Tinkering with Political Utopias and Dystopias in DEMOCRACY 3. An Educational Perspective

Abstract

The article looks at the possibility of tinkering with political utopias and dystopias in the turn-based political simulation DEMOCRACY 3. Political utopias are understood as coherent sets of political ideas and/or policies following a particular theory of justice, such as political philosophies, political ideologies, or manifestos from political parties. Political dystopias refer to political utopias that do not suit the player's ideological standpoint or that went objectively wrong in the practice of playing. In this sense, playing DEMOCRACY 3 is read as applied political philosophy which might be utilized in political education. The contribution reconstructs the game's implicit learning possibilities and exemplifies observable learning processes, which become visible in »affinity spaces« around the game, for example, on platforms such as YouTube, when players present and discuss their own realizations of utopian or dystopian policies in Let's Play videos.

Game designers as agents of political education

“…Auch für die politische Bildung, die in Deutschland eine fächerübergreifende Aufgabe ist, liegen neben Lernspielen (Cuhadar und Kampf 2014;Motyka 2018) etliche geeignete Unterhaltungsspiele vor (Czauderna 2019;2020;Preisinger und Aumayr 2020). Insbesondere in vielen zur Unterhaltung entwickelten Strategie-und Managementspielen lassen sich typische Themen der politischen Bildung wiederfinden.…”

“…Wenn die Spielerinnen und Spieler mit zahlreichen Herausforderungen gleichzeitig, und insbesondere mit Zielkonflikten in polytelischen Situationen (Dörner 2002;Betsch, Funke, und Plessner 2011, 142 f.), konfrontiert werden, erhalten sie die Gelegenheit, ein Gefühl von Verantwortung und Einfluss zu erfahren sowie den Zustand des «Flow» (Csikszentmihalyi 2009) zu erleben. Die Entscheidungssituationen bewerten die Designerinnen und Designer dann als interessant, wenn sie den Spielerinnen und Spielern «Trade-Offs» abverlangen (weil sie auf Zielkonflikten basieren), sie emotional berühren und ihnen Spielräume lassen, den Problemen mit kontroversen Lösungen zu begegnen sowie mit verschiedenen Philosophien und Strategien zu experimentieren (Czauderna 2019). Somit verfolgen die Designerinnen und Designer durchaus eine Interessenorientierung im Sinne des Beutelsbacher Konsenses, die ihren Spielerinnen und Spielern unter bestimmten Bedingungen -z.…”

How Digital Strategy and Management Games Can Facilitate the Practice of Dynamic Decision-Making

“…In Cities: Skylines, for instance, players can dedicate themselves solely to build a beautiful or recreate an existing city instead of building an economically successful city. In Democracy 3, players can tinker with political philosophies and try to set up a utopian state of their own choice beyond the supposedly rational decision-making of "Realpolitik" [31].…”

“…Thus, games offer players the possibility to adapt their decision-making in a safe space, enabling them to try out a variety of different decisions, learn about their effects on the system and possibly correct previous decision-making, which can be seen as another learning mechanic for the practice of decision-making. In addition, to facilitate the repetitive practice of decision-making, the possibility of "time travelling" also fosters creative experimentation with the possibility of a number of decisions, e.g., when players adopt/try out different perspectives from political philosophy in Democracy 3 [31].…”