For my video game exploration, I started by searching simulation games on the video game website Steam. As an ELA and Social Studies teacher, one game, in particular, caught my eye. It was titled, “Nuremberg VRdict of Nations.” The description of this game expressed that less than 50% of young people are familiar with the historic Nuremberg trial citing a survey conducted by the “Nuremberg: Casus Pacis” project. There was no year or further information on that study so I am not sure how valid that claim is today or in different countries. However, The Nuremberg Trials are a very relevant piece of World History and I decided to play this free game. Right away it was very confusing. The initial instructions were in Russian but did have English subtitles. However, the instructions were very vague simply stating, “Grab and snap flag to flagpole.”

I realized this initial screen was intended to be a tutorial to learn the controls. However, the instructions for the controls were almost incomprehensible to a novice gamer. There was a box in the upper left corner that gave a key to the shortcuts however they were things like, “Button Press Mode Modifiers: Touch (T), Hair Touch (H).” I had no clue what button press mode modifier meant or why there was a need to differentiate touch and hair touch.

It took me twenty minutes just to learn how to use the mouse and keyboard to manipulate the VR hands to grab the flag that I was supposed to “snap to flagpole.” After I finally figured out how to pick things up I became frustrated at the fact that there was no flagpole. I will admit, the initial feeling of figuring out how to grab was extremely satisfying as I had spent 25 minutes just trying to figure that out (it turned out to be a combination of holding down control, q, and the left mouse click). Gee would describe my small victory as the phenomenon where “humans feel expanded and empowered when they can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways.” Those command keys were nothing if not intricate. However, as I said my next task was to find the flagpole. I tried to stick that flag in everything that vaguely resembled a flag pole for the next 30 minutes.

This game was not “pleasantly frustrating” as Gee would encourage but rather tremendously frustrating to a fault. It was at that point I realized I could not even figure out this loading screen that was meant to teach you the controls. I was not finding any useful information that could be incorporated into a Social Studies lesson after an hour of just learning controls so I decided to give up and pursue a different game. If I could not figure out this game, a room full of middle schoolers would certainly be frustrated as well. 

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