The Hunger Games Game: Exploring Ideology through Game-Based Learning

Roughly seven years ago, as my thirty-six-student senior-level adolescent literature class was about to embark on studying Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, I realized that I needed to do something to motivate students' interest in studying the text. It was the end of the semester, and they were already overwhelmed with final papers and projects, upcoming exams, and long working hours. From this impetus, I developed The Hunger Games game, a week-long class format (two seventy-five-minute classes) that uses game-based learning to help students investigate Collins's The Hunger Games in relation to Louis Althusser's theory of ideology and ideological state apparatuses and Hakim Bey's theory of the temporary autonomous zone.¹ My hope—and what I believe to have been the case after several years of playing this game—is that pairing the active learning of a role-play game with post-game reflection and an investigation of ideological concepts encourages students to become more motivated (and more adept) at exploring power and rebellion not only within Collins's text, but within all course texts. Moreover, the broader benefit of this impertinent pedagogy is the impact it generates; past students have informed me that their experiences of the role-play game remain with them long after the semester ends, helping them to think critically about their perceptions of power and ideology in their own lives.

The format of the game combines role-play with course review, and incorporates two primary objectives: first, to employ active learning in order to help students investigate concepts of ideology and power, particularly as they appear within The Hunger Games text; and second, to provide an interesting review of key texts, authors, and ideas that we have studied throughout the semester. That is, while the game takes its roles and structure from Collins's novel, the actual content of the game expands to incorporate material from throughout the course. For both objectives, it is important to me that students' motivation to participate be authentic, rather than externally driven (or at least as much as a classroom-based format allows). As Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci note regarding intrinsic motivation,

Comparisons between people whose motivation is authentic (literally, self-authored or endorsed) and those who are merely externally controlled for an action typically reveal that the former, relative to the latter, have more interest, excitement, and confidence, which in turn is manifest as enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity. . . . This is so even when the people have the same level of perceived competence or self-efficacy for the activity.

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Thus, I have found that if the students willingly and enthusiastically participate, their genuine interest in the functioning of the game allows them to be curious and creative in discussing concepts of power and ideology during our post-game discussions. Essentially, the novelty of the game motivates students to participate in it, and that participation, in turn, motivates them to explore their experiences through the lenses of The Hunger Games text and Althusser's and Bey's theories.

Gameplay

The game takes about twenty-five minutes (depending on class size), although the players' roles and the rules of the game can easily be changed to create shorter or longer gameplay. I start by randomly assigning students to five roles:

• • Tributes representing each of twelve districts (tributes make up the majority of the students. In my class of thirty-six students, twenty-four are tributes)

• • Capitol citizens

• • Gamemakers

• • President Snow

• • Game observers

I give tributes time to find their district partners, and to initiate alliances with tributes from other districts. This time allows the students to consider strategy, and the alliances have a secondary outcome of helping to quell anxiety that may arise from the change to our normal class format. The members of the Capitol similarly meet to set their own agenda for the game, as do President Snow and the gamemakers. As the students form alliances and discuss strategies, I foreground the role-playing aspect by asking each student to consider how their assigned character might...