What Would John Do?

Role models help us to identify the characteristics we want to build within ourselves. In fact, in regards to our overall sense of identity we generally share our most valued traits with someone we consider to be a role model. Psychology Today explains that most people seek out a role model, even when it is subconscious. We just look up to those that we feel is of high moral standards in our person lives, or someone who is successful in a situation that people can relate to in their lives.

Videogames have the freedom to totally create a character to their perfect liking, and put them in difficult situations that could relate to anyone. The imagination is limitless, and with the medium of videogames, developers can maximize their potential with their imaginations and positively reach out to their audience. Characters that can be romanticized, legends that can be interacted with and feel more real, and heroes with goals that the player can directly identify with has pushed gaming into a whole new scope within the entertainment industry.

Mario, Link, Master Chief, Samus, Lara Croft, Ezio Auditore, Megaman, and many more heroes in videogames have unyielding willpower and indestructible moral values, even in the face of the most impossible odds. These characters are all relatable to different people, for different reasons, with the unifying element of heroism. Our day to day lives are filled with hundreds of thousands of choices, all influenced by what we believe is "right" or "normal", and role models help us to define what these words mean to us.

Ezio Auditore, my personal favorite, is a character representing an unyielding desire to make a difficult life better than what it is. He takes control of the world around him, and just like the quote from Ghandi, becomes the change he wanted to see in the world rather than wallowing in despair. After being framed for his family's murder, he decides to make a difference and dedicate himself to the pursuit righteousness by reigniting the order of the assassins. His only motivation is not vengeance, though. He fights for the greater good, and uses the tragedies he faced as further reasons to protect innocent people from the same fate.

Although characters that are most effective in my opinion, are the faceless ones. John-117, AKA Master Chief of the Halo franchise, provides merely an orange mask as a face and few instances of dialogue, the (male) gamer is free to feel as if they were Master Chief themselves. Bungie Studios' Frank O'Connor describes Spartan 117 as, "so quiet and so invisible, literally, that the player gets to pretend they're the Chief. The player gets to inhabit those shoes [and] apply their own personality." This type of immersion greatly enhances the psychological effects of the characters on the gamers. 

What Do Videogames Teach Us About Society?

How much do we really get out of videogames when we play them? Can they really teach us things or cause us to act in certain ways? Dr. Brad J. Bushman and Dr. Chris Ferguson both agree that they do, for both have participated in psychological studies involving the correlation between violence, race, and videogames. Whether it be positive or negative, videogames will influence how we think in one way or another, be it subconsciously or consciously. The Huffington Post is where I found these two researches with opposing views, who both implicitly agree that videogames alter the way of thinking of its gamers. It seems that gamers will relate the characters that they play directly with reality, and most times it is totally unintentional. Playing as an avatar of a specific race, perhaps one different than yours would be easier for your mind to disconnect from and create stereotypes, generally leads people to draw conclusions from the actions preformed by this avatar to people in reality.

So, if videogames can install preconceptions or ideas into people, can we use that to our advantage like Dr. Ferguson suggests? What if people played videogames in which every race preformed the same tasks, would people just associate all races with the same thing, and essentially end racism by collectively characterizing all races at the same time? Sounds like an interesting idea. Maybe, like Dr Ferguson attests that we should just make every race be the hero. But this still wouldn't eliminate the fact that the gamers will be stereotyping huge amounts of people based on made up stories and loosely made associations. Videogames are likely perpetuating the issue of racism, but its' likely not the means of eliminating it.

People are what creates racism. Human beings stereotype each other, and when it comes to racism and the abuse of others based on false claims we begin to destroy each others' lives. We categorize things because we need to. Because if we didn't, then the massive amounts of information we take in on a daily basis would be really difficult to work with and comprehend. Mental categorization helps us to cope with life, helps us to survive. If we see a shark, or some animal that we categorized as dangerous based on other events, we were more likely to survive as we avoided it. This doesn't mean that the shark is actually going to be dangerous, though. In the world, there are on average 16 shark attacks with an average of two fatalities per year. Categorization may have helped and may help in some scenarios, but it doesn't make it perfectly accurate.

I think people really need to be careful when trying to understand the world around them. Everyone generalizes and categorizes, but sometimes we need to take a deeper look inside of ourselves to make sure we don't have any misguided preconceptions installed into our subconsciousness that have no merit or follow false information. Videogames can give you insight, or it can cause unintentional stereotyping.

Skyrim is a game I believe to give insight. In a mostly Nord driven land, racism is prominent and the player experiences what it is like to be subject to such racism. This can show the gamer the issues that racism brings about. The game teaches us in a way, by giving us experience, and further developing our understanding of society.

Ender's Game was a perfect introduction for this discussion about the intellectual development of the brain with simulations. The "game" that Ender plays in various simulations throughout his life was intended to serve as practice and training for actual combat. In the beginning, Ender's games could be seen mostly as combat drills as we would see in the army today with mock battles, while near the end he would be given a computerized station in which he would remotely command his troops. This means of controlling his army is very similar to Real Time Strategy games (or RTS games for short) such as Blizzard's Starcraft or Warcraft. All of Ender's life, war has been a game, in fact most of what he knew about life was a game.

The story itself implies that games are parallel to reality, Ender becomes unable to discern between the real war and the games he had played. He proves to be an extreme, fictional example of the training aspects videogames may have. There are a few discrepancies that must be addressed between our RTS games and Ender's games before understanding the underlying principles of the teaching aspects of videogames. First, Ender trained mostly with games that he needed to play, and games that were intended to train people to fight wars effectively while most of our games are for entertainment and competition. Second, Ender's games were identical to the wars he fought, while our videogames may strive for realistic gameplay, it is the player who must absorb the useful information and be able to apply it in different situations correctly.

With the understanding that Ender's Game is a purely ideal example of my discussion, it can then be relatable to our videogames. Just as chess has been hypothesized to enrich people's ability to compete in the business world, RTS videogames inadvertently train us to compete and dominate our opponents with wits, speed, skill, and experience. Before we play one of these games for the first time, we may have heard as children to "try our hardest and we will be rewarded" by our superiors, but we never really knew what it was to succeed. RTS games put you in a position, where you and only you are responsible for your outcome, which will be an immediate result. These games will put you in an atmosphere in which you are expected to understand and overcome your adversary, while learning how you may react given a specific situation. You are given goals to attain, materials to succeed, and an adversary that has the same drive as you.

If applied outside of the videogame, these lessons are invaluable to the player in their development through life. With immediate results from a win or a loss of a game, a goal completed with new rewards that little other people have, or being ranked higher and higher with more effort and new strategies people will begin to discover the reality of the "game" that is required to be played for college or for success in life. If a player is able to learn and apply what they have learned, as Ender unknowingly did, one can excel in their studies as they develop new strategies to destroy their opponent: the exam. Or, to become an above-average student with the understanding of handwork and determination. The gamers have experienced what it means to compete in new environments, who they are when placed under demands of people that may be twice or 3 times their age as Ender did, and what it feels like to be successful- or even one of the best.