Eugen Pfister (Hochschule der Künste Bern – HKB), Martin Tschiggerl (Universität des Saarlandes) ⁸

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Abstract

History is not only the construction of a past, but is also its interpretation. In this paper we study examples of taboos in historical representations of World War II in digital games as sources for contemporary collective identities. To this end we analyze two
distinct phenomena: legal and cultural taboos determining what can be shown and what can be said in these games.  We will show how a cultural and political paradigm shift has occurred in Austria and Germany in recent years. Thus, the portrayal of the Holocaust is no longer only understood as a taboo but also as a necessary part of our culture of remembrance. In a second part, we will look at how taboos are not only discussed but also co-constructed within the gaming community on the occasion of authenticity debates.

Introduction

In popular culture, history functions as a reliable selling point: historical novels, historical films, historical Netflix-series abound (cf. Samida, 2014; Cauvin, 2016). Many digital games are likewise advertised by promoting their historical authenticity and there seems to be an ongoing demand for historical content among users (Pfister, 2020). History here is not only the construction of a past, but is also its interpretation. Through this interpretation, history functions as a building block for our collective identities; it communicates values and norms (ibid). In order to illustrate this, we will use examples of taboos in historical representations of World War II in digital games as sources for contemporary collective identities. We will first explain which taboo concepts we are dealing with, in order to later analyse how they are imposed upon and received in digital games. We will investigate two distinct phenomena: First, taboos surrounding the production of the games as well as the product – the games themselves. Here, we are interested in the representation and successive way in which the use of Nazi symbols in this media and the Holocaust in digital games has been taboo over the years. To this end, we have selected games that in their representation of the Nazi era, have caused controversy: Wolfenstein: The New Order, Call of Duty: WW II and Through the Darkest of Times. In a second step, we will investigate taboos surrounding the reception of digital games that have World War II as their main theme. For this purpose, we have selected two games that have also triggered discussions in recent years due to their depiction of the Nazi era: Battlefield V and the grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV. This reception is examined in the form of a critical discourse analysis. (Wodak et al, 2009, Jäger, 2011). Consequently, we have evaluated particularly popular threads on the social medium Reddit and in the forums of the gaming platform Steam with regard to the handling of taboos.

In our everyday use, we mostly understand “history” as the unchanging sum of all the past. In scientific understanding, however, the term takes on a different meaning. We understand history as a narrative construction of the past in the present (Tschiggerl/Walach/Zahlmann, 2019, p. 138). The depicted events (similar to a story) are shown as motivated (there is a comprehensible causal connection), and become a meaning, a world explanation (White, 1973).  As such, history is always bound to the dispositives of its respective time of origin. In our modern societies, history plays a crucial role in communicating meaning and identity, not only in academia but also – and especially – in popular culture. The representation of history in games communicates worldviews and common values and is thus a good source with which to better understand our contemporary societies. We recognise taboos as social limitations of what is sayable in the broadest sense. They socially and culturally regulate what may not be said, done or shown, whether in principle it could be said, done or shown. Here, we are influenced by Michel Foucault’s concept of “discourse” as “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 2013, p. 54). Discourse governs what is considered as truth and what as lie, what is considered right and what is considered wrong. In this way, discourse not only creates meaning, but in fact constructs our reality. Discourse must thus be thought of as a social practice that is socially constructed, on the one hand, but is also socially determining, on the other (Wodak et al., 2009, p. 8). Taboos are areas of discourse that are the most affected by disciplinary measures and bans on speaking and acting. Put very simply, taboos are an effective means of defining what a collective defines as ‘good’ and what it defines as ‘bad’, and taboos, by their very nature, are intended to prevent unacceptable behaviour. The Second World War as a quasi-global lieu de mémoire is of central importance in the collective memory of our western post-war societies. This is why narratives of the Second World War are also full of cultural and political taboos. There are different ways to ensure that these taboos are observed. The most obvious being practices that are effectively regulated by law, as for example, denial of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes, which is a criminal offence in Austria and Germany. The same applies to various forms of re-engagement in National Socialist activities and the use and reproduction of anti-constitutional signs (e.g. the swastika and SS-runes) in Germany. Apart from legal forms of regulation i.e. the criminalization of taboos – which are the exception rather than the rule, especially in the case of historical representations – taboos tend to be enforced within society itself through peer pressure and exclusion and without jurisdiction. When politicians – as has been the case recently with actors from the Austrian and German Far-Right – violate these taboos, they are usually rebuked by their parliamentary colleagues, in the media but also by the public in general. They lose social status and are excluded from certain events.

Just like discourse itself, taboos, however, change over time and things that were previously unspeakable, untouchable, and even unthinkable can gradually become part of social communication. Especially in historical research and representation we can find numerous examples of such shifts in discourse.

In the following paragraphs, we will therefore take a closer look at three distinct forms of taboos concerning the depiction of World War II in games. For one, there is the political taboo, which extends to making it illegal to reproduce Nazi symbols. Deeply interlinked with this is the cultural taboo, which makes it unthinkable to use images of the Shoah in an entertainment media. In the sense of a critical history of ideas and conceptual history, we will diachronically examine the discursive taboo strategies at work within public debate. To this end, we will look at examples of individual reactions of journalists and cultural critics to perceived breaking of taboos. A comparison of reactions to the TV-series Holocaust, the feature film Schindler’s List and to digital games such as Wolfenstein: The New Order and Through the Darkest of Times should enable us to recognise historical continuities or breaks in how these taboos have been dealt with. We are not interested in a comprehensive survey of all public reaction, but rather in identifying historical patterns. To complete this first impression we will finally reverse our initially adopted top-down approach and analyse taboos from the bottom up from the perspective of the individual players themselves through an analysis of how they receive them.

“You don’t play with the Swastika!” – A failed Political Taboo?

It is impossible to cleanly separate cultural taboos from legal taboos. Austria and Germany are – for obvious historical reasons – the two countries with the most restrictive legislation regarding the memory of National Socialism. In Austria, the provisional post-war government passed the so-called “Verbotsgesetz” as early as 1945, a constitutional law which banned the Nazi-Party. In its present form it became applicable in 1947 and prohibits Holocaust denial as well as the denial of other of crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi regime. The “Abzeichengesetz”, enacted in 1960, also prohibits the use of uniforms and insignia of forbidden organisations. The German equivalent are the sections 86 and 86a of the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch StGB). These cover the prohibition of the “use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations” outside the contexts of “art or science, research or teaching” (Trips-Hebert, 2014). The intention of these laws was not only to make any form of political continuity of Nazi ideology impossible but also to prohibit the use of all insignia of the Nazi regime for the future. These were to be effectively erased from everyday life. The impulse for the ban is understandable, as it was intended to make any habituation impossible (Dankert & Sümmermann, 2018, p. 6). Any use of swastikas is a taboo that was thus enshrined in law.

However, it is important to note, that there were exemptions to the ban: the so-called “Sozialadäquanzklausel” (social adequacy clause) in German law states that the use of Nazi symbols is permitted if it serves the arts, science or political education (Trips-Hebert, 2014, p. 17). The use of Nazi symbols in historical movies became so widespread that practically all films were permitted to use them (the only exception being posters advertising the films). This was not the case with digital games. In 1998, the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main ruled “that no signs of unconstitutional organisations may be shown in computer games” (Dankert & Sümmermann, 2018, p. 6). The judges understood that computer games were neither art nor history books and disallowed the social adequacy clause in their case. Up to now, the highest state youth authorities have been guided by this ruling; developers and publishers have not been permitted to submit games to the Unterhaltungssoftware Seltbstkontrolle USK (the German Entertainment Software Self-Regulation) that contain the swastika symbol. But, what is more, before the court ruling almost all game distributors had already decided to remove all Nazi symbols in the German releases of their games (Pfister, 2019, p. 275). In the German localisation of the Lucasfilm game adventure Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) all swastika symbols had already been covered by black bars. It is difficult to communicate a taboo more clearly.

There are three well-known cases of World War II games that were put on the German ‘Index’ in the 1990s, a list of media banned by the German government. This ban, however, was not because of the prohibition on the use of unconstitutional symbols in Germany. The inhuman game KZ-Manager – which gained notoriety in the early 1990s, not least because of a report in the New York Times – was put on the German “index” under the Youth Protection Act (Bundesanzeiger, 2014). Next was Wolfenstein 3D, the first first-person shooter to be set in World War II. The reason for the decision of the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften – BPjS (Federal Department for Writings Harmful to Young Persons) later renamed Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien – BPjM (i.e. Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors) was — contrary to popular belief — not the historical setting but the glorification of ‘Selbstjustiz’ (vigilantism) and the excessive violence of the game. Panzer General was also placed on the “index” in June 1996, but this too had nothing to do with paragraphs 86 and 86a because the game developers had renounced the use of the swastika and had instead chosen the Balkenkreuz (the military cross used by the German army) to identify the German troops. The game was placed on the index because its content was deemed to ‘kriegsverharmlosend und kriegsverherrlichend’ (downplay and glorify war), since it failed to show the consequences that the war had on the population and because it trivialised Nazi ideology (Celeda, 2015, p. 67).

The pre-emptive and superficial removal of Nazi symbols, however, did not automatically lead to a more critical depiction of the Nazi regime in digital games. On the contrary, the replacement of the swastika symbol by the “Balkenkreuz” or other symbols was understood by most publishers as sufficient distancing and thus led de facto to a continued and uncritical representation of the Nazi regime because the subject had been depoliticized (Chapman & Lindenroth, 2015, p. 146-147). In Hearts of Iron IV for example, players can micromanage the German Reich to German marching music for hours without having to deal for even a moment with the inhuman ideology of the simulated state apparatus (Pfister, 2019, p. 275-276). Indeed, the example of Hearts of Iron shows an unintended counter-effect of the ban. The problem is that the Prohibition Act was not understood in its intention, especially outside Germany. The following commentary on Steam shows that German legislation has been misunderstood on more than one occasion internationally as being a general ban on talking about the crimes of the Nazi regime: “a lot of it probably also have [sic] to do with German law. there’s a reason why his [i.e. Hitler’s] picture is blurred in the German version. if they censor that they will for sure censor a game that actually “shows” the holocaust”⁹ Such misunderstandings or misinterpretations were and still are quite common, as can be read, for example, in the recently published memoirs of Sid Meier. He believes, for example, despite his own experiences with German legislation, that the mere mention of the name Hitler would be punishable (Meier, 2020, p. 122). Another example for the ineffectiveness of superficial erasures can be found in the multiplayer mode of Call of Duty: World at War: players winning a match on the German side will see no swastika, SS runes or skull insignia, but a speech by Adolf Hitler to the German party youth can be heard offstage (Pfister, 2019, p. 275-276). The political taboo behind the banning of the symbols thus did not stop the insensitive handling of the historical event effectively nor prevent a possible habituation among players, but merely caused cosmetic changes.

There is one last, in our opinion, especially problematic example of misunderstood self-censure from the recent Austrian and German past: Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. While the international version propagates a conscious anti-fascist narrative (Roberston, 2017) and shows swastika symbols as insignia of an evil ideology, these have been removed on behalf of the publisher for the German version along with Adolf Hitler’s moustache. The historical narrative of the game has also been rewritten to reflect the completely fictional background of the German version. Hitler was renamed “Heiler” and the word “Jew” was replaced by the word “Verräter” (traitor). The industrialized, racially motivated murder of 6 million people thus became, in translation, the murder of political opponents. This removal of the Holocaust, in the German version, led de facto to a rewriting of history. A subsequent debate in the German media showed a decreasing support for the Verbotsgesetz (Schiffer, 2017). A central danger of the political taboo is that it could not be discussed politically, and thus made a public discussion on the topic impossible (Steuer, 2017, p. 688).

This became particularly clear when the taboo was, in effect, broken in 2018. When the German Classification Board “USK” decided after a process of internal discussions – also in response to the self-censorship in Wolfenstein –to take account of the social adequacy clause in the future when rating games by age and to permit the use of Nazi symbols in individual cases, there was an immediate political outcry. Both the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and Franziska Giffey, the Social Democrat (SPD) Minister for Family Affairs promptly attacked the decision. “Mit Hakenkreuzen spielt man nicht” (i.e. You don’t play with swastikas), Giffey declared (“Mit Hakenkreuzen spielt man nicht”, 2018) and was seconded by the DGB. This public expression of indignation came immediately following the USK’s announcement, and as Minister Giffey explained on her Facebook page a little later, too hastily: After playing the game Through the Darkest of Times, which is clearly opposed to the Nazi regime, Giffey admitted that the application of the social adequacy clause would be justified in this special case (Giffey, 2018). This is also where we find an explanation for the vehemence of her initial reaction when Giffey writes: “As Minister for Family Affairs, my concern is to create the framework for children and young people to learn how to use games in an age-appropriate way” (ibid.).  A helpless and supposedly easily influenced population group had to be protected. The interesting thing about taboos, as can be seen here again, is that their defenders usually consider themselves immune to the dangers from which the taboos are supposed to protect. But this also means that those who stand up for and those who oppose a taboo both consider themselves to be unaffected by its effects.

The reaction of the German press and the ensuing decision of the USK showed however, that the taboo had at this point already been broken. This is not least related to a paradigm shift that had already occurred years earlier concerning an interrelated cultural taboo surrounding the Shoah.

To write a game after Auschwitz is barbaric – a cultural taboo

Parallel to the symbols of the Nazi regime becoming a political taboo, after the Second World War there was also an ongoing discussion among cultural actors whether and how the crimes of the Nazi regime – especially the Shoah – could be depicted in works of art. In this context, Adorno’s dictum “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” (Adorno, 1977, p. 30) is regularly quoted, most often interpreted as a dogmatic ban in the tradition of a religious “Bildverbot” (i.e. ban in images. cf. Krieghofer, 2017; Hansen, 1996, p. 300, 306). According to this interpretation, it would forever be impossible to adequately describe the suffering of millions of people in a poem. However, this interpretation of Adorno’s statement, which he himself relativised later on, could also be read as criticism of a culture that is inherently barbaric (cf. Lindner, 1998, p. 286). Nevertheless, from this moment on every medialisation of the Holocaust was met with the fear of trivialisation. For a long time, then, it was considered inconceivable that the Holocaust could be treated in a television series or in a feature film – the entertainment media par excellence (Pfister, 2019, pp. 269-270). Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, US, 1993) – despite or perhaps because of its success (Classen, 2009, p. 78) – was criticised massively at the time of its release in a similar way to the TV-Series Holocaust (Chomsky, US, 1978). Fifteen years earlier, Chomsky’s TV-Series led to a heated public debate, particularly in West Germany. The journalist Sabina Lietzmann, for example, criticised how history had become a story. (Lietzmann,1979, 39). The writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was also appalled: “I am horrified by the thought that the Holocaust could one day be measured and judged by NBC television production.” (Wiesel, 1979, 29). We will encounter similar if not the same arguments in relation to digital games.

A decade later, Spielberg’s film met with similar criticism. Claude Lanzmann, director of the Shoah documentary rejected Spielberg’s film, in particular because of its “fetishism of style and glamour” (Hansen, 1996, p. 296). The American film critic James Hoberman asked: “Is it possible to make a feel-good entertainment about the ultimate feel-bad experience of the 20th century?” (Hansen, 1996, p. 297), and Lanzman declared: “[In Spielberg’s] film there is no reflection, no thought, about what is the Holocaust and no thought about what is cinema. Because if he would have thought, he would not have made it – or he would have made Shoah” (Hansen, p. 1996, p. 301). Of course, both the TV series and Spielberg’s film also met with a positive to very positive response from the general public. Both were extremely successful with the audience, so successful, in fact, that they led de facto to a discursive paradigm shift. They changed the boundaries of what could be shown and what could be said.

Of interest to us is that similar arguments are found in critiques of digital games: “Where the line of decency is drawn is somewhat dependent on whether you consider video games art, storytelling or a braindead way to kill time, blasting pixels in increasingly gross ways while memorizing movement patterns” (Hoffman, 2014).

The first games that tried to address the Holocaust were problematic for a variety of reasons. First of all, there was a game that brutally and criminally transgressed all norms: The aforementioned KZ-Manager (unknown developer, unknown date), an inhuman shareware game that was circulated in right-wing extremist circles in Germany and Austria in the late 1980s (Benz, 1996; Nolden, 2020, p. 188). The game was quickly banned in Germany and sadly gained international notoriety through an article in the New York Times, where Rabbi Avraham Cooper, then associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said “he believed that the games were neo-Nazi propaganda aimed at influencing youths through a technology that their parents are largely unfamiliar with” (Video Game discovered uses Nazi Death Camps as Theme, 1991).

This troublesome first contact with video games explains the subsequent scepticism of the Simon Wiesenthal Center towards video games depicting the Shoah. The taboo remained in place, which perhaps also led to the failure of the game project Imagination is the only escape (Luc Bernard, not published, 2008-2013) due to lack of financial support and the loss of Nintendo as publisher (Sridhar, 2008). The games developer, Luc Bernard, wanted to tell the fictional story of a young French Jew, Samuel, who during the Nazi occupation increasingly fled into a fantasy world in the face of the atrocities he had experienced. While the historical events took place in a monochrome sepia-coloured Paris – with the exception of individual details such as the yellow Star of David and red pools of blood – Samuel’s fantasy world was to shine in all possible colours. Bernard ultimately lost the support of his publisher and was not able to raise enough money for the project. “Labeling it a game instantly conjures up the wrong image,” said Deborah Lauter, civil rights director of the Anti-Defamation League in New York. “It devalues the seriousness of the topic” (Parker, 2016). Another example was the mod Sonderkommando Revolt which was developed for the then nearly two-decade old game engine of Wolfenstein 3D. The leading Israeli developer on the game, Maxim Genis, did not, however, display a particularly ethical approach to the topic. He claimed there was no political intention behind it: “the mod was a plain ‘blast the Nazis’ fun” (McWerthor, 2010). After an introductory black-and-white still, whose aesthetics are reminiscent of the photographs of the gas chambers secretly taken by Greek naval officer Alberto Errera, the rest of the mod is presented in bright colours and primitive graphics, which are mainly characterised by visualisations of heaped corpses, charred skeletons and vast amounts of blood. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, who had taken a stand on the game KZ Manager twenty years earlier, took an understandably critical view of the game: “What happens if this is the only thing a young person gets to know about the Holocaust or a concentration camp?” (ibid), reminding us of Eli Wiesel’s words. In view of the mod, Cooper generally rejected the idea of depicting the Holocaust in video games : “I don’t think even the best combination of game developers would ever be successful [at doing so]. This is not an issue that should be reduced to a game” (ibid). Both the American Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre were appalled and the mod was withdrawn. Again, the argumentation used to uphold the taboo was the same as that used previously for television series and feature films. It is interesting to note that the mod was almost certainly inspired by the success of Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (and the resulting public acceptance of the Nazi exploitation genre), which shows that at this time the medium of games was still evaluated by the general public based upon completely different standards than, for example, film.

Considering these negative examples, it is all the more surprising that we have witnessed a paradigm shift in the last two years. The original moment of this shift cannot yet be satisfactorily clarified. What we can establish, however, is that the depiction of a game mission in a camp in Wolfenstein: The New Order that can clearly be decoded as a concentration camp met with little resistance in the press, apart from a critical interview about the game in the Times of Israel (Hoffman, 2014). A possible explanation would be that the scene only takes place in the advanced game and was therefore not noticed by the press on release. Of particular interest is that, unlike the mod Sonderkommando Revolt, there were no angry reactions from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre or the Anti-Defamation League. However, the game did meet with some criticism. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the editor perceives a change of paradigm: “Man sollte aus dem Schrecklichen aber nun doch keine Komödie machen – und ein schematisches Ballerspiel vielleicht lieber auch nicht” (i.e. “You should not make a comedy out of terror – and not a schematic shoot ‘em up game at that”. Lindemann, 2014). It is difficult to see at this stage why Wolfenstein: The New Order was not attacked as sharply as the Israeli mod was a few years earlier. Maybe it was the science fiction setting, or perhaps it was the direct influence of the now seemingly socially acceptable ‘Naziploitation’ genre, which five years earlier would not have worked  (Pfister, 2019, p. 277). To a certain extent, it was the popular cultural exaggeration of the topic in Wolfenstein – i.e. robot dogs, moon bases and brain-transplantation in the tradition of the last wave of Naziploitation movies such as Iron Sky and Overlord – that made it possible to break the taboo. In a way, the appearance of the pulp-fiction genre allowed the game more freedom. The Nazi crimes depicted were sufficiently distorted by their exaggeration not to be taken “seriously”. Similarily, in the Japanese strategy game Valkyria Chronicles, it is within a fantasy setting that players free “Darkscens” from a concentration camp in a mission. The strategy game, which openly spoke of concentration camps, but in the Japanese tradition of anime relied on scantily-dressed women and exaggerated gestures, was not, to our knowledge, criticised for depicting concentration camps in German-speaking countries or in Israel. But one has to admit that the game, despite its fantastic exaggeration, criticised war crimes more honestly than many games before it. In any case, however, we can discern a change in the sayable and showable around this time. This is particularly evident in the following games: In Call of Duty: WW II the picture of a Jewish concentration camp prisoner was shown for the first time (although much too briefly) in a cutscene at the end of the game and in the international version of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus the murder of Jewish women and dissidents in concentration camps was openly discussed for the first time as such. It is significant that the game was not criticised in the press for mentioning the Holocaust. On the contrary, the German press criticised the fact that it did not mention the Holocaust at all in the German version of the game: “Dieses Spiel leugnet den Holocaust” (i.e. “The game denies the existence of the Holocaust) was the first sentence of a review of the game in the German newspaper Die Welt (Küveler, 2017). When Through the Darkest of Times was published internationally at the beginning of 2020, together with Attentat 1942, the first game that received an age rating from the USK despite the inclusion of Nazi symbols, the response from the international press was extremely positive. Time Magazine recommended the game as “key to keeping World War II Memory Alive”. The American historian Robert Whitaker declared in the interview: “The game exposes players to a history most people don’t know while the game’s mechanics illustrate for the player how difficult resistance to Nazism often was for ordinary people” (Waxman, 2020).

Authenticity and User Generated Taboos

After having analysed the production of the games as well as the products – i.e. the games themselves – in the first part of our article, we will now take look at discursive taboos in the reception of games in the second part. For this purpose, we have examined and evaluated a selection of statements from players in relevant forums on social media using a qualitative discourse analysis. The aim is not to offer a complete view here – there is not enough space for this – but to offer a first insight into the process in which a theme or element becomes taboo on the part of the players, and also to highlight the differences in how taboos are received in politics and the press. The goal of a discourse analysis such as this is not only to analyse the sayable or thinkable in its qualitative range and in its accumulation or all the statements that can be made in a particular community at a particular time, but also the strategies with which the field of the sayable is narrowed (Jäger, 2011, p. 94). From the wealth of statements observed, we have selected those we particularly deem representable for the ideas presented within this article. These statements can be interpreted as hegemonic positions due to interactions made with them (likes, upvotes) and/or their frequency. Since all these statements have been made in public forums and users have done so under pseudonyms, the authors have no ethical or legal concerns in quoting them in this article.

We have observed that both taboos analysed above – i.e. a legal-political and a cultural one – have been internalised by the players in the games. Above all, this applies – as we will show in the following – to the depiction of the Holocaust and the different forms of informal image restrictions (Bilderverbot). But a closer analysis of the players conversations reveals also other forms of taboo. These do not arise from the internalisation of taboos already in place in the sense of a dominant discursive statement, but seem to have emerged from the interaction of the players in these game and the game-specific forums: The deviation from what at least a vociferous element of the game-playing community perceive as “authentic history”, is similarly sanctioned by them and is, in effect, made taboo. Especially among those players for whom the act of playing is a central component of self-identification, there is a strong urge to determine the sayable and thinkable in connection with games. These often show a particularly conservative perception of games, in the sense that they believe that games should change as little as possible in terms of content. Our central category of analysis is the discursive construction of notions of authenticity. These become tangible, above all, when players perceive historical representations as “inauthentic” – in other words, it is a negative construction ex post, the concept only emerges when previously implicit rules are broken.

Any deviations from a representation of the Second World War that is considered authentic are perceived accordingly by a small group of players as breaking something that we could call an “authenticity taboo”. In understanding this “authenticity taboo” it is important to realize that authenticity is not something that is inherent in a phenomenon – be it a digital game, an action or any kind of object – but rather a product of attribution and negotiation. Like taboos, authenticity is also a social-discursive construct. Something must be acknowledged as authentic to be authentic (Reckwitz, 2017). The producers of digital games choose different strategies to create authenticity, i.e. to get their recipients to perceive the product as authentic (Pfister, 2020, Tschiggerl, 2020).

In his reference work Digital Games as History, Adam Chapman makes a fundamental distinction between two types of digital games with historical content: “realist simulations” and “conceptual simulations” (Chapman, 2016, p. 112). These two types, as historical representations, differ not only in terms of different game mechanics and principles, but, above all, in the way they represent history and establish historical accuracy and authenticity. While “realist simulations” – Chapman counts among them mainly third or first-person video games such as the Medal of Honor (Dreamworks Interactive et al., US 1999-2012), Call of Duty (Infinity Ward u.a., US, 2003-2019) or the Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft Montreal et al., Canada & France, 2007-2018) series rely on audio-visual narratives in their mediation and thus show, as it were, “conceptual simulations” according to Chapman, primarily strategy games such as the Sid Meier’s Civilization (Microprose et. al, US, 1991-2016) or the Total War series (Creative Assembly, UK, 2000-2019) use the ludic component of complex game mechanics and rule systems to show why it was as it was. Not without mentioning, of course, that these classifications are extreme examples and that there are also plenty of mixed forms (see Chapman, 2016, pp. 82-120). In the following, we will examine an example each of a “realist simulation” and a “conceptual simulation” to see how players address aberrations from this authenticity paradigm, which they often seem to perceive as breaking a taboo.

Battlefield V, published in November 2018, shows how strongly authenticity is interwoven with taboos around the “right” representation of history in digital games. The first-person shooter game from the popular Battlefield series caused controversy across various social media about the “right” representation of the Second World War in digital games on the occasion of the first release of a trailer. Many users criticised that the trailer showed an apparently female British soldier who was involved in fighting German soldiers, all while using a mechanical arm. The criticism was ignited primarily by the gender of the figure and secondarily by the use of the mechanical arm. Both were – among other things – decidedly perceived as inauthentic. Especially interesting are several threads on the social media website Reddit from the day of the trailer release ¹⁰. We used CrowdTangle to find the threads with the most interactions. The big debates around Battlefield V took place mainly in the subreddits r/games and r/battlefield. Due to the ‘up and down vote’ principle of the website, it is possible to make statements about the popularity of certain posts and certain comments, although it should be noted that these can also be manipulated – for example through the use of multiple accounts and bots. For this analysis, we have examined particularly popular comments and responses i.e. the opinion leaders voicing the hegemonic positions

The most popular commentaries around the appearance online of the first trailer of the game all revolve around the representation of the Second World War which is perceived as inauthentic. While one user states, that the game “didn’t look like WW2 at all” ¹¹ another asks: “Seriously, what the hell was that?” ¹² and a third chimes in his distaste for the game: “A complete and utter bastardization of World War 2. What a disgrace” ¹³. These users’ criticism on Reddit mainly take aim at the following: Women as part of the fighting troops, inauthentic uniforms and weapons, a basic mood perceived as being too “colorful” and an “unrealistic” gameplay that does not do justice to the Second World War. Several users complain about a lack of respect for the veterans of the Second World War: “Remember when they revealed BF1 and were all about giving credit to those poor soldiers in WW1. Seems like the soldiers from WW2 don’t deserve that.” and: “Watching it made me feel like all the respect for anyone that served in that war was completely gone, How disrespectful can a company be?” ¹⁴.

The analysis of these individual points of criticism shows that the main complaints are focused on the fact that a British soldier, who plays a central role in the trailer, is female and, in addition, disabled: “Most immersive, authentic WWII game shows British female soldier on the frontlines with prosthetics I mean there is being PC and then there is being inaccurate. Women didn’t fight mate, certainty not frontline. That’s not “anti feminism” it’s facts” ¹⁵. “Facts” is a central keyword in this context – the commentators in the different threads repeatedly emphasize that although they have no problem with women in digital games, they wish for a “fact”ually correct portrayal of the Second World War. While some users are sarcastic and mention several times that their grandmothers were World War veterans: “My grandma is a WW2 vet. She was a sniper with a claw arm” ¹⁶, others are outraged and see the memory of their ancestors tarnished: “60 million, we lost 60 million brave souls fighting in this war, and we get a childish colorful excuse of a game from it” ¹⁷. One can clearly see from the language how the perceived breach of taboo is staged as the desecration of the fallen, i.e. as the desecration of a sacrifice for the community. The statement made by users that they have basically no problems with women in digital games seems insofar implausible because of the frequency of complaints about the female protagonist. No other point of criticism – be it the colour setting or the very fast-acting gameplay itself – is repeated with such vehemence in the comments we read as the criticism of the soldier’s gender. It is, of course, true that women in the British Army were generally not part of the fighting troops – so this depiction is factually incorrect. At the same time, however, one must be aware that digital games about the Second World War are full of “mistakes”: “Real” soldiers couldn’t respawn, couldn’t regenerate magically, couldn’t carry hundreds of kilos of equipment, didn’t have a heads-up display in front of their eyes etc. But all these things occur in Battlefield V and are necessary for the game to work – it has to be different from everyday reality (Huizinga, 1997). These obviously necessary artistic freedoms in the representation of the Second World War are accepted – and probably not even noticed – by the same players who complain so bitterly about the representation of women in their games because they have this fixed idea how the World War II really was.

Any deviation from their hegemonic narrative about the Second World War is perceived as an insult, a breaking of taboos which is therefore sanctioned by ridiculing the game. This indicates a transgenerational identification with the soldiers of the Second World War who are perceived as heroes. A free interpretation regarding the semantic scope of the “Second World War” represents a personal insult to one’s own identity and is accordingly antagonized. Critical voices that point out that Battlefield V is first and foremost a game to entertain are marginal and only become visible in the discourse if one looks for less popular comments. The hegemonic discourse in the threads studied is clearly negative towards the game and its portrayal of the World War II. Factual correctness, however, is mainly demanded with regard to the gender and the disability of the protagonist. The genre-typical factual abbreviations – war crimes, suffering of the civilian population, genocides etc. are neither mentioned in the trailer nor in the later game in any way – are accepted approvingly. Not surprisingly, the aforementioned basic differences between diegesis and extra diegesis, such as the fact that protagonists survive gunshot wounds without any problems or players being able to simplify the difficulty level of the fight by mouse-click, are not addressed at all – one-armed female snipers seem to overshadow everything. It becomes clear how strongly the perception of authenticity is linked to the visual level for these players: the game must look like they imagine the Second World War to be. For this reason, other deviations – such as incorrect weapons or uniforms – are usually also criticized, but not with the same vehemence as the depiction of women as part of the fighting troops. An interesting aspect of the discussion about the “wrong” portrayal of the Second World War in Battlefield V is that many users relate the story directly to themselves and their ancestors. Incidentally, this represents such a hegemonic fragment of discourse in the critique of the game that the game’s publisher integrated these negative comments into its own advertising campaign. Under the hashtag “#EveryonesBattlefield” they collected numerous such insults as, for example: “Did my grandfather storm the beaches of Normandy [for this] s***?” The controversy surrounding Battlefield V is part of a larger debate about representation and identity politics in digital games, which reached its early climax in the infamous “Gamergate controversy” in 2014 and 2015 (Dewey, 2014, Condis, 2018). In this context, the desire for so-called historical authenticity must be seen as a proxy argument of a larger debate around new forms of representation in digital games which have been perceived as threats by a rather small but very vocal group of gamers who use Social Media to express their anger and disdain (ibid.). Using Battlefield V in particular as an example, the players take any deviation from the hegemonic narrative of the correct and authentic depiction of the Second World War as a breach of taboo and react accordingly: with criticism, insults, and ridicule.

While the debate around Battlefield V was mainly ignited by the – from the recipients’ perspective – misrepresentation of the Second World War, which was perceived as “inauthentic”, the pendulum in the debate on authenticity around the game Hearts of Iron 4 (see above) swings in exactly the opposite direction. Having already addressed the question of how National Socialist symbols, the Holocaust and other crimes of war are depicted in the popular World War II game, we now want to look at how the players themselves react to these exclusions in the game’s presentation.  We examined representative statements of players in relevant forums in the form of a qualitative discourse analysis and identified the hegemonic accepted statements. To this end, we systematically searched relevant forums for the thematization of our central analysis category “Holocaust” (also for synonyms such as “Shoah” or related categories such as “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity”) and qualitatively evaluated the debates taking place there using the method of critical discourse analysis (Wodak et al, 2009, Jäger, 2011).

There are numerous threads on both the gaming platform Steam and Reddit in which, for example, the absence of the Holocaust and other war crimes are addressed. In the forum of the game developer Paradox itself, threads dealing with the Holocaust are explicitly forbidden and will be closed by the mods almost immediately. This is justified as follows: “There will not be any gulags or deathcamps (including POW camps) to build in Hearts of Iron 4, nor will there be the ability to simulate the Holocaust or systematic purges, so I ask you not to discuss these topics as they are not related to this game. Thank You. Threads bringing up will be closed without discussion” ¹⁸. The forum rules also prohibit threads on swastikas, area bombing and all other topics of political significance. Already at this point we can thus see that a taboo is in place for certain controversial topics and is, in this case, perpetuated by the developer.

The discussions on the platform Reddit on this topic are better-mannered and of higher quality than on Steam. This is probably due to a much stricter moderation, on the one hand, and  because of the rating system of the comments, on the other. On the Steam forums, for example, comments that openly deny the existence of the Holocaust are not deleted ¹⁹. On reddit, “troll” comments are either deleted immediately or are not visible due to their negative rating.

A recurring misconception in both forums, however, is the widespread assumption that the depiction of the Holocaust in digital games in of itself would violate German law, which is not the case. On the contrary. The taboo attached to depicting the crimes of the Nazi state is doubled, in that many of the people posting in the different forums perceive a portrayal of the Holocaust in a digital game as a violation of a social taboo that would be punished. The concerns range from a ‘shitstorm’ that would be whipped up against the game to a complete ban: “the SJW’s don’t care how it’s portrayed, they see the word holocaust and go beserk“ ²⁰ And: “if they put the holocaust in and other things like that then it’d get banned in a lot more countries“ ²¹.

More interesting, however, is the recurring argument that Hearts of Iron IV is a strategic war game and that the crimes that the various warring parties committed against the civilian population, above all, the Holocaust, would not be part of the war: “There’s no need for that. HOI is a military strategy game, no simulator or something” ²². In this argumentation, there is often a conscious, sometimes unconscious blurring of two different levels. On the one hand, the suffering of the civilian population and the crimes against them are separated from the apparent warfare, on the other hand, these crimes are also seen as detached from the fighting troops: “Adds nothing to gameplay and remember, at the end of the day this is a game. Further, it’s a war game, generals like Rommel were tasked with defending beaches and capturing cities, not doing a politician’s job of fixing political dissidents and interning them” ²³. The response to the question of whether the Holocaust should be portrayed in Hearts of Iron IV is problematic in several respects. First of all, the user implies that the victims of the Shoah are “political dissidents” – this is of course as wrong as it is dangerous. The European Jews were murdered by the Nazis because they were Jews and not because they held different political positions. (Aly, 1998; Friedländer, 2007, 1997) At the same time, it also perpetuates the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht” (Chapman & Lindenroth, 2015; Pfister, 2020). “Generals, like Rommel” were of course involved in the crimes of the Nazi state, the Wehrmacht was part of the apparatus of annihilation (Wette, 2007). Among those who oppose a depiction of the Holocaust in Hearts of Iron, this is a recurrent narrative, which, as mentioned earlier in this article, is part of a long tradition of debates in the successor societies of the Nazi state itself: The war and the fighting troops are seen as detached from the crimes of the National Socialists. The Holocaust is thus wrongly reduced in these games to the actions of a small circle of psychopaths i.e. the elite of the “Third Reich”.

There are however also commentators on these forums who advocate an integration of civilian casualties in games: “Honestly, I wished it took into consideration civil casualties. About 3% of the world’s civilians died in that war. That’s about 60 million and that’s no [sic] including Japanese expansion into China in 1933-1939. Now, I’m not talking about adding the Holocaust. Honestly, I think they should shy away from that” ²⁴. Most of them agree, however, that this should not happen on a ludic level, but that the players should be informed about war crimes by events, notifications, counters and info-boxes. A recurring fragment of the discourse is that the goal is to communicate how horrific the Second World War was and what a high price the civilian population, in particular, had to pay.

It is evident here how strongly the representation of the Holocaust in digital games is seen as taboo, not least on the part of the players themselves. Even those who wish for a more nuanced depiction of the Second World War, which openly addresses the historically unique destruction of human life, shy away from including the Holocaust, even as pure information on the narrative level of the game. The reasoning behind this, however, is not so much of a moral nature, i.e. that the horror of the Holocaust in of itself would forbid it from ever being portrayed in a game, but the external effect of such a portrayal: “Holocaust I think not… Just imagine the PR shitstorm” ²⁵. The debates about the possibilities of depicting the Holocaust, which have already been discussed in detail in this article, are thus also repeated in the reception of the digital games themselves: What can be shown and what not? The question of how it can be possible to depict the crimes of the Second World War after the fact in digital games is indeed a difficult one. However, as our analysis shows, the complete absence of these atrocities is not an adequate solution either. After all, it perpetuates historical revisionist myths such as that of the “clean Wehrmacht” and disregards central aspects of World War II.  Simultaneously, we can also detect a certain need of the players to keep their games free from the horrors of the systematic crimes against humanity that were committed during this period. The taboo of depicting the Holocaust in digital games thus serves to protect a romanticized notion of the Second World War which reduces it to only the strategic warfare of the battlefield.

Conclusion 

In general usage, the term “taboo” is increasingly perceived from a critical standpoint and viewed as something negative. After all, taboos appear conservative, out-dated, and authoritarian: They create a climate in which it is prohibited to speak, to act, or even to think about a certain topic. From this understanding, taboos do not allow for discussion and thus, it can be argued, block change. As we were able to show with our analysis, this is partly true and indeed problematic with regard to digital games. While the origin of the taboos examined here are morally understandable, the extreme restrictive interpretation of German law, for example, did not lead to a critical portrayal of the Nazi regime but rather to its depoliticization. As a result, taboos already consensually broken by society as a whole, such as mentioning the participation of the regular German army in the crimes of the Nazi state, were suddenly reinstated in the games.

The taboo of the Shoah’s irrepresentability is a different matter and one must rightly ask if digital games could ever be the right medium to portray the Holocaust. While an answer to this question goes behind the scope of this article, we must keep in mind that it was the survivors of the Shoah, but above all their descendants, who sought new ways to report on this historical experience. One after the other, taboos surrounding what can be said or shown in regard to the Holocaust have been broken. To a certain extent, it is understandable that digital games, as the most recent medium, are following the examples set by the novel, the film and the graphic novel. Of course, it is hard to imagine how the Holocaust could ever become part of a game that aims to entertain. However, we have shown that exactly the same accusation was levelled at the feature film more than twenty years ago. Games such as Wolfenstein: The New Order, Call of Duty WW II and Through the Darkest of Times have shown what a responsible approach to the memory of Nazi crimes in games could look like in the future.

The breaking of taboos is a particularly important sign for historians of social and political change. That this discursive change does not only come from above, but also from below – it was first discussed in forums before politics reacted – is in a certain sense also a sign of a functioning civil society. For different functional elites are traditionally rather sluggish when it comes to shifts in hegemonic discourses, which often happen through grassroots movements in a constant process of renegotiation from below. The individual examples we have shown do not give us enough information about the extent of this discursive change. They are not sufficient in scope to clarify satisfactorily the exact reasons for the paradigm shift we have identified. But they permit us a first glimpse at different discursive statements. It also gives us insight into the darker side of a so-called gamer community, whose latent misogyny produces new forms of taboos. But here, too, it should be remembered that isolated examples once again offer no conclusion about the diffusion of this thinking.

Finally we must not forget one thing: Taboos are a central component of functioning communities and in themselves are neither morally good nor bad. By clearly marking borders that must not be crossed, they make our coexistence possible. For example, the incest taboo is an almost universal one that can be found in practically all societies for good reasons. (Lévi-Strauss, 1981) We have internalised most taboos in such a way that we no longer even notice them in our everyday lives. The constant change of taboos is also a sign of healthy communities. If, for example, the over-sexualised portrayal of women and/or racist portrayals of certain ethnic groups in games becomes a taboo in the future, this is not a sign of repression but only of a discursive change, just as we can speak openly about sexuality today thanks to the removal of taboos on sexuality in the late 1960s.

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Ludography

Assassin’s Creed – series, Ubisoft et al, France, 2007-2018

Attentat 1942, Charles Games, Czech Republic, 2017

Battlefield V, DICE, EA, Sweden, USA, 2018

Call of Duty – series, Infinity Ward et al., USA, 2003-2019

Call of Duty: World at War, Treyarch, EA, USA, 2017

Call of Duty: WWII, Sledgehammer Games, Activision, USA, 2017

Hearts of Iron IV, Paradox, Sweden, 2016

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lucasfilm Games, USA, 1989

KZ Manager, unknown developer, Austria, unknown date

Medal of Honor – series, Dreamworks Interactive et al., USA, 1999-2012

Panzer General, SSI, USA, 1994

Sid Meier’s Civilization – series, Microprose et al., US, 1991-2016

Sonderkommando Revolt, Maxim Genis, Israel, 2010

Through the Darkest of Times, Paintbucket Games, Germany, 2020

Total War – series, Creative Assembly, UK, 2000-2019

Valkyria Chronicles, Sega, Japan, 2008

Wolfenstein 3D, id Software, USA, 1992

Wolfenstein: The New Order, MachineGames, Bethesda, Sweden, Usa, 2014

Filmography

Holocaust – TV series, Marvin J. Chomsky, USA, 1978

Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, USA, 2009

Iron Sky, Timo Vuorensola, Germany, Finland, Australia, 2012

Overlord, Julius Avery, USA, 2018

Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg, USA, 1993

Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, France, 1985

Authors’ Info: 

Eugen Pfister

Hochschule der Künste Bern – HKB

eugen.pfister@univie.ac.at

Martin Tschiggerl

Universität des Saarlandes

martisch.tschiggerl@uni-saarland.de

Hanna Wirman (ITU Copenhagen), Rhys Jones (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

download the pdf 

Abstract

This article discusses researchers’ personal safety by examining a case of studying game arcades in Hong Kong. We approach personal safety from three perspectives as we focus on 1) safety risks associated with specific spaces, 2) risks in meeting and being acquainted with specific people, and 3) risks that are brought along by the theme of a research that may be sensitive. While interview data suggests arcade-goers’ worries over ‘triad’ stereotypes exaggerated by popular culture, police reports and news articles helped us to understand the true and worrying linkages between game arcades and organised crime in Hong Kong even though criminality can by no means be generalised to encompass all arcades. 

Introduction

“We can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space.” (H.G. Wells as quoted in Space Invaders)

Games research is typically a low-risk occupation. However, there are topics and areas of study that force a researcher to exercise great care or to encounter situations that are threatening, disturbing, or unsettling. Delving too deep into the Gamergate ²⁶ controversy or putting together a counter-hegemonic games exhibition in a totalitarian state are some examples that may be considered to involve heightened risk. And then there’s organized crime.

This article is an attempt to address the dangers of researching the ‘dark’, illegal aspects of gaming, and their perceived, if not exclusively factual, links to organized crime. It focuses on a taboo of openly discussing researcher safety concerns, specifically in games research. The intimacy and vulnerability uncovered by such concerns form part of the reason why this may be. Researchers may also worry about being ridiculed over seemingly overweening expectations of one’s importance. Organized crime, meanwhile, can seem like a remote phenomenon too unfamiliar to think alongside one’s modest writings on games.

We start by briefly introducing a study about Hong Kong game arcades, known for their links to organized crime syndicates, that prompted us to examine personal safety in relation to our research practice. Our main interest is in how personal safety and research methodological choices are linked in the study of digital games. Here we rely on earlier research that has approached researcher safety in research areas traditionally dealing with ‘risky’ topics, such as criminology or research into so-called difficult populations (e.g. people with substance addiction). The article approaches how association with organized crime turns the ‘field’ of ethnographic research dangerous and unpredictable (Hobbs and Antonopaulos 2014). Alongside introducing challenges that concern research conduct when gathering material, we discuss methodological approaches that help overcome such risks.

Addressing Risk

When studying organized crime in relation to gaming, it is valuable to investigate how other fields tackle the topic from a research methodological point of view. According to Lee-Treweek and Linkogle “Social research involves us entering other people’s workplaces, homes and communities and we are often unaware of the threats of the field until we have been there for some time […] Therefore we posit all qualitative research is to some extent potentially dangerous.” (2000, 10). Earlier studies also suggest that, “A number of risks to the researcher have been identified, including physical threat, psychological harm, and accusations of improper behavior (Social Research Association 2005), and understandably these risks may present differently for qualitative researchers” (Parker & O’Reilly, 2013).

To minimize such risks, Pollock (2009) advocates covert, invisible, and non-participatory observation as potential approaches when studying adversary practices. Analyzing official data, such as statistical records and government reports, as well as media accounts, meanwhile, can help to distance the researcher from the subjects. But to avoid the stereotypical, canonical approaches provided by media accounts and common beliefs, an option is to provide multiple perspectives on the issue. In our study, we started from interviews but soon extended the scope into materials that were available without directly researching people or going into arcades.

Research into sensitive or potentially dangerous areas are important but can prove a challenge for institutional ethics approval boards. In looking at research into conflict, violence, and terrorism, Sluka (2018) looks at an ethical approval required by university review boards and how researchers can develop risk assessment and management plans to help negotiate them. While not as directly dangerous as a live conflict zone, the use of risk assessment to minimize exposure to harm by a researcher was essential when the issues of criminality arose in the study.

Ethnographic studies of criminal networks and the consequences for researchers have been addressed by Martha Huggins and Marie-Louise Glebeek (2003), among others. They detail issues such as meeting people after office hours in the evenings and mention precautions such as taking self-defense classes, avoiding working alone, and carrying a mobile phone. In our study, game arcades are not only dimly lit and far away from the public eye, but also considered highly intimate among those who frequent them. In a study by Lin and Sun (2011), conducted in Taiwan, some gamers treat arcades as their home, for instance.

This article demonstrates a need to better understand how a research topic that tackles aspects of organized crime affects both research participants and researchers. We operate utilizing the concept of ‘risk’ and identified three domains of existing research into personal safety in research, all relevant to our study:

1. place: some research takes place in dangerous environments (e.g. Williams et al., 1992),
2. people: some research involves people who pose a safety risk (e.g. Cressey, 1967; Fijnaut, 2016), and
3. theme and findings: some research address politically, religiously, economically, or culturally sensitive topics which third parties would not like to see published (e.g. Lee and Renzetti, 1990).

The following sections discuss how the place (i.e. game arcades), people (i.e. members of the triads), and theme of the research yielded perceptions of risk in both participants and in us researchers. In qualitative research, methods gain a lot from the researcher’s standpoint since subjective approaches and analyses are not only accepted but encouraged. While scrutinizing our and research participants’ subjective perceptions of risk in this article, we encourage the reader to approach with reflexivity as it offers a view into one’s own research conduct alongside ours.

Hong Kong Game Arcades and Organised Crime

Hong Kong’s arcade culture was most prevalent in the 1980 and 90s with thousands of arcades estimated to be operating in the region. The number of actively operating centers has, not unlike in other parts of the world, plummeted significantly in recent years. In 2002, there were more than 400 game arcades or ‘amusement game centers’ (遊戲機中心) in Hong Kong while by 2018, the number had dropped to less than two hundred. In their place, esports training centers and arenas attracted both government and private investment. The nearly 50-years long history of local arcade gaming (Ng, 2015), meanwhile, continued to change as centers were primarily populated by older adults instead of youngsters.

To document this shift as well as the past experiences of arcade-goers, we conducted semi-structured interviews in Hong Kong. They took place between 2017 and 2019 and helped us to establish the local ‘collective memory’ (Halbwachs, 1992) of arcade play, spaces, and players (cf. Wirman & Jones, 2018, 2019) with a purpose to record and archive the cultural history of Hong Kong’s arcades. The people interviewed played in arcades in the 1980s and 90s. 15 males and 5 females aged between 22 to late 50s were interviewed about their current ideas, meanings, and values associated with game arcades. About half of the interviews took place online through different means of text chatting tools while the other half was conducted face to face.

One of the most prominent themes in the interviews was the assumed pervasiveness of criminal activities in arcades. These were typically linked to the region’s organized crime syndicates, or ‘triads.’ Historically, starting in Mainland China, criminal organizations set up in Hong Kong in the 19th century where they remain as a hidden yet large part of society to this day (Varese & Wong, 2018). It has long been the opinion of the police force that the general public is aware of triad activity in Hong Kong, with the Commissioner of police for Hong Kong in 1960 stating that “Most people are aware of the existence of such societies, but few appreciate the extent of their activities or their dangerous potential in the event of emergencies, whether such be local or international in origin” (Morgan, Bolton & Hutton, 2000).

The major link between gaming culture and the triad gangs lies in the introduction of game arcades in the late 1970s. In the past, arcades often served as venues for money laundering and as gathering spaces for criminals with most people knowing that “in Hong Kong, many lawful public entertainment establishments, especially cinemas, bars, clubs, karaoke lounges, night clubs, discos, restaurants, billiard saloons, and video game centres, are under triad protection” (Chu, 2000).  Increased focus on triads in Hong Kong popular culture in the late 1980s and early 90s reflected an increase of triad involvement in the entertainment industry itself in both illegitimate (protection rackets, harassing film stars, etc.) and legitimate forms (producing, financing and distributing films, etc.) (Teo, 1997). Movie scenes of triad brawls and violence inside game centers were not uncommon at the time (Jing & Lau, 1992, 0:32:20) and seemed to inform the negative impressions of arcades of our interviewees as well.

Studying such a potentially sensitive topic presented several ethics concerns that had to be taken into consideration for the safety of our interviewees and ourselves as researchers. For instance, all interviewees were offered the opportunity to have their contributions anonymized. While this is quite a standard option given to people who participate in a study, the sensitive topic and potential revealing interview findings made the practice crucial for us. Participant informed consent was originally obtained on paper, but the documentation was later destroyed so that no paper trail was left behind. We acknowledge that verbal consent becomes a valuable option when there is a need to minimize risk. Full participant anonymity may prove useful when the participants themselves take a more active role in criminal activity or in tackling it.

When engaged in researching people, various practical measures can be taken when personal data is recorded, and sensitive materials handled. This has been explored in relation to digital humanities using the concept of ethics of care (Suomela, Chee, Berendt & Rockwell, 2019) when it comes to handling “toxic data” and researcher safety for Gamergate related research. In our study, this applied to recognizing the power of researchers and research publishing as something that may put participants into risk. It was also possible to make participants less vulnerable by avoiding mentions of specific neighborhoods, arcades, or notable events.

To complicate the situation, many of the interviewed participants had also disobeyed rules about arcade customer age limits. In Hong Kong, arcades operate under the rules that no one aged less than 16 or wearing a school uniform should enter. During our research it became clear that this was a rule almost no one followed, with interviewees admitting they entered arcades regularly when they were aged less than 16. Stories were fondly told of arcade owners who facilitated underage clients by turning a blind eye or who even offered jackets to wear to cover school uniforms. What this meant is that many of our participants were admitting to breaking the law, and while the likelihood of any negative consequences arising from admitting this now – ten, twenty, or even thirty years later – it is something that had to be handled with care for the sake of high research ethics.

During the interviews, a range of personal accounts addressed criminal activities in relation to personal safety. Triad presence in game centers was discussed similarly to an open secret, with almost all interviewees acknowledging the link between the two. Research participants’ perspectives label the entire physical arcade spaces risky. Yet this view is also related to considering risk in certain people, in the unidentified members of triads, who render spaces risky by occupying them. Participants mentioned, for example, that arcades were ‘full of triads’ or breeding grounds for triad recruitment. Most of them discussed triads from the perspective of parental care and explained the concerns of those who children frequented arcades. However, as we will discuss in more detail later, such notions are supported by factual accounts about game arcades as spots for a range of criminal activities still today.

“I think in the early days arcade games do have a very negative image in the mind of parents, because they always think that there is a bunch of gangsters and mobs, but in actual fact most of the arcades is either run by members of the triad or they’re protected by the triad members, because you cannot stay there in such terms, so this is one thing.” (Man, early 50s)

In the interview material, the dangers of game arcades draw from popular cultural depictions, such as movies and from the themes of the games themselves.

“Especially these either cop or gangster, triad related movies, you’d always see a scene in an arcade, where the bad guys are playing there, and the cops go in and they want information from this guy.”  ²⁷ (Man, early 40s)

One participant assumed that her parents gained such a perspective from local TV drama, but expressed a lot of uncertainty around the reasons:

“They allow[ed] us to go and the thing is okay because I went with my brother, they didn’t say no. But if I was a parent I would say no because…you could sense the danger there. Yes…maybe they asked the kids to deliver drugs or whatever. You’ll never know. But I think when I look back, like, when I was teenager, I looked back as I…oh no, this kind of place is really danger[ous]. But I don’t know [how] my parents know.” (Woman, mid 40s)

While links between arcade centers and illicit activities have also been noted in other countries such as the UK (Meades 2018) it is the involvement of organized crime that makes Hong Kong’s situation unique and potentially dangerous one to research. Participant perspectives, however, mix personal experiences of danger and parental control with popular stereotypes some participants openly acknowledging the difficulty to distinguish the two from each other. To understand the context of suggested links to criminality, analysis of a range of official documents was done to understand the position of triads in contemporary Hong Kong society. These included news articles, documents provided online by Hong Kong Police, such as annual operational priorities, special topics and news items, and Hong Kong Government press releases, statistical reports, and game center license data.

On ‘Real’ Risks

The link between arcades and triad activity was acknowledged by most of our interview participants. However, their understanding was that these associations were overblown by the media, in keeping with Chu (2005) who states that “people perceive triads as a menace because they are portrayed as such in sensational media reports and gang movies”. While such media reports may be sensational, they do nevertheless reveal that acts of violence are still carried out by triads in game centers on occasion. Among others, a 15-year-old child was beaten unconscious by suspected triad members with a fire extinguisher in a game arcade and caught on CCTV (Lo, 2020). In 2019, there were 1353 reported cases of triad related crime in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Police Force, 2019). And within a year from starting our research on game arcades in Hong Kong, dozens of them were raided, hundreds of thousands of dollars confiscated, loads of gaming machines seized, and hundreds of criminals arrested in ongoing anti-triad police operations (Lo, 2019). A government press release from June 2020 reports that 527 locations including bars, amusement game centers, a cyber café, and residential units were raided and 380 persons arrested during a tripartite anti-crime joint operation, codenamed “THUNDERBOLT 2020” (GovHK, 2020).

Becoming aware of the actual criminal activities linked to game arcades meant that precautions needed to be taken by us when undergoing fieldwork visits to arcades all over Hong Kong. What our participants had suggested about the shady and suspicious triad activities typically linked with game arcades became a visible reality and a central part of our research. Criminality was foregrounded as one of the key themes of the research.

Without digging into the probabilities or actual occurrences of the risks mentioned, the inseparability of perceived an actual risk leads us to accept the concept of risk as theoretical, “not something capable of precise empirical prediction or confirmation” (Shrader-Frechette, 1990, p. 349). As Shrader-Frechette carefully examines, there exists various reasons for the impossibility of differentiating actual risks from perceptions of risk for perceived and actual risk are inseparable and inform each other. Hence, what is discussed in this article is based on how we as researchers, not unlike our research participants, perceived risk when working on a specific research project that involved visits and research into game arcades in Hong Kong. We have tracked back and analyzed the associated personal knowledge (e.g. prior research, news articles, interviews) that informed our judgement, since “even real risks must be known via categories and perceptions” (Ibid., p. 353). Therefore, our analysis and discussion have come to cover both an autoethnographic viewpoint to the risks we perceived and insights into the broader cultural context that builds the notion of danger around the culture and physical spaces we studied.

Following Shrader-Frechette, the reader should keep in mind that “all risks are defined, filtered, and judged on the basis of some subjective standard, whether it is expected utility theory or benefit-cost analysis, or something else” (1990, p. 353). Importantly, then, the different sources of information and experience that contributed to such perceived risk do not form an exhaustive list of what could lead a person, in general, to perceive risks in relation to Hong Kong game arcades. They are, instead, the sources of information that affected our judgement and our research conduct, things that made us reconsider and revisit our methods and our approaches. The things that contributed to us perceiving risk were further filtered through our inability to communicate in local language (Cantonese), our positions in the city as white European immigrants, and our lack of direct access to interview representatives of the police force, for example. However, as the next section will elaborate, some of the issues with access to information itself added to the mystery and exemplified suppression of speech around the arcades.

Secrecy, Intrusion, and Risk

Beyond interviews, working in and around potentially illicit places resulted in challenges in accessing research data. Among others, it was particularly difficult for us to gain access to an official list of game arcades and their addresses in Hong Kong. By law, all game centers in Hong Kong need an “Amusement Game Centre License” from the Home Affairs Department of Licensing. As a government operated department, the list of all premises that currently hold an Amusement Game Centre License should be made freely available to the public. Yet the home affairs department appeared extremely reluctant to provide this list when requested and demanded the request to be made in person at specific offices and during specific times, refused to provide a digital copy, and charged a fee for the printing paper. With such close association between criminal gangs and game centers, it makes sense that the government would not want to release this information so easily, as it would provide a map of triad associated premises within Hong Kong. ²⁸ However, without proof of this being the case, we hereby document such difficulty and can only speculate on the possible reasons.

After help from a local contact to navigate the bureaucracy and red tape of the different departments of the Hong Kong Home Affairs Office and Office of Licensing Authority, the arcade address list of 202 addresses was eventually obtained and digitized, creating a custom map of the locations listed. Rhys Jones then walked a total of 94 kilometers over 14 days in May of 2018 to visit the addresses. The result from the location verification was that 4 had become inactive since the government licenses had been issued at the beginning of the year.

While visiting the arcades, risk was always perceived more prevalent in smaller, gambling-focused arcades. The intimacy of such small arcades made it highly obvious when a person entered the space and people inside would be found staring at Rhys presumably trying to figure out why he was there. This was especially evident in the New Territories where foreigners are less likely to live or visit. Tellingly, it was during this research, while walking between arcades, that Rhys was stopped and searched by the police for the first time, which certainly added to the perceived illegitimacy of the task at hand. Doing research in such spaces that may or may not be operated by triads resulted in experiencing risk that was associated with intruding a semi-private territory with a hidden motive.

Photographic documentation, too, was hard to gather as having one’s phone or camera out to try and take pictures was immediately met by a member of staff coming up to Rhys to forbid photography. Deciding whether to go against the staff’s wishes to take photos secretly was considered risky as it could have led to a confrontation and ejection from the premises if spotted. It is understandable that private premises have the power and legal right to protect their patrons by forbidding photography. However, the strict admonishing added to the secrecy and feeling of intrusion in the space which, again, invited thoughts about how feasible, admissible, or even risky it would be to publish research on the topic.

Even when no physical or psychological risk was perceived, Rhys often felt himself unwelcome. With windows covered from outsider gaze, possibility to smoke at premises, commonly worn-out furniture, and dim lighting, the actual physical surroundings added to the illicit ‘feel’ of the arcades. In short, the unkept and dark interiors were in high contrast to the fancy malls and well-lit ‘cha chaan tengs’ and other restaurants in the city. Considering that Hong Kong is one of the safest cities in the world (The Economist Intelligence Unit 2019), the potential risk, even if minuscule, in arcades that stand out from the rest of the city’s fancy modes of entertainment became emphasized.

Another instance of perceived risk inside arcades was triggered by the security measures in place. While the staff taking and exchanging cash were typically older men or women, there was typically a young tattoo-covered man sitting nearby to make sure people did what they were asked to do. It should be noted that in Hong Kong wearing tattoos is not as common as in most European countries or in the US, but still typically associated with criminal and deviant behaviour instead (cf. Ma, 2002, Ho et al., 2006). Even if the tattooed ‘guards’ commonly seen at arcades were not engaged in any sort of deviant behavior, it is fair to assume that their presence was calculated and aimed at intimidation given the prevailing stigma. The perceived risk therefore increased by the co-presence of these assumed triads even if there was no way to verify if they really belonged to the organized crime group or not.²⁹ The mental association of arcades and criminality seemed to fill in the gaps and assumption of triad membership was given to people who “looked” like triads in places that felt increasingly unfamiliar and faraway. To avoid any risk of confrontation, Rhys only took photos of the outer shop fronts to compare with each other instead while writing notes after exiting an arcade to document the interior.

Moreover, issues arose when it came to co-operation with arcade center owners during the project. It was hard to find owners willing to participate or allow access to the game centers after hours to take photos for archiving purposes. The association with criminality, regardless of being an open secret, remained as something that only certain parties had the liberty to talk about

Researcher Standpoint at Risk

Both authors of this study were born and raised in Europe and both are white. Neither of us speaks the local language in Hong Kong, Cantonese. Our positions as white immigrants had implications to research conduct and safety. In terms of language, many slang phrases, or self-references to Hong Kong culture can be obtuse or impenetrable for non-locals to comprehend without additional research into the background and context. Laws concerning the use of certain triad language can constitute a criminal offense in and of itself making translating it a risk for researchers (Bolton & Hutton, 1995). Language barrier can also prove problematic as a non-local researcher, with participants either needing to speak the language of the researcher instead of their native Cantonese or requiring the use of a translator in addition to the non-local researcher. A translator’s presence adds to the vulnerability of the participants and discourages the sharing of sensitive information.

Moreover, non-Chinese researchers stand out from the general customer-base of game arcades. Hong Kong is an ethnically homogenous region with 92% ethically Chinese population as of the 2016 census. Attempting to conduct field work into criminal activity becomes a lot more difficult when the researcher is so obviously present or visible to the participants. It can also lead to unintentional bias of the results, if participants are aware of being observed by a non-local researcher and change their behavior.

While there are drawbacks to being a non-local conducting taboo or sensitive research one cannot ignore certain privileges that are afforded to non-local researchers. On the one hand, our position was close to that described by Huggins and Glebeek as a ‘friendly stranger’ who is “a relatively unthreatening outsider to whom interviewees felt they could disclose their feelings, complaints, and deepest secrets” (2003, p. 374). Accordingly, such outsiders are likely to gather more data and encounter less friction. On the other hand, from a political perspective, non-local researchers enjoy more freedom to research sensitive topics knowing that if any negative consequences ever arose from their research, they may have the option to return to their country of birth while holding that passport. Such opportunities do not exist for local researchers, who if faced with consequences for their research would not be able to go. This is especially relevant regarding studying the criminal aspect of Hong Kong’s arcade scene.

The distinctive political system in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (S.A.R.) causes its own issues with games research in the region. Special care and attention need to be paid when researching these sensitive political issues, especially relating to mainland China. As an example, during the 2019 demonstrations some of the game arcades operated by mainland Chinese companies were destroyed by demonstrators who suggested they have links to mainland Chinese organized crime (Cheng 2019, Mok & Siu, 2019). When reporting such research results, used language needs to consider the local sensitivities. Unwanted notions of the relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China may be met by objections even in cases where relationships between the two regions are not the focus of the research.

A National Security Law introduced to Hong Kong on the 30th June 2020 has further complicated the execution of research in the region with academics already self-censoring research topics (Normile, 2020) so as not to break the vaguely worded law. Some Hong Kong researchers have voiced concern that applying for international research grants or international collaboration may fall under “foreign collusion” because of the broad scope of this law (Silver, 2020) meaning even non-taboo research topics could become prohibited. It is also questionable how research that uncovers some negative aspects of local culture, conducted by foreigners, could be interpreted.

Conclusions

“Even though all risks are perceived, many of them are also real.” (Shrader-Frechette, 1990, 347)

This article discussed the specific perceived risks associated with different research methods and techniques and the possibilities to alleviate some of the risks in a study into Hong Kong game arcades. Previous research on research safety and risks shows that such concerns can be categorized into personal safety risks related to place, people, and research topic and findings.

In our article we drew a picture of game arcades as potentially risky research environments given their factual links to organized crime in Hong Kong. We observed that arcades as places were often considered risky, but this was because of the assumed people, members of triads, in them and in control of them. These people, moreover, were unknown and hardly identified, yet perceived as a risk to personal safety due to participants’ and researchers’ existing knowledge of factual arcade links to triads and stereotypical portrayals of triad members occupying game arcades in popular culture such as movies. More than people, members of triads refer to the presence of organized crime, a domain quite alien and distant for most research participants and researchers alike. Place and people, then, become merged and blurry, and ‘triad’ a shorthand for a sense of secrecy, thrill, danger, and caution at large.

Referring to government and police reports as well as news articles, we were able to establish a solid link between game arcades and triads in Hong Kong even though this by no means covers all such spaces. Therefore, organized crime, in our short analysis, poses a potential risk to both researchers and research participants. Moreover, the topic of our study itself is potentially politically sensitive and there may be parties whose interests are against publishing details about how game arcades operate in Hong Kong. While such a risk to researcher’s personal safety is extremely vague and nearly impossible to prove, its potential existence should be acknowledged.

With all the limitations, one may be left asking: What is the value of such research that does not even attempt to provide a full account of the various aspects of arcade gaming and leaves out those too risky to approach? Does a researcher need to force themselves to approach dangerous people or go into risky places? Is ‘edgework’ (Lyng, 2005), or voluntary risk-taking for its sensual appeal, a prerequisite for good research in such situations?

Our answer is to support and encourage even the smallest attempts at creating new knowledge while also taking care of oneself and research participants. Beyond physical safety concerns, however, the researcher should also pay attention to how a risky study can drain emotionally: “Research work can be emotionally draining for researchers, and if we are to think about the possibilities of researchers being in risk situations, then we need to consider both physical and emotional risk” (Dickson-Swift et al. 2008, 134). There is, therefore, a further need to study the emotional burden of risky games research.

Finally, Shrader-Frechette reminds us that “risk perceptions often affect risk probabilities, and vice versa” (1990, 350). With appropriate precautions and low risk methods and techniques, it is possible to overcome many of the risks mentioned in this article. One of the goals of this paper was to bring forth and start a conversation about personal safety and risks in games research to allow better preparedness for others.

What comes to the taboo nature of the risks discussed, we see that games researchers who have long justified not only the very existence of their work but also the many positive aspects of their objects of research may find it uncomfortable to address some of the bigger negative sides in the study and play of games. Culturally, the bigger picture behind the interconnectedness of games and organized crime stems from other difficult topics such as gambling in general, illegal gambling in particular, addiction, and money laundering. The lack of research in this area partially results from many games researchers’ lack of knowledge and methodological capability in relation to criminality. Moreover, discussing researcher vulnerabilities is not an easy thing to do especially when they are related to risks that are perceived and difficult to ‘prove’ actual no matter how inseparable the two may be.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dixon Wu, the Founder of RETRO.HK | Hong Kong Game Association (HKGA), for his support to the project.

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Filmography

PTU, Johnnie To, Hong Kong, 2003

Authors’ Info: 

Hanna Wirman

ITU Copenhagen

wirman@itu.dk

Rhys Jones

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

rhys-g.jones@connect.polyu.hk

Tomasz Z. Majkowski (Jagiellonian University Krakow), Katarzyna Suszkiewicz (Jagiellonian University Krakow)

download the pdf 

Abstract

The following paper is a report from a board game design workshop organized by a team of memory scholars, game scholars and Holocaust educators from Jagiellonian University in Kraków for a group of middle school students (age 15-16) from Radecznica, a small village in eastern Poland. The aim of the workshop was to raise awareness and facilitate reflection on local Holocaust histories through board game design. To that end, a two-day design event was organized and conducted, to help the students develop personal bonds with the local Holocaust history. Due to the workshop’s success, we believe the board game design proved to be an effective tool in the Holocaust education. The workshop results are discussed with regard to the Holocaust absence from game culture and considered in the context of the ongoing struggle to detaboo the involvement of ethnic Poles in the destruction of Jewish communities in Poland during the Second World War.

Keywords: Game design; Game-based education; Memory; Holocaust; Radecznica

One day, we invited a group of teenagers to gamify the Holocaust with us.

The above sentence, though factually true, looks rather inappropriate when put on paper, at least at the moment of writing this article. The memory of the greatest tragedy of the 20^th century is off-limits for gamification or the game culture in general – and the involvement of middle-school students gives our enterprise an additional scandalous quality. Yet, the same game design workshop for teenagers in a small Polish village proves that games can be a useful tool to explore systemic aspects of Holocaust and to allow participants to create more personal and empathic relationships with the hurtful memories of local Holocaust histories. This paper discusses interactions between the workshop findings and the way Shoah is portrayed (or not portrayed) in game culture and game studies. We start with a short review of existing Holocaust-themed games in order to move on to a more theoretical consideration of the Holocaust-themed game possibilities and reasons behind the scarcity of such games. Then, by presenting our workshop, we consider games’ usefulness the preservation of Holocaust memory and address the long-standing Holocaust taboo of game culture.

Holocaust as a Taboo of Game Culture

The Holocaust remains one of the major taboos of game culture: it is a topic rarely even mentioned in games – moreover, the few existing game portrayals of the genocide are met with outrage. There has to be a special reason for that, given the fact digital games feature numerous difficult and hurtful historical subjects, such as Transatlantic slave trade in Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry (Ubisoft, 2013); systemic racial discrimination in the USA in Mafia III, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream, 2018); legacy of European colonialism in Shadow of the Tomb Raider; or war crimes and the fate of civilians in This War of Mine or Spec Ops: The Line – with various degree of success.

Most game scholars analyzing the issue agree that the major cause behind the invisibility of the Holocaust is the social perception of games as trivial pastime, unfit to deal with serious and sensitive topics (Chapman and Linderoth, 2015; Frasca, 2000; Kansteiner, 2017; Michalik, 2015; Pfister, 2020a; Seriff, 2018). Therefore, any attempt to directly address the ultimate historical evil through a game is considered sacrilegious by popular media, as if the Holocaust were about to be made a matter for child’s play. Moreover, as Eugen Pfister (2020a, pp. 275–276), and Adam Chapman and Jonas Linderoth (2015, pp. 139–140) point out, as sold globally, local restrictions regarding usage of Nazi-related symbols further limit the possibility to include the Holocaust themes or imagery. As a result, in many World War II-themed games, both Nazi ideology and Shoah are usually whitewashed, especially if the given game allows playing as a German army or assuming a German soldier’s position. The Nazi ideology and the genocide cannot be included in such games, as they tend to present War World II as a conflict between two equivalent sides, and perpetuate the idea of war being historical necessity, if not a glamourous opportunity for heroism (Pfister, 2020b, pp. 56–59). Such reluctance to include Nazi war crimes – especially in strategy games – can be traced back to the long-standing fascination with German army in wargame culture (Alonge, 2019; Pfister, 2020b).

It does not mean, though, that the subject is entirely absent from mainstream digital games, and there are a few titles including imagery associated with the Shoah. As Eugen Pfister observes (2020a, 277-279), contemporary mass-market games trying to depict Holocaust employ two basic strategies: either set the game narrative either in an alternative history, or a fictional world where some evil power mimics the Final Solution, or – if caring about historical accuracy – never mention Shoah by name, but throw in subtle hints, whose recognition relies on players’ prior historical knowledge.

Wulf Kansteiner (2017) ties this inability to introduce the Holocaust as a topic for mass-market digital games with a larger problem of digitalized memory culture. As it is more open to vernacular activities and testimonies, it disrupts sanctioned ways of remembering the past, safeguarded by public institutions and based upon “time-tested rituals for containing and forgetting potentially unsettling pasts” (p. 133). The digital game market is dominated by a few large, international companies, which go the extra mile with self-censorship to effectively eliminate the risk of games becoming tools of memory disruption. This way, game producers remain a part of institutionalized, regimented culture of World War II memory, which delegates Holocaust memory to selected institutions, such as Yad Vashem or Auschwitz Museum. As a result, Holocaust-themed games can emerge only on the margins of global game culture.

For years, such marginal games formed three general groups: quizzes available on websites educating on Holocaust, failed attempts shut down due to public outrage and neo-Nazi provocations, such as notorious KZ Manager, a concentration camp manager first released for Commodore C64 around 1990 in Austria, and then translated, upgraded and developed for different platforms ever since (Kansteiner, 2017; Pfister, 2020a; Selepak, 2010). Only recently, three attempts to make Holocaust-themed games were made, with My Memory of Us, a puzzle platformer using a  childlike aesthetic to tell the fairy-tale about friendship and oppression in a country invaded by evil robots (replacing Nazis), being the only one focusing on the topic directly. The other two, Through the Darkest of Times and Attentat 1942 use persecution of Jews as a background for their main subject: complexity of the resistance in Nazi-controlled countries.

Even though II-World-War-themed board games are numerous and varied, titles mentioning the Final Solution are even more scarce. We’re able to identify just two of them. The first one is infamous Juden Raus!, a Nazi-era German board game about cleansing the city from Jewish influence, published in 1936 – and, ironically, criticized by the official SS newspaper for trivializing national effort to cleanse Germany from Jewish influence (Seriff, 2018, p. 159). The other is Brenda Brathwaite-Romero’s Train. Presented in 2009 it was meant as an exhibition piece and a part of The Mechanic is the Message project. Played with a series of yellow pawns over a broken glass (alluding to the Kristallnacht of 1938), the game was testing whether players would continue upon learning they were preparing transports heading toward concentration camps. With the powerful combination of mechanics and theme, Train is considered to be the only board game successfully addressing the Holocaust to date (Kansteiner, 2017; Seriff, 2018).

The limited number of games even mentioning the Holocaust, especially when compared to the much bigger number of World War II titles conveniently omitting it, can be therefore explained as a result of external pressure from official Holocaust memory custodians, considering ludic frame disrespectful. To avoid the outrage, a game has to either reframe itself from ludic to artistic, documentary or educational (Chapman and Linderoth, 2015, pp. 143–144; see also Pötzsch and Šisler, 2019), or disrupt the link between the subject depicted and history by introducing fictional settings (Chapman, 2019; Pfister, 2020a). Train serves as prime examples of game-based artistic installations (Chapman and Linderoth, 2015; Seriff, 2018), while My Memory of Us or Through the Darkest Time follow conventions of an artistic digital game, the former also using a fictional setting. Attentat 1942 is in turn framed as educational and documentary, as a university-created software using historical footage and archive-based (though fictionalized) statements (Pötzsch and Šisler 2019; Šisler 2016).

But there is an additional factor to be considered: innate qualities of games as a medium for Holocaust memory. This perspective draws less academic attention, with the most prominent attempt to analyze game poetics as a vehicle for Shoah memory being Gonzalo Frasca’s Ephemeral games: Is it barbaric to design videogames after Auschwitz? (2000). According to Frasca, there are two main obstacles to the serious treatment of Holocaust in games: the focus on binary outcomes, especially when playing a game is perceived in terms of winning or losing, and the possibility to repeat unsuccessful actions, which leads to the trivialization of all consequences. As a result, Frasca claims “the player could follow a ‘correct’ path in order to save Anne Frank from death. And if she happened to die, it would not be important, since she would be alive the next time he restarts the game. In other words, the player would be able to jump from life to death back and forth. Therefore, those concepts would lose their ethical, historical and social value.” (Frasca, 2000, p. 177)

To remedy those issues, Frasca proposes an “ephemeral game”, playable only once on each computer, without any possibility to save, restart or repeat. This way the player would be forced to live through consequences and would not be able to experiment with optimizing the gameplay for the best effect, thus forced to embrace the irreversibility of consequences and the ultimate nature of death.

In twenty years that passed since Frasca’s paper some issues he analyzes were successfully resolved. Even though games still frequently rely on positive and negative outcomes, they are no longer necessarily binary or framed in terms of success and failure. Moreover, irreversible consequences have become a highly-desired feature of cRPGS, such as Mass Effect (Bioware 2007) or the Witcher (CD Projekt RED 2007) series. Failure is no longer necessarily equated with the “loss of a life” analyzed by Frasca. There are games that get rid of failure entirely and introduce branching narratives without a possibility to repeat unsuccessful actions. Simultaneously, there are numerous games with the “permadeath” feature, i.e. permanently removing a killed character from play and forcing the unsuccessful player to start over. While not exactly “ephemeral” in Frasca’s sense – as they allow repetition from the beginning – those games seem to be a step toward the narrative experience he considered necessary for serious topics, such as the Holocaust.

With innate obstacles mostly removed, and the changing public perception of digital games as a trivial pastime, both major reasons behind developing Holocaust-themed games are gone. We should expect, therefore, an influx of Shoah games, My Memory of Us is a vanguard of. Such expectation leads to yet another question: what are possible benefits from the development of such games?

One answer could stem from the cultural significance of games, both digital and non-digital, in contemporary culture and media ecology. It would be a perfectly reasonable development of Astrid Erll’s claim about mediatization of memory (Erll, 2011): if games are surpassing movies as the main medium for cultural memory, then censoring the Holocaust from War-World-II-themed games can do unspeakable damage to the social awareness of the conflict. Arguing along that line, Eugen Pfister points out the danger of depoliticizing World War II and reducing it to the military conflict of technologically advanced and visually appealing armies, while removing both Nazi ideology and untold suffering it caused out of sight (Pfister, 2020a). From this perspective, the introduction of the topic to the game medium keeps the memory alive and seems to be a moral obligation caused by the very existence and popularity of World War II games.

In addition, it is possible to consider unique possibilities the medium opens for shaping the Holocaust memory. Wulf Kansteiner (2017) points to digital games’ capability of inducing empathy based on personal responsibility and considers digital games as a possible remedy for the consumer’s passivity in the contemporary Holocaust culture. A digital game allowing the player to enact various scenarios in a simulated Shoah environment could lead to a critical examination of perpetrators’ and passive bystanders’ position, and teach how to recognize signs of radicalization in real life. Thus, the author considers the very thing criticized by Frasca: the possibility to explore outcomes of various decisions without suffering consequences, to be a major asset in Holocaust education, adding an important reservation – such a game should be produced by official curators of Holocaust memory rather than a commercial company.

Susanne Seriff is far less optimistic, claiming that even though Holocaust-themed games could be prepared with best intentions in mind, they fortify the concept of Jews being “the Other” to be removed, and contribute to the growing neo-Nazi discourse and rampant Western antisemitism. Building her argument on Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, she points to the dangers of presenting the Holocaust as playful and reinforcing antisemitic ideologies by introducing them as a part of game rules or setting: “creators of Holocaust toys and toy art may insist that their creations are mere parodic commentary – or cautious education – on the nature of evil in our lives, repeated events of history teach us that, in fact, they are playing with dangerous fire.” (Seriff, 2018, p. 167).

The latter reservation is not without merit, but assumes introducing the Holocaust perpetrator as a playable position – it is not by accident that Seriff herself criticized Train as a well-meaning game reinforcing hateful ideology. But alternatives should be also considered: a possible Holocaust-themed game could educate about Nazi atrocities without forcing anybody to enact the Nazi position. The question therefore arises: is it more productive to teach the horror of Holocaust by employing the perspective of persecuted Jews and making them playable characters for people of non-Jewish origin, or by highlighting the involvement of non-Jewish agents? As we argue, both solutions come with their own sets of significant issues that cannot be easily resolved

We seriously doubt whether it is ethical to put a gentile player in the position of a Holocaust victim or survivor and make them experience simulated persecution while enjoying the comfort of their own armchair. Firstly, such a perspective might be seen as an especially hurtful form of identity tourism (Nakamura, 1995), allowing perfectly safe people to assume they have experienced Shoah themselves. Secondly, it might also bring forward the problem Frasca exemplifies with the search for an optimal path to Anna Frank’s survival. To be playable, a hypothetical game featuring Jewish protagonists trying to survive in the extremely hostile environment of organized persecution would put the agency in the hands of the player. Even if such agency were very limited, as in a walking simulator, it would inevitably force the player to learn the rules, and, in turn, the way to successfully navigate the simulated Shoah. Therefore, the game would necessarily invoke the problem of personal responsibility, creating a false assumption that crafty people could learn “the rules of the game” and bolster their chance of survival. Such rhetoric easily suggests that millions of Jews murdered during the Holocaust were, to a degree, victims of their own shortcomings, as they had never learned to “play the game well.” It goes without saying that such an abhorrent idea is both inaccurate and deeply offensive, which makes the concept of a Holocaust-themed game with a Jewish protagonist extremely difficult to put into practice.

The option of putting the player in the position of a non-Jewish character involved in the Holocaust, in turn, might enforce collaboration with the Nazi regime, thus risking the pitfall Sheriff points out and lending itself to neo-Nazi appropriations, even if created as a critical project. Alternatively, such a game might feature playable characters who help Jewish NPCs to survive the nightmare of Shoah. Although tempting, such a solution caters to the trope of the Heroic Gentile, perpetuating the stereotype of agency-deprived, passive Jewish victims waiting to be rescued by external forces, a Holocaust movie trope made popular by films such as Schindler’s List,  The Pianist, In Darkness, or Zookeeper’s Wife. It is a direct reversal of the problem created by the Jewish protagonist: in this case there is too little agency given to the victims, which suggests the Jewish population of Europe to have been an object over which forces of good and evil struggled.

The trope of a Heroic Gentile is also very precarious due to the state-regulated World War II discourse common in European countries or Israel. In many places, it is presented as a morality tale of Nazi culprits, Jewish victims and local non-Jewish resistance fighters risking their lives to save as many Jews as possible from the inhumanly efficient German death industry (Majewski et al., 2009; Novick, 2000; Steinlauf, 1997; Zertal, 2005). Such stories censor the painful truth about non-German antisemitism (Gross, 2000; Leociak, 2010; Tokarska-Bakir, 2012), local population responsibility and active participation in Holocaust murders (Engelking, 2016; Grabowski, 2011; Gross and Grudzińska-Gross, 2011). A hypothetical game focusing on heroic resistance stories, even if factually correct, would, therefore, inevitably reinforce such white-washing narrative.

We agree that the removal of the Holocaust from World-War-II-themed games is a deeply disturbing issue that should be addressed alongside the possibility to play Nazi Germany or Japanese Empire. We are also convinced that the highly interactive game medium could prevent the passivity of the consumer’s position toward the Holocaust cultural memory and facilitate reflection on the subject. But we also stand by Frasca’s two-decade old, insightful comment: using games to educate about Shoah and preserve its memory introduces major ethical issues caused by combining agency and player position, which inevitably leads to questioning the moral acceptability of participating in a simulated Holocaust, even to learn.

Bringing Taboo into Game

The theoretical considerations presented above became very practical for us when we were invited to organize a game-based Holocaust-related event for teenagers from Eastern Poland. The event was a part of Uncommemorated Genocide Sites and Their Influence on Collective Memory, Cultural Identity, Ethical Attitudes and Intercultural Relations in Contemporary Poland – a four-year research project carried out by the members of the Research Center for Memory Cultures at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. While the research was conducted in various sites across Poland, the village of Radecznica was chosen for the game-based event due to the involvement of a local middle school in the earlier stages of the project.

Radecznica (est. population 920 in 2019) is a village in eastern Poland, nowadays inhabited almost exclusively by ethnic Poles. Before World War II, though, there was a population of Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish denizens here, Catholics being a clear majority due to the proximity of a prominent Bernardine monk monastery. During the wartime, it was also an area of heavy armed resistance against the Nazi occupation. Local guerrilla fighters are currently well commemorated and celebrated by the local church and community, in a way consistent with the dominant patriotic public discourse in Poland. Radecznica was also a witness to the local Jewish population mass killings during World War II. While researching the local memory of the Holocaust, the scholars from JU helped to uncover and properly commemorate a number of unmarked graves (Sendyka et al., 2020).

The location of mass graves in the area is known largely thanks to the grassroots activity of Stanisław Zybała (deceased in 2014), a local librarian who devoted his life to preserving the memory of the pre-war Jewish community in Radecznica ³⁰. His work started after a wartime discovery of the bodies of a Jewish family hiding in the forest ravine called Second Pits (Drugie Doły in Polish), as his childhood friend Raźla was among the dead. In 2016 Zybała’s efforts and the involvement of Jagiellonian University Holocaust researchers resulted in the commemoration of the Second Pits grave by Rabbinical Commission for Cemeteries in Poland – a ceremony attended by the entire local community including middle-school students who would participate in our event three years later (Grzybowska et al., 2019) ³¹. The event we organized focused on Second Pits, as it was the case best known to the students we were working with – though it is important to stress that the site was only one of ten unmarked mass graves identified by Zybała, the biggest one counting about 70 Jews shot and buried there by Nazi enforcers.

The basic idea behind the workshop commissioned to the Jagiellonian Game Research Centre was to provide the Radecznica community with additional educational opportunities before the conclusion of the project, so that the scholars from Jagiellonian University not only took data from the local population, but also shared their expertise and commitment in return, an important ethical consideration in contemporary memory studies (Brzezińska and Toeplitz, 2007; Salzman and Rice, 2011). There was also and additional factor to be considered: while the commemoration of the local murder site was quite well-received by the local community, the grave itself quite quickly started to fade into obscurity. To rectify that, Jagiellonian University memory scholars decided to employ additional measures to ensure that the pre-war Jewish population and its tragic history would be remembered and understood by students of the local middle school, the youngest generation of Radecznica citizens. Looking for something else than another celebratory lecture or discussion, they turned to the Jagiellonian Game Research Centre to consider a possibility of using games as an effective tool for Holocaust education.

The aim of the game-based event we designed was, therefore, twofold: to engage teenagers through the usage of ludic practices, and to address the main topic of the research project, that is – the local Holocaust history. It put us in a unique position, as the few existing games engaging that topic deal with the fate of the Jewish population in large urban centers, including ghettos and death camps as major signifiers of the theme. While consistent with the mainstream Shoah discourse appropriated in popular culture through movies set in city-based ghettos, such as Schindler’s List or In Darkness, and photos from death camps, such imagery is also quite different from the local experience and memory of Radecznica population. Therefore, we decided to design our own way of using games as a tool for students to reflect upon the systemic conditions of the Holocaust outside big urban centers or concentration camps.

The ultimate goal was to help the students resolve contradictions resulting from the clash of two competing Holocaust narratives within official Polish Holocaust culture by appealing to their vernacular culture. We understand two factors contributing to the public memory following the description given by John Bodnar (1994, pp. 15–20). The public memory is a general set of believes shaping a community’s understanding of its past – in our case, Radecznica’s communal attitude toward Holocaust. According to Bodnar, it is a result of two competing cultures: the official one, sanctioned by institutions and power structures, and the vernacular one, born from everyday practice and individual memories of the community members. In our case, there is a tension within Polish official Holocaust culture, as two narratives compete. One of them is state-sanctioned, safeguarded by national institutions and focuses on absolving ethnic Poles from the involvement in the Holocaust. The other, trying to nuance the picture and highlight the Polish role in the Nazi death machine, is backed by the authority of academic institutions and Jewish community in Poland. As the students were heavily exposed to both contradicting ways to understand the past during the course of Uncommemorated places… project, we decided to provide them with creative space to explore vernacular memory of Radecznica community as a counterbalance to both discourses.

We assumed games to be a great vehicle for such an undertaking, as they foster active participation which, in turn, can lead to a change in the attitude toward the past. It is important to stress that we were not presenting students with any new information, as they had already learned about the Second Pits murder and the Holocaust in general. What we were aiming at was to activate that prior knowledge. The textbook information the teenagers had collected during classes, the participation in official events and lectures had formed what could be called an archive: a fact-oriented, static and passive body of knowledge. Our task was to turn that archive into a repertoire: an alternative mode of remembering the past, which Diana Taylor identifies as active and embodied, relying on active participation and repetition instead of memorizing (2003). That, in turn, could lead to integration of the archival, official knowledge with the vernacular culture and foster an active commemoration of Holocaust memory sites as enduring practice.

An additional challenge was the selection of a game type that would make such endeavor possible. Our participants’ access to electronic equipment was very limited, as the school hosting the event lacks a computer lab. That fact ruled out digital games and turned our attention to board games as an alternative. Even though our choice was mostly circumstantial, it turned out to be an auspicious one. First of all, being independent from digital technology, it expanded the potential application of the workshop beyond educational facilities in possession of computer labs (and therefore beyond well-funded metropolitan culture centers). Moreover, board games rules are more explicitly presented and less numerous than video game rules, and therefore facilitate thinking in more systemic, rule-based way, something we wish to encourage. Finally, in many board games luck is a more prominent gameplay factor, with rolling dice or drawing cards at random. In those games individual agency, already recognized as an obstacle when introducing Holocaust as a game theme, is counterbalanced with the with the prominence of fate.

Board-game Design Workshop in Radecznica

Considering the aims of the workshop and the lack of board games that would facilitate the discussion on systemic aspects of the Holocaust, we decided that designing board games during the event would be a preferable alternative to just playing them. Choosing the design focus we had two factors in mind. Firstly, we considered game design potential as a learning tool, already analyzed in game studies literature. Secondly, we hoped that such focus would allow us to address the biggest ethical problem about Holocaust-themed games as explained above – namely, that designing games would introduce a different kind of agency that would not force students into one of three morally dubious positions – Nazi murderer, Jewish victim or Heroic Gentile rescuer.

We aimed to provide Radecznica students with an opportunity to discuss and personally process textbook knowledge as well as involve Shoah memories preserved by their families. The goal was, therefore, to enable safe and productive discussion on such a heavy and commonly avoided topic within a controlled environment framed by a goal-oriented exercise facilitating the conversation. In that regard, we were following Illaria Mariani and Davide Spallazzo’s (2018, pp. 19–30) practice of approaching social taboos through teacher-curated game design. As a result we hoped to inspire the teenagers to develop more personal attitudes toward the local Holocaust history and help them transform theoretical, textbook archival knowledge into a more practical repertoire, an approach of extreme importance in Holocaust memory preservation (Boroń, 2013; Taylor, 2003).

Interpreting the educational potential of game design as a transformational practice, inducing lasting change on the designer, is also a concept argued by Stefano Gualeni (2015), who claims that in order to prepare the system of the game, the designer has to develop a deep understanding of the issue serving as a base for the said system, and fashion themselves in a way that transforms their comprehension and attitude toward the issue itself. Gualeni’s theoretical position was reinforced over the course the game design class, with students designing games promoting healthy lifestyle slowly changing their dietary habits.

Gualeni’s, and Mariani and Spallazzo’s design classes were both conducted in the course of several months. In our case, the duration of the workshop was limited to two days. For that reason we decided to build upon the experience from critically-oriented game jams (Kultima, 2015). Even though the game jams’ initial aim had been to increase the creativity in game development, it turned out to have highly educational properties leading to an improvement of academic performance among game design students participating in such events (Preston et al. 2012) and dissemination of values shared by organizers and key participants (Kultima 2018). They have also proved to be an efficient tool for building a community around a tragic event, as was the case with Fukushima Game Jam (Shin et al. 2012), or facilitate culture preservation through collaboration between indigenous population and game designers, for example during the Sami Game Jam (Laiti et al., 2020). The latter case was especially important, as it demonstrated that collaboration between professional game scholars and local amateurs without any prior knowledge of game design conventions can open new ways of memory preservation, as the local participants introduce their own cultural perspective and highlight aspects of vernacular practice that outsiders can easily miss.

Drawing inspiration from the game jam culture and hoping for similar effects – a transformation of knowledge and shift in values, as well as preservation of traumatic cultural knowledge through game design – we chose a similar formula. Our workshop was designed as an intense two-day event with professionals working alongside amateurs to develop games operating under mechanical and thematic constraints.

Our final consideration was to not overwhelm students with the workshop theme from the very beginning, as their initial task was to learn how to design a board game in the first place. In rectifying that issue, we were inspired by Braithwaithe-Romero’s Train, where players were exposed to the rules and allowed to play the game only to be introduced to the Holocaust context afterwards. The shocking revelation provided a powerful tool to explore the concept of banality of evil by changing the perception of the game and forcing a critical evaluation of its system.

Inspired by that example, we decided to task the students with designing a board game on a neutral theme, featuring a mechanics for hiding, escaping or smuggling, and then to re-theme it as a Holocaust game. Thus we hoped to make the task easier while steering the participants out of the most common Shoah imagery to prevent them from designing games set in ghettos or concentration camps.

The event itself spanned over the course of two days and involved 14 students from the last class of the middle school (age 15-16), three of them dropping out during the second day due to their prior obligations. The workshop was organized and supervised by and a team of game scholars from Jagiellonian Game Research Centre including professional game designers, and a Holocaust educator watching over ethical aspects of the endeavor. Two teachers from Radecznica school were also present throughout the workshop. All students and their parents were informed about the reason behind the workshop and its theme before the event, and parents were asked for consent for their children to participate.

During the first day, participants were instructed in basic principles of board game design and asked to design a simple board game on a randomly selected subject, but including a specific mechanics for hiding and seeking, escaping or smuggling. Students were divided into teams and provided with pre-prepared blank board game component sets (including boards, tokens, cards and wooden pawns) and a mentor from among the workshop organizers to guide and inspire the design process. Mentors were also asked to introduce pre-created rulesets in case participants struggled with the design process. That precaution turned out to be unnecessary, as by the end of the first day all teams managed to create playable game prototypes based on rules of their own design.

The second day started with a lecture on the Second Pits murder, delivered by the Holocaust researcher. Afterwards students were tasked to re-theme their games in a way that would fit the local Holocaust history, focusing on the systemic aspects of depicted events. The introduction of the Holocaust as a theme was hardly a surprise – the students and their parents were not only well-aware of the research conducted in Radecznica by Jagiellonian University memory scholars, but also informed beforehand that the workshop would be dealing with the topic. What was surprising, though, was the re-theming challenge, as most students assumed they would be designing a new game on the second day, with rules crafted specifically for the subject.

After approximately three hours of discussion, three working prototypes were presented by design teams, with detailed explanations of how rules designed the other day were used to cover locally based Holocaust narratives, and why such design choices were made. None of the teams decided to play the re-themed versions, even though they had readily played the prototypes before re-theming. Following games and their re-themes were presented:

1. The game initially themed as light-hearted science fiction about petty criminals escaping from a space jail was, quite predictably, themed as a game about Jewish families trying to escape the region, with a lot of emphasis on the roles of luck and local topography in the runaways’ survival.
2. The game about escaping from a collapsing haunted house became a tale of group effort necessary to save a single life, strongly stressing the growing difficulty of such an act over time.
3. For the jolly game about cartoon pigs tending to a farm while searching for a hidden treasure, authors presented not one, but two possible themes. One tied the resource management of the original game with gathering the necessities for survival by swapping farm products to medicine, food and hope. The other dealt with contemporary attempts to uncover and preserve the hidden treasure of the local Holocaust memory.

All presentations had a solemn aura, as both the students and the organizers were deeply moved by the profundity of the outcomes. The last hour of the workshop turned out to be a very emotional yet rewarding experience for everybody involved. After the workshop’s conclusion the prototypes were donated to the school library, more as mementos than playable artifacts.

As stated above, the immediate emotional impact of the workshop was unquestionable and very intense. As the task was to preserve the original game mechanics untouched, the students could not rely on conventional pop cultural Holocaust themes. As a result, they were forced to mobilize their knowledge of the local Holocaust history and discuss in detail how to translate it into the existing ruleset. That task allowed the participants to improve their shared knowledge through discussion and community building, as described by Mariani and Spallazzo (Spallazzo and Mariani 2018). It also allowed the students to move past the tired clichés of the Holocaust-related school education into a far more intimate territory. Although undeniably unpleasant for them, the exercise achieved its basic aim: it made a group of teenagers from a devoutly Catholic Polish village develop personal perspectives on the Second Pits murder and Jewish fate in general.

The process of designing the games validated Frasca’s arguments, as all three teams not only problematized the conditions of winning the game, but were visibly uncomfortable and faced verbal difficulties when explaining them during the presentations. All groups replaced “winning” with “surviving,” and one group made a point to emphasize that not everybody was able to survive the nightmare of Shoah and that it was mostly dependent on external circumstances. By reducing player’s agency in the Holocaust-themed version, all groups underlined chance as an important factor in the survival.

Moreover, while re-theming the mechanics designed to cover such actions as hopping planets while escaping from the space jail or entering the haunted house, the students made an effort to redirect the mechanics from reflecting action(s) to emphasizing emotional and physical conditions of the survival. As stated above, one team decided “hope” to be as crucial as food and medicine, introducing those three resources in place of crops from their previous farming game, and another team changed reason for being on the move from active pursuit to fear of being exposed – a decision that strongly increased emotional tension. Not a single group introduced active antagonists, replacing them with the extreme hostility of social environment. Thus, the game designers avoided simplistic blame-tossing and bypassed the nationalistic aspect of the official Holocaust memory.

We consider the workshop to have been very successful in mobilizing the students’ prior knowledge of the Holocaust and local history, and putting both official and vernacular archives of memory into practice. Even though it was not explicitly required by the organizers, all students turned to the local topography, seeking to relate game space with the area and subsequently discussing Holocaust memories preserved in their community and their families in addition to what was taught in class. For example, an attempt to name safe spaces on the board after local villages was discarded when, after a prolonged discussion on the said villages’ attitude toward Jewish refugees, the students agreed that there were not enough shelters for Jews in the area to cover all safe spaces on the board.

The workshop had an undeniable and immediate emotional impact on all participants, including the organizers. The requirement of operationalizing archival knowledge of the Holocaust crimes transformed it into a far more personal and practical experience. Still, long-lasting effects of the workshop are difficult to assess. Even though the surveys conducted one week after the workshop give us a reason to be optimistic, we have no method to verify the durability of the transformation. The participating students were in the last grade, so they have already changed schools and are impossible to track without engaging substantial resources. As a result, we cannot repeat the survey and assess lasting influence of the experience with any degree of certainty, though both the original survey results and the very strong emotional reactions we personally experienced allow us, to some degree, hope for the workshop to have had lasting positive effects.

Designing Games after Auschwitz

Though the workshop experience was a limited one, we believe it sheds some light on reasons behind the difficulty for the game culture to approach Shoah as a serious subject. Our conclusion is based on the reactions shared by all designing teams: replacing victory with survival, focusing on Jewish experience and the reluctance to play the game. We believe that those three factors co-create the final conclusion: designing Holocaust-themed games might be a more efficient and morally permissible way of addressing the Shoah through the game medium than playing such games, and board games seem to serve the Holocaust education better than digital ones. It does not mean that we do not consider the necessity of including the genocide in World-War-II-themed digital and board games, as we recognize the importance of Pfister’s argument about the dangers of white-washing the conflict (Pfister, 2020a, 2020b).

Our conclusion is consistent with Frasca’s (2000) observation: there is a serious obstacle for gameplay engaging the topic in a meaningful way in the game dependency on binary outcomes as a means of game progress or lack thereof, ultimately leading to triumph or failure. It was very clear when each team independently decided not to call the ultimate outcome of the re-themed game a “victory” and found competition within the game tragic rather than exciting. We do not believe, though, that the reason behind such design choice was related to design team conviction that such binarity leads to the trivialization or operationalization of death. There was also no sign of the other reason Frasca gives for the game inability to deal with Holocaust, namely the possibility to revert the action in case of undesirable consequences. No game directly dealt with death, nor included any mechanism to revert move: therefore the problem with binarity and the victory as a final outcome has to be related to other game properties.

As we have learned watching design teams discussions and subsequent presentations, all students had to overcome the major problem with translating Holocaust narrative to the set of actions performed by players. The reason for that difficulty seems to be an inability to reconcile the Holocaust narrative preserved by public memory with two game-related concepts: personal agency leading to desirable outcome, and the conflict framed as thrilling. As a result, a strong dissonance was created, as those game elements that usually make gameplay exciting: overcoming obstacles and competing against the environment or other players, are framed as sources of trauma in the Holocaust narrative. Shoah public memory depicts conflict as source of untold suffering, and empathizes limitations of the agency, as it is often presented as unavailable for Jewish victims – especially in stories focusing on Heroic Gentile trope.

That dissonance became very clear during re-theming games. All participant discovered that forcing the opponent out of a hiding place or competing over resources is fun as long as the opponent is presented as another petty criminal escaping from a space jail, and the resources are crops to be sold on a farm market. However, the fun evaporates when the one who is chased away is a fellow Jew desperately trying to survive, and the resources turn into food and medicine. As the rules were not transformed with the game themes, the process left all parties involved with an awkward sensation of having fun in a wrong way, which contributed to the emotional impact of the workshop.

This observation can be generalized, as the dissonance workshop participants felt comes from general properties of game culture and Holocaust culture discourses, not from the particular condition of the workshop or the individual properties of Radecznica public memory.

It is, therefore, our claim that there is a basic incompatibility between the way official, public memory of the Holocaust is created and the act of playing the game. It stems from the ways agency and conflict are framed in game culture vs. the Holocaust culture. In game culture, it is common to identify struggle for control and agency the main property of gameplay or a desirable quality in a game, while the official Holocaust culture frames the same struggle as tragic and traumatic. This dissonance is manifested when players are facing a choice leading toward victory or failure, but it is not rooted in binarity of the outcome or possibility to revert choice once made, as Frasca claimed. We believe it is caused by that outcome being decided through player’s agency, improving player position in the conflict against other players or AI-operated enemies. Both traits are deeply incompatible with official public Holocaust memory.

We believe that fundamental discrepancy to be the hidden reason behind the common conviction that games are an inadequate medium for the Holocaust narrative, the phenomenon described extensively by Chapman, Lidenroth (2015), Kansteiner (2017) or Pfister (2020a, 2020b). It also explains why the most common strategy to include Shoah-related motifs in games is to relocate it to the outside of the official Holocaust discourse, either by including fantasy elements or incorporating the Holocaust theme into a background of a more game-compatible narrative of armed struggle or civic resistance to Nazi regime, therefore moving agency elsewhere. It also explains why it is easier to introduce other hurtful histories into digital games and present them through gameplay: their official memory is not as tightly guarded and curated as the Holocaust memory, whose dissemination is monitored by several institutions and nation states (see Kansteiner, 2017, pp. 129–132).

Nevertheless, we consider games to be a very powerful tool for discussing and analyzing the Holocaust memory, precisely for the aforementioned reason: the focus on agency and ability to present complex ideas as systems, not narratives (Galloway, 2006), a quality that can serve as an effective way of explaining entanglements between various actors of the Shoah. Our simple exercise showed that translating textbook knowledge of the topic into a ruleset forced a change in the workshop participants’ attitude to the Holocaust and allowed them to consider perspectives they had not reflected upon before, such as the availability of resources or spatial and temporal aspects of survival. It also facilitated the transformation of archival, scripted knowledge into embodied practice (Taylor, 2003). Thus, game design turned out to be a very potent way to disrupt the official Holocaust memory, and combine it with vernacular memory and practice, as to address the local Holocaust events, the students were forced to merge what they had learned at school with anecdotes and information preserved by their families (Bodnar, 1994).

For this reason it is curated game design rather than playing Holocaust-themed games that we consider a powerful educational tool. By positioning the students as designers, not players, we successfully managed to circumnavigate three biggest issues. We avoided forcing the participants into assuming morally dubious positions of Nazi perpetrators, Jewish victims or Heroic Gentiles. We delegated agency out of the gameplay and into the game design, reducing the tension between agency constructions in game culture and Holocaust memory. We successfully mobilized the vernacular memory of the Shoah and facilitated turning archival knowledge into embodied practice. By giving the students a sense of accomplishment coming from the successful design of a functional game prototype, we hopefully forged a link between the Holocaust memory and intense emotions, both positive and negative, providing participants with more personal experience of the topic. This way we’ve created a emotional alternative for both the prideful state-sanctioned narrative about Polish heroism and the guilt-ridden academic tale of Polish complicity for Radecznica students.

Finally, if the reason behind attempts to break the Holocaust taboo in game culture is the intention of preserving memory through the new medium, as Eugen Pfister and Wulf Kansteiner propose, curated game design offers yet another advantage. While playing an educational Holocaust-themed game constitutes the players as students learning about the historical event, designing a game makes the participants custodians of the Holocaust memory, combining official and vernacular discourses into a unique game-based narrative. That is what prepares the knowledge of the ultimate man-made tragedy to be passed on to the next generation.

Acknowledgements

The workshop was designed and organized by Jagiellonian Game Research Centre members: Marta Błaszkowska, Małgorzata Majkowska, Tomasz Z. Majkowski, Maciej Nawrocki and Bartłomiej Schweiger, with support of Katarzyna Suszkiewicz, Holocaust scholar and educator from Antyschematy2 foundation and Wojciech Rzadek, professional board game designer. The workshop was possible due to hospitality of Hanna Nowak, the principal of Public Middle School in Radecznica, and Janusz Krukowski, the history teacher, to whom we aim our most sincere gratitude. The original idea for the workshop was developed from advice given to us by Sybille Lammes. Agata Zarzycka graciously help us with language edition and provided numerous insightful comments that helped us to clarify our argument. The article and the event described were prepared within the scope of the project: Uncommemorated Genocide Sites and Their Impact on Collective Memory, Cultural Identity, Ethical Attitudes and Intercultural Relations in Contemporary Poland (Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the National Programme for the Development of Humanities, 2016-2020, registration no 2aH 15 0121 83) developed in the Research Center for Memory Cultures, Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University. Principal Investigator: Roma Sendyka.

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Ludography

Attentat 1942, Charles Games, Czech Republic, 2017

Detroit: Become Human, Quantic Dream, France, 2018

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Rockstar North, UK, 2004

KZ Manager, unknown developer, Austria, unknown date

Mafia III, Hangar 13, USA, 2013

Mass Effect, BioWare, Canada, 2007

My Memory of Us, Juggler Games, Poland, 2018

Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics, USA, 2018

Spec Ops: The Line, Yager Development, Germany, 2012

The Witcher – series, CD Project RED, Poland, 2007-2015

This War of Mine, 11bit, Poland, 2014

Through the Darkest of Times, Paintbucket Games, Germany, 2020

Train, Brenda Romero, USA, 2009

Filmography

In Darkness (W ciemności), Agnieszka Holland, Poland, Germany, Canada, 2011

Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg, USA, 1993

The Pianist, Roman Polanski, UK, France, Poland, Germany, 2002

Zookeeper’s Wife, Niki Caro, USA, UK, Czech Republic, 2017

Authors’ info: 

Thomasz Z. Majkowski

Jagiellonian University Krakow

tomasz.majkowski@uj.edu.pl

Katarzyna Suszkiewicz

Jagiellonian University Krakow

Kristine Jørgensen (University of Bergen), Riccardo Fassone (Università di Torino)

download the pdf 

What are the taboos of game studies, and is it even possible to identify taboos in a highly interdisciplinary field like game studies? And how are games and game studies tackling topics that are considered cultural or social taboos? This special issue is taking a stab at these questions, tracing both the disciplinary controversies of our field, as well as debating specific taboo topics and the theoretical and methodological approaches through which they have been addressed.

This collection discusses taboos in game studies, ranging from research into taboo subjects to the taboo methods and approaches. Game studies is still a young field, and while specific paradigms may not have yet settled, it is likely that the areas that are deemed taboo for researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds will contribute to crystallize certain research paradigms or shift the focus of inquiry on specific issues. In this volume, we aim to tease out the taboos of game studies by looking at subjects and fields that researchers dare not venture into, and by studying how games treat topics that are commonly believed to be inappropriate for games and play. We also discuss scholarship that relates to other societal taboos, such as research projects involving people associated with criminal environments. We hope that this collection will contribute to a better understanding of the field of game studies by providing insight into topics that are rarely addressed but potentially create large divisive gaps between research traditions in game studies.

According to dictionary definitions, a taboo can be understood as “a prohibition imposed by social custom or as a protective measure” (Merriam-Webster, 2019). Taboos are topics or acts that are off limits, often for reasons based in social conduct, convention, or norm and associated with morality; in most cases these are unspoken agreements and expectations that one has come to learn through socialization and engagement with a community. Although there are certain taboos that appear to be virtually universal and thus also implemented into the juridical system, such as incest, cannibalism, and murder, taboos are also changing with culture and time (Lambek, 2001).

Taboos can be found in all parts of society and guide our practices in many ways. In research, talking about taboos may seem counterintuitive as an ideal common to all research is a fundamentally critical disposition where researchers question assumptions and accepted truths in order to understand a phenomenon as thoroughly as possible. In cases where there is disagreement about the interpretation of data or the phenomenology of a subject matter, this could certainly be controversial, but would be considered a source for academic debate rather than a taboo as such. However, this does not mean that research is void of taboos.

On an overarching level, we can find the taboos of science and research are closely related to the norms and restrictions regulating research practices. As society’s primary producers of knowledge, research and science have a social responsibility and are held accountable for scientific rigor and validity. Scientific taboos that span disciplines from mathematics and medicine, to philosophy, law, history, sociology – and indeed game studies – are practices that break our ability to confide in the results presented. Fabricating data, dishonest or “creative” interpretation, misquotation and plagiarism are thus obvious, largely universal taboos in the academic community. Closely related are the violation of research ethics. Experiments and tests that do harm to participants, in particular when carried out on non-consenting or unaware subjects, are examples of this (Carlson, Boyd & Webb, 2004).

However, if we consider the taboos of a specific research field, we must look for issues that go against the norms or established truths of that field. A glance at our own practices of game scholars indicates that finding universal taboos for the field may be challenging due to its interdisciplinary nature. This indicates different perspectives that may sometimes stand in stark contrast or opposition to each other. While researchers may cherish the research paradigms and methodologies of their native field, they are confronted with colleagues of different persuasions, while simultaneously experiencing pressure from culture and society about the ways in which games should be addressed. This indicates that what may seem controversial in a certain field may not be so in another. As game studies grows into maturity, the field has been through several debates, spanning the disputes about effects and learning, the so-called narratology vs. ludology debate, to the discussions about how to respond to the #gamergate controversy.

In his article, Frans Mäyrä takes an introspective view where he discusses disputes of game studies by adopting the perspective of a broader intellectual history. He describes current game studies as taking part in a “charged intellectual and political landscape” that seems to increase the differences rather than build bridges in the field. While admitting that descriptions of academic differences often tend to appear as more polarized than they may actually be, he describes today’s situation as dominated by two traditions; one “formalist” tradition and a “politically committed” tradition. He traces these traditions back, not simply to the narratology vs. ludology debate, but further to the history of thought brought forward by the idealist and empiricist positions of epistemology. In the contemporary climate of culture wars, this also resonates with the current polarization between right-wing and conservative activists and progressive and feminist intellectuals that were at the barricades in the #gamergate controversy.  Addressing the political and theoretical polarization of the field, Mäyrä argues for need to banish taboos in discussing the topic, arguing that while setting up clear dichotomies might serve educational and analytical purposes, it is ethically important to remember to acknowledge both the value and limitations in (ostensibly “value-neutral”) formalist as well as in (politically committed) contextual, critical and cultural studies positions in the game studies field. Mäyrä’s piece uncovers many of the issues that are disputed in the field of game studies, and by doing so he points out some of the areas in which the taboos of game studies can be found. He suggests that one of these perceived taboos is the realization that a formalist approach to game studies appears unable to tackle some of the pressing issues in gaming culture relating to misogyny, racism, and homophobia, and the attacks by #gamergate.

The fact that games and game culture may be oblivious to their own ignorance of racial issues can in itself be understood as a product of one of the taboos of the field of game studies. In his essay, Aaron Trammell is addressing the relationship between blackness and games by investigating the connection between play and torture. The article engages with the important thought that games and play are not always safe, consensual, and fun, and that the link between torture and play is an important one in understanding black experiences of play. The author takes us on an uncomfortable journey through the history of play as torture in the black experience. This peculiar configuration is traced back to American slavery and reminds us that play often goes hand in hand with more sinister practices, and that it is our duty as game scholars to shed light on this fact.

While Mäyrä and Trammell’s essays offer viewpoints on what can be considered taboos in game studies, addressing overarching issues on how we think about knowledge production in our field, and how we construct the ontology of play, we can also look at how game studies deals with topics that are considered cultural or social taboos. Public debates about games have revealed the existence of certain topics that tend to be perceived as inappropriate for games. Chapman and Linderoth claim that games appear to have a trivializing effect on subject matters because they simplify and thus risk representing issues in a disrespectful way (Chapman & Linderoth, 2015). For this reason, some are of the assumption that games cannot deal with topics that need to be handled with sensitivity. Two of the papers in this special issue discuss how games deal with World War II. While the popularity of military conflict in games hardly makes the topic a taboo in itself, war in games is generally sanitized in the sense that everything that would remind the player about the problematic aspects of war is removed (Pötzsch, 2017). This means that war games tend to avoid civilian causalities or war crimes. In their piece, Eugen Pfister and Martin Tschiggerl discuss how videogames navigate the representation of historical taboos relating to World War II and analyze the moments where games and players violate these taboos. While World War II is a shared European cultural and historical trauma, the authors reflect on how its representation has been the subject of different regulations and interpretations in different cultural contexts and on the impact of this process on the idea of authenticity in historical representations. They discuss the peculiar situations that occur when game developers attempt to work around national regulations such as the German banning of Nazi symbolism in entertainment, which sometimes result in a paradoxical exposure of the taboos that the regulations are trying to protect. The authors also discuss how the idea of authenticity creates taboos in game culture, illustrated by debates on how the presence of female soldiers in historical games is perceived not only as inaccurate but as a transgression against a shared historical reality.

A debate about the representation of taboos would be incomplete without a discussion of the Holocaust, an event whose visibility has been a major preoccupation for philosophers and historians in the XX Century (see e.g. Didi-Huberman, 2003). While this is an issue also in Pfister and Tschiggerl’s piece, it takes the center stage in Tomasz Z. Majkowski and Katarzyna Suszkiewicz’s paper. Rather than discussing how games deal with the representation of the taboos of Holocaust, Majkowski and Suszkiewic are investigating how the design of a game about Holocaust can be both a pedagogical tool as well as a way for game scholars to better understand the affordances of games in communicating culturally and historically sensitive matters. Thus, the piece is both asking how games as well as game studies can deal with taboos. The paper documents a boardgame design workshop organized by game scholars, historians, and Holocaust educators during which high school students designed a board game that would raise awareness on the Holocaust history of the Polish town of Radecznica. While the design workshop itself is an innovative and even radical way of dealing with sensitive issues, the aim is not to break taboos or make the students engage in transgressive practices. Instead, the authors’ aim is de-tabooization: a refusal of the idea of the Holocaust as a taboo that games cannot address and a demonstration that games can tackle this historical trauma in a respectful way, allowing the student-designers to take an active role in the meaning-making process relating to their local history.

The last paper in this special issue concerns a common but often neglected topic for many fields in social research: the fact that research sometimes intersects with crime and criminal environments. To study games and game culture is generally a safe endeavor unless the researcher gets involved in issues that provoke online harassment campaigns (Chess & Shawm 2015; 2016; Mortensen, 2016). For Hanna Wirman and Rhys Jones, however, a research on Hong Kong arcades, or “amusement game centers” (遊戲機中心), put them into a situation where they became engaged with environments with a perceived relation to organized crime. While the respondents in Wirman and Jones’ studies report that local arcades are dominated by cartels, this is also a taboo in the sense that it is obviously not on any public records. At the same time, the simple – and without doubt real – possibility that such as link exists, creates a number of issues for researchers. In addition to the potential threats towards their own safety and the fact that simply researching arcades can cause reactions by the cartels, this situation exposes a number of fundamental questions concerning methods and research ethics, including to what degree researchers themselves are willing to – or should – break not only social norms but also the law, in their pursuit of knowledge.

As a concluding remark it is worth bringing up a possible elephant in the room – whether we have at all been able to address the actual taboos of game studies. A problem about taboos is that they are by definition that which should not be spoken about, and for this reason simply addressing them would in itself be socially unacceptable and potentially lead to social stigma. Research is by its very nature investigative and based on curiosity and the willingness to challenge the establishment to understand all aspects of a topic, which implies that even taboos should be challenged and broken. At the same time, research is also a part of the social world where issues such as social stigma is real, and it is thus unlikely that there should be no taboos in research. For this reason, it may seem like a paradox to discuss the taboos of game studies and comes as no surprise that identifying the taboos of a research field may be difficult.

While we do not claim to have exposed all taboos in the field of game studies, what we have done is to take a first stab at identifying areas of research in which the taboos of game studies can be found. The papers in this special issue have been able to identify both certain disputes inside game studies that involve some of the taboos of our field, as well as providing in-depth discussion of how games and game studies tackle topics that are considered taboo in culture and society. This is important for the maturation of the field: It is only through exposing the taboos of our field that we can start having an informed scholarly debate about our taboos, and about the ways in which they may hinder the progress of our field by reducing the space for dialogue.

References

Carlson, R.V., Kenneth M. B. & Webb, D.J. (2004). The revision of the Declaration of Helsinki: past, present and future. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 57, 6. Available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1884510/

Chapman, A., Linderoth, J. (2015). Exploring the limits of play: A case study of representations of Nazism in games. In T.E. Mortensen, J. Linderoth, A. M. L. Brown (Eds.), The Dark Side of Game Play. Controversial Issues in Playful Environments (pp. 137-153). New York: Routledge.

Chess, S., Shaw, A. (2015). A conspiracy of fishes, or, how we learned to stop worrying about #GamerGate and embrace hegemonic masculinity. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59. Available: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08838151.2014.999917 (accessed Feb 6, 2020). 

Chess, S., Shaw, A. (2016). We Are All Fishes Now: DiGRA, Feminism, and GamerGate. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 2 (2). Available: http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/article/view/39.

Didi-Hubermann, G. (2003). Images Malgré Tout. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.

Lambek, M. (2001 [2015]). Taboo. In J.D. Wright (Ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition). London: Elsevier.

Mortensen, T.E. (2016). Anger, Fear, and Games: The Long Event of #GamerGate. Games and Culture, online first April 13. Available: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1555412016640408.

taboo (2019). Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Accessed: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/taboo

Authors’ Info: 

Kristine Jørgensen

University of Bergen

Kristine.Jorgensen@uib.no

Riccardo Fassone

University of Torino

riccardo.fassone@unito.it

Theo Plothe (Savannah State University)

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Abstract

Hue is a successful digital game from the independent game company, Fiddlesticks, that is focused around color theory. The game’s core concept, however, made digital game play impossible for players who are colorblind. Hue’s built-in and customizable game modes allow colorblind players to use patterns instead of colors to play the game. Through an interview with Hue’s creator Henry Hoffman, this article details Hoffman’s design process and proposes a framework for accessible game design based in universal design principles.

Keywords: Game Design, Accessibility, Universal Design, Color Blindness, Hue.

Introduction

Digital games are currently one of the largest sectors of the entertainment industry, with a U.S. market value of $18.4 billion in 2017 (Statista, 2018). Bierre et al. (2014) note, however, that the digital game industry excludes a significant portion of consumers because of the difficulty of making many games accessible to players with disabilities. Yuan et al. (2011, p. 86) estimate the number of people whose ability to play digital games is impaired by disabilities to be 32.2 million, or 1% of the total U.S. population. While assistive technology solutions, such as screen readers, magnifiers, voice recognition systems, and adaptive controllers and keyboards exist, many of these technologies are not compatible with widely used game consoles and popular games themselves. There is a need, then, to consider not only the ways to adapt a game for players with disabilities after it is produced, but to integrate considerations of disability within the design process itself.

This paper considers the process through which one digital game designer approached adaptations of the popular digital game Hue (2016) for players with one particular disability: color blindness. Through an analysis of an interview with the game designer Henry Hoffman, this article considers the ways that Hoffman’s design process follows principles of Universal Design (UD), an approach to disability adaptation that considers accessibility at the beginning of the design process. Hoffman’s example provides a model for other game designers to follow in developing successful games that are accessible for players with specific disabilities.

Accessibility in Gaming Design

While accessibility and accessible design are growing areas of concern in education, education technology, and other areas of digital technology, digital games are a bit behind in addressing the needs of individuals with disabilities. The W3C set accessibility standards for websites worldwide, but digital games have more specific and often idiosyncratic requirements. Yuan et al. (2011) note the difficulty in improving accessibility in digital games; technologies and consoles change frequently and use different configurations and hardware. Digital games also are doing more than simply presenting information to the user, and they also require interaction through user feedback (Yuan, 2011, p. 82). Some players can use alternate input devices, including eye controllers and vocal joysticks, but these devices usually have limitations on the amount and type of input that the device can record.

Yuan et al. (2011) propose that games that need just one form of input, called one-switch games, can be easiest to make adaptable, especially for players with visual or motor impairments who use alternative input devices; a few of these popular games include remakes of earlier classics, including Frogger, Sudoku Access, and Gordon’s Trigger Finger, a modification of the FPS game Half-Life 2. Bierre et al. (2014) also surveyed game developers on specific games that were designed with accessibility in mind. Like Yuan et al., these scholars mentioned a number of games that have been adapted from commercial titles in order to shape gaming experiences for individuals with specific types of disabilities. They also described popular commercial titles with adaptations for players with disabilities, including Half Life 2, with closed captioning options tested in collaboration with deaf players; Doom 3, with a closed caption modification developed in collaboration with players after the game’s release; Terraformers, created with a sonar system for vision-impaired players; and F355 Ferrari Challenge, with an intelligent braking system for players with slower reaction times (p. 8-9).

Color Blindness in Digital Games 

Color blindness, which affects nearly 15% of Caucasian males (Zammitto, 2008, p. 272), has not only proven problematic for digital game creators, but is often ignored for commercial or production reasons, or much less even considered to be an issue. When digital games do adapt to players’ needs, rarely do they make any news about it, nor is it much beyond a cursory notification in the game’s instruction manual. Scholars such as Tanuwidjaja et al. (2014) have investigated the issue at length, designing Chroma, a Google Glass inspired technology to provide “real-time textual feedback about the color at the center point of the scene” (Tanuwidjaja et al., 2014, p. 801). Another app on iTunes Tanuwidjaja et al. (2014) mention is HueVue, which helped the colorblind “to identify, match and coordinate colors” in addition to providing detailed color information just by touching any image. (Cnet, 2010).

Several other studies have examined these issues within game design (Duvall, 2001), players with disabilities (Lim and Nardi, 2011), and even eye testing in children (Gaggi and Ciman, 2016). While these technologies do make exceptions for individuals who are colorblind and make various media more palatable and usable by those with this particular disability, they invariably work as add-ons, as secondary technologies. Disability studies scholar Jay Dolmage (2008) calls such approaches “retrofitting”:

To retrofit is to add a component or accessory to something that has already been manufactured or built. This retrofit does not necessarily make the product function, does not necessarily fix a faulty product, but it acts as a sort of correction. (p. 20)

While these technologies can assist players who are colorblind in playing the digital game more effectively, they do not solve the underlying problem that makes the digital game inaccessible to a portion of the gaming market.

Universal Design 

Universal design (UD) is a broad set of design principles used in architecture, technology, and education to create spaces and objects that take into consideration the needs of differently-abled and older adults. The core tenant of universal design is to start from the earliest stages of a product’s design to take into consideration how different sorts of users might use the space or object. By foregrounding concerns of accessibility, designers can create products that work for the widest range of people possible. The most recognizable and perhaps ubiquitous of these adaptations are curb cutouts. The Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University (1997) has developed the following best principles for universal design:

1. Equitable use
2. Flexibility in use
3. Simple and intuitive use
4. Perceptible information
5. Tolerance for Error
6. Low physical effort
7. Size and space for approach and use

These principles, as a whole, allow for multiple approaches and means for reaching an objective. Whether it is creating a space with wide hallways and movable furniture to accommodate wheelchairs and other assistive devices, or allowing for user error and multiple approaches, the overall objective is to provide flexible, user-friendly objects for all individuals, not just those with disabilities.

While universal design principles were first developed for architecture, they have been applied to other fields, including education and educational technology. UD approaches in these areas may be the most productive to consider for digital game design. Dolmage (2015) argues that anyone utilizing universal design for education needs to consider three broad principles in its creation that will avoid problems of retrofitting and ensure the most accessible approaches:

Multiple means of representation, to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge,

Multiple means of expression, to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know,

Multiple means of engagement, to tap into learners’ interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation. (Dolmage, 2015)

While Dolmage’s framework is specific to instructional design and delivery, the principles are broad enough to provide a flexible framework for game designers. Considering multiple means of the representation of information as well as multiple means of engagement will allow digital game players to customize digital games to fit their needs, whether it is closed captioning on a digital game (as a differentiated means of representation) or through multiple possibilities for player controls or inputs (as multiple means of interaction). Taking these issues into account early in the design process provides more flexibility and possibilities for meeting accessibility needs than those available later in the process.

Hue

Indie developer Fiddlesticks and publisher Curve Digital made their commitment to an adaptive technology from the start with their digital game Hue, a runaway hit, both commercially and critically. As the protagonist Hue, the player explores a gothic story of a boy searching for his missing mother through world of black and white environments that can be manipulated with a color wheel that is slowly filled in with various colors as the game progresses. Obstacles can disappear and reappear with a turn of the wheel, or reveal new puzzles to solve, as the game increases in difficulty all while adding eight colors: Blue, Dark Blue, Purple, Pink, Orange, Red, Yellow, and Lime. The very first press release describes the game as, “A heartfelt story that touches on themes of love, loss, existence and remorse” with “Over 30 original music tracks, composed exclusively for Hue.” The designers explicitly state that Hue features “full colorblind support, using symbols as a color aid” (Hue, 2016).

Creator Henry Hoffman has noted this was a key consideration in making the game. “After much research, testing, and seeking advice from color-blind communities, we devised a simple symbol system which we hope will make the game accessible to all. We really want as many people as possible to enjoy Hue” (Musa, 2016). The rest of this article details the design process for this specific digital game specifically.

Methodology 

In order to more fully consider the ways that accessibility for players who are colorblind colorblind players was incorporated into the design process for Hue, I conducted an interview with Hue creator Henry Hoffman, the Creative Director and Co-Founder of indie game developer, Fiddlesticks. I spoke with Hoffman at length over Skype and asked questions regarding the development of Hue and the design process. The interview was transcribed, and I analyzed the transcript for common themes. While the experience of one designer cannot be extrapolated to the experiences of other game designers, as a case study Hoffman’s experience can identify trends and questions for further inquiry.

Interview Details 

Hoffman explained that the central concept of the digital game was color theory. He noted that he begins a game around a central concept or mechanic, and then builds the game from there:

I’ve got a very consistent approach to game design in that what I find most interesting about game design is coming up with new ways to interact with things that haven’t been interacted  with before. So, for me, it’s all about devising interesting game mechanics that haven’t been explored. [. . .] In Hue’s case, what I was doing is I had PhotoShop open I think, and I had sort of a color fill background, and I had a layer with something on, and I was just sliding the hue slider around on one of the layers, and I noticed that as the hue of the foreground layer matched the hue of the background layer, it kind of visibly melted and disappeared into the background. And I thought it would be interesting, as a game mechanic, if it also physically sort of disappeared.

Hue as a game, then, was based around color as a central concept. Zammitto (2008) has noted the ways that digital games traditionally have relied on color to communicate meaning, for example, using the color red for danger when the player’s health bar gets low. In Hue, however, the central game mechanic requires the player to switch between color backgrounds. In the game, as noted above, players unlock an array of colors and switch between them as they play, making the objects appear and disappear based on their own colors. The game’s central concept is based on color, so the game has an immediate accessibility problem for those players with colorblindness.

Hoffman reported that he discovered this issue not in the initial design process, but during initial testing:

So, I don’t have a background in game accessibility at all, so I was just kind of thrust into this without any real notion that this was going to happen. […] When I started taking it to game conventions very early on, I think we had a five-minute demo that I put together in two weeks, and I took it to game convention just to get some player feedback, and it was immediately apparent that a large amount, a substantial amount or a percentage of people were struggling to play the game, and that was due to their inability to differentiate between different colors due to colorblindness–various forms of colorblindness.

Hoffman noted that he doesn’t necessarily know anyone with colorblindness, and he had not initially anticipated that it would be an issue with this particular game. As a small developer, Fiddlesticks does not have a quality assurance (QA) department, but the company instead tests their games at various conventions and events with real players, which is where he first found colorblindness to be a problem with Hue.

After this discovery, Hoffman sought out players who are colorblind for advice on how to address issues of accessibility with this group, as well as game testing:

On Reddit, there’s a colorblind subreddit, and I posted a video, a really early video of the gameplay, and I was like, “Guys, I think I created your worst nightmare. Can you please help me?” And they provided loads of feedback, lots of people offering to do game testing. People came up with the idea of using symbols, using patterns. I actually experimented very early on with using patterns, which are a much simpler aesthetic, having sort of a pattern overlay over each different color and being able to match those patterns. But then as the aesthetic developed and we got these intricate details, overlaying patterns became too much visual noise, and even people who weren’t colorblind struggled to play the game. So, I was like, okay, that’s not going to work. So I ended up devising sort of this symbol-based system, my own symbol-based system, which ended up getting a substantial amount of press, which I’m very happy about.

Universal design principles advocate for an inclusion of users in the design process, as Dolmage (2015) has noted. While Hoffman did not anticipate accessibility issues when designing Hue, he was quick to reach out to individuals with colorblindness to come up with a solution that worked for them. He included these users in the design and troubleshooting process in order to make sure that his solution was 1) flexible; 2) intuitive; and 3) easy to use, all key principles of universal design. What is especially notable about this example is that the solution came not from Hoffman or the other game designers, but instead was a suggestion from the community itself.

Hoffman reported that he found these players, particularly players who are colorblind, essential to the design and development process:

I think we wouldn’t have even recognized that there was an accessibility issue unless we had that dialogue in the very beginning. So, it was super important to get people in front of it. And I think the aesthetic – and the world itself, the world building itself – constantly developed when we were showing it to people. We showed it at 40 different events throughout the development of Hue, and in that process, we just got such huge amounts of feedback.

Universal design principles, as described by the Center for Universal Design (Connell, 1997), at their core are simply best practices for design. Applying these principles to digital game design, involving users at all stages of the design process, and incorporating their experiences, can create better gaming products and experiences. In this example, Hoffman found the testing phases with players to be important not only for issues of accessibility, but also for refining other elements of the digital game as well.

He also found the accessible features to be incredibly successful; players rated the adaptations highly, and they were also utilized by other players, not just those with colorblindness:

There’s been a huge response. We’ve had colorblind streamers who have streamed the game and sort of expressed support. There’s been players that have got no vision impairment whatsoever who turn on colorblind mode just because they prefer it, because it’s another form of visual reinforcement.

While many features of accessible design, including the curb cutouts mentioned above, are created for those users who need accommodations, they assist all users, and many individuals who do not have specific disabilities also use and appreciate the adaptive features.

These design experiences have given Hoffman a sense of the importance of building accessible games, and not just for players who are colorblind He also described another situation that caused him to understand the need for flexible, accessible design:

When I came into this, I had a vague awareness of accessibility but I didn’t realize quite how important it was and how pervasive some of these things that people can suffer from are. And I think one of the most notable things I remember is our showcasing … in London, and there was a player with a physical disability who wasn’t able to use a keyboard and mouse, and I don’t think they were able to use an analog stick on a controller. So, at that point we didn’t have accessible controls, so he wasn’t able to play the game at all. He was really disappointed, and you could see that he was really excited to play the game, and then the disappointment when he physically wasn’t able to. That, for me, was a real eye-opener, and because of that we added accessible controls, which allows players to sort of personalize the controls so that they can play how they like.

This comment demonstrates the importance of building flexibility into the game design process wherever possible. While many players may not need or use these controls, they can be crucial for those who do need them. Hoffman’s experience here demonstrates how he learned firsthand the importance of accessible game design.

While the importance of accessible design is clear, these adaptations can certainly cost money. For small developers reliant on funders for project development, decisions about accessibility ultimately come down to cost. Hoffman noted that the positive attention Hue received because of its accessibility features have made the game more commercially successful:

We even released promotional videos sort of speaking game accessibility, and if you look at MetaCritic, what’s really interesting, and this is something that I say often when giving talks about accessibility features is that, as a small studio and developer, when you’ve got other people’s money on the line, you need to make a business case for accessibility features. And if you’re willing to accept that your MetaCritic rating directly influences your sales, if you go through our MetaCritic reviews, every single positive review praises the accessibility features. So, I think there’s a huge business case.

While building accessibility accommodations into digital games can open them to a different audience, they can also make the games more marketable. That feature, more than ethics of accessibility, can be a driving force in increasing accessibility in digital games.

Hoffman described accessible game design as a growing area, and one driven by this commercial viability:

I think a lot more people are starting to realize that if you make games as well, because you’re making games and small elements of these games aren’t sort of accessible, and they’re realizing that players aren’t able to play the games and those players are disappointed, so I think there’s a kind of a collective awakening. […] I think the bigger studios are going to be looking at the bottom line, and I think the game designers are probably going to be pushing for making the game accessible so more players can enjoy the game. I think there’s going to be arguments coming from all sides because it just makes sense. Like there’s no argument against it at this point.

As Neely (2017) argues, digital game designers can no longer afford to ignore concerns of disability and accessibility when it comes to design. The broader appeal of digital games, and the need to make them adaptable to players’ abilities, make this a required issue in the marketplace.

While making accessible games are important to Hoffman, accessible design is a secondary concern to the overall game design itself:

But I think, for me, what’s important about accessibility is that you’re not compromising the game design vision in order to make a game more accessible. What you’re doing is just allowing as many people to play your vision as possible without compromising the game. For me, game design comes first, and making it accessible is sort of a really high priority after that.

Hoffman’s primary concern is to build a digital game that fulfills his vision, and then he works to build accessibility accommodations. While they do not come first in his own game design, when integrated early enough in the process they can enhance and even improve the game overall. In the case of Hue, building a pattern-based alternative to the color backgrounds and the subsequent testing with players with different abilities improved the game as a whole. It also created an important market and marketing approach for the game after its release. Working to make Hue more accessible built a better game.

Henry Hoffman provides just one example of a digital game designer who was confronted with issues of accessibility and worked to adapt. We can learn a good amount about accessibility issues in design, however, by considering his experience. The main findings of this interview are as follows:

1. Hoffman described the central concept of Hue to be color theory.
2. Hoffman first discovered accessibility issues with color during initial game testing with an early version of Hue.
3. Hoffman approached players with colorblindness to develop a solution for his game design and involved these players in the design process.
4. Hoffman solved these accessibility issues by offering a pattern option rather than a color option.
5. Hoffman saw accessibility as a central concern for all digital game designers, one that will help a game to reach more audiences and also to perform more successfully in the competitive digital game market.

Hoffman noted that he came to these issues in game design organically. Because he emphasized color as his central game mechanic, he soon learned that this design feature was a limitation for many players. His process in solving this problem by involving players with colorblindness themselves is a strategy recommended by many experts in universal design and can serve as an example for other designers.

Conclusions 

Henry Hoffman’s introduction to issues of accessibility in digital game design was based on his first-hand experience with different players. While designing games for individuals with disabilities was not a primary goal of his, he turned to accessible design as a means to solve a problem. While Hoffman’s experience cannot stand as representative for all designers, and we cannot extrapolate beyond his experience, his emphasis on both the positive press he received from Hue’s accessibility features, as well as the financial argument for accessible design brings up issues of concern for many in the digital game design industry. Pitaru (2008) notes the importance of accessible game design, which is still a neglected issue in industry. As Pitaru argues, “even the slightest impairments can severely compromise [players] ability to play mainstream games” (p. 75). As accessible design is becoming a larger concern, and even a market for digital games, it’s worth considering not only the process of game designers in approaching accessibility accommodations, but also ways to incorporate accessible, and in fact universal, design throughout the creation process.

While these concerns were not in the forefront of his mind or his experience, Hoffman’s approach to Hue demonstrates the flexibility and usefulness of universal design principles for game design. As Hoffman described, he had a short mockup of the game when he began testing it with different groups of players and discovered the color issue for players who are colorblind. This realization early enough in the design process allowed Hoffman to incorporate the needs, concerns, and even ideas of players who are colorblind in order to create a more accessible gaming experience. As advocated for by many universal design proponents (Connell, 1997; Dolmage, 2008, 2015), Hoffman worked with the community of individuals who are colorblind, and the solution to his accessibility problem came directly from this community itself. While the pattern innovation helped players who are colorblind, it also helped other players as well in providing customization and allowing for ease of use. Hue has won several awards: the Develop Indie Showcase 2015 as well as the Develop Indie Showcase, Game of Show and Best Art at Casual Connect USA, and Best Design at Casual Connect Europe. Hue serves as a model for the ways that digital games, even those from small and indie developers, can excel both creatively and commercially by embracing accessible design.

Universal design principles and approaches present what I argue is a productive approach for digital game design. Jay Dolmage (2008, 2015) advocates for design approaches that allow for multiple means of input, multiple means of output, and multiple means of interaction. Considering these approaches at the beginning of the design process can not only avoid the issue of retrofitting, but it can also ensure ease of use for players with a wide range of disabilities. Testing the game throughout the process with a wide range of players will allow designers to see these approaches in action and allow for troubleshooting as well.

Hue and Hoffman’s experience also emphasizes the importance of leaning on the community of individuals with disabilities for support, not only for testing the game, but also in solving accessibility challenges. It is notable that in this case, as described by Hoffman, the ultimate solution for issues of colorblindness came from players who are colorblind themselves. This experience demonstrates how crucial it is to include the community of individuals with disabilities into the design process, in order to create flexible games with multiple means of both representation and interaction. As accessibility becomes a larger and larger issue within digital gaming, as Pitaru (2008) and Neely (2017) argue, building a comprehensive approach to accessible game design is becoming more crucial. In these ways, Hue can serve as a model for successful possibilities for other game designers.

References

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Dolmage, J. (2015). Universal design: Places to start. Disability Studies Quarterly, 35(2). Retrieved from http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4632/3946

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Neely, E. L. (2017). No player is ideal: why video game designers cannot ethically ignore players’ real-world identities. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 47(3), 98-111.

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Pitaru, A. (2008). E is for everyone: The case for inclusive game design.. In K Salen, (Ed.) The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 67–88. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262693646.067

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Author’s Info:

Theo Plothe
Savannah State University
plothet@savannahstate.edu

Benjamin Vercellone (Missouri Department of Social Services), John Shelestak (Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University), Yaser Dhaher (Department of Mathematics, Kent State University) and Robert Clements (Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University)

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Abstract

Vision enables a person to simultaneously perceive all parts of an object in its totality, relationships to other objects for scene navigation, identification and planning. These types of perceptual processes are especially important for comprehending scenes in gaming environments and virtual representations. While individuals with visual impairments may have reduced abilities to visualize objects using conventional sight, an increasing body of evidence indicates that compensatory neural mechanisms exist whereby tactile stimulation and additional senses can activate visual pathways to generate accurate representations. The current thrust to develop and deploy virtual and augmented reality systems capable of transporting users to different worlds has been associated with a push to include additional senses for even greater immersion. Clearly, the inclusion of these additional modalities will provide a method for individuals with visual impairments to enjoy and interact with the virtual worlds and content in general. Importantly, adoption and development of these methods will have a dramatic impact on inclusion in gaming and learning environments, and especially in relation to science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) education. While the development, standardization and implementation of these systems is still in the very early stages, gaming devices and open source tools are continuing to emerge that will accelerate the adoption and integration of the novel modes of computer interaction and provide new ways for individuals (with visual impairments) to experience digital content. Here we present the rationale and benefits for using this type of multimodal interaction for individuals with visual impairments as well as the current state of the art in haptic interfaces for gaming, education and the relationships to enhanced end user immersion and learning outcomes. As these technologies and devices are adopted and evolve, they are poised to have a dramatic impact on entertainment, education and quality of life of individuals with visual impairments.

Keywords: Haptic media, Special education, Special needs, Video games, Visual impairments.

Introduction

Successfully navigating and interacting with video game environments is naturally tied to the ability of the player to visually discern objects on the display and understand spatial relationships between these objects. As such, the realm of gaming has been heavily focused on increasing rendering quality to provide greater acuity and immersion for the user. This has undoubtedly pushed both the hardware and software forward, however, little of this development effort has been focused on how to convey in game elements without the use of vision, specifically for gamers who are visually impaired. Touch based methods have been classically used by the blind as a substitution for vision, with the most obvious example being the braille method of tactile writing whereby a system of raised bumps organized into six block cells, typically on embossed paper, are used to represent characters and punctuation. Invented by Louis Braille (Duxbury Systems, 2017) in the early 19th century this method has stood the test of time affirming the utility of touch, or haptic, sensations as an alternate method to convey visual concepts to the blind. In the realm of computer interaction for gaming and visualization of complex imagery, haptics have been integrated for many years via “rumble pads” and force-feedback devices providing users the ability to crudely physically sense digital events (Orozco, 2012). While these systems offer a level of multi-modal interaction for the sighted user, they have had limited use for seeing impaired individuals with most games for the visually impaired based around the use of sound for cue identification. However, tactile games for individuals with visual impairments based off popular WII console games (VI-bowling and VI-tennis) have been successfully developed using vibration to indicate ball timing, controller position and object placement (Tony, 2010). The crudeness of these cues and the difficulty in isolating them spatially limits the vibration only approach. It does affirm the principal and ability of using tactile feedback to accurately represent spatial concepts within the gaming realm. This would be especially true for haptic interfaces referenced to real world space with rapid refresh-rates that could provide much of the information that a sighted gamer would get visually.

While individuals with visual impairments may have reduced abilities to visualize objects using conventional sight, an increasing body of evidence indicates that compensatory mechanisms exist whereby tactile stimulation and additional senses can activate the visual system to generate accurate spatial representations. Indeed, reading braille is known to activate the visual cortex (Burton, 2006) of the brain in the blind (a region that typically codes visual information) and reflects the recoding of tactile sensations into “visual” signals. Studies also indicate that blind participants are typically able to better discriminate 3D shapes via tactile and haptic interaction (Norman, 2011) than sighted persons. Research evidence indicates the blind have different patterns of activation in the brain during haptic tasks (Roder, 2007) as well as during vibrotactile stimulation (Burton, 2004). Moreover, large-scale changes manifested in both structural and functional differences in brain connectivity indicate that the changes are not limited to the visual areas of the brain but reflect large changes in associated areas and “visual” perception as a whole. The idea of perceptual learning and substitution of sensory signals (where visual input is substituted for touch) can afford the ability of “sight” to subjects who are physically incapable of doing so. The remarkable capacity of the human brain to reorganize itself results in long lasting changes. This type of reorganization of visual pathways affirms the utility of a haptic approach to represent virtual environments to individuals with visual impairments. This will not only provide a means for additional brain reorganization but also that inherent differences in their brain structure suggests that perceptual learning will be more beneficial in this population with a dramatic impact on in game orientation and perception.

With the advent of new devices facilitating the generation of complex spatial and temporal representations of real world and virtual scenes, as well as the incorporation of tactile devices that allow physical interaction with computer generated imagery has emerged a novel platform for augmenting seeing impaired interfaces. Coupling this with evidence that individuals with visual impairments are able to acquire spatial knowledge using ancillary neural pathways via harnessing additional senses indicates that this is a promising and potentially game changing avenue to enhance user engagement and immersion. Here we detail the current state of haptic technologies as it relates to using these methods for encoding spatial information to individuals with visual impairments for both gaming and education. We begin with a discussion of the available hardware, and then we propose how these technologies could be used to convey in game information and learning as well as identify barriers and potential solutions. Finally, we address future developments and next steps for dealing with these innovations in the long term.

New Technologies at Stake

Haptic Media

Simple haptic feedback has been a part of gaming now for many years, but newer technologies are allowing for a larger range of haptic sensations across different digital experiences. Newer controllers, such as the Steam controller have improved on this feedback, allowing for a greater range of in-game information through finer control of the haptic output including haptic information on speed, boundaries, textures, and in-game actions (Steam Store, 2015). Microsoft is developing various haptic controllers to achieve various sensations such as texture, shear, variable stiffness, as well as touch and grasp, to enhance the level and variety of stimulation provided by a VR experience (Strasnick, 2018; Whitmire, 2018). Haptic styluses offer a different handheld experience via force feedback instead of vibrotactile feedback and can be used to interact with objects, or as a physical interface for more advanced simulations (Steinberg, 2007). Further, advances in wearable haptics; gloves, vests and full body suits have also expanded the potential experience of video games. Gloves allow for different actuators to be woven into the fabric or attached as an exoskeleton to achieve both vibro-tactile and force feedback (Virtual Motion Labs, 2018; VRGluv, 2017). The force feedback from the exoskeleton can define the edges of hard surfaces while vibrotactile actuators give information surface texture. In addition to exoskeleton-based force feedback, some gloves feature pneumatic actuators that can provide pressure directly to the skin, creating a realistic feeling of skin displacement.

Beyond gloves, the same technology is being applied to wearable vests and full body suits to create the most complete and immersive feel possible. Vests allow for targeted sensation to the body depending on where the stimulation is received in a game or VR environment (Kor-Fx, 2014; Hardlight VR, 2017; Woojer, 2018). Electrical nerve and muscle stimulation is also used for haptic feedback and also provides temperature control for changing virtual environments (Teslasuit, 2018). One practical problem with VR gaming is that moving around a space while wearing a headset can be difficult and dangerous. Haptic or omni-directional treadmills help fix this problem by anchoring the user to an area while still allowing for unfettered movement in any direction. More commonplace treadmills are also integrating haptic force feedback to give the sensation of moving through a real place while running on a treadmill (Nordicktrack, 2018). Indeed, a great deal of focus has also been spent on developing haptic touchscreens and incorporating this hardware into experiences for blind users. Newer haptic feedback seeks to alter the interaction between screens and fingers to create a more diverse sense of touch such as friction or texture simulation (Tanvas, 2018). Other developments include the manipulation of ultrasound to achieve tactile stimulation (Hap2U, 2018) with potential to create 3D surfaces in midair. Clearly as these new haptic technologies evolve and standardize the impact on immersive gaming and blind user interaction will be broad.

Visually-Impaired Specific Devices 

A number of tactile hardware implementations specifically designed for individuals with visual impairments also exist. The Graphiti is tactile device consisting of an array equidistant pins with variable height and can be connected to a smartphone to control the height of the pins to represent text or camera images (Graphiti, 2018). The variable pin height could conceivably be used to represent limited information regarding the Z-axis, color, or whatever else someone may reasonably desire, such as an in game map. The system also offers a way to zoom in and out which is important from a tactile perspective, since human fingers cannot perceive and interpret information as minute and dense as the human eyes. The BrainPort V100 (Wicab, 2018) provides real world raw geometric information based on wearable camera input via a dongle inserted in the mouth that provides electro-tactile stimulation to the tongue. Bubble like patterns convey spatial information on the tongue and the user learns about shape, direction, relative distance, and size. BLITAB have successfully created a tactile braille tablet that utilizes “tixels” that dynamically rise above the surface of the display and can convert text to braille (Blitlab, 2018). The hardware also provides audio cues for the user but is limited in its ability to convey graphics, and objects in 3D space. BlindPAD offers a similar technology consisting of an array of electromagnetic “taxels” with 8mM pitch and a rapid refresh rate (Blindpad, 2018). The interactive technology is able to display graphics, maps and symbols as a tactile representation. This system has been successfully used in the education realm as well as can enhance users with visual impairments sense of space and their knowledge of unknown places. These latter points would be especially helpful if used for gaming to enhance blind users’ ability to navigate and investigate virtual environments and worlds.

While these systems would clearly be beneficial for reading braille and other 2D applications, it would appear spatial haptics currently in development for VR applications would be capable of creating 3D touch sensations closer to real world experiences. The enhancement in the variety of tactile stimulation available only deepens the experiences and the value these technologies can provide. It is clear that the development of the specific devices for individuals who are blind have been based around familiar technologies typically used to convey text; raised bumps on a flat surface. Nevertheless, creation of a common interface for these devices to video game environments or primitives (potentially by direct access to the graphics depth buffer) would create a new platform for both education and entertainment that would definitely empower its users.

Augmenting Visually-Impaired Gaming 

This explosive development in hardware opens new avenues to convey spatial and game specific information in real time to gamers who have visual impairments. We have identified areas to specifically exploit these technologies to support in-game navigation, information extraction and user interaction. While some methods are specific to a certain device, the same principles would work at some scale using any haptic feedback from rumble pack in a controller to a fully-fledged VR vest.

1. Navigation: Fundamental to almost all gaming experiences is the requirement to correctly navigate and understand virtual environments. Tactile maps, proximity cues and new in game tools could enhance blind gameplay.

1. 1. Tactile maps used by the blind have been shown to augment navigation when used during and prior to route traversal. However, the specific touch cues must be carefully considered when representing different types of information (roads, water, grass). Undoubtedly, a tactile approach to facilitate navigation of gaming environments would also offer similar benefits to the real-world case. It has been shown that the haptic approach when coupled with additional modalities such as audio can provide a method for individuals/gamers with visual impairments to generate cognitive maps of virtual environments using multimodal cues (Lahav, 2012), this is one of the major challenges for navigating gaming environments. Gaming environments (top down map) represented on a connected cell phone or other tactile tablet device (listed above) and interacted with via touch (vibration, tactile pixels) would provide an inexpensive solution. Here, haptic cues would orient the user using published frameworks for providing haptic access to 2D maps (Kostopoulos, 2007) to enhance knowledge and traversal of gaming environments.
   2. Proximity cues. As well as knowledge of entire gaming maps, information about discrete and proximal in game cues (walls, surfaces, barriers) is essential to spatial awareness, navigation and gameplay. Haptic outputs (within a vest for example)) at discrete regions over the body activated by cues extracted from the in-game display would rapidly provide feedback about in game surfaces. Using this strategy, a wall detected on the left side of the in-game player would activate a haptic sensor on the left side of the player. Haptic output modulation (such as vibration frequency and amplitude) would code for object distance and textures using proximity sensors as has been shown successful in physical applications (Keys, 2015).
   3. New tools. Here we propose the development of new methods for users to probe spatial environments. Specifically creating methods for users to digitally explore regions of the virtual environment and providing targeted haptic feedback. Specific tools such as a haptic sonar, floor probe and virtual compass whereby the users can target specific areas of the screen and be provided feedback regarding structural elements and orientation. The proposed haptic sonar would probe a customizable portion of the environment and activate an output (a rumble pack for example) if an object is within the frustum of the probe. Floor probes would more specifically sample areas directly in front of the user (floor) within the game and indicate hazards (water, textures, holes) by varying haptic outputs to facilitate locomotion. Orientation is key to navigating any environment, and the creation of a haptic compass to identify gaze direction in the form of a necklace (or array of actuators around the body) where feedback rotates around the ring and indicates north. These three strategies have been shown to help blind navigation in real-life applications (Quest, 2018; Choiniere, 2017; Visell, 2009) suggesting they may beneficial for navigating virtual environments.

2. In-Game Information: Layered upon game scene spatial information are characters, entities, game packs, enemies and other relevant dynamic game information. In order to provide a separate stream of information a distinct and generalized in game warning and information system is proposed. The information system should convey location, type of entity, and utility on a scale (good, indifferent, bad) to the user. Notifications would serve to provide spatial output to the user in the form of actuators at geographically separate points (around the body to indicate position for a vest or vibrator array for a glove). The nature of actuator output would convey the type of in-game entity at the specific location. For example, a health pack would initiate a series of short low intermittent vibration pulses but an enemy would cause fully maximal and continuous vibration at the actuator. Utilizing strength of haptic output to represent danger (good, bad, indifferent) and frequency to represent type of entity is a potentially viable solution.
3. User Interaction: A major factor contributing to immersive gaming is the ability to interact with digital scenes and in-game characters. Different to navigation and in game cue identification, interaction typically includes feedback from the entity, such as dialog, a response (enemy fires) or change in the entity (health pack disappears). At least two types of interaction are possible, the first is scene object interaction (e.g. pick up a key or a health pack) and the second is dynamic entity interaction (engage an enemy, interface with a non-playing, or friendly, character). With the former, interaction is relatively passive and layering this information on top of the navigational cues above makes sense whereby a separate tone (or haptic output) indicates the passive entities response. However, when engaging enemies, or other characters, active interaction requires additional feedback and dynamic responses. Here, a “lock in” mode, whereby all haptic resources are dedicated to interacting with the dynamic entity would provide directed attention to the entity. Under this system, the in-game notification system would identify an entities utility to the user via haptic cues (very good or very bad) and the user can initiate interaction, or “lock in” all haptic resources, to track the object and map it to spatial actuators and convey entity specific information to the user (hostility, temporal changes, weapon activity). Once the user “un-couples” attention (or the character disappears from the area), the full array of scene probing once again is reestablished. This method is designed to “silence” inconsequential haptic information during times of critical engagement to increase clarity and resolution of the engagement.

Possible limitations 

Many of the approaches above have been shown to benefit individuals with visual impairments interactions with real-world scenes and as such provide a potentially beneficial framework for virtual scenarios. However, caution must be taken when trying to implement such a layered and complex haptic system. The ability to multiplex different signals (using amplitude/frequency modulation as well as additional modalities) and silence less relevant information (via “locking in” attention and feedback) is key to the successful application of a system with a relatively limited set of physical outputs compared to inputs. Care should be taken to reduce overload to the user, potentially accomplished by using additional modalities to convey specific notifications or events (a bell to indicate a health pack). Haptic resolution (dynamic response and spatial constraints) is also a major factor that should be considered when localizing feedback systems on the body. It is known that our ability to discriminate between two points varies over position on the skin (Purves, 2001) as such placement of haptic actuators is of great importance. These numbers vary from a 5mm threshold on the thumb to 45 mm two-point discrimination threshold along the shoulder, suggesting that haptic placement as well as device capabilities should be considered when localizing haptic sources on the body.

Potential Learning Applications

Importantly, adoption and development of these methods will also have a dramatic impact on inclusion in gaming and learning environments, especially in relation to STEM education. Understanding spatial properties including shape, size, distance and orientation is foundational and essential to developing spatial thinking skills and understanding many topics including algebra, trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, physics, biology and higher mathematics. Typically, students use sight to internalize geometric and spatial properties, however, the students with visually impairments need to have a different mode of experiencing this. While the development, standardization and implementation of these systems is still in the very early stages, gaming devices and open source tools are continuing to emerge that will accelerate the adoption and integration of the novel modes of computer interaction and provide new ways for students to experience digital content. The use of tactile graphics which employ the sense of touch rather than vision to convey spatial properties have been used to deliver mathematics instruction (Brawand, 2016), biology (Reynaga-Pena, 2015), chemistry (Copolo, 1995) and physics (Holt, 2018). 3D printing technology is also a valid method for delivering science content (Grice, 2015; Kolitsky, 2014) to blind students but clearly suffers from an inability to modify representations that are typically static, with limited use in the gaming sphere. Tools are becoming to emerge that standardize the procedure of generating tactile graphical representations (Pather, 2014); however, more are clearly required to broaden adoption of these practices. While many of these early studies incorporated printed static models or embossed paper, with the explosion of hardware and software computer haptics are increasingly being used to convey spatial information using force feedback in real world space but further development of both platforms and content are integral to expanding. With support for vibration output on many tablet and cellphone devices it is one of the simplest ways to incorporate tactile response is via activating this output (Awada, 2013; Diagram Center, 2017) and successfully conveys mathematics concepts (Cayton-Hodges, 2012), graphics and additional STEM content (Hakkinen, 2013) but not without limitations (Klatzky, 2014). Most STEM based studies have relied on surface haptic approaches while less have incorporated spatial haptic feedback systems (Nikolakis, 2004; Lahav, 2012; Evett, 2009) but it is known to facilitate knowledge acquisition of 3-dimensional objects (Jones, 2005). By incorporating 3-dimensional space co-registered to the real world into the haptic workflow clearly provides a more fundamentally “real” experience. Further, it results in an explosive increase in the potential amount of information that can be conveyed to the user or gamer. It is clear that the use of additional senses can help provide cognitive representations of environments and spatial structures and as VR gaming technologies evolve it is clear they need to be incorporated into applications to augment seeing impaired learning in STEM.

Future Directions

Our lab and others are currently investigating new directions in haptic interaction for navigating physical and virtual environments as well as identifying geometric primitives using multimodal cues and triggers. Recent studies in our lab have been focused on evaluating tactile (touch) feedback for the instruction of students who are blind or visually impaired. Pilot studies using the GeoMagic device have affirmed the utility of the method where blind users are able to autonomously recognize designed representations and specific shapes in only a few seconds. This suggests a clear benefit for teaching geometry and basic mathematical principles, something we are currently exploring. Coupling this with the fact that our infrastructure can both represent dynamic objects that change over time and new models can be simply built or downloaded. Our excitement for the method is hampered by the fact that the technology does not simulate the physical sense of touch in a natural or indeed accessible way. We acknowledge that devices do exist that can simulate touch via spatial force feedback but cost and clearly prohibits the use and mass rollout of such devices. This is coupled with the fact that software is extremely limited and requires extensive programming knowledge to be extended. As such, using off the shelf technology we have also developed a hand tracking system with vibrational feedback for touching virtual objects. Using vibration motors attached to each fingertip the user is able to probe a virtual object in space and sense 3D objects (Dhaher, 2017). We intend to evaluate the technology and develop lessons for the students with visual impairments by deploying these instruments to learn foundational spatial concepts. In addition, we are actively developing interfaces for probing external and virtual environments with tactile feedback for navigation and virtual tele-presence applications. Using scene depth imaging and physical triggers located at strategic points on the body, users can continuously physically sense details regarding proximal objects and walls in the (virtual) environment. For example, vibration on the right side of the body indicates presence of an object in the right part of the environment. The use of more specialized “virtual” probes in development for scanning depth buffers and providing physical and multimodal feedback. Importantly, this thrust is toward the development of a common interface for navigating (gaming) environments using (virtual) environment probes with accompanied audio and touch based feedback. The end of goal of which is to create a method for probing running applications on the graphics processing unit (GPU) to map inputs and outputs to multi-modal cues (sound, vibration).

As is true for the integration of any technology portability, compatibility and easy end user access to functionality is critical to adoption. The current state of haptic development is in its early stages and as such relatively disparate with most projects based on creating individual applications rather than platforms for haptic integration into existing software. The development of end-user friendly middleware, or other programming interfaces, to provide a means to generalize the access of both non-specific software and output signals to any type of (haptic) device is critical. A number of platforms for haptic interaction and programming have emerged relatively recently but are still beyond the reach of most end users since they require programming software and detailed knowledge. Openhaptics Professional (3DSystems, 2018) is a commercially available programming interface that is designed to facilitate creation of a wide range of software incorporating haptic feedback and interaction. CHAI3D (Chai3D, 2018) is a similar open source project that is designed to be compatible with a large amount of existing hardware devices and incorporates the ability to extend support for custom or new hardware. The interface exists as a C++ simulation environment that supports a number of core functions for volume rendering, visualizing CAD files and beyond. Both interfaces suffer from the significant requirement of programming knowledge as well as each project is essentially its own specific application. A relatively mature open source library, the Virtual Reality Peripheral Network (Taylor, 2001), supported by the National Institutes of Health allows access to VR tracking devices as well as a limited number of hardware haptic implementations. VRPN aims to be a device-independent interface to virtual reality peripherals and provides a way for applications to communicate via the VRPN’s client-server architecture. The system provides an excellent way to interface hardware tracking, controllers and human interface devices. However, VRPN still requires specific modules for each hardware device as well as client module for the running software application. The Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR, 2018) software development kit (SDK) allows developers to create applications with access to all supported VR headsets and controllers by including libraries during the creation of applications. This limits the scope of OSVR as well as denying end users with no programming knowledge the ability to effectively use the software.

A number of solutions have emerged that have solved some of these issues and allow running software applications to have no knowledge of the specific targeted hardware while still providing interaction. The open source project OpenVR (OpenVR, 2018) is a programming interface and runtime binary created by Valve (Valve, 2018) that permits many types of VR hardware (including haptic devices) to communicate with running applications. Importantly, the system is compatible with SteamVR (SteamVR, 2018) and can be installed from their portal but is still limited to compatible devices and games/applications available within the SteamVR portal. An older and apparently unmaintained interface does allow software agnostic access to arbitrary hardware. The Glovepie system uses an input/output mapping system to allow end users the ability to map arbitrary controller inputs to control running applications (GlovePie, 2010). It should be noted that none of the above libraries explicitly support devices created for the blind, an issue that clearly needs to be remedied to move seeing impaired gaming forward. Some progress has been made towards allowing any running game or application to have access to any piece of haptic hardware, but these implementations are not broad enough in scope (minimal application/hardware support) and potentially difficult to implement. In addition, the abstraction layers are designed for interaction using the inherent interface and methods built into the controlling software (for example, a device can only be used to control typical in game activities such running or jumping) rather than the ability to generally probe the games 3D environment and structure. To accomplish this it will likely be required to extract information from running applications at a lower level, for example via the graphic processing units’ (GPU) depth buffer. This could provide low level access for developed environmental “probes” or tools that are implemented as a simple installable binary providing (haptic) devices access to the display lists of the running application. These digital probes could then be simply translated into pertinent outputs for (blind) users that activates and supports both the hardware specifically designed for the seeing impaired as well as the next generation of VR haptic devices.

Conclusions 

Here we present the rationale and benefits for using multimodal interaction for gamers with visual impairments as well as the current state of the art in haptic interfaces for gaming, education and the relationships to enhanced end user immersion and learning outcomes. As these technologies and devices are adopted and evolve they are poised to have a dramatic impact on the entertainment, education and quality of life of individuals with visual impairments. However, accessibility, software implementations and a common interface point would significantly help broaden the impact. As far as the latter, an underlying interface, or middleware library, built upon a standardized graphic libraries (such as OpenGL) that provides simple cross platform haptic access to depth buffers, geometric primitives and the virtual environment would simplify, enhance and expedite the incorporation of new methods of tactile computer interaction. More importantly, it would function with any running game without modification. It is clear that the human eye is able to acquire much more information temporally than the somatosensory system and touch based representations of color may be arbitrary and difficult to convey but haptic representations will clearly offer a much more natural interface for video games for individuals with visual impairments. The key will be harnessing next generation devices via a simple extraction layer to provide meaningful and compatible haptic outputs. The 2016 Disability Status report (Erickson, 2016) indicates that 2.4% (7,675,600 people) of non-institutionalized people in the US population reported a visual disability. In addition, it is estimated that there are 36 million blind persons worldwide with a further 217 million with moderate/severe impairment (Bourne, 2017) indicating that the development and integration of new haptic interfaces (both hardware and software) is warranted to support the entertainment and education of this population of potential gamers.

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Author’s Info:

Benjamin Vercellone
Missouri Department of Social Services
benjamin.j.vercellone@dss.mo.gov

John Shelestak
Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University
jsheles1@kent.edu

Yaser Dhaher
Department of Mathematics, Kent State University
ydhaher@kent.edu

Robert Clements
Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University
rclement@kent.edu

Karen Schrier (Marist College)

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Abstract

How can games be used to reduce biases and biased behavior toward those people with special needs—if at all? In this paper I contextualize biases toward people with special needs, and also investigate possible intervention to encourage bias reduction. I also provide particular attention to educator biases around students with special needs, and how games may support interventions and professional development to reduce biases and biased behavior. Based on this, and the limited research on games, empathy, perspective-taking and bias reduction, I describe five possible strengths and four possible limitations of using games for these purposes.

Keywords: Games, Design, Bias, Special Needs, Empathy, Video Games.

Introduction

Can games help to reduce biases, or the practices and behaviors related to these biases? If so, which characteristics of games may encourage or limit the reduction of biases, such as biases toward people with special needs? Games are starting to be used for bias reduction and the lessening of stigma, including non-digital games (Wong & Li, 2015) and digital games (Roussos & Dovidio, 2016; Simonovits, Kézdi & Karos, 2018). Finding interventions and experiences that support bias reduction and change behavior is becoming even more pertinent as schools become more diverse in student population (Lee, 2010) and as the number of children characterized as having special needs continues to increase (according to the IDEA act statistics, the number of children ages 3 to 21 that are served doubled from 1976 to 2015 (US DOE, 2018)). Moreover, between 2016 and 2018, there has been an increase in bias-related incidents, including hate crimes, cyber harassment, and a lack of civil discourse online (ADL, 2018).

In this article, I will review research on bias, anti-bias education, and bias intervention techniques, as well as research on games that aim to reduce bias, as well as games more generally. Games and gaming culture have even been seen as driving an increase in bias and expressions of bias, and has been suggested as causing antisocial behavior, such as aggression, violence, and addiction (WHO, 2017). Rather, in this paper I seek to understand how we may be able to reduce bias, unravel any strengths and limitations, and make recommendations for going forward. Finally, I will apply particular attention to research on educators and biases, and investigate research on biased behavior and attitudes toward students with special needs.

Biases and Special Needs 

What are special needs? In this paper I define special needs as specific needs outside of what is typically designed for, whether a game, intervention, learning experience, or classroom environment. Regardless of whether these needs should be designed for, they may not be considered in the design process, as designers may seek to create a “one size fits all” environment. For instance, a person with special needs could refer to a person with autism spectrum disorder, or someone, like my son, who is developmentally delayed and needs to wear prosthetics. It could also mean different types of learning disabilities, hearing or vision issues, a sensory disorder or ADHD.

Further, what are biases? A bias is an, “inclination or preference either for or against an individual or group that interferes with impartial judgment” (ADL, 2018). Researchers distinguish between implicit biases and explicit biases, with implicit being less consciously applied and explicit more deliberate. Both types of biases can affect behavior (Bai & Ertmer, 2008), judgments (Campbell, 2015), and sense of self or self-efficacy (Burgess & Greaves, 2009), although it is still unclear whether activation of stereotypes is causing the application and judgment of a group (Glock & Krolak-Schwerdt, 2013).

Besides the term bias, there are other related terms: stereotype, prejudice, stigma, and discrimination. Stereotypes are automatic and (often) evaluative judgments of a specific group (e.g., a gender or racial group as being associated with particular characteristics) (Campbell, 2015). Prejudice is defined as a systematically unfavorable attitude or belief toward a specific group of people, whereas discrimination is the “operationalization” of these prejudices in the form of negative actions and behavior toward that group (Adachi, et al, 2015). As Powell (2014) explains, stigma is a mixture of “stereotypic beliefs, prejudicial attitudes, and discriminatory actions” directed toward any specific group of people, which also stems from and varies by its social context (Lockenvitz, 2016).

All people, including teachers, parents, peers, and even young children, may have different types of biases. Biases may be based on gender, race, ethnicity, perceived social class, nationality, and special education needs (Campbell, 2015). These biases may influence a person’s behavior (Bai & Ertmer, 2008) and may also have an affect how that person interprets, assesses, and interacts with others (Campbell, 2015; Overby; Carrell & Bernthal, 2007).

Teaching and Biases 

Do teachers and other educators have biases about and biased behavior toward students with different backgrounds and needs? Teachers may assess their students differently based on their biases (Campbell, 2015). For instance, Campbell (2015) looked at teacher judgments of their students and found that students with any special needs diagnoses were less likely to be found to be rated “above average” for reading and math ability than those without any special needs. The researcher also found the same pattern for lower-income students, boys (reading), girls (math), and all ethnicities except white and Indian (Campbell, 2015). Likewise, research by Lavy & Sand (2016) suggested that gender biases were implicated in long-term consequences for domains such as STEM and boys’ achievement (positive effect) and girls’ achievement (negative) (Lavy & Sand, 2016).

Teachers also specifically have biases about people with different types of special needs. For instance, researchers looked at biases about students with speech sound disorders; and their results suggested that teachers may judge students’ school performance based on intelligibility and speaker pitch (Overby, Carrell, & Bernthal, 2007), such as judging those students with moderately intelligible low-pitched speech as having more behavior problems (Overby, Carrell, & Bernthal, 2007). People may have biases about adults and children with speech and communication disorders, such as a lisp—and judge them as not being as intelligent, even if the disorder has no relationship with intelligence (Lockenvitz, 2016). Teachers may also have biases about the competence of students with autism spectrum disorder and developmental delays (Travers & Ayres, 2015). An older model of special needs was based on an idea that there was a “deficit” or gap in ability in children; whereas a newer model is one of presuming competence and seeing those people with autism spectrum disorder as being capable of feeling and thinking (Travers & Ayres, 2015).

Researchers also uncovered biases related to who gets referred for treatment and/or further support for special education and special needs. One’s professional judgment of behavioral issues or academic competence is affected by their biases (Travers & Ayres, 2015). For instance, males are more often referred for learning disabilities services and support than females by teachers (Flynn and Rahbar, 1994) suggesting gender bias in beliefs around learning disabilities and in interpreting behaviors associated with this (Anderson, 1997). On the other hand, some studies suggested that teachers’ judgments and behavior were not driven by racial and socioeconomic bias (Abidin & Robinson, 2002).

Teachers are not the only ones with biases and are no more or less biased than other populations (Campbell, 2015). Biases also start young. Research by Quian, et al., (2015) suggested that implicit racial biases were present in three to five-year-old children in China and Cameroon. Parents have implicit and explicit biases against children with obesity (Lydecker, O’Brien, & Grilo, 2018). Biases do not always lead to negative or problematic outcomes. Researchers found a leniency bias that favored applicants to jobs who had a physical disability or handicap (Brechner, Bragger & Kutcher 2006).

The relationship among bias, attitudes, behavior, and social context, however, is complicated. Biases that educators may have also influence, and are influenced by, biases of students. People may be both objects of stereotypes and biases, as well as perpetrators or agents of biases and stereotypes, even at the same time (Castillo, Cámara & Eguizábal, 2011). What may be problematic or stigmatized behavior or characteristics in one social context may not be stigmatized in another time, place, or social situation (Lockenvitz, 2016).

Bias and Identity 

The relationship becomes even more complicated as one’s own identity, other’s biases and one’s internalized biases, and structural and systematic inequality, can even one’s affect performance and overall educational attainment (Burgess & Greaves, 2009). Internalized biases and stereotypes about one’s identity or group identity, may also affect one’s performance. Stereotype threat, the risk of living up to the negative stereotypes that an individual hears about one’s group or one’s identity, affects performance and achievement, and affects marginalized minority groups (such as women and people of color) and may lead to disengagement in STEM and other domains (Woodcock, et al., 2016; Woodcock, et al, 2012; Steele & Aronson, 1995).

Gender and race-ethnicity, as well as other aspects of identity, also factor intersectionally into how people feel a sense of inclusion and their experiences (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017). One’s social identity affects and drives learning and growth (Kim, et al., 2018), including one’s sense of belonging (Cheryan, et al, 2015), expectancy-value (Wang & Degol, 2013), stereotype threat (Shapiro & Williams, 2012), and interest in something (Su & Rounds, 2015). One’s racial, academic, and disciplinary identity also factors into one’s social identity complexity (Varelas, Martin & Kane, 2012; Roccas & Brewer, 2002).

Biases are also embedded in design itself—whether of the classroom, the learning experience, or a game or interactive application. For instance, biases have been found in artificially intelligent algorithms, which then become embedded in platforms that rely on them, such as search engines, face recognition, or social media platforms (Howard & Borenstein, 2017). Models and systematic educational approaches may also be embedded with the biases of the time and the social context of its creators. As mentioned earlier, more recent models of presumed competence replaced previous approaches toward those with special needs as if they have a deficit (Travers & Ayres, 2015); and each model or theoretical approach comes with its own set of biases and ways of seeing the world.

How do we reduce biases? What can design do to reduce biases and support greater equity, accessibility, and support for all human beings? But how do we mitigate disrespect for others and reduce negative social behaviors, such as bias? In the section, I will discuss findings and studies that investigate bias reduction, much of which is contradictory, and apply it to games.

Games and Bias Reduction

There is limited research on how to successfully reduce biases and biased behavior, and which strategies are most effective. Likewise, there is even less research on how to reduce biases using games and/or other designed playful experiences. In this section, I will share and apply the existing research on bias reduction and games, and identify the possible strengths and limitations of games, particularly in relation to helping teachers and other education professionals reduce biases in relation to students and colleagues with special needs. I will also explore open questions and gaps, and recommended areas for further research.

Possible Strengths

Games can help to support a professional development experience for practitioners, or can function as part of the intervention

A game can be part of a professional development experience that is virtual, in-person, or a hybrid of the two. This experience, depending on how it is designed, can be the entirety of the intervention, or can be part of it, and support other aspects of an intervention. How the entire intervention is designed matters, just as how a game is designed also matters. While some interventions, workshops, and even simulations have worked to reduce biases (Simonovits, Kézdi & Karos, 2018), many do not (Nario-Redmond, Gospodinov, & Cobb, 2017).  It often depends on how the intervention is designed, rather than the fact that there is an intervention. For instance, there are also many “trendy” interventions that do not work, such as for those with autism spectrum disorder (Travers & Ayers, 2015).

Researchers have begun to drill down into what types of interventions work for which types of biases, populations, and prior experiences (Castillo, Cámara & Eguizábal, 2011). Brecher, Bragger & Kutcher (2006) looked at job interviews, and their findings suggested that structuring an interview (standardizing the interview in some way to decide on questions and evaluation rubrics and methodologies (Campion, et al., 1997) helped to reduce biases in favor of applicants with physical disabilities. Williams, et al. (2018) looked at medical schools and found that those programs with a lower incidence of bias were found to have “longitudinal reflective small group sessions; non-accusatory approach to training in diversity; longitudinal, integrated diversity curriculum; admissions priorities and action steps toward a diverse student body; and school service orientation to the community” (p. 1).  Though this does not suggest causation, it does suggest possible features to address in future training environments. They recommend, for one, the creation of learning communities as this would support reflective small groups over time (Williams, et al., 2018).

How can games, specifically, be incorporated into interventions? First, either analog or digital games can be used as part of in-person in workshops or other interventions to support learning and interaction among participants. The ADL’s anti-bias teacher training, for instance, includes non-digital games and playful interactions, such as “Things in Common,” a game where players need to figure out aspects of their identity that they have in common before the time runs out (ADL, 2018). Adathi, et al. (2015) explains that games can serve as intervention tools to reduce bias, particularly when played cooperatively, even if the participants are in different locations. This may be particularly effective when people on the same team are aware that they are working with people from “out-groups” (Adathi, et al., 2015). While a completely virtual game that functions as an intervention is not an exact replication of an in-person, interactive professional development experience, it may have instructional value, and its own strengths and weaknesses. Games, for instance, have been used effectively for instructional purposes to teach both skills and content knowledge in a variety of areas, from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to English language arts (ELA) to music (Schrier, 2018). Quandary, created by Learning Game Networks, helps teach middle and high school students how to build arguments and interpret evidence, by placing the player in a new society, where they have to help decide how to solve problems in the new society.

Games can possibly cultivate the practice of empathy, perspective taking, and compassion

Research on bias reduction, particularly racial and ethnic biases, often points to encouraging empathy and perspective-taking (Batson, 1987), which has helped improve attitudes toward marginalized groups (Dovidio, Pagotto, & Hebl, 2011). Though there are many different definitions of empathy, in general, empathy has affective and cognitive components and is defined as caring about what someone else is going through, thinking, or feeling (Schrier & Farber, in progress). Recent research on bias suggests that people tend to treat others with more empathy if they feel like they are more “like them” (in one’s in-group) as opposed to those who they think are different (an “out-group”) (Darvasi, 2016). Seeing someone as being in one’s “in-group” or in an “out-group” can be based on one’s abilities, race, gender identity, religious affiliation, or even sports or fan interests. Intergroup contact has been a common tool for helping people reduce their biases about other people (Castillo, Cámara, Eguizábal (2011 Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2005, 2006), in that people become more accustomed to others by spending more time with them, and begin to see someone as more of a member of an “in-group.” For instance, Powell (2014) looked at stigma around mental illness, and found that those who have exposure to mental illness are typically those who have less anxiety around it, and more positive beliefs and fewer negative beliefs about mental illness and its prognosis.

Perspective-taking activities may also increase connections among disparate groups. Castillo, Cámara, Eguizábal (2011) describes perspective-taking as the process of cognitively thinking through what one “cognitive approximation between the self and members of the stereotyped group and between the ingroup and the outgroup” (p. 168). Such perspective-taking could lead to more positive views of “out-groups,” reduced communication of stereotypes and stereotypical representations (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000; Galinsky et al., 2005, 2008; Castillo, Cámara, Eguizábal, 2011). Perspective-taking has also been associated with a greater willingness to engage with others that are from another group (Wang, et al, 2014). When engaged in perspective-taking, people will start to ascribe the perspectives of the other as their own, and vice versa, which in turns strengthens connectedness between the two groups (Galinsky, et al, 2008). Even just feeling that someone else is taking our perspective may be beneficial as taking another’s perspective, as it could lead to more connection and feeling of overlap with the other person and greater empathy for them (Goldstein, et al., 2014). Self-esteem and empathic feelings may also interrelate to the effectiveness of perspective-taking (Vescio, et al., 2003; Galinsky & Ku, 2004). Vescio, et al (2003) had participants take on the perspective of an African American student, and the participants self-reported more empathy and more positive attitudes toward African Americans in general following this exercise (Vescio, et al, 2003; Castillo, Cámara & Eguizábal, 2011). Likewise, Castillo, Cámara, Eguizábal (2011) studied older adults and provided a story about a Moroccan immigrant and led through perspective-taking exercises. Their research suggested that perspective taking was moderately effective for reducing stereotyping and that this research has implications on training programs to support the reduction of intergroup biases among older people, for example.

Familiarity, exposure, and contact with others may also help (Steele, Maruyama, & Galynker, 2010). For instance, teacher training, workshops, and professional development opportunities that use these types of methodologies have been shown to enhance more positive attitudes in people, such as preservice teachers toward linguistically diverse populations (Cho & DeCastro- Ambrosetti, 2005).

How can games further encourage empathy, perspective-taking, exposure, and other related practices, such as people with special needs, or people with different backgrounds, perspectives or experiences? Many researchers have pointed out the potential of virtual spaces to support the practice of empathy, bias reduction and compassion (Faber & Schrier, 2017; Aviles, 2017; Schrier & Shaenfield, 2015; Schrier, in progress). Most research has considered how to apply the aforementioned theories and practices around reducing intergroup conflict and biases, and applying them to virtual worlds and games (Yee & Bailenson, 2007; Faber & Schrier, 2017; Aviles, 2017).

For instance, some games may help to immerse people into virtual worlds and new roles and identities (Schrier, 2014), which may encourage consideration of others’ experiences, feelings, and perspectives (Faber & Schrier, 2017). Games may help people express and experiment with their own identities and others’ identities (Schrier & Faber, 2018), and may enable people to communicate and interact with people from other cultures, with other types of needs, and with different types of experiences (Schrier & Shaenfield, 2015). As Aviles (2017) writes, “If one reason individuals self-segregate in the physical world is because they have no prior experience interacting with diverse individuals, the virtual world can be a safe place to gain this experience and lead to further contact in the real world. In addition, virtual contact with diverse representations of users may be enough to enact the positive qualities associated with contact in the physical world.” (Aviles, 2017, p. 3).

Games may help motivate players to consider others’ perspectives and to share their own views (Schrier, et al., 2014), and to work with others to solve real-world problems (Schrier, 2016), which may help to build empathy for those in an “out-group” by making them more of an “in-group.” For instance, in games, players can learn about other’s perspectives and connect with (virtual) people and stories in which they may not typically interact (Farber & Schrier, 2017). Research has suggested that even virtual perspective-taking can decrease bias and negative attitudes toward “out-groups,” and also enhance compassion and helpfulness toward others (Hasler, et al., 2014).  Though this is complex (Nario-Redmond, et al., 2017). Simonovits, et al. (2018) created a perspective-taking game that significantly reduced prejudice toward stigmatized groups in Hungary (Roma and refugees); this reduction lasted at least a month, and also resulted in changes in voting behavior. In Revolution: 1979, players are able to take on the role of a person from history during the events leading up to and during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The game incorporates authentic perspectives from this time period and moment, and helps players to better understand the types of issues that led to the uprising, as well as how that may affect culture and politics today. Another example, The Migrant Trail, is a game that allows players to explore two different perspectives on migration from Mexico to Texas, and shows both the dangers of being a migrant, as well as the difficult decisions in being a border patrol agent. Games can not only share perspectives, but also help us express and appreciate emotions. In That Dragon, Cancer, a game about a (real-life) family grappling with their young son’s cancer, players can connect through themes of loss, family, and love (Farber & Schrier, 2017).

Moreover, researchers also found that they could redesign the features of a platform to counteract the tendency of people to make judgments based on social biases and trust people more if they are more similar to them (Abrahao, et al., 2017). Abrahao, et al. (2017) found that they were able to increase trustworthiness of dissimilar people from the participants on the Airbnb platform by including a reputation system.

Games can foster a learning community and enhance exposure to others through social interaction and cooperatiive problem solving and working on tasks

Games can support the creation and interactions of a learning community, or a community of practice (Wenger, 1998). For instance, games can help participants interact with each other around topics of interest (Crowley & Jacobs, 2002), can help participants collaborate on solving problems (Schrier, 2016), and can encourage more experienced players and practitioners to train novices, or to trade knowledge around different types of skills (Steinkuehler & Oh, 2012). Players (such as those of World of Warcraft) may develop shared norms by participating in these communities (Steinkuehler, 2007) and can help players acquire the vocabulary, tools, and epistemic understandings of those communities (Shaffer, 2006; Squire, 2011). As mentioned earlier, a learning community can help to encourage connections among disparate groups, as well as encourage a sense of belonging and inclusion in a game community, which may contribute to empathy, perspective-taking, learning, and positive exposure to others’ backgrounds and cultures, and greater self-efficacy and social support (Schrier 2016; McGonigal, 2011).

Games may also allow players to work with and partner with others across distance and time, who are not only not part of their everyday peer group, but may even be from the outgroup. If players are depending on each other, and need to communicate with each other on a shared task, they are able to build a more collaborative, altruistic relationship with each other (Schrier & Shaenfield, 2015; Adachi, et al., 2016). For example, in Eyewire and Foldit, players work on real-world problems (such as understanding brain cell and protein structures, respectively) and communicate with each other through the game’s platforms, and often form learning and problem-solving communities, which have helped to contribute to significant scientific discoveries (Schrier, 2016). Intergroup contact enhances empathy for the out-group and intergroup empathy decreases prejudice for the out-group (Adachi et al., 2015).

However, competitive and/or violent games may not have the same effect as collaborative and/or cooperative ones (Adathi et al., 2015). Adathi et al (2016) looked at violent video games and those who played it cooperatively were able to have more improved out-group attitudes than those who played them solo. Those playing a violent or nonviolent game, cooperatively, were more likely to increase attitudes toward the outgroup versus those playing either game by themselves (Adathi et al., 2016; Greitemeyer, 2013). It is unclear as to the mechanism for why cooperative play enhances these attitudes, and often these types of cooperative interactions among disparate groups are avoided (Adathi et al., 2015). Thus, while research by Adachi, Hodson & Hoffarth (2015) suggested that competitive games are associated with enhanced intergroup bias, games that support intergroup cooperation may reduce bias, particularly in multiplayer games online.

Players in a game are solving problems simply by the very act of playing a game. Players need to figure out how to overcome obstacles, avoid enemies, or reach specific goals. Players in a game could solve these types of problems on their own, or as mentioned in the previous subsection, they could solve those problems with others. Problems could be solved using a “jigsaw” method  or having different players have different roles, each of which helps to solve part of the problem. However, the entire team needs to work together to solve the problem. By having players solve problems with others, players start to see that people have different abilities, and different ways of contributing. This may help players to be more open to different types of skillsets and experiences and help to make people feel more “in group” with those who are in an outgroup.

In research on role-playing games, such as Fable III, Schrier (2016) found that players used more empathy-related skills, including perspective-taking, after spending time playing and overcoming obstacles with others, even virtual characters (Schrier, 2016). Schrier & Shaenfield (2015) also found that playing collaboratively with another (real) person in a game increased one’s willingness to engage with the collaborator, befriend them, and enhanced more compassion and empathy toward them (Schrier & Shaenfield, 2015). In the multiplayer online game and cooperative game Way, players tended to connect, forge friendships, and identify each other’s emotions to support collaborative problem solving (Schrier & Shaenfield, 2015).

Games may allow expression and experimentation with identity, and help to increase identity self-efficacy

Games can enable people to play as a role and shape their role’s identity, as well as gain confidence and self-efficacy in their identity. Games may also enable players to interact with other types of roles and identities as well. For instance, in some games players can shape their avatar (or their representation in the game), they can role-play as other identities, they can “level up” by practicing certain skills (e.g., magic, weaponry), and/or can make choices or interact with other characters or players to shape their own role in the game. In Mass Effect, you can make choices that lead more to a “renegade” character, or one who tends to disobey rules and social norms to get things done, or you can make choices that lead more to a “paragon” character, or one who follows the rules and social norms on their path. In the Walking Dead (Telltale) game, players make choices on how to support other characters during zombie attacks, which affect how other characters treat the player’s avatar and also shapes how events unfold in the game. In the Fable series, players can make ethical choices, as well as choices on how to rule their land (as in Fable III) and their decisions directly impact how other characters (NPCs or non-player characters) treat them, or how they look (the avatar or character representing the player starts to look more devilish or more angelic, or more scarred or more clear-skinned depending on their choices. They also might get brawnier or more tattooed depending on weapons used or abilities earned. Expressing one’s own identity, experimenting with different identities, and learning about other’s identities has been implicated in supporting empathy (Banakou et al., 2016) as well as in reducing bias (ADL, 2018) in that it helps to make any differences seem less “othered” and more understood and appreciated (Darvasi, 2017).

Who someone plays as (their avatar) may affect their biases as well. Behm-Morawitz, Pennell, & Speno (2016) investigated avatar creation and a game to understand whether participants took on the perspectives of others. They found that creating and being a Black avatar in the game helped to support more favorable attitudes about African American men (though not women) and more support for policies that support minorities, than playing as a White avatar (Behm-Morawitz et al., 2016). Banakou et al., (2016) also found that White people’s implicit racial bias against Blacks decreased after virtually embodying a Black avatar. Likewise, in another study, Peck et al., (2013) found that light-skinned players inhabiting a darker skinned avatar reduce their biased associations with darker-skinned people. However, the game context may matter. Yang et al., (2014) found that in a violent video game, playing as a Black avatar (instead of a White one) enhanced negative beliefs toward Blacks, and the players behaved more aggressively in the game. On the other hand, Aviles tried two different theoretical approaches to reducing prejudice using avatars in a virtual world (the Proteus effect (or the idea that how an avatar looks affects one’s own behavior), as well as a theory of intergroup contact) and found that neither were effective (2017).

Increasing self-efficacy around one’s identity can also help people to persist in systematically biased environments. Enrichment programs can excite interest in STEM by enhancing scientific curiosity (Ogle et al., 2017), which in turn leads to high scores of self-efficacy around science and also higher STEM knowledge (Ogle et al., 2017). Leonard et al., (2016) used robotics and game design to enhance self-efficacy around STEM for middle school girls and indigenous populations. They found that students who participated in blended robotics/gaming clubs had higher self-efficacy scores related to the construct of videogaming (Leonard et al., 2016) and created effective game prototypes. Siritunga et al., (2011) taught biology using a culturally and personally relevant model and found that half or more were confident or very confident in their results, and an increase in content knowledge occurred after the module.

Well-designed games scaffold (or support) content over time, and level it appropriately, so players are only getting what they need at each moment to do what they need to do to reach a goal (Fullerton, 2016). This type of design avoids overwhelming cognitive load, where a player has too much information to attend to and does not know what to attend to at each moment. It also helps to balance the players’ mastery of material with their ability to practice it without being too bored, such that they end up in a “flow state” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) or centered state where they feel both a sense of mastery without a sense of tedium and boredom. This state also relates to a feeling of higher self-efficacy or the feeling that one is able to do what they need to do and reach the goals they need to reach. Encouraging a higher self-efficacy may also support people’s ability to help others and engage in prosocial behavior through the game or perhaps even beyond the game.

Games can encourage moments of reflection and give clear and systemic feedback

Part of the learning process is not only acquiring and using information and skills, but reflecting on the learning process itself, and how it might be changing one’s views, behaviors, and perspectives (Mezirow, 1996). It is important for professionals to not only take actions, but to reflect on the consequences and outcomes of their choices, and how they may act differently in the future. The reflective process also helps to crystallize new knowledge and allows us to think about how we think, or engage in metacognitive processes, which further critical awareness, flexibility, and possibilities for future adaptation (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).

How can games support reflection and reflective moments, especially when games often require the player to keep moving forward toward a goal. While not all games provide points where a player needs to reflect on their choices, games can provide outcomes, consequences and feedback on choices, which can be used to help players reflect on those choices and consider how they would make choices differently. For instance, in Life is Strange, the game takes the player back to moments where they made a decision and has them reflect on the decision and its consequences, and then invites them to make a different decision to see how the consequences play out (Schrier, 2018). Outcomes could be large (a town disappears, a person commits suicide, a person gets murdered) or smaller (a woman gets bullied). Life is Strange also includes gameplay where a player can decide to sit on a bench and just look around for a while, suggesting to the player that they can take breaks from the storyline and gameplay, the reconsider their actions, and engage in the present moment.

Clear and comprehensible feedback is important in any learning situation. People need to know how their actions and choices are evaluated, and in what ways their behaviors affect the world. As they receive more feedback, and more specific feedback, this helps them adapt and reorient themselves to better meet the goals and needs of a learning environment. Well-designed games are typically adept at giving this type of feedback, and enabling players to know how their choices are valued in the game, what the effects are, and whether and how well they are doing at reaching their in-game goals. The more precise, personalized, relevant, and “just-in-time” this feedback is, the more useful it is to the player. For instance, in Lim, players play as a colored square who is moving through a board, which is filled with rooms that have groups of squares that are different than the players square. As they move, the other squares have different reactions to the player, such as bumping into the square, pushing it away, or attacking it, and the player gets immediate feedback on how their square will be treated. The player can choose to “pass” as different colored square, or adjust their square’s color temporarily, and this has an immediate result of the other squares being less combative and more tolerant. Using these simple interactions and feedback, the game is able to express an abstraction of the effect of individual biases on a person.

Likewise, in a complex system like a game, players can experience change dynamically rather than just linearly. The feedback that players receive does not have to be linear (1:1), in that players only get to try something or make a choice, and then get a clear piece of feedback returned. Feedback in games can also be provided in a such as way that players can understand consequences and effects in a more dynamic way. For one, games can help to simulate and express complex systems, and enable players to interact within those systems, helping them to visualize and experience shorter- and longer-term effects. But players can push on and play with the boundaries of these systems, try out “what ifs,” enact behaviors, and perform within the system, such that they begin to interact with more holistic feedback provided on a more system-wide level (Schrier, 2016). Through a game, players can also experience and comprehend more complex, messy consequences—even ones that happen over time or have multiple levels of interactions. As a result, players can build systems thinking skills and the ability to see how different behaviors, biases, and attitudes may affect others, not only on a one-on-one basis, but at a system-wide level. For instance, though it’s not a game, per se, Parable of the Polygons is an interactive simulation that shows how biases affect interactions on a more systemic level. Participants are asked to move objects around to show how individual biases may result in more system-wide and institutional biases.

Thus, these types of simulations can help establish contexts to support intergroup relations and a reduction in bias (Adathi et al., 2015). Adathi et al. (2015) explain how enabling students who identify as heterosexual to imagine, discuss, and consider life on a different planet for those from a marginalized minority group helps to reduce prejudice against LGBTQ+ populations in real life. The context of imagining the short-term and longer-term effects for a group help to reduce out-group prejudices and enhance trust among groups (Hodson, Choma, & Costello, 2009; Hodson, Dube, & Choma, 2015; Adathi, et al., 2015).

Possible limitations

While there are many possible strengths of games in supporting bias reduction and changes in empathetic behaviors, there are also many limitations. For one, many games are not designed specifically to reduce biases or support perspective-taking. The design of the game, rather than the fact that it is a game itself, matters more in how well it is effective. The following are general limitation of games, however, the biggest limitation is simply that they are very dependent on how they are designed, which is complex in understanding.

Like any designed intervention, a game may not meet its goals

Biases and biased behavior are highly complex and dynamic, and require similarly complex and dynamic solutions. Can any intervention, whether a game or not, even reduce biases and change behavior? Researchers have debated whether biases and stereotypes are always automatic, and whether we will be able to actually reduce implicit biases (Devine, 1989), stereotypes, or prejudices, as they are too ingrained and may also affect social behavior (Quillian, 2006, 2008; Castillo, Cámara, Eguizábal, 2011). Other research suggests that the activation and application of the stereotype can be adjusted, and even automatic biases can be changed, with trainings and interventions (Castillo, Cámara, Eguizábal, 2011). As such, research on interventions is often contradictory, as it depends on the design of the intervention, the interaction with a specific audience, and the context of its use, among many other factors. Any type of intervention has limitations, and may be ineffective or unsuccessful in reaching its goals. While some games may take place over many months or even years, depending on the level of engagement of the player, it is difficult to design a full game experience that is so versatile and engaging for all players that it meets the goals of the intervention, fits appropriately into the context, and meets the needs of the audience. Design and context matter (Gentile, 2011) and may interact with how people play the game, treat each other, and their attitudes and behaviors toward each other (Adachi, et al 2015). The same game played in a different context may not be as successful. How a game is played (with others, alone, in a classroom) may also influence outcomes as well as what type of game is played (such as a cooperative or prosocial game) (Adachi et al., 2015). Games, for instance, need the right types of support, and are not “one-size-fits all” “out-of-the-box” solutions. They often require an appropriate teacher or mentor to help shape the game and curriculum to each other.

Overall, the simulations used to reduce biases have had mixed and limited results. Nario-Redmond et al. (2017) explain that a review of empirical evidence for disability awareness simulations resulted in only four prior studies and only one suggested that upper elementary school students had enhanced knowledge and understanding for people with a disability (2017). Nario-Redmond et al. (2017) used a virtual reality game to show the perspective of someone with a wheelchair and found that the game was not effective for enhancing constructive behavior toward those with disabilities.

Games may even further activate and spur biases, particularly competitive ones further expressing how the design of the game matters. For instance, research by Greitemeyer (2013) suggests that violent game play may enhance intergroup biases, however, the underlying mechanism for this is unclear as there have been mixed results as to whether violent video games cause real-world violence or aggression. Greitemeyer & Mügge (2014) also explore in another meta-analytic study how violent games are associated with antisocial behavior, whereas prosocial games are associated with prosocial behavior.  Likewise, research by Adachi, Hodson & Hoffarth (2015) suggested that competitive games are associated with enhanced intergroup bias, whereas games that support intergroup cooperation may reduce bias.

Games, players, and the cultural context around them are embedded with biases

Games are built with and embedded in societal and individual biases, even unwittingly. All games, just like any designed experiences, embed the biases of how they were designed, who designed them, and the sociocultural context in which they were designed (Deng, Joshi, & Galliers, 2016; Flanagan, 2009; Flanagan & Nissenbaum, 2014). Just the fact that we are using a game to try to reduce biases is a type of bias in that it suggests that games may have value in this way. Moreover, the communities around and within games have their own norms, values, and biases that are embedded in their design, and how they emerge over time. Games have also been cited as places where biases and intergroup conflict persist and are propagated (Adachi et al., 2015; Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014). While most game players and communities are respectful, mature and engage in appropriate language, some game players and communities participate in toxic behavior, or purposefully volatile or problematic communications, such as bad language, mocking, negative tone, taunting, or even biased remarks or stereotyping, the amount of which may even vary by different game communities and fanbases. While many games, particularly more collaborative games, may not be as supportive of antisocial behavior, and some game companies have been trying to reduce this using various strategies, there remains a stigma around games themselves as being propagators of bias and antipathy—the very behaviors and attitudes that we hope to address and even reduce. This stigma, a bias in itself against games, affects how games are interpreted and the types of ways they are used (Schrier, 2016).

A game may be well-intentioned, have appropriate goals and operationalize change in an appropriate way, but still fail to meet its goals. This is because players come into game contexts with their own myths, misconceptions, and biases around people, relationships, and social structures, and it is hard to predict how people will complexly affect the game system, and be affected by the game system, dynamically. In fact, games have been used as environments in which to study and understand intergroup conflict and biases more generally (Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014; Adachi et al., 2015; Ferguson, 2015; Pryzbylski et al., 2014). Most of the research on games and prejudice has been around using it as a site for understanding implicit bias, rather than on how to constructively support less bias for another group. A number of studies looked at shooter games, where players need to quickly decide who to shoot – they need to shoot at armed targets and avoid shooting at unarmed ones as they appear on the screen (Adachi, et al 2015). For instance, researchers have found that there is a bias toward shooting unarmed Black rather than White targets (Adachi et al., 2015; Correll, Hudson, Guillermo & Ma, 2014) and have also been able to decrease this bias in the short-term by presenting counter-stereotypical scenarios to the police officers (Adachi et al., 2015; Sim, Correll & Sadler, 2014).

Players may enact and perform their own individual biases in games, or even express biases that emerge from the particular design of a game experience. Yang et al. (2014) found that those playing a violent game as a black avatar versus a white avatar had more negative and stereotyped attitudes toward Blacks if they had a black avatar in the violent game, but in the nonviolent game, neither condition had more stereotyped attitudes toward African Americans after playing the game. The design of the game interacts with already present societal stereotypes and could activate them.

Players may bring their preconceived notions, myths and biases to the game. Roussos & Dovidio (2016) used the game, SPENT, to understand whether players would reduce biases against those with financial insecurity by playing a game about the poor. They found that those players who came in with the preconceived notion of a “meritocracy” (in that systems reward those who work the hardest and are the most deserving based on personal characteristics), ended up having less empathetic attitudes toward those in poverty than those who did not have the meritocracy preconceived notion (Roussos & Dovidio, 2016; Farber & Schrier, 2017).

Players and designers need to consider ethical ramifications

Those who are using or playing games to support bias reduction also need to understand and reflect on the ethical ramifications of their designs or gameplay. For instance, players may need to be mindful of how they experiment with and/or try on others’ identities. Players also need to be respectful of how they take on or engage in dialogue with the perspectives of others. One major critique of games and virtual reality when players take on roles of marginalized individuals and engage in perspective-taking is that the player is really a “tourist” who briefly takes on a fictionalized version of an individual or group, and then mistakenly think they perfectly understand the perspectives of others, while also being able to slip off that identity without feeling real consequences. This may then reinforce misconceptions and make it even more likely to dismiss real individual’s perspectives or more systemic inequities.

Another myth might be that games are even able to change biases or behaviors, and that games, like other technologies, are all-knowing, all-powerful and magical. This has ethical implications because it obfuscates its flaws, and also how important the context, player, and other factors are in making a game successful. Tailoring and communicating these expectations properly will help to ensure that the game is appropriately contextualized and that ethically transparent. It will also help ensure that the game is effective as it focuses on the humanness of games, rather than its cold, technological prowess. Games may not always effectively teach or change behavior per se, but they can possibly give us experiences with people we may not come in contact with often and give glimpses into different aspects of humanity, even if they cannot perfectly simulate a system or how someone feels, thinks, dreams or acts.

Designers need to address how to best cultivate the practice of empathy

There are possible general limitations to using a game for the cultivation of empathy, compassion, which should be considered (Farber & Schrier, 2017). For one, putting someone in “another’s shoes” or simulating their life may increase empathy, but also distress and overwhelming negative emotion. In Against Empathy, Bloom (2016) argues that empathy can backfire (in part) if people get too immersed in their own response to someone else’s pain or suffering, that they cannot properly and appropriately help them. For instance, Nario-Redmond, Gospodinov, & Cobb (2017) found that after showing two simulations about a person with a disability such an individual with dyslexia or mobility issues, the participants felt more upset, anxious, ashamed and helpless than before. Although their empathy toward people who are disabled increased, their openness to interacting with people with disabilities did not get better, and they felt that they would be less effective in interacting with someone with a disability (Nario-Redmond et al., 2017).

Galinsky et al. (2008) argue that perspective-taking helps participants take on the so-called stereotypical behavior of the other (“out-group”) (both the positive and negative ones). Perspective-taking may even “backfire” and lead to negative outcomes when a person feels threatened (Sassenrather, Hodges & Pfattheicher, 2016) or even where there are good intentions (Holoien, 2014). Perspective-taking may also work well in Western cultures, but may not be as effective in East Asian cultures (Wang et al., 2018). Perspective-taking may help enhance understanding, but the process may not predict the other person’s actual views, mental state, emotions, and attitudes; whereas communicating with the other person and learning about them, and gaining their perspective (exchanging perspectives), did help to increase accuracy of understanding the other person (Eyal, Steffel, & Epley, 2018). For instance, Gloor & Puhl (2016) looks at strategies for reducing weight bias and found that empathy-induction and perspective-taking conditions both enhanced more empathy for people with obesity than the other conditions, but may not reduce overall stigma about weight (Gloor & Puhl, 2016). Moreover, “imagining oneself in the place of others—rather than taking the other’s perspective—is less effective at inducing empathy and help” (Nario-Redmond et al., 2017). In sum, perspective-taking is complex in that it can enhance connection among groups and between those of in-groups and out-groups, but it can also contribute to increased flawed understandings of the other, and enhanced use of stereotypical evaluations and behaviors associated with the out-group (Nario-Redmond et al., 2017).

Moreover, research has suggested that players need to build relationships and interpersonal connections over time to support empathy and perspective-taking (Schrier, 2014), such as in the case of Fable III,  or need to interact with them in a way that they mutually benefit and play together (Schrier & Shaenfield, 2015), such as in the case of Way. Players need to have the time to authentically build intimacy with other players or even non-player characters (NPCs), or virtual characters that are not controlled by a player.

Finally, a game may be well-designed, but it if no one plays it, it will not be able to support any types of experiences for its players. Players need to be motivated to play a game that encourages empathy, and be open to the types of interactions, choices, relationships, and outcomes in the game. Moreover, these choices need to be meaningful to the player—not just in terms of how the game is played (in that the choices affect something in the game itself), but that it is also meaningful to the player and what is personally relevant to them (Schrier, 2018). This may be many different things to many different players, so it is important to allow for a variety of play styles and experiences such that players can form their own personal connections to the experiences.

Conclusions and next steps

This paper seeks to analyze the recent research on bias education and couple it with research on games and bias reduction (with particular attention to special needs), to help make recommendations of how to better design game and related environments to support bias reduction and less biased behavior toward others. There are many complex and dynamic interactions that both spur and reduce bias, prejudice and discrimination. This complexity is also seen in interventions such as games, virtual worlds, and simulations, in that it’s never as simple as “games reduce or increase bias,” but it’s under what conditions, by whom, how, and when. I described five possible strengths and four possible limitations of using games for bias reduction, particularly in relation to special needs. However, almost any aspect of a game could possibly be a strength or a weakness, as games and their players form a dynamic system that depend on many factors, including social context and cultural biases of the time, place, and people.

As next steps, each of the strengths and limitations should be empirically studied and further investigated. For instance, we may want to take each of our strengths and weaknesses and ask additional questions. In terms of strengths, the following are questions we may want to pursue further, as these will have implications for designers of games to reduce biases, players of these games, and people who are creating interventions for teacher educators to support their professional development:

• Games can help to support a professional development experience for practitioners, or can function as part of the intervention. Which types of games work best within different types of interventions for bias reduction and special needs educators? How can games be best integrated into professional development for teachers and educators; what are the factors and configurations that are most effective?

• Games can possibly cultivate the practice of empathy, perspective taking, and compassion.  What are the specific design elements and gameplay that best support the cultivation of these skills, and particularly, in how they may help to reduce biases? How does storytelling, emotional expression, character development, relationships, reflection, transportation and other factors specifically affect this practice?

• Games can foster a learning community and enhance exposure to others through social interaction and cooperative problem solving and working on tasks. How can we best support, manage and cultivate useful learning communities using games? How do we provide the appropriate scaffolds for problem solving, and encourage constructive social interactions among the players?

• Games may allow expression and experimentation with identity, and help to increase identity self-efficacy. How do we support players to safely experiment with their own identities and other identities, as well as other perspectives? How do we best enhance player’s self-efficacy and confidence in their own roles to better support bias reduction through games?

• Games can encourage moments of reflection and give clear and systemic feedback. What are the most useful ways to provide feedback and how can we use messaging, communication and interactions with the game’s system to further help players grapple with bias? How can we build in reflective moments that will continue to crystallize knowledge and enhance critical thinking of one’s own practices and biases.

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Author’s Info:

Karen Schrier
Karen.Schrier@marist.edu
Marist College