of Civilization III in learning
environments is to step back and examine the range of activities that occurred and the
kinds of experiences students had. Students interaction with the game itself followed a
pattern of observation, problem identification, information gathering (frequently
employing offline resources) enacting strategies and then observing their consequences.
As Zimmerman and Salen (2003) describe, game play could be described as several
overlapping observation and consequences chains. Early in each case, most students
experienced confusion and failure as they were overwhelmed by a game system posing
complex problems, employing difficult language, and representing geographical and
historical phenomena in ways that may have been unusual. Students asked questions.
Students asked a lot of questions. Most of these answers came from teachers, researchers,
games, or eventually, the Civilopedia. Although students did a lot of asking of questions,
they did relatively little offline research activities. Students did however, formulate
“research” questions in response to issues arising in their games and issues of more
general intellectual curiosity. They examined each other’s games, discerned patterns
across games, formulated hypotheses about the game system, and acted on these
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emerging theories by enacting strategies. The extent to which playing Civilization III
raised students’ curiosity about both game systems and historical issues was a unique,
and perhaps defining aspect of these units.
Much of the analysis and reflection that occurred during game play naturally led
to discussions of history and geography. Questions driving these discussions included:
Which civilization should I play, Why is colonization not happening? How should my
civilization expand? How can improve my economy? What resources might I capitalize
one? or Why did the game deviate from history? Some of these questions were quite
novel, piquing students’ curiosity in hitherto immaterial questions such as the geography
of Greenland or the history of Madagascar. One of Civilization III’s most intriguing
affordances may be how it engaged some of these students in lines of inquiry of genuine
interest, particularly given how so many of these students resisted studying history.
Civilization III also provided marginalized paths for studying and creating histories
outside the context of dominant political and intellectual agendas. To a large extent,
students framed the kinds of questions that they wanted to ask of the game, as mediated
by teacher practices and other student relations.’ Minimally, Civilization III was playable
in many different ways and recruited a wide array of gaming practices.
Although Civilization III is a computer game that typically consumes the attention
of its players, when taken as a practice, playing Civilization III involved offline activities
of interest to world history educators. Students observed other games, discussed
strategies, and negotiated meanings with their peers. Meanings and play were mediated
by others’ game practices, as students appropriated the game in particular ways (such as a
colonial simulation), co-constructed reasons for playing (as in the “races”), and mediated
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specific practices, such as the domination of other civilizations or decision to stay out of
war. Play occurred as a part of game playing communities, and in these cases, to discuss
game play outside of the social contexts of that activity is to miss much of the activity at
play.
Toward an Instructional Model of Digital Game-Based Learning
This study examined how Civilization III might be used to support learning in two
very particular contexts. In each case (as in any case) there were unique drivers and
barriers affecting how Civilization III was appropriated both by teachers and students.
Hopefully, the telling of these cases has persuaded the reader of the particularities of
these cases and the importance of considering local social and political contexts (as well
as participants goals and intentions) when characterizing activity. Nevertheless, these
cases did present findings that challenged my initial assumptions about the role of games
in this context, and suggest critical issues for instructional designers to consider when
designing game-based learning environments. This section presents my revised model of
an instructional unit using Civilization III with similar populations of students (See table
7.1).
Days 1-3 appropriating Civilization III as a tool for learning world history.
In the MEDIA case, one of the biggest challenges was to appropriation was
perceived relevance. In the first few days, students were not only confused, but they saw
little relevance of the game play to their lives. On Day 4 drawing the map on the board
drew students into the game, as they made more connections between the game and
history and saw that they could change the course of history. These patterns suggest that
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putting students on realistic maps early, ensuring that they knew where they were located,
and making clear that there are multiple modes of interacting with the game (exploring,
building, replaying history) might also help more students develop goals. With these
students, it seemed especially important that they see that the game would allow them to
explore hypothetical histories, and several seductive hypothetical scenarios (such as an
“African” Europe could be presented up front. I had conceptualized the first three days as
primarily about introducing them to the game, but this early period of the game play
might be better conceptualized as in facilitating the appropriation of Civilization III as a
tool. Showing the relevance of this activity to students’ lives (and identities) was critical.
I had hoped that students would enjoy reading more about the civilizations or
discussing conceptual issues raised in civilizations (such as the ethics of referring to
native tribes as barbarians), but these students had little willingness to read assignments
or discuss game concepts until well after they were engaged in the game play. On the
other hand, they found the “civilization vote” interesting and they were willing (up to a
point) to discuss which civilizations they might be. In a future iteration of this unit, I
would present students with descriptions of the various civilizations (with maps) and ask
present them with discussion activities whereby they evaluate the strengths and
weaknesses (from a game play perspective) of each civilization. I would ask students to
rank order each civilization along which ones they would want to play as in order to (a)
grow the quickest, (b) generate the most trade, (c) become the wealthiest, (d) have the
happiest citizenry, (e) interact with the most civilizations, (f) explore the most territory,
and (g) last the longest. Each of these dimensions loosely corresponds with a game goal
that engaged students. From a teacher’s perspectives, it would be very interesting to
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examine how students make these judgments, what factors they bring to bear in making
these determinations.
Days 4-7: Facilitating informal gaming groups.
For these students, Civilization was so complex as to take several class periods to
master. Whereas I had initially envisioned students learning most of the game through
trial and error (and one another), it is apparent that in this case, such means were largely
ineffective. First, I would prepare mini-lectures for the beginning of class on (a) how to
defend cities against barbarians, (b) how to avoid civil disorder in cities (c) how to get
more money, (d) how to build more cities, (e) how to have cities grow more quickly.
Given students’ resistance to any mandated activities and disregard for most information
presented in lectures, a key would be to phrase them in language and terms that students
themselves identify with. Of course, demonstrating with a projector would be desirable,
and perhaps help sheets for these five common problems would also be useful.
Across both cases, the students who were the most successful with the game (and
perhaps learning) were those who belonged to informal groups of gamers. Thus, the first
approach I would try is to encourage collaboration through informal partnering. At the
beginning (or end) of class, I would ask students to find a partner and answer the
following questions. Again, rather than framing the activity as one designed to “teach
history,” I would frame it as an exercise designed to help them do better at the game.
These activities would include: (a) Find where you are on a real map and anticipate what
tribes will be your rivals; (b) Examine your cities and find the ones that are growing the
fastest (and say why); (c) Compare the natural resources. On the following day, I would
have students find two players playing different civilizations, analyze each game, and
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then report back what the three biggest advantages and disadvantages were of each. As a
class, we would discuss these factors and then discuss which ones we thought were
realistic and which ones were not. Perhaps students might also generate questions during
this phase. Although there is some pedagogical value to these discussions, the primary
goal of these activities is to habituate students to examining one another’s games,
observing other games to pick up strategies, and encourage students to compare and
contrast civilizations.
Days 8-11: Fostering Communities of Inquiry
In the MEDIA case, a game playing culture began to emerge by the ninth day.
Students had defined goals and began to play with purpose. Students were invested in
their games, and began to identify with their civilizations. Successful learning activities
leveraged this engagement and queried students’ games to see what could be learned
about improving game play, and used geography and history as tools to support game
play. Introducing maps, timelines, charts, graphs and primary documents at this time in
order to support game play would quite likely be effective. One can imagine having
students use maps to identify natural resources, anticipate the growth of civilizations (like
Marvin did), or to plan exploration routes. Maps of famous voyages and historical
vignettes of events that were commonly raised in the form of just-in-time lectures (e.g.
causes of World War I, isolationism vs. trade, the advent of agriculture, the role of horses
in colonization, the historical importance of the Sahara Desert, the origin of the Bantu,
germs and disease in North America) could be useful in supporting play, as well.
Similarly, primary documents such as accounts of Cortez’s slaughter of Native
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Americans could help students understand the military importance of history through
primary documents.
A number of reflection activities introduced in the third and fourth weeks of the
MEDIA case were useful and suggest how teachers can better bridge game play with
world history inquiry. Some reflection activities, such as listing the “unrealistic” aspects
of the game were easily accomplished and could possibly leveraged in small research
projects. For these students, outside readings were unfeasible, although one can imagine
using film, lectures, or discussion to support students in comparing their games to world
history. Although this is purely conjecture, I believe that introducing a small, constrained
research project, such as describing the role of the Nile River in the history of Egypt at
this point may work with these students as well. Regardless, a key goal of this portion of
the unit is to facilitate the emergence of communities of inquiry whereby students’ goals
shift from learning the game to using history and geography as tools for supporting their
game play.
Group discussions in the MEDIA case suggest how gamers’ interest in comparing
games can be leveraged to support deeper history learning. It was during this time period
that I began aggregating information across students’ games and leading discussions in
game strategy in order to help students build interpretations about the properties of
Civilization III as a simulation. Structured design activities such as discussing the
historical importanc of horses, discussing the issues surrounding isolationism and trade,
or connections betweeen technological advancement and geographic location (See Table
4.2). In other classrooms (See Appendices A and B) I have suggested that students map
their own game world and compare it with historical maps. Whether or not that would
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succeed in this environment is unknown but worth investigating. However, establishing
the practice of having students examine games to deduce patterns in order to help their
game play can profitably lead to the focus of the next unit, which will be using
Civilization III as a simulation.
Days 12-15: Recursive Play and Civilization III as a Simulation
By days 12 through 15, a number of students began playing recursively as they
experienced failure, generated hypotheses about the game systems, and tried new
strategies. This cyclical practice of starting and restarting the game resembles the
recursive learning process typical to learning through modeling or simulation and tends to
produce learning about Civilization III as a system. A primary challenge in this study was
how to support students in recursively reading their games off of history. In particular,
finding ways to introduce historical information was a challenge in these settings where
students showed little interest in reading texts, there was barely enough time in the period
to get the class going on the game – let alone switching activities, and a paucity of
resources useful for comparing games to history. Most often, the teacher introduced
information in the form of just-in-time lectures. A primary (and unsolved, in this context)
challenge is how to provide students access to data in forms that are easily accessible and
designed to support students in reading their games off of history.
Having students develop arguments and create artifacts with representations of
these ideas is one way to engage students in disciplinary thinking about world history. In
the camp context, students built presentations describing what they learned from playing
Civilization III, pulling data from just-in-time lectures, discussions, and their game play.
The success of this activity suggests that having students build presentations for their
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peers in class may be feasible, particularly if students are given appropriate scaffolding.
In the MEDIA case, we abandoned this activity because of time and resources
constraints. I am suggesting here that small, focused research projects may be possible if
students are supported in asking research questions early in the unit, given resources
targeted to their questions, and enveloped within a supportive community of inquiry to
share resources, talk through ideas, and provide encouragement. Specifically, I would
hope to create such a community by having students playing as the same civilizations
begin sharing experiences, information, and resources early in the unit and then assist
one another through the completion of the unit. Another possibility would be to have
students work in groups, although my sense is that most students’ game play is so unique
as to warrant individualized projects.
Days 16-18: Synthesizing Findings and Meaning Making within Communities of Inquiry
In the MEDIA case, some of the most fruitful learning opportunities occurred as
students such as Chris, Tony, or Kent observed one another’s games and deduced
patterns about history, such as that isolated civilizations developed technological
discoveries more slowly than civilizations connected in trade networks. These students
used others’ as data sources, examining how patterns arose across games. At times during
these discussions, students developed arguments about the growth and evolution of
civilizations; one approach to fostering deeper learning about world history would be to
have students who played as similar civilizations compare experiences and generate
conclusions about their particular civilization which could be then shared as peers.
Similar to the presentation discussions in the camp case, students could then compare
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findings across civilizations within a knowledge building environment (Scardamalia &
Bereiter,1994).
One goal of this activity would be to have students ground their historical
arguments in the particulars of civilizations, culling data from historical texts, primary
documents, maps, film, and their game play. In the Camp case, most of students’
interpretations were grounded in game play, previous understandings, or just-in-time
lectures. The more that historical texts could mediate game play, the more historically
grounded these interpretations would be. Finally, a critical goal of this activity would be
to have students critique Civilization III as a materialist representation of history.
Students in the camp case quickly and naturally criticized Civilization III as a materialist
reading of history; ensuring that other students had ample time to consider the inherent
simulation biases of Civilization III is desirable as well. Indeed, learning from
Civilization III as a simulated history appears to have some value in terms of introducing
students to background concepts, expanding their vocabulary, and helping them deduce
patterns across history. My hope is that through these discussion and research activities
students will also learn to build and critique historical arguments synthesizing data across
a variety of sources.
Conclusions
In this section I have proposed a number of findings and curricular changes to my
initial guesses of what kind of curriculum would be successful in supporting learning
world history in these contexts. Much of these findings emanate from students’ resistance
to appropriating Civilization III as a tool for studying history, unexpected difficulties in
learning Civilization III due to its complexity, and time constraints in trying to learn such
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a complex game while also engaging in other academic practices. Consistent with the
initial curricular models, the social practices surrounding game play seem to be as critical
to learning as the game itself; however, examining these cases shows that leveraging the
kinds of knowledge sharing and critique that arises naturally through informal gaming
communities may be more productive than trying to layer extra activities over an already
complex instructional process. A lot of these suggested revisions are about dealing with
the unexpected complexities of bringing a game into classroom contexts.
Many of these unexpected complexities arose from the particulars of this
environment, where students resisted externally mandated activities, were reluctant to do
outside readings, and unable to do homework assignments. Being able to send home even
short, simple reading assignments or map making activities would change things
considerably. Perhaps most importantly, having even a few hours of time to play
Civilization III outside of school would have been immensely helpful. Indeed, on the few
days where students did start playing Civilization III after school, there were tremendous
gains in students’ confidence and skills with the program. My hope is that this model can
inform the design of other game-based learning environments, but that in future studies,
researchers will examine the use of the game (and other games) in more contexts and
develop a variety of instructional models using games to support learning.
Days
1-3
Game Play
Facilitate appropriation of game
Activities
Discussion activities designed to make
connections between world history and game
play more apparent.
4-7
Master game basics; go over
common “failure points;”
Encourage formation of informal game
groups; Encourage semi-structured discussion
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8-11
Fostering purposeful game play
& communities of inquiry
Consult maps, timelines; discussions that
aggregate students’ experiences; geography
and history as tools.
12-15
Recursive play and examining
Civilization as a simulation
Examine outcome of simulations, compare to
history, create presentations
16-18
Finish games
Discuss presentations, aggregate findings
across games
Table 7.1 Suggested Curricular Outline for Civilization III
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Chapter VIII: Implications
In the past few years, a number of game-based learning initiatives have sprung up,
ranging from the Serious Games initiative sponsored by Woodrow Wilson, The Microsoft
MIT iCampus Games-to-Teach Project, to more recently, Stanford’s Gaming X
workshop. It is almost taken for granted that games are engaging to players and will
appeal to a generation of students raised in a fast-paced, changing media environment
(Prensky, 2001). At the same time, examining gaming trends in greater depth indicates
that there is wide variation in amount that youngsters game, the types of games they play,
and the reasons they are attracted to games (c.f. Squire, 2001). Given that game players
identify with particular games and genres – to the point where many players play one or
two games exclusively – it is not at all clear how any one game would engage an entire
class, school, or generation of players. Finally, in the US and indeed in most countries,
gaming culture has often arisen as a sub-culture and how these artifacts can be ported into
educational environments or how these design features “port” into educational products is
not a given.
A goal of this dissertation was to examine some of the issues in using complex,
commercial-quality gaming software in classrooms to inform the design of nextgeneration educational games, as well as explore some theoretical models for
understanding the design and enactment of game-based learning environments. This
chapter explores the implications of this study for these issues.
Schools have long had an uneasy relationship with popular culture (Jenkins,
Squire & Tan, in press). Although television and film are occasionally brought into
classrooms, artifacts of popular culture are often looked down upon, if not held in scorn
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for their commercialism, prurient content, or social values (Jenkins, 2003). Video games
are no different. In fact, throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s the bulk of the discourse
around games and education focused on how games constrained the play of children,
encouraged anti-social behavior, promoted questionable gender roles, or reinforced
violent behavior (e.g. Provenzo, 1992). Although a few educational psychologists and
technologists were intrigued by games motivational capacity, prevailing attitudes might
best be characterized as suspicious toward games.
Bringing into classrooms elements of popular culture, which have been marked by
cultural critics as cultural pollution and have become associated with anti-establishment
values may feel like disingenuous to some, something akin to teaching mathematics with
punk rock. Indeed, formal schooling and video game culture are very different activity
systems with contradictory values, discourses, and social norms. As Jim Gee (2003)
describes in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, gaming
is a complex social practice where computer and video game players routinely engage in
complex thinking, the kinds of thinking that most educators want but cannot get students
to do in school. As I will argue in this chapter, simply bringing games into school also
does not ensure that students will engage in the robust kinds of practices that are typical
for many dedicated gamers.
Managing Multiple Modes of Engagement
In these two cases, engagement, goal-formation, identity and learning were all
entangled, dynamic concepts that shifted in response to the affordances of Civilization III,
social groupings, and the superstructure of the classroom. Within the engagement and
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motivation literature, game play is frequently (and somewhat usefully) boiled down to a
handful of variables, namely challenge, fantasy (or context), control, and curiosity.
Others might add the social contexts of collaboration and communication (Malone &
Lepper, 1985) ; or discuss the importance of how games maintain a dynamic tension
between challenge and skills. All of these factors were at play in this case, although I
would like to argue that how these goals formed and evolved and related to learning were
much more important in describing learning than purely the presence or absence of
particular variables. This section explores intersections between engagement and learning
and their implications for the design of educational games, arguing that games that need
to appeal to a broad market, such as educational games, might benefit by appealing to
multiple game tastes.
Game play provided some students who were failing in school but successful in
gaming (i.e. Dwayne) opportunities to excel academically in socially-sanctioned ways
without giving up their personal values and identity. Most students in these cases said
that they found school-based history boring, although once the unit got underway, it was
clear that they found some aspects of history interesting, whether it be historical struggles
between China and Japan or the history of colonization viewed from native perspectives.
Learning through Civilization III gave them ways to explore ideas counter to common
myths in American history, as they explored history from the point of view of Egyptian,
Native American, or sub-Saharan African civilizations. Many of these students were
resistant to authority and dominant state-sanctioned narratives, and learning through
playing Civilization III gave them ways to explore history without necessarily giving up
power to an instructor or state-sanctioned narratives. In an age of political contestation
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about world history curriculum, Civilization III is an interesting tool because it affords
multiple paths of entry and significant opportunities for student expression through
enacting history.
Good games afford multiple forms of play and are playable many different ways,
allowing them to be adopted by multiple game tastes. Students each played Civilization
III differently, with modes of play varying from student to student and across time. The
goals that students formed include replaying (or changing) history, socializing with other
students, exploring the globe, building a strong economy, building a dominant
civilization, creating an efficient civilization, caring for peoples, meeting other
civilizations, competing to see who could last the longest, or simply winning the game.
These goals map loosely to game designer Richard Bartle’s four player types in MUDs:
achievers (building civilization, economy, winning the game), explorers (exploring the
globe, replaying history), socializers (social players, caring for others), and player killers
(making it the longest, first to win the game). Players whose primary interest was in
caring for other peoples mapped less closely to typical models of engagement (i.e.
Lepper), suggest that altruism, or caring for others may be another aspect of motivation
(See also Barab in press). Similarly, the act of building could be thought of as a fifth
category, a practice much more creative than simply “achievement.” Further, this model
does not account for some of the simplest pleasures of game play, such as seeing other
civilizations’ clothing or humor. Students found these little touches compelling, and it is
critical that educators and designers not overlook the importance of humor, style, and
aesthetics in understanding why games are engaging.
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Social and aesthetic factors including playing with other students, caring for
citizens, meeting other civilizations, and comparing clothing were game factors that
tended to attract girls to Civilization. Too often, game designers argue that girls are not
gamers because technology-enhanced toys are boys’ toys, girls are not into competition,
or games that appeal to girls (i.e. The Sims) are not “real games”. In these cases, we saw
many girls show many different relationships to games. Some were initially turned off
and became intrigued by the game; others never found anything in the game engaging. In
game representations, including the lack of female characters (i.e. settlers) bothered some
girls. At the same time, others enjoyed female characters such as Joan of Arc. One of the
more interesting findings was that the girl game players picked up on subtle clothing and
fashion cues, which represented success. Other games might leverage these kinds of
different play styles and tastes, encoding success not only through statistics, armies, or
powerful buildings, but through fashion, clothing, or powers to affect interpersonal
relationships. Anecdotal evidence from social games suggest that such multiple modes of
representation appeal to boys and girls alike, as anyone who has watched Ultima Online
players pay a premium for a specifically-colored pair of pants with no functional game
value will attest.
The most important point in understanding how games engage players in
educational environments may be that good games engage players in multiple ways and
the interplay between these different forms create dynamic learning opportunities.
Different play styles and tastes enriched classroom conversations, often leading to
discussions that produce important “taken-as-shared” meanings; for example, when
Dwayne, who might be profiled as a competitor / explorer was quite ruthless in his
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negotiations with other civilizations, while Tony, an explorer / achiever had compassion
for other civilizations and wrangled with decisions about whether to assimilate them into
his civilization. Discussions between different player types drove them to articulate and
defend different strategies, even rethinking their orientation to the game as when Marvin,
a builder / explorer, implored Joey to rethink waging war. Bartle (1999) argues that it is
the intersection among player types that makes MUDs compelling play spaces. It is not
only that multi-player games are interesting social, exploration, achievement, or
competitive spaces, but that interactions of these types creates dynamic play
opportunities. Bartle maps out these relationships extensively; educational game
designers might map out the multiple ways that games engage players and examine how
they recruit players into articulating different points of view, encouraging players to take
up differing view points for explicitly educational purposes.17
One way to enhance the pedagogical effectiveness of game-based learning
environments would be to create more pairings of different player types in order to help
knowledge spread through the environment more quickly, help players confront areas of
weakness in their understandings (in the game and in history), and support the formation
of knowledge building communities. One can imagine the explorers functioning as
“classroom geographers”, sharing knowledge about global resources and the affordances
of physical geography with other players. Competitors might research historical cases
such as the causes of World War I. Core to this logic is a belief that learning is most
effective in game-based learning contexts when it functions as a tool for solving
interesting dilemmas. Different students bring different tools to this enterprise. Through
17
One example of such pairing is how explorers go out and find information, and then socializers disseminate it
throughout the game playing community. Elsewhere, Eric Klopfer and I have begun mapping these kinds of dynamic
relations in scientific role playing games (Klopfer & Squire, 2003).
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grouping and pairings instructors may be able to seed productive conversations where
students argue for different theories of history. In these cases, we saw students adopting
and defending different interpretations of game events, which could be connected to
different positions on history. Finding avenues for students to articulate these views, or
perhaps even exploring games with contrasting underlying assumptions may be an
effective way for introducing students to historiographical issues. Students in the Media
cases began to engage in this kind of talk, constructing arguments about the game as an
authored text with inherent biases.
This argument for leveraging different player types draws from limited groups of
students playing in very specific contexts. Different cases in different contexts (perhaps
using different games) might reveal different goals and different practices. The
affordances of Civilization III suggest that there will be consistencies across contexts, and
further studies of Civilization III players might reveal such consistencies. Further study is
needed in order to understand students’ goals and intentions in game-based learning
environments, how these goals are fostered and developed, how they relate to learning,
and how they relate to learning, performance and identities across contexts. If anything,
these cases reinforce that the “motivating appeal” of games is anything but uniform, but
rather malleable and contextual.
As such, game play is a very complex social practice, one that extends far beyond
a simple computer-human interaction. Too often, we take a player and the game as a unit
of analysis, overlooking the schoolyard talk, internet-based discussion, outside
consultation, and mediating cultural factors that circumscribe game practices. For
educators, this means that simply designing game structures without attending to how
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gaming is socially situated will likely prove ineffective. In these cases, Civilization III
was appropriated differently across each context. Media studies students did not shy
away from adopting strategies of conquest or global domination, whereas the YWCA
class played in a much more subdued, school-like manner. Notably, the teacher /
researchers attempted to seed several game playing strategies, such as becoming a
democracy or replaying history. At times these goals appealed to students, particularly
when they were consistent with their interests and identities; other times students rejected
them, particularly when they already developed gaming goals.
Playing Civilization III recruited a range of practices, including competitive
practices, collaboration, outside research, and using the game as a simulation for playing
out power fantasies and understanding history. This power of games such as Civilization
III to inspire sharing, criticism, knowledge seeking, and social relationships maybe its
most important feature as an educational tool; games such as Civilization III are so
complex that they are not easily mastered by any one person. Even broadly accessible
games such as Zelda are purported to be designed so that they are unmasterable by one
person in order to foster game talk. Educators designing problem-based, case-based or
other kinds of challenge-based learning environments can learn from game design
practices that inspire different forms of play and then rely on social networks to spread
knowledge among players. In each of these cases, local divisions of labors did relatively
little to encourage or inhibit such knowledge flows. Having students responsible for joint
presentations that glean information from multiple games might be a way to better
encourage collaboration and knowledge building.
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Knowledge as Tools, Interpreting Game Play,
Civilization III has many unique properties as an instructional tool (See Chapter
III). In regards to world history, the game allows players to investigate patterns of change
across vast dimensions – from decades to thousand year time frames, from local
geography to continent to “western” or “eastern” civilization to the entire globe, and from
governments to global patterns of human activity. Critically, learning through Civilization
III is a non-narrative based activity. Students learn concepts by playing with them and
observing patterns that emerge from rule sets and initial conditions. The most intriguing
aspect of learning through playing Civilization III may be the way it reframes what it
means to study history. By portraying history as an emergent process arising from
intersecting systems rather than post-hoc description presented through the conventions
of narrative, Civilization III may change the way students think about history. Rather than
construing history as the rote memorization of dates, names, and facts, history
simulations provide students a window into the inter-relationships among phenomena that
span several disciplines (e.g., geography, politics, history) at once yet combine into a
pattern of complex causation.
Game-based learning environments share a good deal in common with problembased learning, anchored instruction, and goal-based scenarios in that knowledge is
mobilized for action. Game-based environments are unique in that knowledge is
developed for action in a very specific domain – that of the fictitious universe of games.
Indeed, the willing suspension of “normal” rules is a part of game play by definition.
How students develop knowledge in the context of game play and how this knowledge is
reconstituted in other contexts merits further study. This problem (historically considered
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the transfer problem) is a problem in any learning context (including problem-based
learning environments), although the inherently fantastical nature of game environments
may create extra obstacles for students in mobilizing and using knowledge across a
diverse range of situations.
Interviews with students showed that students had complex ways of reading their
game play off of history and that they framed the game as a simulation, using the game as
one of many ways of interpreting specific historical events. Dan, who was among the
players most committed to using the game to “replay” history became more familiar with
the game concepts and was able to retell a few key facts he learned through the game,
such as the importance of horses in history. Ultimately, though, the game only partially
mediated Dan’s thinking about historical reasons for colonization, as he considered
colonization a cultural issue as well as a materialist one. That playing Civilization III only
partially affected Dan’s conception of colonization may also be encouraging to alarmists
concerned that games are rewiring kids’ brains; these experiences would suggest that no
single gaming experience is going to completely change students thinking. Dan had
complex methods for reading Civilization III as a simulation, and he carefully considered
where it was useful in understanding historical thinking and where it was not.
Interestingly, the one student whose game play seemed to have a profound impact
on his understanding of world history was Marvin, whose game “taught him that war
does not pay.” Marvin drew many connections between the game, history, and politics,
particularly in regards to war. After playing Civilization III, Marvin thought that nations
holding geopolitical power such as the United States had a moral responsibility to ensure
world peace. No doubt, a belief as complex and politically charged as this one will
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continue to undergo transformation as Marvin grows. How these “lessons” from the game
evolve with Marvin is worth further study. Seeing students play Civilization III to explore
alternative histories, and then develop very different ideas about history, suggests that
students have complex ways of reading games, relating game events to personal
experiences, politics, previous beliefs, and assumptions about the accuracy of the game
model itself. As more and more students grow up playing games such as Rise of Nations,
Civilization III, or Age of Empires, it is important to examine how students make such
interpretations and what are the long term implications of these interpretations.
Minimally, they may be remediating how students think about history, as
suggested by Tony’s comment that “no matter how history ends up it plays by the same
set of rules.” Indeed, the rule-based nature of simulations violates some cherished ideas
for many historians. The notion of knowledge as a conceptual tool, while increasingly
accepted in the sciences, seems to be less common among historians, where preserving
the complexity of historical narratives and caution about overextending lessons from one
situation to another are the norm. Packaging and presenting narratives such as the causes
of World War I into simple just-in-time lectures may reify problematic practices already
rampant in most schools, treating complex, debated ideas as settled-upon,
decontextualized narrative accounts, or oversimplifying patterns so as to “dehistoricize”
them. As Sam Wineburg argues, historians think of historical narratives in very particular
ways, looking for contested evidence, counter claims, and perhaps most importantly,
historical positionality. Historians are very concerned with identifying participants’
points-of-view and communicating historical uniqueness. Finding ways of incorporating
original documents, differing historical accounts, or multiple voices into the learning
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environment either through direct inclusion in the Civilopedia or through other activities
warrants exploration.
Such debates call into question broader questions about why we even teach
history. In the wake of the “history as myth” movement, contemporary learning scientists
typically call upon history as a worthwhile discipline because it helps contextualize
current events, helps students understand argument, and helps them identify other
perspectives in historical ways. Implicit in this discussion are arguments for both
developing skills in the symbolic manipulations of text (i.e. argumentation) and the
requisite skills for participating in a democracy (understanding others’ views, critically
evaluating positionality). Most often learning scientists advocate having students write
local histories or draw historical interpretations based on authentic documents.
While these activities are certainly valuable, there still remains a large problem
space whereby we help students such as those at the Media School develop the broad
background knowledge of concepts necessary for studying world history. Playing
Civilization III gave them another way into some of these same ideas – examining history
and politics from other points of view, understanding relationships between geographical
systems and history, and seeing how historical narratives could be tools for solving
problems. Historical thinking, as defined by Wineburg (2001) is a textually-mediated
process of interpreting original documents and historicizing events. While valuable,
historical thinking is only one way of helping students appreciate different perspectives
or historicizing current events. Evidence from these cases suggest that games such as
Civilization III at least have the potential to reach similar ends. The kinds of thinking
these students displayed may share more in common with Jared Diamond’s analyses –
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patterns of change models of history -- than with traditional historical methods, but they
seem to be valuable forms of thinking whereby history is mobilized to understand events.
Learning through Civilization III dramatically repositions the role of historical
knowledge. History, geography, or economics are tools that can be used for solving
dilemmas.
Developing Educational Games
This study examined what happened when a commercial computer game was
used as the basis for a unit on world history and may offer insights to projects and
programs developing commercial-quality games but for the explicit purposes of learning.
This section explores these ideas.
Simplifying games vs. honoring complexity
These cases remind us that Civilization III is an enormously complex game that
takes dozens, even hundreds of hours to learn and master. Learning even the basics of
Civilization took almost twenty hours for these students. This work involved learning
new vocabulary such as monotheism or monarchy, the first-order properties of the system
(river valleys produce more food), or the interaction of cultural structures and production
(i.e. the effect of temples on the growth of organized religion), all of which have value in
most world history classrooms and align to curriculum standards. Other properties of the
game system such as interface elements or specific strategies (i.e. keep two spearmen in
every city) are largely idiosyncratic to the game system and make less sense in formal
learning environments. Balancing learning the game system with reflecting on the actual
conditions of geography and history was a challenge throughout these cases.
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Jim Gee (2003) argues that part of why games are engaging is that they are
complex problem-solving environments. One of the primary reasons that Civilization III
is so engaging to so many players is that it is so complex and difficult to learn. Once the
player has learned all that there is to know about the system, some of the attraction of the
game ends. As long as there is any split between learning the game system and having
meaningful educational experiences, there may be obstacles to designing educational
games that rival their entertainment counterparts in complexity and their ability to engage
players. This finding suggests that educators need to work to make interfaces more
transparent, or perhaps to make interfaces more similar to tools and resources used in the
field so that the experience of learning the interface is one with transferability.
Custom modifications
Custom modifications are one way that educators can experiment with different
methods for making games more usable in game contexts. This study used a custom
modification constructed by the author to better simulate world history processes. Other
options would be to experiment with smaller-scale scenarios which model regions more
specifically, provide students more scaffolding through hints or pre-existing structures,
introduce concepts more gradually, or limit the number of factors students have to
consider at any one time. The possibilities that custom modifications provide are almost
endless; in Appendix A I describe an instructional unit developed for an ancient
civilizations modification game which is still in development. Custom modifications
provide educational researchers doing design experiments wonderful opportunities to
tweak variables, share materials, and compare their impact in use. Game modifications, if
made open source and freely available to all, could easily be improved, expanded, and
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modified to meet classroom needs. One can imagine online communities of game using
teachers, such as the nascent Teacher’s Arcade (Squire, in press), providing a both a
service and a context for researching game development.
This finding also reminds educational game designers of the importance of
making game systems open and refinable. Open source programming is one model for
making games modifiable certainly with exploring, although this study shows how just
providing game modding tools can help instructional designers create educational
scenarios using more general purpose game engines. Educational game designers should
be pushing the way in this arena, creating mod tools, level design tools, and other tools
for teachers and designers to customize tools toward local contexts. If appropriating tools
means “redesigning” them for one’s own purpose, then educational software designers
need to be aware of the ways in which teachers are using and appropriating their games,
and provide tools that are not only sensitive to local needs but flexible and transparent
enough to be modified by users.
It is important to be mindful of the amount of time required to become familiar
with Civilization III in order to the game in classroom contexts (which means anticipating
both intended and unintended emergent outcomes). Given that a single game can easily
take twenty or thirty hours, building and play-testing custom scenarios is a significant
investment of time for teachers. Teachers need not only play through the customized
games, but be mindful that they will be played by other players --
which means
anticipating different ways in which they will be played and debugging features that
might confuse novice players. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a number of teachers are
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starting to build custom modifications for Civilization III, but these cases show how
teaching with Civilization III is really a hobby unto itself.
Designing Game-Based Learning Environments
Just-in-Time Resources
If good games are difficult to learn and meaningful learning occurs through
analyzing failure, then instructional designers need to be balance the tension between
allowing students the freedom to think through game problems and providing tools that
reduce frustration and failure. Part of this design challenge means ensuring that students
have access to information to solve their problems. The design of this information is
tricky; instructional designers need to walk a line between providing information that is
useful in game play and that encourages students to think about the game as a simulation.
From a semiotic perspective, these just-in-time resources need to illuminate the semiotic
system of the game while also making connections to the world behind the simulation. In
these cases, a classic example of this tension was how to mediate students’ struggle with
managing civil unrest. Consider a few of the options available: I could explain how the
game represented citizens’ happiness and describe the rules of the simulation; I could
describe historical anecdotes of civil insurrection, and describe details of the social period
in hopes that students would derive lessons for their own games; or I could share the one
or two most obvious solutions and help students move on to explore more aspects of the
game. In these cases, each strategy was appropriate at different times, and a primary
instructor practice was managing how each of these just-in-time resources was deployed.
As the primary tool for supporting students’ game play, I had considerable flexibility and
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power in managing how students’ play was mediated by outside information; at the same
time, this places a lot of burden on the teacher and requires a deep knowledge of the
game, subject matter, and places where the two intersect.
One obvious solution is to provide more tools and resources for players and
instructors. In these cases, the Civilopedia and tutorials alone were insufficient tools for
mediating game play for these students, both in terms of teaching them the game and in
drawing connections to world history. The Civilopedia was of little help for students in
recovering from failure states, and when something went wrong in the game, such as a
city falling into disarray, the Civilopedia was of little help for debugging play and
devising new strategies. The Civilopedia is written at about an eighth grade level, and the
way that the Civilopedia is organized may have also impeded its appropriation. Because
the information is arranged by topics (like an Encyclopedia), as opposed to by problem
(like a F.A.Q), students did not immediately perceive it as useful to their ends. Once
students were committed to learning the game and engaged in the unit, the Civilopedia
became a valuable resource, even though it was written at a level more advanced than
most could read. Dedicated gamers enjoyed just browsing the Civilopedia and reading
about concepts. Perhaps not surprisingly, there was relatively little evidence of reading
the Civilopedia in the Media case, where time was scarce, and much more in the camp
cases where reading the Civilopedia was a nice break from game play.
One way to ease the burden of the teacher would be to create learning aids for
common problems. In these cases, these problems were, in order of problem encountered
(1) How do I defend my cities against barbarians? (2) How do I avoid civil unrest? (3)
How do I create new cities? (4). A list of common problems encountered while playing
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this scenario are summarized in Table 8.1. Consistent with minimal instruction
techniques (Carroll, 1998), providing answers to these four common problems would
account for a majority of the problems and questions in the first few days and perhaps
alleviate student and teacher stress. In the YWCA case, I introduced this kind of problem
identification and problem solving exercise as class discussions, the results of which are
captured in Table 8.1. Some strategies, such as “keeping two spearmen in every city”
flowed quickly through the room (as when Marvin shared this information with Jamal)
and appeared to only add to students enjoyment of the game and learning from the game.
These cases suggest that managing students’ questions and failures may be particularly
important early in the unit, as students orient to the game and adjust to the feelings of
frustration and the failures common to game play.
Table 8.1: Game Play Issues and Solutions
Increasing happiness





Temples
Coliseums
Entertainers
Luxury items
Connecting cities with roads
How do you increase defense?


Keep two defense in every city
Explain attack / defense / movement
Natural resources / and land bonuses.




Incense
Dye
Furs
Trading natural resources
How do I build stuff faster?


Build Mines
Choose the terrain carefully (hills)
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Ultimately, how to support students in learning games and managing success and
failure may be less an issue of particular instructional resources and more one of learning
culture. It is worth reiterating the contradiction between predominant approaches to
curriculum and instruction where information is broken down to easily processed chunks
of information and “failure” is to be avoided, and game-based learning environments,
where problem spaces are complex, information must be gathered from disparate sources,
and failure is the norm. Learning in game-based learning units means resetting
expectations so that problem spaces are way too large to be fully understood, information
must be gleaned from multiple sources (particularly other games), and failure is accepted,
even valued. Learning, as it predominantly occurs in game playing communities is driven
by goals (which are often going unmet due to failure) and is iterative, multi-modal, and
ongoing. In most schooling environments, learning is about mastering a pre-determined
body of knowledge for the purposes of gaining “exchange value,” that is, learning is in
order to earn a degree, credential, or to gain increased access of some type. These cases
showed the difficulty of porting a gaming culture of learning (which also happens to be
closer to how learning occurs outside of schools) into schools. Games are complex
artifacts, and learning through them looks very different than learning in most school
settings.
Instructor practices in game-based learning environments.
In each case contradictions emerged between activity systems, namely, playing
(or learning to play) Civilization III for enjoyment vs. using Civilization III to learn social
studies. These tensions rendered many of my curriculum ideas impractical. Given the
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steep learning curve, maximizing students’ interactions with Civilization III was
necessary. This left relatively little time for in class research or discussion. Further, once
students did become engaged in the game, the seductiveness of playing Civilization III as
an object of activity superceded other activities I introduced. More successful were
activities where students used their games as data to ask questions, reflected on their
game play experiences, and were able to share their game experiences. This last point –
that students took great pride in their games and saw value in using them as a point of
exploration -- suggests ways that the game can be used to spark discussion and debate.
Mediating game play by introducing conceptual tools. Students found most prepackaged lectures irrelevant. Comments that were not made in direct response to students
questions and game goals generally failed to become tools for understanding their play.
My lectures were most effective when they introduced information that helped students
play their games, such as drawing a map on the board to clarify the starting points of
civilizations, discussing strategies for playing in North America or comparing the growth
of civilizations across continents. Identifying where students lack knowledge necessary to
play the game and then organizing activities that employ knowledge of history or
geography to inform game play seems to be the most effective role of the instructor in
these environments. Tony agreed with this assertion himself, saying, “While you play the
game the teacher can tell you about things that happened in real life. Then, you use it to
take advantage in the game.” Learning was most powerful when students repackaged
these “real life” things into conceptual tools for game play, such as when students used
knowledge of geography to plan voyages or locate luxuries, or when students used
examples from history to interpret events in their games.
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In both cases, most offline activities such as discussion of readings or discussions
of history also failed to enter the activity system, although activities such as the
classroom vote on civilizations suggests how offline activities might feed into game play
more elegantly. The classroom vote on civilizations encouraged students to articulate and
discuss their beliefs and knowledge about civilizations to enhance game play. One can
imagine other similar assignments; one the second day of the unit for example, students
might locate their civilizations on a map, research the history of their civilization and
report what luxuries were important during that period. Game play for these students was
a creative act, one which they enjoyed reflecting on and documenting for others, as when
students took special pride in comparing their games to history or identifying places
where the game was unrealistic. These activities leveraged students deep knowledge of
the particulars of their game, including a systemic awareness of how and why events
unfolded and channeled them toward making connections with academic content. This
study is but a beginning in understanding how offline activities can supplement game
play, but it suggests that activities that leverage students’ investment in their games is a
good starting point in designing curriculum.
More creative offline activities that involve students doing outside research,
consulting maps, or critiquing games in order to directly impact game play seem to be the
most effective means for encouraging reflection in action while also respecting the power
of games as seductive objects and avoiding contradictions between academic learning
practices and game play practices. Of course, other studies of other games in other
academic contexts might find that students have more of an interest in academic study, a
higher tolerance for engaging in activities that do not immediately impact their games, or
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greater ability to build connections between academic understandings in school. These
students’ disinterest – even despise for the formal study of history and anti-authoritarian
postures -- color these cases and raise caution about -generalizing from these findings.
Nevertheless, integrating curricular activities directly with gaming has certain elegance.
Supporting reflection within naturally – occurring game communities. A second
strategy for teachers is to leverage the game communities that games seem to naturally
spawn. Across both cases students showed a desire to observe other games, learn from
their friends, share stories, and engage in friendly competitions. From an educator’s
perspective, some of the most intriguing and productive talk arose naturally from game
play, as when students sought justification for imperialist practices, satirically adopted
the language of cultural imperialism, or made connections between their games and the
Cold War. Teachers might benefit by supporting and encouraging these kinds of
discussions and more explicitly building connections between students’ talk and
historical events. Such instructional strategies may be difficult for some teachers as they
are completely emergent from game play, making them impossible to plan for. 18 The
emergent nature of game play is also part of what makes gaming and simulation so
interesting for both students and teachers, and as instructional designers, we need to be
careful not to over prescribe and overplan activities so as to kill the emergent learning
that is part of the power of this approach.
Students’ interest in other games may be used as a way for broadening students’
exposure to different aspects of the game. Just as Chris and Tony began watching games
to anticipate challenges they face in their own game, other students might be paired in
18
I recognize that after teaching several units with similar populations of students, patterns of play will most likely
emerge, reducing some of the variability of this instructional approach.
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order to create similar conversations and knowledge. Pairing up students to compare
games leverages both their interest in sharing games and the social power of gaming in
the service of analysis and reflection. These activities also encourage students to discern
patterns across games, which is one more inroad toward helping them reflect on their
games as simulations as well as engaging experiences. Placing students in roles where
they are helping each other understand their games and examining multiple results from
simulations mimics both the ways that researchers examine simulations and the ways that
gamers learn from one another. Further study of game play communities may result in
other useful strategies for facilitating learning in both gaming and non-gaming
experiences.
Final Thoughts
As games enter their way into schools, undoubtedly there will be even more fear
and fascination with how they remediate students’ thinking. Mention using games for
learning among people – both educators and the lay public -- and the kinds of answers
one hears are striking. Common questions include: Are games good for all learners? How
do we really know they are learning from games? Aren’t games biased? or Do we really
want kids learning from games instead of books (or people)? These questions reveal more
about the uncertainty and uneasiness that many people have with games than anything
particular to the medium; one can easily imagine similar questions being asked of books;
in fact, most of them were. The fact is that games are not good for all learners, we do not
know exactly what people learn from playing games, games are in fact biased, and no one
really expects that games will replace other media. Rather, the interesting questions are in
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understanding how learners orient to games, who they seem to work for and in what
situations, how learners come to understand their bias, and how games relate to other
media in instruction.
In this dissertation, I have gathered data pertaining to these questions and offered
some preliminary answers. Most striking among these answers is that in these cases
games (and simulations) seem to be a very disruptive medium. Students who had failed
history found ways of constructing and enacting identities with games. Games recruited
some learners while repelling others. Static textual resources became tools for action and
concepts were tools for solving problems. Power relations were negotiated as gaming
practices emerged through relations among students’ goals, the games’ affordances, and
the broader social context. These patterns are not entirely new and not entirely the
province of games; researchers examining project-based, modeling, and other
constructivist learning environments have made similar observations.
One way to get at these issues is to invite students into this inquiry alongside
research communities. Encouraging students to consider how they learned through games
and how this differed from other forms of learning produced interesting conversations.
Students like Tony identified that games “forced” him to learn history, and that history
became a tool for game play. Students themselves had sophisticated ways of reading
games, as most students detected many sources of bias in the game, clearly understood
ways in which the game was unrealistic, and had intuitions regarding kinds of problems
the game as a simulation was good for answering and which ones it brought little to bear
on. Talking with these students about their experiences also helped point the way for how
discussions, timelines, and other resources could be brought into play. Students have very
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sophisticated ways of interacting with and understanding games as a medium, and
teachers and researchers alike can learn a lot from the skills they have developed growing
up with gaming.
At the same time, students also seemed blind to some of the ways in which
learning through Civilization III was different than through other media. When Tony said,
“No matter how history plays out in this game, it’s all based on the same rules – kind of
like in real life,” no one in the class (other than me) blinked. The idea that the world may
be governed by a few simple set of rules may be taking hold in science (i.e. Wolfram,
2002), but it is hardly well accepted, particularly in history. Whether it is growing up
interacting with rule-based systems, an uncritical accepting of Tony comment, or
experiences in this unit that caused such a comment to be so easily agreed upon, it is
important to note this kind of understanding emerged from a game-based learning
environment. If such an understanding is more than an anomaly, then perhaps Marshall
McLuhan is right and the medium itself is the message here.
Meeting these students and learning from their game play suggests the importance
of talking with students about how media fits into their lives. In the beginning of the
twenty-first century, educators face a number of importance choices, one of which is how
do we want schools to relate to media. Will we shut the doors and lock out emerging
media, preserving the school as a pantheon for the technologies of generations gone-by,
or do we want to embrace students’ worlds and enlist the media that speak to them, cocreating learning environments that engage their experiences and identities? Do we
expect students to appropriate only the worlds of orality and print (and possibly film and
television, media over a hundred years old), when increasingly they encounter worlds
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such as Civilization III in their lives outside of school? Do we expect students to be
satisfied with only the experiences of listening to lectures and reading books, and on the
odd occasion doing projects or discussing ideas, when outside of school, they can
negotiate meanings in communities they help define, lead civilizations and build whole
virtual worlds?
These questions are not so much about games per se, but more about how schools
relate to society. In the past few years, our response to these issues has been (for the most
part) to take students who see history as boring and school as irrelevant to their lives as
simply “unmotivated” to learn 19 and/or to increase accountability of those teachers
charged with the unenviable task of marching a classroom of thirty such students through
a seemingly never-ending list of externally-mandated standards. Like most of the
educational research community, I am not convinced we have a found solution to the
issues facing schools right now. This study proposed games as one possible solution to
the problem of engaging students in learning world history, and explored what happened
when Civilization III was brought into a few formal learning environments. Ultimately,
this question of how to engage students was not answered by technology or media per se,
but through listening to students, understanding their experiences, and honoring their
identities in constructing curriculum. Civilization III, once appropriated by students for
the purposes of learning, exhibit unique affordances as an instructional tool, but the social
context surrounding the game proved to be as important as the game itself in engaging
students and promoting learning.
19
Or perhaps as having disorders (i.e. Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder).
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