Using AI to Create Games: McCarthyism

The Experiment

I wanted to find a way to make McCarthyism come alive for my students. In the past, I relied on traditional lectures, and I always felt that my students did not really grasp the paranoia that was rampant at the time. This felt like an ideal moment to introduce another active learning experiment.

My best friend is obsessed with the game Werewolf, a social deduction game in which villagers aim to identify werewolves, while werewolves try to eliminate villagers. A moderator guides the game through alternating night (special actions) and day (discussion/elimination) phases. The villagers win by eliminating all werewolves; werewolves win by matching the number of villagers. I had this concept in mind when I was designing this game.

I gave Claude and Google Gemini this prompt: “I’m supposed to lecture about McCarthyism and the 1950s next week. I want to create a more immersive and engaging activity. Small classroom. 21 students. 50 minutes. Minimal background or time to set up the assignment.” Google Gemini immediately suggested the “Loyalty Review” simulation, which basically copied the Werewolf game mentioned above. Claude suggested something similar, but rather than students taking an active role in the accusations, it generated a “dossier packet” with cases that, while fictional, were similar to those from the 1950s. While this had value, I wanted something more immersive for this activity, so I decided to adopt the Gemini suggestion.

Gemini initially suggested this as a mobile game where the communists tried to infiltrate the largest possible group. This does not work because I teach in a tiny classroom that barely has enough room for the desks. I asked it to convert to something less mobile, and it suggested a “Seated Committee” variant, which I felt would be a better fit.

To up the tension, I asked Claude to create a Loyalty Oath document for students to sign as they entered the classroom. I have found that Claude excels in document creation and textual assignments, which is why I chose to use Claude for this part of the game. You can see this in the Downloadable Resources section at the bottom of this article.

What Happened

I entered the classroom and told my students to sign the Loyalty Oath. I informed them that if they lied or misrepresented themselves, they faced loss of their careers or possible imprisonment for perjury. This heightened the tension, as they were quite freaked out.

I then handed out notecards. Three had a red star, and the rest were blank. I told them they could not show the card to anyone.

We then went through the Rules of Procedure for the Loyalty Board.

1. The Accusation Any cadet may formally accuse another of subversion by name, stating the specific reason for suspicion.
2. The Defense The accused had 30 seconds to mount a verbal defense, but they were not allowed to show their cards.
3. The Vote Blind votes followed the defense. I told students that abstaining counted as sympathizing with the accused.
4. The Purge A simple majority vote purges the cadet. They must flip their card face-up and remain silent for the rest of the hearing.

The goal was to identify and purge all three infiltrators before time expires — or the entire room is considered compromised.

My students immediately targeted the one freshman in my class, which is to be expected at VMI. One cadet decided that anyone with glasses must be a communist (unintentionally foreshadowing the Khmer Rouge). I have two female students in the class, and one of the female students targeted her counterpart and friend because “women must be communists.” She was correct, as her friend was one of the communists. She would be purged in the next round. Ultimately, the students found all three communists. The last one to be detected was finally accused because he had taken a leading role in accusing others, attempting to deflect attention from himself. We talked about how the expectation of “naming names” and the use of aggression as a shield were hallmarks of the era.

The Limits

• students did not take the situation as seriously as I had hoped, and at times it developed into a more humorous activity than I expected.
• The game only lasted 20 minutes, so I resorted to a mini-lecture to fill the rest of my 50-minute class period.

Where I’m Taking This Next

• I am revising this game to stretch the activity and deepen the psychological pressure.
• Next time, I will have a cadet serve as the chairman of the Loyalty Board and give them the authority to intervene in the proceedings to serve as a source of friction.
• I will also add friction points: The “Chief Counsel” Foil; randomly injecting “classified intel”; and adding a guilt by association penalty where any cadet who votes to retain an infiltrator loses their vote in the next round.