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Note: What follows is an experiment. I had a very productive class session last semester using this activity to teach about cultural globalization, and decided to write it up for publication in a pedagogy journal. I just finished a rough draft, and decided, what the hell, might as well make it available for teachers now rather than waiting for publication. And while I'm at it, I might as well solicit some last-minute editing tips, right? In particular, I'm a bit concerned that this somewhat complicated game is not really clear. So, if you enjoy this and find it useful, you might repay me by offering any pointers in the next couple of days before I submit. Thanks!
“Neolithic Survivor” is a single-class activity exploring concepts of
cultural formation, intercultural communication, and technological change. The activity is appropriate for courses on
intercultural communication, cultural globalization, and communication and technology,
and is intended to help students think expansively about the role of technology
in shaping cultural values and ethnic identity.
 |
A Neolithic Survivor game in progress.
Note the three different colors of figures,
representing three different teams. |
Theoretical Grounding:
The spread of communication technology has combined with more open
post-Cold War trade regimes and social liberation movements to increase the
flow of information, goods, and people across cultural and political
boundaries. This condition of the
current world system is commonly referred to as “globalization” (Beck, 2000; Castells, 1996; Pieterse,
2009). Globalization involves a distinct heightening
of the frequency and intensity of the interaction of nations and groups from
different cultural, economic, and historical positions. The mixing of these different cultures
includes not just the sharing of cultural texts (music, movies, television),
but also the increasing uniformity of the global technological infrastructure.
There are long-running arguments about what impact communication and other
advanced technologies have on the structures and practices of disparate
cultures, particularly including traditional cultures or those still in the
process of modernizing. Some have argued
that the spread of communication technology is sufficient to transform
traditional societies into modern ones, and that this process should be
celebrated and promoted (Lerner, 1958; Schramm, 1964). Others, particularly after the failure of early
‘modernization’ efforts globally, have argued that the implementation of new
ICT (information and communication technologies) can conflict with basic
cultural values, either rendering the technologies less impactful or altering
the culture’s underlying values (Kyem, 1999, 2012). Finally, more and
more scholars have pointed out ways that both technologies and messages are
re-articulated to local needs, resulting in significant differences in how
similar communication tools are used across cultures (cf. Appadurai, 1996).
This debate builds on ideas about the relationship between technology and
culture explored by Harold Innis and Marshall Macluhan, who argued that the
formal properties of communication technology have a more profound impact on
societies than the content of the messages those technologies transmitted. For instance, Innis argued that certain forms
of communication emphasized extensions of a culture’s power through space to
construct empires, while others provided superior duration of cultural
influence through time (Innis, 2008; McLuhan & Lapham,
1994). To fit the curriculum of my courses, my version
of “Neolithic Survivor” emphasized and specifically rewarded students for
engaging with these concepts of ‘time-binding’ and ‘space-binding’ media. Technology cards and other elements of the
game can be easily modified to emphasize different key course concepts.
It can be difficult for students to get a big-picture view of how the
dispersion and adaptation of technology can restructure something as subtle as
culture. As with most communication
courses, the first task in teaching about globalization is often to get
students to look at themselves and their own surroundings as ‘unfamiliar,’ as
having origins and differences , as something other than a completely natural
and taken-for-granted norm. The goal of
the “Neolithic Survivor” activity is to take students out of their familiar
settings and push them to think of culture as a ‘blank slate’ that is formed in
a complex interaction between cultural practices, ideas, and interactions
between groups.
Preparation:
Technology Cards: Use the attached
file to print and then cut several dozen cards representing a randomized
selection of ‘technologies’ that will be handed out to teams. These are the most important element of
gameplay. We define ‘technology’ quite
loosely here, with a few examples of things teams can ‘discover’ being:
stonecarving, navigation by stars, pottery, money, bronze, large stone
structures, numbers, writing, the wheel, agriculture, musical instruments,
religion, stone inscription, fire, stone tools, smoke signals, and the bow and
arrow.
Obviously these do not represent any ‘logical’ progression, and sequences
of discoveries that might seem strange do arise – but as we’ll see, this is
part of the game’s learning potential.
I would encourage instructors to use their own creativity to add
technologies to the stack that are either relevant to specific lessons, or that
they just think would be fun to work with and talk about.
Playing Pieces:
You’ll need about a dozen markers or figures about the size of nickels to
represent players’ tribes. They should
be four different colors, or otherwise marked to be distinguishable by team. If
you happen to be a board game fan, you can probably find something appropriate
around the house – I was able to use various figures from a Dungeons and
Dragons board game.
Playing Board:
You’ll need a playing surface divided into roughly even-sized squares that
fit your figures. The attached file
representing the Fertile Crescent may be used, or if appropriate for your class
you may use a different regional map and turn it into a play surface. Scale is not really important to gameplay.
Depending on your technology circumstances, you may want to print your map
out on a transparency. The ideal
possibility would be if your classroom is equipped with an overhead projection
camera, allowing the image of the board to be magnified for the whole class, in
which case you can just print on plain paper.
Otherwise, you may need to project the board as a transparency, or in a
worst-case scenario you can place the playing board in the center of the room
and allow students to look at it more closely as needed.
The Activity:
Neolithic Survivor is a turn-based game
that simulates cultural change and hybridization over time as a group of small
tribes in a nonspecific prehistoric period move, grow, and adopt new
technologies. While it is played in part
on a game board, the largest portion of its gameplay consists of collaborative
storytelling, in which the players make decisions whose outcomes the instructor
determines.
This kind of gameplay is based
largely on the creative and collaborative model of tabletop role-playing games
such as Dungeons and Dragons. While such games often involve complex
statistical systems to simulate probability and outcomes (most often in
combat), their more deeply distinctive feature is the way players make choices
and a gamemaster improvises the consequences of those decisions in a way that
constructs a larger narrative. Neolithic Survivor focuses almost
exclusively on the storytelling element of such games, with the instructor
serving as gamemaster-for-the-day. As
we’ll see, this means that the game calls on an instructor’s ability to be
creative on the fly.
A game of Neolithic Survivor tells the story of three or four primitive
tribes and their transformation, over the course of hundreds orthousands of
years, into sophisticated communities with distinct identities and mutual
relationships. The emergent story is a
parable, and is not meant to reflect any real instance of similar
development. Instead, it is intended to
capture a sense of what it means for a culture to make decisions about
technological usage and interactions with others, and to develop in particular
ways as a result of those decisions.
At the beginning of the
game, read this script:
As
the game starts, you are playing as the leaders of a tribe of very early
humans, living a very rudimentary nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the
Tigris/Euphrates river, far back in human prehistory.
Each
receives one technology card per turn, for every five population. After receiving your card, you have three to five
minutes to work as a group to write one or two sentences about how you will use
your new knowledge. How will you use it
increase your power? How can you use it
to influence your population? The
population of another tribe? Can you use
it to claim territory? Be creative! Try to come up with actions that will either
improve your tribe’s monopolization of space
or your monopolization of time. You
may use a computer/smartphone/tablet to research ideas for how you will act
each turn.
But you can only use your new technology in
ONE way, so be thoughtful! For example,
if you discover fire, you can use it to construct a system of communication by
smoke signals or to cook food, but not both.
Your communication enhancement might give you greater ability to move or
more prowess in battle, but more healthy food would increase your
population. Also note, some technologies
can interact with previous discoveries!
For instance, if you have already discovered bows and arrows, you can
use fire to make flaming arrows.
After
all groups submit their actions for the turn, I will determine the outcome of
the turn. I will award “population
points” based on the creativity and effectiveness of your planned actions each turn
(or I may take points away!). Everyone starts with five population points. Each additional five population points earns
you an extra population marker, which grants you an extra population figure,
which allows you to control an extra territory and gain an extra card each
turn.
Following this
introduction, the game proceeds as follows:
11. Divide students into
three to five teams. Ideally, this is an
activity in a class of no more than 30 students, so that each group is small
enough to operate collaboratively. Have each
team, or tribe, pick a name. The
instructor then creates a visible scoreboard on a whiteboard or the like, with
a column for each team. Each team begins
with five points. In this game, ‘points’
represent the population of a tribe, and can grow or shrink on the basis of
game outcomes.
22. Using an overhead
projector, display the map. Using any
method to decide order of selection, have each team pick a starting location,
with each team represented by some sort of figure or marker. Council them that map features make a
difference – encourage them think through what it might mean to plant their
tribe on a river or coastline, for instance.
33. Distribute, at random,
one technology card to each team. Give
teams three to five minutes to collaboratively write a one- or two-sentence
description of how they will use their new technology on a slip of paper, with
team name.
44. Game master
(instructor) collects all technology decisions.
At this point, teams may also move their figure one space, if they
wish. During later turns, when they may
have more than one game piece, they can move none, some, or all of their
pieces.
55. Game master
(instructor) evaluates all technology decisions, and assigns population points,
generally in a range between one and three, depending on the creativity and
effectiveness of the teams’ declared use of the technology. Outcomes of decisions may depend on each
tribe’s geographic location, or on the interaction of more than one decision. For instance, land near rivers will provide
better results for tribes that choose to invest in agriculture. Also, in the event of a conflict between
tribes (almost guaranteed sooner or later), the game master has to resolve the
conflict, deciding how many population points each side lost or gained, and
what territory each tribe controls at the end of the turn. This determination is based on any number of
factors including teams’ declared strategy and relative level of technological
development.
66. Each turn is identical
in structure, though they will get more complex. Each turn will take at least ten minutes to
resolve, so games will generally involve between four and seven turns in one
class session.
77. As the game continues,
teams accumulate more population points, and one figure is added to the playing
surface to represent every five points of population. This allows teams to control multiple types of
terrain.
88. Teams ALSO receive an
additional Technology Card for every five population points they have on the
board. Teams need to describe how they
will use each piece of technology.
9 9. As the game continues,
teams accumulate more technologies, at random, and become more differentiated
from one another, with different advantages and disadvantages. If teams get a new technology card identical
to one they have already received, they can use the same technology in a new
way (remember, each new technology can only be used one way).
1 10. Remind students that
because this is a narrative game, decision making and planning are very
open-ended. Students can get very
creative, and you may have to improvise, as I’ll show in the sample game
described below.
111. The game ends when time
is up. If you want to debrief in the
same class session, allow at least ten minutes, but you may also want to devote
a second class session or substantial chunk to discussion of the game.
112.. Count up population
points to determine the winning team.
Students will be drawn into a game they think they can ‘win,’ but as
with all educational games, who wins isn’t of as much interest as the process.
Gameplay Examples
The rules for Neolithic Survivor are relatively simple, but the real
engagement and learning opportunities for the game come from students’
creativity and the game-master’s responses.
Each student decision about how a team will ‘use’ a technology or
otherwise act or move produces unpredictable results as they interact with the
decisions of other teams. A few examples
taken from games played in the authors’ classrooms will help show how this can
work at the level of individual technology uses, on a turn-by-turn basis, and
over the course of a game. To help show
the bigger picture of the game’s flow, these examples are drawn from a single
real game. These examples show that
while the game emphasizes communication technology and practices, more material
aspects of life and technology are also represented.
Example Technology Use 1: A team receives a card giving them the ability to draw
durable images on stone. Drawing on
Harold Innis’ discussion of time-binding media, they specifically choose to
inscribe religious imagery. The
game-master responds by declaring that they have successfully founded a new
religion, increasing social order, and awards them two population points.
Example Technology Use 2: A team, who earlier in the game had learned agriculture and
chosen to settle near a river basin on the map, are later given the card
granting the ability to create pottery.
They choose to use this technology to store food. The game-master declares that this
drastically increases their durable food supply and grants them four Population
Points.
Example Technology Use 3: A team who had earlier discovered the bow and arrow and
established a military subsequently invent musical instruments. They choose to use music as a form of
military control. The game-master awards
them 2 population points to represent their increased ability to defend small
threats, and informs them that their military is now particularly potent.
Example Turn: A team that has developed both military power and a
powerful religion moves to attack a team that has built a larger population by
focusing on agriculture and social structure.
There are no rules in Neolithic Survivor for combat – the game-master
simply has to make a decision based on what makes sense given the
circumstances. In this case, the
game-master chooses to reduce the population of each team, which is much more
damaging for the smaller, aggressive tribe.
As a result of this mistake, the smaller, religious, militiarized tribe
decides in the next turn to pursue peace with the tribe they had attacked. The game-master chooses to allow it, and the
two teams negotiate a peace and then merge, along with their technology, to
form a culture with strong agriculture as well as intense religious practices
and military strength.
Debriefing:
This game simplifies culture to a Neolithic context, with a small
population, limited geography, and only a few ‘moving parts’, and shows how it
grows larger and more complex with innovation.
This model provides easily digestible insights into many fundamental
ideas of communication, technology, and culture. Though the game-master should always dictate
outcomes that are sensible and proportionate (i.e. punishing teams that make
unstrategic decisions and rewarding those that act carefully), there will
ultimately be no neat, linear progression to the game, and the game can be
actively engineered both before and during play to emphasize different concepts
depending on the course context.
In a course focused on technology and communication, the game could illustrate
the idea that communication is constitutive – that forms of communication do
not simply ‘reflect’ the cultures that use them, but in fact shape those
cultures in non-deterministic ways.
Observations of how fire can be used in different ways can build into
discussions of how modern technologized communication has different impacts on
the various societies that adopt it.
In a course about identity or globalization, the game could show how
cultures and ethnicities are not pre-given, but emerge through a process of
change over time. For instance, in the
gameplay example above, the struggling team that chose to ‘merge’ with a more
successful team illustrates a fairly historically common process of melding or
hybridity (cf. Kraidy, 2005). The game’s mix of randomness (in the discovery of new
knowledge) and strategy (in teams use of technology) is particularly suited for
illustrating the concept of contingency – the idea that any given cultural
formation is the result, not of the logical unfolding of some inherent national
or ethnic ‘essence,’ but of a series of historical events that are the product
of the strange alchemy of purpose and luck.
The game may, then, serve as a powerful support for a course that advances
a position of cultural anti-essentialism (see West, 1990).
The game’s main shortcoming is that it relies heavily on the
improvisational skill of the instructor/gamemaster, and on a sense of
cameraderie and exploration in the classroom.
The game’s structure is intentionally open-ended, and there are
relatively few hard rules in place to deal with the vast number of possible
actions undertaken by a team. An
instructor/gamemaster must be prepared to quite literally make things up as
they go along. Particularly in the
awarding of points and declaration of a winner, this might lead to student
unrest if the course as a whole is not already on a steady footing of
collaborative exploration.
Works Cited:
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity At
Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1st ed.). Univ Of Minnesota
Press.
Beck, U.
(2000). What Is Globalization. Polity.
Castells,
M. (1996). Rise of The Network Society (Information Age Series) (1st
ed.). Wiley.
Innis, H.
A. (2008). The Bias of Communication (2nd Edition.). University of
Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division.
Kraidy,
M. M. (2005). Hybridity: The Cultural Logic Of Globalization (1st ed.).
Temple University Press.
Kyem, P.
A. K. (1999). Examining the Discourse About the Transfer of GIS Technology to
Traditionally Non-Western Societies. Social Science Computer Review, 17(1),
69–73. doi:10.1177/089443939901700107
Kyem, P.
A. K. (2012). Is ICT the panacea to sub-Saharan Africa’s development problems?
Rethinking Africa’s contentious engagement with the global information society.
Progress in Development Studies, 12(2-3), 231–244.
doi:10.1177/146499341101200309
Lerner,
D. (1958). The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East.
Macmillan Pub Co.
McLuhan,
M., & Lapham, L. H. (1994). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
(Reprint.). The MIT Press.
Pieterse,
J. N. (2009). Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange (Second
Edition.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Schramm,
W. L. (1964). Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information
in the Developing Countries. Stanford University Press.
West, C.
(1990). The New Cultural Politics of Difference. In Out There:
Marginalization and Contemporary Culture (pp. 38, 19). MIT Press. Retrieved
from https://my.ucdavis.edu:443/main_frame.cfm
