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Gee, James Paul. (2007). Good Video Games and Good Learning. NY: Peter Lang Pp. 194 ISBN 978-0-8204-9703-7
Reviewed by Erik Jacobson
Montclair State UniversityOctober 22,2008
In Good Video Games and Good Learning, James Paul Gee wants to counter what he considers alarmist concerns about the effects of video games by making a case for the ways in which good video games model and provide opportunities for "good learning." Beyond defending video games, Gee makes the case that they compare favorably to the instruction provided in many schools. He notes, “I hope to convince you that today’s young people often see deeper and better forms of learning going on in the games they play than in the schools they attend” (p. 47).
Throughout the book Gee uses the term “good” two different ways. At times he means good in the sense of pleasurable (as in a good time), while at others he uses good to describe something that works well (as in a good machine). Because of the way that he frames his questions he does not use good in the sense of “ethical,” and I believe that is a built-in limitation in his analysis (and therefore the book). I will review each of these meanings of “good” in turn.
Good as Pleasurable
Early on, Gee makes a case for the importance of pleasure, claiming that “pleasure is the basis of learning for humans” (p. 10). Indeed, he believes that “Good video games reverse a lot of our cherished beliefs. They show that pleasure and emotional involvement are central to thinking and learning” (p. 2). Furthermore, Gee suggests that video games are able to provide pleasure because they connect to human’s need for “control, agency, and meaningfulness” (p. 10). In this analysis, schools do not provide opportunities for connecting pleasure and learning and they actively work to convince students that “pleasure is fun, and learning is work, and thus, work is not fun” (p. 10). In video games, players are often not aware of what (or when) they are learning because this separation between pleasure and learning is not experienced.
Although the criticism of the lack of pleasurable learning in schools is not a new one, Gee’s work might help teachers and others take video games seriously when framing analyses of their students’ experiences at school and at home. When critics bemoan students’ lack of engagement at school, video games tend to be treated as a harmful distraction, or as time away from learning. Yet something deeply pleasurable is underpinning sustained engagement with the video games he examines (such as World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto). How many students find something about school-based learning so pleasurable that they spend hours upon hours immersed in it? There is a reason it is called school-work. However, although there may serious concerns about much of contemporary schooling, I believe that Gee’s claim that “good” games ‘reverse our cherished beliefs’ about pleasure, emotional involvement learning, and thinking is overstated. Long before the advent of video games, there were teachers and students striving to have those kinds of experiences in school. These games may be putting schools on notice, but they are not introducing new conceptions of learning itself.
Good as "Working Well"
Gee suggests that video games designers have to take the learning experiences of potential players into account when games are being created. Players will not take hours to learn a game if they sense it is not worth their time, and games live or die depending upon how many people are playing them. In this sense, video games are “good” when they do a superior job of getting the players invested and committed to playing – if they work well. In Gee’s analysis, in a game that works
well we see problems that are well ordered, challenges that are enough to keep a player interested without making them feel like they cannot complete the task, and players cycling through different levels of mastery. Additionally, good games help players learn how to play them. He suggests they do this by following sound learning principles. For example, in keeping with the idea that “good learning always involves knowing early and well what type of thing we are being asked to do” (p. 59), video games strive to make it clear to players what the expectations are (e.g., navigate a skateboard through a course, build an empire by controlling natural resources, etc.). Similarly, good video games give players a clear sense of the bigger picture. In these games “we clearly see how each piece of information we are given and skill we are learning (and doing) is inter-connected to everything else we are learning and doing. We see the game as a system, not just a set of discrete skills” (p. 55). Good games also help players master the (sometimes) arcane language of the game play because the language itself “is married closely to specific and connected actions. The relationship between language and meaning (where meaning here is the rules and the actions connected to them) is clear and lucid” (p. 111). You develop an understanding of terminology and rules by acting in a given context and getting immediate feedback about your ability to draw on that knowledge (e.g., you live or you die).
James P. Gee Not surprisingly, Gee does not think there is much of this holistic and integrated-learning taking place in contemporary school-based education (which instead teaches language and skills somewhat abstracted and removed from any application). For this reason, he suggests that good video games can be seen as working better than schools at teaching students how to learn.
Another aspect of good learning that Gee thinks video offer is how these game provide chances to “take on a new identity in the world, to see the world and act on it in new ways” (p. 172). Indeed, “the identity of the character one plays is clearly associated with the sorts of functions, skills and goals one has to carry out in the virtual world” (p. 154). So players taking on the identity of a S.W.A.T. team member (for example) must adapt their thinking if they are going to survive or thrive in the domain of the game. Gee writes that these games help players use their experiences “to build simulations in their heads through which they can think about and imaginatively test out future actions and hypotheses” (p. 81). This lets players “act and experience consequences of their actions (based on the values and identities they have adopted as participants in the domain) in ways that lead them to build better simulations for better future action” (ibid). Gee suggests that this process “enables young people to develop deeper understandings of important domains of inquiry” (p. 120) and that range of video game titles could be expanded to allow for a diverse array of domains (e.g., being an architect, being a veterinarian, etc.). The players themselves could be involved in this process, as the best video games allow for players to reconfigure them and explore the parameters of possible actions.
While Gee makes clear and compelling arguments about the benefits of good video games, the analysis suffers in a few regards. He tends to list many titles of video games that he thinks are examples of different aspects of good games, but he does not go into detail for many. We are left to take his word for it that the games he lists support his arguments. Additionally, while his critiques of contemporary education are in themselves not wholly off the mark, at times the analysis feels like a case of comparing "my best and your worst." He provides examples of educational malpractice that stand in for schooling as a whole, but does not spend much time talking about the countless video games that might not stand up to the standard that he has set for "good" games. For this reason, institutionalized education becomes a bit of a straw man which "good" video games defeat quite easily.
Good as Ethical
A more problematic aspect of the analysis is that while Gee admits that many of the games are informed by ideologies worthy of criticism (e.g., militarism, sexism, xenophobia), he brackets off any discussion of content. At times he suggests that other people have taken on that aspect of games, so it is not necessary for him to do so. At other times he argues that the content of the games is irrelevant to an analysis of how the games might be modeling good learning (understood as pleasurable and well-designed). His stated concern is not what is being learned, but the way learning occurs within the games. As part of his attempt to remove content from the analysis, he explains that a game is not good or bad on its own, but rather in how it is used. He argues that, “video games – like any other technology – are neither good nor bad all by themselves. It all depends on how they are played and the social contexts in which they are played” (p. 3). Indeed, rather than critiquing the content of a game, Gee suggests that “When educators recruit games for learning, they build distinctive social and learning systems (e.g., curricula, mentors, connections to other activities, social interactions and so forth) around the games, and we need to assess the effectiveness of the whole system, not the game alone” (p. 134).
Gee is correct to point out the role of social context and the importance of learning systems, but bracketing off the content of the games reduces the analysis to a design problem (i.e., How successful is a given game at helping the player learn how to survive in the virtual environment?). For a writer who has been long concerned with how discourse, learning and identity are co-constructed, it is odd to have the learning taking place be treated as technical issue. Is it possible to talk about “how” the learning happens without addressing the “what” (including the ideological aspects of discourse)? What does the violent, xenophobic and misogynistic nature of some these games say about the larger social context? While he is right to critique attacks on video games that suggest a direct relation between playing violent video games and acts of real-life violence, it remains troublesome that the many games that he lists involve problems being solved by violence. Most of the games he discusses have a structure of kill or be killed, take land or have it taken. He suggests that criticism of this type of content is off base:
In games like this, elements of content could be changed without changing the game play – for example, in some cases, taking pictures of people instead of shooting them or secretly planting a message rather than a bomb in their car would leave the problem solving and its difficulty pretty much the same. Critics of games need to realize that players, especially strategic and mature players, are often focusing on game play more than they are on content per se.” (p. 19).The fact of the matter is that this is not happening, however, and it begs a larger question about the nature of society and of gaming. Why are the embodied experiences currently offered through video games so violent? What kind of social learning systems are in place to help players interrogate the structures and assumptions of these games? Why do players focus on game play rather than content (if they do indeed do this) and what is the possible impact of this attitude? While Gee raises some important points about the ways that learning happens, divorcing the content from the design and technical aspects of the game means that only part of what is learned from video games is addressed. Looking beyond the technical aspects of how games effectively teach players to be good gang members or railroad tycoons might show us that video games are providing for no better learning systems than schools if we are concerned with addressing the negative influence of harmful discourses like racism, sexism, or unbridled capitalism.
On the whole this collection of essays lays out Gee’s thoughts in a clear (if somewhat repetitive) manner. The volume is perhaps best for those who are interested in the educational implications of gaming, particularly teachers who may be unfamiliar with the games their students find to be so compelling. Gee draws on first-hand experience to detail exactly how the design of certain games illustrates good models of learning and his description of game play will be very helpful to teachers and others who have not spent much time themselves playing the current generation of video games. Gee, like many people, has a strong opinion about video games, and readers will certainly find themselves rethinking their own positions, whether they agree with him or not.
Erik Jacobson About the Reviewer
Erik Jacobson is Assistant Professor in the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Literacy Education Department at Montclair State University. His research interests include adult literacy education, learner leadership, and the use of online technologies as part of professional development (e.g., wikis, blogs, discussion groups).
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