Identity in Gaming | LFEd Ep. 002

Luke and Alex discuss identity learning through video games.

There are countless ways in which our identity shapes the way we view the world and how the world views us, but Alex and Luke only have so much time and focus! In this companion podcast to the Low Five Education Project, the focus is going into more depth on each of Luke’s two articles on identity learning in video games. Connections to video games are made for games that affect our personal learning identities, learning outside of our own identities, and the development of both civic and environmental identities. 

Games highlighted within the podcast include: Assassins Creed (series), Souls Likes, Celest, Animal Crossing, Airborn Kingdom, Red Dead Redemption 2, and more.

Participation and/or feedback is encouraged!

Access Luke's capstone project at lowfivegaming.com/education.

Transcript

Luke 0:08

Hello, hello. This is Luke from LoFive Gaming, and here is your co-host Alex. Hey everybody. And this is the LoFive Education Project. Companion pod. Companion pod for the identity articles. But uh yeah, there you know, I created two articles on identity. Identity, you know, who am I, who are you? It ranges in so many different directions that it ended up being two pieces. This companion podcast will accompany both. If you'd like to read the second article and come back to this recording, that would be great. You'd probably have a more robust understanding of everything. But honestly, if you've read the first one, we have links to those in the show notes. Yeah, and if you read the just the first one, it'll totally just flow fine and it'll probably give you some extra understanding when you read the second one. So, uh identity, what it is in general, how do we identify? So myself, Luke, I am in this case a brother, a podcaster, I am a husband, a teacher, I am white, I am a gamer, I'm a social studies fan. Or just I'm, you know what? I'm just a social studies person. It is what it is. I'm a deep nerd. I'm a nerd, I'm a geek, I've been a comic book fan, I'm a Minnesotan, yaw. Midwest air.

Alex 1:16

Can't believe you're doing that accent for everybody.

Luke 1:19

Well, you know, I went out onto the I went out onto the boat with my taco pizza, grabbed a bag, a tapped tater, you know. Who are you, Al? How do you identify?

Alex 1:28

Well, I'm Alex. I am also a brother. It's your brother. Hey, brother. I'm also a podcaster, co-host of the show. I am a son, I am a husband, I am a marketer, I am also a cis white male. Yeah. Uh hard to avoid that one. Yeah, yeah. Always good to clarify. This is true.

Luke 1:47

Yeah.

Alex 1:47

But I'm a lot of things, man. It kind of depends. Um I'm also a server and a bartender. Sure.

Luke 1:53

And uh honestly, as I was going through there, friend. A gentle soul. I'm a dog dad. Dog dad. I'm so soon to be dad. All right. Anyway, moving past that impending doom/slash delight. Uh, identity. It's I'm an uncle. Yeah, I like it. You are and you will be again. Identity and impacts how you see the world, it impacts how the world sees you. It seems something so obvious, but you could spend your entire life studying identity. It is what makes up the world and mostly perception of the world and you. Right. You of others, others of you. So uh, you know, if we get back into the educational mindset, identity's massive. It's your comfort in the learning environment. Are you a learner? Are you a good student? Are you a bad student? We, you know, we all want to say that we're good students, and as a teacher, you want to build them up, but like you know, from your own experiences, you probably had different types of feelings as the type of learner that you were. Were you an excited one? Were you a curious learner? Are you a physical learner? Um visual learner, personally. For sure. Um, I'm a verbal learner, hence the podcast format and the rambling through things until like I would call professors or not call, but I'd show up for office hours and I just need to talk some stuff through. It was, yeah, I'm not I'm that type of guy. Um and then it also gets into your comfort with your content. Do you identify as a math person? Do you identify as a science person, a social studies person? Specifically within math, they really try to like break this mold of like I have a math brain because they want you to have this open mindset, they want to change the way you think about it. But for good and for bad, our identity very much leads into our comfort with the content that we're learning. There's the desire and drive to learn, we've kind of already talked about that, but like depending on how you identify what motivates you, how does that impact your desire to learn? Are you in this environment for you know monetary gains? Your desire and drive to learn, how you identify very much influences that. Think about your college days, think about your high school days, and like who you were as a person and how your identity kind of would impact that. It also is your relationship with other students, teachers, yourself, like who you are, what group you fit in, your comfort with your teachers, do you identify with them? I know as a teacher in a multiracial school, a lot of the first month is like building trust because I am a cis white male who looks like a lot of people that aren't always the greatest influences in their life, the greatest interactions. So, like a lot of my time is just like, hey, I'm very comfortable with who I am. Are you very comfortable with who you are? In marketing, I gotta imagine that like identity is a big impact in the way that you go about your business and the way you reach people. You want to talk on that for a second, or is that a little too work-like for you right now?

Alex 4:34

I'm I mean it's true, man. So the in marketing, you're always uh you're telling a brand narrative or uh, you know, the narrative of whatever company you're working with or you know, brand entity, and it's always telling the story of that brand or the or the or of that company, right? And how to portray them in a light or to give a narrative to them that is positive to the consumer and to make people want to use your product or follow your product or whatever that may be.

Luke 5:00

Once again, it's how you see yourself, but also crucially how others see you. And with a brand or like an institution, I'm getting my master's through Hamlin here. This is a project technically for Hamlin, but Hamlin very much projects the identity of which they want to have. Sure. And they want others to see them and how they would like to interact with the whole world. So yeah. So this talk about identities, you know, we're talking about identity and video game. For why? This whole project is very much about advocating for the use of video games within the classroom. So my deep held personal beliefs that I've kind of developed over the years as an educator, once again, identity, as a gamer, and as a social studies fanatic, and then as a grad school student, all kind of blended together and gave me this inspiration of like, you know, I'm learning a lot through these video games that I've played throughout my life. I'm I'm seeing different things now that I'm adding these different identities and context through these games, and I really wanted others to have that experience because there is some pretty good academic work on video games within education. A lot of it is outdated in the sense of the references to games, but the content is still very strong. And I just personally feel as an educator and all my time with professional development and even in grad school as a student, like it's it's not it is it is a tool of which has great untapped potential.

Alex 6:16

Right. In our previous companion pod, we brought up the fact that uh James Paul G started or he at least published his uh initial work about this whole idea of semiotic domains and having uh you know, looking at uh video games uh under the lens of education back in 2003, right? Yeah. Uh so you know it's 2022 now, and just like our example last in the last companion pod, you know, cell phones have come uh milestones, miles and miles from what they used to be. And you know, that's kind of a classic example, but yeah, video games have, I mean, think back to the 80s when you had just your arcade cabinets, right? Yeah. And today we have these crazy, I mean, you can have a you can have a gaming pace PC that is just a mammoth of a machine, or you could have even like your Xboxes or your PlayStations, it's amazing what these games can do now. And you know, beyond just the graphical like prowess of these games, like the the stories or the things that you're doing and the puzzles that you're undertaking, it's just it's just so crazy. It's like there's so much opportunity. You know, Ghee was looking at this uh some great games back in 2003, no doubt. But there's just been leaps and bounds, and there's just so much opportunity for for learning in these games.

Luke 7:22

So he very much would agree and has done great work on the idea that video games are a tool. They're a fun tool. And when used properly, and there's a lot of good academic work behind this, but when used properly, video games can be an educational tool. Now imagine that there's this tool there way back in the day. That tool has if we're gonna use like a Swiss Army knife, it's instead of just a little knife and a little can opener, it's now got like all the gadget.

Alex 7:47

Right. And I think you you you've mentioned this in your articles. So if you've if you've read this as a listener, if you read these articles, you have a little bit of this understanding as well. But we're talking about using these these video games to talk about in the last one the semi-octo mains or this uh this you know video game language and now identity. The thing is, though, in a in the lens of education, you would never just throw a video game at a student, right? No, nor would you ever just throw a book at a student in an English class and be like, figure it out. You know, like there you have to have a backing to your to your lesson plans. You as a teacher know this obviously.

Luke 8:20

Purpose and skillful instruction. Absolutely, yeah.

Alex 8:23

So good lesson plans, everything. Right. So as a listener, no, we're not saying that video games are going to take over the classroom and then that they should take over the classroom. No, that's not the case, but they can be used as a very successful and awesome tool to help children learn. And adults for that matter.

Luke 8:39

And to contradict, but at the same time, add to that point, I acknowledge that I'm hoping honestly, and the point of this project was also to get this more general audience. We're talking parents, we're just talking casual gamers. So, like, when you have games in front of your kids, like, so okay, it's a tool that can be awesome and used in front, and there's so much potential to use it in the classroom. It's also something that at home you can encourage and cultivate in the right type of way, and you can select different games, encourage kids to go different paths, or even just have conversations with them about the games that they're playing, and it'll add to the experience and kind of draw out some of those things just like a teacher would. It's not going to take over schools, it's a super awesome, valid tool that should be used in schools, but even at the least, man, just using it at home, right? So we've mentioned James Paul Ghee a few times here for more in-depth on his resume and everything else. Our last companion pod on semiotic domains is the place for that. But he comes up yet again because of his works as the author of the book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Very foundational for this project, gave a lot of direction. He's a very big voice in the education world, specifically when it comes to the integration of video games as well. He talks a ton about identity in the book, and honestly, even though some of the game references are outdated, I can tell you from experience, it's still a great read. Right on. The examples are still awesome and clear, and he the the academic points are still incredibly valid. We're going to be talking about these ideas of identity. Some of these are some lenses that I've thrown on there for the sake of this conversation, and some of them come right from his works in the book. Another very important academic work, uh, produced around the same time, actually, instead of 2003, it's 2004, and it's the Civic Potential of Video Games, a book by Joseph Kahn, Ellen Madaugh, and Chris Evans through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. I picked that up in my research early on. It was really good around the civic identity, the idea of a person's interactions with their community, but we'll get into that later. And then some quick, just two little like there's a bunch of different articles that I went through in my research, and like that's not the purpose of these, like to get bogged on by the two. I just wanted to mention two very quick different articles that people could find, read, just know that it kind of influenced this research in some type of way. Uh, you really can see it. Environmental identity shifts through interacting with a climate change impact a glacier landscape. That's from the International Journal of Science Education. Great read on bringing kids to at-risk natural environments and how that really shapes their feelings towards the environment and their desire to do things. More on that later. And then a case study of in-class use of a video game for teaching high school history in the Computers and Education video game. When we get into conversations about social studies specific content, a lot of it was drawn from there.

Alex 11:29

And we can link those articles in the show notes as well, right?

Luke 11:32

Yeah, I mean, and if you don't have academic databases at your disposal, I said some fancy words and some fancy magazine titles. So obviously I have great validity. Uh jokes aside, jokes aside, I will have like my entire thesis, like the more academic, like what I had to write for Hamlin on the site. So if you want to dig into that, my bibliography slash notes is available in there too.

Alex 11:56

Add fancy pants to Luke's list of identifiers. Yes, right.

Luke 12:00

I used Nadir in a text thread with Alex the other day. I was abreast. And he was like, nice. Good word, bud. Good word. I used the word unendoctrinated in one of these articles, and my professor just commented, excellent vocabulary. Nice. So, you know, vocab snob. Add it to the list of identifiers. All right. Uh, our first topic here, when we're we're gonna break off into some discussions, the two articles that I wrote very much do this as well. And the first subject is very much a bridge from our conversation earlier on semiotic domains to our conversations on identity, and that is learning to learn. We identify as learners, as a teacher, getting your kids to like identify with the content and just like themselves as like I'll give you the easiest example. Thinking like a historian is something that is that is advocated within social studies teaching, specifically through like Stanford, Stanford History Education Group, and other like high-end institutions. Like the idea is like giving the I d having kids identify the skills within that profession and like being a mathematician, being a math person, a math brain, having that, developing that, acting like a scientist. So, and then even at just like a base level, like learning how to learn and like loving how to learn and like seeing yourself as a learner. So, a lot of the times on this pod, the idea is to just kind of give more breadth and depth to the conversation that was taking place in the article. And my co-host Alex and brother is really gonna like I'll obviously come pretty heavy with the education forward ideas that is due to my identity, that's the way I've shaped and thought about this project. And as the website and the low five creator, content creator, and co-host of this podcast, Alex very much as a gamer and the things I just mentioned, like has his own perspective. There's a ton of validity to that in his relationship with games. So I'm gonna let him take off his uh when it comes to the idea of learning to learn, identifying as a learner. What game have you selected, sir?

Alex 14:08

Yeah, man. So one of the games that came to mind pretty immediately when we were talking about games that might fit into this identity aspect was Celeste, right? So Celeste is an action platformer that came out a couple years ago. It's a little indie joint.

Luke 14:22

Super cute, super cute art, great music.

Alex 14:24

It's great, great music, great art. It's kind of got that 8-bit look to it. But you play as a character and she is navigating her way up this mountain, right? Yes. So the platforming of this is to get to the top of the mountain. There's a great story that got goes along with it, but it's uh it's a grueling platformer, right? So when you mess up, you die. Yeah, but with the mechanics of the game, basically you just it doesn't matter that you die, you get to restart and try again, okay?

Luke 14:46

Super quick, like platforming is a term from like Mario. You jump from platform to platform.

Alex 14:52

Right. Yeah. So as you're trying to get from point A to point B, sure. Um, but it's it's not so easy, right?

Luke 14:57

No, it's it's known to be difficult when you quote unquote die, like you start over and it's actually really quick, which is important.

Alex 15:04

Yeah, so it keeps you going. So it's actually a game that encourages death. So failure would be a better term. Uh so when your character dies or fails uh the objective, you start over right away. So the idea is that it keeps pushing you, you keep trying it again and again to succeed, right?

Luke 15:17

Yeah.

Alex 15:18

Whereas um a game like you you bring up Mario, which is you know it's a classic example. So also a platformer, but you're given three lives to start. Yes. You can obtain more lives or opportunities to to complete this mission throughout the game. Where in whereas in Celeste, your lives are infinite. Yep. So you can keep trying. It's actually, you know, some people where a badge of honor is like, well, I had a thousand whatever desks before I I beat this game or whatever the case may be. But the the but it's so it's it's interesting because you know you have this really tough uh obstacle ahead of you. You have to jump, you can you know, use the buttons to make your your character like shoot forward, do some of the other things, she can hang out on the walls. Basically, there's all this like intricate stuff to be able to get from point A to point B.

Luke 16:01

Yeah.

Alex 16:01

Just this idea of learning how the mechanics work, trying and prodding and testing around the game environment area to succeed, I think is really interesting. But why I really love this game is because although on a surface level it's a really fun, hard platformer, yep, it also has this story attached to it about overcoming self-doubt and fear and anxiety, which is ties into that idea of a really difficult, challenging platformer, right? But the story itself, you know, you know, Celeste's making her way up this mountain and she's over in it, so that's like an actual term metaphor for this idea of uh overcoming yourself, right?

Luke 16:40

She's literally and figuratively climbing a mountain.

Alex 16:43

Right. So it's this uh overcoming that self-doubt, this fear, this anxiety, actually overcoming yourself to to reach the end goal. So I think that's really cool. And I think one, you know, like I just mentioned, the idea of prodding around this gameplay to try and become a master of it, but then adding that layer of the actual, like having that empathy or being able to relate to this character as a person because that's something that we're all trying to do in our own lives, right? Yeah, so seeing that reflected in a game like this, I think is really big for someone, you know, a gamer or whoever is playing to see themselves in Celeste, yeah, to see themselves, you know, trying to make it to the top of their mountain, their own personal mountains. I just think it's really cool. And it's cool to see video games pushing the boundary like that, right? Going beyond your your Mario's where you're just trying to save the princess, but actually tackling some of these tough gather coins and just the goofy trivial that the way we look at games, but really mind you, there are strawberries that you can collect in in Celeste for some bonus points. Mind you, there are some, yeah. But you know, the point is is like, you know, in Mario, you're trying to save the princess. In Celeste you're trying to overcome yourself, which is uh it's cool, it's a cool angle.

Luke 17:47

So it actually hits on identity in in a handful of ways, right? Like you are learning to learn this game, it learning isn't easy in this game. You you have to adapt this mindset and this idea of how to get through it, and you're being tested in all these ways. But like you mentioned on the other on the other side, like there's a real deep story there of overcoming, of identifying yourself and your struggles and fighting past them, and like it's depression and anxiety, awesome topics to be covering in a middle school and a high school. Totally, and another game super valid to be going through, definitely, yeah.

Alex 18:20

And another game that I'll I'll throw in there real quick is called Grizz. And Grizz is another it's a puzzle platformer, so uh slightly different than their action platformer, it's gonna be this slowed down. Uh you actually can't die in Grizz, but it's this beautiful game, it's got this like watercolor uh artwork to it. But the idea of Grizz is a g it's a platformer, so you are trying to make your way from one side to the other side of you know whatever you're point A to point B, right? Yeah, but it's all about grief and your character experiencing grief and overcoming grief, dealing with this fear of danger, frustration, and death, and trying to overcome that. And it's done in a very interesting way with the music and the art, like as as Grizz, your character, makes her way through this experience, more colors are added into her world, right? Forward, and so on each stage and the music changes, and there's more, you know, this watercolor sensations going on, and there's this more and more added because your character is uh is growing, and it's this very surreal journey through sorrow. But as time, as you progress, like the world becomes more vibrant and real. So it's it's a very interesting game that's been uh you know, it's great. And it's just like it's great again to see games tackle things like depression and grief in a in a very interesting way.

Luke 19:38

A word that comes to mind is disarming way. Yeah, yeah, like it it's it's a prickly subject, right? And it's not something that the wrong person can necessarily like always do, right? Like you have to have like the right type of relationship with someone to like get into some of those topics if you want to do so fruitfully. So like video games could be a very disarming way to tap into that. So what do you got, man? Little little sub-bonus bonus education subject there. On the last pod, I briefly talked about City Skylines. We have a whole pod dedicated to it, and I need to show myself as more than just a one-trick pony. Like I have thought of more games for these purposes. So within this idea of learning to learn and identifying as a fan of a certain type of thing. I'm gonna talk about the idea of like city building and settlement games, which yes, City Skylines is, but this is a genre that I that I live in. It's a pretty it's a pretty broad genre, but the idea that you either build a city, maintain a city, it could also be like a village, or just like really systems. And I want to mean my systems is like a word that you'd hear me use a lot would be like a production chain. So I need to gather wood, I get that wood to a carpenter, that carpenter makes it into planks, or a lumber mill, lumber mill makes it into planks, gets it to a carpenter, makes a specialty good, and then I sell that specialty good at my stall. And then my citizens are happier. So like these are these intricate production chains, and like once you get into use some vocab words, the semiotic domain of these city building or settlement games, you kind of become more fluent in them and you still have to learn new systems. But that process gets easier, and as you begin to identify with those games and play more of those games, that process of learning those systems becomes more fluid and more natural. And I think that's like as a social studies teacher, it'd be a really cool thing to be doing in school because I have to talk a lot about resource management. I have to talk about like production chains, like that has everything to do with how human settlement happens, survival, all these things that we talk about with culture, even so two games that I'd love to highlight because I especially last summer were not gonna talk about my Steam hours. Steam is a game platform that shows you how much you've played these games. We're not gonna talk about my hours played on these hundreds. I mean one or one or one or both of these might have cracked the hundreds, but um maybe not. Foundation is the first one. You're this kind of like medieval slash trying to think of like the proper era for it. You start off as like a small little group, and you gotta gather berries from bushes, you gotta go fishing, yeah. And then like I kind of mentioned earlier, you you get into these greater inter intricacies. You have to build a tavern, you have to supply that tavern with like mead. So you have to like or like stuff like where you're growing barley to get it brewed, to be it served at your pubs, and it's like don't be like, oh no, alcohol, like trust me, it's very wholesome. Like it's just like meeting the needs of your little let's say medieval township, and then like you grow out and you expand and you get new needs, and citizens have newer demands, and all of a sudden you're you're in charge of this very like beautiful interactive landscape where you're like farming sheep and like getting their wool. Is there combat in this game? Uh there's like kind of like this goofy little system where like you send some troops off, like the king asks for some troops that you have to like, you have to your fealty to the king, you have to send off some troops on some missions. So you don't see the combat, you just kind of train your soldiers and you send them out and they come back with some rewards.

Alex 23:06

I kind of love that though, because you know, a lot of people that are familiar in the gaming world with um strategy sims might think of your classics like Age of Empires, which is basically Yeah, it's another one where you are doing resource management, but it's all for basically for your army.

Luke 23:18

Yeah, and this one would be a lot more wholesome, and it also shows like the connections between cities and like how you need to strategically place things. Like you know, I'm not gonna you know build my you know, my sheep, my shepherd's pen. I you know, but I'm I'm not gonna put that so far away from my tailors because they need that raw material, right? Or like my windmills are gonna be pretty close to my farms and then my bakeries are gonna be pretty close to my windmills. So it's just kind of like this cool relationship, and then you have your markets nearby, but you have to have your housing near the market so people can get their goods, and like that's one. And then the other one's a game called Going Medieval, where you start as three settlers and it's like a harsh kind of survival sim slash management, and all these different pe they have all these different like needs, but they also have different skills. So you might have somebody who's really bad at cooking, but that's like their passion, man. And they like to keep them happy, you kind of gotta like let them contribute that, but also they like maybe they're a really good builder and you need them. But you assign them different tasks, you have to serve this one's a little bit more combat heavy, still not it's very cartoonish, um, and it's more based on surviving raids or like wild animal attacks. But you kind of build up, and it's the same thing with the production chains, but also has like some building mechanics, so like you build basements to cool your food so you can survive the winter and you have a certain amount of food sort of like stashed up. So these are just some games that it's just like it's this idea of learning how to learn, sure, and learning these systems and becoming comfortable, trial and error. I remember with uh going medieval specifically, I sent you some super frantic texts, and I'm like, I cannot survive. Like, apparently they're bringing battering rams, and I wasn't ready for that. And now my best cook, who was the only one that knew how to smoke and preserve meats, like died, and then now I'm not gonna have any food for the winter, so I'm like scrambling, and then I you know I it's so you have to become a critical thinker, right? Yeah, super, super so like, and it also like as a social studies person, I can see the validity in like making that subject area come alive. Sure, and that ties into my like childhood playing games like you mentioned Age of Empires. I identified as a social studies student pretty quickly because of my love of these games. Sure. So our next topic is role-playing outside of your own identity. There is a vast open ocean of content. You can literally play a big game out right now as power wash simulator, yeah, and you just power wash buildings and people loving it, very cathartic, uh soothe core gaming, chill core gaming. So, like, jokes aside, like there's literally a game where you mow lawns. There's literally a game where you're power washing, like there's almost a game for everything. So that gives you like the ability to just be whoever and whatever you want. So, what's a game you'd like to talk about that really helps you expand your identity and like just like explore and be someone else or someone that maybe you want to be?

Alex 26:08

Oh man, there's so many. I think it's hard. I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up the Sims game. It's a it's a life simulator where you uh create a character and basically live their life.

Luke 26:19

Um even though you end up making like yourself and projecting your own, yeah. Right, right, right. But sometimes, you know, I'm an astronaut now.

Alex 26:26

Yeah, sure, sure. But it's it's one of those things. So you know, it's um it's I haven't played, I haven't poured a bunch of hours into the newer, more refined ones, but in I played a lot of uh definitely put enough hours into the Sims and Sims 2 and the various expansion packs. And sure did. But uh household classic, all of us did. But this idea of you know, you get to choose what you know what career you want your person to have. You get to literally build a house for this person and decorate it the way that you want that person to live or to the things they have. So does it uh cater a little bit too much to our capitalistic society? Yes, sure. Very materialistic. But you know, in in in terms of identity, though, I think it'd just be remiss not to bring up a game like The Sims, right? Because you're literally placing your identity or you know, or you're totally roleplaying an identity that you want to see played out by one of these characters, right?

Luke 27:19

Uh so experiment to poke and prod and these types of things.

Alex 27:23

And I think uh I think more recently though, uh we have a podcast about Red Dead Redemption 2, and I sure recently also finished that game. We'll have some content about that coming up as well. But I found myself really lending to the role play aspect of this identity. Being a cowboy.

Luke 27:42

Don't bury the lead. You get to be a cowboy, take care of a horse.

Alex 27:46

So in this game, you you play a character called Arthur Morgan, and he is a very morally conflicted person, right? Yeah. And there's and the way the mechanics is work in this game is you can actually go down a road where you are more, you know, they there's a meter. There's one end of the meter is dark and the other is light. So we use the the light and dark trope. But um dark side, light side, right yep. But basically the reason I bring this up though is beyond those mechanics of the game, I find myself so immersed in it that and it's it's just a beautifully done game to begin with, but I found myself so immersed in it that there are certain things happening in the gameplay where I wasn't just like trying to do a fetch quest or point try to go from point A to point B or whatever. Uh a good example that I bring up is there was I was riding my horse and all of a sudden I hear someone calling for help, and you go into the woods a little bit and you find them in the tent, right? Yeah, they're like they're just saying they're really sick and you uh you're a bandit.

Luke 28:43

Tuberculosis or something.

Alex 28:46

Yeah, there is that game touches on the game touches on that as well.

Luke 28:49

Yes, something that's highly contagious, though.

Alex 28:50

Yeah, so like the this person in the tent, though, they're like, ah, you know, help me out. Do you have any medicine? And you know, we live in 2022 right now. COVID's still around, but we're just getting, you know, like we're COVID is we all know what COVID is. And so, like, so here I am playing this game where this person's in this tent saying that they need medical help and they have this super contagious whatever's going on. I can't remember exactly what the deal was, but you have a bandana in this game, right? So as I approach the tent, I was like, ah, you know, I'm gonna see if I can help this person. So I live, I go out of the way to lift my bandana up over and put on my as a mask, right? So I'm putting my mask on in this game to go help a person like that's sick or whatever. And I was like, I just kind of chuckled at myself because it was like me just embodying like role-playing as this cowboy in this game, yeah. And then, but also like, you know, implementing and inflicting some of my own personal like biases and and learnings into this. But this is the fact that I could do that, and then you know, I could have just gone in, I could have skipped it entirely, or I could have went in with I didn't have definitely didn't help me to put the mask on.

Luke 29:51

No.

Alex 29:52

Uh but or in the game's sake, but uh it was just funny that I took that step because I was really jumping into that role and making that a reality. For myself.

Luke 30:00

Yeah, uh, two quick notes. One, we're actually going to bring that game back up towards the tail end of this podcast briefly. And then two, the game came out in like I want to say 2018. And uh you use the bandana usually to hide your identity and commit cowboy crimes. Yeah. But um, if you wear your mask into town, people are like, why are you wearing that mask? Yeah. I don't like it. And I'm like, this aged interestingly. Oh, definitely. But uh yeah, okay, so for mine, uh, there's two things I'd like to highlight as far as role-playing outside of this own identity and exploring, and just like it's like a safe space to like try these different things and these different concepts. The first is there's a video game series that's been near and dear to my heart since high school, which is Assassin's Creed. Now it's kind of funny because it's like, okay, why would you suggest ever playing a game for education called Assassin's Creed, where you're essentially a time traveling assassin, but there is a discovery mode in the game where you peacefully go about this painstakingly recreated historical city. They've covered the ancient like Middle East, like Jerusalem, they've covered Renaissance Italy. Um, most recently is like Vikings within England, but they've had like really cool Mediterranean, um, really cool um America around like colonial like revolutionary war. But I digress. It's really cool. It's like a way for you to immerse yourself in like a historical simulation that's like painstakingly researched and actually like you know, I hesitate to say accurate, but like it's probably fiction, yeah, and it's probably like your best way, other than Mark Zuckerberg's creepy metaverse, but like it's probably your best way to like walk through ancient Greece. Right. And you interact with like Socrates. And is it a perfect recreation of Socrates? No, but like do you get pin pick do you pick up hints of his personality? Sure. And do you pick up hints of how he may have or may not have interacted with people? And like it might not be perfectly accurate, but there is like a great way of your role-playing within this historical fiction, and it gives you something to associate to, and it also kind of like inspires you to look more into it. Like, it might not be realistic, but that might inspire you to research more about that subject so you begin to identify more with that identity that you picked up in this game. So it's a fun role play, and then just something to be said about the idea of like it's also a safe space for a lot of marginalized populations when the game is done correctly and when the game game is done inclusively, like that's still something that needs to come a long way as far as like more hair types, more skin types, all those types of things. It ranges all the way from like I can be an orc or an elf, but sometimes like the true capability of these roleplays is like I can be a gay man accepted by my neighbors in the Sims. And that's like a real thing. Um LGBT class communities have had their qualms with the Sims for specific reasons, but it's also been seen as a particularly progressive game in other points too, because that's like I know for a fact, like tangenti or like anecdotally. Like I, you know, in the neighborhood, like I know some kids who experimented a little bit more with same-sex kissing than like I did within the game, but like that was like a safe space for them to do so, and then like it provided an avenue of which the game like allowed same-sex marriage and couples. It's pretty cool. Yeah. These games can let you be something as extravagant as like an animal. They can let you be something as mundane as a lawnmower, right? But they also can give you a safe space to be who you want to be. So that's pretty cool. Our next topic kind of weaves into each other, uh, but I'll I'll separate them first for identification purposes, and then we'll kind of talk about the relationship of them both. But civic identity and environmental identity, or environmentalism in general. Our civic identity is how we see ourselves and our role within our community, and due to the fact that it's an increasingly small world, we're ever connected through the internet, and it's you know, big world, small world type of thing. So this can range from how we see ourselves and our actions and our roles within our community all the way up to the entire globe. How are you as a St. Paul citizen, a Minnesotan, a Midwesterner, an American, global citizen, all the way up? And then there is environmental identity, and that is how you interact with the environment and your relationship to the environment. Are you a steward of the environment? Are you someone who just uses the environment to your own pleasures? Are you someone who cares for what is your environmental identity, and developing that environmental identity? And as you can imagine, when you're listening to those two, they're pretty easy to blend. Your civic actions, how you take care of your community, can also very much include how you take care of the environment within your community. Thinking about the world outside of yourself and seeing yourself within the world, though. Both the political world, the human systems world, but also that environmental world and that like how your actions affect the world around you. So, for some games, one that we played pandemic hit uh March 2022. I mean, it was here before, but that's when the shutdowns happened, right?

Alex 35:21

I think so, yeah.

Luke 35:22

Yep, March 2022, and then right released that weekend that all of America shut down. Are you saying that Nintendo's behind the pandemic? They financially benefited. But not the conspiracy corner. But just like the perfect timing for this type of game was Animal Crossing. And we touched on it ever so briefly in the last pod, but in Animal Crossing, you start off as this adorable little villager on this like adorable little island, and you your raccoon landlord slash overlord capitalism Tom Nook sets you up with that first attempt, and then you get a house, and then you kind of build up this island and you care for this island around you. And it is a game that um Alex and I, along with some friends, like very much like we could not see each other in person, so we started to hang out online. So there's like actually kind of a few ways that this talks about environmental and political activity or identity.

Alex 36:13

A fun example that I can remember of our time with Animal Crossing was it was our our homie Ace's birthday, right? Yeah, and like you mentioned, we couldn't all get together to celebrate or anything like that in person because the pandemic was hot and heavy. Yeah. So Ace actually threw a little birthday party at his island. Yeah. So we all got together. We all got on the Dodo Airlines and uh flew our way over there, and it was just like it was fun because Ace had gone out of his way to curate his island for a birthday party. He had set up cupcakes for everybody, like he had like grab bags, like different items. Uh you know, it was just fun. And you know, we were able to go in there and kind of poke around and check out what he had done with his island.

Luke 36:52

Yeah.

Alex 36:52

Uh kind of like to see because that was one of the cool things. Like, you spend all this time curating your own island, but then you get to go and check out what this other person has been up to you. And in this case, it was fun to have multiple people come through to to celebrate Ace's birthday virtually in Animal Crossing, you know?

Luke 37:08

Yeah, and it's in the game, like I could do a better job of explaining, but like you build up your island and you you care for your island in a way that like an active citizen hopefully cares for their community. Now, there are some selfish motivations, you want a bigger house, so there's like you know, there's some obvious capitalism in there too, but there's definitely like your civic duty to your island. Like you work together, you care for things, you build a bridge that your citizens are going to use, you help out your neighbors all the time. Right. And I think it's a good example because it's a very kid-friendly but adult-played for sure, forward game. So it's just the type of game that you could introduce to like literally like a first-time gamer. My wife played a bunch of it, and she is not a gamer, but it was it was very accessible to her, and like you care for both your local environment and your local like communities, so it's like kind of a blend of those two games, and there is academic work. Could this be used to teach kids like ecology and environmental care? Like you clean up the beach, you identify a bunch of different animals, you collect them and give them to your like growing museum where they have like different it's basically like a zoo/slash museum on the island, but like you put a ton of time and work, and some of it's selfish, but a lot of it is just trying to beautify and create and care for the neighbors in the world around you. So it's a pretty cool game.

Alex 38:27

So it's interesting when you think about this online community play that you have in games, right? So in something like Animal Crossing, like you get to go in and kind of see how someone has maybe curated their island. Now you have a game, you know, games like Fortnite or you know, Call of Duty or whatever, you know, these massive online um games that people play with each other, you know, they're a lot of them are shooters or whatever. So the the academic integrity they're not great, but it is super interesting the options that online git play give you to for teamwork in a in something like that, right? So a lot of these games you go in and you have to navigate as a team to accomplish a certain goal, right? So you're actually talking to someone, you know, maybe coaching somebody through somebody through something, or literally giving your teammate certain items to help them progress, right?

Luke 39:17

Yeah, I mean, and to tie it back to when I like mentioned some of the academic works that this is centered around. So the book The Civic Potential of Video Games, there's two games they highlight, one of them being the Sims, and that players of all the gamers that they like were communicating with, people who played a bunch of the Sims were more likely to be like involved in civic identity and like civic action and community improvement. Right. Whereas players of Halo 2, popular first person shooter, a lot of online lobbies, were more likely to identify as like a teacher of content and like a guide to other players. They developed these online communities. So if we're talking about these civic mindsets of thinking of yourself as a part of a community, there was like very much, and if you talk to like any of us old heads, like there was like a very much large communal aspect to this online game. Could it be toxic? Sometimes, yes.

Alex 40:06

Or take a look at uh Grand Theft Auto 5 online. Sure. So you have these you have communities of folks that people have poured, and you know it's a great game, but like people have poured hours and hours. They've actually built literal communities within this game, right? With HSAs and everything. Yeah, it's just wild. But you know, there's people subscribing, it's cool, it's exciting. It's people subscribing to this uh HOAs. Yeah, HOS my bad, different, different things. But people subscribing to this um, you know, the to this role-playing identity thing within these video games, and maybe that wasn't the intention of them when they came out, but people are using them as a way to roleplay and then you know insert themselves into this uh you know, for a for a pretty hot term in the world right now in the metaverse.

Luke 40:46

Sure. And it's just this development of these online communities and the way that they identify with each other, but also they take on these new roles as like teachers, mentors, experts. Which, for you know, we talked about learning to learn and like seeing yourself as a learner and competent, like you've become a master of this domain, and you want like people inherently often want to share that knowledge, and that definitely ties into like the civic in your community. What is the name of the game that we put we played a couple times online?

Alex 41:17

The where you're the door. Deep Rock Galactic. Yeah, so in Deep Rock Galactic, you have you know a lot, and this this isn't different this isn't um this isn't abnormal of games like this, but there's different character class types, right? Yes, so you get to choose uh whether you want to be a gunner or whether you want to be. Do you remember what the other ones are?

Luke 41:34

There's there's like a minor, there's a gunner, there's a scout, I think there's an engineer.

Alex 41:41

Uh depending on which character you choose, it gives you certain attributes that are gonna help you reach your end goal, right? And this is another game where you're you're playing, you know, you can play solo, but you can also play with your friends to try and achieve this goal of going, you know, digging down, but you can talking to your friends while you play, uh, achieve certain aspects of whatever your end goal is by talking through whatever you're doing. But then also if you're the engineer or if you're you know, like if you're the gunner, like you're probably gonna be on point taking down some of the enemies or whatever, because you're uh given certain uh equipment and attributes to help you do that better, right?

Luke 42:14

So it's just you all have your specialized role and right. So once again talk through these things, yeah.

Alex 42:19

Right, once again, playing into this teamwork idea, but then also meeting that role and then uh kind of embodying that role and working with uh with others to get it to get it done.

Luke 42:27

So James Paul Ghee, when going through an example like that, he uses World of Warcraft, which kind of lets you know of the timestamp. Um, modern day examples, Deep Rock Galactic would be a newer one, Overwatch is another team one. So these are games that like as a parent or just as a consumer you wouldn't think are necessarily always good, but like a lot of teamwork, a lot of synergizing, a lot of skill, a lot of things that we're trying to get students to do in classrooms is like communicating and working together. Uh League of Legends. I've come upon a few that I I wanted to highlight in a different way because I'm very excited about them, but they're not out yet. So in future writings, you might see me hopefully kind of review them through an educational lens. But just this idea of there's these few games, and I can I can kind of see their potential and how they pull what I'm hoping, but I can definitely see from the way these games are being marketed and the way they're being built, like I think that they're gonna like they've piqued my interest with their strong ties to these types of identities. And the first one is the wandering village, where it's another one of these management city building games, which you were building a little civilization on top of like a giant wandering turtle.

Alex 43:29

Oh, yeah, I've seen some dates for this.

Luke 43:32

Yeah, so one, the art looks beautiful and it's very compelling, but like what I and this is why I'd love to see how it turns out. To me, it's like, okay, that means that the earth that you are living on is more clearly a metaphor for a living thing that you need to have this symbiotic relationship with, right? You need to care for it, you can't overburden it, you are tied to its fate, it is tied to your fate. So I thought that's kind of interesting. That could be like a really cool conversation to have with uh players, students, whomever. The other one's a game called Terra Nil, and the idea of instead of building from nature into industrialized society, it's like an industrial society that has gone to waste. And in this game, you are re-beautifying the earth, you are basically turning all of these machines and all these landscapes back to nature. So that's like a nice little narrative flip through the gameplay, and that kind of ties into those environmental themes and that environmental identity and developing that as well in a really compelling way, like just kind of flipping that narrative and giving you instead of you starting with a blank nature nature-field map and turning it into city, you're doing the opposite. Interesting, yeah, and how that could really identify the way that you interact with the environment. So for some more obvious connections games where you as the individual have to work for the community good, saving the world or kingdom, ultimate trope, but if you want to you know strip it down to its core, it's like a lot of that hero concept, right? Like just the the work of one mighty individual overcoming the obstacles, working for something outside of your own self-interests. Those are in I think a Zelda comes to mind. But like those themes and games that that gives you an idea of working towards something other than just yourself, identifying yourself within this greater community, the greater good, or the environment. And then one game I want to focus on that I have played that kind of ties into those games where I was like sneak peeking is Airborne Kingdom. Do you remember playing that one with me?

Alex 45:20

Uh I played a lot, I remember watching you play a little bit, and then uh I did download it. I've dabbled, but I haven't gotten really far into it.

Luke 45:27

It's this another game with just beautiful art, but you're like you've rediscovered this lost technology to like fly above, and you're like this giant man, how do I even explain it? You're like this giant flying city, airborne can be.

Alex 45:40

I don't know how to do it.

Luke 45:41

Yeah, that's fair. And like, so there's these themes of like resource management, and like if you use up everything on the ground, because you're floating above, but you send people down to gather supplies that you use. So you have to be very careful with how you treat the world because you do use the world the world gives to you, but if you take too much, you're left bare and both you and the world go to decay. Right. So that kind of develops that environmental mindset with a careful eye and curation towards having those conversations. But there's also like you have these little land-based kingdoms that you communicate with and like do favors and missions for, and they help you out and you help them out. And in that process, you kind of piece together your own history that has been lost and you aid them. So that to me is just a game that I was just looking for an excuse to talk about. But honestly, it just does a great job of kind of piecing those like what are you working towards? Sure, who are you working with? How do you work with others? And then also how are you caring for the environment and how is the environment caring for you? So I've babbled on long enough. What are some games that you think really kind of meet either civic, environmental, or maybe a little both?

Alex 46:46

I brought up Red Dead Redemption 2 earlier, and I think that's an interesting one, again, because of the choices you make in that game. So a lot of games today, your decisions will affect the outcome of the story. And I think Red Dead is a cool one in which that happens. So they're kind of uh you're this cowboy outlaw guy who is struggling with this idea of the uh America not being the you know the land of the free that he wanted it to be.

Luke 47:10

That he and his game was very much to be kind of taking place past westward expansion and kind of when like industrialization is moving west and kind of catching up.

Alex 47:18

Yeah, uh, but I think it's super interesting because he's grappling with all these ideas, but he's also grappling with his own morality, Arthur, the the protagonist in this game, also you as a role player. But I think that's an interesting one where your decisions will affect the outcome. And I think it's super interesting that you know, in the civic mindset, that you know, how you treat people in the game is going to affect how the outcome of that game is, right? Another one that I really like, uh Well the pause.

Luke 47:43

You also you're within, although an outlaw bandit community, you're very much a family. That's true.

Alex 47:49

And your actions are tied to how you treat each other, but also like what are you doing for the group and depending on how you depending on how you act in the game, uh your your family will interact with you differently, right?

Luke 48:02

Yeah, and you also have wonderful interactions with the nature. You go fishing all day long. There's actually an academic article I have LinkedIn that um talks about like people learn more about ecology and like identifying wildlife through that game.

Alex 48:16

That's super cool.

Luke 48:16

Saint Denis, the industrial city. I know. I know you had some the game gives pretty open commentary on that too for the player to meditate on.

Alex 48:23

I can't remember specifically how what the dialogue was when you enter Saint-Denis. Saint-Denis is like the big city uh in this game, right? It's kind of got a New Orleans feel, you know, it's more more of this southern city, but it's it's very interesting because you play a good chunk of that game, you're you're out in nature, and you know, your whole gang or your family totally, and your your gang, your family, they're they want to live out in this this open, you know, this uh this free America, this free world, but it you know, that's just this idea that's is uh it's waning, right? It's not it's not it doesn't seem to be working out for them. Yeah uh but they they end up having to go to Saint-Denis for whatever reason, and there's a very awesome cutscene where it kind of you know it shows Saint-Denis, it's an impressive city, but there's also it's you know, it's right at this industrial time, so it's like you're you've been dealing with all of this uh beautiful landscape, and then all of a sudden there's this these billowing stacks of like nasty smog and like whatever coming up.

Luke 49:17

The industrial revolution area like smoot everywhere and it's grimy and gross, and the character like very openly is like this is gross.

Alex 49:25

Yep, totally. That's one that I think definitely meets the bill, had a ton of fun playing. Another one that comes to mind is The Witcher Three, is a game that I got widely immersed in. Now, that one I bring this up because I get a role-playing as well.

Luke 49:39

Exactly.

Alex 49:39

So I bring that one up again because the decisions you make in this game impact the outcome, and how you choose to to to speak with or your answers or how you choose to react to certain characters is going to impact your relationship with them down the line in this game, right? I don't want to give any spoilers away because I think there's like some great, there's some great story outcomes for that game, but I just love the idea, you know, when you're grappling with identity in video games, I love this. And then uh another one that comes to mind is uh Mass Effect. I haven't played that one, but it's the same idea, these games, and there's a there's a uh a plethora of them, there's a whole bunch where you your your choices impact what's going to happen. And I think that's a I think that's a really cool concept in video games. It's you know, it's not too far off from your your Dungeons and Dragons, that type of thing.

Luke 50:25

You know, if you your autonomy and your agency within this storytelling is just an entire massive layer.

Alex 50:31

And mind you, it's not super open. Uh obviously, there are there are limited options, limited outcomes because it is a programmed game, but at the same time, I just love this idea that like your decisions have impact, right? And so you take an idea like that into the real world because it is real, you know. It's like you know, you the what you decide in these games is gonna impact the outcome, just like your decisions in real life are gonna impact the outcome of whatever whatever you're up to.

Luke 50:54

Yeah, no, and um honestly, some some community feedback would be awesome on this one if they're if you're screaming at the recording right now and you're like, How did you not mention this game? Add some comments, add some commentary. There is just so much directions you can go in, especially when we're talking about the immersive roleplay. And I know I've been reading a lot of articles on like PC Gamer, Ktaku, different sites, Polygon. The idea of these environmentally forward games like Terra Nil that I mentioned earlier, like that is that has garnered a lot of attention. Like they're definitely starting to creep into commercial landscapes, and you know I mean look at art media is a mirror, right? And it holds up what matters to you at the time. So, like, with the environmental concern happening right now, like video games have become a fascinating outlet for those conversations, and like developing these environmental identities. And the reason I brought up that one about the the article about the glacial landscapes and the kids being to being able to see it and how that like really shakes them and they like they want to like impact the environment afterwards. Vide games like give you an outlet to do so. So in the previous companion pod I talked about Imagine Earth where you have to manage the colonization of a new planet and make sure that you don't like let it ruin, go to waste and like managing your resources thoughtfully. Like those themes are getting worked into games, so like if you got an awesome suggestion, throw it out there. Of course we missed it. This is a massive conversation. It was hard to write an article and keep it. I had to break it into two pieces and it could have gotten broken into more pieces because there's many, many, many conversations to have around identity. This whole project could have been around gaming and identity.

Alex 52:35

Right. And uh we'd love to continue that conversation with you. So do not hesitate to send us an email at hello at lofegaming.com and we'll get back at you.

Luke 52:45

Yeah. Join us for our last companion podcast on the jobs and career focused article.