Review: Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card

July 27th, 2007

More than twenty years ago, Orson Scott Card published Ender’s Game, so why am I reviewing it now? Well, partly because, after twenty years, I suspect that some few newer fans of science fiction may actually not have encountered the book yet. But I have a better reason.

Ender’s Game is the best science-fiction novel focused on games and gaming that has ever been written.

The book isn’t just about games, which is part of why it succeeds. It recounts the experiences of Andrew Wiggin, who goes by “Ender.” Only six years old, he’s taken to a Battle School in orbit around Earth to train for an officer’s position in the International Fleet, the united interstellar army dedicated to defending humanity from the hostile insectoid aliens known as Buggers.

Games serve as a primary means of education in the book. Students spend their free time playing video games in a shared arcade or on their own “desks”—effectively, networked laptops. All the games, apparently, teach small lessons in strategy, tactics, and even more academic subjects. Card gives us just enough detail about the video games that we can imagine them as fun and innovative, even after twenty years of innovative game development have elapsed.

from the amazing—and
nerdy—xkcd.com webcomic

The book focuses especially on a zero-G battle simulation game that is the obsession of all the students. Divided into armies, the students vie with one another to achieve top rankings in various categories. Naturally, Ender performs exceptionally well.

But the game sounds damn fun. Card believably explores the physics of the game, imagining what would and would not work in such detail that you can almost feel the thrill of tactical combat. Someone could easily use the book to make a top-notch video game today. Almost all the design work is already done within the pages of the book.

I’m not much of an athlete (and I never want to be a soldier), but if I had the chance to participate in a zero-G game of human pseudo-soccer with guaranteed non-lethal guns and suits that freeze when they’re hit, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Games even influence Ender’s psychological growth. A vivid fantasy roleplaying game effectively serves as Ender’s personal psychiatrist, though he doesn’t realize it. And although the book came out well before MMOs had grown into their own, this psych program has surprising multiplayer dimensions. But that’s part of one of the book’s big twists, so I don’t want to go into detail.

The story itself is compelling enough that I’ve managed to convince many readers who dismiss science fiction as “kids stuff” that some of it is damn fine literature. Indeed, Ender’s Game has everything such readers fear: laser guns, bug-like aliens, spaceships, and more.

But it also has real heart. Card gives Ender, his classmates, his family back home, and his instructors real stories. Not one comes off as a two-dimensional villain, and the heroes carefully examine their own motivations, not taking their successes for granted for even a moment.

Card also engagingly tackles tough philosophical issues surrounding war. It presents a “just” war, but doesn’t shy away from the fact that war is awful and that even a just war is barely just. As does Ender, the book struggles to find new ways to solve problems, new resolutions to age-old conflicts, and new understandings of just why people fight and why they might not always have to.

Whether in the skirmishes in Battle School or the Usenet flame wars Ender’s siblings conduct back on Earth, the book wrestles with philosophical questions as part of the story. The narrative doesn’t come to a screeching halt while the author climbs on a soap box. In fact, the books seems to be a genuine exploration on the author’s part of some tough questions, not a final statement in the matter.

(In the past two decades, Card’s politics have become, to me, thoroughly reprehensible, though he and I may have started out with similar viewpoints. I can’t understand why he believes what he does today, knowing him through his work and a couple of brief personal encounters. But I know he believes it, and sincerely, so I won’t attack him for deceitful motives.)

Card clearly loves games. (They’ve featured big in some of his other books, like Lost Boys.) In fact, as I understand it, he’s worked a bit in the video game industry.

In Ender’s Game, he presents a convincing case for games as educational tools. Sure, they’re being used to train soldiers. (Aside: America’s Army was a marketing tool, not a training tool.) But the book makes you believe that games are a powerful learning tool, maybe one of the most powerful.

With the MacArthur Fellowship granting over a million dollars to fund a school exploring games as teaching tools (the latest I’ve read about it is here, in an article by Robert Torres, one of the recipients, though it’s been in the news for weeks) and scientists and game companies alike exploring and marketing “serious games,” it’s astonishing to look back twenty years and see such a powerful argument in favor of educational games.

And I’ll reiterate here as I did before that the games are fun.

The book is fun, too. If you haven’t read it yet, grab a copy and settle down for a just plain good read. And if you have, maybe it’s time to read it again. Even when you know all the surprises and twists, you’ll find pleasure in watching the story unfold. And it’s fun to spot the gaming innovations that Card didn’t imagine. While reading, ask yourself if the book would have been different had someone put out a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game in 1985.

Entry Filed under: Serious Games, Review, Book, Learning