The Not-Quite-Weekly Blogosphere Moment of Zen

And there was the master himself: shoes off, socks on, dressed in shooting gear, but sitting behind a computer, stuck on the fifteenth level of a first-person shooter called BioShock.

"This is like months to get to this level, and he can’t get past this one little mysterious spider god, and he’s losing his mind. He’s like, ‘I can’t do it, Shia! I can’t do it.’ ”

Shia LeBeouf witnessing Steven Spielberg playing the Earth Defence Force version of Bioshock

GQ, via kotaku

GTA:Great Teaching Aids

[This is an article I wrote for the newsletter at work - as it relates to games I thought I'd put it here]

Videogames are making the leap from living room to classroom -and they have a lot to teach educators about motivation, feedback and challenge.

First off - let's dispel a few myths - the idea that videogames are solely played by geeky teenage boys sitting in their bedrooms is simply not true. A survey by the BBC in 2005 showed the average age of a gamer as 28, a more recent survey put the average as 34. The gender gap is also suprising - 48% of gamers are female, with 21% of females across all age groups saying they were 'Heavy' gamers (more than once a week). The recent impact of GTA IV - culturally and economically - has shown games are a powerful force in entertainment - but what's that got to do with learning?

Games as learning tools
Modern games are far from simple - often the player has to manipulate a vast array of tools to progress through complex worlds. And as most seasoned gamers will tell you - they never read the manual. Try reading the manual of a modern game and you'll rapidly see why - the sheer amount of information is overwhelming. And yet players rapidly absorb all that information plus more and enjoy the process- how do games teach the player, and how do they make the learning process so entertaining players will gladly spend their time and money for the privelige of being taught?

In his paper - Learning by Design:Good Video Games as Learning Machines -James Gee boils it down to 3 key areas:

- Empowerment
In a video game the entire world reacts to the player's decisions - they're free to decide what they want to do and when. Their decisions may sometimes have adverse effects, but ultimately don't ever result in complete failure. In order to feel motivated learners need to feel they can personalise and control their learning. They need to feel they can make decisions and get feedback - either negative or positive - to guide them.

- Problem solving
Games build logically from simple to complex problems and are always challenging. In fact games are often criticised for being too easy - not a common complaint in a classroom! If a player fails a task the game will always give feedback, and often some form of reward. For instance a player might fail to kill a monster but will be awarded experience points or collect some treasure while fighting it. It's important to note that the reward doesn't make the monster easier to kill -games very rarely make challenges easier. Games that do are criticised and bizarrely accused of "cheating".

- Understanding
Knowledge presented in context is easier to learn. Games always present knowledge just before, or even during, the problem that it's application will solve. You learn how to climb walls when you need to get into the castle. Learning always serves a purpose. Learners need clear goals, they need to understand why they need to know things. "To pass the exam" is not a compelling reason! Unfortunately there may not be any other real reason why the learner needs the knowledge then and there - however by using avatars and simulations (another trick games use) learners can be presented with virtual problems that need solving. for instance in a recent psychology lesson I heard a teacher asking students to think as if they were members of the Ethics Committee.


Games in classrooms
Evidence that using games for teaching improves results is increasing - and there is much research ongoing. However teachers are still reluctant to use "off the shelf" commercial games in classrooms. This is understandable - the common media image of video games is that they are all violent "murder simulators" -however games can be powerful learning tools. There are an increasing number of "educational" games on the market. The problem with many of these games, however, is that they're just multiple choice quizzes albeit presented in a novel way. They don't tap into the central power of interactive experiences.

I have a particularly bad example on my laptop - picked up from a conference somewhere - called Alien Attack. It's a basic space invaders game where the player has to shoot down waves of aliens that are descending - the "educational" aspect comes in when the player dies. In order to continue they have to answer a question, set by the teacher, if they get it right they can continue playing, if they get it wrong they lose a life. This is typical of many educational games - the game itself has nothing to do with the subject being learned and just acts as a carrot to encourage students to answer questions. Even worse the learning is associated with a negative event in the game, education is a punishment for being bad at the game! While these types of games can be good for motivating students to revise facts, games can do a lot more.

Some games that are:

Fatworld (needs to be installed)
http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?game=fatworld
a game that aims to "demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations."
September 12th
http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm
Short but effective game dealing with the war on terror
Darfur is Dying
http://www.darfurisdying.com/
A game that puts the player in the shoes of a displaced Dafurian trying to survive the crisis in Sudan.
Real Lives 2007 (needs to be installed)
http://www.educationalsimulations.com/products.html
Compelling game that uses real statistics to model life in a different country. The player is "born" in a random location and lives out an entire virtual life governed by the politics, customs and laws of their country of birth.

Lie to me

I got very confused about Wii Fit. On one hand it's a game - it's previewed and reviewed on all the gaming sites and magazines. It's written about in gaming blogs and promoted at games events. It's got "Nintendo" written on it. So it's a game. But it's not a game. It really isn't anything like a game. It's an interactive exercise video. No amount of cute 3D avatars speaking in impossibly high-pitched voices is going to make it a game. With Wii Fit these self improvement titles have finally crossed the line - they need their own category, they can't be called games.



I haven't played Brain Training but I would argue that it's still a game. In fact it's a very pure game - all games are essentially brain training. Whether you're training your brain to spot the tree-coloured bad guy against a background of trees or training your slow human fingers to react with robotic speed to visual cues - it's all brain training. I see no difference between Dr Kawishima telling me my reaction speed is getting better and getting 5 stars in Guitar Hero. Brain Training is just spectacularly unimaginitive in it's premise. Or honest - depending how you look at it. Brain Training is for people who don't want plot, character or beauty alongside their brain workout.

The counter argument to this is that these self-improvement titles teach "real" skills - not like playing a fisher-price guitar, or running round a fantasy planet shooting unreal aliens in their made-up heads - those aren't "real" skills. "Dr K teaches us maths and logic skills." say these "real" people "Skills we can use in everyday life." Sorry no - real life teaches real life skills. Skills you use every day you already practice every day. You don't seem to be getting any better at them. Brain Training is like any other game -the only thing it trains you to do, is be better at Brain Training.

Half the fun of games - in fact maybe 100% of the fun - comes from the sense of achievement you get from making progress. Learning is inherently fun -this article explains why - [well it would if I could find it to link to..], supposedly we're genetically pre-disposed to enjoy solving things and remembering the solution. In a game, this sense of progress is controlled by the designer - they decide when to hand out rewards, how to achieve that delicate balance of challange and reward. To be fun, a game's learning curve must be pitched just right - so we get a genuine feeling of achievement all the way through. Brain Training games are just the same - it's just they pretend you're making progress in a "real" skill, thus increasing your sense of achievement.

But Wii Fit is different. Weight isn't an abstract concept like intelligence - it's a real measurable quantity. Which means this game can't lie. It can't pretend you're making progress -all it can do is uncomfortably squeak that sometimes it takes time for exercise to show results. But I'm a gamer! I've done what the game says I want my reward now! My brain improved with improbable swiftness, why can't my body? Wii Fit has the structure of a game - rewards, stamps, even collectibles - but it doesn't have that progress curve, the spine that games need for all the other parts to work. So it's not a game. It's real life in a game-shaped box - don't be fooled people. Stay away.