The Compulsion to Learn

It's 80,000BCE. On the plains of prehistoric Africa, a very average tribe of early humans lives. They do all the normal cavepeople things. They hunt animals, make music, and have little cavepeople children. Nothing unusual about them at all. In this tribe are two cavemen, Thag and Blag. Thag and Blag have equal intelligence, equal physical strength, and equal looks.

One day, after a successful hunt, the hunters all have a few days off. Thag spends his time off lying around and relaxing. Blag, for some reason, does not. He is struck by an odd desire to repeatedly throw his spear at a wooden target. He does this for a few hours, and goes to sleep. Nobody thinks much of it.

Eventually, the next hunt comes around. Thag and Blag are out on the prowl. A deer jumps. Thag throws his spear and misses. Blag throws his spear and hits, due to the practice he got with the piece of wood. Blag gets credit for the kill, his social status rises, and he eventually manages to mate with more cavewomen than Thag. Thirty years down the line, Blag's children outnumber Thag's, and his compulsive spear-practicing genes outnumber Thag's do-nothing genes.

Repeat this story a few million times, and we are the result. We compulsively seek opportunities to learn essential prehistoric skills. One of the main ways of learning those skills is by playing games, just as Blag enjoyed throwing his spear at a target.

Games teach in ways that study and instruction cannot. Even today, in highly trained professions, game playing can still be an effective teaching tool. Doctors who play videogames have been shown to work faster and make fewer errors when performing laparoscopic surgery (1). Pilots are trained on simulators. Soldiers are trained with mock combat competitions. Playing is learning.

These are some of the ways we play games to learn.

The Compulsion to Learn by Practice-Fighting

When I was a kid I used to be obsessed with weapons, warfare and violence. I read enough books about weapons and warfare that I became a child expert on military history and tactics. I played countless games about war. I ran around with toy guns, designed nonexistent space battlecruisers, created and played war strategy games, and of course countless video games. I spent a large part of my childhood preparing for a war I'll never fight, and a hunt I'll never go on, simply because it is in my genes to compel me to do so.

The compulsion to practice-fight is a very popular one for use in games. All games with warlike or violent themes of any kind will trigger it. It is easy to trigger because war is so physical, overt, visual, and dramatic. There is nothing subtle about the things that trigger this compulsion.

Unfortunately, the fact that it is so easy and obvious means it is very overused.

The Compulsion to Learn by Practice-Nurturing and Socializing

Social and nurturing skills are just as important to us as fighting and hunting. We need to learn how to maintain and gain social status, how to interact with family and friends, and how to care for our young. It is a compulsion which tends to be stronger in females, who are specialized for nurturing roles in prehistoric societies.

_{A teacher in ruthless methods of social manipulation, which are useful in adult life.}

Consider Barbie. The entire Barbie line of toys can be thought of as a training program for teaching girls how to maximize their social status. They learn social roles and interaction through roleplay, they learn fashion and beauty by dressing and making up their Barbie, and they learn to create and decorate a home. Girls compulsively do these things because these behaviors teach reproductively useful skills.

The Tamagochi toys are also is based on this compulsion. Personally I spent more time driving my Tamagochi insane with endless punishment (maybe this compulsion isn't that strong in me personally), but I know people who actually nurtured theirs.

Powerful as this compulsion is, it is not commonly used in games for a variety of reasons. First, game developers are predominately men, and this is a more female compulsion.

Second, directly simulating social interactions is impossible because computers do not have the context knowledge to have a real conversation. Third, social interactions and nurturing involve variables and objects which exist only in the mind, which makes it difficult to conceptualize the mechanics them since they lack a physical presence. Visualizing feelings on a screen is not easy.

It's a shame, because the compulsion is so powerful. Anyone who can effectively trigger this compulsion (Will Wright, please stand up) will make a lot of money. Working with this compulsion is tricky, but I think that there is a lot of unexplored potential here.