Principle 2: Good Game Play

In this post, I'd like to continue to share what I've identified as the five key principles of A Play Theory of Learning.  Today's post concerns Principle 2: Good Game Play

To better understand what I am trying to say, it's helpful if you see play and learning games as more than an escape from the dreary regimen of the school-day:

He didn't like broccoli. I knew that much.
"What if it was covered with chocolate?" I challenged.
"Then, I'd eat it," he said.

Unfortunately, many learning games used in classrooms today are what Kurt Squire calls "chocolate on broccoli," a hopelessly icky approach to game play, and one to be squarely rejected by both culinary experts and education designers.

This means that in a play theory of learning, game play has to be at the center of the learning experience.  It's really about tasty broccoli.

How can we do this?  Well, it's possible because good game play is fun, and as Koster (2005) succinctly says, "Fun is just another word for learning."

So this means that when you are hungry for learning, the fun in play arises out of the act of mastery or out of comprehension in the context of a game, and that doesn't need to be covered in chocolate. It's sweet enough as it is.

Good game play is the best way to create hard fun, and that's why it is the second principle of a play theory of learning.

So what is good game play and how do you get to good game play?

Technically speaking, game play is a way of considering the interactivity of a game from the perspective of the immersed-in-a-game player, and how task performance lead to the intrinsic rewards of play, creating an experience of 'fun'. Or as Salen & Zimmerman (2004) write in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, "Game play is the formalized interaction that occurs when players follow the rules of a game and experience its system though play."

In a similar fashion, the game theorist Sebastian Deterding offers a concise statement of good game play: "Games are not fun because they are games; they are fun because they are well-designed experiences" where the game play is about a player's mastery of well-designed attainable challenges.

This means that the learning must be the game play, and it must be integrated into the game.

Stated even more succinctly, a play theory of learning holds that the learning goal must be same as the game mechanic.

Many so-called education games fail this basic test because they focus on the mere gamification of learning as opposed to creating great game play.

The enfant terrible of education video games is the wildly successful franchise called Math Blaster, created by the Davidson educational software company in the late 1980s.

The most recent incarnation of Math Blaster is Hyperblast 2, for the iPad. Let's consider whether or not it conforms to the principle of good game play in a play theory of learning.

Andy Losik, writing in a blog titled, "Wired Educator: Helping educators transform education with technology," offers a helpful review of the latest incarnation of the Math Blaster learning game, called Hyperblaster.

The user interface of Hyperblast 2 is that of an alien adventure where the hero rides a type of rocket cycle through  a series of three dimensional tubes and tunnels, avoiding barriers and blasting away at obstructions. After certain distances ... users take on the Alien Boss who holds in its tentacles the answers to math fact problems. By solving the Alien Boss's problems quickly, users unlock more ammunition, weapons, and levels.

The game play in a Math Blaster-game is that the player is forced to quickly solve math problems, and it is the player's timely performance of these actions, in a way that is completely unexplained, becomes the most powerful and destructive force in the universe. As MIT researcher Michael Resnick observes:

The problem is with the way that creators of today's edutainment products tend to think about learning and education. Too often, they view education as a Bitter medicine that needs the sugar-coating of entertainment to become palatable. Your schooling provides a little entertainment as a reward if you are willing to suffer through a little education.

A little entertainment in exchange for a little education. This is the essence the Math Blaster trade-off, and that is exactly one of the reasons that it is despised by many teachers and education professionals.

As you can see from Losik's description, the game play of Hyperblaster doesn't really teach math at all, and is more in the nature of a contrived "drill-and-practice" exercise.

In contrast, game play requires active participation in the learning dynamic.  Here again it is instructive to listen to Resnick:

I also have a problem with word "edutainment" itself. When people think about "education" and "entertainment," they tend to think of them as services that someone else provides for you.

Studios, directors, and actors provide you with entertainment; schools and teachers provide you with education. New edutainment companies try to provide you with both. In all of these cases, you are viewed as a passive recipient. That's a distorted view. In fact, you are likely to learn the most, and enjoy the most, if you are engaged as an active participant, not a passive recipient.

 So I prefer to focus on "play" and "learning" (things that you do) rather than "entertainment"   

Thus we can join Margaret Robertson's observation that, "Gamification is an inadvertent con. It tricks people into believing that there's a simple way to imbue their [top-down play] with the psychological, emotional and social power of a great game."

So in sum, how can you avoid the gamification trap and create great game play in a learning situation?

Well, the learning goal must also be the game mechanic, and provide meaningful playful interaction with the subject matter.

An example of a game that avoids the gamification trap and provides meaningful playful interaction with the subject matter, we need only to look at a learning game with the unfortunate title of "The Virtual Performance Assessment Project" or "VPA" for short.  (Can you taste the broccoli already?)

This is research project is based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and conducted under the leadership of Chis Dede and Jody Clarke-Midura.

In the VPA game, the player works in an immersive virtual environment, and can "walk around the environment," and make observations, gather data, and solve a scientific problem within a context define by the game and the game play.

In one instance "Save the Kelp!" the game play virtually brings students to an Alaskan bay to investigate the decline in the kelp population, and is challenged to explore the cause of a health issue among a species within its own ecosystem.

To win the game, the student must advance a hypothesis about the health of a species based on the scientific evidence that they have gathered in the context of the virtual word.

In a second instance, called, "There's a New Frog in Town," aspiring scientists are challenged to explain the sudden appearance of a six-legged frog.


The principles of game play here are consistent with the game play required for a play theory of learning.

Ultimately, in a game like VPA it's about learning to play (and not playing to learn). You are learning to play a game that embodies learning in its very game play. In other words, in the case of VPA, "Learning to play" is the same as mastering the game mechanic.

VPA is a good example of Nick Fortugno and Eric Zimmerman's (Learning to play to learn: Lessons in Educational Game Design) principle that you can't just transfer the style of games onto ordinary educational tasks without first understanding the substance of what makes a game work. Their observations on this subject are worth repeating here:

The excitement of games doesn't magically emerge from fancy graphics, well-written stories, or point-based rewards. Good games integrate a number of complex elements (moments of decision-making, challenging goals, rewarding feedback, etc.) to create a fun play experience

So what Fortugno and Zimmerman are saying this that we must recognize the importance of process-based game play. In other words, "Play is an activity, and the content of a game should be expressed in that activity," and they emphasize that "games are good at showing and embodying processes, rather than delivering raw facts."

This means that, "Games give players the opportunity to get their fingers into a system, muck about with it, and see the results." So here's  Fortugno and Zimmerman advice:

So when you make educational games, let the games be games. A game that quizzes you on presidents' names or periodic tables is just a gimmicky test, but a game that simulates the planning and execution of your own archeological dig gives you a direct experience of process that a textbook or lecture can't."

Instead, Fortugno and Zimmer say that it is the "actual repeated actions, decisions and choices, and thinking processes that the game design engenders should themselves embody what the game is about." 


This is easier said than done - especially for new kinds of subject matter. This means that the game designer must:

choose content that is as game-like as possible. Games are dynamic, participatory systems, and process-oriented content is much better suited to games than factual content. For example, if your aim is to create a game about history, an experience in which players learn historical dates is less of a game-native approach than one about historical causality, or a simulation of a historical period.

While process-based gameplay is important for "pure entertainment" games, it is particularly relevant in regards to games that teach. Simply slapping educational content onto a generic play style is an often-seen formula for failed educational games. Instead, the educational content should be tightly coupled with and integrated into the play of the game. If you want to make a game about the scientific method, have the players actually hypothesize, experiment, observe, and analyze in order to achieve their goals.

Indeed, that is the game play underlying VPA, and why I think strongly adheres to the Principles of a play theory of learning.

Finally, let us briefly consider how games and good game play are especially well-suited for dynamic learning. Michael Hercenberg (2008), Dynamic Learning of AI in Gaming, writes that:

Dynamic Learning is where one takes the current situation and compares it to previous situations to find the most viable option." In dynamic learning, a player needs to be able to assess a situation and make the best choice, but not a static choice, a dynamic one that takes into account the type of human the user is. The enemies need to learn how the user acts in given situations and then be able to formulate plans and carry them out. This is the heart of dynamic learning.

In other words, Hercenberg says that "Learning is an essential and continual function of the individual agent as he adapts in an ever-changing world. If the world would not be in a perpetual change, agents would not face new information and would not be induced to learn."

So that brings us to a wonderful paradox.

In A Play Theory of Leaning, what good game play offers are challenges for the player to overcome and a range of possible actions that let him or her overcome them.  So the essence of game play is the dynamic relationship between the challenges and the actions available to surmount them."

A play theory of learning holds that game play has to emerge from the learning dynamic, and that the best learning is learning that takes place in the context of a game where it is hard fun - in fact the game looks like work! Consider my imaginary work-day:

Start:  

1.  Information gathering
2.  Information analysis
3.  Decisions
4.  Interactions with the world
5.  Assessment (back to step-one). 

Finish 

It is in the context of a game's aesthetic and dramatic elements that make this 'work' change into game play. Through the magic of the game play, work and fun merge into a single learning experience. (If you doubt this, just ask anyone who has played a Civilization-like computer game, a highly-addictive turn-based single-player game concerned largely with with strategic resource-management).

Well, that's probably an all-to-brief summary of  Principle 2: Good Game Play, and I hope that I was able to keep you engaged in this project.  I welcome your thoughts, comments, corrections and feedback.


Stay tuned for the next installment of A Play Theory of Learning. Principle 3: Don't Play in the Classroom.

Principles of a Play Theory of Learning

Over the next few posts, I'd like to share what I've identified as the five key principles of A Play Theory of Learning. Starting today, Principle 1: Hard Fun


Ben Wildeboer, a 9th grade science teacher, provides a good introduction to the concept of hard fun in his blog, Re:Thinking: Science education should look like science. He writes:

In high school I’d spend hours in the back yard trying to perfect my curving corner kicks, not because it was easy, but because it was something I enjoyed. 

He goes on to say that a traditional school curriculum is largely lacking in activities that can be called hard fun.

Not because there’s something inherent about what we learn in school that prevents it from being hard fun, but because designing hard fun learning experiences requires a bit more flexibility, a lot more student control, and a heckuva lot less 'feeding' students the-one-right-way.

Looking over the education literature, Wildeboer suggests that the idea of hard fun in education theory originates with Seymour Papert, who tells this story about the origin of the term:

Way back in the mid-eighties a first grader gave me a nugget of language that helps. The Gardner Academy (an elementary school in an under-privileged neighborhood of San Jose, California) was one of the first schools to own enough computers for students to spend significant time with them every day. Their introduction, for all grades, was learning to program, in the computer language Logo, at an appropriate level. A teacher heard one child using these words to describe the computer work: "It's fun. It's hard. It's Logo." 

I have no doubt that this kid called the work fun because it was hard rather than in spite of being hard. 

Once I was alerted to the concept of "hard fun" I began listening for it and heard it over and over. It is expressed in many different ways, all of which all boil down to the conclusion that everyone likes hard challenging things to do. 

Hence, Papert began to popularize the idea of hard fun in context of learning. In a 1999 statement titled, "The Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Laboratory" Hard Fun is the third principle in his list.

The third big idea is hard fun. We learn best and we work best if we enjoy what we are doing. But fun and enjoying doesn't mean "easy." The best fun is hard fun. Our sports heroes work very hard at getting better at their sports. The most successful carpenter enjoys doing carpentry. The successful businessman enjoys working hard at making deals (cited in Gary Stager's blog, The Daily Paperet: Words and wisdom of Seymour Papert).

So what does fun mean?

A word to the reader. We're just getting started here and there's a significant danger of confusion. Let's dig a bit deeper for a moment. One place to start is with Raph Koster. In his well-regarded book, A Theory of fun for Game Design (2005) puts the concept of fun in the center of the designer's universe. But he notes that the term fun is seriously ambiguous because 'having fun' covers such a wide range of human behavior in a rich variety of contexts. So when we speak of the enjoyment that is 'fun,'

... we actually mean a constellation of different feelings. Having a nice dinner out can be fun. Riding a roller coaster can be fun. Trying on new clothes can be fun. Winning at table tennis can be fun. Watching your hated high school rival trip and fall in a puddle of mud can be fun. Lumping all of these under 'fun' is a rather horribly vague use of the term. 

So its obvious that we need to be more precise about the meaning of 'fun' in the term 'hard fun.' In Koster's view, the fun in 'playful interaction' arises as the player increases his or her mastery or sense of comprehension from an activity. I feel that this is a useful definition from a play theory of learning perspective because it unites the feelings of engagement and attainment from the player's point of view. Like Wildeboer's attempt to master the art of the corner-kick in soccer, a learning challenge is hard fun because it not easily accomplished but it is very satisfying to try. Most recently, Sebastian Deterding's keynote address, From Game-based Learning to a Live Well-Played, at the Games, Learning, and Society Conference (Madison, WI, June 16, 2012)  reprises this idea from Koster.  Deterding says that the key to fun in a learning context are attainable challenges or 'learning challenges' that a game or other context requires a player to master. This means that a typical learning game is not 'fun' because it is a game; it's fun because it presents a well-designed challenge that is inherently fun for the player to attempt to master.


Over the next few posts, I will build upon Koster and Deterding to more precisely define the essential words like 'fun' in the context of learning.

Hello, world. Let's think together about a Play Theory of Learning

I recently started a research project focused on the intersection of play, serious games, and college-level learning. I'll be posting some of my thoughts here, and I welcome your comments, additions, criticisms and suggestions.

The foundation for the work is my realization that my traditional classroom is obsolete -- impossibly burdened by the weight of its fixed desks, fixed time periods, and fixed student expectations. I want something different, a new environment for teaching and learning.

After 20+ years of university teaching, I now want to focus on imagining the future of higher education. 

The first step is to develop a play theory of learning which holds changes in thinking, feeling and doing occur most effectively when the mind is in a playful mode.

I've posted an outline for a book proposal. The working title is Just Play with It: Applied play for 21st Century Learning Environments.

A version of the outline is available at: http://www.slideshare.net/edwardlenert/just-play-with-it-outline-v-2

Please take a look and tell me what you think.