Video Games: A New and Better Learning Experience?

Is it time to incorporate “playtime” and “games” into formal education?

Video games aren’t often seen as tools for learning, since as Ian Bogost claims, are mainly associated with “leisure” and “playtime.” However, with the majority of communication occurring through the use of images and videos, it would be narrow minded not to consider the use of video games as a new way to both educate and communicate.

In his article, “The Rhetoric of Video Games”, Ian Bogost defines the rhetoric and importance of video games, showing that it has the potential to be a powerful tool in education. He shows, using examples of games such as Animal Crossing, that much larger systems, concepts, and skills, can be experienced, understood, and comprehended by the gamer. Video games create a space and certain rules that force a player to experience a setting in a particular way, drawing attention to certain aspects of an environment. It is in this way that video games, through their own individual type of rhetoric, are able to make arguments: “its arguments are made not through the construction of words or images, but through the authorship of rules of behavior, the construction of dynamic models”(125). Bogost argues that video games provide a new perspective on learning; if we are able to move “playtime” and “games” back into the classroom, students could truly benefit from the experiential learning platform that video games provide.

Bogost’s claim that video games have the ability to “make claims about the cultural, social, or material aspects of human experience”(123), reminded me of a game that I heard of called Bioshock. This game, along with its sequel, use the setting of a failed city of Rapture, a city that started out as a “utopian” society but ultimately fell due to the greed and corruption of its inhabitants.  Along with the social and political commentary that the setting provides, the procedures and the constraints of the game play also force the player to make moral decisions, based on the choice between mercy or revenge, all which ultimately determine the player’s fate in the end of the game. While the players understand that this fantasy game is just a fabrication and an exaggeration of  a certain social structure, the players moral actions within the game are able to allow the player to experientially and symbolically learn the consequences of our actions.

I believe that video games can provide a much better and more effective learning experience, if presented in the correct way. In games such as Animal Crossing and Bioshock, the the player is able to understand through experience, the workings and consequences of moral and financial decisions. Video games allow for players to become invested, sometimes even emotionally, into the lessons or ideas that the game contains. Through experience and play, the gamer is learning in hands on way that simply is not possible in the traditional classroom that force students to listen behind a desk. Video games provide a means of learning that is asking the student to experience the lesson.