Over+the+Top+(Patrick)

Overview

//Over the Top// is an historical simulation produced by the Canadian War Museum. Its creators describe it as an “interactive adventure game” that allows players to experience the “excitement, despair, brutality and sheer horror” of life in the trenches during WWI, but in reality, the game is primarily a written story accompanied by simple animated scenes. At the outset of the game, you are prompted to enter your name, the name of a friend, and your hometown. These details are used to personalize some of the game and make more of a real connection between the player and the game narrative.

This narrative follows a few days (or less) in the life of a young Canadian soldier (you) stationed on the Western Front in 1916. The story describes many of the hardships of daily life: poor food, lack of sleep, bitter cold, constant fear of German attack, and so forth. After reading/listening to this story and clicking through several minutes of animated scenes, you are suddenly faced with a choice; you may join a work crew to clear new trenches, or you may choose to retrieve some communications wire from the rear lines. From that point on, the story is dictated by your responses.

The game is broken into “chapters,” each consisting of a short mission or dilemma that must be overcome. At several points in each chapter, the player is prompted to make a choice to direct the next stage of the narrative. A good choice means survival to the next chapter. A bad choice means danger or even death. All told, your only goal (and only reward) is survival, a more difficult task than it may seem. Each new encounter escalates the danger that you face. Many choices have no clear “correct” response, and one wrong move can mean immediate failure (I saw my name on at least four KIA notifications before actually managing to complete the game). In the end, one lesson is made very clear; you need a lot of luck (or may tries) to make it through this game.



Kinds of Learning

This game may not be sufficient to teach a student everything there is to know about WWI and trench warfare, but it could definitely help players think more deeply about what it would have been like to experience this piece of history. Of course, some content learning is involved. Setting-specific vocabulary (artillery, shells, dugout, etc.) is introduced with a dictionary option, allowing those previously less familiar with the topic to understand the narrative. Furthermore, players may take part in many of the tactics involved in trench warfare. For example, players can encounter a gas attack and must choose to either risk being poisoned or to don their gas mask that has a cracked lens and will render you sightless. In this situation, depending on their choice, players can learn both about the tactics of chemical weapon attacks and defense, as well as the effects of such attacks and the technology to avoid injury (though the game notable overlooks the ineffective nature of early gas masks). Similar content learning takes place throughout the game. Still, the game as a whole lacks sufficient detail to give a complete understanding. As mentioned above, the main lesson learned through this game has little to do with technology or tactics. Rather, players learn that caution and luck are vital for survival. Above anything, this game helps bring the human side of history back into the picture. Although this game cannot fully teach about trench warfare, it helps players to imagine the experience without the chance of death. In that way, players can learn a deeper, more personal understanding of life in the trenches than typically accompanies book learning alone.

Kinds of Teaching

As far as gameplay goes, there is very little to learn. The game can be played with one finger, used to click through screens, scroll through text, and select choices of action when prompted. Nonetheless, the game does nothing to teach these processes. When the game opens, players see a brief, simple, animated video with a scrolling text box below. A male voice begins narrating the text, and once he finishes, a button reading “replay scene” appears at the bottom of the screen. The only other features with which you can interact are small arrows to the left and right of the screen. To proceed, proceed, you must click on the right arrow, and another scene with another narration begins. This process repeats until you are faced with your first choice (note: once you begin to interact with the story, the narration stops, and you must begin to read the text for yourself). Likewise, to choose the option you desire, all you must do is click on the button of your choosing.

Really, that is all there is to the gameplay. The engaging part of the game is the story. You don’t know what will happen next. You don’t know what the consequences of your choices will be. In other words, you must make the best guesses you can and hope everything turns out alright. In this way, //Over the Top// uses Gee’s “discovery” principle to teach about the dangers of life in the trenches. It seems that almost any situation can be fatal, but the game doesn’t tell you until you try.

At the same time, this game somehow simultaneously implements Gee’s “psychosocial moratorium” principle and circumvents it. All video games use this principle to some degree. The very nature of a virtual world separates a player from the consequences of their actions. In that sense, this game does so as well. You play a soldier that almost inevitably dies, but you, of course, do not suffer his fate. Nevertheless, this game does everything it can to make the consequences seem real. There is no body armor or health regeneration as in most battle simulations. If you get shot, you die. Heroics get you killed. Cowering gets you killed, mimicking real life consequences.

Furthermore, throughout the game, you are not only responsible for your own well being, but that of a friend that you also name (I named mine after my oldest and closest friend). Through this, the game further makes you feel for its characters, trying rather successfully to provoke an emotional response when your friend also seemingly inevitably dies. In these ways, the game tries to make consequences as real as possible, helping players to experience the hardships of war in some small way. Simply put, the game is not meant to be fun.

Overall Reflection

For use in the classroom, this game has some notable strengths and weaknesses. As described above, the game does a very good job of creating an emotional story that helps players experience the hardships of trench warfare while simultaneously teaching (or reinforcing) historical content. However, not all students would find this game engaging. As said, the game is heavily text-based, and actual player interaction is very limited. Further, sometimes several minutes of narration or reading may pass between points that the player can actually make any decisions. For these reasons, many students might find the game boring.

However, I happen to know this game can have a very real impact in a classroom. I learned of this game through a colleague who used it in a 10th grade history unit on WWI a few months ago. Though I had not had a chance to play it myself until recently, speaking with my colleague and with his students made it clear that this game can be very engaging. I overheard one student in particular, who just happened to be in my class immediately after playing this game, recounting some of the horrors her character had encountered to other students. She reported to have died many times in the span of one class period, and she appeared to be truly, though not overly negatively, effected by it.

//Over the Top// could be used to great effect in a history classroom. Ideally, I envision the game’s use in the midst of a unit on WWI, after students had already been introduced to the major concepts and events of the conflict. Students should have a basic understanding of the causes, consequences, and hardships of trench warfare prior to playing the game. In this way, the game might transform prior content learning into something more real and more personal for the students. Though some students may not let themselves connect with the game characters and thus fail to gain anything from the gaming experience, even a single class period of play could be highly impactful for those that do.