Publish at April 13 2014 Updated May 07 2025
Gambling is an act of little consequence, you might think. Whether in front of a screen or around a table, playing brings nothing but pleasure and the excitement of competition. However, experts contradict this analysis, as many games have an important socio-political dimension.
Take, for example, the Civilization series of PC video games. This game series, which has been around since the mid-90s, places the player in control of a civilization that must extend its influence over the world, be it militarily, culturally, economically or diplomatically. Clearly, the strategy of hegemony is the mainspring of this game. A morally dubious goal in itself, but one that has taken an even more controversial turn. In 2008, the fourth edition of the series featured an expansion based on the European colonization of the New World. A blogger interested in video games and history, Trevor Owens, had already denounced the offensive aspect of the Civilization series and this extension, where the aim is, of course, to enslave the indigenous nations.
Being a skilled computer scientist, Owens delved into the game's code to see if it was possible to modify it so that players could instead be in command of Native American peoples. The result: yes, it would be possible, but the programmers had made sure that the natives' abilities were still far below those of the European colonizers. Whether this was really the aim of the game's designers is anyone's guess, but the software nonetheless inculcates the idea that the European settlers were superior in every way to the First Nations of the Americas. A discovery that has shown that beneath the innocent appearance of the video game lurks a political statement, whether conscious or not. This does not mean, however, that it is shared by gamers. An example which, for some, confirms the political aspect of gaming.
Many schools are uncomfortable with the idea of using games for learning, because they pride themselves on being rigorous and offering quality teaching. They should not forget the potential of seemingly playful media - video games or comics, for example - to present concepts and subjects as rigorously as a conventional textbook. And if games have a real political aspect, then there are possibilities for not only conveying moral concepts, but also and above all for discussing them, confronting them with each other, and so on.
Barnard College understood this when it created "Reacting to the Past", a role-playing game for its classes that places learners in a variety of historical contexts. For example, they will play members of the brand-new Constituent Assembly in the context of the French Revolution. Through reading, research and discussion with the teacher, they will interpret the different points of view opposing each other at the time. This will enable students to analyze the dialectics of the opposing parties, the turn of events and to form their own ideas about these great figures and moments in history.
The principle can, of course, be used in a variety of disciplines. Based on the mechanics of Reacting to the Past, Adeline Koh recently created a game dealing with the issue of positive discrimination on campus. In Trading Places, students took on the views that emerged in 2003 when the University of Michigan wanted to use positive discrimination to welcome more students from different cultural groups. At the time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this was unconstitutional. But more than 10 years later, do the students feel that the court ruled correctly on this issue, or did it hinder the university's multi-cultural development? In Trading Places, learners "play" to argue the different points of view that prevailed at the time.
Not only did the students who took part in the game learn to debate and defend a point of view, they also learned to listen to and understand each other's arguments. In fact, some of them admitted to having understood the arguments of those they initially considered to be their opponents, even to the point where they felt compelled to switch sides!
Gaming is not an innocent act. Behind the games lurks a much more important socio-political dimension than we'd like to believe. Whether it denounces or complies with what it presents, gaming transmits a message to the player. It's up to them to use their critical faculties to judge the relevance and value of what's on offer.
Illustration: Lasse Kristensen, shutterstock
References
Barnard College. Reacting to the Past. Accessed April 10, 2014. http://reacting.barnard.edu/.
Koh, Adeline. "The Political Power of Play." Hybrid Pedagogy. Last updated April 3, 2014. https://hybridpedagogy. org/political-power-of-play/
Michael Morris, Sean, Pete Rorabraugh, and Jesse Stommel. "Beyond Rigor." Hybrid Pedagogy. Last updated October 9, 2013. https://hybridpedagogy. org/beyond-rigor/
Owens, Trevor. "if (!isNative()){return false;}: De-People-ing Native Peoples in Sid Meier's Colonization." Play The Past. Last updated March1, 2012. http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2509.
Trading Races. Accessed April 10, 2014. http://tradingraces.adelinekoh.org/.
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