Video games: implicit knowledge by practice

All games are educational, what are they teaching us?

Much has been written and will be written¹ about games. Let’s start with the usual perspectives that, without being wrong, focus on the less important aspects of games. For example, considering that games are only:

1. For people with too much time to play alone offline or online in teams.

2. Multimedia entertainment, like movies.

3. Art, like paintings.

4. Culture and messages, like music.

5. Stories, narratives, and storytelling, like novels.

6. An industry with deep pockets and massive budgets, or small indie studios.

7. A matter of fast reflexes, like ping-pong, or deep thinking, like chess.

They are all of the above combined and more, but we can see all of the previous by analogy with other industries, products, and arts. Video games have several characteristics that set them apart, break analogies and parallels, and we need to consider them from a first principles perspective. To keep this short, I want to highlight just one: learning implicit knowledge by doing.

Implicit knowledge is hard to teach; you can tell someone “be resilient,” but you cannot reasonably expect that will impact their resilience. Stories, as in books and films, or occasionally songs, may have some impact. But only games allow one to practice resilience and take it into real life. This is one of the most straightforward lessons a game may teach; it is explained in the TEDx talk “The Super Mario Effect” by Mark Rober. This is minuscule compared to the people that Dark Souls helped to get out of a dark mental place, inviting them to a hero’s journey with its unforgiving difficulty.

Contrary to encouraging words or inspiring stories, games set the player as the main character. The implicit message is not “You can do it” or “If someone else can do it, so can you.” With games, the implicit message is: “You can overcome your limitations.” This is not something that someone tells the player or is implied about someone else; this is something that the player experiences firsthand.

Games, as any effort that may fail, may help to beat Dunning-Kruger and overconfidence. As any effort where we may improve and grow, they may help to challenge the fixed mindset and adopt a growth mindset. They may help to practice and acquire problem-solving skills (or at least measure them). Any RTS player knows that unused resources mean death, as much as any management simulation player knows how debt can spiral out of control and bankrupt you. Any RPG player knows that skill points need to be strategically prioritized. The examples are infinite.²

Black swans and existential risks are hard to imagine. Let people experience the “you died” message on the screen until they get it right, then see if they keep the same “don’t look up” mindset.³

The implicit message may educate and inform, but it may similarly misinform. When “the Mario Effect” is applied to criminal behavior and the lack of consequences of going to prison, it seems less “educational.” However, games may provide this kind of implicit knowledge, with priorities on profit, network effects, and fun, probably in that order.⁴

The current games’ self-regulation may provide an age rating based on their themes and contents, but the age rating was already falling short in cinema. For instance, films like American History X, Requiem for a Dream, and The Basketball Diaries may provide educational value by realistically depicting the negative consequences of drugs and violence, serving as cautionary tales. While other shows may glamorize these issues, and some characters may get away with anything. With games, this is deeper, more subtle, and more powerful, with the player being in control and making some of the decisions. In short, it is not so much about what is depicted but how it is depicted, which will shape what the player experiences and learns, possibly unconsciously, and how it is extrapolated to real life.⁵

In short, the educational potential of video games is:

1. Unparalleled, hard to understand by analogy, shaping culture and future.

2. Unharnesed, underutilized, improperly utilized, mischaracterized.

3. Undervalued, underestimated, misunderstood, unappreciated.

4. Hidden by other more salient features, like profitability.

5. Forgotten, with public discourse focusing on different aspects of games.

Many forces shape the path and the future of industries. The strongest may be consumer responsibility: how consumers vote with their money. I am not going to tell anyone how they have to spend their money, but everybody should think about it. I hope this helps, at least with the last point.

Screenshot from Banished, looks nice

1. In particular, this post is motivated by Simon Wardley and the replies he has received when discussing video games on Twitter. This inspired me to write about the topic and update an old post about “educational games.” I could only prioritize this post when he recently “threatened” with a video games mapping group.

2. This paragraph was revealed to me through extensive research by playing games. In particular, I think management games are incredibly underrated. (But perhaps avoid games like Dungeon Keeper, don’t slap your serfs.)

3. The message, however, should not be too literal. If the game is supposed to be a simulator about climate change, its accuracy will be questioned, and people will remain in denial. If the game shows hundreds of tail risks, it will shape people into paranoia and risk aversion without anything specific to criticize because “it is only a game; you may just play a different one.” I am not suggesting everybody should be paranoid; I am just trying to provide an example and say: “If it is a tacit lesson, you are better off without being literal.”

It is usual to see games and movies that communicate a message explicitly, while the implicit aspects communicate something different, nothing, or the opposite message. Personally, I think the focus should be set on what developers want players to witness (preferably from different perspectives, interactively) and especially what developers want players to experience (again, with freedom of action), and less on what developers want to say. Analogously for series and films. It might help to have some training as a role gamemaster with players with low agreeableness constantly trying to think out of the box and derail the story.

For example, Arcane may communicate that science is a lonely endeavor without needing anyone explicitly saying it. FullMetal Alchemist is even more nuanced; both the original series and Brotherhood have common themes of knowledge and sin, but the implicit message in each series is entirely different, in my humble opinion. No spoilers.

4. I can see the randomness of loot boxes as a gateway dopamine trigger toward worse addictions like gambling. Recreational drugs are profitable and also normally illegal. Modern medicine and the pharma industry can save lives and improve life quality. Games, as simulators that let people experience and learn something that cannot be put into words, have a great potential for good and for bad. Who is paying attention to that?

5. This will derail the conversation towards: “violent games do not create serial killers; serial killers (and other people) choose to play violent games.” That is a smaller idea compared with the bigger idea: “Games may teach management better than an MBA by providing practice rather than theory.” Not only management but also problem-solving, navigating (cybernetics) complex systems, etc. But Internet debates derail. That is a law of the Internet. Contributing to the derailment, some people consider the learning pyramid is pseudoscience.