Designing Videogames as 'Trojan Horses' for Catalyzing Human Development
"Moses Silbiger has been doing a breakthrough exploration on the untapped territory of designing integral-developmental video games as ‘Trojan horses’ for catalyzing human development through what I call the ‘Conveyor belt of Growth’.
His research points into a significant and timely needed re-integration of the ‘worlds’ of entertainment (arts), technology (science), and integral development (morals) into new levels of inter-dependence through novel and proactive interactive-entertainment applications.
I highly endorse Moses’s vision to bring meaningful messages and practices to the emergent world of interactive entertainment, a path which he has chosen to explore with such an engaging and contagious sense of purpose and passion!
Looking forward to the unfolding and great manifestation of these potentially revolutionary integral-developmental video games, and to the virtual doors and windows they are most certainly going to open up, in, out, and down the ‘rabbit hole’… "
Ken Wilber, contemporary philosopher, pundit, and writer
As virtual reality and entertainment technologies continue to evolve and integrate with leading edge integral-developmental psychology practices, I envision video games being increasingly designed to facilitate human development and personal growth.
While enrolled in my Masters Degree in Integral Psychology with Certification in Life Coaching at John F. Kennedy University (California), I had the opportunity to start integrating some of my passions and multi-disciplinary interests for computer graphics, video games, technology, and psychology by researching the potentials of video games to catalyze self-development.
Since my graduation in June 2008, I have been engaged in an ongoing mixed-methods research exploration including 6 qualitative & quantitative methodological approaches, related to the emergent academic research approach of Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) (Wilber, 2007, Esbjörn-Hargens, 2006).
In gradual but quite significant ways, this research has brought me a great deal of unexpected surprises, insights, and realizations in relation to the immense potentials of designing video games to catalyze human development.
Video games have been currently considered by many thinkers and critics as the storytelling or "story-making" media of the 21st century, and one of the “ultimate art forms” due to its unprecedented cross-disciplinary and integrative aspects. Today, the design of high quality video games have to be orchestrated by a myriad of different professionals such as artists, painters, actors, dancers, choreographers, architects, directors, designers, painters, writers, technicians, cognitive scientists, behavioral psychologists, marketers, engineers, and AI (artificial intelligence) programmers, among many others.
In my research, I discovered that the influence of video games in our culture and society is much bigger than many people may think. Indeed, this industry is “the fastest growing and one of the most popular, pervasive and profitable segments in the … entertainment industry” (Bryant & Vorderer, 2006); having already surpassed the movies and music industries altogether (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2007).
In the year of 2007, 33% of homes had a video game console in the US (ESA, 2007), with 38% of players being female, and 62% male.
Adult gamers had been already playing computer or video games for an average of 13 years, with almost a half of gamer parents playing for 10 years or more, in average of 21 hours a month (!) (ESA, 2007).
The average age of gamer today is 33-35 years old, an age especially prone to benefit from integral research and applications related to inner growth and awareness beyond conventional adulthood levels (Cook-Greuter, 2006), moving towards post-adulthood levels of self-actualizationand human development (Wilber, 2007, Maslow, 1974). Besides that, 37 year-old gamers are now the biggest buyers of video games in the United States.
In my view, these astounding numbers make video game play and “practice” in terms of time range and commitment to be quite significant and extremely prone for incorporation of proactive “Trojan Horse” applications (subtle, non-forceful, underlying) based on developmental cross-training aimed to catalyze human development; since these practices also tend to request a lot of time, commitment and steady growth over time.
These games will purposefully take into account some of the fundamental aspects of human development based on various integral and developmental psychology frameworks and subtly (and skillfully) explore their full potentialities of growth through various developmental experiences and practices. Ideally, these transformative and self-improvement oriented tools would be totally embedded in their design, and hence not being too forceful, literal or even apparent at first glance.
Whether some may like or not, we are already fully immersed in the information technology and virtual age, meaning that a lot of aspects of life that we were accustomed with are gradually and radically changing as time goes by. In general, many people still think that some video games can bring more negative than positive influences to players, or at best a neutral contribution. Also, people from all ages today are fairly used to the idea of most video games as being “kids” or “adolescent” things, or being mostly superficial entertainment. As with other types of entertainment media, they can also have the potential to create both positive and negative influences on players, including different types of persuasion, impressions, influences, and role modeling.
Due to issues of space and scope, I have not investigated in depth the potentially harmful and negative aspects of video games in my research, since my primary concern has been to focus on exploring their healthy, positive and proactive potentials for catalyzing human development.
However, I suggest in my study that further developmental research about the combination of a low Self-Center of Gravity (Wilber, 2007, 2000) with critical levels of disintegration, unbalances, shadows, and/or repressions in some of the main aspects of players' reality - e.g., types of personality; levels of development; lines of intelligence; emotional states; as well as players' individual, behavioral, physical, cultural, and social background - could add significant data to complement most of the existing academic research on video games in relation to their potential positive and negative aspects.
Currently, most of these studies have been concerned with positive and negative influences of video games as related to cognitive-behavioral psychology and other objective and empirical factors (e.g., video games’ intrinsic mechanics, play dynamics, genres, themes, and contents), but not developmental psychology, especially through the whole range of childhood to post-adulthood stages.
Based on the emergent academic field of Integral Psychology founded by the contemporary philosopher and visionary Ken Wilber (2000), I propose making use of a deep, integrative and comprehensive integral perspective that takes into account both the potential “dignities and disasters” of the exponential evolution of video games and virtual reality technologies; a perspective that accounts for many developmental variables, dynamics, and aspects.
During my research, I came to realize that the potentials for video games to promote positive and proactive influences can be especially significant at this moment in time and in the future yet to come. Today, there are already a myriad of new and emergent applications related to education, arts, health, behaviors, training, simulations, exercises, development, social and cultural issues, which have been increasingly explored by many game designers and organizations (commercial, institutional, military, advertisement, business, academic, and others). Besides that, I can envision a series of emergent potential applications still waiting to be “discovered” and “downloaded” into concrete video game manifestations.
As en example of how the field of "serious games" is growing, investments in “game-based learning” had already reached the amount of $125,000,000 in the year of 2006, and an increasing number of contemporary academic studies have been gradually proving their efficiency and success through different studies and projects - e.g., Blunt (2006); McDivitt (2006); Baba, Hichibe & Tomiyasu (GDC 2008); NMSU Learning Games Lab; and Project Tomorrow, among many others.
The greatest potential of video games stems from the fact that we now have the ability to interact with a mass communication medium that can be intentionally structured to deliver developmental “packages” skillfully designed to stimulate personal growth on a mass scale. This comes in contrast to non-interactive and less experiential processes of learning generally provided by other types of educational media.
If we take in consideration the growing trends of the emergent multi-billionaire industries of Self-Improvement & Wellness and add into this equation the rapid growth of the similarly emergent multi-billionaire Video Game industry, only "the sky is the limit" as to where the combination of both industries will be heading into the upcoming future...
According to Marketdata Enterprises, a group that tracks major cultural trends, the Self-Improvement business (e.g., coaching, seminars, workshops, books, CDs & DVDs, etc. ) is expected to hit $12 billion in the U.S. by 2008.
Likewise,the"Wellness Revolution"is gradually becoming the "Next Trillion Dollar Industry", according to Paul Zane Pilzer - world-renowned economist, successful entrepreneur and writer In 2002, his book The Wellness Revolution helped to define this industry and outline an emerging $200 billion growth for the next years. Indeed, in 2008 the Wellness industry has already grown to $500 billionand according to Pilzer,"it's still just getting started, offering even greater entrepreneurial opportunities".
Millions of people have been already benefited from using all kinds of media designed to facilitate personal growth, promote inner awareness, self-improvement, and significant transformation in many areas of their lives.
As new form of media, video games and virtual reality simulators can potentially incorporate several practices and concepts related to the industries of Self-Improvement and Wellness into their own structure and design, expanding their influence and power through the unprecedented potentials of interactive entertainment.
From a philosophical meta-perspective, I see video games as potentially able to re-integrate the three main fields of human experience and exploration - arts (computer graphics), morals (human development) and science (technology) - in a multi-functional media, allowing players to access both “the Beautiful, the Good and the True” referred by many perennial philosophers through the sheer and transformative experience of play.
Sweeping through the Arts section of a Time magazine (May 19th, 2008), I spotted an article about a new trend that has been called the “future of movies”. The story analyses two recently released top-box films: Iron Man (Favreau, 2008) and Speed Racer (2008), the later directed by Larry and Andy Wachowsky. As stated in the Time:
The implicit message [of Speed Racer and Iron man] is that we’ve dwelled too long in the crypts of antiscientific dystopia. We live in an age of sophisticated machines. They do much of our work for us; we spend most of our playtime with them. So, let’s recognize our symbiosis with machines – and celebrate our mastery of them – in movies that couldn’t be made without them. (Corliss, 2008)
This symbiosis and mastery are becoming especially true with the advent of new and upcoming technological interfaces, such as brain-mind linkages; biofeedback and emotional tracking devices; somatic & kinesthetic recognition technologies (camera recognition, body movement tracking, touch & smell sensors, and others).
The potentials of using these new and emergent virtual technologies to catalyze human development are also shared by leading contemporary thinkers.
The contemporary philosopher, pundit, and writer Ken Wilber, who participated with philosophical comments in The Matrix Trilogy movie series (The Ultimate Matrix Collection, 2004) comments: “I do think that is going to happen, brain-mind linkages which in essence will plug every human mind into the World Wide Web and world wide computer capacities, [which] is going to be the [upcoming] techno-economic mode”.
Likewise, Ray Kurzweil - one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers and authorities on technology, stated in the Game Developers Conference (San Francisco, 2008) that “in the acceleration of technological progress, there is no industry in the world matching the video game industry today” (!!!) According to him, as technology evolves towards new kinds of subtle, cybernetic, and more embodied interfaces, “video games and virtual reality simulators will be the main tools used for teaching, training and learning in the next decades.”
In order for these predictions to fully manifest in our daily life, gradual but exponential innovations in the areas of virtual technology, artificial intelligence (AI), biofeedback and brain-mind interfaces will need to continue until a critical point of growth is reached that can totally revolutionize the current technological paradigm (Kurzweil, 1999). And the fact is that these innovations are already happening, and in astounding speed...
In the meanwhile, I envision the integral-developmental video games proposed in my research as having the potential to gradually transform what we conventionally call by “entertainment experience”, by adding an extra layer of meaning and proactive intentionality into the game play.
These games will purposefully take into account some of the fundamental aspects of human development based on various integral-developmental psychology frameworks and skilfylly explore their full potentialities of growth through various developmental concepts & practices.
In my view, these are all important issues to consider at this auspicious moment of great opportunities represented by the contemporary advances of the video game industry, as well as the fields of developmental and integral psychology.
We are now in a great, timely and also critically needed position to start integrating all the artistic, developmental and technological systems we have been building around us in the last century, so we can start using them in more proactive and constructive ways. We have now in our hands the great possibility of exploring these emergent potentials through novel and creative video game applications, in order to create more meaningful, healthy, and proactive entertainment experiences - and as a result of that, a better world for all of us to live, play and enjoy, in both virtual and real ways.
As the old prophet Hillel used to say, “if not now, when?” - which I add: “If not us, who”?
PS: A special thanks for Sean-Esbjörn-Hargens, PhD, my mentor in the research at John F. Kennedy University for his ongoing enthusiasm, encouragement and support during the main phase of the project; to my parents, sisters and wife Catherine-Weber Silbiger for her unconditional love and daily help; to Ken Wilber, Corey deVos and the Integral Institute for their ongoing support, synergy and shared vision; and to all my family, friends, colleagues, interviewees, mentors, and teachers for their sincere feedback, support and excitement with this significant cause. And finally, thanks to all gamers, video game researchers, designers, conferencists, and academics who have shared their meaningful experiences and ideas throughout my whole project and beyond. Thank you!
~ Best wishes, Moses
Moses Silbiger, M.A. Integral Psychology
Visionary & Entrepeneur Researcher - Video Games, Virtual Realities & Human Development Integral Life Coach & Consultant Architect, Creative Director & Designer
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In my view, these astounding numbers make video game play and “practice” in terms of time range and commitment to be quite significant and extremely prone for incorporation of proactive “Trojan Horse” applications (subtle, non-forceful, underlying) based on developmental cross-training aimed to catalyze human development; since these practices also tend to request a lot of time, commitment and steady growth over time. 
If we take in consideration the growing trends of the emergent multi-billionaire industries of Self-Improvement & Wellness and add into this equation the rapid growth of the similarly emergent multi-billionaire Video Game industry, only "the sky is the limit" as to where the combination of both industries will be heading into the upcoming future... 
Attention UHPA! - Untapped High Potentials Ahead!
