Learning to Kill? Taking aim with the First-Person Shooter Wayne O’Brien Doctorate in Education Centre for Excellence in Media Practice Bournemouth University October 2020 1 Abstract Wayne O’Brien: Learning to Kill? Taking aim with the First-Person Shooter Academic debates about the ‘effects’ of playing video games have been ongoing for several decades. By investigating the learning potential of first-person shooter games from the Call of Duty franchise this study gives fresh stimulus to the area of video games as tools for facilitating learning. Some games attract the label ‘serious’, replicating pre-existing notions of high culture and popular culture: this thesis rejects this tendency towards canonisation and focuses on how a popular gaming franchise can become the site for a wide range of learning opportunities. This project has undertaken research with three different research cohorts and the ensuing research data enables a claim that the Call of Duty games franchise is a powerful force for learning. Focus groups and interviews have been conducted with a range of participants to discuss their views of how the games may facilitate learning; how gaming metaculture may assist in this process and queries the potential for ideological transference from games to player. A questionnaire was also completed by different participants to cross-check data validity. The research findings all flow in the same direction: playing Call of Duty games is an aid to players learning strategic and tactical thinking skills. This happens through the scaffolding offered in-game, the quantity and range of different feedback points and through engagement with different aspects of gaming metaculture. These in-game and extratextual features combine to shape a formidable learning tool which takes players on a journey towards becoming model learners. Demonstrating that video games are learning tools is a good thing in itself. However, with the substantial shift to online delivery of education at all levels around the world in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, this project provides a very timely insight into the capacity of video games to provide thorough learning opportunities. 2 Acknowledgments This thesis has taken a lot of time to bring to fruition. While the work is mine intellectually, no-one really works alone. Projects like this require a lot of support and encouragement from a number of people to enable them to happen. So a massive thank you to Maxine, Caitlin, Erin, Janet for all of their support along the journey and special thanks to my parents, Dermot and Janet - both with this project and with their strong encouragement and support in all of my educational steps from primary school and onwards. Thank you to the project supervisors, Professor Julian McDougall and Dr Julia Round for their assistance in driving the project forward. Their support and input has continually helped me to improve the work. Massive thanks to all of the participants who have given up their own time to take part in this research, especially the people who participated in the focus group research. For reasons of confidentiality, they cannot be named here, but there is no thesis without them, and I am very thankful for their input. We always stand on the shoulders of giants and two of my giants have sadly left us in recent years, so this thesis is dedicated to the memories of Maura Boyce and Bryan Arnold. 3 Chapter Page Abstract 3 Mission Briefing: Introduction 9 Statements and questions 9 Education: 20/20 vision 11 Teaching, learning, assessment and feedback 15 Research questions 21 Chapter outline 23 Chapter 1: Heads-Up Display – literature and literacy 25 Introduction 25 Objectives – what and why? 26 The effects debate: remastered - video games and effects 27 ‘Violent’ video games: setting the stage 29 Games / effects / learning : the big picture 32 Video games can teach, but they teach the wrong things 39 Video games can teach and they can teach good things 45 Teachers? Where we’re going we don’t need teachers 54 ‘Learn from the loss, adapt or die’ - Games and learning 65 Playing or learning / Playing and learning 65 Gee’s principles of learning and the relationship to video games 68 Tutorial - playing Call of Duty 78 Game information 78 Scoring and feedback 79 Chapter 2: Loadout - tools of the trade: methodology and methods 84 Introduction 84 Conceptual framework – epistemology and ontology 85 From theory towards method 85 Research design 87 Methodological rationale 91 4 Interviews 91 Focus group 93 Discourse analysis 94 Questionnaires 94 Analysing the data - Grounded theory 95 Ethical considerations 97 Limitations 99 Concluding remarks 100 Chapter 3: Recon mission - pilot study research 101 A short history of fear - from Cromwell to COD 101 Discourse analysis 103 Purpose Rationale and decisions 104 Findings 104 Interviews 108 Interpreting the data Findings 109 Participant A 109 Participant B 111 Participant C 112 Participant D 114 Participant E 116 Participant F 117 Discussion points 118 Conclusions 120 Chapter 4: Mission 1 - Main focus group 121 Content analysis 121 Thematic coding 121 Overview of the hotspots and coldspots of the focus group 122 Online play code analysis 124 5 Tactical code analysis 127 Strategy code analysis 133 Campaign code analysis 138 Focus group data analysis wave 2 143 Enjoyment code analysis 143 Serious code analysis 147 Gaming culture code analysis 152 Ideology code analysis 155 What is being learned when playing Call Of Duty? 164 Skill development 164 Value of feedback 167 Conclusion 168 Chapter 5: Mission 2 - Video focus group 171 Theoretical context 171 Learning code analysis 176 Tactical code analysis 178 Teamwork code analysis 182 Culture follow up code analysis 189 Communication follow up code analysis 194 One-to-one interview with P2, semi-professional esports player 199 Conclusions 208 Questionnaire analysis 211 Debriefing - questionnaire answers to research questions 227 Mission debrief - final conclusions and future directions 234 Theoretical approaches – some reminders 234 Research questions – and research answers 235 Above and beyond… the call of duty 244 6 Limitations 247 Benefits 248 Future work 249 Reference list 250 7 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and due acknowledgement must always be made of the use of any material contained in, or derived from, this thesis. 8 Mission Briefing: Introduction The title ‘Learning to Kill?’ centres the study on the grounds for seeing ‘violent’ video games as vehicles for learning. Academic curiosity is aroused by what can be learned from gaming - and not just from the game itself – it is the social world around playing such games which is the focus for analysis in this project. Similar to other media products, video games are cultural artefacts and are nested within wider frames of discourse. This study analyses how video games, specifically games of the Call of Duty franchise, can be viewed as tools which facilitate learning. The more recent iterations of the franchise (Call of Duty: World War II (2017) to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) are the focal points for investigation and discussion, but participants were free to discuss any aspect of the games of the franchise). This study respects the differences in immersion and popularity of the offline and online modes and does not attempt to conflate the two modes together. Much of what is discussed later in the thesis pertains to the online modes owing to the directions which participants took their answers in. What marks this study out is the belief in the value of seeing the ‘problem’ of playing so-called violent video games from the perspectives of the people who play such games. A vital component in this endeavour is the interlinking between games and the surrounding metaculture and focus on this forms a significant aspect of discussion. The Call of Duty game franchise has become one of the biggest in the burgeoning video game sector. In the past twenty five years, games from the franchise have been the bestseller in eight of those twenty five years, achieving a dominance that outreaches the Grand Theft Auto franchise (Fortune, n.d.). For example, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold more than 20 million copies worldwide whilst the biggest selling Call of Duty game to date is Call of Duty: Black Ops which has sold 30.72m copies worldwide, marginally more than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 which has sold 30.71m copies worldwide (Stuart, 2011; McCarthy, 2019). Regardless of moral taste or personal choice, this fact alone means that the franchise is culturally and economically significant and the findings of this project have relevance to those with an interest in education, video games and popular culture. Therefore, whilst this study 9 only investigates the experiences of Call of Duty players and how they account for this in discourse, the impact of Call of Duty on both cognitive processing and strategic learning and its ideological effects on players, addressed in my first two research questions (see page 21), will be significant, both culturally and educationally, given the scale of engagement with these texts. Statements and questions The title has two antecedents, understanding both of these is crucial to understanding the rationale for the existence of the study and for the nature of it's execution. The first inspiration was the title of and a succinct description of Willis’ research findings of the sociological study ‘Learning to Labour’ (1978). Willis conducted a qualitative study with British school-aged teenagers to better understand their attitudes to the coming world of work and how their experiences at school conditioned them for future subservient roles in industrial occupations.