Knight’s Quest: A Video Game to Explore Gender and Culture in Chaucer’s England

A cross-disciplinary team of researchers from the College of
Arts and Humanities (English, Philosophy, and Digital Media)
at the University of Central Florida are working on a virtual
medieval world based on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The
objectives are (1) that students experience a realistic virtual
environment, with historical detail (buildings, music, artwork),
and (2) that students view fourteenth century England from
various perspectives, both as a master and the mastered, from
the sacred to the profane. These objectives are accomplished
through a knight’s quest game based on the Wife of Bath’s Tale.
The Wife’s tale emphasizes the battle between men’s perceived
authority and women’s struggles for power. In her tale, a knight
must go on a quest to fi nd out what women most want. The
Wife’s tale leaves a narrative gap in the knight’s quest, which is
where our adaptation of Chaucer’s work is launched.
The knight interacts with Chaucerian characters on his journey-
-he meets everyday people like a cook, a reeve, a miller. In order
to understand the perspectives of master and mastered, sacred
and profane, the knight will dress as a woman to disguise his
identity; enter a cathedral to converse with a priest; disguise
himself as a peasant; and, later disguise as a monk to escape
danger. Other characters are scripted to react differently
to the noble knight when he is in disguise. This fetishism of
clothing is reminiscent of several of Shakespeare’s comedies
and tragedies, notably Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night’s
Dream, and King Lear. There are also two narrators, the knight
operating from his perspective (male and noble) and the Wife
(female and a widow), interrupting and offering her opinion on
the action of the quest.
The initial phase, a Game Design Document, was completed
in May 2007. A complete dialogue script for the storyline is
scheduled for December 2007, and initial programming and
modifi cation of the project, using the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
game engine to create this virtual world have also taken place
through 2007. A paper prototype usability study is complete
during November 2007 and a prototype visualization will be
available by June 2008.
As the Canterbury Tales is traditionally taught at the high
school level (Florida’s curriculum includes this under 12th
grade English Literature), the target audience for this prototype
is 14 to 16 year old players. Eight episodes of gameplay will run
an average player about two hours to complete. This format
has proven suitable for classroom use, where the teacher can
use the game during a computer lab session, with independent
student interaction time, or as a whole-class teacher-directed
activity to be completed over 3 to 4 days. The objective here
is not to teach the plot of Canterbury Tales—this information
is readily available from a number of different sources. Our
primary focus is to immerse the user in Chaucer’s historical
world while educating the user on the historical facts behind
the medieval era. These facts have been diluted over the years
by popular fi ction. An additional mission of this game is to
provide the player a variety of cultural perspectives through
the use of disguise and interaction with members of the Three
Estates of clergy, nobility, and peasantry and the feminine
estates of virgin, wife and widow. This game is not developed
to “teach” students the narrative structure of the Tales. It is
designed with the literary theories of New Historicism and
Cultural Studies as a basis for understanding the Tales as
situated in a particular history and culture.
Current research in the fi elds of human learning and cognitive
science speak to the exceptional ability of computer games to
explore identity, problem solving skills, verbal and non verbal
learning, and the transfer of learned ability from one task to
another (Gee, 2003; Berman & Bruckman, 2001; Cassell, 1998;
Fiore, Metcalf, & McDaniel, 2007; McDaniel, 2006; Jenkins, 2006;
Ryan, 2001a, 2001b; Squire, 2002). In fact, learning games in the
humanities have been used for hundreds of years--Bach’s Well
Tempered Clavier and The Art of the Fugue are his “learning
games,” simple to complex musical exercises that build skill
(Prensky, 2000). Virtual worlds offer a unique and interesting
way in which to observe critical relationships involving race,
gender, identity, community, and history. Such relationships
are clearly within the territory of humanities scholarship, and
we believe video games will excite and motivate students to
understand and engage with these complex topics in a fashion
that is intuitive and exciting for them.
In terms of humanities-specifi c objectives, games can provide
entry points for discussions and refl ections of all types of
cultural and critical issues. The discussion of interactivity and
the semantic quality of narrative and its application to digital
media is an important aspect of computer game development.
Ryan, in her article, “Beyond Myth and Metaphor—The Case
of Narrative in Digital Media” concludes that computer
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games offer the most suitable interface for digital narrative
is compelling, especially in light of current applications in the
fi eld (2001a).
Serious games can also foster new understanding among their
players. In philosophy of the mind, Gadamer describes a fusion
of horizons as the way humans understand. We, as human
beings, are historical and we each possess a unique horizon.
Each person has his own prejudice, history, and tradition, all
within the context of his language. If we approach knowledge
acquisition from Gadamer’s perspective, serious games are
one of the best ways for students to more fully understand
the humanities. Although Gadamer understands these new
experiences as material interactions with the world, we
propose that new understanding can take place through
interactions with the virtual world as well.
Lorraine Code echoes some of the historical and cultural
defi nitions of hermeneutical understanding that Gadamer
proposes, she fi lters these ideas through the lens of feminism and
her explanation of a mitigated defi nition of cultural relativism.
In her essay “How to Think Globally: Stretching the Limits
of Imagination,” she uses Shrage’s idea that relativism works
mainly with ‘crosscultural comparisons’ to endorse her view
that global understanding happens within a local context (Code,
1998). Our team proposes that serious games allow the player
to construct new perceptions of global understanding from a
variety of social, gendered and cultural perspectives (Berman
& Bruckman, 2001; Squire, 2002). Also, the production of video
games offers an important learning opportunity for students
involved in the multimodal production and representation of
source-specifi c content, narrative, and gameplay experiences.
We believe that this project, the development of a virtual
medieval world of Chaucer, can challenge learners to use
this path toward creating a new kind of knowledge of the
humanities. This new kind of knowledge in the humanities is
not the traditional memorized litany of Western icons, nor
a structure of literary genres and plots, but intensive and
extensive meaningful interaction with the cultural and artistic
achievements of humankind. This project is really what game
based learning can be at its best, meeting the needs of a
changing modern paradigm of understanding and basing its
development in good theoretical research.
Representative Bibliography
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