The blog looks at gamification, g-Learning and games based learning theory and practice. It provides insight (via games-ED and pixelfountain) on games based learning use in education and g-Learning (including learning simulations) use in adult learning / training such as application in curriculum delivery, training, awareness raising, organisational development, communications and engagement.
This week, we thought we'd share an infographic with you. One of our fans from webdesigndegreecenter.org alerted us to it. Hopefully it will be inspirational for some of our readers (and particularly young women, like myself). If you would like to learn more about easy ways to get into
programming, click here or click here for more about designing a learning simulation.
There has been quite a bit of research into the effects of games on the brain. For example, a study looking at the effects of playing Mario 64 by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development had very interesting findings. The research found that those who played at least 30 minutes of Mario 64 every day for two months grew significant amounts of new grey matter in three areas of the brain. The areas were correlated with spatial navigation, strategic planning, working memory, and motor performance. The control group who did not play Mario, didn’t have the same growth (their grey matter actually decreased; attributed to ageing). For a nice summary of the research, click here.
However, what can games designers learn from research into the brain?
A fantastic article by Ben Lewis-Evans looks at research into dopamine. He concludes that while the research is interesting and may provide some insights, it is rarely applied and especially not to gaming. He thinks it would be more useful for games designers to use observational data from test subjects playing their game, than looking to neuroscience for answers. However he does say: “One exception could be that a theoretical neurological approach may be able to detect if a player was ‘wanting’ to play your game without consciously realising it (something that may indeed be possible)” and “All this said, if you are interested in knowing what your games may be doing to peoples brains, or perhaps you are working in serious games and want to see if games can improve (or worsen) brain function. Then, here, neuroscience can be valuable.”
While this seems negative, it is a powerful insight. Ben discusses how people both over-use and over-trust the prefix ‘neuro’. He urges us to be ‘neuroskeptical’ and not think something is more worthwhile just because it sounds scientific and important. He thinks that while research into the brain may improve and be more useful in the future, at the moment it might be better to stick with observing people’s behaviours. And what is wrong with that? Most games designers won’t have access to laboratories and MRI scanners. So, if games designers can try and use some premises of neuroscience, along with common understandings of people’s behaviours and observations, they should be suitably well informed where the brain is concerned. And, if researchers do try to see the serious effects of games (as in the example above), that is great and could help to fill in some of the blanks and provide much sought after ‘evidence’ that games can have serious learning outcomes.
Ben also lists some of the findings from non-neuro research into the preferences/motivations etc. of gamers, which provide powerful insight and help for games designers. Just because these findings weren’t obtained through peoples’ brains being hooked up to a machine, they are no less of an insight into the mind’s inner workings and human behaviour. For example:
Rewards that are unpredictable (loot drops) are generally more motivating than rewards that are predictable (100 xp per monster).
Rewards should be meaningful, e.g. food is not particularly motivating for most people if you are already full, or if you are in a relatively visually sparse setting then new, unusual, stimuli will attract your attention more readily.
People tend to have a preference for immediate rewards and feedback and are not so motivated by delayed rewards and feedback. This preference for immediate gratification is strongest when young, but persists throughout life.
A predictor for a reward can serve/become a replacement for that reward in terms of behavioural response (e.g. getting points in a game becomes associated with having fun and points can therefore become a motivating reward in themselves).
For the full article and Ben’s list of sources, click here.
I have referred to cognitive flow before in my article: “10 Resources on Creating your Own Learning Game”. This is another area of research into the brain through observations, and it has many implications for game design. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that skill and task difficulty cause people to have different cognitive and emotional reactions to stimuli. When their skill level is too low and the task is too hard, people become anxious. However, if the task is too easy and their skill level is too high, people become bored. ‘Cognitive Flow’, like in the story of Goldilocks, is when skill level and difficulty are ‘just right’.
During this state, there are several effects. For example, extreme focus on the task and the experience of the task itself being the justification for continuing it. Csikszentmihalyi also defined four characteristics found in tasks likely to induce Flow states. Tasks were likely to:
Have concrete goals with manageable rules.
Demand actions to achieve goals that fit within the person's capabilities.
Have clear and timely feedback on performance and goal accomplishment.
This obviously has huge potential for games designers, and particularly for learning games designers. A fantastic job of describing Flow in more detail and unpacking its implications for game designers has been done by Gamasutra here.
So, as you can see, observations into human behaviour and mental states can be powerful tools for game designers. I couldn’t resist tagging this article about neuro-gaming onto the end of this blog post. It looks at how future gaming technologies could tap into our whole nervous system and drive gameplay (brain wave data, emotional states, emotional recognition, pupil dilation etc.).
In a previous blog (A Games Based Learning Manifesto: 10 Thoughts for Discussion), we stated “Use the “G” word sparingly”. Using games in the title is great if we want to sell to the innovators and early adopters, which as developers we probably are doing. But - and it is big but, I won’t lie - is that innovators and early adopters often need to get buy-in from others who don’t quite get it.
At pixelfountain, we have been selling games since 1998 and have needed to avoid the G word. In the early days we used the term Virtual Training. This seemed to fit nicely with what we were doing which were exploratory adventure style games where users interacted with characters and objects in simulated organisations and sites. As it happens, we now use Situated Training for this type of product / pedagogy as it is built on the theory of Situated Learning. By the early noughties, we had started developing resource management games or simulations. Thus, we started using the term Learning Simulations. To date we still use this term for this type of game, but the problem is that it is a subset of all learning games of which there is no overall nomenclature in the way there is for entertainment games (simulations, first person shooters, platform and so on).
In a terrible spoiler, I have already stated my preferred term g-Learning in the blog title - note to self, must create more suspense if I am ever to make it big as a novelist. But, let me appraise the current contenders, before announcing g-Learning as my winner (doh, I’ve done it again).
Games Based Learning: For me, this term conjures up education and includes the G word. We called our blog Games Based Learning as we had originally planned to just talk about education, but we have partially drifted away from that narrow focus.
Serious Games: “Serious Games” has gathered some traction but is somewhat of an oxymoron - games are supposed to be fun. I appreciate it is the outcome that is serious not the game, but that is not clear from the term. Also confused with serious games meaning hardcore commercial games.
Learning Simulations: As previously stated, this is my preferred term for simulations (obviously) but it doesn’t encompass the array of game styles.
Learning Games: Too vague (doesn’t imply digital) and contains the G word. So in the tradition of judging recent UK Eurovision song entries; that will be nil points from me.
Gamification: The term of the moment, but it is too encompassing describing everything from badges, leader boards through to complex simulations.
The case for g-Learning:
It only sneakily hints a games - it is the Assassins Creed of learning terms.
It sounds like advanced e-Learning, which I guess it is.
It fits in with the learning nomenclature: e-Learning (electronic learning), m-Learning (mobile learning).
It sounds techie and sounds like a category (see bullet above).
It is succinct.
So, I Googled g-Learning to see what I could find: a few people are using it in the same way that I am suggesting; there is a training company in the UK trading with the name (they don’t do games); a blogger is using g-Learning as in Google learning and another is using it to mean Green Learning. So with that little amount of research, I don’t think there is a reason why we shouldn’t annex the term, what do you think?
In September, we (pixelfountain) held a workshop in partnership with Virtual College. The delegates were professionals from a wide variety of sectors who were invited to discuss the role of serious games/games based learning in learning and development strategies. For more of an introduction and to see footage from the day (and to appreciate more how our workshops work), watch the video below.
After playing the learning simulation, the delegates discussed using serious games for learning and development. Various applications were suggested, including:
Inductions
Management training
Partnership working and relationship building
Staff engagement days/away days
Stakeholder collaboration
Team building
Assessment centres
Training needs analysis
Community/resident groups
Barriers to adoption were also discussed. These were fewer in number, but included:
The term ‘game’ and misconceptions about games for training
Access to technology
IT literacy
Cost
One of the main aims of the day was to discuss the delivery method of the games and the positives and negatives of different methods. For example, workshop-based, facilitator-led, collaborative delivery as opposed to individually played, online delivery. There was a bias in favour of the games being workshop based, but that is likely to have been because the simulation used on the day was designed for that purpose, which could have skewed opinion.
The delegates had a fantastic day and really loved our newest simulation, Planit-Housing, which was developed in partnership with The University of Northampton. For more information about Planit-Housing, click here and to learn more about our other products and how our workshops work, click here.
To download the full Virtual College report, click here.
The following manifesto is some thoughts that have cropped up over the course of this blog and some new ones. We would welcome your thoughts, and together maybe we can create some guiding principles that might help move the technology forward.
1. Use the “G” word sparingly.
In education you might be able to get away with games based learning, but in the commercial sector it is usually better to stick with terms like learning simulations. “Serious Games” gathered some traction but is somewhat of an oxymoron.
2. Don’t believe the hype (or more accurately understand that clients might believe the hype)
“The minute they see me, fear me
I’m the epitome - a public enemy”
Don’t believe the Hype, Public Enemy.
Games bring with them a lot of baggage. Titles such as Grand Theft Auto are controversial, but games in general are seen as trivial and time wasters. Sell to the believers (innovators and early adopters) and provide them with the ammunition to succeed in their mission of gaining buy-in in their organisation.
3. Don’t sell the sizzle, sell the WHY.
While selling benefits rather than features might be perfectly sensible for products that have become commoditised, that is not the case with innovations. As Simon Sinek says we should “start with why” - . What inspired us to develop games based learning? Sell that why. Tell that story. Inspire others and create a movement.
4. Learning design trumps game gimmicks
If (for example) 3D graphics and a first person perspective help the learning, then use them; if they don’t, then don’t use them. Not only do they add to the cost of development, they are aesthetically tied to entertainment games and make games based learning look trivial and so on.
5. Real enough, not really boring
Whilst the simulation “models” a situation, it is not a model in the strictest sense. A learning simulation needs to be real enough to allow learners to quickly explore a situation without getting too bogged down in detail.
6. Don’t crowbar games into the solution
Just because we can develop games doesn’t mean that they are the correct solution to a particular problem - apropos games.
7. Games = game changers
Games can reach the parts of learning other methods can’t. We need to look for intractable learning problems. Complex issues that are hard to explain with traditional learning methods fit the bill, as does the need to engage large numbers of people. Death by PowerPoint won’t work in these situations.
8. Gamification and serious games / simulations are not the same thing
As Andrzej Marczewski points out, gamification shares some aspects with games such as scores, leader boards, badges (rewards). But, serious games / simulations incorporate game play. And serious games / simulations differ from entertainment games, which are only played for fun. This fact has design and marketing implications and is more than a simple semantic issue ‘about names’.
9. Glammed up quizzes aren’t really games
They are tests in disguise. Games take many forms but they have traits such as problem solving, narrative approach, situational reference (simulations), challenges, jeopardy, interactivity, engagement etc. While a quiz might be engaging if there is a potential to win a million, they are not going to expand learning much.
10. Fads can become mainstream
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
The law of Diffusion of Innovation (Everett Rogers) shows how innovations are taken up by innovators, then early adopters, then come the early majority, the late majority pile in and finally the laggards turn up. Games based learning is still in the early adopter phase and we should be marketing to these types of customers. But to go mainstream, as Geoffrey A Moore states, we will need to cross the chasm, by building momentum and creating a bandwagon effect that the pragmatists will take notice of.
