As odd or paradoxical as it may seem, could video games be really designed to facilitate personal and spiritual growth?
Well… why not?
If books related to self-help, personal improvement and spiritual growth have been best sellers for several years; if millions of dollars have been spent in all kinds of communication media and storytelling tools related to inner development - such as audio books, talk shows, web applications and all kinds of therapeutic workshops, lectures and classes; if movies, stories and plays have been already used for many therapeutic purposes, why not video games?
Why not video games, given their potential to act as powerful vehicles of entertainment and mass communication that could potentially embrace and integrate all kinds of media into effective developmental “packages” skillfully designed to catalyze inner growth?
In my opinion, video games could incorporate a series of unprecedented and powerful developmental design tools and practices by providing highly engaging and joyful interactive experiences related to "real time" and "hands on" practical learning directed towards inner growth - set in totally customizable "virtual worlds" that could be eventually transferred into real situations and experiences in the "real world".
An increasing amount of focus, research and serious work have been put in motion in relation to using video games for educational purposes, an initiative leaded by various scholars, critics and game designers (Gee, 2007, 2003; Bogost, 2007, 2006; Prensky, 2006; Johnson, 2005; Quinn, 2005; Aldrich 2005, 2003, and many others). According to some of them, a specific challenge faced by video game designers today is to find creative and effective ways to incorporate educational concepts and experiences that would attract and engage different kinds of players in various contexts.
Building upon this timely discussion, my intention with this research was to expand these current educational goals to embrace not only education related to acquiring information (formal orientation), processes (cognitive, social & soft skills orientation) or technical skills (training & hard skills orientation); but also to incorporate education related to facilitating personal and spiritual growth and integration (transformative and more subjective orientation) - as explored by contemporary scholars and philosophers such as Wilber (2007, 2000), Esbjörn-Hargens (2007), Torbert (2004), Cook-Greuter (2002), Beck & Cowan (1998), Kegan (1994) and Maslow (1973); among others.
In a way, I don't see with much surprise why video games that already incorporate a different (and deeper) quality of subjective and inter-subjective aspects have been recently considered "the best of the year" or creating a lot of buzz and interest around them - such as World of War Craft and various Massive Multi-Player online (MMO) games (sense of community), Bioshock and Mass Effect (rich subjectivity & morality dilemmas), Portal (personal & subjective touch allied with humor), Second Life (community, arts & freedom of expression), Rock Band and Guitar Hero III (arts and community), Nintendo Wii (community and kinesthetic appeal), and many others.
Imagine how good and useful it would be if we could purposefully expand those already successful subjective and inter-subjective concepts even more, both in terms of focus, depth and quality. This expansion would ideally integrate the engagement, intensity and fun of play with a secondary but essentially positive "collateral effect"; skillfully and scientifically designed into the video games in accordance to the most recent research and practices in developmental and integral psychology. These tools would allow video game players to joyfully - and possibly more effectively - experience inner growth in various aspects of their selves, such as cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, social, physical, behavioral, moral, ethical, and even spiritual...
Think about how many current video game players from all ages, genres and backgrounds could be taking a better advantage and making a healthier use of those new video games features, even if not directly aware about those underlying developmental purposes - which by the way would not necessarily need to be explicitly stated, but just put in action by incorporating customizable inner growth messages and practices in the intrinsic structural design of those video games as storytelling and "story-practicing" media. In my view, that could contribute for a mass and even global enhancement of health, awareness and growth in individual, cultural and social aspects, given the increasing worldwide popularity of video games.
After going through this initial research, I see the moment we are living right now from a very promising lens. I can already envision it with an immense potential to provide an unprecedented opportunity for video game, educational and developmental designers to start creating video games that could facilitate personal and spiritual growth in the most efficient and joyful ways, for all kinds of people. As the prophet Hillel used to say, "if not now, when?"
Furthermore, to the extent that a video game would satisfy, support and challenge different players in relation to as many aspects of their lives as possible, the better, more complete, developmentally significant, attractive and “acceptable” these video games would be to the general population. That would also include spreading their popularity into a broader range of players and hence becoming even more profitable in the market.
For me, these are some of the really worthwhile questions to be made at this auspicious moment of great technological, aesthetical and developmental opportunities represented by the recent advances of the video game industry and computer technology, as well as the fields of Integral theory and developmental psychology. That is actually the core of what my research was (and will still be) all about.
Video games as proactive "Trojan Horses" of inner growth
Like positive and proactive "Trojan Horses" of inner growth, these new video games would purposefully take into account at least one or more of the basic multi-dimensional aspects that compose our daily life - some elements which are categorically mapped in Integral theory's AQAL and Integral Play - and subtly (or surreptitiously) explore their full potentialities of growth through various kinds of developmental concepts, practices and ideas.
In a way, I see these video games possibly covering an extra step on the perennial gap between translating theory (concepts, symbols & representations) into practice (actions, embodiment & "reality"), allowing video game players to "walk the talk" of whatever line of growth is being engaged or "played" - in better, more efficient and timely ways, including further applying these knowledge and experiences from the "virtual" to the "real" world.
As a result, these new video games would be not only aimed to individuals and communities, but also geared to facilitate the job of coaches, mentors, teachers, organizations and institutions, being an unprecedented media tool for conveying their various messages. This could provide a new revolution in terms of all kinds of developmental teaching, guidance, training and practices.
Adding to the fast emerging inter-subjective, cultural and social potentials of massive multi-player online (MMO) video games and virtual communities composed by millions of players, the evolution of these applications could spread in a relatively short period of time into an exponential and massive individual and collective wave of inner development, maybe never accomplished by any kind of communication media geared towards inner growth in history.
However, as is the case with most cases including technological innovations and human affairs, those video games - especially MMOs - could also bring a series of potential misuses and abuses (see a word of caution and further reflections). That is due to the simple (but disconcerting) fact that people coming from different levels of inner growth and maturity (morals, ethics, emotional, interpersonal, spiritual) - but with highly cognitive capacities and talents - can make negative, unhealthy or unbalanced use of these same technologies and media; from players getting stuck in addiction patterns and exhibiting violent behaviors to the possibility of people purposefully using video games for anti-social, egocentric, fundamentalist and even terrorist agendas.
This phenomenon seems to be part of our intrinsic human developmental nature and the seemingly chaotic and non-linear cultural and social patterns of evolution; in other words, these positive and negative polarities are simply part of the "game of life" itself. So, in my view, we better acknowledge and face those potentially negative realities straightly as they are, and not be too pessimistic or paralyzed by those potentially harmful or darker aspects. Instead, we have the choice to keep doing the "good" work, using technology for proactive and healthy ends as much as we can, and looking to prevent as much as possible those unhealthy and negative uses to occur.
In regards to that, it is ironic that among other developmental media and tools, it is through video games that this potentially negative pattern could be also seen and challenged in very efficient ways, so new and more constructive paradigms and worldviews could be brought forth into full awareness and manifestation.
Sounds too far-fetched? Well, look around at what is happening in terms of the leading edge of technological, artistic, psychological and spiritual knowledge in the planet, and start linking some of these ideas into the idea of having a potentially integrated set of interactive media and tools such as video games designed for inner growth. That is where I am coming from...
Further thoughts: A leap into the future
As different leading thinkers such as Ray Kurzweil (2008) and Ken Wilber (2008) suggest by looking ahead into the next decades of expected exponential technological growth, we are still in the baby steps in terms of developing more advanced artificial intelligence and direct human-cybernetic interfaces, although we are definitely moving towards that goal.
Video games as virtual simulators could be one of the precursors of some of the most "far-fetched" sci-fi ideas such as those illustrated in the movie The Matrix. In this movie, experiential learning and practices could be directly "downloaded" - and fully embodied - from previously programmed virtual reality software connected directly to our bodies, brains and nervous systems; which in my view could inevitably lead to all kinds of advanced practices geared towards personal and spiritual growth. Of course that could (and most certainly would) also involve even greater dangers of abuse and misuse of this technology for negative purposes, which is a burden we would need to cope with and prevent as much as we can, since it seems to be part of the human condition and evolution. Although this revolutionary sci-fi idea is still reserved for a far (or not so far) future, video games could be already providing all kinds of inner growth and experiential learning through purposefully designed interactions and feedback between the "virtual" and "real" worlds.
I also personally think that this new “revolution” of video games purposefully designed for personal and spiritual growth could represent one of the first technological signs of manifestation of what the Harvard development researcher Robert Kegan (2001) calls the “Transformation Highway”, an educational concept that would transcend the limits of the “Information age”. In his words:
Perhaps we need leaders who are able both to start processes of learning and to diagnose and disturb already existing processes that prevent learning and change, the active, ongoing immune systems at work at every individual and organization. Perhaps [we] can begin building not simply an information highway but a transformation highway. (p.234) |
In a way, I see the potential emergence of this new generation of video games from a similar perspective as the scientist and mystic Teillard de Chardin (1959). This "bigger than life" thinker used to see the apparently chaotic raising of the technological and industrial world of the 20th century - in which I include the emergence of the information age and the video game industry of the 21st century - as just a temporary adjustment towards a whole new reality; a reality that would finally bridge the worlds of technology, meaning and spirituality. In his words:
We may be reassured. The vast industrial and social system by which we are enveloped does not threaten to crush us; neither does it seek to rob us of our soul. The energy emanating from it is free not only in the sense that it represents forces that can be used: it is moreover free because, in the whole no less than in the least of elements, it arises in a state that is ever more spiritualized. (Chardin, 1959, p. 190) |
In other words, as video games and technology are increasingly becoming - or at least having the potential to become - subtler, more intelligent, personal, subjective, refined and aesthetically pleasing, we would tend to start seeing more and more of an unfolding kind of spiritualized energy to be naturally manifested through them.
I personally think this is already happening, if we compare current technological gadgets and video game devices to some decades and even years ago, as well as some of the current and past trends of this industry. In my view, these trends are related to a bigger focus and concern on subjective and inter-subjective aspects, and how they could be better served by all kinds of technology and storytelling media such as video games.
So, besides the objective and more easily observable and measurable aspects of this technological evolution, a whole set of subjective, inter-subjective and more experiential aspects of inner development – which is less easily accessible by external investigation – may be already set in its on natural course. As for the future of this objective-subjective & technological-spiritual evolution, maybe only spiritually oriented scientists like "Chardins, Da Vincis, Einsteins & Wilbers” could more clearly envision and attest.
Research results and practical applications
As a result of this preliminary 8-month mixed-methods research, the potentials of video games for facilitating personal and spiritual growth were not only confirmed, but also deepened and expanded into powerful and useful video game design ideas, insights, concepts and practices.
The data gathered in the six methodological analyses (Phenomenology, Structuralism, Hermeneutics, Ethnomethodology, Empiricism and Systems Analysis) brought various surprises and confirmations, raised timely challenges and issues, and pointed into various untapped potentials and applications.
Taxonomies of video game “play” and video game players were also explored, based on developmental spectrums of human growth and potential.
Data showed that there could actually be a fairly good market for those kinds of video games. Their creation would require intentional shifts in some of the current paradigms, worldviews and patterns of video game design. Part of these shifts would include video game designers purposefully applying some of the basic concepts covered by developmental psychology and the integral model - such as personal and spiritual growth theories and practices - in their overall design process.
