Let's be clear. Certain games, their mechanics, internal logic and the way they are played, are of endless fascination to those who understand the shape and form of the video games industry. Right about now, World of Warcraft happens to be one of them; though in the case of this game, it is largely due to the way they are played. On line games naturally lend themselves to the study of how they are play, for obvious reasons—but this game in particular, because of the size and varied demographics of the audience it attracts.
Consider the lengths to which players will go to compete at the highest levels. This may not be clear to the outside, but the serious player will seek to understand, inside and out, the mechanics of the game. Effectively, they are reverse engineering the game from within it—in much the same way as we reverse engineer the physics of the real world. Like physics, they are at any given time, some accepted truths and many unknowns. Like physics, player use many methods to discover the unknowns, and learn how to maximize the knowledge they gain. This involves not just a simple process of trial and error; it quite often involves semi-scientific experimentation, custom built analysis programs, massive statistical databases and an active and shared process of hypothesis.
Eventually the community, as whole, arrives at an understanding of how the underlying mathematics of the game work. This is then disseminated about the playership through the various community models, and all interested players seek this information out and educate themselves. This then leads to a very complex series of analyses called min/maxing, which essentially mean finding the best results possible within the system. This, in turn, feeds back into the simulation itself. That is, unlike the rules of physics, the rules of World of Warcraft are constantly changing. Sometimes these changes are due to inconsistencies found by players or balancing problems (that is, where the min/max point is too easy to find or too obvious). Over time, we see a gradual increase in the complexity and subtly of the simulation, because the creators recognise that a more educated audience is a more demanding audience.
This is a very curious situation because of two things: the way in which certain pioneers in the community take it upon themselves to discover the secrets of the simulation and disseminate the results; and the way in which other players actively seek out knowledge, become education, and then learn how to turn these abstract rules and equations into practical benefit within the game.
World of Warcraft is, of course, at its core a microcosm of the world; but here we see a very real, active and functioning microcosm of science and engineering. Given the extreme simplistic of the microcosm, compared to the real thing, this in itself might not be so astounding; except for the fact that it is a microcosm in which the community as a whole is participating. This means players from a vast range of ages, locations and background, and people who would otherwise have no interest in either science or engineering. In other words, the game has found a successful way to invoke the curiosity of the scientist and the practicality of an engineer, and is, in some way, teaching the world not only the value of these things but also how they fit into society.
This principle, the value of a microcosm, is something that may be of particular interest and significance to the massively on line genre moving forward. But perhaps it has wider ramifications, also? This is a form of education through our medium, one that seems somehow different from what we traditionally mean when we talk about education in games. Is there a hint here about how we might better use the medium to teach our audience real world skills?
This is a question that has been rolling about my mind for a while now. It may even offer some hope, however dim or distant, to curing my ennui. But we'll see.
One interesting thing to consider is how other mediums deal with the same types of issues. Having been recently exposed to holiday programming on BBC Prime, I've discovered that there is a considerable abundance of Top Gear and What Not To Wear, so I'll use those as examples.
What Not To Wear is great example in that is ostensibly simply a program that teaches women, directly, how to pick out clothes that suit them. But, if you look closer (that is if you're one of the few people reading this who are likely to have seen it), you'll find that the rules of correct and incorrect dress decisions make up only a small part of the show. A much larger part of the show focuses on the story of the featured women, even to the point of very personal details about their life and psychology. They also seem to value a progression to their stories—so that the women leave the show not just better dressed, but happier people, more confident people. Count how many times they refer to self-confidence on a typical show. Therefore, we might conclude that the real message of the program is to show how important clothes are to many women's self confidence, how lack of self confidence can result in poor dress decisions, and how easy (and under what situations) one might come off the tracks, so to speak. The first thing the witch in Stardust realises, after becoming beautiful, is the dreariness of her surroundings. Following this line of thought, the show is effectively teaching, or attempting to teach, women how to become more confident.
Top Gear is often more about the joy of being an automobile enthusiast, than it is about the cars themselves. Ultimately the comparison between one sports car and another is often not the most practical information, in that the audience is unlikely to be watching the show in order to inform a purchase decision. So perhaps what we're really learning is how to, and why to, love cars. So in Top Gear, also, perhaps the direct information is eclipsed by the indirect information.
Lastly, let me tell you a story of a high school student. He was an average student, not doing particularly well, but not failing either. But that, unexpectedly, he was getting very high marks in world history, often coming top of the class. He wondered about this, and asked himself, “Why am I getting such high scores is history? Why can I remember this information so much more easily than information from other classes? Ah, I know. It's because I've heard all these names and terms before. I have a pre-existing framework for this information, so that each new fact can fit nicely into its own spot. And that framework and these names are very firmly in my mind because they are reinforced by visuals and personalities. In other words, it's because I've played Civilisation.” This story is hypothetical, but it's actually based upon reports I remember from a very long time ago where students reported a head start in geography because they had played Pirates!.
So; its been established elsewhere that when you bring games and play and education together good things tend to happen. This has resulted in many teaching aids being built to teach mathematics and languages and whatever. That's all well and good, but let's put that aside for the moment. Those types of games aren't directly relevant here because of three things: they teach in a “direct” fashion and that is their only purpose; they borrow very little, if anything, from the entertainment part of the industry; and they teach topics that already have good teaching methods, involving non-interactive media, and then to be designed as companions to larger courses.
But what if there was a type of educational game—well not so much an educational game as a game that teaches—that we haven't thought about much yet? A game that we played, not to be educated, but for its entertainment value? A game that fed on an inherent curiosity of a topic, rewarding investigation with ever more difficult challenges? A game that taught us, however gradually and indirectly, practical information that we could apply immediately to the word around us? A game that showed us a topic that we're all interested in, and is simple enough for us all to understand, and was previously only kept from us by ineffective teaching methods? A game that was clearly mainstream oriented, in so much that it couldn't clearly be distinguished from mainstream games, and that was exciting and evocative and rewarding to play?
And why would we want to do this? Well, clearly not take the place of any established form of education. More realistically, maybe we would want to leverage the natural instinct of curiosity to provide a head start on certain topics, or simply a framework to make organising and retaining facts easier. Or perhaps we teach a topic that is not usually taught elsewhere—like What Not To Wear. Or perhaps our ultimate goal is to make a point, but to do so we need the audience to understand a certain amount of background information.
In other words, this is an idea very distinct from what we think of an educational game. It is instead a way of imbuing a traditional mainstream game with a little something extra, a hidden secondary effect that the player may not even notice, but will have deeper and longer lasting impact than even the primary effect. While it may be tempting to imagine that I'm trying to suggest the like of Typing of the Dead--or other similar contemporary games that, while clearly being learning aids, use a game component as a reward mechanism--this, I think, is missing the true possibilities. To grasp the full potential of this idea, we need to think longer and deeper.
Well, I'm starting to believe that such a game exists. It has been made in the past and it can be made again in the future. Now, we all know it is difficult to try to appease two masters, in that you run the risk of having to prioritise either gameplay or education when they disagree, but this can be overcome with inventive thinking.
If the game can be made, however, I think that finding it may depend largely on finding the right topic, the just the right domain of knowledge that will suit the medium perfectly. To that end, I have tried to enumerate what might work below.
Domains that have an inherent process; an element of cause and effect. This, I think, is critical. Certain domains are naturally procedural, in that they involve a large set of rules that work simultaneously and sequentially, and a sense of one thing changing another and potentially involve feedback loops. These systems are typically difficult to understand because we tend to see then mathematically, which means inventing many abstract concepts and complex interrelating equations. They tend to be very difficult to visualise and require learning a lot of incomplete fragments of knowledge before you can get your head around the big picture. Each individual concept might be easy enough, it's just seeing and understanding them all in concert that is tricky.
These kind of domains can be thoughts about as a system with many “actors,” each with their own ruleset and working in a selfish manner, but interacting with the other actors. In other words this, curiously enough, is mathematical game theory. So perhaps we might find that those domains that are best modelled using game theory would be a good candidate for games that teach.
While traditional education methods may not be well suited to this, games are—because games are inherently procedural themselves. Furthermore, the rules that constitute typical games mechanics are very similar to the rules use game theory simulations. So we can end up in a situation quite like the World of Warcraft situation, in which the player is attempting to understand the model and rulesets from the inside. And, I think, that game shows how an interested player can learn not only the ins and outs of a surprising complicated system in this manner, but also use that understanding to practical use.
Practical domains, those with real world impact. This idea, I think, will work best if we can inspire a sense of curiosity in the player. One way to inspire this is if the game concepts resonates with what they might see in their daily lives—that is, there should be some cross-over of ideas and knowledge between the game and life. If a game was pitched at a very specific audience, then the domain could be very specific; for example, if we pitched a game at mathematics students, then mathematics fits the bill fine. But since most games are pitched at a very wide audience, for the game to resonate effectively, it needs to have some relevance (perhaps indirectly) with the things that effect us all in everyday life. In other words, the more practical and ubiquitous the topic, the better.
Domains we are naturally curious about. Naturally, some domains are more interesting to us than others. Some have a sense of mystery about them, others we are continually reminded of and attracted to. Sometimes we become curious about a domain because it continually cause strange or seemingly unintuitive things to occur, but we aren't sure how to find out why. Others we're curious about because we think they might, if their secrets were revealed, offer some improvements in our lives—but we're not sure. If a game can tap into this sense of curiosity, the player will naturally want to step beyond simply see the game as entertainment only, and begin to analyse and drill down to discover what lies underneath.
This idea of drilling down, I think, is particularly important. Imagine presenting the player with a final simulation, where the player is only invited to interact at the topmost level, and all the lower level details are just given as is, like “black boxes.” The curious player will want to understand those low level details, not only to improve their game, but also just to understand it better. That voluntary drilling down into the details is the educational part.
Domains that require some memorisation and/or repetition. Often educational games target memorisation, because this is generally thought to be combinable with play and interactivity. It works well for language software and like. It can also play a part here because even in mainstream games, ideas and concepts and facts can be very firmly planted in the memory.
Domains that have some relation to or baring on evocative and exciting themes. Clearly, if we want to appeal like a mainstream game, we must use the same methods as mainstream games. Therefore, whatever message we want to teach indirectly must relate in some way to the main themes of the game. These themes can be things like history, warfare, romance; all the things that we find in our entertainment media. This seems to be a somewhat difficult requirement to fit, but it's also potentially a very important one.
Domains that have clear positive and negative outcomes. Scoring, and success and failure, are important for providing a rewarding experience for the player (that is, because it's necessary for rewards). So our domain should ideally be scoreable and break down into a set of clear and accepted rules. Most domains should lend themselves to this just fine, with the exception of those that are a little too people oriented.
Domains that require little pre-existing knowledge and skills. Generally players don't expect to need some pre-existing knowledge to play a game, apart from a little common sense. You wouldn't expect to, for example, find “calculus” in the list of minimum requirements. So, we should avoid domains that require a lot of specialist knowledge to even approach them. This doesn't mean we have to avoid all but the most simple domains, however, because we can use the computer to do all of the mathematics and as much of the grunt work as possible.
Domains that involve some form of competition or interaction between multiple parties. Some sense of competition and friction between agents is almost mandatory to building a set of game mechanics, and ideally our domain should reflect that. A domain that allows multiple players to participate and compete against each other works even better. Competition against a friend or stranger is a great way to motivate the player to dig deeper and seek to understand more.
Domains that have a clear visual element. Some domains lend themselves to imagery, others don't. Visuals are, of course, very critical to games, so we need to avoid those domains that can't be depicted in any way, or can't be depicted at reasonable performance levels.
Domains that we are naturally attracted to. Some domains have a natural attraction, in that we value and admire the skills involved, and those people who understand it. Other domains can have the opposite effect. Of course, we want the game as a whole to be attractive and we don't want the player to feel put off at the idea of learning about that domain, so we should prefer the attractive domains.
Domains that can tell a story. Story is critical in game, be it as simple as a feeling of progression, or complex interactions between characters. Ideally we want our domain to allow and support a story. This doesn't mean that it necessarily has to involve people, though that helps, but we at least don't want the domain to get in the way.
Domains that result in positive psychological boost as the player learns. Sometimes learning hits the right psychological buttons and just feels good. Typically this is things like life skills and artistic skills. Obviously this isn't a required property, but can provide significant benefit.
So, will it cure my ennui? Only time will tell. However, this idea and its implications, such as it is, has caught my attention where all other ideas have failed. It's likely that it will not be immediately clear why, though. More on this, perhaps, a little later.
0 Responses:
Post a Comment