In Soviet Russia, The Game Plays You…
How the ideas of a young, long-dead Russian psychologist helps explain how modern media can manipulate our abilities.
Take a gander at this dapper fella. Yes sir this is the great Lev Vygotsky.
You probably haven’t heard of him, a harsh fate leaving this world at the ripe age of 37, but in that time he achieved things that we still look for in developing the minds of today.
Lev himself was born 1896 and due to his Jewish heritage in Russia was only able to receive an education through a lottery system. But he was able to progress impressively and eventually founded Vygotsky Circle, a group of psychologists, educationalists, medical specialists, physiologists, and neuroscientists.
But his most famous contribution is his thinking on the “ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT” or ZPD.
Imagine you are trying to do a puzzle for fun, but you just can’t get it right no matter how you try. You’ve made progress no doubt, but for the most part you aren’t close to completing it. It is beyond you at this point.
Now picture a sibling, parent, someone you look up to and you know is keen at this kinds of things. They’ve got the knack for it, so you ask them to complete the puzzle for you. They decide that is better to instead guide you step by step instead so one: you learn how to do it yourself and two: you go to bed cause its 11pm on a school night. Eventually with their help you make it through. Over the next couple of days you try to strike it on your own and you’re getting the hang of it. Eventually you manage to nail it without help
Now let me tell you how ZPD comes in to play from all of that. At the start you knew how to do some of the puzzle on your own. Then there’s an area you couldn’t get past to the rest and go for help. Its that area that is the ZPD. That is where you get your more Knowledgeable other to assist you. Of course nowadays that other can be a video on YouTube, but for the most part its someone guiding you along the way.
That is what Vygotsky found that one can improve their own skills through how much guidance was given in this ZPD. As such you can imagine that blue circle above as growing with the guidance of another.
Another aspect of Vygotsky was scaffolding which was essentially someone giving you support as you build up your skills. The scaffold is malleable and can be adjusted based on a desired skill result. Think like training wheels in a sense. They give you a sense of safety and balance until you can come to a point where the supports are adjusted and the wheels taken off. As such your sense of balance is better and can ride a bike (eventually) on your own.
Now there one department that uses ZPD quite a bit and that’s video games, and there are various genres and techniques they use to have the game play you in a sense to test what you know and what others can do for you.
DARK SOULS Summoning : Co-op and Otherworldly Invaders
While many people have not played any of the Souls-borne franchise, its reputation precedes it. It has become the benchmark for any and all difficult rouge-like videogames these days. The Dark Souls and Blood borne games have been known for their ability to beat the a player down to a pulp over and over again mercilessly, hours spent getting gutted by deadly dragons and medieval knights alike. This “single player” action RPG preaches the virtues of patience and patterns to the point that some players have beaten the game blindfolded or with a ddr pad.
You will get stabbed so many times by a skeleton that you eventually you will learn how to play around with it in a sense and it will be able to take it down withing seconds. What I saying is that for the most part you learn by dying from an enemy to get the know how, but however that doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities to learn from others which is the essence of ZPD. While I did note that this game is single player in nature, the Dark Souls games are unique in how it channels that ZPD power.
Enter the practice of summoning. In game there times where you can find glowing sigils on the ground. Approach it and it will ask you if you would like to a summon a person. Doing so can allow a player to enter your game world and play with you. From there you can fight side by side and take down enemies together. You can’t speak to each other, but in a game like this actions speak the loudest. You can take on enemies and bosses that have been giving you problems before. If they’ve beaten the game before they can show you what they’ve done the defeat these foes. When exploring areas this summoned fellow could help lead you to secrets and items you didn’t know existed before. All the while with this helpful stranger you are within your own zone of proximal development gaining new insights thanks to your more skilled partner. Of course there will be times that your summoned partner is slain and thats when the scaffold comes off. While you can return to their sigil for another coop run, its that time in between that marks the true test of skill. You are without your knowledgeable other and now with the skills attained you can do what they do now. You have stepped forward in your abilities because of it. In fact anyone can be summoned so if you feel up to the challenge and are confident in your skill you can put down your own sigil, wait and help another player in need of guidance in this dark and grueling game.
Yet while this cooperation like this is a great example of ZPD in motion, sometimes you like to be daring and dastardly “helping” in a more provocative manner. Enter the INVADER mechanic. Sometimes in game while you are fighting the npc enemies, you will be the target of an invasion which a fellow player who is entered your world to slay you where you stand. It is up to you to defeat them to expel them from your world. It adds its own dimension to the ZPD chart. This invader is a teacher alright but acts is a foe to test the players overall skills. You will be fighting a foe that thinks and reacts, something that npcs cannot emulate. They will keep you on your toes as skilled invaders can cut you down easily and do not suffer from a range limit. They will hunt you down. Whether you find defeat or victory against them, they show you how your overall skills are. You might see them use tactic you never thought of before ever or die to a weapon that you underestimated. In the end the invader is a reflection of yourself. From its guidance you might choose to aid others against invaders as a Shepard or become the wolf and test the mettle of others as an invader yourself.
Metal Gear Online’s Instructor Mode: Instructional Scaffolding in an Online Combat Game?
As we saw in Dark Souls ZPD in video games these days is usually done by learning on the field. This is when you face other players and die by their hand while learning new ways to play the game from watching them. But this can be a trial by fire for most novices as the expert hasn’t gotten where they are by giving rookies an inch. As they say adversity is a great teacher at times however what if you had a game where you actually had a chance to learn from a designated more knowledgeable other?
This is where the Metal Gear Online comes to mind. Metal Gear Solid 4 which came out over a decade ago had an online multiplayer that fulfilled people’s desire of action combat in response to the main games emphasis on stealth and sneaking. As such you were pitted against both those of equal, lesser or higher skills and fought it out as a soldier on the battlefield. Yet what is so ZPD about this is the INSTRUCTOR mode in the game.
In instructor mode, the an instructor can change certain aspects of the game in order to train others in scenarios as requested and build a series of scaffolds to help newer players. As in the video above that instructor wanted to test the students abilities in using pistols. You can see the instructor in the chat logs giving some advice to his students on how to approach using the pistols. It doesn’t have to be pistols exclusively as the students are given whatever the instructor has a swell. In the instructor mode there is a lecture mode which disables killing which can be quickly switched to live combat after the lecture is finished. After 30 minutes of instruction, learning players are eligible to “graduate” and given the ability to become instructors themselves. MGO’s instructor mode is something I rarely see appear in games these days. Sure there are training modes with bots but they lack that real dedicated expert who is willing to impart guidance on those of lesser skill.
Tetris 99: or You vs 98 Lev Vygotskys
Everyone knows Tetris. Stack the Tetris Blocks, make lines, don’t fill the screen. Simple right? Now take that and add 98 other people doing this at the same time and have them be able to fill up parts of your screen.
Tetris 99 is essentially playing Tetris normally based on what you already know while at the same time learning from 98 knowledgeable others. Of course as you play the game gets harder and harder , but not only that you must deal with people adding tetris blocks to your board to ruin your patterns and while you are doing the same to them. In fact you can see everyone’s boards at the same time. You are seeing everything that is going on. The longer you survive, the more it tells about your own skills. Eventually you might lose, but from there you can observe those surviving learn what they do and go on for the next round. You learn how they manage to live longer and add it to your own knowledge base essentially allowing you to overcome any hurdles from before and become successful than your previous self.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R a “Zone” Where the Zone Doesn’t Exist
While I have been talking quite extensively about good video game examples of Lev Vgotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, one game that does not lend itself well to the system of learning from others is actually a big favorite of mine.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R is a Russian game series about surviving in a hostile and living world of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, now re-imagined with mutants, Things that defy science and people who roam these strange lands known as Stalkers. How Dark Souls is known to be quite cruel in its own way, it is from manageable for most people. However this game is something else. For the most part it gives you a whole world with only one goal to go deeper into the world. How you do it or by what means is never given too much. Yet waiting there are things that will indeed end you in one second. Sometimes you can’t even see what got you so you can’t react.
Players have chalked it up to being that’s just life in the “Zone” encompassing all misfortune. Yet what makes this misfortune impervious to scaffolding and knowledgeable other is the fact the game has a mechanic called A-Life. Most games have scripted events with some randomized actions to make it less repetitive, but it only happens when you are in the present area. This game throws that away and reminds you that you are just a small part of the world. A-Life makes its a breathing world where even if you aren’t there the worlds is still going on around you. NPCs will travel to parts of the map and fight things miles away from you only for you to find their lifeless remains with no explanation. A-Life is unpredictable which means someone who has played the game can’t tell you how to deal with every situation. For all you know you could be fighting a bandit when a pack of dogs come to steamroll you out of nowhere. Reload the save and this time the dogs are gone or something even worse eats you instead. The game doesn’t give you anything to latch on for safety for the zone is never safe. You can’t master it ever. Even the ones who know have played for years will succumb to the weird events in the game. Again all they say is “such is life in the zone”
To think that after all this time the dapper Russian’s discovery would find its greatest effect in the virtual world, one that didn’t exist in his era, but nonetheless, the things we learn about our limits and how others can get over these limits is part of every video game there is.
After all there always someone out there that doesn’t know how to play PONG, but you’ll be there to slide that paddle and trying not to laugh the whole time.
