Understanding Civilization (III)

Henry Jenkins III and Kurt Squire

Seemingly overnight, educational gaming has gone from something to be snickered at to a buzzword in education and industry. Maybe it’s the widespread use of gaming for military training, maybe it’s increasing graphical realism, or maybe it’s that so many young teachers grew up playing games. Today, the Sloan Foundation’s Virtual University, the ICT’s military simulations, or the MIT-Microsoft Games-to-Teach Project are beginning to explore computer games designed specifically for classroom use.

But what are players learning through game play already? Strategy games such as Capitalism or Sim City can help players grasp complex social systems as they try to run a company or build a city. Games such as Sid Meier’s Gettysburg! or Patrician place players in historical scenarios. Teachers have been using computer games like Oregon Trail (which was originally sold as an entertainment, not educational game) to teach for decades.

Still, very little is known about what happens when we bring games into schools. What are the effects of competition on classroom culture? How do players interpret their game experiences and apply them to the world around them? We need to understand more fully what happens to learning when we play games in the classroom and to identify what specific properties games offer education.

Over the past year, Kurt Squire has been studying how Civilization III can be used to teach high school and middle school social studies. In CivIII, players lead a civilization from 4000 BC to the present by managing its natural resources, economic system, civil infrastructure and diplomacy. One of the game’s most educational components is its elaborate technology tree that ties together everything from the alphabet to nuclear fission. Using CivIII’s mod building tools, Kurt created custom scenarios to teach global history and then examined what students learned through game play.

For the strategy gamers, this unit was a gift from the gaming Gods. Building civilizations replaced listening to lectures and managing vast empires replaced reading about them. But some non-strategy gamers were overwhelmed by the game’s complexity; many aspects of the interface were completely foreign. Even those students who played real-time strategy games were confused by the pace, gaming style, and strategies of this turn-based game. Gamers have had to learn more than they realize just to play their favorite titles.

Once everyone got up to speed, amazing things happened. First, students used concepts such as infrastructure, natural resources, or isolationism to interpret and analyze game play. As students suffered defeats, they discovered the importance of geography. By the end, several students were using gaming experiences as conceptual tools, explaining how a scarce natural resource such as oil could destabilize global politics. As one student commented, “What I learned is that you can’t separate economics from politics or geography. What natural resources I have or where I’m locate affects how I can negotiate with other civilizations.”

American textbooks often overemphasize western culture. CivIII takes a more global, geographical perspective on history. It is often difficult to get students to realize that history could have played itself out differently. The “what if” quality of the game allowed students to draw their own conclusions about such questions as how and why Europe colonized North America rather than the other way around. These students, most of who came from mostly minority backgrounds, read below grade level, and struggled with social studies developed sophisticated skills for thinking about history through playing CivIII. They learned to ask their own questions about the historical process.

On the other hand, few detected the game’s geographical, materialist bias, or realized that CivIII minimizes the role of historical figures and cultural factors. In her course, “Spanish and Portuguese Colonization as Depicted Through Computer Games,” Rice University Professor Pat Seed has students critique several games, including Age of Empires, Colonization, and Cutthroat, showing how different games embody different theories of history. There is no such thing as a neutral simulation; they all embody assumptions about the way the world works.

When games can be used as a springboard for engaging in critical thought and play, they can be powerful educational tools. However, we see no reason to fear that computer games will replace teachers or textbooks. Class discussions are needed to help students develop critical perspectives on game play and understand where games fail to represent reality.

The game industry could win over many parents and educators who are currently suspicious of game content if they fully embraced the development of next -generation games for classroom use. Imagine a world where learning more about chemistry, history, or even Shakespeare through a game is as commonplace as learning through books or film. What if we could engage those students who stay up all night solving a level on a game to put that same energy, creativity, and imagination into mastering schoolroom concepts?

Originally printed in Computer Games Magazine, September 2003