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.