I’ve just used up the rest of my holiday allowance this year to take a week off to concentrate on writing my Great Novel (and getting on top of the washing). I’ve spent a lot of time reading about the composition of narrative (not procrastinating, you understand) and, in particular, the Hero’s Journey, which provides an archetypal framework for storytelling.
I was interested to find this article on the use of the Hero’s Journey in games.
I was fortunate to be asked to talk at the Open University’s Computers and Learning Research Group conference yesterday. The afternoon was dedicated to the topic of game-based learning and this game me the opportunity to watch some very interesting talks and meet other researchers in the area, most notably Shaaron Ainsworth, who specialises in investigating the psychological and cognitive effects of games, Richard Joiner, who is doing some interesting work on games and gender, and Jo Iacovides, who is half-way through her doctoral research on engagement and motivation in games.
I presented my first talk since returning from maternity leave, and found it more daunting than I had been expecting. It was lucky that they were a friendly, interested group (even last thing in the afternoon) and what the presentation lacked was compensated for by the lively audience participation at the end. The presentation centred around what I think will be the three biggest challenges facing game-based learning as a discipline in years to come. These are:
I would suggest that what the field needs is to focus on two areas: rethinking the research methodologies by which we investigate the learning impact of complex games, drawing on the whole range of disciplines that make up the field of game-based learning; and rethinking the development models that exist for involvement the creation of games to become a possibility for more people. I think we also need to create an environment for innovation and be more open to the possibility of failure, including its open discussion and dissemination, if we are to learn from our mistakes and build up a robust body of evidence in a relatively new research field.
Doug Clow’s write-up of the session can be found here.
It’s quite a busy week this week so I haven’t had time to explore any of the following links in detail, but thought I would get them down in one place before they disappear into the ether (i.e. the section of my bookmarks list that goes off the end of the page).
First, a couple of different takes on a game-based learning institution. Quest to Learn is a school based around gaming principles, which describes itself as “a school that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences.” In contrast, the WILL Campus online learning environment provides access to “socially responsible interactive video games” (although from the demo it looks like these are really video-supported decision trees with fairly limited interactivity).
I’ve also recently come across this report from Learning and Teaching Scotland on the use of the Mangahigh maths game in Scottish schools. The research shows that greater use of the game (i.e. greater maths practice) leads to better results. Says more about the importance of control groups to me than about the value of Mangahigh.
Finally, I’m glad that Alan Titchmarsh has taken the time to add his considered and well-researched opinions to the video games and violence debate. Don’t know about video games, but I’m sure that listening to too many ill-informed media pundits could be proven to lead to violence.
New research has just been published (full paper in pdf) showing the results of an experiment carried out by the BBC to investigate whether ‘brain-training’ games make any difference to overall brain power.
The results of this study (n=11,430) seem pretty conclusive: they don’t.
These results have been criticised because the researchers used a sample aged 16-60 when most games of this nature are aimed at the over 60s (the age at which one switches from a sentient being to an absent-minded simpleton) and because the time spent playing the games was relatively short (4 hours on average over 6 weeks). These may be valid criticisms, but the question this research really raises for me is: why did anyone assume that playing this sort of game would improve overall brain power in the first place? The idea that repeatedly playing a series of cognitively low-level and disparate games will in some way enhance overall brain function seems very strange to me. (But, hey, if someone wants to prove it I’ll be the first to be converted)
This research both pleases and troubles me. The former because there is finally some robust research being carried out that opens up the debate about these type of games rather than simply following the hype put forward by those who produce them. The latter because I worry that the media will equate this research with ‘games not good for learning’ and put back the case for games - complex, rich, sophisticated games - for learning back 20 years.
I don’t really need another thing to fill up time in my life, but somehow my DSi turned up at Christmas and slotted right in. My only real complaint with it is that I can’t seem to get hold of the types of game I like (adventure, mystery, puzzles). I played my way through Professor Layton One and Two, and enjoyed them despite the extrinsic puzzles because the story was fun and I liked collecting the hint coins. I had no real enthusiasm for the daily tedium of Professor Kawashima and found myself just getting a bit too much eye strain from Mystery Case Files.
Then along came Zelda and the Phantom Hourglass and made me rethink what I know about the types of games I like. It involves fighting and killing things and doing things in a certain time and I really shouldn’t like it. Oh but I do. Thinking back to the work I’ve been doing on what makes ARGs engaging, it ticks some of the boxes:
However, there’s more to it than that. This got me thinking about what other aspects of the game I find so compelling:
I’m sure that as I keep playing the game will continue to evolve, so I may well be adding to this list on another occasion (or adding a rant about being stuck because it has suddenly got really hard). At the moment however, thank you Zelda for broadening my horizons.
I felt the need to have a little rant. Last night I watched Jo Frost’s Supernanny Extreme Parental Guidance (hoping to pick up some tips, clearly) and managed to get very, very annoyed at one of the features. This centred around whether violent computer games make kids lack empathy, and the experiment was so full of holes it was ridiculous.
To start they quoted some facts about the average child watching a screen for six hours a day, and immediately started talking about violent computer games. The inference is clear; they have just failed to mention that he average child watches television, and uses the computer in a whole range of other ways. Next, we have the controlled trial: 40 teenage boys split into two groups, one playing a violent game for 20 minutes, the other playing a football game. 40 subjects. 20 minutes. The boys’ heart rates were tested during the game play and the rate of those playing the violent game was found to be higher (although no mention of the word significant was made at any point).
At this point Jo Frost looks worried. So they’ve ‘proved’ that twenty boys on one occasion some had a higher average heart rate than another twenty. I can feel her constanation. Clearly we need no more evidence to see how computer games are rotting the minds of our youth. But there is more…
The next part of the experiment involved the researcher ‘randomly’ interviewing participants from each group (how many is not made clear - four? five? nineteen?), which the viewer sees through a hidden camera. During the interview, the researcher accidentally knocks over a jar of pens and in the majority of cases the boys who had played the football game helped pick them up while those that had played the violent game did not. What more proof do you need that violent computer games lead to lack of empathy? Except that the researcher had obviously decided that violent games were the work of Satan before the start of the experiment and had pre-judged the actions of the boys. When he dropped the pens during an interview with a football game player he stopped, looked at the pens and started to pick them up - the boy reluctantly helped; whereas with the violent game players he ignored the pens and so did the boys. They were simply mirroring him.
Now, I’m not going argue that violent games don’t make children lack empathy (to be honest, I don’t know enough about it), and I appreciate that there may be more to the experiments than could be typically shown in a short TV feature. However, I strongly feel that that faux-scientific experiments and Brass-Eye style media frenzy is not the way to take a rigourous and impartial look as something as serious as the potential effects of violent games.
Thanks to Fiona Littleton (who incidentally runs a excellent course in computer games for learning at Edinburgh University) who sent me the link to this article from Time magazine on the use of computer games to support awareness raising and activism.
A long time ago I worked for Oxfam and one of my tasks was to engage with groups on developmental issues as part of the education remit. I remember being asked to run a last minute session with a very well-to-do pensioners’ group in Edinburgh, and because I didn’t have anything prepared, I decided to run a development game with them. I think they were expecting a slide show of ‘poor children in Africa’ because the fact that they were going to do something interactive came as a bit of a shock (and initially met with a fair bit of resistance) but by the end of the session there was a high level of engagement and some of those present were starting to think differently about the reasons for poverty.
So games for activism aren’t something new, and in my experience they are certainly powerful, but I wonder whether the people who play these type of games aren’t already well informed and active. Without something to force the initial engagement are they simply preaching to the converted?
I thought I would round off the year (and the decade) with some thoughts about how gaming has changed in the past ten years, and how these advances in gaming could inform learning. So, I present my Top Five gaming innovations of the past ten years (in no particular order):
Well, that’s my take on the last ten years. I’d be very interested to know if you agree, disagree, or think that I’ve left out something important?
That just leaves me to say Happy New Year and wish everyone the very best for 2010!
I was recently watching one of James May’s excellent television programmes about childhood toys. in which he reminisces and/or uses them to build something incredible and very cool, when he said something that got me thinking. I can’t remember his exact words but it was something along the lines of modern computer games being boring because they leave nothing to the imagination.
I’ve been thinking recently about the importance of graphical quality in games, and this struck a chord with some of my own ideas about the increasing fidelity of high-end gaming. As the gaming experience becomes ever more realistic it becomes ever more immersive… or does it? I remember being immersed in games of far lesser graphical wonder, such as The Hobbit with its shaky line drawings, and the brilliant Secret of Monkey Island with its 2d pixelmen. Or even a good book.
I think that May has got it right. By striving for increasing accuracy and definition in games we may be losing some of the essential ‘gameness’ of them - the mystery, storytelling, creativity and imagination that goes on in our own heads as we play.
Thanks to Katie Piatt for a recent inspiring blog post on play in relation to student’s learning. She considers how Eberle’s process of play (described by Johan Brand) could be applied to the design of student learning experiences.
The process of play model contains six cyclical steps, roughly sequential:
What also interested me in Johan Brand’s post was the idea of enablers of playful behaviour, which can be harnessed to support the design of playful experiences. These enablers are described as: ownership; sharing; personalisation; creation; participation; socialising; and competing.