Why The Most Important Question In Game-based Learning Is "Who Will Fund The Game Genome Project?" (Part 2 of 2)

What's Missing From This Picture?

I hate Monopoly.  If there was a time when I liked Monopoly, I can't remember it.  Even today, when I dream of hell it features an endless game of Monopoly played with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot (Don't ask...).

What if game C in the image above (and also featured prominently in Part 1 of this series) is Monopoly?

All the cool databasing and meeting and organizing in the world aren't going to help me learn if I absolutely hate the game that is supposed to teach me.  Resolving this problem is tricky and it starts with the question, "What is a game?"

I am a big fan of Bernard Suits definition of a game: "Games are a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles."  

Note:  At this stage, it is typically obligatory to write a lengthy discussion about all the other definitions of "game" and how Suits succeeds in part and fails in part...blah, blah, blah.  You can find this sort of stuff anywhere - just Google it.  So, in the interest of time, let's just pretend I have already written this essay (OK, OK, "brilliant essay", if you insist).  Now we can get to the point.  

The key thing that the Suits' definition adds to the discussion of games in the context of learning is that games are voluntary.  Think about it.  If, at some level, the learner is not motivated to play the game by the game itself, it isn't really a game for that learner (kind of like The Hunger Games aren't really games for Katniss Everdeen...).

What Is The Game Genome Project?

If the missing piece from the picture above is the preference of the learner/player, then the question becomes, "How do we determine those preferences?"  To put it another way, if Rock and Country and Classical were insufficient to define musical preferences, why should we think that Role-playing, Collectible Card or First Person Shooter are good enough to define game preferences?

The truth is, we shouldn't.  The Game Genome Project would seek to do to games what the Music Genome Project did to music - break games down into their component parts, validate the relevance of those parts in determining player preferences and then test that system so that we can reliably predict game preferences across learners/players and genres.

Some of this kind of work is already being done, albeit without the focus on education.  Take a look at BoardGameGeek, for example.  BGG is arguably the web's best resource for tabletop games and its advanced search feature allows users to search by hundreds of categories, subcategories and mechanics as well as by number of players and playing time.  

The tens of thousands of amateurs and professionals who have contributed to BGG over the years have done very good work in crafting all these elements of board games but which of these categories actually matter?  And what about video games?  Do any of these categories and subcategories cross over?  

Yes, there is a lot of work to do but imagine if such a system were fully realized.  Teachers could go to one site, input their students preferences and the teacher's learning objectives and a list of games would pop up.  Even more important, a student, faced with a learning challenge could input his or her preferences and the learning objectives and find a list of games that would make the effort not only fruitful but fun.  

The ability to reliably connect learner/player preferences in games to learning objectives in classes across the full spectrum of tabletop and video games would, in turn, transform game-based learning from the pedagogical technique du jour to a lasting  and important part of the educational landscape.

Who Will Fund The Game Genome Project And Why Is This Question So Important?

If I am right about the importance of the Game Genome Project to the future of game-based learning, then who will fund it?

The first possible source is, of course, private investment.  A Pandora-like game recommendation engine makes about as much business sense as Pandora itself.  Pandora, however, let's you listen to music it thinks you will like and then makes money when you buy it (and ads, of course, but that would be true for any website).  

Since most games take longer than 3 minutes to play (or even to download...), it is unclear to me if this business model would work as well (or at all) for games.  More importantly, private investors are unlikely to want to invest in the hard work of tying learning objectives from all of the various curricula to the games.  It is something that only someone with deep pockets and a financial incentive (like an educational publisher?) might be able to attempt.

Government could do this, of course.  It looks like a good NSF or Dept. of Education grant, perhaps.  The military or intelligence community could certainly do it but would be highly likely to focus almost exclusively on a narrow range of skills and games.

Whoever will do it, it will have to be done. Until we are able to connect game to learning objective and learner to game, game-based learning is likely to remain a niche teaching technique, full of unrealized potential.

Realism, Playability And Games In The Intelligence Classroom

A couple of weeks ago, I made a print-and-play version of my new game about collection management, Spymaster, available to anyone who reads this blog and would drop me an email (The offer is still open, by the way, in case you missed it the first time).

Since then, I have mailed out over 100 copies to everyone from the DNI's office to troops deployed in Afghanistan to academics in Japan to the Norwegian police forces!

Feedback is starting to trickle in and the comments have been largely positive (whew!) even from some very experienced collection managers (Thanks!).  In addition, I have received a number of outstanding suggestions for enhancing or improving the game.  Some of these include:

• Making different collection assets work better or worse against different information requirements.
• Increasing the point value of information requirements collected early.
• Making some of the OSINT cards "Burn - 0" or impossible to burn.
• Giving players a budget and assigning dollar values to each collection asset such that players had to stay within their budget as well.

I recognize that these suggestions may not make much sense if you haven't played the game but all of them (plus many more) are fantastic ideas designed to make the game more real.  And therein lies the rub...

One of the classic problems of games designed to simulate some aspect of the real world is the trade-off between realism and playability.  Playability is really just how easy it is to play the game.  Every time you add a new rule to make the game more realistic, you make the game more difficult to play and therefore less playable.  Its not quite as simple as that but it gives you a good idea of how the problem manifests itself.  Great games designed to simulate reality often give a strong sense of realism while remaining relatively simple but the truth of it is, like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the more you try to do one, the less, typically, you are able to do the other.

The problem of playability versus realism is analogous to the problem of feature creep in project management.  Most people have been involved in a project that started out simple but, over time, grew incredibly complex as more and more "good ideas" were added.  Each idea, in and of itself, was justifiable but, in the end, led to an unwieldy mess.

Figuring out where to draw the line is just as important in game design as it is in project management.  This constraint is even more strict when considering the modern intelligence classroom.  Here, unless the course is entitled "collection management", there is likely a highly limited amount of time to devote to a game on collection management.  

Consider the case of Spymaster.  I wanted a game which would replace a one-hour lecture on collection management for our intro classes.  To make this work, I would need to be able to set-up the game, explain the rules, play the game and then conduct an outbrief all within an hour.  That's pretty tough to do (at least for me) and still make the game meet your learning objectives.  It becomes a very careful balance of putting good ideas into the game while not running out of time to play the game in class.

The classic solution to this problem is to have a basic version and an advanced version (or several advanced versions).  These can be included in the rules from the outset or added later as expansion packs.  Right now, this is exactly what I am doing with all of the feedback I am receiving - scouring it for good ideas I want to put into more advanced versions of Spymaster!

The Game Every Intel Professional Should Play Is Now Online And Free!

About a year ago, I wrote about one of my favorite games, the old Viking game of Hnefatafl.  I said then I thought it was a game every intel professional should play.

Since then I created an launched an updated tabletop version of the game through Kickstarter called Cthulhu vs the Vikings and a few months ago announced a very rough online version of the game.

Today, the high quality version is available for free on my website, SourcesandMethodsGames.com!

The game is an asymmetric, player vs. player game.  For those of you unfamiliar with gamer-speak, this means that, like games such as Words With Friends, you are playing a real person and not the computer.  It also means that you do not have to sit at the terminal waiting - you can play a few moves, walk away and come back and finish it later.  You can even have up to 5 games going at the same time!

Another unique feature of this games is that you can either play against people you have invited or you can choose the "Quickplay" option which will match you against the next player to come to the game and choose quickplay as well.

It's a great opportunity to play a great game!  Hope you enjoy it!

Game-based Learning And Intelligence: A Summary And Re-boot

While I haven't written much about it recently (hence the reason for this re-boot), for the past four years (!), I have been looking at the value of game-based learning techniques in the intelligence classroom.  While I am still a strong advocate of game-based learning approaches for intelligence professionals generally (and intelligence analysts in particular), my outlook, having actually used these techniques in the classroom, is a bit more nuanced and less naive than it was a few years ago. 

I started by looking at several years worth of data in a series of posts I called Teaching Strategic Intelligence Through Games.  Published in 2010, this is still one of the most popular series of posts I have ever done.  

My goal then was to improve the ability of analysts to see deep patterns in disparate and largely qualitative data sets relevant to problems of strategic importance.  My primary approach to this goal was to use what I think is the most powerful aspect of games - the implicit learning that accompanies them - to improve student performance on real-world problems asked by real-world decisionmakers. 

Nothing that has happened over the last two years suggests that the initial conclusions were wrong.  I am firmly committed to a game-based learning pedagogy in teaching strategic intelligence analysts because it works.  Students simply are able to do strategic intelligence much better, much faster, when I combine traditional concepts in strategic intelligence with appropriate games. 

My most recent round of strategic projects (completed in February) merely reinforced my beliefs.  My students performed so far above their nominal level of expertise that it makes my nose bleed.  The questions they were asked were some of the most difficult I have ever encountered and yet, in every case, a collaborative nimbleness of mind emerged in each team such that they were able to not only effectively answer the challenging questions posed to them by real-world senior decisionmakers but also push beyond the limits of the requirement and exceed expectations in useful and inventive ways.  

Most of their success is attributable to their hard work and dedication but I have always been fortunate enough to have hard working and dedicated students.  I remember the old days, however, when I often had good and sometimes great projects.  Now I can consistently anticipate great and oftentimes extraordinary projects on increasingly difficult questions. 

Unfortunately, students appear to be less "happy" with this game-based approach than with a more traditional lecture/discussion model and this, too, has persisted throughout the years.  Don't get me wrong; they don't hate it (at least not all of them) but, like elite athletes engaged in high intensity interval training, my students seemingly can both acknowledge the value of the exercises while becoming cognitively exhausted at the pace and difficulty of them.

It would have been easy to ignore this modest but noticeable decrease in student satisfaction.  After all, the learning outcomes were significantly better.  While this is the most important thing, of course, it is not the only thing and I began to explore reasons why student satisfaction with a game-based approach were lower than with a traditional lecture/discussion model.  It appeared to me to be counter-intuitive and, frankly, to fly in the face of much of the game-based learning literature.

This led to my second series of posts on the topic which I have called The 5 Myths of Game-based Learning:  A Report From The Classroom.  It is too long to summarize but the parts I have completed are listed below:

Part 1:  Introduction
Part 2:  Myth #1:  Game-based Learning Is New 
Part 3:  Myth #2:  Games Work Because They Capture Attention 
Part 4:  Myth #3:  I Need A Game That Teaches... 
Part 5:  Myth #3A:  I Want To Make A Game That Teaches...

I have not finished this series but intend to do so over the next several weeks.

Recently, I have been distracted with my third major excursion into game-based learning and intelligence - the starting of my own games company.  This effort has been all-consuming and promises to get more so with the launch of my first game, Widget, tomorrow.  

The goal for now is to explore the kind of intelligence that can explore entrepreneurship (ENTINT as I call it).  Hopefully, I will soon be launching some games designed to take advantage of what I have learned about game-based learning and apply it to specific intelligence concepts such that I can better teach intelligence with games rather than merely through them.

What Is Crowdfunding And Why Is It Important To Intelligence? (ENTINT)

http://widget.launchrock.com/

Six more days...

If all goes well, in six days, I intend to launch my first game, Widget, on Kickstarter  (if you are interested in the game itself, you can get more info by clicking on this link).  Once launched, I will have 30 days to get "funded" by various "backers".  If I fail to reach my pre-designated goal, I get nothing at all.

That's how crowdfunding works.

Well, at least, that is how Kickstarter works.  Kickstarter is the oldest and most popular crowdfunding platform currently available.  For those of you unfamiliar with these platforms, you probably should be.  This is not just for entrepreneurs or people interested in entrepreneurial intelligence, either.  There are implications here for intelligence professionals at all levels of business ... and law enforcement and national security, too.  

Let me explain.  Kickstarter is by no means the only crowdfunding site these days.  IndieGoGo and RocketHub are two popular alternatives, but there are a growing number of these sites.  The pace of this growth is likely to increase in 2013 as new laws are set to come into effect that will allow contributors to take small equity interests in start-ups (the current crowdfunding model centers on what typically amounts to pre-sales of a product or service).  Forbes expects revenues generated by crowdfunding sites to double, from 3 to 6 billion USD, in 2013.  Increasingly, this is the way everything from music to games to books to electronics will be funded at start-up.     

Savvy intelligence professionals in the business world should be watching these sites for potential competitors that might emerge from successfully funded projects.  Likewise, given the underfunded nature of most start-ups, it makes equally good sense to see successful crowdfunded projects as a no-cost extension of your own R & D programs - buying out small companies with proven products may well be less expensive than developing them in-house.   Finally, understanding crowdfunding is going to be an increasingly essential element of providing entrepreneurs any meaningful intelligence support.

Law enforcement intelligence professionals should also be taking note.  While there is little evidence of criminal activity in crowdfunding activities to date, with an increase in money, crime is virtually certain to follow.  Fraud of all kinds, money laundering, illegal or unsafe products are all activities which the reputable sites work very hard to avoid but, with the expected growth, criminals will inevitably carve out new niches in the market.

While national security intelligence professionals might not be interested in some artist's new comic book, many of these sites either specialize in or actively promote innovative hi-tech product development and design.  In fact, some academics are even turning to crowdfunding sites to fund their research.  Everything from geo-mapping to verification of information on the internet to pens that can draw in 3D have been funded by crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is both an innovative and disruptive practice that is set to become much more important in the coming years.  In my opinion, it is worth staying ahead of this particular curve.

Sources And Methods Games? Yes!

Well, I went and did it!  Started my own company - Sources And Methods Games!

No, I am not quitting my day job.

But ... I do want to explore the intersection between games, intelligence, learning and entrepreneurship (4 big passions of mine).  Doing so from the safety of the University and with someone else's money, however, just didn't seem right somehow.  I suppose I just like testing theories more than talking about them.

What specifically, do I hope to learn?

• What makes a game good?  
• How do games teach?  
• Is it possible to make good games that teach intelligence concepts or methods?  
• Does it make more sense, from the standpoint of teaching intelligence, to focus on tabletop or video games?  
• How is crowdfunding (KickStarter, IndieGoGo, etc.) changing the gaming industry (particularly the tabletop games industry)?  
• What are the intelligence requirements of a globalized, crowdfunded, social media driven business environment?
• Given the research into effectual reasoning and entrepreneurship, what is intelligence's role in a start-up? 
• What are an entrepreneur's Essential Elements of Information (EEIs)?  
• How can they best be met?  

There's more, but this list is a good start.  The bottomline is that this effort -- which is as much a research project as a company -- gives me a chance to explore these questions in a more realistic way.  I recognize that much of the evidence I gather will be anecdotal but I think I will be better able to orient myself on important issues as a result.

This is not the first time I have owned a games company, though.  I ran a small company, Wheaton Publications, back in the early 80's while I was still in law school - ran it right into the ground.  Despite having two pretty good, well-reviewed games, the company was massively under-capitalized and had to be shuttered within 18 months.  

While it was painful at the time, I remember how much I learned from the experience.  While I am no Rockefeller, my financial position has improved a bit since I was a poor law student living in a basement and eating mac and cheese 4 times a week.  I still have good games (including one I which I am about to launch in the next couple of weeks -- if you are interested you can get more information here).  So, who knows?  Maybe I'll make it 24 months this time!

Myth #3a: I Want To Make A Game That Teaches... (The 5 Myths Of Game-based Learning)

Part 1:  Introduction
Part 2:  Myth #1:  Game-based Learning Is New 
Part 3:  Myth #2:  Games Work Because They Capture Attention 
Part 4:  Myth #3:  I Need A Game That Teaches...

(Needless to say, it has been a strange August.  Thanks for the well wishes and notes of concern.  Hopefully, I am back at it...)

You have a PhD (or you have just been teaching a subject for quite some time) and you like games.  If no one has bothered to make a game that happens to teach anything remotely related to your subject matter, why not just make your own game?  

I have already made the point that good game design is hard (if you want to get an idea of how hard, check out Ian Schreiber's excellent 20 part series:  Game Design Concepts).  Teaching is also hard which makes designing a game that teaches a real...well, you get the point.

None of that is going to deter some of you, though.  If you are still bound and determined to design a game that teaches, whatever you do, don't try to make it a video game.  I have nothing against video games, but they have three strikes against them when it comes to teaching.

Strike One:  Even inexpensive video games cost a ton to make. According to the Casual Games Association, the least expensive games to develop (such as the ones on Facebook) still cost between $50,000 and $400,000.  Large scale games (such as Call of Duty or Mass Effect) can exceed $30 million. No educator has that kind of money laying around for course development. 

Strike Two:  Video games have a very short shelf life.  The technology is advancing so quickly that very few video games hold up well over time.  Most start to look their age within a year or two and many feel old and clunky within 3-4 years.  To get a sense of this drop off, take a look at the steep discounting that typically takes place on video games within the first few years of life:

http://blog.pricecharting.com/2012/03/lifecycle-of-video-games-price-30-years.html

Even if you can design a great game that teaches, if it is a video game, you will have to work pretty hard to keep the game looking fresh and up to date.

Strike Three (A):  A single video game will typically not have enough content to fill a course.  Two of my favorite games of the last year were Portal 2 and Kingdoms of Amalur.  I play both of these games through Steam (for those of you not familiar with Steam, it is like an iTunes for games.  Just like iTunes, it lets you download content directly to your PC and just like iTunes it keeps track of your statistics for you -- how long you play, what you play, how much you like a game, etc).  Steam says I logged 17 hours playing Portal 2 and 101 hours playing Kingdoms of Amalur.  

Both games (which I purchased on sale) provided excellent value for money in my opinion.  Portal 2 is one of the highest ranked games ever and was immensely fun.  Kingdoms of Amalur was designed to be a much lengthier game and was equally fun to play (though many reviewers did not think so...). With an average university course requiring approximately 45 classroom hours and, depending on who you talk to, 2:1 to 4:1 hours outside studying to inside of class, it is arguable (in a rough order of magnitude sort of way) that only video games on the scale of Kingdoms of Amalur could hope to fully replace even a single university course.

Strike 3 (B):  Even if the content is there, relatively few players actually finish video games.  Consider the two games I mentioned above.  Portal 2 is one of the highest rated games of all time.  Players and reviewers loved it.  Heck, I loved it.  I played every level and received every "Achievement" - little electronic tokens of accomplishment that players collect throughout the game.  Steam, of course, keeps track of "Achievements".   Typically, there is at least one achievement associated with completing the main part of the game.  In the case of Portal 2, that achievement is called "Lunacy" (play the game and you will understand why).  I have received this achievement and truly enjoyed the process of getting there.

What is really interesting, though, is that Steam allows me to compare my achievements with the millions of other players who have also played the game.  Only about 56.4% of those who have played the game through Steam have received the Lunacy Achievement.  That is actually a pretty stunning statistic when you consider this is one of the best rated games ever, players presumably volunteered/wanted to play the game and they had to pay between $30 and $60 for the privilege.  It is even harder to imagine a successful class where only 56% of those who start it, finish it.  Kingdoms of Amalur is in an even worse position.  Here only 18.1% of those who started the game played through to the final achievement, "Destiny Defiant". 

**********

OK, so its not as bad as I make it look.  I will readily acknowledge that many of the arguments I make are not as strong as they appear to be.  Indie game designers are bringing extraordinary labors of love to the attention of the masses every day.  The overwhelming success of video games like Minecraft, Braid and Bastion are testaments to what creative people can do on a shoestring.  Likewise, even if one of today's games can't fill a course or routinely get played to completion, you, Kris Wheaton, are the one who said we would have to have multiple games for our courses anyway.  Besides, just because the games aren't here today, does not mean that we shouldn't keep trying.

Exactly.  My point is not to deter game-based learning approaches -- I believe in them wholeheartedly!  My goal is to let teachers know that the process is not as easy and straightforward as it appears.  This is truly a "hard problem" and hard in two fields, game design and education.

I believe the problem will be solved but what are we to do in the meantime?  I recommend two strategies for teachers.  First (and this is the one I use in my Strategic Intelligence class), look for great games that already exist that can teach, reinforce or supplement one or more of your learning objectives.  Second, if you must design your own game, make it a board or card game.  These cost significantly less to design and produce and require much less equipment to play.  They are easier to fit into the constraints associated with a normal 1-2 hour class and, for intelligence professionals, at least, are simply easier to get into the building!

Next:  Myth #4:  The Learning Objectives Come First

Myth #3: I Need A Game That Teaches... (The 5 Myths Of Game-based Learning)

Part 1:  Introduction
Part 2:  Myth #1:  Game-based Learning Is New 
Part 3:  Myth #2:  Games Work Because They Capture Attention

"I'd love to use game-based learning in my classes but I need a game that teaches..." organic chemistry, quantum physics, SIGINT, whatever.

I hear this quite often and it is a legitimate concern.  So many things to teach and so few game designers and publishers willing to take them on. Before I answer why this is, let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that all of the administrative and regulatory hassles involved in designing a game that teaches could be overcome (These are not trivial.  On the contrary, I suspect that these kinds of issues are a big part of the reason that game-based learning strategies have not been more widely tested and applied).  Let's also assume that there is a business model that makes these kinds of games profitable to produce and distribute (another non-trivial assumption).

What's left?  Just building a great game and, at the same time, making sure the course content is integrated into it.   If this sounds really hard, it is.

And its just the beginning.

Because the reality is that you don't need a single great game that teaches these concepts, you really need multiple games that teach.  It turns out that game-based learning is plural.

If, to be successful, game-based learning needs to be, at least to some extent, voluntary (and particularly if you accept the premise, as I do, that the more voluntary the game play is, the more learning will occur), then it makes sense that you will need more than one game covering the same topic to fully engage a diverse classroom full of learners.

To explain this as simply as I can, I often ask people to imagine a typical elementary classroom.  If I only have one great game, let's call it "Barbie Math", I suspect that I may only engage approximately one-half of the students.  I probably need another great game, let's call it "GI Joe Math", to get the other half.  This grade school example is about as simple as I can make the problem but it is potentially much, much worse because of "fun". 

Most game designers I know hate the word "fun".  They hate this word because it is so indistinct and overused that it has virtually lost its meaning.  To say a game is fun (or not fun) is, in short, not very useful criticism.  There are lots of ways games can succeed or fail to produce fun generally and, more relevant to games that teach, specifically for individual students. 

The best place to start to get a sense of this problem from a game design perspective is Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun.  Koster lays out the problem pretty clearly and his book is widely used as a text and cited by professionals. 

To get an even more practical view of the problem, I like Pierre-Alexandrre Garneau's 14 Forms Of Fun article for the online magazine, Gamasutra.  Here Garneau outlines 14 different ways that a game can be fun along with a number of examples of how each element worked in a game (see list to right).  This list has not been scientifically validated and I am sure that, if we got 10 game designers or gamers in a room, there would be lots of disagreements about this list.

I like it, however, because it makes a good case for thinking about fun, and, by extension, about what makes a great game more broadly.  If I think about what I like in a game, I can better see it in this list.  I don't just like the game Portal 2 because it is fun, I like it because it is a witty, immersive game that focuses on intellectual problem solving, advancement and completion (If you are not familiar with the Portal franchise, watch the video below.  It doesn't give much sense of the gameplay but it does give a good sense of the humor in the series).  Moreover, once I know why I like what I like, I can use this system, in much the same way the Music Genome Project worked for music, to help me think about other games I might like to play.

My preferences might not be my students' preferences, however.  It is easy to imagine a student or students that prefer the exact opposite -- I may like cooperative games; they prefer competitive games.  I may like beautiful, discovery games like Myst but they like beautiful, thrill of danger games like Batman:  Arkham City.

We are still just scratching the surface.  What about genres of games?  Some will only like sports games while others will prefer action titles.  What about themes?  Some like high fantasy (like Lord of the Rings Online) while some prefer space based games (Like Eve Online). And what about students who cannot define what they like ("I hate math and statistics and besides I have to spend this entire weekend preparing for my fantasy football draft...")?

These differences have focused on gaming style but even more important are  teaching concerns.  Different students are known to learn differently -- sometimes dramatically.  Text based games, for example, no matter how compelling, may be inaccessible to dyslexic students. 

I know it may sound like I am trying to paint a picture that game-based learning is a herculean, almost impossible task.  That is just because I am a lawyer and creating a "parade of horribles" is what we do.  Many of these distinctions probably matter far less than the discussion so far might lead you to believe.  Some might not matter at all.  Gamers tend to have broader rather than narrower tastes in games.  For every student who only plays sports games, for example, there are likely many more who play both sports games and high fantasy games.  Likewise there are a number of strategies for overcoming almost all learning differences and many could likely be applied to games.

I recognize and accept these objections.  My goal here is simply to paint a more nuanced picture of the challenges teachers and game designers face when they try to take games into the classroom.  There is a naivete in the statement "I need a game that teaches..." that nothing in my experience justifies.

I hope my observations will resonate with the comments made by James Shelton at the Games For Change conference last year (see the video in Part 1 of this series):  In order for game-based learning to go mainstream, it has to scale.  It can't just work with a self-selected population; it has to work across demographic lines and socioeconomic lines and learning differences lines.  This likely means that whatever course or subject you are teaching, you will need multiple games to fully engage your entire class.  A single game is unlikely to do it all.

Next:  Myth 3a:  I Want To Make A Game That Teaches...

Welcome USA Today Readers!

If you have found your way to my little slice of the internet today, it is probably because of this article in USA Today. 

Hello!

If you are interested in learning more about my use of games in my intelligence studies classes, you will probably want to read my online article, Teaching Strategic Intelligence Through Games.

If you are interested in a specific example of a game and how I used it in class, you will probably find this article, Spot Report From The Future, to be worth reading.  If you want all of the games-related posts, just search for "games" in the search bar at the top left of this page.

If you are interested in where I teach, you can find out more at the Mercyhurst website.  If you are interested in the intelligence studies program at Mercyhurst, you can find out more about it on the Mercyhurst College Institute For Intelligence Studies website.

If you want to look at some of my other research or observations, just poke around this site.  I post updates concerning most of the things I am working on here as well as some links to various projects on which my students have worked.  Finally, if you have a question for me, please post a comment or drop me an email directly at kwheaton at mercyhurst dot edu.

Thanks for stopping by!  You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this site directly at the link on the bottom right or through your RSS feed reader.  If you use Twitter, you can follow all my postings @kwheaton.

Why Am I So Excited About A Game Called "Resistance: Road To Liberation"? (Kickstarter.com)

Three reasons, actually.

First, Resistance: Road To Liberation is a tabletop role playing game.  Yes, yes, like Dungeons and Dragons and Traveler and a whole bunch of other games.  

The difference here is that the game intends to be historically accurate and based, initially, on the various resistance movements of WWII.  

I have had a chance to speak with the designer, however, and he indicated that his intent is to move beyond WWII and to develop rules and scenarios appropriate to the current spate of revolutionary and resistance movements going on in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Role playing has a long history as an intelligence analysis technique.  Dick Heuer and Randy Pherson devote a chapter to it in their recent book, Structured Analytic Techniques For Intelligence Analysis, where they indicate that "role playing is particularly useful for understanding the outcomes of a conflict situation."  Research by Kesten Green at the Victoria University of Wellington  indicates that analysts who role play are over twice as accurate in their estimates as those who use unaided judgment. 

Analytic role playing is typically very unstructured and informal, however.  To get more realistic results, it would seem necessary to realistically constrain the "players".  Taken to its extreme (See, for example, The Marine Corps' Infantry Immersion Simulator which is, in some sense, just role playing on steroids),  it is highly effective but also extremely expensive and time consuming.

It seems to me then that a lightweight role playing game that captured many of the essential constraints without overly burdening the players in either time or money would be a useful tool for exploring resistance movements.  It might also be a lot more engaging than listening to another briefing or reading another report.

The second reason I am excited about Resistance is that it is using Kickstarter.com as a way to fund the game.  Kickstarter has only been around for a very short time but it has already become a major way to fund creative projects.  While most of the projects are small (Resistance is looking for only $4000 in funding to get up and running, for example), some Kickstarter projects have raised over a million dollars. 

On the other hand, Kickstarter also has a fairly brutal kill switch.  If a project doesn't meet the minimum funding level, Kickstarter cancels the donations (which don't get distributed until the minimum is met) and the creator gets nothing at all.

Microfinancing isn't new (Kiva is my personal favorite example) but microfinancing has been traditionally associated only with developing countries.  As an intelligence analyst, anytime I see a new financing model gaining acceptance outside its traditional sphere, I sit up and take notice.  

Don't get me wrong, both Kiva and Kickstarter are excellent organizations and completely above board.  However, any business model that can be used for good can also be used for ill (can anyone say "JihadStarter"?).  Donating $15 or $20 to a worthwhile project on Kiva or Kickstarter is not only a good thing, it is also a cheap education in how these kind of internet based microfinancing sites work.

And the third reason?  The designer is my son, Charlie Wheaton.

OK, OK.  I hear you.  In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I am damn proud of him.  How many of us have wanted to make a living doing something we are passionate about?  How many of us had a plan for turning that dream into reality at age 20?  Yep, "damn proud" about sums it up...

More than that, though, is my interest in what he is doing with the role playing game genre and its possibilities for intelligence analysis.  I have played Resistance and it is a good game that is very different than most role playing games and not just in terms of subject matter.  

He has deliberately kept the rule set streamlined to give the maximum leeway to the players.  He has created a system where groups advance in skills and abilities as well as individuals.  He intends to publish the final version on Kindle as well as in hardback.  The list goes on...

Charlie has been actively designing games for the last three years and, while he has not had any commercial success, he has learned a good bit about design by both studying it and actually getting his hands dirty.  If he can get the money and successfully implement all of his ideas (and, in particular the ones revolving around more modern conflicts), I think we may all have a new tool for analysis and training.

Charlie distributed free copies of the beta version of Resistance at the Origins Game Fair (one of the world's largest) two years ago.  He made a point of giving copies to soldiers that were there.  The feedback he received was universally positive but everyone indicated that it needed more work on the details -- more scenarios, more options for weaponry and tactics and more possibilities in terms of resistance movements.  With the money he gets from Kickstarter (assuming he makes his minimum), he hopes to do all that.

So, if you want to throw a few bucks his way, you can do that here.  He has some neat "premiums" for various levels of contribution but Kickstarter also gives you the option to just donate some money to the cause.  

Likewise, if you know anyone who might be interested don't hesitate to forward them this link or the link to the Kickstarter page.

"Gamification" And What It Means For Intelligence (NewScientist.com)

"Gamification" is a neologism that highlights the increasing tendency to add game-like qualities to serious or mundane tasks in order increase participation or, in the context of education, learning. 

A recent issue of The New Scientist, one of my favorite science magazines, contained a feature article on the trend and produced the nifty video below to explain the phenomena:




I accept the premise that gamification is a hot trend everywhere but recent reporting and my own research suggest that game-based learning has an important role in educating the next generation of intelligence professionals.

In the first place -- if we are honest with ourselves -- gamification of serious or mundane tasks has been around for quite some time now. I have been able to reliably trace the general trend back to at least 1964 (see the first ten seconds of this video) and it probably goes back much further.

This is true in intelligence as well.  Some of the classic cliches of intelligence, such as "connect the dots" and "put the pieces of the puzzle together" are game references.  Furthermore, to the extent that Kriegspiel has an intel component to it, you can push the date back to at least 1812.

Second, and despite the recent press coverage, I don't want to sound all pollyanna-ish about game-based learning. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that this pedagogical approach has its own challenges.

Many educators think like I thought at this time last year:  Games = attention and attention = learning. While capturing the attention of students remains one of the most important yet increasingly difficult elements of teaching, the idea that games = attention deserves some "tweaking".

To begin with, a game is not really a game unless the players enter into it voluntarily. Jane McGonigal in her new book, Reality Is Broken, talks about games as "voluntary attempts to overcome unnecessary obstacles."

In my mind, "voluntary" is the operative word here and voluntarism comes in degrees.  At one end of the spectrum, you have the passionate volunteer.  For this person, playing a game as a way of learning is a real pleasure.   In fact, if this passionate volunteer has played the game many times, they may have already sucked all of the learning out of it but not be aware of that fact because most of the lessons have been taught implicitly.

At the other end of the spectrum lies the person who hates a particular game or type of game.  Getting these aggressively indifferent players ("apathetes"?) to volunteer to play a game, no matter how tangible the benefits, is going to be difficult.  I often use the example of trying to get a 6th grade boy to play a Barbie-themed math game.  It might work, but I wouldn't count on it...

As a professor, I can adjust the level of voluntarism to some degree ("Would you rather hear me lecture or play a game?") but unless I am linking this new sense of voluntarism to an intrinsic motivation on the part of the student, I don't think I am necessarily increasing the learning. 

The focus, then, for game based learning initiatives (both inside and outside the intel community) needs to be as much on the motivations for playing a game as it is on the game itself.  As IARPA kicks off its SIRIUS program next week (with the goal of creating "Serious Games to train participants and measure their proficiency in recognizing and mitigating the cognitive biases that commonly affect all types of intelligence analysis") this is going to be at the top of my mind.

Previous Posts on this Topic:  Teaching Strategic Intelligence Through Games

Teaching Strategic Intelligence Through Games (Final Version With Abstract)

Abstract:

Strategic intelligence is considered by intelligence professionals to be the highest form of the analytic art.   There is a tremendous demand for this type of intelligence product and a lack of trained professionals capable of producing it.  Developing effective teaching methods for this challenging subject, therefore, is an area of ongoing concern for the business, law enforcement and national security intelligence communities.

Previous research suggests that a game-based approach to teaching can be successful but no report so far has examined game-based learning in intelligence analysis.  I hypothesized that a game-based approach to teaching strategic intelligence analysis would increase learning and improve performance while also increasing student satisfaction with the course.

This paper reports the initial results and lessons learned from teaching three full courses (2 undergraduate and one graduate) in strategic intelligence using games as a teaching tool.  The paper will begin by examining the unique challenges in teaching about strategy, strategic decisionmaking and the types of intelligence that supports those efforts.  This will be followed by a short discussion concerning games based learning generally before examining in detail the specific approaches used in these three courses.   

This paper will also examine both the learning outcomes and student satisfaction with the courses.  Finally, this paper will discuss appropriate course modifications for undergraduate and graduate students when teaching advanced subjects with games based on the evidence from this study.
 

Part 1 -- Introduction

Part 2 -- What Is Strategy And What Are Strategic Decisions?

Part 3 -- What Is Intelligence And What Is The Role Of Intelligence In The Formulation Of Strategy? 

Part 4 -- Why Games? 

Part 5 -- How, Specifically, Were Games Used in Class? 

Part 6 -- So, How Did It All Work Out? 

Part 7 -- What Did The Students Think About It?

Part 8 -- What Else Did You Learn? 

Teaching Strategic Intelligence Through Games

Part 7 -- What Did The Students Think About It? (Teaching Strategic Intel Through Games)

Part 1 -- Introduction

Part 2 -- What Is Strategy And What Are Strategic Decisions?

Part 3 -- What Is Intelligence And What Is The Role Of Intelligence In The Formulation Of Strategy? 

Part 4 -- Why Games? 

Part 5 -- How, Specifically, Were Games Used in Class? 

Part 6 -- So, How Did It All Work Out?

The SIRs actually measure a number of variables and identifying those that might be most closely associated with the underlying pedagogy of a course are difficult to identify.  Instead, I chose to look at just one of the SIR-generated ratings, the Overall Evaluation of the course.  This is clearly designed to be an overall indicator of effectiveness.  A large change here (in either the positive or the negative direction) would seem to be a clear indication of success or failure from the student's perspective.

Furthermore, my assumption at the beginning of the course was that there would be a large change in one direction or the other.  I assumed that students would either love this approach or hate it and that this would be reflected in the SIR results.  The chart below, which contains the weighted average of the Overall Evaluation score (1-5 with 5 being best) for all classes taught in a particular year, indicates that I was wrong:

Clearly, while students did not love it, they did not hate it either.  The drop in score from recent years could be attributed to a reduction in satisfaction with the class or it could simply be attributed to the fact that the course changed from a fairly well-oiled series of lectures and exercises to something that had the inevitable squeaks and bumps of a new approach.  Feedback from the student surveys given after the course was over, while extremely helpful in providing suggestions for improving the class, gave no real insight into the causes of this modest but obvious drop in student satisfaction.

Comparing this chart with the previous one concerning the quality of the final product yields an even more interesting picture:

This chart seems to be saying that the more a student thinks they are getting out of class (as represented in their Overall Evaluation of the course) the better their final strategic intelligence project is likely to be.  This holds true, it seems, as long as strategic intelligence is taught through more or less traditional methods of lecture, discussion and classroom exercises.  Once the underlying structure of the course is centered on games, however, the students are less satisfied but actually perform better where it matters most – on real-live projects for real-world decisionmakers.

Taken at face value (and ignoring, for the moment, the possibility that this is all a statistical anomaly), a possible explanation is that the students don’t realize what they are getting “for free” from the games-based approach.  Other researchers have noted that information that had to be actively taught, assessed, re-taught and re-assessed in other teaching methods is passively (and painlessly) acquired in a games-based environment. 

I noted this effect myself in my thesis research into modeling and simulating transitions from authoritarian rule.  My goal, in that study, was to develop a predictive model; not to teach students about the target country.  One of my ancillary results, however, was that students routinely claimed that they learned more about the target country in three hours of playing the game than in a semester’s worth of study. 

This “knowledge for free” aspect of the games-based model was nowhere more obvious than in the fairly detailed understanding of the geography of the western part of the Soviet Union acquired by the students in all three classes while playing the boardgame, Defiant Russia.  While this information was available in the form of the game map, learning the geography was not explicitly part of the instructions.  Students rapidly understood, however, that they had to understand the terrain in order to maximize their results within the game.  Furthermore, an understanding of the geography of the western part of the Soviet Union was critical to the formulation of strategic options. 

This raises a broader question regarding games based learning:  If students don't know they are learning, how can they evaluate the learning process?  While I have not had time to dig deeply into the literature regarding implicit learning, I intend to.  Giving students a tangible sense of what they are learning in a game based environment may be one of the biggest challenges to overcome with the approach, at least in higher education.

Next: 

What else did you learn?

Part 5 -- How, Specifically, Were Games Used In Class? (Teaching Strategic Intel Through Games)

Part 1 -- Introduction

Part 2 -- What Is Strategy And What Are Strategic Decisions?

Part 3 -- What Is Intelligence And What Is The Role Of Intelligence In The Formulation Of Strategy? 

Part 4 -- Why Games?

“Indeed, experiments have shown that the more mental work readers have to do to infer a cause from a set of facts, the more memorable the causal inference will be.” – The Trouble With Intuition, Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris

While I wanted games to be a central tool within the context of the class, I established some fairly rigorous pre-conditions for myself before deciding which games and how exactly they would be used in class.

First, I did not want the games to detract from the project.  The experience gained from working on a real world project for a real world decisionmaker trumped, in my mind, any value games might bring to learning the essential lessons of strategic intelligence.  In addition, these projects have significant tangible value to the students beyond the knowledge they gain from them.  In many cases over the years, these projects have led to jobs (or at least job offers) either directly or indirectly.

I was worried that the games might detract in two specific ways.  First, the games were to add value, if at all, to only that 20% of the class that was indirectly involved with the project.  I did not want to create an environment where a student felt they had to choose between playing a game and getting work done on the project.

Second, I did not want the course to become about the game or games.  I know from experience that games can be genuinely compelling.  There are many good strategic simulations (Diplomacy, The Total War series) around which a strategic course could easily be built.  In these cases, I saw the games not just competing for time with the project but actually overwhelming the project completely.

Beyond the potential for distraction from the project, the games I did select needed to resonate in a meaningful way with the core concepts of the course.  I either needed a single game through which I could articulate all of the core concepts of the course more or less in the order they needed to be presented (which proved impossible to find) or find a number of different games which could help me accomplish the same goals.  Of course, if I were to use a number of games, the time to learn the new rules of each game would become a factor as well.

If I were to use a number of games, then I also believed I needed to include a variety of game types and genres.  I know from experience that not all game types appeal to all game players.  In fact, I believe that one of the major hurdles to overcome with regard to game-based learning will be the re-packaging of core concepts in any given subject into a variety of game genres such that at least one approach will work for every student. 

Finally, I was very conscious of the cost.  Textbooks are expensive and I believe that, in many cases, they are unreasonably so.  I could not see adding to that burden.

In the end, I settled on using casual online or downloadable games or games, such as World Of Warcraft, that came with free trials (for a complete list of the games and the core concepts, I will include the syllabus to the course in the last post in this series).  The exception to this general rule was the addition of one "old-school", paper-pencil wargame, Defiant Russia (pictured above).   

Students were required to play the game before each class.  In addition, students were required to come to some defensible conclusion about how the game related to the topic of that particular class and to be prepared to discuss it when they came to class. I indicated to the students that the relationships between the games and the topics were rarely obvious and that in some cases there were many possible defensible conclusions.  In many cases, I informed them, there might appear, on the surface, to be no real connection between the game and the topic.  I wanted them to have to think hard about the possible connections, to evaluate them and to come to a conclusion that they were prepared to defend.

Classroom time was devoted in part to examining what the students saw compared with what I saw as the essential connections.  A careful matching of games and topics yielded a fairly high overlap between what the students saw and what I hoped they would see.  In addition, I had the genuine pleasure of having students come up with unique and deep interpretations far beyond my expectations (I will discuss this in greater detail in the subsequent posts).

To give a sense of how this worked in practice, in the class where we discussed strategic intelligence requirements (i.e. the questions that intelligence professionals are asked at the strategic level), students had to play World of Warcraft (WOW) or some other quest-based game.  While there are many defensible answers to the question regarding the connection between WOW and intelligence requirements, I was able to leverage the student's experience with a well-formed "quest"(typical of the high-end MMORPGs) and contrast it with the consequences of poorly formed intelligence requirements.  This, in turn, gave the students a unique perspective on their upcoming meeting with their decisionmaker where they would be receiving the intelligence requirement relevant to their particular project. 

As a result of my experience with the first two classes, I required the third class in which I used this approach to write down their conclusions and post them to a discussion board on Mercyhurst’s Blackboard course management software prior to class.  This writing assignment was modest (100-150 words) but it allowed me to better prepare for the class itself.

While students were required to play the game and to come to a conclusion, I also made a wide variety of supplemental readings available.  These provided "hints' to the connections between the game and the topic that I saw.  I believed that, in some cases (particularly where the material was more in the way of a review), students would be able to come to reasonable conclusions without any additional reading.  I also believed that students that were not overly familiar with the topic under consideration would be more engaged in the reading if they were working to answer a question, even one as difficult as the one I posed.

Next:
So, how did it all work out?

Additional Readings:
School Uses Video Games To Teach Thinking Skills