Social Learning Theory and Video Games' Effects on its Players AttitudeTowards Indigenous People

Social Learning Theory and Video Games Potential Effects on its Players Attitude

Towards Indigenous Peoples

Videos games are getting increasingly popular and they have changed the way children

spend their times. Due to the popularity of video games, they are designed to be played on

almost all sorts of digital devices. They can be played online or offline, on console systems, on computers or cellphones. Recently, smart TVs have been equipped with video games as well.

Statistics show that video games have a significant presence in the lives of children and adults. In 2014, the consumer spending on video games in Canada amounted to 1.21 billion Canadian dollars and is expected to reach 1.47 billion by the end of 2019 (PwC, 2014). The huge number of hours of exposure to video games can have strong effects on the players and what they do in the game can affect who what behaviors they form. Social learning theory (SLT) posits that behavior is learned through imitation of attractive, rewarded models (Bandura, 1994) and the repeated behaviors can remain in the players and become part of their personality. According to SLT video games can have very strong impacts because of their attraction and active identification with the characters in the game. Furthermore, the high amount of exposure to vide games can leave have a stronger effect.

There are lots of studies on the effect of violent video games on the children’s’ behaviors

(Ferguson, & Olson, 2014; DeCamp & Ferguson, 2017; Greitemeyer, 2018; Gray, 2016;

Ferguson, 2015). However, the effects of video games cannot be limited to violence and

aggression. Madigan (2015) goes further and asserts that the appearance of avatars are in-game representations of ourselves and can affect our thoughts and behaviors just like wearing different clothes can. This can show that the effect of the video games on the players’ behaviors can be much more than what we think they are.

In another study, Beasley and Collins Standley (2002) showed that female characters are

vastly underrepresented in 47 video games that they studied and those who are present are less clothed than their male counterparts. They found that Female characters are more likely to be seen in low-cut clothing and with bare arms and are dressed in a way to bring attention to their bodies, particularly their breasts. By refereeing to social learning theory (Bandura, 1965) they asserted that exposure to such show of female characters develops a gender role discrimination and emphasizes women’s sexuality by drawing attention to their breasts.

There have also been some studies regarding the effect of games on the players’ concept

of colonization. The most famous game that rose controversies due to the game’s subject is Sid Meier’s Colonization and Sid Meier’s Civilization series. In Civilization IV the players have the ability to colonize the Americas. Variety reporter Ben Fritz writes in a blog post that Civilization allows the players to do “horrific things” and the game is a “whitewash of the worst events of human history” (website reference). However, not all the game critics agree with him and believe that Colonization is successful at showing the viewpoint of colonialists during colonization (Mir & Owens, 2013). Mir and Owens (2013) looked at this game from another point of view and believe that games like this provoke feelings of guilt in players and have the power to be used as a vehicle for exploring the past and understanding history. Another game critic believes that history should not be distorted in games and a game like Colonization can have a rhetorical purpose beyond its surface subject matter (website reference). He believes that not showing colonization is a whitewash since it is not showing the truth. Whatever the purpose of the game is, based on social learning theory (Banduras, 1965) it is rational to accept that destroying Native cities to receive extra gold can have implicit effects on children through the process of reinforcement, observation and imitation. We know that colonization is not finished yet and if we are planning to decolonize we should give options to players to develop a country without killing the indigenous people. Another point is that the games with the themes of Colonization, Consumerism, Capitalism and Extractivism are not limited to Colonization and Civilization. In the following, I will provide a brief description of one computer and one smartphone strategic game and try to illustrate how the meaning of “Civilization” is being formed and showed by western game designers through video games. I will start with a game designed for smart phones and move on to a computer game.

Rise of Civilizations

Rise of Civilization is a strategic game designed for smart phone platforms. Reading the

description of the game is enough to understand how game works:

“From the depths of obscurity to the peaks of legends, you will be the author of your

civilizations history. Will you lunch epic wars and conquer the entire world? Or rise up as a

virtuous leader renowned for your sagacity? Will you set off to explore the unknown as a

pioneer? Or dedicate yourself to helping your own people?”

Before the players start the game, they have to choose one Civilized empire among eight,

including Rome, Britain, Spain, Germany, France, China, Japan, and Korea (Figure 1). There is no option for the indigenous players to choose their nation or see their nation as one of the

civilized ones. Also, it implies to the players of other nations that the indigenous people have

never been civilized. After choosing a nation the players watch a short clip that shows how

people of their nation arrived in the new land

and try to survive and build their cities.

It doesn’t say whose land it is but when you continue playing the game you see that your city is surrounded by walls to keep it safe from the barbarians. Barbarians are very scary, huge and with much simpler devices than the westerners and the westerners are shown as hard-working and benign people who are being killed by hostile and malicious barbarians. A closer look at the barbarians reveals more similarity between them and the indigenous people, especially the necklace they are wearing (Figure3). The skirmishes with nearby barbarians never end and just gets more difficult as the game progresses. The players also send scouts to make new discoveries. The scouts explore the area and may come back with gold or other precious things. This game has been downloaded more than five million times so far according to Google Play and can be played by anyone over the age of ten (Apple Store age limit is nine). Colonization can be seen all over the game from the title of the game to the plot, characters and game goals. The native people are beyond the walls of the fort (Donald, 2009) in current video games. There should be further studies on how such games can affect their players’ attitudes and what they learn from the game but a superficial look at the surface of the game can be enough to understand how the native people are being seen by the designers of, at least, this game. Considering the fact that at least five million people are playing this game (google play), how can we expect a change of attitude toward the native people when such powerful tools are forming our thoughts. How can we expect the indigenous people not to hate themselves when they are being shown five million times every day how detestable and heinous they are.

There are lots of strategic games among the smartphone games with very similar features

namely, Rise of Empire, Age of Z and Sid Meier’s Civilization. However, a more profound

search in this area can reveal a huge number of games with similar characteristics. These games have different goals, stories, graphic designs, characters, etc. but they have one mutual feature; none of them considers the indigenous or native people as civilized people with kind hearts and sincere natures. None of them depicts the indigenous as sources of knowledge about the land and as helpful people who helped the settlers survive. In the continue, I will describe a computer game and elaborate on their anti-indigenous features.

Tropico Series

There are many similar games with the similar theme of conquering lands, building cities

and developing civilization among the computer strategic games. In Red Dead Revolver (2004), and Gun (2005), killing “Indians” is rewarded and there are lots of other games that show the native people as savage and enemies like Rise of Civilization that I discussed above. However, for this part, I decided to review a different game and look at it through Consumerism, Capitalism and Extractivism point of view. Tropico is a construction and management simulation video game. The main goal of any Tropico game is to stay in power as the president of a newly independent island in South America during the Cold War period of history:

You, the newly installed dictator of an obscure Caribbean Island, must create a life of

prosperity and happiness for your people. Build farms to feed them, tenements to house

them, pubs to lift their spirits and churches to save their souls. (Tropico back cover,

PopTop Software, 2001)

Players have a god-view of the game and their decisions affect the result of the game.

Wrong decisions can end in riots, demonstrations, revolutions, or even invasion by the US or

USSR army. Tropico features Latin-styled Caribbean music. Although tropical islands are home of many native peoples like Taino, Igneri, Ciguayo, etc., the music, characters and languages used in the game show no signs of its native people. I will skip the non-indigenous aspect of the game because I don’t want to repeat what I said about Rise of Civilization and move on to look at other aspects of the game.

Extractivism is defined as the activities to remove large quantities of natural resources

that are not processed, especially for export and it includes oil, minerals, farming, forestry, and fishing. (Acosta, 2013). Extractivism can include renewable sources like water or forests because the rate of extraction is so high that nature is unable to renew the resource (Acosta, 2013). Considering the fact that Extractivism started with the colonisation, it can be said that it is a colonial phenomenon and the revenues of extraction rarely benefit the local people or nations and most of the extractions are for export. With these ideas in mind, we are going to look at the Tropico computer video game. In the game, in order for the players, as the president of the game to be in power, there are two ways. You may either follow a “socialist path of factories, mines, logging and fishing or chase capitalist dollars by building resorts to lure Yanqui tourists” (Tropico back cover, PopTop Software, 2001). However, money has much stronger power in managing the problems of the game so either way, you will have to go for money to win with no ethical boundaries. After failing the game several times, you learn that the best way out is to deplete the natural resources, make money, and then build luxury hotels to lure American tourists and continue making money and stay in power. The natural resources are oil, mines, farms and forestry. Interestingly, you can increase the extraction by employing more miners and applying new technologies.

The sources finish faster and the soil erodes with no chance of renewing itself; you should have built your hotels by then. These are the examples of Extractivism that we are facing in the 21st century. As well as meeting the financial needs of the citizens, each citizen has an affiliation with a political faction, which links their respect for the President to the happiness of the faction's leader and how well the faction's goals are being met. The factions are as follows: Communists, Capitalists, Religious, Intellectuals, Militarists, Nationalists, Environmentalists, Industrialists, and Globalists. As it was said at the beginning of this part, the setting of the game is a tropical island so there should be a faction for the indigenous people but as it can be seen the designers have no attention to this aspect of the game.

The player in the game is clearly playing as a dictator who doesn’t care about anything

other than money and keeping the power at any costs. The players have the power to kill, bribe or jail the environmentalists or any other protectors. Playing the game becomes synonymous with “playing the colonizer” and the players are unconsciously incorporated into the game ideology and follow colonial principles without being aware of naturalized colonizing worldviews through game rules (Magnet, 2006). Tropico sold 1 million copies in total by November 2007 (Kim, November 14, 2007), has been selling its updated versions of Tropico 3, 4, 5 since then and its version 6 is coming in 2019. Here I ask the same question, how can we expect a change of attitude against colonizing and towards decolonizing when such powerful tools with extraordinary graphics are forming our thoughts? In the continue, I will review a video game that is designed to teach a black part of Canadian history about the indigenous people.

The Raven and the Lights

This game is a horror game that was released in 2015 to illuminate Canada’s dark history

of residential schooling and its damage on thousands of indigenous students. The Raven and the Lights uses a fictional story to show this history. The designers have used the element of horror in the game to help the players understand a bit of real-life terror that the indigenous children experienced.

The game is a first-person action game and the character is not visible. The player sees

the game through the eyes of the main character. The music is a typical horror music, the setting is always at night in northern Canada in a residential school. The game starts with a car crash in British Colombia, August, 1974. The player has to find a way through the jungle in a snowy weather, he finds a shelter, which is an old and abandoned residential school The player should dodge monsters and creatures while picking up documents (letters, diary entries, and records—that tell the story of a former residential-school student—referred to as Sixty- Four—who was raped by Reverend Caldwell (the clerical patriarch of the school). That student is later revealed to be your mother.

Raven and the Light is a great step towards understanding the lives of those who suffered

from the residential schools through video games. The difference between this game and the

games I introduced before is that this game is mainly a serious game (designed for educational games) and not a commercial game. Serious games are usually assigned by teachers or parents to the children to play and learn; on the other hand, commercial games are so sexy that children would love to spend their free time on. Unfortunately, the number of times a commercial game like Civilization or Tropico gets downloaded or bought and played is significantly higher and so is their effects.

Furthermore, games like Rise of Civilization or Colonization are very implicit in

transferring anti-indigenous ideas. Players unconsciously enjoy killing native characters of the game because they receive points for them and points gives them a feeling of achievement. Such games form habits and behaviors gradually and shape the players’ attitudes. There are more indigenous games being designed nowadays, Huni Kuin ( to teach the history of Huni Kuin), RezWorld ( to teach indigenous languages) Mikan ( to teach Anishnaabe language and traditions) Honour Water ( to teach the value of water and Land) and Gathering Native Foods (to teach how to collect food and preserve the environment for its habitats). These are all great steps, but to catch up with commercial games we should integrate indigenous worldviews into commercial games.

Conclusion

The Land of the indigenous people is being colonized by game designers. Native people

are being killed and the players get points, coins and rewards. In the world of video games, not only are we far from decolonization but at the very beginning of colonizing the indigenous lands, murdering them, extracting their sources and loudly and proudly telling the world that we brought civilization to them. It shows that in no way have the western countries regretted

colonizing the world. Regret should be seen in all forms of communication; From language to

books, movies and video games. Games, as new forms of media, can have devastating effects on the indigenous kids who get killed and non-indigenous kids who kill to win.

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