I wanted to post a very short posting on playful spaces.

In this month's Wired there was a short piece on public games that combine public spaces
and communities in real time. 

The first game, Noticings, turns a private reflective sub domain of photography - taking pictures of obscure ephemera of every day life, street scenes, abandoned items etc - and turns it into a community games through creating league tables of participation and points for specific features (see screen caps below). It is a fun game but one could see more practical community uses (for instance the same structure of game but specifically being used to flag up graffiti, littering, etc.) or for learning games in the field - this is, after all, a sophisticated community treasure hunt that could be extended to feature more specific goals or reflective learning opportunities (as in, say, some uses of geocaching.

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The second game, created by KMA, was a really interesting way to engage people in a safe and interesting space. I don't think there is learning per se here but it is a great and fun use of playfulness in unexpected places:

What triggered me to make this post was however was attending Maker Faire in Newcastle a week or so back and wanted to record some of the really interesting learning environments that formed part of that event. The Faire was essentially around 100 stalls by people who make geeky things varying from high complexity robots right down to hand sewn merit badges. It was not a trade show, now a sales event but a space for sharing experience, knowledge and trying things out. There were contact cards and some small items for sale but on the whole it was a space for relaxed peer learning for fun. 

One of the more elaborate items on display was the Maker Bot (pictured above) a low cost open source self-assembly 3d printer. I think this is a really interesting example of a playful learning experience as the Bot's arrive in kit form and require mixed construction skills and a large number of hours - most owners quote between one and three days to built the kit completely. Once constructed the bot must be given complex 3D images and the owner must therefore be familiar or learn how to use those tools. They can then print an item of their own design enabling a relatively instant ongoing relationship between creative idea and manufactured prototype/limited run product. 

What cannot be seen in the video above is the wealth of resources - learning objects, advice, template items etc. - that the community around the Maker Bot have and continue to create. This is a peer supported and enhanced machine with small modifications, reuse of designs and communities of creativity around it. The hours required to build and use the machine are extensive but the number and usage of YouTube and Vimeo clips (see above) of owners proudly building and sharing there build of their machine turns this into a type of community game where the rules are that everyone builds the same things from the same kit, the community is a mixture of experts, new comers, and observers of how the game should be played, there are right ways to construct the kit but additional knowledge or experience can enable shortcuts, reflection is part of the process and the success is a complex mix of completing a working machine, doing so swiftly and/or stylishly AND participating in the ongoing community comparison of cool and interesting things. 

Maker Bot is quite typical of the types of work and creativity shared at Maker Faire - my partner and I spent 2 hours making a circuit and sewing it into a plush toy in one workshop, a further 2 hours learning a new programming language to create digitial art in which we exchanged designs in a game to adapt and change each other's work, and we spend half a day soldering items just so that we could plug them in and see if they worked and could be programmed (see above). It was all intensely playful activity and often structured to be lightly competitiv. Learning was scaffolded in a safe and mixed environment with peers and experts on hand to help. It was a really interesting experience to compare with the style of learning in other spaces (and it bore positive resemblence to much of the peer support and accessibility I associatte with this MSc) and gave me some ideas about what might or might not work in my final game design assignment which I am currently thinking about.

The weekend also reminded me how important the haptic dimension of play and games can be. Doing most of this course on a laptop or desktop machine isolates me from the devices many normally experience digital games on - handheld gaming devices, consoles, add ons (controllers disguised as skateboards, drums, guitars, aerobics steps, steering wheels and (very old fashioned) joy sticks even), and phones. The physical element is not something we have been considering in this module and I think it often overlooked in educational games designed for academic or workplace environments - where PCs or laptops are expected. I do wonder, especially for specialised and/or training games, how much that physical aspect is crucial to engagement, a real sense of embodiment and participation and a sense of emotional involvement in a scenario. 

uLearning (ubiquitous and context-specific) and Alternative Reality Games (ARGs)

The binding medium is generally the Internet, drawing on other forms of media. 

My understanding is that it is an inversion of the classic computer gaming paradigm, whereby the real-world characters are controlled or undertake a computer-generated narrative.

Where I think uLearning is interesting within this particular genre of gaming is that a context-aware environment can play along/maintain this invention of reality in supporting the narrative, therefore removing itself from the players’ physical domain and merely adopting symbols or metaphorical representations from of this narrative.

uLearning “enables users to interact and learn with sensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) embedded objects in their surroundings… As a student moves around the learning area, the system can detect their location by reading and analysing the data from the nearest RFID tag. Consequently, assessment can be conducted to evaluate the learning performance of the student in the realworld” (Liu et Hwang, 2009b, p. 1 & 4)

References

Liu and Hwang. (2009).  A key step to understanding paradigm shifts in e-learning: towards context-aware ubiquitous learning.  British Journal of Educational Technology (2009) doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00976.x

Liu and Hwang. (2009).  Learning spaces, learning environments and the dis‘placement’ of learning.  British Journal of Educational Technology (2009) doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00974.x

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Ubiquitous_learning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_learning 

Chapter 7
The Impact of Digital Games on Learning

I found this an interesting read, especially in accordance with my own reflection upon the three classes currently using or having used digital games in order to complement some aspect of learning or having “the ability to make mistakes in a safe environment and and learn from them [which] is one of the key benefits of game-based learning” (Whitton, 2010, p. 104).

Commandos

On the 15th of March, the S3 pupils at Dunoon Grammar School sat their S3 exam ('mocks').  In order to foster relationships - a recurring factor in much of the material being amassed as part of my studies of the MEd in Education on The University of the West of Scotland's Chartered Teacher Pathway programme - I decided to look at the interaction within and between groups of 14 year-old boys, with each group taking part in the playing of the game projected onto a large classroom display.  Each of the 6 groups would control the mouse, direct commands and filter comments and suggestions from the other groups. The pupils are about to conduct research on a topic from which they will develop and deliver a solo talk presentation to the whole class, which will be summatively assessed in accordance with SQA Standard Grade Arrangements.  I am attempting to remove and existing barriers amongst pupils and to continue fostering the supportive and actively collaborative climate necessary in a single gender (all male) class.  These are noted as “unintended learning objectives” (Whitton, 2010, p. 108) and include: “Valuable transferable skills, such as problem solving, teamwork or negotiation” (ibid.).

I was not to be disappointed.

Initial uptake was slow: I put this down to the audience and 'public performance' factor.   There were instances of bravado and a carefree, less-than-interested approach.  One particular academic/quiet pupil made significant progress - suggestions as to having played before (private interview afterwards). 

I then released the 'walkthrough' now that they had mastered basic navigation.   Still, there were small isolated pockets of resistance: disengagement - post and pre-play.

However, there was plenty of humour - pupil-teacher humour and a fair amount of camaraderie/praise.

Sherlock Holmes



Whitton’s provision of examples whereby games can be justified as applicable within a learning environment lend to specific areas within which I have used this game:  

• Narratives associated with the action in the game (e.g. characterizations, back stories, future scenarios);
• Reflective accounts of actions taken in the game and the learning acquired from it; 

(Whitton, 2010, p. 105).

It is important to note Whitton’s view that adults require close connections to be made between game-based activities and learning outcomes and benefits.  With the S1 pupils, merely adopting the game as an adjunct to a piece of study and utilizing it for a generic lesson opening activity has been enough; whilst formative assessment of daily journals helps to deliver feedback about their writing attainment.  This is certainly a justification to anyone seeking educational merit!

Myst

After a single period of this game – used with an extremely able s2 class (aged circa 13) – I observed and detected disengagements that hadn’t been noticed before from the S1 class.  On the 16/03/2010 I passed around a Pros/Cons sheet and asked for at least one entry from each pupil. 

‘Bad graphics’ featured once, but interestingly the cons noted that it was “hard”, “no one can use it” and that it was “confusing” (no context or background is provided).  What also featured was the looseness of the lesson structure and that “we all shout out at once”.

It would be interesting to allow the pupils themselves to structure a ‘best practice’ approach…

On the plus, the idea was “fun” and that some enjoyed “puzzles” and the “mystery”, “scenes” and “setting” were positively remarked upon.  Whitton offers a more fine-grained ‘Engagement Questionnaire’ that could be used in future.

Overall, I was curious about the following:

 “higher levels of engagement with a learning activity are indicative of increased learning from it” (Jacques et al. (1995) cited in Whitton, 2010, p. 110).

But that it “is possible to be engaged while not actually in a state of flow” (Whitton, 2010, p. 110).

“Lepper and Malone (1987) provide evidence that there is a link between intrinsic motivation to learn, engagement and instructional effectiveness” (Whitton, 2010, p. 110).

I shall conclude these musings AFTER I have watched the Youtube clip on ‘flow’.

Drawn: The Painted Tower
I thought that this was an utterly beautiful looking game. Although some of the narrative segments involved pauses, cryptic message and faintly naff voice over it was still surprisingly engaging. As I explored the game I did have to be quite strategic about what I picked up, what I used, how I chose to progress... There was a lot of looking through an area of a room in the Tower and then having to find the tools/items located elsewhere in or near other parts of the room. On the negative side all those beautiful graphics came with several pauses as areas loaded (and as the areas involve only small-ish amounts of game play this could get tedious). It also felt like quite a lot of clicking around at times - just guessing at answers where I didn't know what to do. Gameplay felt a lot more fluid as I got more used to the cryptic format and I was quite disappointed when my hour long trial ended. Not quite enough to pay $6.99 but almost. I am not entirely sure what the educational value of the game is exactly but there was certainly an aspect of analysis, pattern matching and problem solving that was engaging and got my brain working in an interesting way. But it did feel much more like a highly sophisticated puzzle game more so than an Adventure to me.

Tradewinds Legends
This strategy game was quite fantastically addictive. The concept is extremely simple: you have a ship, a certain amount of cash, and a certain amount of debt. You can increase your cash (and your savings which start out at zero) by buying and selling goods around the series of coastal cities. You can also take on missions and you have to, on occasions, take on pirates. At it's heart the game is a simple trade game but there are also extremely subtle and engaging layers of strategy and analysis: you have to monitor goods prices; you can borrow or save money at different interest rates; you can choose how to arm or protect your fleet and you can expand and repair it as you need. There are lots of choices to make and almost complete control (the random factors being the quasi-optional tasks and the pirate attacks though you come to expect the latter).

Training elements are well integrated into the game - there are a lot of help screens at first and there is always help available either through help text or funny comments that indicate you are looking in the wrong place for something. Pleasingly there is no block on selling goods below their worth - if you want to play a very differnt strategy around the game then you are free to do so. Visually Trade Winds is ludicrously old fashioned but it feels bright and lively, the game play is pretty quick if you want it to be and there are some fun comedy comments, silly catch phrases and virtual banter that gives the game an enjoyable personality. And although the game is clearly very educational - there are a good number of small business owners that could do worth than use it for training themselves in some basic principles of buying, selling and doing well - it is also clearly aimed at adults with the cynical comments and roles of religious figures etc. in the game.

At set up I deliberately picked the one female character available - there were very few female characters in the game and those that were there were mystics/assistants in religious buildings whilst all the bankers, traders, etc. were men. That fits the Arabian Nights theme but is a bit irritating as a female game player. In my one hour of game play I got my character out of debt, into profit and purchased her two new ships. I was delighted and was getting enormously excited about making good trades, getting a good interest rate on my savings, expanding my fleet... I think there is a fairly good likelihood that come the end of this module I may shell out the £17 for the full version. Although the format of the game also reminded me of more sophisticated looking games, particularly things like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, the actual strategies were more grounded in reality and more rewarding to play. I could see huge educational potential here for conveying basic ideas around business strategies and investment. I also thought it was a more realistic way to get a first person "Around the World in 80 Trades" type experience. Overall I found it a very engaging enjoyable game.

SimCity Classic
Sadly SimCity was yet another game which was not compatible with my Mac. Which is disappointing. Having registered for the website the only game I could access with my home computer was a water skiing game which is more of a random element than a true example of game play.

However my partner's computer (also a mac) has a copy of Sims 2 installed so I had a wee look at this instead of the online game. Although my partner has become extremely engrossed in the Sims several times (playing several different families though only usually one at a time) it is not a game I've ever been able to feel as involved in. Although I respond well to the level of control you have over decisions and the personalities of your Sim I have never been wildly impressed with the level of basic knowledge your Sim arrives with. For instance not burning down the house, not using the bathroom when needed, not cooking when hungry... if you are playing an adult Sim these are all skills that are intensely boring to train into your character.

Interestingly I have also always failed to make my own Sims embody my own sexuality because I have confused the game with my choices. I have always found it intriguing that my Sims end up baffled and juggling unsuccessful chaste relationships whilst my partner has successfully created extremely functional same sex partnerships (with an appropriate level of "woo-hoo!") in the game and her characters have been able to also adopt children in the game. I think there is something about how well the game detects your style of play that actually makes it work better for some players than others since it is hard to feel invested and embodied by a character that is not behaving as you would like. I don't think my personal goals in life map conventionally enough for the games algorithms and I suspect this may be part of the problem with my Sims achieving those goals.

There is much talk in both Gee and Whitton books about whether simulation qualifies as a game in any sense. I think the Sims offers an interesting space to consider this as the Sims is very loose and free in form but there are goals and achievements that are imposed on Sims and there are uncontrollable elements that encourage game-like play. Still I don't think it is a game exactly, particularly if games must include an element of competition. Educationally it is an interesting game as whilst it involves various lessons about life and there are some aspects that have quite interesting possibilities. For instance players with mild Aspergers could find the game's rather unintuitive/mechanical analysis of emotions and the ways in which Sims maintain relationships quite a useful aspect of the game for understanding the real world. Teens facing their first experience of independent living might find the games messages about the balue of work and planning useful. And the game has an ongoing message that education and the reading of books and acquiring of skills is always useful which is clearly positive. Having said all of which I don't think there are profound educational lessons innately included in the game. It is the subversive or agenda driven plays of the game that can lead to really interesting learning outcomes - for instance the innovative and touching homeless Alice and Kev experiment in Sims 3.


Google Earth Games

Finally I wanted to pull together my experiences of the team games we built in Google Earth this weeks. Most of my comments here are adapted from my posting on the discussion boards/on the wiki but I felt these were worth recognizing in the blog here.

Team Lara
This was my team's game so I will not discuss my thoughts of it (see my blog post for weeks 5&6 for that), only link to it: http://goteamlara.wordpress.com/



Team Zelda
Team Zelda created a game using a PowerPoint introduction (which caused a few Mac hiccoughs but looked fantastic when I got it working) that explained a mission to identify camps for victims of the recent Haiti earthquake.

The tough part for me was trying to find any sort of site that might be suitable for a camp. I didn't get organised enough to contact my Team Lara colleagues and take part as a team mission - this was something encouraged in the game's introduction and I can see that this would be better was to play - but did lots of exploring on my own. I found the many Haiti layers (provided in a special package created for Google Earth after the earthquake) a little confusing but, more than that, I also found the material quite upsetting to view. It's one thing to see footage on the television but the sheer density of housing and the level of destruction of those buildings made the task at hand quite daunting.

I explored around for several hours as there was absolutely no issue of my not feeling engaged or involved in the game I just felt involved enough that I wanted to do a good job. The aftershock layer really concerned me - I felt I should be looking up further information on earthquake areas and long term damage as I really don't know much about this topic and the idea that my role in the game was taking responsibility for setting up a camp like this (even just within the realm of a game) made me feel under-qualified and nervous about cementing my choices.

In the end I went for sites that looked safe, clear, and relatively accessible:

• 18°32'57.18"N, 72°20'50.86"W
• 18°32'23.27"N, 72°20'59.49"W
• 18°32'54.10"N, 72°20'53.82"W
• 18°33'4.06"N, 72°20'49.63"W

I suppose it would have been good to have a better idea of the pluses and minuses of different sites (particularly those further outside town) in terms of long term issues but I think the bounds of the challenge were well set out in the mission document.

I really liked the game but it was tricky to find the time to do it justice. I could see it working really well in a classroom context as there was a huge number of really interesting and educational discussion points that would be raised by browsing the images and maps and trying to find a good site. I particularly found that the images allowed me to find out so much more about the poverty and organization of Haiti that made sense of subsequent news covefrage around international assistance and practical matters of delivering aid. I found this game a really interesting way to gain insight of a current event and part of the world I soon realized I only knew a tiny bit about. I thought it was also a clever way to leverage all the specially collated resources that wouldn't otherwise have been available for this part of the world.


Team Mario

The Team Mario Game revolved around Food Miles. It was a short simple game in which you watched a video about food miles and the origins of super market food and then had to select items for a stir fry with each decision a trade off between food miles and ethical points.

From the decisions I made I travelled 4609 foodmiles and scored 22 ethics points. A pretty good score based on the guidelines for the game.

I really liked the simplicity of the idea and the execution was beautiful. I did think there should be a more ambiguity in the choices though, perhaps allowing me to make choices before telling me the various good and bad points of each ingrediant. That way I would be more likely to be surprised and find the information memorable. The game's protein choices were prawns and beef but as I was playing my partner also suggested that a vegetarian option like Tofu would have raised a number of useful food miles, ethical and environmental issues that are interesting and useful to discuss. One observation of this game was that it didn't quite feel like a game but I did like that the game allowed the player to make their own choices and the difference in the miles/points clocked up by my coursemates showed how differently it was possible to play.

It would have been great to have a follow up and/or reflection activity to go with this game, particularly if it made you take a look at your own supper or fridge contents or shopping habits (how you get to the shops/waste etc) with a similar critical eye as this would help with the further discussion of grey areas in ethical shopping. In the game as it stood I did really like the contrast of food miles and ethics that was painted. The idea that there are positive ethical and economic benefits to consuming produce from developing countries is a nice touch since awareness of food miles and waste is more acute than awareness of complex agricultural issues at present.


Team Sonic

Team Sonic built their game on a Climate Change layer created by the Met Office. Game play involved undertaking a number of small tasks around the issues of climate change and requiring the reading of first person accounts from the developing work, completion of quizzes, etc. in order to find letters for an anagram that would complete the game.

I found this a really interesting game and the tools and accounts certainly help highlight risks and issues surrounding Climate Change. I think the anagram was a nice idea to bond the game together but I'm not sure if the path from the [final resolved meaning of the] anagram to the specific issues raised in the game is really that clear cut which is an issue in an educational game. Cause and effect are extremely complex in this context and although personal accounts and predictions illustrate the possible consequences of climate change I felt that there was scope here to highlight the problems inherent in such a grey area - say by bringing in issues of natural and man made carbon release, politics around renewables etc. In a classroom context and/or as part of a sound curriculum on the intensely complicated interplay of factors in climate change and the cost/benefit implications of various courses of actions I felt this could be a really useful game though.


Overall I found this a fantastically stimulating few weeks of game design and game play leaving me with huge food for thought.

This is a very brief post to list the games I have been thinking about as possible subjects of my game review for the first assignment:

• Foldit http://fold.it/portal/ - a biological puzzle game with actual scientific discoery as the ultimate goal. 
• Plants v zombies http://www.popcap.com/games/pvz - a game where zombies can be killed off with a variety of toxic plants planted strategically!.
• The Cost of Life http://thecostoflife.org/- sort of an ecological variant on Civilisation I think. 
• Super Energy Apocalypse http://www.fadupinator.com/about_sea.html -pollution game (where you have to play polluter).

This was a really challenging pair of weeks as we were designing our own games in Google Earth. I was working as part of "Team Lara" and it took some time to get a sense of what might be practical in the space in the time available. Google Earth looks beautiful but our team of three didn't have a lot experience with it and our schedules were rather out of synch so we needed to find a practical way to combine ideas into an engaging and coherent game. Having decided upon the theme of the Seven Wonders of the World (rather inspired by our team name and the Lara Croft Tombraider games) we turned to this week's recommended reading for advice on where to start.

Whitton (2010 [1]) was an incredibly useful and practical resource for designing a game. We decided to start sketching out our idea for the game - a sort of treasure hunt based on cryptic puzzles and using Google Earth to understand and explore the Seven Wonders - and clarify our learning objectives. We decided that the players would, through playing the game:

    •    Learn about the 7 wonders of the ancient world.
    •    Gain confidence in using Google Earth as a discovery tool.
    •    Practical experience of analysing a learning game.
    •    Use the internet to locate information based on a supplied brief.

Having had a real-time chat in Skype and various discussions about how the game could work and be built we turned our idea and learning objectives into a game specification (which can be seen in the password (which is: voncroy) protected part of our game) using the example offered by Whitton (as per Table 6.2 on p. 101 of 2010 [1]) as a template. Although we did take note of all the considerations highlighted in Whitton (2010 [1] and [3]), Gee (2003 [2]), and other readings we have encountered it proved, in practice, very challenging to build training elements, control, immersion, challenge, reflection etc. into a short game. Indeed as I was looking at the readings this week I initially assumed many of these principles applied primarily to games with complex structures and multiple levels - as per many of the games highlighted by Gee and Whitton - but in practical terms I am aware that many educational games are for quite specific purposes with only a few levels so it seemed to be a really appropriate to be trying to get the wider principles to fit within the constraints of a short focused game. 

Having said this a conversation did break out on the discussion boards about training levels in larger games but I felt that Gee (2003 [2]) was suggesting adopting some of the training techniques not just as stand alone levels in elaborate games but as a subtle element at the beginning of smaller/less complex games and/or a continuing way to pass knowledge on to the player/learner throughout the learning games. I may have interpreted this erroneously but it was what I felt he was suggesting. A lot of learning games are rather clunky to get going and the evolving level of help you see in commercial games (which I believe both Whitton and Gee acknowledge include learning points throughout) tends not to be as subtley or flexibly included. The question of motivation for completing training levels was also raised and I think that is an interesting issue. My own experience has rarely been frustration at training levels but I play games infrequently enough that I basically always need the assistance. Gee conciously draws parallels between the training and game play conventions of games that reveals that he is not only investigating these as an academic but is also predisposed to enjoy certain types of games himself and is playing each game with knowledge of games played before. These seems worth raising since "predisposition" includes factors of motivation, culture and gender and these are very important in understanding the expected training and gameplay skills in a new game. Subtle and flexible mentoring is certainly extremely difficult to replicate in any training level, even given the cleverness of the Tomb Raider training levels that Gee discusses at length.

It is actually really interesting, in thinking about this topic, to see what does and doesn't work when initially restricting access to a game to training levels only. When attempting to play Myst (several times) I found myself trapped in a training level which made me feel quite frustrated but also left me wholly unengaged. I had no motivation to try progressing since nothing seemed to happen - and I seemed unable to succeed - no matter what I did or clicked. If you pitch these things wrongly it can be utterly disheartening and lead to an abandoned game (as both Gee and Whiton observe - and as that Dara O'Briain clip [4] a few weeks back also observed). That type of frustration is annoying - and potentially unprofitable - in entertainment games but potentially near disastrous to the learning process for educational games. Perhaps the answer could lie in a vision of the future recently shared at the DICE conference [5] that the world will become points based and that you can jump levels through purchases? Points and purchasable level jumps are features of some games, particularly those built on social networking platforms, but the vision painted offers a radically different view of how the "real" and the gaming worlds could intersect and, in such a world, a training level that left you stuck in a gaming cul-de-sac would be profoundly unacceptable.

Collaboration does offer a (rather more realistic) potential compromise between what is possible within the algorithmic universe of the in-game training and what is possible in most teaching environments. Whitton (2010 [6]) mentions Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (1978 [7] - also mentioned by Dr Hamish Macleod in Week 3 of this module) and those ideas of scaffolded learning - that others in a learning environment can help learners progress past a point they might other reach by assisting and referring them as needed - offer quite a nuanced form of collaborative working in gaming environments (where that is possible).  I think games that foster collaboration between peers - where, say, you might want an informal chat about how to do a particular move and/or where there may be a strong online community helps new players train and learn (things raised by Greenfield [8] but applicable to educational games too) - can be seen to have significant value (our own game fostered collaboration almost by accident as you'll see at the end of this post). This sort of peer collaboration around a game may also be more achievable than in-game social interaction which, as Whitton talks about herself, may be tricky to achieve especially with a niche games audience (indeed one of the games I found most frustrating in Week 4, Quest Atlantis, is in fact built to support synchronous in-game collaboration (though not apparently enabled on our test user accounts) and is intended to compliment classroom teaching with teacher participation so may, in a realistic context, work extremely collaboratively and rewardingly). 

Something that certainly challenged my previous understanding of games this week was the discussion in Gee (2003 [2]) of the unique linguistic styles of training levels and game narratives. I have always hated the video introductions to games and have seen them as very disruptive to game play but I have clearly missed a trick - and a lot of good advice about game play! Having said with this training approach it's not common to every game and I notice that a lot of puzzle games and a lot of games pitched at younger players roll out skills in levels in game hierachies that are just as complex but do so through less cryptic, often more visual training cues.

In building the Team Lara game, which we had now called "A Wonderful Quest", we tried to establish what sort of training and collaboration would suit the compact size and scope of the game. Because our target audience was expected to be our fellow IDGBL10 learners we decided that providing training on how to use Google Earth was not required as we had all been asked to look at and use the space for our games. I think in retrospect this was perhaps an error on our part because each team, having now seen all their games, clearly had quite different perceptions of the best ways to use Google Earth and some seemed far more experienced as users than others. We also limited our game to those willing to learn about Google Earth and, though we published our game on a public blog, this does mean that our audience is still relatively restricted. Indeed we had several tough decisions to make in setting up our game. The first was whether or not to explicitly state that the game was about the Seven Wonders of the World. Although this is not a hard to detect facet it certainly made the clues easier to solve. We decided not to tell players at the outset that all the clues pointed to a Wonder but we did use a Seven Wonders layer for Google Earth (since many of the Wonders are hard to locate on modern maps otherwise) and we included a simple How to Play section that showed players where to get this layer, which layers they should have switched on and the approximate format and goal for the game. We sort of assumed many people would see the name of the layer and make the connection to the Seven Wonders of the World but decided to leave that discovery as one of the early rewards of exploring the game.

Writing clues proved to be quite an unexpected art form. We thought we knew what we wanted to do: use the Seven Wonders to indicate seven letters that would form an anagram of the password to the treasure. Since we had picked a password that referenced both the source of our team name and the discussion in Gee [2] we thought it would be quite easy to guess and therefore tried not to give the clues in a straightforward order or provide any additional clues to what the password might be. In retrospect I see that this made the game more complicated but, at the same time, still think there was value in our initial fear that the game would be more fun if it was about exploring the clues and the themes - and more intrinsic rewards - than if it was more specifically focused on completion and final achievement - a more extrinsic motivation given that initial playing of this game would largely be triggered by course requirement rather than pure interest in the game. To try and encourage reflection and collaboration we encouraged players to comment on clues (taking our cue from a treasure hunt game, Hunt the Poem that was online for February's One City One Book initiative Carry a Poem) but we found that players actually chose not to do this - perhaps because they wanted to keep answers to themselves, perhaps so as not to share/reveal answers too early, perhaps because they did not want to be seen to get things wrong. No matter what the reason was I was delighted when Team Sonic not only cracked the clues and completed the game but also shared their collaborative efforts with us (Team Lara). It turned out that they had decided to share their findings with their group in their private area of the module discussion boards. By comparing ideas, thought processes and possible answers they were then able to explore possible passwords and work backwards to confirm their answers to the clue. This was actually a method we thought some players might take though the terms in which Team Sonic discussed their discovery of the answer indicated that they felt it was almost a cheat to find the password and then check their answers which suggests we failed to communicate that we wanted people to learn about the Seven Wonders (and about where they sit on a modern view of the world) much more than we minded how they did that. It also highlighted to us that our obvious-seeming clues were actually quit tricky. Perhaps the addition of an easier or example clue might have helped engage users and build their confidence for solving the clues, confidence certainly seemed to be  factor in how long players engaged with the game and how satisfied with their performance they were. Which is interesting as I don't feel Whitton or Gee fully address that subtle need to have someone (the games designer?) confirm that "no, you are on the right lines" or "good but have you considered..." or similar. I know for our game that would have been a super addition although Team Sonic's collaborative approach certainly enhanced the game play of our game and I think I would recommend working with a friend in the "How to Play" section if we were creating it again.

All of which confirms to me that "A Wonderful Quest" was a fantastic learning experience but that the user testing (which effectively our games launches acted as) was also essential as no matter how much theory is applied ultimately it is crucial to get direct feedback on how fun or engaging a game is to play. Knowing it does the right thing in terms of learning is no use if no one wants to play!


    •    [1] Whitton, N. (2010). Chapter 6, 'Designing a Digital Game for Learning'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.
    •    [2] Gee, J. P. (2003). Chapter 5, 'Telling and Doing: Why doesn't Lara Croft obey Professor Von Croy?'. In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
    •    [3] Whitton, N. (2010). Chapter 8, 'Using Existing Digital Games for Learning'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.
    •    [4] "Dara O Briain - Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe". YouTube clip retrieved from eightySeventh's channel 1st February 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG3aHvPG6H8
    •    [5] Schell, J. (2010). "Design Outside the Box". Presentation given at DICE 2010. Accessed and viewed online on 1st March 2010. http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box-Presentation.
    •    [6] Whitton, N. (2010) Chapter 3, 'Understanding the Pedagogy of Digital Games'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.
    •    [7] Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Fuctions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univeristy Press. 
    •    [8] Greenfield, P. M. (1984). Chapter 7, 'Video Games'. In Mind and media : the effects of television, video games, and computers. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

"Pedagogy and Design" sparked quite an interesting cross section of discussions around the readings partly because of the quite different approaches taken by those discussing games design for school age children versus those designing for adults/older learners in Higher and Further education. I started with reading Whitton (2010 [1]) who specifically addresses the needs of adult and older learners drawing on Knowles' (1998 in [1]) key premises of adult learning theory/andragogy as a framework. I think it is quite interesting that Whitton addresses the difference between the needs of children and older learners - she questions the idea that "games are motivating" or that "all students like playing games to learn" - though she does not seem to recognise that this assertation is also likely to be flawed for some child learners as well. I actually think many of Knowles' premises also apply to a wider group of learners, in particular the idea that "Adults need to know why they need to learn something before they are willing to invest time and energy in learning it..." (Knowles 1998 as quoted in [1]).  Although children are certainly obliged to attend school I think this particular principle actually holds true for children, older learners and even training contexts. Motivation is a key factor to making any learning environment work so whilst I agree with Whitton's observations about adult learners - and her findings from studying leisure game usage even with non-gamer adults - I think that Whitton's comment that "It is crucial also that students are aware of the educational benefits of any game and feel that it has a true purpose in the context of their studies" (p. 41 in [1]) is thus applicable to the engagement of any learner regardless of age.

Whitton's highlighting of the fact that not all games will suit all types of gamers does, however, raise some interesting issues for including games into a teaching programme. There will, however, also be limitations of access in many games since the most immersive and engaging games are often slick and multimodal and that offers challenges ranging from game and learner style through to accessibility (e.g. compatibility with screenreaders etc.) through to the types of hardware needed to run a game. As a mac owner I have occasional but important problems gaining access to games that PC using gamers have access to. For instance games like The Sims - which explicitly advertises it's Mac version - can take months or years to port from PC to Mac though even this puts it in the minority of PC games since most do not bother to create a Mac edition at all. My Unix and/or Linux using friends also find themselves excluded from using various games. Since higher education students are increasingly expected to provide their own computing equipment (with institutions providing wifi and power points rather than a profusion of computing labs), that compatibility issue will form a (minor) part of learners' expectations along with the (major) issue of pedagogical justification.

In terms of motivations for playing, learning and learning through games I found Malone (1982 [2] and 1980 [4]) really interesting but very flawed. Malone's Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces (1982 [2]) for instance seemed to be based on examples where many more factors were at play than Malone chose to recognise. Discussion around this reading we have examined the role of gender in feedback and the construction of fantasy in learning games. Malone draws on a Darts game for his example here (a fairly male dominated sport/representation to use) and it's usage in a teaching analogy for math (a subject ) where a positive outcome results in destruction (balloon popping) and a negative outcome results in a numeric indicator (on what appears to be a more logical part of the number line than is actually shown if a positive outcome is achieved). It's a baffling visual analogy in terms of the maths it intends to illustrate and I have found myself failing to see either the fun or the achievement of  learning outcomes in the game

The intrinsic fantasy in the game may tie skills to plot but they do not provide much in the way of motivation if the popping of balloons (quite an odd reward) is not sufficient. In his experiment Malone found the addition of music (at the end as a reward for achievement) to be the most popular addition with his female subjects. This addition is an additional pay off for the balloon popping. For the boys observed I think the balloon popping was seen as a reward itself, much as is the case in first person shooter games where it is the process of violence (gory effects, sounds, etc) and the process of inhabiting the character than it is about the reward of reaching the end goal. I suspect in the Darts fantasy the girls may have seen the balloons popping as a form of feedback but not a reward in itself, making the addition of music that much more motivating. Indeed accounting for individual expectations, cultures and experiences is a difficulty for any teaching but particularly in games design I think as the immediacy and human interaction and feedback cannot always be taken for granted as easily as any more direct relationship between tutor and/or course designer and student.

Malone (1980 [4]) seemed stronger as a paper to me - despite being based on 'intuition" rather than experiment - as Malone highlights convincingly the importance of intrinsic fantasy in games as opposed to the extrinsic fantasy of unrelated goals and rewards. This sits really interestingly with research I have recently heard about that has been undertaken on the motivational effects of performance related pay which has shown financial incentives often do not map to better achievement and sometimes lead to worse performance - this would seem to be a wider confirmation that there is something innately more engaging about tasks and objectives that can be motivating in and of themselves than tasks where one is encouraged to perform only in order to receive some abstract reward one desires.

Finally this week I wanted to turn to Quest Atlantis and the two remaining readings Barab, Arici & Jackson (2005 [3]) and Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux & Tuzun (2005 [5]) where the authors, also co-creators of Quest Atlantis (QA), talk about their work on the project and their conception of a "Learning Engagement Theory" and, interestingly, the development of QA the brand, rather than the technology. I think what I found interesting about both papers was the background information on the evolution of QA through research and ethnographic observation of quite an eclectic mixture of schools and community groups and the co-creators immersion in existing childrens games and environments. This shows through in the game - it is clearly a well founded concept (though as a test user it is hard to experience the collaborative and social aspects (Turkle 1995 quoted in Barab et al 2005 [3])) but also perhaps a few years out of date and based on what is available rather than what might exceed expectations in quite new and different ways. Nonetheless the visual panache of the game is impressive even when game play seems, as a lone player of the game as a stand alone experience, rather constraining (see my earlier post for more on this).

What I would be interested to see after this week, if such a thing exists, is a paper outlining the design process of a successful commercial game that could be compared. I think a genuine issue with educational games and in making them fun is that the funding to test and iterate designs is simply not as viable in the education sector. Thus it is not the educational content that makes many educational games seem particularly dry but the more academically structured development process that seeks not only to embed pedagogy in design but also seeks to ensure that the design process is academically valid - which is an interesting restriction to place on a design process that needs to be creative and original as well as educationally valuable. It's certainly something that I will need to consider further before developing my idea for the final game assignment for this module.


    •    [1] Whitton, N. (2010) Chapter 3, 'Understanding the Pedagogy of Digital Games'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.
    •    [2] Malone, T.W. (1982) Heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces: Lessons from computer games. Proceedings of the 1982 conference on Human factors in computing systems table of contents. Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States. (pdf)
    •    [3] Barab, S., Arici, A., & Jackson, C. (2005) Eat your vegetables and do your homework: A design-based investigation of enjoyment and meaning in learning, Educational Technology, 45(1), pp.15-20
    •    [4] Malone, T.W. (1980) What makes things fun to learn? heuristics for designing instructional computer games. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSMALL symposium and the first SIGPC symposium on Small systems table of contents. Palo Alto, California, United States.
    •    [5] Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux, R., & Tuzun, H. (2005) Making learning fun: Quest Atlantis, a game without guns, Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(1), pp.86-107

I have found this week to be really frustrating in a way that I think reveals some of the weaknesses of educational games. The first problem this week was that although there were only two games flagged up as core examples it was near impossible to find a way to play them. This was a two part conundrum. Both Quest Atlantis and Thinking Worlds appeared to be PC-only. Though it transpired that Quest Atlantis (QA) actually was newly available for Mac (and worked fine) all my efforts to install Thinking Worlds (TW) on the PC I have regular access to (my work machine) failed – on start up TW would simply break down and state that there was an “error” but no indication of what was wrong, how it could be fixed or reported or how I could move past it. I was at least able to download and install software on my PC which is something many PC users on institutional machines are not given access to do, and thus a concern for any educational usage of a game.

Frustration number two (again before I even got to play any games) was that I had to wait to get a login for both games. In the case of QA this is a case of good practice to ensure new users are kept separate from school age children who use the game as part of the curriculum. I am not entirely sure why there isn't a test world clearly signposted as such that you could set up instant access for but I do respect their core aim to keen QA safe and friendly. TW required a login for the very different reason of commercial interest – which is fine but I was a bit put off to get an email from a representative. This is probably a bit perverse – humans should be better than machine responses I guess – the problem is that educational games/tools seem to, unlike commercial web tools, tend to directly contact you so it feels a bit like giving a salesperson your phone number rather than just being on an email list. The pitch is often the same but somehow it feels less invasive in in-service reminders or e-newsletters.

So, anyway, I have finally managed to have a play now that I am all set up.

Quest Atlantis is, I think, a rather weird beast. Although it is genuinely innovative in appearance, ambition and pedagogical scope I found it very problematic. Now I have to say that I realise I am not the core QA audience. For a start I am neither a kid nor a teacher so I am used to services and spaces pitched at Higher Education audiences or public audiences. I was also not experiencing the game in the context of a tailored QA-specific teaching experience and this seems to be the sort of context it is expected that people will interact with QA in. With those important provisos stated on we go...

At first I was really impressed with the look and feel of QA. When I first tried it it was on my work PC after I had closed all my usual programmes for the night. This meant it ran fast and the graphics – after a few weeks of fFogger and the like – looked slick. A few minutes in (as I started moving in the direction of my first quest) I started to wonder why the main area of play was such a small part of the screen estate.

I found Quest Atlantis hugely dictatorial and difficult to become immersed in. Though there were numerous choices to be made they were all predefined for you and highly signposted at every turn. You could not, for instance, pick the "wrong" choice and follow the game on this route, you cannot ask background characters for help unless they are preprogrammed to answer questions. It is an incredibly frustrating environment to operate in as you have open options to move and explore but almost no choice in the order you complete tasks, the way you gain new information, etc. I can see that the game would work in it's intended environment - a structured classroom context - but as a stand alone game it is not the high quality of the animation but the inflexibility of play that holds up most poorly against commercial offerings. However I am acutely aware that I am very much older than the core QA audience and that I was playing the game on my own - it is a more social affair including teacher participation in it's intended context - which may have made a substantial difference to my experience of the game.

Both QA and Thinking Worlds did leave me wondering whether the development of separate dedicated educational gaming environments can ever or should ever try to compete with sophisticated commercial games when it comes to capturing attention outside a structured classroom playing environment. Thus using commercial games as learning experiences seems to offer many pluses, though there are of course disadvantages to the type of content and game goals inherent in such games particularly for creating games suitable and pedagogically sound for older/adult learners. It is certainly interesting to move from these educational games to looking at designing our own games (using Google Earth).

• engagement in critical thinking and reflection tasks before the beginning/at the end of a lesson
• intra-/inter-group engagement
• first-person involvement
• cross-curricular learning (History, e.g.)
• the provision of 'rich tasks', whereby pupils can produce non-fiction investigations, engage with World War poetry
• group collaboration and competition (Whitton)
• used a source for personal journal writing