Moses Silbiger on Video Games for Personal Growth

A friend passed along to me a link to Moses Silbiger's research on using video games for spiritual and personal growth. His work is closely related to a article I co-authored on creating inner experience through game technology (not as fluffy as it sounds). It's great to see someone else researching in this area, especially from the approach of integral psychology which I appreciate so much. Moses' site, and the full text of the excerpt below are available here. Take it away Moses:

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...

I really think he is on to something with his approach. The problem in developing video games geared towards spiritual/personal growth is that there are so many different models for how do achieve that growth independent of video games. Populist religion, the self help industry, hell the whole field of psychology is all an effect to help people achieve fulfillment and happiness. When you consider how broad a task this is, and the fact that there is not a singe universal model for personal growth, the idea of designing a game geared towards that end seems all but impossible. I have only surface understanding of Integral Psychology, but I've read a little Ken Wilber and I know that it's based on the principle that all aspects of existence - inner and external phenomena can be mapped onto a similar model, a Theory of Everything, as Wilber recoined it. If this is true, even in part (read some Wilber and you'll think it is), then using integral psychology as a model for 'self-help' game development makes a whole lot of sense.