Introduction

A common complaint among those who teach in wired classrooms is that students often become immersed in games of MS-Solitaire or Minesweeper instead of their class work. Pew Senior Research Fellow Steve Jonesʼ recent report found, in fact, that 32% of the college students he surveyed (sample size=1,162) “admitted playing games that were not part of the instructional activities during classes” (2). Despite studentsʼ best efforts to hide their play, in-class gaming is rarely clandestine; the phenomenon is easily detectable from across the room by the “game glaze” on playersʼ faces. The intensity and ubiquity of this play, as well as the proliferation of personal computers, cell phones, PDAs and other gaming devices in college classrooms, prompted us to ask how we might use games to our pedagogical advantage. This article describes several strategies we have developed over the past several years for teaching media culture—that is, teaching students about the socio-cultural, economic and ideological elements of the mass media—with the most recent addition to the media stable, computer games.

Despite the fact that computer game development is still relatively immature, at least as an art form (cf. Rollins & Morris 261-66; Koster), games are already exceptional educational tools. They simulate, borrow from and hybridize the rich media sensorium of modern life into engaging, immersive, interactive environments. What makes the game experience unique from other mediated experiences—and thus a powerful heuristic—is its kinesthesis. Gaming requires players to use their bodies as well as their minds to help create and advance narratives by performing specific yet changeable actions. While all media prompt their audiences to think and feel, games prepare players for a future and then make them do something to enact that future: investigate a particular area, draw a weapon, jump over an obstacle, and so on. That games often impel such actions awkwardly—a clear sign of the mediumʼs nascence—is a boon for teachers because it helps make visible the mechanisms of technical, cultural, economic, and ideological representation that are normally elided in more mature media such as film, television and radio.

Though computer games have thus far developed into a predominantly visual medium, it is a medium that nonetheless relies on a variety of other elements to create meaning. These elements, or “prompts” as we will call them because they prompt players to act and react, may be ambient, mood-based or even directly connected to playersʼ kinesthetic choices. We have found that sound and interface prompts are especially useful in teaching students about media culture.

Sound Prompts

Game sound refers to every audible aspect of a game, from the tinny electronic theme of Galaga (1981) and the symphonic scoring of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), to the droplets of water echoing through the mines in Red Faction (2001) and the great humming dynamos in Half-Life (1998), to Abeʼs monkish chants in Munchʼs Oddysee (2001) and the air-slicing “whoosh” of a bloody butcher knife in Alice (2000). Game sounds dramatically enrich and vivify the visual landscapes and action sequences they accompany. Creating unique and innovative sonic environments is among the most complex and difficult tasks in game development, and game sound innovation is what becomes mass media convention. It is now commonplace for composers such as Michiko Naruke, Michael McCuistion and Bill Brown to have their game-based musical scores released on CD, performed live by major orchestras, and even excerpted for use in advertisements and casino slot machines.

Among the pedagogical opportunities listening to games afford is that in todayʼs media-driven culture, people depend on sound prompts to make everyday decisions—how to feel, what to think, and even what to do. Games expose the power of these prompts by reducing decisions to “play behaviors”; game sounds sometimes elicit expectation (e.g. when the background music is punctuated by a driving, ominous drumbeat) and other times motivate action (e.g. when the distant wail of a banshee causes a player-character to unsheathe her sword). When games are riveting, funny, scary, or thought-provoking, they inspire hour upon hour of connection between game and gamer, a connection founded largely on sound prompts. Film, television and radio too utilize sound prompts, but do so in a way that prompts reaction rather than action. By asking students to actively listen to game sound, media studies teachers can help students uncover how sounds motivate responses within gameplay, and by extension how similar techniques are used in other, less kinesthetic media. This is key to understanding the importance of sound in the construction of mass media artifacts, and thus denaturalizing the effects of sound in old and new media alike.

A variation of this pedagogical technique can be employed to help students interrogate their knowledge of how sounds “mean.” Several recent games derive their gameplay specifically from audio prompts. Rez (2001), Mad Maestro (2002), and Amplitude (2003), for example, all encourage players to integrate action (e.g. pressing button combinations on the controller, performing complex steps on a dance pad, etc.) with culturally conditioned understandings of rhythm, chord structure, and musical arrangement. When asked to play these games, students realize that although they know what a song “should” sound like, they are at a loss to explain the source of this knowledge. By structuring game play around multi-tracking, audio mixing and other elements of music creation, audio-centric games serve as interactive laboratories that familiarize students with the tools and lexicon to explain how music works theoretically as well as to inspire moods, memories, and actions.

Despite remarkable developments in computer technology and game design over the last thirty years, games are still noticeably “unrealistic.” They do not yet approach the photorealism of film and television. One of the ways game developers have sought to address this lack of “realism” is through the use of digital sound. As extremely life-like elements of an interactive world that is so obviously artificial, digital-quality game sounds stand out and are therefore readily interpretable by students as intentionally placed devices designed to elicit particular player responses. Listening to games such as Tropico (2001) or Prince of Persia (2003), both of which have distinctive and distinctively stereotyped music and linguistic accents, provides a rich opportunity for teachers and students to deconstruct the sonic bath of contemporary media culture.

Interface Prompts

Sound prompts would be largely ineffective if players were unable to respond to them. Gaming requires human/computer interaction, and game controllers, keyboards, light guns, cameras, dance pads and other interface devices facilitate that interaction. In addition to allowing input, game interfaces also prompt input through the industrial and mechanical design of game systems themselves. Gaming thus requires a form of literacy. To play, one must not only be able to interpret a gameʼs prompts, but respond to them in the game systemʼs language.

Game literacy comes at a cost, however: game developers must balance the unique elements they create against a standardized interface that allows players to learn games easily. The three major console systems—PlayStation 2 (PS2), GameCube and Xbox—have nearly identical controllers, and most PC games use a standard key map for player input. Coin-operated arcade games likewise tend to use control layouts that differ little from machine to machine, and handheld game devices (e.g., PSP, Game Boy Advance, N-Gage, Tapwave Zodiac) rarely require players to make radical readjustments in the way they interface with different games. Input variations in games are usually akin to idiomatical differences within the more or less universal language that constitutes game interface design. PS2 players can adapt to the different controllers of the Microsoft and Nintendo consoles, while players of Neverwinter Nights (2003) will similarly find themselves quickly comfortable with games such as .hack/Infection (2002) and Xenosaga (2002) despite slight interface differences. This is not to say that any game interface is inherently intuitive. Rather, once a player learns the “language” of one system, that knowledge makes it easy to adapt to another.

As a consequence of the need for game play to be unique (in order to entice players) and standard (to facilitate ease of use), players frequently become trapped by their level of interface literacy and struggle when their fluency does not match developersʼ designs. Developers, on the other hand (the most innovative ones, at least), feel similarly trapped by established interface literacy standards, standards that naturally constrain aesthetic, narrative and thematic design choices. And yet, both players and developers benefit from these standards because they prompt a range of well-established behaviors almost intuitively among practiced gamers, a phenomenon that maximizes the fluidity between real and game experiences (cf. Rouse, 401-2; Rollings and Adams, 4-8; Bates 32-33, 56). This interface literacy provides an excellent starting point for teachers interested in showing students how media culture often stimulates particular and premeditated behaviors.

There are other ways to examine interface prompts, as well. In recent years, game controllers have become noticeably active in the way they prompt player behaviors. “Force feedback” controllers, for example, give players tactile cues that something is happening in the game. As with sound, these cues can elicit expectation (e.g. the controller rumbles in Ghost Recon (2001) as tanks roll through nearby streets) or motivate action (e.g. the joystick goes slack after players pilot an A-10 into a stall in Janeʼs USAF (2000)). These kinds of kinesthetic experiences, mediated by the controller interface, prompt players in immediate ways about changes in the game environment and their role within it. Interface prompts, then, facilitate game narrativity and—when done well—heighten playersʼ sense of immersion. Here again, though, the kinesthetic prompts conveyed by “DualShock Controllers,” “Rumble Force Pads,” and “Trance Vibrators” facilitate immersive experiences only after players have developed the literacy to make sense of the prompts. The awkward stage that leads to this literacy is a nuisance to developers but can be a boon to media educators.

Interface prompts are also clearly evident in the industrial design of game system housings. The colors, shapes and logos of game consoles and peripherals reveal a great deal about players, their desires and how these desires are manufactured and marketed. Nintendoʼs Game Boy and GameCube, for example, are sold in a variety of colors designed to evoke a sense of magic, fantasy and wonder in the youth market (e.g. “Glacier,” “Flame,” etc.). Other systems are geared toward older audiences: Alienwareʼs computers come in such enigmatic colors as “Conspiracy Blue” and “Alien Green,” while the Sony PS2 and Microsoft Xbox are dressed in the matte black that appeals to image-conscious teens and young adults. These prompts are not intended to elicit gaming responses so much as consumer responses. Among the best examples of this kind of prompt is the X-Arcade controller, a massive, expensive piece of equipment that allows home gamers to play on a full-size coin-op arcade panel. This interface is specifically marketed to gamers who long to play the arcade games they grew up on in the coin-op heyday of the 1980s and early 90s. The X-Arcade controller, in other words, prompts not just play behaviors, but nostalgia, another powerful media trope that students can readily connect to such trends as feature-length movie remakes of old television shows (Starsky & Hutch; Scooby Doo; Shaft) and retro-look television programs and movies such as That ʻ70s Show and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.

Conclusion

Researchers have long recognized that games—electronic and otherwise—are at some level always educational. Dutch historian Johan Huizinga argues, for example, that play is not merely an important element of civilization, but that “civilization arises and unfolds in and as play” (i). Culture, in other words, “arises in the form of play” and play is “almost completely hidden behind [all] cultural phenomena” (46-7). Media theorist Marshall McLuhan likewise takes the relationship between education and play as self-evident, brusquely noting that “Anyone who makes a distinction between games and education clearly does not know the first thing about either one” (149). Games teach people social skills, enhance their mental processes, and develop their physical prowess, all without playersʼ conscious awareness (cf. Phillips, et al.; Sakamoto; Thomas and Macredie; Malone; Malone and Lepper; Rivers). In short, games perform edificatory work in ways that are both fun and transparent.

Computer games are a particularly rich instructional resource, and not just because of the ways game sounds and interfaces prompt action and learning. Computer game developers are well-known for their attention to detail in modeling such things as architecture, geo-physical phenomena, economic systems, philosophical approaches, social interactions, and historical events. Games such as True Crime: Streets of L.A. (2003), Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (2003), and Spider-Man 2 (2004) rely on precise measurements—geological surveys, photographs, and GPS data among other sources—to render buildings and cityscapes as close to scale as possible. Computer games also draw on numerous media metaphors and analogies, from transition cinematics that emulate Vietnam-era frontline reportage, to cel-shaded graphics that index old cartoons and comic books. Such astounding levels of technical and intertextual detail provide teachers with an array of thought provoking entry points for helping students learn about media culture.

Some Tips for Getting Started

The best way to begin using computer games in the classroom is to first identify your pedagogical objectives. What specifically about the mass media and media culture do you want to teach your students? Second, play some games. If you are not sure which games to play, check out internet game sites such as http://mobygames.com (a searchable database of thousands of games), http://gamasutra.com (a website for game developers), and http://www.gamespot.com (a website full of information on computer games and gamer culture). Once you have played a range of games, return to your list of pedagogical objectives and begin to make connections between them and your play experiences. You may find it helpful to remind yourself that computer games are not just interactive movies or hypersensory board games, but unique media.

In addition to the general suggestions above, here are some practical tips for your foray into game studies:

1. Pre-owned game software and hardware can be purchased at greatly reduced prices at used bookstores, video stores, and through online auctions.
2. Contact your system or computer lab administrator regarding technical needs and complications that could arise from the game(s) you select.
3. Look over articles in http://gamestudies.org, http://www.digra.org, and http://ludology.org for other prompts and ways of thinking about games.
4. Visit http://gametrailers.com, http://machinima.com, and http://gamemusic.com for a look at the peripheral industries and cultures generated by computer games, as well as examples of the convergence of games with other media.
5. See http://www.mesmernet.org/lgi for more detailed information on using games in the classroom, on building educational games, and on game studies in general.

Ultimately, let fun as well as pedagogy be your guide. As we say in the Learning Games Initiative, “game to learn, game to teach.”

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Melanie Sethney and her family for providing the space for the 2003 Academic Game Summit where this article was drafted. Many thanks also to Caren Deming, whose feedback was invaluable during the preparation of this manuscript.

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