MediaRights: News: Games for Change: Serious Fun

  13 Responses to “MediaRights: News: Games for Change: Serious Fun”

1. Prokofy Neva says:

   July 22, 2006 at 12:42 pm

   Raph, I’m interested that you used the word “reductionist”. That’s exactly it. TV is reductionist, too. Radio is not reductionist but…I’m trying to think of the word: catalytic, transformative, instigatory…You have only to think of the radio hoax of 1935 with the War of the Worlds or the radio incitement to genocide in Rwanda, later tried as a war crime in the international tribunal — to see what I mean.

   Online games seem to me to be part reductionist but part that other thing, instigatory. And maybe that’s why they pose a brand-new startling and sometimes worrisome challenge. In reflecting how social movements for change want you to “take action,” the author says, “While playing a game you are perpetually “taking action”.

   Well…except, to point out the obvious, you are acting upon pixelated NPCs or other avatars or objects in a virtual space, and not having any action correlating in the real world — except perhaps after long periods, your eyes get tired, your ass gets fatter, whatever. And perhaps your soul is diminished. Or maybe not. Maybe it enriches the soul, and this has to be tested.

   My problem with the games for change gang is that many are on the hard left, consciously or unconsciously, and already subscribe to reductivist ideologies with simplistic slogans and rituals. If only we can get rid of Bush, everything will be fine. If only we can have world peace, the world will be a better place. So they grab on to serious games as things to use to launch their same reductivist ideologies with their simplistic actions. Let’s have a game where everybody gets rid of Bush. Lets have a game where we make Israelis and Palestinians get along. They presume that the only obstacle to their reductivist recipes is just reductivism in another direction, that therefore could be easily reversed, like “Oh, if only we can get Americans to realize the U.S. shouldn’t be greedy and have evil capitalists and Bush, then they will wise up and elect another president who is nicer” or “if only we can get Israelis and Palestinians to realize that the other is human and deserves a chance to live, they’ll stop hating each other.” They’ll make up a game about water as if water is a complex management problem or a problem of scarcity, when it’s more about kleptocratic oppressive African tyrannical governments.

   It’s the underlying reductivism of the ideologies, and their associated memes, and their easily-incited simplistic emotions, that then make these ideologues grab for the simplistic and reductivist games. THAT is the problem, not the games– you think the games have to be fun for this to work; I think the ideologies have to get a lot more fun, too.

   Games and virtual worlds of the more open-ended kind might well be used for social change. They could be used for social change of the evil kind where more totalitarian control is placed over people, and they are influenced more for various political or economic agendas. Or they might be used for social change of a better kind that liberates and empowers and educates people and they become better.

   The heart of this problem will always be the reductivism inherent in those who want to find facile ways to influence or force their fellow man to do something he isn’t already doing. They don’t want to convince or persuade, they want to either bludgeon, or seduce, or fake out, or lead into, or coerce. They want to *use* something that’s popular and fun to *make people do something they aren’t already doing.*

   Why? Because they, tiny sectarian clique that they are, have decided they need to do so with their particular little agenda *shrugs*. So why should we hand over the power to influence people for “social change” when we didn’t elect them? When they don’t persuade us in their ordinary social movements and political parties which don’t collect enough votes in normal democratic circumstances? Why do they get a pass, or an end run, around the broader public they couldn’t persuade through “old media”. This is what perplexes me. I can only answer: they don’t.

   When I think about the extraordinary power of virtual worlds, I think, yes, I’d like that to be used for good. For people to become better communicators. To bond more fully and understand each other better. To cross frontiers and collaborate. All those good things. But then, people might have wished the same thing for LSD once, and yeesh, look at what happened to that idea…
2. Morus says:

   July 22, 2006 at 5:00 pm

   American Culture, atleast, has been on the decline for decades now. Fewer and fewer people bother to be participate in the political process. Distrust is higher than ever.

   I would certainly place making an effort to spur change over being eternally content with status quo.
3. illuminarc says:

   July 22, 2006 at 5:34 pm

   Games should be about choice. If the game is about removing Bush, then it shows a cutscene of a happy happy world, its not much of a game, and gamers see through the fiction, through the agenda. However, if the game was a Civ-style run America simulation, with the relevant choices and concequences, it would have far greater appeal and ‘serious education’ ability.

   While Koster spends his days developing extremely popular games like Star Wars Galaxies for Sony, a small but growing movement of game designers are committed to making games that explore challenges here on planet earth. And they’re just getting started.

   I would argue many games already teach us things, explores many challenges, but because they don’t blatantly push a real agenda, their effects aren’t noticed or are overlooked. SWG could teach a lot about community, human relations, economy etc.
4. Raph says:

   July 22, 2006 at 6:39 pm

   I dunno… think radio is frequently reductionist too. I think any medium can be reductionist, really — a lot depends on who is using it. TV can be revelatory in the hands of someone who has that intent.
5. Prokofy Neva says:

   July 22, 2006 at 7:27 pm

   Well, I’ve given some examples of radio being anything but reductionist, in which it incites panic and genocide. I’ve also seen radio work much better than print or TV to turn elections around, too. I’m trying to think of an example of TV being revelatory and having that kind of catalytic power. Hmm. I suppose the televising of the Supreme Soviet (parliament) in 1989. Or those municipal TV stations in Yugoslavia that broke with Milosevic. That’s more about political factions seizing TV to use as a weapon in political struggle almost. Tell me your examples. And no fair picking some dorky docudrama off a public channel, either. Ok. well pick ONE but then tell me something that was on a major network channel that changed lives and influenced society, for good or bad.
6. Michael Chui says:

   July 23, 2006 at 12:52 am

   It’s secondhand information: of course it’s reductionist.

   This talk makes me wonder, however: can we apply the Hero’s Journey to films, games, books, etc. for social change? Make a game about an intrepid young student from the suburbs being thrown into a situation where his actions directly cause social change….
7. Michael Chui says:

   July 23, 2006 at 12:53 am

   And drat me for not reading everything before I posted.

   I’ve given some examples of radio being anything but reductionist, in which it incites panic and genocide.

   Doesn’t reductionism make it more likely to cause panic and genocide? Isn’t it the other way around that stops it?
8. Prokofy Neva says:

   July 23, 2006 at 11:54 am

   Michael, it really depends on what we mean by “reductionist”.

   Television has a way of minimizing everything into the small blue box (nowadays, it can be a big wide wall screen, but still a square or rectangular box). Everything is inside the blue screen. Therefore, footage of war in Lebanon, suffering and starving in Darfur, fires in New Jersey, they are all merely on the blue screen in the blue box. The footage, even when raw and live, has a frame, from an announcer, or a bookend of commercials, or some other reductionist device. You can glance up from your TV dinner; you can look away, you might become absorbed, you might go in the other room. Some people put the TV on as a kind of “background”.

   Radio can also be that low-level background, but if you listen to it, precisely because it isn’t a picture in a box that is reduced in size or framed, it can stir the emotions, and stir the imagination. Once the imagination is stirred, the emotions might not be far behind. Imagining the war-torn people hearing the gunfire and the cries of refugees seems to act upon you more than seeing the cold footage, somehow.

   Remember the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates where Nixon was seen to have stubble and didn’t wear a blue shirt to make it appear white on TV which in those days tended to turn things blue. This was said to help lose him the elections that time.

   Then there was the experiments with the 1976 presidential campaign, where you could listen to Ford-Carter debates on radio, watch on TV, or read in the newspaper, to see who you’d think would win, depending on how they did in each medium. This is something Marshall McLuhan did in a class I took from him once. There was the concept of “cold” and “hot” medium based on the emotional impact, the apprehension by right or left brain, other subjective hippie stuff, I dunno.

   I’m happy to update these insights if you think these forms of media have so changed in 30 years that the concept of reductionist TV no longer works because of reality tv or police TV. Yet, I think in fact it’s more true than ever, so that even reality/raw tv is so commodified that it actually dulls you then to real life. This is debatable.

   Radio still compels and incites, oddly enough that’s what people use more when they are trying to run political campaigns.

   Then there was the idea that the Internet and blogs would help Howard Dean. It didn’t. So we’ll see if anybody tries that again.

   I think it’s safe to say that any medium that anyone uses for social change will be dependent not only on their agenda for social change, but on what that social change is supposed to accomplish, and then secondarily, on what that medium’s limitations or advantages are.

   If you’ve ever taken part in an email campaign, i.e. the campaign not to impeach Clinton, or a campaign to save Darfur, you’ll find that they aren’t effective. In fact I’ve found they can be spectacularly UN-effective if they anger the target of your campaign by essentially breaking down his email system and flooding his site or box. A congressional office can find it easy to ignore even 3,000 emails. 3,000 letters they pay more attention to. 3,000 phone calls live get even more attention.

   People have overwhelming, unjustified expectations of new media to “effect social change” in ways that old media didn’t, or instead of old media. f2f is still how a lot gets decided. If that wasn’t the case, people like Kofi Annan wouldn’t be flying all over the world.

   I mean, honestly, how do you think this is going to work? Some game about water scarcity will be smuggled into some fun setting like World of Warcraft. Kids clicking on stuff will get the idea that gee, they should turn off the tap while brushing their teeth. The direct connection of how that will work with making available water for people in Africa, however, isn’t clear — because it’s complex. You could presumably build a better human being, by having all these online things that they spend all day clicking on them smuggle in subliminal messages prepared by zealous g4c operatives, making people recycle, turn off the tap, turn off their computers, walk or take the bus and I dunno, not spray hairspray so they don’t put a hole in the ozone layer. The net result of that might have some marginal effect on the planet; it might not. Meanwhile, people in China, Brazil, India, and China will be busy trying to bring their societies up to the point where they can have more computers, have more disposables to save time, use more electricity, so you don’t get ahead. Those people didn’t have broadband and you didn’t get to convince them to shut off the lights that in fact they may have just waited 30 years to install in their village. And so on. There’s just an absurdity to all this that I don’t think people ever contemplate.

   I think the g4c crowd need to come clean on their political agenda first, then we can decide whether we want to play their games : )
9. Michael Chui says:

   July 23, 2006 at 7:24 pm

   This was said to help lose him the elections that time.

   Or conversely, it was said to help Kennedy win. =P Know thine medium.

   I really have no idea how anything but the first two paragraphs were a response to what I said, so I’ll just elaborate on my question.

   Reductionism, as I understand it, simplifies the situation. Like calling the Israeli-Palestine conflict “a war between Good and Evil” (never mind which is which). Thus, it makes it easier to decide (“of course I support the side of Good!”) and thus justifies the less acceptable actions of genocide. The reverse of that would be to increase the complexity by gaining perspective on the situation. To un-dehumanize the victims, so that you realize maybe they don’t deserve to die.

   Now granted, this is The Bad Version of reductionism, but that’s what I understand it to be.
10. Allen Sligar says:

    July 24, 2006 at 4:55 pm

    I think it’s safe to say that any medium that anyone uses for social change will be dependent not only on their agenda for social change, but on what that social change is supposed to accomplish, and then secondarily, on what that medium’s limitations or advantages are

    Thats mostly right

    The issue is that socially progressive games by thier nature need to be reductionist, take for example your water game. Well conservation of water is a lofty goal. How are you going to quantify all the factors that go into what does/does not happen given an action by a player? Well lets get Friedman, Chomsky, and a few Meteorologists, Thermogeologists, BLM, Farmers and the Sierra club president together, sometime in 2035 they should come up with an agreed upon basic game mechanic. Im overexadurating of course….anyhow I think PN is correct on many points.

    BTW, the exact ratio (by which your congressman quantifies constituent interest in an issue) for various email, post and live calls to your local congressman is approx as follows:
    Post: 1 letter equals 2,000 constituents of the same opinion
    Call: 1 call equals 1,000 constituents of the same opinion
    Email: 1 email equals 1 constituent of the same opinion (political email Bots!)

    There are various algorithims used to measure this and extrapolate public/constituate opinion when controlling for things like district voting patterns and participation.

    Maybe someone should do a voting game….oh wait arizona already is!!!
    http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20E15F634540C748DDDAE0894DE404482
11. Jim says:

    July 24, 2006 at 10:40 pm

    Most media — writing, radio, TV — have long non-fiction record. News, biography, history, how-to, general education, you name it, they’ve done it… and computer games haven’t. Even when computer games deal in nonfiction events, it’s only to fictionalize it. (Wargames, etc).

    Wouldn’t computer games have to shed this very long history of being entirely fictional, for anyone to take seriously what they say — enough for them to act as a medium for change on specific subjects?

    I’d still say their best bet is to teach people how to deal with one another constructively, and rely on that strength of character to help resolve social issues.
12. Lacero says:

    July 25, 2006 at 4:58 am

    Classic games are fictional by neccessity. There must be meaningful decisions for them to qualify as games, and as soon as someone makes a meaningful decision thats different to the historical one the game becomes fiction.

    I think MOGs are an exception, there’s a strong case that these are the closest games get can to real. Real people doing real things to each other, really making friends and enemies. Unfortunately it seems difficult for most people to accept them as real because they look too much like computer games..
13. Michael Chui says:

    July 25, 2006 at 8:55 am

    Most media — writing, radio, TV — have long non-fiction record. News, biography, history, how-to, general education, you name it, they’ve done it… and computer games haven’t. Even when computer games deal in nonfiction events, it’s only to fictionalize it.

    Even the fine arts, such as dancing and painting, have a non-fiction record. (Though dancing was mythologically non-fiction; its participants felt it was non-fiction, which is what matters.) And visual recording was the first use of photography and painting, etc., in the form of portraits.

    I think that’s a remarkable insight… to me, it means that games must either set the precedent or withdraw. And I’m all for setting precedents.

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