| | Under the gaming influenceMarch 20th, 2007 |
Yesterday I blogged about this study that has been reported in the press as “racing games can make you drive recklessly in real life.” While that does seem to be a bit of a sensationalistic headline for the actual study, and while the study also seems to have some obvious limitations, I am nonetheless a bit surprised at the reaction among the gaming population.
Basically, I think that sometimes in our zeal to defend our favorite medium, we unwittingly rob it of its power.
The power of media lies in their ability to convey information. Often, it lies most specifically in their ability to convey information from particular perspectives: we value much nonfiction because it manages to present events dispassionately, whereas we other nonfiction because it so powerfully conveys a given experience through another person’s eyes.
With games, we have more: not only can we rely on the tricks of other media to accomplish this, but we also get to literally train the player’s perceptions in a way that is very direct. We get to build reflexes, we get to alter the player’s cognitive take on the flow of data, we get to construct mental models for the player to apply.
This is the core of gameplay, this building of mental models.
The whole point of mental models is that you can then apply them elsewhere. You leave the Holocaust movie having learned to empathize in a way you hadn’t before. You leave the history class with a sense of the broad sweep of repeated patterns. And in games, you leave with fresh understanding as well. What’s more, you can actually leave with those reflexes that you have trained up: actual physical and cognitive tools that you can then apply elsewhere.
In fact, were games not to have this effect, then they would truly be a waste of time, entertainment trifles. But instead, what we see is that games can help train doctors, assist in repairing brain injuries, and so on.
Here’s the thing though: if you accept that they have this power, then you must acknowledge that games can teach both good and bad habits.
And this is why I am not dismissive of studies like this racing one. I absolutely believe in the power of games to teach, and I know that I personally attribute elements of my driving to things I learned in racing games. So it’s not a stretch for me at all to say that were my teacher teaching me bad habits, it’s likely I would pick them up.
This doesn’t mean that racing games are bad — on the contrary, I think that most people are plenty smart enough to recognize the difference between a racing game and a freeway commute. But reflexes are reflexes. Once, when I was a teen I was mock-fighting with a buddy, and it was all good until some long-disused karate kick surfaced from the dim recesses of muscle memory and I laid him out with a mai geri to the nuts.
When a study like this appears, the questions we should be asking are not “is this valid?” but instead ones like these:
- Does the realism of the game affect how it teaches?
- How long does the teaching linger?
- Which lessons does the game teach most effectively?
- Which lessons does the game teach poorly?
- Which lessons are taught as direct reflexes, and how much does the control mechanism mimic reality? (I doubt that something that taught sharp swerves with a joystick would translate to sharp swerves with a steering wheel, for example).
- How do we build our games to teach the right things?
What I am not willing to do is to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Games have power, and power can be used for good or bad purposes, purposely or inadvertantly. The responsibility lies with us.

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