Playing Prompt Questions about Geography and History

Playing Prompt Questions about Geography and History

Shifting a concept such as astronomy from a basic discovery to a tool for game play situates the learner to consider the effects of the discovery on the evolution of civilizations rather than just its basic meaning. Not surprisingly, several students could discuss the consequences of these advancements on the development of their civilizations. Vicky discussed how shifting from a despotism to monarchy made her people happier and increased their productivity. Dramatically, a week later, Tony recalled exact figures of how his civilization and its economy expanded under democracy. As previously discussed, students recalled much less information about these specific advancements, although in reasoning through tasks in the post-interviews, students did use a number of concepts, as when Chris recalled that currency was a discovery that enabled him to make marketplaces, which helped his economy.

Game play fostered a number of interesting questions about geography and history, as when Jason asked if there was oil in Greenland, Tony asked about what Madagascar was and who populated it, when Ricky asked about the barbarians, when Kent asked if the game had World War I, or Marvin asked what the borders of the Roman Empire were during different portions of its history. In these instances, semiotic chains arose where students observed a property of the game system, related it to what they already knew or did not know, and then asked questions about how this would impact their games. These questions ranged from the factual (is there oil in Greenland?) to systemic (does the game have World War I?). They ranged from directly applicable to the game (what civilizations had horses?) to less directly related to game goals (who populated Madagascar and why?). The way that playing Civilization III engendered question-asking was perhaps the most pleasant pedagogical surprise of the unit; teachers and researchers alike agreed that the moment that this group of students were asking these kinds of questions, the unit was a success.

World History as a Tool for Problem-Solving

Failures in problem-solving – most notably cities in disarray, barbarian attacks, poorly balanced economies, and ineffective uses of natural resources – caused students to restart their games periodically. Early in the game, these failures were routine and predictable but caused a lot of frustration. Students were not prepared for this kind of failure and frustrations ran very high. At this point, most students had not established any goals, did not understand the game controls, and frequently perceived their failures as the result of bad game design rather than as a consequence of their own actions. Consistent with classic attribution theory (Bandura 1976; Stipek, 1993; Weiner, 1986), many students perceived the causes of failure as outside of themselves and became quite bitter by failure. When a student such as Bill felt that failure was not the game being “unfair” but reacting to one of his decisions and he could think of a possible solution, he kept playing. Future implementations would profit from anticipating these problems and offering more tools such as learning aids to support students’ play. Later in the units, I began sharing gaming heuristics that most advanced civilization players discover the hard way (e.g. putting a temple in every city over population size four to avoid civil unrest), and, as I began to better understand the social dynamics of each context, I started encouraging students to help one another (e.g., asking Marvin to help Jordan since Marvin had a solid grasp of game basics). Fostering more reciprocal teaching is another possibility for scaffolding students’ work while also promoting reflection.

Later in the unit, causes of students’ failure became more complex and we used the game as a context for discussing variables contributing to a civilization’s growth or decline. Students readily recapped game events and developed theories about why their civilization collapsed, such as a poor defense or economy. At times they still called on me to help diagnose their game problems, which entailed analyzing the health of their civilization and frequently interpreting global geo-political dynamics. Helping students construct narratives – for example, when I explained what was happening when the Celts colonized North America, as happened in numerous games – became one of my primary functions. Devising strategies, such as generating trade or gaining technologies by finding trade routes to other civilizations, brought knowledge of geography or history as a tool for game play. Unfortunately, this approach puts much of the onus of problem-solving analysis and of interjecting history into the classroom on the teacher’s shoulders. Allowing opportunities for students to write their own narrative accounts of game events might be preferable. In the armed forces, trainers use “replay action recall” techniques whereby the player and the instructor review game play together. Through such practices, game play becomes data to be analyzed and the subject of deeper scrutiny. The log sheets implemented in the Media case (case one) were designed to capture students’ game play in order to then make it into the basis for reflection, but, in this context at least, they were ineffective for this purpose.

Comparing Game Play to History

Many students played Civilization III as an historical simulation and derived pleasure from comparing game play to history, developing powerful ideas about history in the process. For many students, Civilization III was an historical simulation and playing the game in order to change the outcome of history or test their wits against other historical civilizations was a primary motivator. Marvin learned that war did not pay, partly through his own game play and partly through watching other games. He became very adamant about this lesson, listing it as one of the most important things he learned from the game. He argued this point with Joey, and when Joey lost his game and had his computer crash after declaring war, Marvin argued that the computer was teaching Joey a lesson.

Many students across cases turned the game into a colonial simulation, investigating the forces contributing to cross-Atlantic colonization. Several students in the Media case read colonization in their games off of history, and in post-interviews discussed the role of technology or resources in shaping colonial history. Students playing as Egypt also saw colonial expansion as the answer to their problems with shrinking borders, failing economies, or insufficient natural resources. Although this Civilization III scenario was not designed to be a colonial simulation per se, many Media students appropriated it as such, beginning with their finally taking the game up on days 4 and 5 and continuing through their fascination with the arrival of the Celts, or, for the Egyptian players, by their efforts to discover sailing technologies and find a route to the Americas. Turning Civilization III into a colonial simulation affected the kinds of questions students asked, observations they made about their games the technologies they focused on, and the solutions they posited to problems. Students mostly read their game events off of pre-existing notions of colonization or geography, expanding and modifying their understandings of colonization in the process.

Students’ emergent understandings of factors behind colonization were an amalgamation of several factors. In post-interviews students said that colonization was the result of a combination several interacting factors (with each student having his own particular take) : population density, access to strategic resources (specifically horses), relations with other civilizations, and access to global trade networks. Dan also included culture in his model of colonization; Chris privileged geography more. Bill, who played as the Bantu learned that sub-Sahara Africa was full of luxuries (ivory, gems) but lacking farmland and removed from global trade by the Sahara desert. Interestingly, Bill’s proposed solution (mediated by Dwayne’s game) was to colonize the Americas, suggesting that he framed colonization as way to gain resources and participate in global trade.

Tony derived particular pleasure in comparing his game to history. Tony spent the last few days of camp sailing about the world, examining how history played out in his world. Of particular interest to Tony was how isolated civilizations (i.e. Aborigines) developed and how barbarians (nomad populations) thrived in remote islands and went undiscovered into the 19^th century. Tony deduced from these exercises that access to resources (farmable land and other natural resources) and geographical proximity to other civilizations was a critical factor in how a civilization developed. It is critical to note that this game practice emerged only after Tony had played for some 30 hours, and there were significant comparisons to be made between his game play and history. Unfortunately, Tony relied on relatively few resources (mostly me) in drawing these analogies to history. Other timelines, atlases, and almanacs may have been useful for comparing game data to history.

Understanding the Interplay of History, Geography, Politics, and Economics

In the Media summer camp (case two), some of the most powerful learning moments occurred outside of the game itself, when students developed system-level understandings about the interplay of history, geography, politics, and economics. As students prepared their presentations, they attempted to classify lessons that they learned by discipline. Tony identified a problem with this activity, drawing connections between material conditions, economics, and politics. Reflecting on game play, particularly reflecting on what they learned through the game, drew students to system-level conclusions about the game and about history. Dwayne started the conversation by noting that geography affected his politics (via resources and trade), which Tony then connected to a civilization’s capacity for building an infrastructure. Tony first commented that economic, political, and geographic systems are all connected, and then posited a theory that money connects all of these systems. Other students add that geography affects diplomacy (natural borders), the growth of a civilization, and its capacity for waging war. Tony, perhaps inspired by my prodding to find a unifying theme in the game, argued that money (or material goods) is the consistent theme across these factors. Tony then made a critical, materialist reading of the game, arguing that the game is ultimately about the accumulation of wealth which is geographically driven. In class Tony observed that, “Well, money is the key… money is the root to everything. With money you can save yourself from war, and that also means that politics you can influence civilizations with money. (Money) ties everything together.” Tony came to this realization by noting that “With a lot of money, I can buy lot of luxuries” and “Luxuries buys you money and money buys you everything. The right location gives you luxuries gives you income more income gives you technology which affects your politics. It all connects.” This kind of reading of the game is actually quite sophisticated, akin to developing a Marxist, feminist, or “great man” theory of history.

Students latched on to Tony’ idea that Civilization III helped them see relations among system components. Kent, Dwayne, and Chris all joined in the conversation, discussing how aspects of one game system affected the rest. Even Kent, who struggled with much of the game could articulate this idea: Geography affects your diplomacy because it gets your more resources and affects how they treat you. Kent had mostly been on the losing end of this equation, but he still detected this pattern in the game system through his play and watching others. Over several hours of game play and game discussions, students in the camp developed sophisticated understandings of the game system and drew parallels between the game and world history.

Importantly, there was little evidence to suggest that such system-level understandings emerged in the in-school Media context or in the YWCA case where students had less time to play the game, there was less informal game talk and comparison across games, and fewer reflection activities examining what they learned through the game. It took most students 20 to 30 hours to even begin to see game problems as systemic issues. Examining relations among game systems and how they related to world history emerged mostly through in class discussions, where students were charged with (and bought into) the task of presenting what they learned through playing the game. These cases suggest that looking across games to identify emergent themes in games (as in the discussion activities) and then comparing these to world history (something we did not do that much of formally) are fruitful ways for using Civilization III to support learning world history in formal learning environments.

“No Matter How History Plays Out it Plays by the Same Set of Rules”

In the Media case, game play mediated how players thought about history in significant ways, as evidenced by Tony’ proposal of – and students’ acceptance of – the notion that “No matter how history plays out, it plays by the same set of rules.” Tony’ discovery of this idea was significant not just because it suggests that playing Civilization III remediated how he thought about world history, but because it was accepted as a taken-for-granted idea. When Tony proposed this claim as one of the most important things he had learned in the unit, students overwhelmingly agreed. No one thought that the claim was novel or surprising; they accepted it as natural that one might study history by defining an underlying set of rules and then exploring the patterns that might emerge as a result of them.

While Steven Wolfram (2002) might agree with this assertion, most historians would not. As described in Chapter Two, history is a discipline characterized by narrative. Few, if any historians build models to test historical theories. Yet, there is some precedence. This non-linear approach to understanding world history is clearly evident in the work of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1999), a work that seeks to explain history not just as narrative but as relationships among interacting systems – particularly, geographical and material systems and culture. When Diamond calculates the carrying capacity of land or speculates on the necessary conditions by which civilizations form and evolve, he is outlining the rule sets by which we might build historical simulations. Civilization III operationalizes many of these ideas (albeit at a courser grain).

Tony’ observation that “No matter how history plays out, it plays by the same set of rules” evokes Marshall McLuhan’s famous saying that “The medium is the message.” Playing Civilization III and participating in this unit remediated Tony’ understanding about what history is and how it could be expressed in fundamental ways, suggesting that there may be other valid ways of investigating history besides traditional, linear narrative accounts. This is not to suggest that students derived this principle entirely on their own; on two separate occasions we discussed models and simulations, focusing on the nature of games as rule-based systems that produce emergent behavior. Students in the Media case (case one and two) in particular seemed to have developed an understanding of the notion of non-linear systems⁶¹ through their game play. Perhaps surprisingly, none of the students perceived this non-linear model of history as potentially biased toward some variables over others.

Students were adept at detecting biases within the game system but less adept at detecting biases with in how the game represented history. In the Media case, we discussed the ways in which the game was biased and students readily picked up on a number of them, particularly the game’s bias toward technology and democracy. Most Civilization III players would agree that the current rule set is weighted toward these two concepts, although there is debate as to whether these are unrealistic biases or simply features of the game as a simulated system. To be sure, I prompted students to think about potential biases during the unit, both in individual and large group discussions. Tony suggested that the game was biased toward democracy and students readily agreed, yet he recounted this bias in the post-interview and added that he thought the real bias was toward the rational, materialist behaviors of other civilizations whereby they would only trade for specific technologies.

Some students noted the materialist orientation of the game, but did not necessarily consider it a bias. Late in the unit at the Media camp (case two), we discussed the ideas that students felt they learned in the unit and attempted to classify these ideas by topic (geography, history, politics). Tony noted that money was frequently contingent on geographical location (i.e. riches around the Nile and opportunities for trade) and that “money allows me to buy technology, so (geography can be categorized as affecting) politics. When you have a lot of money you can do whatever you want. When you’re rich you can buy off other countries.” So, we categorized access to luxuries as something they learned about politics. Later, Luis commented that they (politics and geography) are “all related to one another.” When asked to elaborate, he commented, “Well, money is the key… money is the root to everything. With money you can save yourself from war, and that also means that politics…with money, that ties everything together.” The game fostered in Tony (and other students, it seemed) a materialist orientation to history – that is, the idea that strategic and luxury resources, as well as access to material goods, drove history.

In closing discussions, I tried to emphasize the geographical bias of the game, which most students did seem to grasp. In their final presentation at the Media summer camp (case two), students reworded this finding to be “geography and politics are more important than culture.” Like Dan, who held on to his belief that the Iroquois did not colonize Europe for cultural reasons, these students accepted that Civilization III was biased toward a materialist reading of history. They framed the game as a simulation of the geo-political factors shaping the history of civilizations, learning from it what they could but rendering it useless for answering questions of culture or religion. Most certainly, this appropriation process was mediated by instructor practices, which consistently reinforced this idea.

This kind of realization – that history could be depicted according to different underlying theories (i.e. feminist history, Marxist history, cultural history) – is a subtle and important kind of distinction rarely discussed in secondary classes. That students understood the materialist, geographical nature of the game and were able to not only articulate it but debate it outright suggests that one powerful way of using Civilization III (as well as other simulation games) might be as an inroad to understanding differing theories of history. Indeed, this is how historian Patricia Seed at Rice University uses games in her course on colonial expansion in the Americas (2002, personal communication). Whereas some educators fear that students will fail to pick up the bias and “authorship” of simulations (e.g. Starr, 1994), these cases suggest that perhaps learning through games makes some of the assumptions and perspectives that go into building representations of events more transparent.

On the other hand, students did not detect some more subtle biases, namely the management orientation of the game. All of the students interviewed in both cases realized that the powers they exercised in the game were unrealistic and that there was no direct historical analog for the figures they played in history. Students did not, however, see the management orientation of the game as problematic from a an intellectual standpoint. In fact, on their slide entitled “how is learning social studies through games different than through other media,” students wrote, “Civilization 3 teaches you how to manage a civilization.” For these students, the management-orientation of Civilization III was a feature, not a bug, and therefore did not question how this emphasis in the game might bias those playing it in particular (perhaps erroneous) ways.

This finding suggests that students are actually quite adept at detecting specific biases within the simulation, namely, because interacting with the game students bump up against simulation assumptions and biases all the time. There was hardly a student in these cases who could not discuss the conflict-driven nature of the game, or the way that geographical and materialist factors drove much of the action. Part of this may have been because I, as the instructor, emphasized these biases, but it is also possible that game players just become very good at understanding the biases of the game system. Perhaps it is no wonder that everyone who has ever written on the Sim City series notes that the game is biased toward public transportation. Participating in a game system bumps the player up against its emergent properties very quickly, and if players have any experience of those properties, they seem to be good at detecting what those biases are. What students in these cases were less good at was understanding how representing historical systems through a resource management game biases representations of history in particular ways.