PRESSING START

“The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.”

The G Man, Half Life 2

I have been an avid reader my whole life. While still in elementary school, I remember my parents buying me a collection of the “classic” novels – books like Treasure Island, Moby Dick, and Robinson Crusoe. I loved the sense of adventure, danger, and excitement, and I would often stay awake late, even after my parents had gone to bed, so I could keep reading. I remember one type of story in particular that was very interesting: the allegory.

Works such as Pilgrim’s Progress, the Chronicles of Narnia, Animal Farm, Don Quixote and Aesop’s Fables captured my imagination, as I enjoyed trying to find the parallels between the story and the intended representation in reality. I have also found myself drawn to science fiction movies (often based on books) that offer symbolism and analogy in their storytelling narrative. Some of my favorites include: the Wizard of Oz, Blade Runner, the Lord of the Rings, Fight Club, and the Matrix.

What I find most interesting is this idea that individuals can be taught and even spurred to thinking about things in new ways through storytelling and allegory. Books offer a self-paced experience, where the reader can pause and reflect, revisit and re-read, or even skip around within the story. I am one of those individuals who scribbles notes in the margins of my books, ruining them for future readers, capturing my own ideas as I consume the material. Books can actively engage the imagination, as the writer describes the world and events contained within, but the reader overlays their own interpretation through their mind’s eye in a way that creates a unique experience for each reader.

Movies can build on the strengths of the story, and provide another layer of experience through compelling visuals and heighten the experience with a masterful soundtrack. While movies can intensify the experience, the time limitations of the format cause many details to be lost when converting from written works, and remove much of the imagination’s engagement for the viewer. When we watch the 2013 film adaptation of the Great Gatsby, we are not afforded the opportunity to imagine the physical appearance of Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby, but instead, we see the faces of Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The soundtrack for this movie is also an element under criticism. The decision to include many modern rap songs as part of the soundtrack, jarringly removes the work from the context in which it was depicting and forces it into modern context in a way that reveals the challenge of the passive nature of the medium. Movies remain a popular form of entertainment that provide us with moving experiences, but for the most part remain limited by several of the previously mentioned strengths.

Compared to books and movies, video games offer a great opportunity to combine the advantages of both, within the same media. Storytelling, written word, visuals, audio, self-directed pacing, and active engagement all exists within the media of video games. There is great potential in this area to develop amazing works of art which can also provide instruction and self-paced learning, while prompting and engaging creativity and imagination. Video games have historically been dismissed as a child’s game, immature, addictive, or worse yet, the inspiration behind horrific violent acts. To easily dismiss video games in this way is a great mistake and a denial of their true potential.

Valiant efforts have been made to create learning games, or “edutainment,” but too often these “games” miss their mark. Early attempts like Reader Rabbit and Mathblaster were too focused on the learning, neglecting the elements that make video games compelling. The challenge with many educational games is the player starts a game with the expectation that the game is designed to teach. Already it sounds less like fun and more like work.

Yet the opportunity to truly leverage video games as a teaching tool cannot be missed. In many ways, video games are all about teaching. By way of example, consider the following list of names: Roy Campbell, Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Leon S. Kennedy, John Marston, Professor Herschel Layton, Gabriel Belmont, Gordon Freeman, Sam Fisher, Genjuro Kibagami, Ken Masters, Chun Li, Shang Tsung, Sonya Blade, Nathan Drake, Elena Fisher, Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart, Dr. Wily, Lara Croft, and Sarah Bryant. This list of individuals are people who I know, and I can provide you with rather specific information about.

They also share one thing in common: everyone listed is a video game character.

I think about all the information stored in my brain which is tied to, or learned from, video games, and the possibilities are staggering. To prove my point, just ask any video game player to list out the name of video game worlds or towns they have visited, describe classes of characters, discuss statistics that are game related, or recite complex combinations of buttons pressed for special moves and combinations in fighting games. The learning mechanism’s success is difficult to debate. It is the relevance of the information that is the issue.

What if these towns were real world locations? What if button combinations represented steps in a scientific or mathematical formula? What if the historical events told in the tales of epic quests were actually a re-telling of our own history? Consider all the learning taking place in the over 6 million years of actual history in game play time recorded in just the game World of Warcraft. Also consider that so far, I have only mentioned the possibility for rote memorization, not breaching on topics of creativity, systems thinking, or innovation.

Classic Literature: The Game

Beyond the potential mentioned for allegory within gaming, another potential along the journey to realizing the full potential of gaming, is a clever repurposing of existing classical works. I would be quite interested in seeing a developer attempt to re-create or retell a classic literature story in video game form. Not just an adaptation of the subject matter, but a definitive recreation of the book. I have every reason to believe this could be very successful, especially when I look at an existing game that comes pretty close in execution.

Square Enix and Disney teamed up to create an action role-playing game, Kingdom Hearts. This game combined original characters, favorites from the Final Fantasy franchise, and most notably characters from Disney movies. The stories and game narrative were intertwined with a final result that is very impressive. The game is a standalone work into itself, but what was most notable to me was the environment created around the Disney intellectual property. As you played through various scenarios which included excerpts from famous Disney animated films, you actually took an interactive role within these familiar game worlds.

Various segments of the game felt as if you had stepped directly onto the set of a Disney animated film, and you were taking part in a retelling of Disney movies including Cinderella, Tron, the Lion King, and even the Little Mermaid. In many cases the original voice actors were used or talent was hired sounding so similar to the original Disney voices that only a hardcore fan would be able to tell the difference.

Since Square Enix and Disney can team up to create a game successfully capturing the true feel of these iconic movies why isn’t it reasonable to think a publisher could re-create existing classics such as Treasure Island, the Hound of the Baskervilles or any other number of literary classics? These games could be a highly interactive and definitive version of the written work, with details and learning opportunities unrivaled by any other media.

Allegamy: Old Meets New

Taking the idea a step further, consider video games engage the user in a multi-sensory experience that can span significant amounts of time. I recall playing Final Fantasy VII to the point the in game timer hit 99 hours and 99 minutes and then stopped. That is time I chose to spend, learning, working, and solving the problems of a fictional world. What if all that time, I had been playing a game which was an allegory, or if you will entertain my own terminology, allegamy. Imagine a video games designed with a secondary interpretation, revealing a lesson with real world applicability.

An allegamy is not a simulation. When I imagine the possibilities of simulations, the sobering concepts within science fiction works in the vein of Enders Game and War Games, come to mind. In both works individuals are engaging in what they believe is a video game or simulation, only to learn their activity in the game has real world impact. While simulations have the ability to build self-efficacy in many tasks, their limitation is their effectiveness which is directly tied to their verisimilitude to reality.

I am not alone in my vision for what can be. Thought leaders and authors including Jane McGonigal who makes the case “Reality is Broken,” but offers up ideas which are found in games as possible solutions. McGonigal asks, “What if we started to live our real lives like gamers, lead our real businesses and communities like game designers, and think about solving real-world problems like computer and video game theorists?”

Another great example can be found in physician and leader Dr. James Rosser whose realization that playing video games can improve both the speed and quality of surgeons’ performance with certain types of procedures. This realization has opened doors for his further research on the topic, as well as his book Playin’ to Win which explores the potential of video games to unlock a cultural transformation of “exploration, innovation, and productivity.”

These visions are grand in scale and require significant change in how the public views video games and how games are used. I would like to propose allegamy as a generally unexplored opportunity along the way. Allegamy is the low hanging fruit that can enable video games to leverage their inherent strengths as a teaching tool, in a way simple to implement.

I am convinced of the potential for the method of game-based learning when I reflect on the impact both allegory and video games have made on my learning and thought process.

In the pages that follow, I will share with you some of my favorite principles. Ideas which can help you succeed at work and at home, but I will teach these principles through analogy and metaphor contained in a few of my favorite, and I hope your favorite, video games.

Not All Games Are Created Equal

A word of caution: not all video games are created equal. There are games that are poorly designed, poorly programmed, or contain features that harm the overall playability of the game itself. When a game includes flaws of this nature, something interesting tends to happen. Those who play the game begin to complain, using language such as “this game is broken” while highlighting the flaws, or even heavily criticizing the structure and mechanics of the gameplay itself.

It is almost as if there is an instinctive understanding of what makes a game good or bad. One might even call this the underlying principles. Furthermore, I believe it is not necessary to be a long time game player to be able to tell the difference between a great game and a poorly made game. Imagine picking up a video game for the first time. After playing a new game for a few minutes you begin to realize that it is near impossible, or there are elements in the game itself that cause you to lose any hope of succeeding. Very quickly you will realize the game has violated an unspoken principal seated within.

Conversely, if you begin playing a game and there is a sense of hope, or the opportunity to engage in a quick win, you will feel progress or accomplishment from your effort and engagement will increase. Engagement is then maintained by escalating challenges and increasing rewards that scale with your progress within the game.

Balance And Competition

Like many gamers, the player may not even be aware (at least actively) that principles are being adhered to, but if something were to change the structure, or the rules suddenly switched, the impact would be obvious and the backlash immediate. As video games become more dependent on online features and updates to the game can happen through patches live downloads, rebalancing existing games has become more common. This is probably most noticeable in the genre of fighting games, where in competition character balance is important, especially for competition at a high-level.

Beyond fighting games, competitive video game tournaments are part of the rise of “eSports.” For example, Defense of the Ancients is hosting an annual competitions: the International DotA 2 Championships in Seattle, Washington where the prize pool is almost $11 Million dollars! With over 32 million viewers watching the final 2013 League of Legends championship it is no wonder that universities have begun offering scholarships for students who join college video game teams.

With significant money and prestige at stake, it is understandable that players expect, or even demand, a fair and balanced environment. The same holds true for how people feel about their work, or any other environment that they spend a significant amount of time or effort contributing to. The key focus area is to carefully consider: what are the elements that contribute to a good or successful experience within the gaming environment? What are the “must have” success factors and their corresponding principles? Then, how do we help individuals connect the dots between how the behaviors, concepts, and principles that they employed within the video game space, also hold true and have real world application, not just in work, but interactions with other people, in relationships, and even in parenting?

Looking For A Way To Connect The Dots

I find it fascinating that so many values or morals embraced in the classic traditions are equally important to being successful within games. When you look at the morals found within Aesop’s fables you can begin to connect the dots and draw the lines back to the video game experience, but a thoughtful approach is required.

Now these principles, ideas, and strategies are only useful if you actually put them to use. If you hold an inventory of the best items in your favorite role-playing game, but you never use them, you might as well not have them at all. If you play a modern fighting game and a powerful super move is saved up, but you never activate it, it does you no good.

Several different methods for using video games to teach have been proposed and researched, but there is much work that remains to truly connect lessons learned in video games with application to success in the professional world. The particular approach I propose is targeted to a specific group of individuals: the game player who is also a professional. With the rich mythology contained in video games, the significant time investment in playing as a down payment, and the positioning as a working adult in their twenties, thirties, or forties, this particular demographic is poised for accelerated growth of the soft skills that are in the greatest demand in our current century.

Music and literature benefit from hundreds of years of refinement, and even the motion picture industry has existed over a century. By comparison, video games are still very much in their infancy, yet their progress in such a short time is impressive, surpassed only by the potential to become an even greater vehicle for human communication and interaction than they are today. I believe the approach of allegamy can further establish video games as a powerful tool that can be used for tremendous growth and development while being enjoyable in a capacity unrivaled by any other format in existence.

True to the philosophy of the approach itself, modern technology is integrated with a classic approach to create Allegamy.

Allegamy

Syllabification: al·le·ga·my

Pronunciation: /ˈaləˌgâmē /

Definition: The Interpretation of a video game to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a personal development or moral one.