Introduction
“We Become What We Behold” is a browser game developed by Nicky Case that explores the role media plays in our society. The game is centered around a society filled with square and circle people and the player’s role is to be the media, where the player takes pictures of interactions between the square and circle society. The player then sees how capturing random instances and interactions can cause detrimental effects to the society as a whole.
Educational Goals
I believe the game’s goal is to broaden the player’s perspective on the role of media overall. In the beginning, the player is introduced to this new society of squares and circles where everyone seemingly gets along. As no prior knowledge is necessary, the player initially is placed in a mew environment with no explanation, therefore the players spends most of the introductory game play period experimenting with the game mechanics, like taking pictures and seeing what is desired. The goal of these news stories is to gauge as much interest from viewers, which unfortunately means that most of the stories seek to embarrass or target certain people. As the game continues and the presence of media progresses, the stories that the game deems as “interesting” end up unraveling the society into a civil war.
The implications of this game can be transferred to the role of media in our everyday lives. What was once viewed as a method of connecting people and cultures is also used to weaponize certain demographics in order to gain as much viewership as possible. As unfortunate as it is, the true state of media nowadays is to attract as many people to the platform as possible, even if it entails exploiting people in the process. In the end of the game, the news stories become so targeted that it leads to everyone in the square-circle-society to be killed. This result can be carried into our own society and the role that media plays, as most news stories seem to need to assign a good-guy and a bad-guy to every situation. With this type casting and stereotyping of people in our current media, we can see that this can only divide us further and ultimately destroy us.
Game Elements
The main Core Gameplay Loop is while the members of the square circle society roam around, the player takes pictures of interactions, the game then gives feedback on the stories that the player captures, the players in the society then responds back to these stories, and the game continues where the player continues to take pictures, generating stories, and the society responds to the stories.
As news stories are generated, the society responds to these stories to reflect the story, for example a news story about how hats are out of style will result in no one wearing hats or hat wearers taking their hat off. In the picture depicted, one example of a circle disliking a square caused all squares to dislike circles, perpetuating division between the two groups for reasons established for the media to gain more viewers.
The stories portrayed in the media are specifically displayed to attract new viewership, thus are more prompted to publish stories that are relevant that grab attention, like feuds as shown in figure 3. In response to heightened tensions between circle and squares, new circles and new squares share similar opinions previously established, even if they did not actually feel that way. As new circles learn that squares hate circles, new circles will hate squares and vice versa. This loop ultimately promotes hatred between the two groups which in turn incentivizes the portrayal of this feud.
Learning Mechanism
The main learning mechanism of this game is metacognition, as the educational goals are learned through the players playing the game through the lens of their own life. This learning mechanism supports the educational goals as internal processing of the information is the only way that it can be solidified for the players.
An example of this is the conclusion of the game, the squares and circle, which are now in a war, are all killed. To truly learn the learning objectives, the player must internalize the result of the game as foreshadowing modern day life and how we respond to media. Thus, metacognition plays an important role in how the players learn the educational goals of the game.
Conclusion
All in all, I believe that this game is a good example of game where the learning objectives are implemented well into the game. The objectives are also very clear to the player, as the feedback provided by the game showed how cut throat the media can be. It was interesting to see how a skewed media portrayal can spiral into a civil war, which can put our own interpretation of the media into perspective. While it seems crazy how events can lead to one another, it is a realistic portrayal of media nowadays and how strong of an influence it can be.