Instrumentalism and the Ethics of Videogame Play: The Tactical Iraqi Controversy Elizabeth Losh, University of California, Irvine Competing Positions on Ethics Games • are sites that model communicative exchanges • provide tools that allow learners, patients, or other disenfranchised individuals to realize intended personal or group objectives • represent a pragmatic strategy of negotiation with a less than ideal world • foster exploring institutional environments and testing the architecture of boundaries • are stages for persuasive political rhetoric • are virtual environments that function as ideological deceptions • are visual representations of public deliberation
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Instrumentalism and theEthics of Videogame Play:
The Tactical IraqiControversy
Elizabeth Losh,
University of California, Irvine
Competing Positions on Ethics
Games• are sites that model communicative exchanges
• provide tools that allow learners, patients, orother disenfranchised individuals to realizeintended personal or group objectives
• represent a pragmatic strategy of negotiationwith a less than ideal world
• foster exploring institutional environments andtesting the architecture of boundaries
• are stages for persuasive political rhetoric
• are virtual environments that function asideological deceptions
• are visual representations of public deliberation
Tactical Iraqi
A Pre-History of Tactical Iraqi
The Center for Advanced Research inTechnology for Education (CARTE) atthe Information Sciences Institute of theUniversity of Southern California previouslyauthored a range of imaginative butseemingly disconnected distance learninginitiatives that featured computergenerated animated agents, softwarecapable of expressive speech analysis andsynthesis, and programs organized aroundthe presentation of pedagogical drama.
Mission Game
Skill Builder
Arcade Game
What are the core problemsthat Tactical Iraqi is designed
to solve?
A chronic shortage of Arabic speakersamong military personnel
A combat environment in ambiguous urbanwarfare settings of occupation andreconstruction
A resistance to classroom languageinstruction in the planned population oflearners
Social and Perceptual Realism
What common rituals
make us more likely
to identify a given
situation as realistic?
Alison McMahan
How does the agora
function in digital
spaces?
(The agora is the environmental bubble in which
social exchange and mutual appropriation is
permissible according to Ostwald.)
A Pre-History ofEmbodied LanguageLearning
Georgi Lozanov:SuggestologyandSuggestopedia
Constraining Transgressive Play
James Paul Gee has argued that there arepedagogical benefits to challenging thenorms of explicit instruction in situatedlearning contexts.
Yet military videogames generally punishtransgressive play and limit exploration ofthe virtual environment, to such an extentthat human subjects at first avoided thegame space of Tactical Iraqi entirely or“cheated” to reach the ostensiblerewarded objective.
The Commercial Market forLanguage-Learning Software
The Living Languageseries models normsof politeness in whichinteractions arehighly regulated andproprietary rights tothe physical space isnot contested.
“Knock and Talk” Missions
How do soldiers learn to follow verydifferent rhetorical rules?
How is personal space negotiated?
How do strategies and tactics differ?
Is there a role for politeness?
Positive and Negative Face
Brown and Levinson recommend negativepoliteness as the safer course.
Negative politeness is generally the less riskystrategy than positive politeness
“It is safer to assume that H prefers his peaceand self-determination than he prefers yourexpressions of regard.”
Yet military missions may necessarily constrainthe spatial freedom of others duringinterrogation, quarantine, search, or arrest.
Exactly who is being persuaded when we talkabout “persuasive games”?
Are there lay audiences watching as well asprofessional ones?
Are there domestic audiences listening as well asinternational ones?
What cultural narratives are re-enforced by creating media spectacles around these games?
Stuart Moulthrop
“The declaration (or acclamation) ofwar may distract attention frompreexisting conflicts inherent ininformation culture.”
The First Great Debate
Mimesis: games imitate “real” life and inturn encourage players to act in the“real” world in ways that imitate gameplay.
Catharis: games provide a sociallyacceptable outlet for experiencingdestructive behavior and help playersunderstand the consequences of anti-social actions.
The Second Great Debate
Narratology: games tell stories thatare organized by structural elementsin a plot line in which players identifywith particular characters
Ludology: games subvert culturalnarratives because the “rules” allowfor reciprocity and subversive play
A Third Great Debate?
Instrumentalism: games function astools that give the player enhancedabilities as an individual to effectchange in virtual or real worlds.
Functionalism: games function tomaintain a society’s homeostasis andprotect existing institutions andideological paradigms.
Nick Montfort, on a “greatarticle” . . .
“The BBC article quotes Hannes on gesturaldifferences between U.S. and Arabic cultures,something the program aims to point out totrainees. There are many interesting issuesraised by Tactical Iraqi, but the game shouldremind us that virtual environments don’t erasethe body, and that this can make a difference inhow we use our bodies in the “real” world, too.”
Gonzalo Frasca: “Shame onyou, Tactical Iraqi!”
“They are pulling thetrigger with every singleline of code they create,with every single page ofdesign doc they write . . .The Army money thatfunds your projects istainted with blood . . .”
Pragmatic Responses
Communication saves lives
Lesser of evils arguments (verbal vs.physical violence)
Could serve a public diplomacypurpose
Soldiers might realize the human costsof war if they share a language withits victims
Military vendors won’t cease to be
“A Posteriori” Logic
“There is no such thing as anideologically neutral piece ofsoftware. Of course, teaching a languageis a great thing. However, it does notmake sense to see Tactical Iraqi as agame without a context.
“It is a game to teach Arabic to an Army that illegally invaded Iraq.”
Andrew Stern:
“Gonzalo, it's good to hear dissenting voicesabout military-oriented serious games, evenabout games that are ostensibly intended tomake soldiers more educated and culturallyaware.”
“Military funding (e.g. DARPA) is relativelypervasive in computer science in general,helping fund many researchers, includingsome you know. (The project I'mconsulting on is Army-funded.) Suchresearch, like the interactive narrativeresearch I'm working on for ICT, can beapplied to many other domains.”
“Personally, right now, working for the USmilitary and thinking that it could be a goodthing, given its recent and not-so-recentrecord, I consider that naive.”
“I told you before to stay away
from narratologists . . .”
“Among the more pacifist folks I know, oneof the ‘strategies’ for dealing with theethical issues DARPA and other militaryfunding raise is to think of such research assubversive: they'll take the military fundingand use the resulting research forinitiatives that undermine the military.”
Ian Bogost
“In this global world, it's always hard toknow who is behind who, and what isconnected to what. It's almost impossibleto predict the network of consequences ofyour actions. When I work for a client I setmy limits on the foreseeableconsequences. Let's say that I try to takea sincere ‘to the best of my knowledge.’”
Andrew Stern:
“Ideally of course, the military uses suchresearch in morally acceptable ways, as Ihope my contribution would be — e.g.cultural education. Naive? Well the truthis, the interactive narrative research I'mdoing is somewhat general, and I wouldwant to be working on similar work even ifit weren't military funded, and would wantto make the technology available forlicense; the military would then be free tojust license that directly.”
Hannes Vilhjálmsson, speaking as“a peace activist myself”
1) When I met in person a group ofsoldiers that had just returned from dutyin Iraq I was struck by their awarenessof the mess they were in and theirdesperation to get out of there alive -and to them, being able to make friendsnot enemies was absolutely crucial fortheir own survival.
2) The game rewards non-violence overviolence - in fact, you fail the gameimmediately if things start to take aviolent turn.
“A journalist recently asked me: ‘so, you work onidentifying persuasion techniques in videogames.What if your research falls into the wrong hands?’It is a valid question. Whoever develops tools willface this dilemma and have to live with it.However, I think there is a difference between‘developing X that could be used for harm by A’and ‘helping A so they can use X.’ In the firstcase, it's A's moral responsibility the one that isat stake. In the second it is mine.”
Does any of the Tactical Iraqi debate get very faroutside the instrumentalist paradigm?
Frasca uses the word “tool” at least six times to explain his positions in the ethical debate?
Even anti-instrumentalist Bogost uses the term:
“The position that any tool that requires one toaccept the situation in Iraq explicitly excuses thelogic that brought it about.”
The Tool Approach in Action
Voice Response Translator
“The Human Terrain”
Policy analyst Max Boot in an editorial in The Los
Angeles Times
The FlatWorld mixed reality facility at USC’s ICT
Virtual Tourism
What are the effects of architecturalpastiche?
How is the area of game play constrained?
Virtual Iraq
A HMD exposure therapy simulation that uses
digital assets from other
ISI/ICT projects and
Full Spectrum Warrior.
The object of the simulation
is to allow the patient to
create personal narratives
about real-life traumatic
events that foster psychic
integration rather than the symptomology or
dissociation of PTSD. Some versions of the
simulation use a motion platform and/or scent
release device.
Telemedicine
Rehabilitation and training in virtualenvironments for amputees, spinal injurypatients, the blind, and thedevelopmentally disabled.
Virtual Classroom
Albert “Skip” Rizzo
ADHD Children
Geographies of Trauma
Virtual World Trade Center
Cornell and
the University of Washington
Virtual VietnamJarrell Pair and
researchers at Georgia Tech
Virtual Bus BombingTamar Weiss,
University of Haifa
The Spatialization of Memory in the
work of Jacki Morie
The Memory Stairs
DarkCon
The Rhetoric of WalkingMichel de Certeau
Ian Bogost, the figure of the flaneur, andthe concept of “Procedural Rhetoric”
Showing pervasive problems beingsolved could potentially create
political spectacles
The shortage of Arabic speakers
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among theveteran population
The difficulty of locating improvisedexplosive devices
Ambush! from BBS,another DARWARS
project
Mainstream Media Coverageof Tactical Iraqi
Newsweek
USA Today
The Los Angeles TimesThe New York Times
National Geographic
Forbes
BBCNational Public RadioABC News
In what ways could you argue thatAmerica’s Army is actually a“better,” more ethical game?
It fosters certain forms of community
3-D characters are not racialized
It allows for occasional protest
Embodiment gaps invite critique of its oppositionallogic
It is possible to challenge authority despite sternconsequences
Is there a rhetorical function to makingtraining, language-learning, or therapyvisible to the public?
Regardless of the intentions of their creators,are policy-makers motivated to fund projectsthat show intractable problems being tackledregardless of their efficacy?
If audiences for broadcast media in thegeneral public do not participate ininteractive experiences do they have anyopportunity for ideological critique?
Slavoj !i"ek: “Welcome to theDesert of the Real”
By using the film The Matrix as an analogy,
!i"ek argues that until the attacks ofSeptember 11th, the U.S. was shielded by anartificial but ideologically comforting socio-economic, political, and cultural virtual realityenvironment that separated it from the violenceand privation of the rest of the world.
“If there is any symbolism in the collapse of theWTC towers, it is not so much the old-fashionednotion of the ‘center of financial capitalism,’ but,rather, the notion that the two WTC towers stoodfor the center of the VIRTUAL capitalism, offinancial speculations disconnected from thesphere of material production. The shatteringimpact of the bombings can only be accounted foronly against the background of the borderlinewhich today separates the digitalized First Worldfrom the Third World ‘desert of the Real.’”
Ironically, since those attacks, governmentagencies have created even more VRE’s sothat games and simulations can safelymodel military and public health situationsof crisis.
In particular, a number of other “VirtualIraqs” were to have been recreated; theseincluded plans to construct a digital replicaof the looted National Museum inBaghdad.
Making Things Public
Taxpayer-Funded Games asPublic Property
“Scientific laboratories, technical institutions,marketplaces, churches and temples, financialtrading rooms, Internet forums, ecologicaldisputes – without forgetting the very shape ofthe museum inside which we gather all thosemembra disjecta – are just some of the forumsand agoras in which we speak, vote, decide, aredecided upon, prove, are being convinced.”
Bruno Latour
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Lewis Johnson of the Information SciencesInstitute for allowing me to interview him about thisproject and for access to his published studies, gamescripts, character descriptions, and personal reflectionsin several follow up e-mail exchanges. I am also verygrateful to Albert “Skip” Rizzo of the Institute for CreativeTechnologies, who permitted an extensive interviewallowed me to use the Virtual Iraq system twice andshared his rich archive of digital files that demonstratevirtual reality exposure techniques and clinical findings.Michael Zyda of the Game Pipe Lab at USC, who co-created America’s Army, also granted me an extensiveinterview.