War Play

by Corey Mead

  In Macedonia’s telling, the immersive nature of video games not only adds to their believability but also increases their storytelling power, one of the elements that gives them their training edge. Emotion, he says, “is critical to learning, and one of the key aspects of eliciting emotion is being able to provide a story. It goes all the way back to Homer. Look at The Iliad and the oral tradition—that was the way history was taught. The only way to remember all these facts was you put them into a story. A story is a way for folks to be able to understand, to absorb, and to retain.”

  Part of the military’s (and Macedonia’s) original inspiration for using video games in fact stemmed from a story: Orson Scott Card’s young adult novel Ender’s Game. In the novel, the six-year-old protagonist, Andrew “Ender” Wiggins, is a student at the national military academy, where he spends his days playing what he thinks is a virtual-reality game in which he is a soldier defending the earth against alien attack. We ultimately learn, however, that the battles Ender fought weren’t simulations at all—they were instead quite real, and Ender’s skillful fighting has just saved the earth from alien invasion. Macedonia says that the book was a major influence on the military’s thinking about video games.

  Macedonia is also a devotee of UC San Diego neurologist V. S. Ramachandran’s theory that human beings consist, in essence, of their memories. What military training tries to do, Macedonia explains, is create these memories in soldiers before they ever hit the battlefield. He cites Ramachandran’s notion that human beings have a virtual-reality program in their minds. “Somebody throws a ball at you; you anticipate where that ball is going to be. Really, what you are doing is running a little simulation of the world through your head.” That is what the military tries to do with video games and simulations, he argues.

  If all this sounds a bit theoretical, Macedonia insists on the practical nature of his vision. Ask him whether the military is expecting too much from video games, and his response is an emphatic no. The real question, he says, is, “What would you do otherwise? That comes up in our company all the time: ‘Do you have an alternative?’ Usually the answer is no. Unless the military is somehow able to recruit PhDs who come out of universities and are also really buff, and who speak three languages, particularly Urdu, and have substantial experience in foreign countries. No—you are dealing with eighteen-year-olds, and you have limited amounts of time.”

  Macedonia’s ideal solution would be a fully encompassing virtual environment in which soldiers were always training. In this environment, he could have “soldiers always be[ing] part of the game . . . real people in real places interacting with real people in virtual places that are copies of the real world.” He acknowledges the bizarre nature of this concept. “It does get really weird, and really kind of becomes science fiction at a certain point. It really is Ender’s Game.” And yet to Macedonia that is just as things should be. After all, he says, “I’ve always been fascinated by what you could do with a six-year-old.”

  Literacy, Warfare, and Society

  Science-fiction fantasies aside, defense officials emphasize that the military’s use of video games is linked in a broader sense to changing notions of literacy within the services and in society as a whole. While reading and writing have long played an important role in warfare—for record-keeping, information distribution, propaganda, and maintaining archives—their value only increased during the bloody world wars of the twentieth century, as sophisticated new technologies placed greater demands on soldiers’ literacy and the bureaucracies responsible for managing armies grew exponentially larger and more complex. In the United States, the military came to depend on literacy as a critical resource for rating, sorting, classifying, and placing its soldiers. Moreover—and this is a trend that has accelerated in America’s recent wars—information itself became increasingly important as both a tool and a resource for war.

  We saw earlier that over the past century the military has exerted a powerful influence on literacy, largely by sponsoring the development of cutting-edge technologies. People then had to gain the literacy skills needed to run these technologies, which also transformed economic and social systems.

  As new technologies and duties have emerged, the definition of literacy has changed to encompass whatever skills are needed to handle them. And as the military has been quick to recognize, video games represent one of the more culturally prominent examples of a new sort of literacy. Although the press and politicians have routinely characterized video games as harmful, or simply ignored them, a growing number of education scholars argue that the various moves entailed in playing video games match up quite well with those involved in more traditional forms of literacy. They also match the skills needed to succeed in a complex, high-tech workforce, these scholars say.

  Though the notion that video gaming represents an influential new literacy and is part and parcel of the broader ascendance of digital literacy skills was controversial when it was first introduced in the early years of this century, there is now broad consensus among educational theorists that it is valid. Foremost among those connecting literacy and video games is the distinguished literacy scholar James Paul Gee, who argues that contemporary video games are not only lengthy and intricate, they require players to learn and understand complex systems of words, symbols, problems, and cues. Gee claims that we must start thinking of literacy in this broad way, instead of only as the ability to read and write, because written language today is but one of several important modes of communication; images, symbols, sounds, and movement can be equally significant. Video games, he says, are a prime medium where these elements join together.

  Constance Steinkuehler, a former senior analyst in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and a professor of education of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, shares Gee’s view and has drawn even more explicit links between gamers’ skills and established educational standards. Video games require players to understand and engage in a densely “literate space” of icons, symbols, gestures, actions, visuals, and text. As Steinkuehler notes, “If we compare what individuals do within these spaces to national reading, writing, and technology standards, it turns out that much of their activity can be seen as satisfying these standards. For example, as recommended by the National Council of Teachers of English standards, gamers ‘read a wide range of print and non-print texts’ to build an understanding of texts and of themselves; use a wide range of strategies to ‘comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts’ . . . ; ‘gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources’ . . . ; and ‘use . . . visual language to accomplish their own purposes.’”

  Of course, even in this digital age, not all teenagers are computer wizards. According to a U.S. Army Research Institute study, there exists “a diverse population of soldiers, one that has individuals with limited computer skills to individuals with programming skills.” This diversity in skills means that all digital training must be adaptable enough to train both highly skilled people and those with low skills. This reality isn’t always reflected in the media, however. By far the most common sentiment is expressed by Wired magazine’s Steve Silberman, who writes that today’s soldiers have in many ways been training for their missions “all their lives. They pound on Halo in the garrison and launch strikes on Game Boys while riding in tanks. On their days off, they pile into the multiplex to see blockbusters crafted by the same technicians of verisimilitude who will now train them how to save their buddies’ lives while blowing the enemy out of the zip code.”

  Really, it is the younger generation’s comfort with and acceptance of video games that has played a critical role in their increasingly positive reception by senior military leaders. Now that the United States has been engaged in continuous warfare for over a decade, younger personnel are also beginning to replace many of the older, more technology-averse commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Newell, the army’s product manager for air and combat tactical trainers, expl
ained the shift to me: “The thing about the military is that it doesn’t stagnate; there’s a constant generation shift. Guys who at the start of this war were colonels are now two-star or three-star generals. They were the guys that saw virtual training then, and they’re now at the senior levels. You’ve also got captains now, company commanders, who only graduated from college four years ago; they literally have grown up with Nintendo. The junior leaders have never known a world without cell phones and video games. So they’re very predisposed to being receptive to virtual training.”

  This emerging generation of leaders also understands that today’s soldiers prefer to learn by doing—as opposed to, say, sitting in a lecture hall while their instructor takes them through a PowerPoint presentation. Just as most gamers ignore instruction manuals, opting instead to explore the game for themselves, soldiers, notes the U.S. Army Research Institute, “want to learn Army digital systems the same way that they have acquired much of their non-military digital expertise: by exploring the software and equipment to solve real problems.”

  What Can Video Games Do?

  Despite the Pentagon’s heavy reliance on video games and simulations, the military is still in the beginning stages of researching games’ training and educational effectiveness. Within the services, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is the primary outfit exploring the issue in ways that extend beyond the anecdotal and informal. According to Ray Perez, program officer in the ONR’s war-fighter performance department, “We have discovered that video game players perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players. [. . .] We think that these games increase your executive control, or your ability to focus and attend to stimuli in the outside world.” Research on gaming is part of what Perez believes are the early stages of “a new science of learning” that integrates “neuroscience with developmental psychology, with cognitive science, and with artificial intelligence.”

  For the most part, academics, not military researchers, have undertaken the most serious study of whether games are effective teaching tools. Dr. Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester, for example, has found that people who play fast-paced, action-based video games have better visual attention skills than nongamers. These skills enable people to “focus on relevant visual information while suppressing irrelevant data.” According to Bavelier’s colleague Shawn Green, “At the core of these action video game-induced improvements appears to be a remarkable enhancement in the ability to flexibly and precisely control attention.” For Green, the benefits of this enhancement are clear: “Those in professions that demand ‘super-normal’ visual attention, such as fighter pilots, . . . benefit enormously from enhanced visual attention, as their performance and lives depend on their ability to react quickly and accurately to primarily visual information.”

  Overall, academic research indicates that video games have at least a short-term positive effect on both basic cognitive capabilities (processing speed, visual perception skills) and higher-order thinking strategies. A literature review concludes that video games “promote dynamic cognitive activity as a player confronts challenges to be solved and obstacles to overcome that draw upon problem-solving, reasoning, and strategizing skills.” This dynamic process results in the development of higher-order processes such as metacognition and justification. There is also evidence that continued game play over time modifies attention processes as well as perceptual and spatial skills. Intriguingly, improved visual skills are linked to fast-paced action games (such as first-person shooters) but not slower strategy games (such as SimCity). Action gamers also show improved performance in visual sensitivity, multitasking ability, and perceptual processing speed.

  Research indicates that different styles of games encourage students to adopt different cognitive strategies. Students who play linear, cause-and-effect-style games adopt a strategy of finding the quickest means to an end when completing later tasks, while those who play adventure games demonstrate the ability to think proactively and infer meaning from surrounding details. In general, gamers engage in the same kinds of complex cognitive processes emphasized in school. In this way, sophisticated video games offer experiences that are consistent with play-based educational theories developed by John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky.

  Simulation games also socialize players into specific roles, which can be a highly effective way of imparting knowledge. A MacArthur Foundation report finds that games help players “develop the situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, shared values, and ways of thinking that define shared communities.” The report specifically cites America’s Army as a successful example.

  The MacArthur Foundation—which has spent more money researching the educational benefits of video games than any other private entity—also emphasizes the importance of “new media” literacies, which it defines as “a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape.” Almost all of the competencies and skills identified by the foundation are central to playing video games, including

  Play—the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving

  Performance—the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

  Simulation—the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes

  Multitasking—the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details

  Distributed Cognition—the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

  Collective Intelligence—the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

  Judgment—the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

  Transmedia Navigation—the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.

  As John W. Rice of the Texas Center for Educational Technology points out, a critical distinction must be made between games that “import skill and drill exercises into electronic media formats” and “cognitive Virtual Interactive Environments.” The former type of game has so far dominated the educational software market. But as Rice writes, “The important distinction is that cognitive VIEs provide sufficient opportunities for complex interactions, making them suitable environments within which higher-order learning may occur.” He argues that commercial titles such as Grand Theft Auto and Civilization, as well as explicitly educational games such as America’s Army, can be considered cognitive VIEs. Among computer-based options, open-ended simulation games are viewed as having unique potential to encourage creative problem-solving and higher-order thinking. These, as it happens, are the very kinds of games the military has most actively embraced.

  The Learning Principles Behind Video Games

  Probably nobody has done more to analyze and promote the learning properties of video games than James Paul Gee, the author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and a professor of literacy studies at Arizona State University. Gee argues that good video games require players to decode complex “internal design grammars,” a process that emphasizes critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Game play, he writes, resembles experimental science in that it follows a cycle of “‘hypothesize, probe the world, get a reaction, reflect on the results, re-probe to get better results.’” Within this process, problems are ordered in such a way “that earlier ones lead to hypotheses that work well for later, harder problems.” As players strategize, explore, and take risks, they continually test, and then expand, the limits of their competence.

  In his article “Good Video Games and Good Learning,” Gee writes, “Some people think of learning in school . . . as all about learning ‘facts’ that can be repeated on a written test. Decades of research, however, have shown that students taught under such a regime, though they may be able to pass tests, canno
t actually apply their knowledge to solve problems or understand the conceptual lay of the land in the area they are learning.” Put another way, just because a student gets an A in physics doesn’t mean that she can solve a real-world problem. Schools don’t necessarily have to worry about that, but the military does. By way of contrast, video games emphasize “situated meanings,” in which everything that is learned is located within a specific context. This is the kind of knowledge that people retain long-term and can apply in actual practice—not just facts for the sake of learning facts, but ways of thinking and understanding that apply to consequential situations. For most people, practicing skills without a context is pointless. As Gee writes, “People learn and practice skills best when they see a set of related skills as a strategy to accomplish goals they want to accomplish.” As much as anything else, video games provide a powerful, motivating context for learning and practicing new skills. Because these games are interactive, players must take an active role in this learning, making them agents of knowledge, as opposed to “passive recipients.”

  Another learning principle embedded in video games relates to the fact that players must take on new identities in which they are highly invested. School, Gee writes, “is often built around the ‘content fetish,’ the idea that an academic area” is made up merely of a “list of facts or body of information that can be tested in a standardized way.” This, he says, is wrong. An academic discipline such as biology or psychology is not a body of facts but rather “the activities and ways of knowing through which such facts are generated, defended, and modified.” To learn biology, one must learn to think like a biologist—to take on that particular identity, just as players do in a video game. Similarly, one learns to be a soldier not by memorizing facts about historic battles but by learning how to operate in battle. This, Gee says, is what constitutes deep learning, as opposed to the kind of learning that helps students pass tests. Video games also promote “system thinking,” in which players must consider how their actions play out against the entire system of the game and the actions of everyone playing against them.