| Read Narrative by Sasha Barab | [ - ] |
These slides illuminate one of the power of games over less interactive forms of entertainment. More than watching or reading someone else’s story, players are positioned as first-person protagonists making ethical choices and witnessing the impact of their choices. This opportunity to have a sense of consequentiality is a real problem for many who have no opportunity in their lives for bringing about meaningful consequences. We believe that the current dominant model of schools, which positions children not as “agents of change” but as “agents to be changed,” is a major problem and is one of the most damaging outcomes of a standardized curriculum and such a rigid emphasis on test items as the dominant form of assessing school learning.
Missing Ingredient Mission presents Questers with two ethical dilemmas, also playing on the student’s curiosity to continue with the Unit. The doctor has finally found the missing ingredient in the antidote, but the Quester must go get it for him. If the Questers choose to look in the “box,” they find some ethically questionable ingredients.
I am curious about the interplay between these different ethical dilemmas; some of the decisions and consequences are more obviously troublesome than others (looking in a box that you’re not supposed to versus being faced with human body parts). Here we begin to get into the distinction between morals and values; the former often considered to have implications for someone’s safety or well-being, and the latter relating to socially sanctioned behaviors. So for example, in some cultures secrets or personal information is much more publicly shared; in some cultures it is perfectly acceptable to ask a stranger about their income, in others such a move is considered intrusive and rude. But when it gets to issues involving physical well-being, there are fewer distinctions between cultures. I wonder how these kinds of differences—between “moral” decisions versus “value” decisions, like the ones juxtaposed here—play out for students, or differ for students from different countries.
The Questers must then decide what to do with this box- return it to the doctor, or discard the package and destroy the possibility of an antidote?
The experience the children gained within Plague World made them evaluate their thinking process. With each step they had to think about the pros and cons of their choices and the effect their choices would have on the world. Their choices were based on information they learned from the various people they spoke to in Ingolstadt. As a teacher, I was very impressed with the level of engagement my students had working with Plague World. I witnessed my students reading not only for the details but also for evidence they would then use to base their personal decisions on as they progressed through the mission.
Shown to the left is a screenshot of a conversation between the Quester and a local police officer. Here, the Quester has to decide if she should lie to the officer to get access to the ingredients or break her promise to the doctor and tell the officer—the latter decision also risks not getting the necessary ingredient from the grave yard and not being able to create a cure for the plague.
When does the game break? If choosing to break one’s promise to the doctor ends the game, then how do we tell the difference between an ethical choice and the child simply making a choice (i.e., keep the promise) that seems to fit with the “logic” of the game and seeing it to the end? This is a dilemma in game based learning of this “digital story telling” type.
Game theorists talk about the "magic circle" -- the idea that within a game, actions do not carry the same consequences (and thus the same meanings) as they would in everyday life. The idea of the "magic circle" explains how we can engage in fantasies through our game play which we would find repugnant under other circumstances. The magic circle allows us to explore darker sides of ourselves, to transgress against social norms, to take risks and to flaunt expectations. This is where much of the fun of game play comes from. So, one model of games as a site of ethical education assumes that they will want to make the "right choices," the choices we think reflect the ethical norms that govern everyday life. But another model might be that they make the "wrong choices," that they try out alternative ethical systems. Is this not also a valuable form of ethical education? In either case, surely, the goal is to get them to reflect on choices and consequences. Games seem uniquely suited for this process since they encourage such a strong sense of identification and since the outcomes are so open ended. Game designer Will Wright has argued that games are the only medium which allows consumers to feel guilt for what happens in the story because they have some degree of control over the characters and their actions. Yet, all of this argues against reading the game as a simple and straight forward reflection of the young player's ethical development. We need to pull back from the fantasy of the game and talk through these ethical issues so that we can help separate out choices made in the game (or in the fantasy of a monster story) and the choices they might make if confronted by similar choices at school or home.
On the right side is a picture having to make the ethical decision to peek at the package or to simply remain ignorant of the contents and deliver them to the doctor anyway.
