Abstract
This chapter presents three principles for how digital games could be used by teachers or designed by game developers to raise awareness about and discuss discrimination, stereotyping, inequality, and other issues connected to age, aging, gender identity, and sexual preference. In other words, an intersectional approach is developed with special focus on age and gender aiming to facilitate learning and game design processes about harmful social constructions. The three principles are (1) encourage minimizing hurdles for players to access and play games, (2) diversify the content within a game or across multiple games, and (3) encourage intergenerational learning processes. These principles primarily draw on educational research, but are intended to be used by teachers and game developers alike. Regarding principle 2, a model is derived from sample games with the goal to inform lesson plan creation and game selection processes for teachers as well as design choices for game developers. The independent digital game development scene served as the primary source for the development of the model. Because games revolving around age- and aging-related topics appear to be exceedingly rare, the proposed principles were initially developed with LGBTQ* topics in mind. However, it is demonstrated that the developed model can also be applied to other social dimensions such as age.
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Notes
- 1.
The digital games discussed in this paper mostly present an “inside” perspective of (parts of) the life of LGBTQ* people, which is a perspective most players should be unfamiliar with (similar to old age-related rhetoric). By playing games about LGBTQ* topics, players can assume and enact LGBTQ* identities individually—they can get a “glimpse behind the scene.” By enabling players to experience LGBTQ* life from the perspective of an “insider,” digital games are able to provide them with a potentially more authentic understanding and emotionally relatable narrative of what it means to be LGBTQ*. And because age-based discrimination is in many ways similar to LGBTQ* discrimination, the argument of this chapter is that the discussed games, approaches, and principles can just as easily be applied to raise awareness about cultural constructions of aging as they could be to LGBTQ*-related issues. In other words, the idea is that intersectional approaches developed from an LGBTQ* point of view should still be transferable into the realm of teaching about ageism. The chapter explores to which extent this statement holds true and outlines possible limitations.
- 2.
Game developers/designers do not face this same set of difficulties as teachers do because they can target a specific audience and hardware. However, if the goal is to reach as large an audience as possible, the above-mentioned suggestions of (short, free, easy to access, and low system requirements) still hold true. The larger the project, the more difficult these suggestions will probably be to implement. If not all aspects can be implemented, game developers/designers are encouraged to consider to design the project at least partially around these suggestions.
- 3.
It should be noted that the concept of exposing learners to many unique experiences is not to be confused with what literature on educational research sometimes terms the “experiential learning model.” Strong instructional guidance is of paramount importance. Authoritative teacher instructions which encourage meta-level thinking and discussions among learners, as well as secondary materials such as newspaper articles and videos should go hand in hand with engaging learners with digital games.
- 4.
Recent research questions the efficacy of minimally guided approaches to instructing and teaching, that is, learning theories referred to as experiential learning, discovery learning, constructivist learning, etc. (Kirschner et al. 2006; Mayer 2004). Evidence “almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners” (Kirschner et al. 2006, p. 83).
- 5.
See, for example, http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games.
- 6.
Lim (Kopas 2012) is a minimalist game “about fitting in” (Zoya 2012) and the consequences of challenging established norms. Players control a square, a “multivocal body” (Zoya 2012) which wildly fluctuates between colors, symbolizing nonconformity. In the game, players meet a number of single color squares and are constantly confronted with making a decision: either they take on a single color to blend in with the crowd or they continue flashing in many colors. Either option has its benefits and drawbacks:
“When the protagonist is spotted not fitting in, it is attacked by the surrounding squares. There’s no depleting health, no chance of dying, but the attack is loud, uncomfortable […] and makes it harder to move around the game space.” (Zoya 2012)
“[C]hange colors by holding down Z, afford yourself some respite, just realize that doing so leads to an entirely different kind of unpleasantness.” (Porpentine 2012)
- 7.
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank Roberta Maierhofer for all her support. I am also grateful to Margarida Romero, Hubert Ouellet, and the GBLL editorial team, who have provided invaluable feedback and help to improve this text. Maureen Daly Goggin has my gratitude for proofreading this text on short notice and giving additional feedback.
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Schuch, A. (2017). Digital Games as a Means of Raising Awareness About Ageism and Gender Discrimination: Three Principles for Teachers and Game Developers. In: Romero, M., Sawchuk, K., Blat, J., Sayago, S., Ouellet, H. (eds) Game-Based Learning Across the Lifespan. Advances in Game-Based Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41797-4_9
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