Pedagogical Crime in Games

Everett and Watkins are concerned about immersive harmful effects of gaming to youth and childhood. They believe that games have a forceful learning environment in which young people can be faultily immersed in. Their main goal is to warn that youth can be affected by some games having certain forms of learning that is socially destructive. They argue that youth can learn and experience a urban culture in terms of race, gender and identity by playing game.

“Significantly, games establish compelling learning environments that help facilitate how young gamers develop their knowledge of and familiarity with popular views of race and urban culture.” (Everett and Watkins pg.144)

I agree with this. Some games have impact on youth as well as it shows what the urban culture is, and generally it depicts the urban culture in cool way. The image of how the game characters are shown makes the learning environment even stronger, because the gamers can even identify more with the characters in the games. I want to go over some games that were not mentioned but somewhat to suit the reading. Here’s example of those kinds of games. Urban Reign is spinoff of Tekken. you run around a urban street, and attack whoever near you.

The picture below shows the the boss of the game, who is actually black gang.


As you watch this video, black gangs appeared as boss, and most of enemies were black or Hispanic. How bad you could image about the culture of urban street after playing this game! Everett and Watkins believed that the design of urban has huge influence on young players such as social schemas, scripts and beliefs players develop from the larger cultural and ideological environment. (Everett and Watkins pg.146)

They also argue that video games are pedagogical, and lead young gamers to racial problems.

“Video games teach—they are pedagogical—and that “what we’re learning from them bears no resemblance whatsoever to what we think we’re learning.” It is precisely learning “about life” in America with its entrenched racial problems that is at issue here.” (Everett and Watkins pg.155)

Games like GTO, Urban Reign would make young gamers have prejudice against the urban culture. These games establish forceful environment for learning race and gender and enable young gamers immerse themselves in the environment without realizing whether it’s racially good or bad.

Here’s my question. Have you ever seen anyone who become racist or have irrational racism after playing some games?