Connecting Mechanics and Experience in Call of Duty MW to Opportunities for Civic Empathy
0In this showcase, we highlight our recently published work where we discussed how game mechanics that constrain players’ actions serve to create juxtaposition and cognitive dissonance, which in turn create emotional experiences that serve as rich sites for complex learning to take place. We examined the 2019 release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (MW) as a thematically violent videogame and engaged in narrative descriptions of two missions from the game. We interleaved discussion of the mechanics in these missions, drawing conclusions from our own play experiences. Our findings may inform the design of learning experiences such as games and simulations for broader audiences. In this showcase, we play selected parts from the game's missions while providing expanded commentaries from the published paper. Generally, we argue that MW illustrates design principles useful for effecting emotional experiences, which previous works show are a key element to the formation of memories and therefore learning. Specifically, we discuss how MW’s mechanics (a) are designed to constrain player’s actions to facilitate visceral experiences while being (b) thoughtfully juxtaposed with typical first-person shooter mechanics to (c) create opportunities to develop civic empathy—the ability to understand and, to some extent, share the feelings of another person. We also highlight the concept of global civic empathy, in which one includes the world’s citizens as co-members of a global community.