Instrumentalism and theEthics of Videogame Play:

The Tactical IraqiControversy

Elizabeth Losh,

University of California, Irvine

Competing Positions on Ethics

Games• are sites that model communicative exchanges

• provide tools that allow learners, patients, orother disenfranchised individuals to realizeintended personal or group objectives

• represent a pragmatic strategy of negotiationwith a less than ideal world

• foster exploring institutional environments andtesting the architecture of boundaries

• are stages for persuasive political rhetoric

• are virtual environments that function asideological deceptions

• are visual representations of public deliberation

Tactical Iraqi

A Pre-History of Tactical Iraqi

The Center for Advanced Research inTechnology for Education (CARTE) atthe Information Sciences Institute of theUniversity of Southern California previouslyauthored a range of imaginative butseemingly disconnected distance learninginitiatives that featured computergenerated animated agents, softwarecapable of expressive speech analysis andsynthesis, and programs organized aroundthe presentation of pedagogical drama.

Mission Game

Skill Builder

Arcade Game

What are the core problemsthat Tactical Iraqi is designed

to solve?

A chronic shortage of Arabic speakersamong military personnel

A combat environment in ambiguous urbanwarfare settings of occupation andreconstruction

A resistance to classroom languageinstruction in the planned population oflearners

Social and Perceptual Realism

What common rituals

make us more likely

to identify a given

situation as realistic?

Alison McMahan

How does the agora

function in digital

spaces?

(The agora is the environmental bubble in which

social exchange and mutual appropriation is

permissible according to Ostwald.)

A Pre-History ofEmbodied LanguageLearning

Georgi Lozanov:SuggestologyandSuggestopedia

Constraining Transgressive Play

James Paul Gee has argued that there arepedagogical benefits to challenging thenorms of explicit instruction in situatedlearning contexts.

Yet military videogames generally punishtransgressive play and limit exploration ofthe virtual environment, to such an extentthat human subjects at first avoided thegame space of Tactical Iraqi entirely or“cheated” to reach the ostensiblerewarded objective.

The Commercial Market forLanguage-Learning Software

The Living Languageseries models normsof politeness in whichinteractions arehighly regulated andproprietary rights tothe physical space isnot contested.

“Knock and Talk” Missions

How do soldiers learn to follow verydifferent rhetorical rules?

How is personal space negotiated?

How do strategies and tactics differ?

Is there a role for politeness?

Positive and Negative Face

Brown and Levinson recommend negativepoliteness as the safer course.

Negative politeness is generally the less riskystrategy than positive politeness

“It is safer to assume that H prefers his peaceand self-determination than he prefers yourexpressions of regard.”

Yet military missions may necessarily constrainthe spatial freedom of others duringinterrogation, quarantine, search, or arrest.

Exactly who is being persuaded when we talkabout “persuasive games”?

Are there lay audiences watching as well asprofessional ones?

Are there domestic audiences listening as well asinternational ones?

What cultural narratives are re-enforced by creating media spectacles around these games?

Stuart Moulthrop

“The declaration (or acclamation) ofwar may distract attention frompreexisting conflicts inherent ininformation culture.”

The First Great Debate

Mimesis: games imitate “real” life and inturn encourage players to act in the“real” world in ways that imitate gameplay.

Catharis: games provide a sociallyacceptable outlet for experiencingdestructive behavior and help playersunderstand the consequences of anti-social actions.

The Second Great Debate

Narratology: games tell stories thatare organized by structural elementsin a plot line in which players identifywith particular characters

Ludology: games subvert culturalnarratives because the “rules” allowfor reciprocity and subversive play

A Third Great Debate?

Instrumentalism: games function astools that give the player enhancedabilities as an individual to effectchange in virtual or real worlds.

Functionalism: games function tomaintain a society’s homeostasis andprotect existing institutions andideological paradigms.

Nick Montfort, on a “greatarticle” . . .

“The BBC article quotes Hannes on gesturaldifferences between U.S. and Arabic cultures,something the program aims to point out totrainees. There are many interesting issuesraised by Tactical Iraqi, but the game shouldremind us that virtual environments don’t erasethe body, and that this can make a difference inhow we use our bodies in the “real” world, too.”

Gonzalo Frasca: “Shame onyou, Tactical Iraqi!”

“They are pulling thetrigger with every singleline of code they create,with every single page ofdesign doc they write . . .The Army money thatfunds your projects istainted with blood . . .”

Pragmatic Responses

Communication saves lives

Lesser of evils arguments (verbal vs.physical violence)

Could serve a public diplomacypurpose

Soldiers might realize the human costsof war if they share a language withits victims

Military vendors won’t cease to be

“A Posteriori” Logic

“There is no such thing as anideologically neutral piece ofsoftware. Of course, teaching a languageis a great thing. However, it does notmake sense to see Tactical Iraqi as agame without a context.

“It is a game to teach Arabic to an Army that illegally invaded Iraq.”

Andrew Stern:

“Gonzalo, it's good to hear dissenting voicesabout military-oriented serious games, evenabout games that are ostensibly intended tomake soldiers more educated and culturallyaware.”

“Military funding (e.g. DARPA) is relativelypervasive in computer science in general,helping fund many researchers, includingsome you know. (The project I'mconsulting on is Army-funded.) Suchresearch, like the interactive narrativeresearch I'm working on for ICT, can beapplied to many other domains.”

“Personally, right now, working for the USmilitary and thinking that it could be a goodthing, given its recent and not-so-recentrecord, I consider that naive.”

“I told you before to stay away

from narratologists . . .”

“Among the more pacifist folks I know, oneof the ‘strategies’ for dealing with theethical issues DARPA and other militaryfunding raise is to think of such research assubversive: they'll take the military fundingand use the resulting research forinitiatives that undermine the military.”

Ian Bogost

“In this global world, it's always hard toknow who is behind who, and what isconnected to what. It's almost impossibleto predict the network of consequences ofyour actions. When I work for a client I setmy limits on the foreseeableconsequences. Let's say that I try to takea sincere ‘to the best of my knowledge.’”

Andrew Stern:

“Ideally of course, the military uses suchresearch in morally acceptable ways, as Ihope my contribution would be — e.g.cultural education. Naive? Well the truthis, the interactive narrative research I'mdoing is somewhat general, and I wouldwant to be working on similar work even ifit weren't military funded, and would wantto make the technology available forlicense; the military would then be free tojust license that directly.”

Hannes Vilhjálmsson, speaking as“a peace activist myself”

1) When I met in person a group ofsoldiers that had just returned from dutyin Iraq I was struck by their awarenessof the mess they were in and theirdesperation to get out of there alive -and to them, being able to make friendsnot enemies was absolutely crucial fortheir own survival.

2) The game rewards non-violence overviolence - in fact, you fail the gameimmediately if things start to take aviolent turn.

“A journalist recently asked me: ‘so, you work onidentifying persuasion techniques in videogames.What if your research falls into the wrong hands?’It is a valid question. Whoever develops tools willface this dilemma and have to live with it.However, I think there is a difference between‘developing X that could be used for harm by A’and ‘helping A so they can use X.’ In the firstcase, it's A's moral responsibility the one that isat stake. In the second it is mine.”

Does any of the Tactical Iraqi debate get very faroutside the instrumentalist paradigm?

Frasca uses the word “tool” at least six times to explain his positions in the ethical debate?

Even anti-instrumentalist Bogost uses the term:

“The position that any tool that requires one toaccept the situation in Iraq explicitly excuses thelogic that brought it about.”

The Tool Approach in Action

Voice Response Translator

“The Human Terrain”

Policy analyst Max Boot in an editorial in The Los

Angeles Times

The FlatWorld mixed reality facility at USC’s ICT

Virtual Tourism

What are the effects of architecturalpastiche?

How is the area of game play constrained?

Virtual Iraq

A HMD exposure therapy simulation that uses

digital assets from other

ISI/ICT projects and

Full Spectrum Warrior.

The object of the simulation

is to allow the patient to

create personal narratives

about real-life traumatic

events that foster psychic

integration rather than the symptomology or

dissociation of PTSD. Some versions of the

simulation use a motion platform and/or scent

release device.

Telemedicine

Rehabilitation and training in virtualenvironments for amputees, spinal injurypatients, the blind, and thedevelopmentally disabled.

Virtual Classroom

Albert “Skip” Rizzo

ADHD Children

Geographies of Trauma

Virtual World Trade Center

Cornell and

the University of Washington

Virtual VietnamJarrell Pair and

researchers at Georgia Tech

Virtual Bus BombingTamar Weiss,

University of Haifa

The Spatialization of Memory in the

work of Jacki Morie

The Memory Stairs

DarkCon

The Rhetoric of WalkingMichel de Certeau

Ian Bogost, the figure of the flaneur, andthe concept of “Procedural Rhetoric”

Showing pervasive problems beingsolved could potentially create

political spectacles

The shortage of Arabic speakers

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among theveteran population

The difficulty of locating improvisedexplosive devices

Ambush! from BBS,another DARWARS

project

Mainstream Media Coverageof Tactical Iraqi

Newsweek

USA Today

The Los Angeles TimesThe New York Times

National Geographic

Forbes

BBCNational Public RadioABC News

In what ways could you argue thatAmerica’s Army is actually a“better,” more ethical game?

It fosters certain forms of community

3-D characters are not racialized

It allows for occasional protest

Embodiment gaps invite critique of its oppositionallogic

It is possible to challenge authority despite sternconsequences

Is there a rhetorical function to makingtraining, language-learning, or therapyvisible to the public?

Regardless of the intentions of their creators,are policy-makers motivated to fund projectsthat show intractable problems being tackledregardless of their efficacy?

If audiences for broadcast media in thegeneral public do not participate ininteractive experiences do they have anyopportunity for ideological critique?

Slavoj !i"ek: “Welcome to theDesert of the Real”

By using the film The Matrix as an analogy,

!i"ek argues that until the attacks ofSeptember 11th, the U.S. was shielded by anartificial but ideologically comforting socio-economic, political, and cultural virtual realityenvironment that separated it from the violenceand privation of the rest of the world.

“If there is any symbolism in the collapse of theWTC towers, it is not so much the old-fashionednotion of the ‘center of financial capitalism,’ but,rather, the notion that the two WTC towers stoodfor the center of the VIRTUAL capitalism, offinancial speculations disconnected from thesphere of material production. The shatteringimpact of the bombings can only be accounted foronly against the background of the borderlinewhich today separates the digitalized First Worldfrom the Third World ‘desert of the Real.’”

Ironically, since those attacks, governmentagencies have created even more VRE’s sothat games and simulations can safelymodel military and public health situationsof crisis.

In particular, a number of other “VirtualIraqs” were to have been recreated; theseincluded plans to construct a digital replicaof the looted National Museum inBaghdad.

Making Things Public

Taxpayer-Funded Games asPublic Property

“Scientific laboratories, technical institutions,marketplaces, churches and temples, financialtrading rooms, Internet forums, ecologicaldisputes – without forgetting the very shape ofthe museum inside which we gather all thosemembra disjecta – are just some of the forumsand agoras in which we speak, vote, decide, aredecided upon, prove, are being convinced.”

Bruno Latour

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Lewis Johnson of the Information SciencesInstitute for allowing me to interview him about thisproject and for access to his published studies, gamescripts, character descriptions, and personal reflectionsin several follow up e-mail exchanges. I am also verygrateful to Albert “Skip” Rizzo of the Institute for CreativeTechnologies, who permitted an extensive interviewallowed me to use the Virtual Iraq system twice andshared his rich archive of digital files that demonstratevirtual reality exposure techniques and clinical findings.Michael Zyda of the Game Pipe Lab at USC, who co-created America’s Army, also granted me an extensiveinterview.

My e-mail and web addresses

lizlosh@uci.edu

http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh

http://www.virtualpolitik.org

http://www.digitalrhetoric.org