María Lacalle - III Diálogo entre las ciencias, la filosofía y la teología. Volumen I

In relation to games as learning locus to learn about the human condition, I find that games suffer from undue pressure to deliver positive change in ways that other media cannot. There are no expectations for film and television to only have educational purposes – while reading a book is supposed to be a symbol of learning and growth by default, playing videogames is regarded as frivolous or a waste of time. Although the prejudices about videogames are fading steadily over time, as they have become more and more normalized and part of everyday life, there is still a somewhat hostile attitude towards the discussion of games as a humanities subject outside the circles of game studies. As Marie-Laure Ryan argued (2003), the way immersive qualities of games and digital are thought to make their users not be able to distinguish fantasy from reality is the modern equivalent of how chivalry novels were supposed to have dried the brains of Don Quijote . Discussing the potential for positive influence of games on their players is the flipside of this attitude – believing that games can operate on people, who are «passive» and are modified by the influence of the media they engage with. But neither extreme is true – games do not change us, for good or bad, just through sheer exposure. How we engage with videogames and how they can transform us depends on our levels of literacy.

Literacy is where the potential of games as a way to understand human nature and as a space for learning lies. We can gauge how much games can change us by knowing how they work and how to play them, as well as what their expressive possibilities alongside their socio-cultural implications. Games use different strategies to interpellate different kinds of audiences – videogames are stereotypically thought of as an activity for teenage boys, but every year we have audience studies that prove the heterogeneity of videogame players and the different platforms they use. There are games geared towards women over 35 years old, educational games for children, games for seniors, to name but a few. All these have different presentations – the covers or download icons allow players to make assumptions about what they may play, as Jesper Juul argues in the context of casual games ( Juul, 2009). The design of the games themselves also makes assumptions about who is going to play them and what they know beforehand; some games lack tutorials or are hard to get into without having played a similar game before. For example, first-person shooter games often assume that players know the difference between moving in the space and moving the camera point of view, which becomes a barrier for many new players to the genre. Some groups of people, often self-identified as «hardcore gamers», are proud of making playing videogames all about having specific skills and hand-eye coordination, which can seem inaccessible to others. The focus on skills and supposedly hard-to-access knowledge makes some groups of male gamers feel that they belong to a special club «in the know», at times fostering exclusionary practices. But the truth is that everyone can play games, digital or non-digital. Play is pervasive in culture, and there are games for everyone, whatever their gender, ethnicity, socio-economic class or sexual orientation.

Games also reflect the beliefs and values of the people who make them (Flanagan and Nissenbaum, 2014)providing a compelling arena in which we play out beliefs and ideas. \»Big ideas\» such as justice, equity, honesty, and cooperation -- as well as other kinds of ideas, including violence, exploitation, and greed -- may emerge in games whether designers intend them or not. In this book, Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum present Values at Play, a theoretical and practical framework for identifying socially recognized moral and political values in digital games. Values at Play can also serve as a guide to designers who seek to implement values in the conception and design of their games. After developing a theoretical foundation for their proposal, Flanagan and Nissenbaum provide detailed examinations of selected games, demonstrating the many ways in which values are embedded in them. They introduce the Values at Play heuristic, a systematic approach for incorporating values into the game design process. Interspersed among the book’s chapters are texts by designers who have put Values at Play into practice by accepting values as a design constraint like any other, offering a real-world perspective on the design challenges involved.»,»ISBN»:»978-0-262-32445-8»,»language»:»en»,»number-of-pages»:»222»,»publisher»:»MIT Press»,»source»:»Google Books»,»title»:»Values at Play in Digital Games»,»author»:[{«family»:»Flanagan»,»given»:»Mary»},{«family»:»Nissenbaum»,»given»:»Helen»}],»issued»:{«date-parts»:[[«2014»,7,25]]}}}],»schema»:» https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json»}, and part of their potential to make us understand the human condition through them is understanding how their worlds and their characters are reflecting those values. For example, a game like Overcooked (2016) has players working together to run a hectic kitchen, and players need to work together in order to complete each challenge, thus promoting values of collaboration and communication. A game which embodies values that may not be shared by a specific sector usually leads to controversies – for example, Resident Evil 5 (2009) was criticized for the way in which the enemy zombies were mostly dehumanized representations of black people. Making games while being unaware of how they transmit values not only leads to controversies, but also undermines the perception of games as artistic expression.

Game controversies usually derive from sectors of the population who recognize values or representations in them that they do not agree with or make them feel uncomfortable; this happens with people in all places of the ideological spectrum. Violence in games is a tired topic, now the controversies can come from representations of history, perpetuating gender stereotypes and objectifying women, or including same-sex relationships as part of the mechanics. One unfortunate defense from certain players as well as some game makers is to claim that games are «just entertainment», as a way to pretend they are a frivolous activity and negating the possibilities of games having social messages or being a cultural expression. Thing is, in order to understand the role of games, narrative or not, as an expression of the human condition, we need to acknowledge that they are significant, that they mean something to their players and makers, and that they embody ideas that we may agree with or not. When most of the enemies in a game have dark skin, the game is making a judgement value about who is the hero and who is disposable or undesirable. When Civilization III (2001) organizes religions as a property that indicates progress, polytheistic religions are less powerful than monotheistic ones, the game is making a value judgement about which religions and national groups are more powerful or deserving. Games express ideas through their representation as well as through the actions that they allow players to perform.

In the same way that there needs to be a general acknowledgement that games already make ideological statements through their design, game makers also need to acknowledge the richness and wide expressive possibilities of the medium they work in. Some game designers wonder what games would be like without using violence as a part of their mechanics, while the truth is that there are plenty of games where the player can interact, explore, discover, manage resources, play at make-believe, without needing to resort to violence. One just has to look beyond the stereotype to find puzzle games, city simulation games, racing games, or mystery games. The worldwide success of the game Candy Crush Saga (2012) derives from its accessibility, as a platform as well as how easy it is to learn to control it. Walking simulators such as Dear Esther (2012) allow players to navigate and explore spaces to figure out their story, to meditate and absorb their environment by appealing to their senses. There are plenty of examples that belie the stereotype of games just being software that is played on a console by young people to perform fantasy violence.