How to Fail at Education in Games

There are two types of teaching: Engagement and Lecturing.



Lecturing is what you do (in professional terms) when you are teaching to a set of required standards which brooks neither departure, nor arenas for critical thought.



Educators who are out to collect paychecks, for whom education involves one faceless mass of students after another in a career whose focus is eventual tenure and then retirement, lecture. They can be successful while doing so, solely because their students are intellectually subservient to them. They'd better be, if they want a passing grade! In college, particularly, students have even more pressure to conform to what is fed them, as they or their family are paying for the privilege.



But the real problem with lecturing is when it's attempted OUTSIDE this educator-controlled box.



If, for example, a professor says "X is problematic", you had better agree and internalize it, because it's going to be on a test you want to pass. But if someone on the street says "X is problematic", you have no particular reason to agree, much less take it as the proverbial gospel.



Nonetheless, we're seeing more and more instances where you are EXPECTED to treat any given claim as though it's going to be on a test you're also expected to pass.



If you ask "why is X a problem?", you may well get the response "oh [expletive] you're so ignorant, I don't have time for this, go educate yourself". This person has just passed up an opportunity to Engage because what they want to do is Lecture. And the next time "X" comes up in conversation with such a person, their expectation is that you've agreed and internalized their viewpoint so they never have to Engage you about it.



An extreme modern example of this is a Canadian court case where the defendant disagreed with the complainant on Twitter. Before the Court, this person is now claiming the defendant has no right to defend himself against any allegations she publicly makes against him: "he can defend himself to the world, but not to me". This is her argument for claiming that when she tweets something vile about him and he responds in defense, that's harassment which causes her to "fear for her safety" (that being the issue before the judge).



For the record, he's not accused of threatening harm or doing harm of any sort. Just of pushing back against her Lectures about his character.



Now think back to your best school memories --- at least, those which involved actual education!



Did your high-school History teacher come in with props, put on demonstrations, or show movies to immerse you in past events?



Did your college Philosophy professor explain the difference between Sophistry and Socratic Method by having students stand up and debate each other while using them?



Did your elementary Algebra teacher get across the idea of variable equations by plugging them into events and ideas we experience every day?



All of these methods are Engaging. They make the discussion interesting. They lead to towards an understanding, instead of battering you over the head with demands for agreement without question.



The longer you go through life, the more you'll notice that people who want you to believe a dogmatic ideology without question, those are the folks who Lecture. Those who want you to understand how they feel, believe, or think will Engage. While neither style of education guarantees what's being taught is accurate, it's Engagement which allows for the flowering of an intellect.



Applying this dichotomy to video games, you find a stark chasm between people who SAY they want to educate via the medium, and how they actually go about it.



For example, it's a common shibboleth in academic circles to ignore progressive concepts in gaming as though they simply do not exist. Stereotypes about "bro-gamers" and "toxic masculinity" are shopped around as Lectures, tolerating few or no thoughts which disagree. Games like "Gone Home" are lionized for containing story references to lesbian relationships as though this were new and fresh...



...except video games have been dealing with such subjects for decades already. In 1997, almost twenty years ago, "Fallout" presented a harsh post-apocalyptic world where you could not only play as male or female, but as gay or lesbian. Choices you made in the story pertinent to these affected how the story would proceed and how your character would evolve.



Yet many at the recent E3 presentation of "Fallout 4" cheered wildly when the publisher announced that "of course, you will be able to play as a female" --- as though they had no idea this had been the franchise's standard for every past iteration as well. Someone had told these people that gaming companies didn't like women as protagonists, and they had believed it without question.



When, more recently, "Sunset" bombed with only 4,000 sales (despite a massive and expensive advertising campaign supported by many in the games press), the publisher threw a vitriolic fit about how this proved games were a toxic industry intolerant of new ideas.



...except that "Sunset" made the same mistake of Lecturing to the player instead of Engaging them. Derided as a "housekeeping simulator", all the player actually does is clean up the apartment of a South American dictator while no one is there. The "socially-conscious content" is nothing more than some text when you click on something, revealing a story behind it all, but not one the player can Engage themselves in.



I've seen a partial playthrough where the player was annoyed that the character in the game made a decision to steal bread simply because he had clicked on it to see what it was. There was no option to MAKE a moral decision; it was made FOR him by the game's creator, and was also immediately self-justified to the player ("I need this more than he does"). If you as the player hold a different morality, well screw you, this is a Lecture about how poor people are justified in theft even when they have a job, not Engagement where you have any thoughts of your own on the subject.



Similar outings --- "Gone Home" and "Depression Quest" being notable examples --- have been derided as "not even games" for exactly this reason: they eliminate player agency, in favor of dictating a story which the developer believes the gamer has a moral responsibility to internalize. Refusal to do so is at the heart of certain major controversies in gaming right now, where a negative opinion of any of these games is often held up as proof of racism, sexism, or any number of other negative '-isms'.



What these developers and their supporters don't seem to understand is that it's not just THESE games which get called out for that sort of thing. A common derogatory phrase is when a first-person-shooter or role-playing game is accused of being "on rails". This refers to theme-park rides where you sit down, strap in, and watch things go by as you essentially do nothing but react.



Games which do this can be and have been successful, and they often do it with a story, yet all of them manage to be far more Engaging as they do so... this being the key to their success. "Call of Duty" rarely presents a branching set of missions and every playthrough is like every other, but there are still game mechanics to explore, tactics to develop, and strategies to carry out. There is still a modicum of skill involved, providing for a sense of personal accomplishment which is missing from games which merely Lecture.



This is why "Gone Home" got a 10 out of 10 "Game of the Year" award from Polygon (which champions a Lecturing design philosophy), while actual sales suggested the number would have been more accurately within the 5 to 7 range.



In turn, this response from the gaming community is why outfits like Polygon concluded gamers just plain hate stories about lesbians: because they did not agree with and internalize the Lecture that "Gone Home" was a 10/10 GOTY outing.



So long as culture warriors insist on Lecturing to gamers, they will continue at failing to Engage their interest. Calling them stupid, hateful or a mob won't change that reality by one iota.

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