CULTURAL SIMULATION AND THE APPLICATIONS OF CULTURALLY ENABLED GAMES AND TECHNOLOGY by Jumanne K. Donahue APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: ___________________________________________ Marjorie Zielke, Chair ___________________________________________ Dean Terry ___________________________________________ Frederick Turner ___________________________________________ Habte Woldu Copyright 2017 Jumanne K. Donahue All Rights Reserved This dissertation is dedicated to the civilized, humane, rational, and creative people of the world. May you increase in number. Your wise actions are sorely needed. CULTURAL SIMULATION AND THE APPLICATIONS OF CULTURALLY ENABLED GAMES AND TECHNOLOGY by JUMANNE K. DONAHUE, BS, MFA DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ARTS, TECHNOLOGY, AND EMERGING COMMUNICATION THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS December 2017 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To begin, I would like to like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Marjorie Zielke. I appreciate your support and guidance given the unorthodox confluence of ideas in my dissertation as well as your confidence in me and your leadership of The First Person Cultural Trainer project. I would also like to think the members of my committee: Dr. Frederick Turner, Dean Terry, and Dr. Habte Woldu. Dr. Turner, you are a gentleman, scholar, and writer of the first order and your work on epic narrative has been enlightening. Dean Terry, your knowledge of avant-garde cinema and role as an innovator in social technology has always made our conversations stimulating. Your example encourages me to take risks with my own endeavors and to strive for the vanguard. Dr. Woldu, you introduced me to the concept of quantifying cultural values. Without this notion, this dissertation would be impossible. Additionally, I would like to thank Dr. Monica Evans for her editorial advice and teaching me how to approach games in a scholarly fashion. Finally, I must acknowledge Dr. Thomas Linehan, who repeatedly encouraged me to stay the course until this dissertation was complete. I remember you telling me, “A good dissertation is a done dissertation.” Hopefully I have exceeded your expectations. I must recognize the sponsors of The First Person Cultural Trainer project. These include Benjamin Jordan and Melvin Cape of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. Without your patronage my life and career would not have developed as they have. You both have given me the opportunity to do work of significance. I must also personally thank the entire First Person Cultural Trainer team and my colleagues on other teams over the many years: Russell Anderson, Jason Barnett, Yaseen Benhalim, Desmond Blair, Lee Brown, Adam Buxkamper, v Adam Chandler, Tim Christopher, Steven Michael Engel Craven, Frank Dufour, Monica Evans, Ricardo Flores, Brent Friedman, Gary Hardee, Jacob Harris, Daniel Hurd, Souphia Ieng, Slade Jansa, Erin Jennings, Phillip Johnson, Jeremy Johnston, Michael Kaiser, Brandon Keown, Jay Laughlin, Crystal Leal, William Lemons, Tim Lewis, Jean Mertz, Phonesury Ounekeo, AJ Paradowski, Dan Trinh, Edward Whetstone, Michael Wonser, Tony Wu, and Djakhangir Zakhidov. Please forgive me if I have left anyone out. Without your contributions, I would not be where I am today. I want to thank my cousin Norman Butler for decades of steadfast friendship. When I needed financial assistance as a broke graduate student, you were there. Tony De La Garza, you have also been a shoulder to lean on since our days at Texas A&M and I appreciate it. Natasha Marin, you are an energetic and amazing performance artist and community-builder. Thank you for valuing me and including me in your Mumbai show. I’ll never forget the experience. Mona Kasra, thank you for years of compassion and fellowship. I still remember our debate on the value of modern art. I would also like to express gratitude to Asma Naz for years of friendship, good conversation, and for taking the time to listen to me, especially when my mother was dying and I needed someone to talk to. Cassini Nazir, thank you for your calm demeanor, compassion, and wise counsel. I appreciate you reading my experimental fiction and listening to my musings on film, television, race, culture, moral philosophy, political philosophy, and utopia. In conclusion, what I wish for you all is what I wish for everyone—to be free of suffering, to alleviate the suffering of others, and to increase the breadth and depth of wisdom in the world. November 2017 vi CULTURAL SIMULATION AND THE APPLICATIONS OF CULTURALLY ENABLED GAMES AND TECHNOLOGY Jumanne K. Donahue, PhD The University of Texas at Dallas, 2017 ABSTRACT Supervising Professor: Marjorie Zielke This dissertation is an examination of social and geopolitical problems and how culturally- enabled technology, games, and simulations might be used to address them. In order to merge a cultural functionality with technology some notion of culture must first be defined, then quantified. Thus, the research explores definitions of culture and how it has been quantified in the past. The dissertation also investigates game studies—digital training simulations, social online games, socially-conscious games, massively multiplayer games, and face-to-face educational simulations—in order to identify fruitful intersections between game studies and culture. Given the complex nature of culture and society, a third area of study involves the science of complexity and how it has been applied to both conceptualize culture and address social difficulties. The outcome of this research was used to propose an expansive and flexible cultural model, a Cultural Construct, combining quantifiable notions of culture with the dynamics of a complex adaptive system, as well as a number of original culturally-enabled, game-inspired, concepts for addressing the social and geopolitical problems identified in this dissertation. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................ v ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................ x LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... xi LIST OF ACRONYMS ............................................................................................................. xiii INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 PART I: CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND REAL WORLD PROBLEMS CHAPTER 1: WHY DO WE NEED CULTURALLY ENABLED TECHNOLOGY? ............... 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW OF CULTURAL QUANTIFICATION..................... 35 PART II: INTEGRATING GAMES, SIMULATIONS, AND CULTURAL QUANTIFICATION CHAPTER 3: GAME AND SIMULATION STUDIES ............................................................ 45 CHAPTER 4: CULTURAL SIMULATION IN INTERCULTURAL TRAINERS .................. 74 CHAPTER 5: CULTURAL SIMULATION IN THE FIRST PERSON CULTURAL TRAINER ..................................................................................................................................................... 88 CHAPTER 6: CULTURE AND THE SCIENCE OF COMPLEXITY .................................... 105 PART III: CULTURALLY ENABLED SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT AND ANALYSIS CHAPTER 7: APPLICATIONS OF CULTURALLY ENABLED TECHNOLOGY ............. 125 7.1 CULTURAL CAPTURE GAME DESIGN................................................. 151 CHAPTER 8: SUMMARY AND FUTURE WORK ............................................................... 163 viii APPENDIX A: FIRST PERSON CULTURAL TRAINER PRELIMINARY CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS ........................................ 170 APPENDIX B: EXCHANGE GAME RULES......................................................................... 178 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 183 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .................................................................................................... 197 CURRICULUM VITA ix LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1. Game Genres and Characteristics Framework........................................................... 54 Table 7.1. Pathways to the Culture of Joy with COF Orientations........................................... 146 Table 7.2. ABG Value Category, Value, and Task Sample ...................................................... 149 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 5.1. Emotions and Motivators ......................................................................................... 99 Figure 5.2. FPCT Agent Psychology ........................................................................................ 100 Figure 6.1. Buckley’s Model of Society as a Complex Adaptive System as Interpreted in This Dissertation ............................................................................................................................... 108 Figure 6.2. Narrative Interpretation of a Complex Sociocultural System ................................ 110 Figure 6.3. Narrative Interpretation of Culture as a Complex Adaptive System ...................... 111 Figure 6.4. The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map, WVS-6