There is in fact one prominent group of critics who agree completely that it is the realistic nature of simulations that make them problematic. A plethora of “concerned citizens” groups, soapbox psychologists and their legislative panderers routinely castigate electronic games for their putative ability to influence the behavior of gamers in negative ways. The power of these games, the argument goes, lies chiefly in their realistic nature, and the way in which their violent content doesn’t simply model behavior for their clientele (in the way that movies do, according to the argument mounted in parallel by the same groups), but allows gamers to, in essence, practice the behavior by participating in the realistic environments in which it is employed. Now this argument is clearly rubbish, and Frasca himself has provided one of the wittiest denunciations of this proposition. He has argued that the amount of social harm that games may have perpetrated is as nothing when compared with the horrors unleashed on the world by people who have been inspired by books (Mein Kampf, Mao’s Little Red Book, the Bible, Pamela. . . ):
If you are really concerned about media effects, forget videogames: you should start burning libraries right now. Please also encourage illiteracy among your family and friends. If you happen to be a researcher, please apply for a grant for studying “the devastating effects of printed texts.” People will thank you. And there is one more thing that can really contribute to saving humanity from this paper-based menace: PLEASE keep books away from children. [1]
Moral crusaders allude to (without, usually, referencing) a supposed superfluity of research that provides damning evidence of the evil effects of electronic games. Henry Jenkins (2006) has pointed out however that much of the research refers to other media (like television), and that even the research specifically devoted to violence in video games is more equivocal:
if you actually read the reports, most responsible researchers are careful to qualify their findings and are reluctant to make sweeping policy recommendations. None of them buy a simple monkey-see, monkey-do hypothesis. But the activists strip aside any qualifications, simplifying their conclusions and mulching together all of those contradictory findings. What they want is the aura of scientific validation, since that provides cover to all of their liberal allies who wouldn’t support the Moral Majority but love to sound off about cultural pollution. (p. 201) [2]
To the extent that such studies have shown a correlation it has often been due to the fact that they have employed particular methodologies that are disposed to produce such correlations; Jenkins has discussed at length the influence of the media-effects school on the debate and John Sherry (2006) has analyzed the limitations of a reliance upon a dose-response research model. Indeed, the emphasis upon the violent effects of computer games proceeds from a long-lived attempt that couples moral policing of society with a fear of youth, and gives that a contemporary twist by attempting to greatly expand the state’s censorship capabilities [3, 4].
But there are two things that are interesting about this argument for the understanding of simulation specifically. First of all, electronic games are problematic for moral zealots precisely to the degree that they are understood as simulations. Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Dave Grossman (1999) for example, a fear merchant who briefly gained a degree of notoriety by feeding the moral panic that emerged in the wake of the Columbine murders, once (in)famously described first-person shooters such as Doom and Quake as “murder simulators,” a phrase that was at once picked up by a dutiful news media [5]. The second important point is evident from Grossman’s choice of target games: games that are not conventionally classified as simulations by players, designers, industry analysts and scholars are seen unproblematically by the “label em, ban em, burn em” brigade as simulations. This was true in the wake of Columbine, when the target was FPS games, and it has been as true recently when the cross hairs have shifted first to Grand Theft Auto and then Manhunt 2. For these critics, it is decidedly not the representational content of the game nor its core gameplay that defines a game as a simulation. And it is most certainly not the realism of the representational content itself (a departure from the simplistic arguments deployed historically by such groups against books, theatre, film, comic books, etc.); indeed, many of the games targeted by these groups are patently fantastic in either setting or gameplay). Instead, the realism, and the simulational power of these games lies wholly in their ability to a) evoke and train realistic behavioral and emotional responses in a player, and b) encourage them to translate their game experience into real world behaviors.
Simulation Fever
Let me offer a brief recap. If we accept Frasca's definition of simulation,
then a large number of electronic games would qualify as simulations;
accepting Bogost's definition broadens the pool still further. Game critics,
players, and designers, however, seem content to define simulation according
to a narrow marketing category of games that involve the modelling of
machinery. On the other hand, the very people who have recognized quite
correctly that a broad spectrum of electronic games are simulations, are
doing so as part of a concerted effort to destroy gaming and limit the
role of games in our culture. Ironically, however, they are doing so using
a definition of simulation that accords perfectly with the limited perspective
of many players and game critics: an excess of behavioral realism, a slippery
slope that carries games away from their true nature as harmless, diversionary
fun. This conflicted mess is, however, exactly the kind of cultural anxiety
that Bogost has highlighted as emerging in response to the gradual spread
of simulations throughout society, a condition he has labeled "simulation
fever."
A conflicted response to simulation is, however, as I have noted, built into the etymology of the word itself. Simulation is:
- condemned as a secondary, derivative activity, but tacitly acknowledged to be capable of a problematic creativity;
- confined to modeling reality, yet at the same time threatening to constitute its own, parallel reality;
- threatening to assimilate, to absorb the user (hence the pop-journalism stories about the addictive properties of games)
In other places and times (Pedagogia, Programma) I will argue (and may already have done so by the time you get there) that these troubling characteristics similarly define the application of simulation to the writing classroom. Simulation is the unnamed lurking presence that bedevils the teaching of writing. Some teachers do not want to admit that their classes are essentially simulations. The association of simulations with the counterfeit, with secondary activities such as copying and duplication, with behavioral training seem to render simulations the opposite of the first-year writing class. The operative paradigms for the writing class in fact appear to be very different: originality, authenticity, a concern with faithful represntation and the honing of the intellect. Other teachers, however, are all too aware that the problem with the traditional classroom is its simulative character. Thus, they seek to get beyond the idea of simulated writing instruction, away from the production of ersatz prose and toward writing that engages authentically with the real. In each case there is the fear of simulation as the force that destroys the distance between authenticity and the fake, that threatens to remove the distance between reality and its models, to assimilate students and teachers alike into a realm of false appearances.
Yet there is one further characteristic of simulation that bears mention:
- even as it threatens to absorb the user, it makes possible assimilation on the part of the user: they are learning, incorporating, adjusting, harmonizing, becoming like. . .
. . .what exactly? Are they harmonizing with the original referent of the simulation, or with the simulation itself? The confusion is troubling, no doubt, but it is this sense of simulation that is the basis of the effective learning techniques employed by MMORPGs—and within which lurks the potential of the writing classroom if we embrace rather than run from its status as a simulative space.
2. Jenkins, H. (2006) Coming up next! Ambushed on Donahue. Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture. New York: New York UP.
3. Sherry, J. (2006). Would the Great and Mighty Oz play Doom? : A look behind the curtain of violent video game research. In P. Messaris & L. Humphreys (Eds.), Digital media: Transformations in human communication (pp. 225-236). New York: Peter Lang.
4. Jenkins offers an additional framework with which to understand this debate: “When culture warriors and media reformers cite examples of violent entertainment, they are almost always drawn to works that are explicitly struggling with the meaning of violence, works that have won critical acclaim or cult status in part because they break with the formulas through which our culture normally employs violence. They rarely cite the banal, formulaic, or aesthetically uninteresting works, though such works abound in the marketplace. It is as if the reformers are responding to the work’s own invitations to struggle with the costs and consequences of violence, yet their literal-minded critiques suggest an unwillingness to deal with those works with any degree of nuance. These works are condemned for what they depict, not examined for what they have to say” (p. 216).
Jenkins. H. The war between effects and meanings: rethinking the video game violence debate. In Fans, bloggers, and gamers. 209-217.
5. Grossman, Lt. Col. D. and Degaetano, G. (1999) Stop teaching our kids to kill: A call to action against TV, movie, and vide0 game violence. New York: Crown Publishers.
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