one lately? I bet you get sucked in.” The latter approach is the one
I find most appealing since it is the most true to my experience. I
found my first attempt at playing a computer game exhilarating,
frustrating, humiliating, challenging and fun. However, computer
games are considered suspect intellectually, much like comic
books were before them. Healy, author of best selling books such
as Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children’s
Minds—For Better and Worse
poses the question this way: “Could
children’s mental habits, such as internally generated motivation,
attention, oral expression, listening skill, imagination, visual and
verbal imagery, inner speech, or sequential analysis be affected by
having their brains externally engaged by more holistic, fast-paced
visual ‘games’ in which language use is frequently absent? And
would this development be positive or negative?” (“Five
Commentaries” 172). Healy’s answer is that this development is
negative and that it would be preferable if children did not come
near a computer until they are at least seven (173).
Kaveri Subrahmanyam, on the other hand, has done a fair
amount of research examining the potential positive benefits of
computer gaming for children. In “The Impact of Interactive
Technology on Children’s and Adolescents’ Cognitive and Social
Skills,” he summarizes research on development of cognitive skills
through the use of computer games, and while he notes that much
of the research in this area is outdated, he introduces three areas of
potential cognitive development: spatial representation skills (men-
tal rotation, spatial visualization, and the ability to deal with two-
dimensional images) iconic skills (ability to “read” images), and
visual attention skills (the ability to keep track of many things at
the same time) (125-27). Subrahmanyam further notes that
research shows development in ability to perform better in com-
puter games with extended use, but it is unclear whether this devel-
opment transfers to the arenas outside of the game. He does spec-
ulate that this increase in ability may be related to documented
increases in performance on non-verbal components of the IQ test.
He writes: “Greenfield has pointed out that many computer games
seem to utilize the very same skills tested in the nonverbal sections
of the IQ tests such as the Wechsler and the Stanford Binet” (127).
However, Subrahmanyam cautiously does not push the implica-
tions of Greenfield’s work too far, stating: “all the studies examined
only the immediate effect of game playing and we really do not
have any evidence on the cumulative impact of interactive games
on cognition” (128). After playing even such a simple game as Lilo
& Stitch
, I am inclined to believe that playing computer games
teaches hand-eye coordination, quick decision-making, motor
skills, spatial skills, and strategizing.
For example, the Lilo & Stitch game requires that the player move
the stick with her left hand to move Lilo forward while she watch-
es the screen to read directions on which buttons to press in order
to pick objects up, to destroy them, to walk around them, or to
jump—all of which involve hand-eye coordination. In order to
jump on floating slabs of wood and avoid falling in the water, the
40
WORKS AND DAYS
player has to be able to correctly judge how hard and far to push
the joystick in order to have Lilo move in the direction she wants
her to, which requires good motor skills and spatial judgment.
Finally, as the player moves Lilo along her narrowly constructed
digital path, there are split-second decisions to make; for example,
the player can either decide to karate-chop a large insect, to pick
up a barrel of dynamite for later use, to pick up a flower for bonus
points, or, most desirable of all, to do all three in one split-second.
This involves quick strategizing on the player’s part. In addition,
Lilo & Stitch
is constructed in such a way to encourage learning
from past mistakes since a player cannot move on to the next sec-
tion of the game until the first level is completed successfully. This
teaches the need to practice, to return to the site of one’s mistakes,
and to analyze error in order to improve one’s performance.
However, the concern that quickly arose for me while playing
the Lilo & Stitch game was that while I am inclined to believe that
some cognitive development does take place while playing this
and similar games, the context in which these skills are developed
is disturbing. We have seen from other areas of pedagogical
research, such as recent scholarship in composition and rhetoric,
that epistemic development does not occur in vacuum, but rather
that all learning takes places in culturally defined arenas that work
to mark that pedagogical space in particular socio-political ways
(cf. Reynolds and Payne). Thus the conscientious user of comput-
er games would want to analyze the dominant ideologies perpetu-
ated by the game to determine whether the potential cognitive
skills gained are worth the ideological package they come in. And
this is where the trouble begins.
Early in this piece I noted how the original tale of a boy from
Kansas and his pet dog was transported to Hawaii, with minimal
attention paid to the cultural complications of performing such a
move. My goal in this section is to describe the ways in which this
superimposition of continental American culture upon the virtual
setting of Kauai, creates situations in which Lilo, the Native
Hawaiian girl in appearance, acts more like a white kid from the
mainland. Let me begin with the seemingly innocent image of Lilo
as she readies herself to begin down the path of “Koa Wood,” the
first segment. A sharp contrast is created between the soft and har-
monious surroundings retained from the film and the harsh,
unimaginative storyline of the game, which involves not much
more than the capture and destruction of objects and animals. The
player quickly realizes that while the depictions of Hawaii are nos-
talgically washed in romanticized watercolors, the drive of the nar-
rative has not shifted from the typical gamer’s goal: to destroy any-
thing in his path for his own benefit. Lilo is technologically
designed to move only on the path in front of her; she cannot veer
from it. On this path, her primary purpose is to move forward, col-
lect points, and destroy any animal or object that blocks her
progress.
This purpose does not suit the game’s alleged theme, which is
ostensibly about the value of cooperation. The blurb on the back
of video game promise its readers that: “throughout the game you
Desser
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