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...

Innovative Teaching Through Game Design (Games Education Summit -- Part 5)

(Note: I am still playing catch-up from a series of conferences I attended over the last several weeks. The post below is taken from notes done at the time of the Games Education Summit. I hope I captured the very good thoughts of the speaker, Ian Schreiber, accurately.)

Ian Schreiber spoke eloquently and at some length at the Games Education Summit about using the principles of game design to construct better learning experiences for our students.

He started his presentation by comparing Pokemon to the periodic table of elements. How is it, he asked, that children will happily remember all of the characteristics of all of the Pokemon characters but not be able to remember any of the characteristics of the periodic table of elements?

Both contain a wide variety of seemingly unrelated information and both are fairly complex yet children as young as 6 and 7 can remember all sorts of things about a Pokemon character and almost none about an element of nature.

What is it about the game that encourages and facilitates learning?

Schreiber did not pretend to have the answer. He readily admitted that game design had no real theory to speak of and made a point of mentioning that 90% of all games are essentially unsuccessful (in that they do not turn a profit).

He did think, however, that there might be some leads in the game design literature that would translate well into instructional design principles.

Specifically he mentioned 3 ideas, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's ideas of "flow", Raph Koster's Theory of Fun and Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek's 8 kinds of fun.

Csikszentmihalyi (a psychologist and not a game designer) argues that learning stuff at the right pace puts us in a "flow" mode that encourages us to learn more. If things are too easy we are bored. If things are too hard, then we quit. We need do-able challenges that allow us to progress, to learn and get better (see image at right). If we have this (or can find it on our own) then we are in the flow.

Schreiber joins this idea to games by way of Koster. Koster's Theory of Fun is as much about learning as it is about games and the book is a perfect segue from the more abstract ideas of Csikszentmihalyi to the world of games.

Finally, Schreiber points us to the 8 different kinds of fun (at least) that are out there. Specifically, these are: Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression and Pastime. It is important to understand that fun comes in a variety of sizes, e.g. learning that is "challenging" can also be "fun". Fun does not, in this way of thinking, equal easy.

Schreiber clearly stated that not all classes had to include all the elements of fun. He seemed to be recommending that considering these elements in the design of a class might increase the "fun" in the class and thereby increase the learning.

Beyond these three broad elements, Schreiber pointed to a few additional thoughts that seemed to me to be worth considering. First, he offered a quote from Sid Meier, the designer of the popular Civilization game series (among others): "A good game is a series of interesting decisions." Translating this to the classroom means that these decisions need to be decisions that the students make in the course of the class, not decisions the teacher makes for the students. Furthermore, these decisions do not necessarily have to do with content. Schreiber called the attempt, in some classes, to jazz up the content to make it seem more fun to be little more than "chocolate covered broccoli" (I love this term...).

Schreiber's ideas were thought-provoking and his presentation was well designed and easy to wrap your head around. For more of his ideas, he blogs at Teaching Game Design and
Game Design Concepts.