I can think of two ways to teach using computer or video games that already exist. I can also think of two ways to teach using games that do not exist, or perhaps using portions or aspects of existing games. Someone has thought of this before, but I'm going to write it out here in any case. Understanding the ways that games can be used clarifies what to look for when considering whether a game is useful in a particular educational context.
Teaching Game Content — The most straightforward approach. You're teaching physics, so you use a game based on the laws of physics to teach about tension, work, energy or load distribution. You're teaching world history, so you use a civilization-building game to teach about how geography influenced the technologies that different cultures developed to survive in prehistory.
Games as Artifacts — This is the approach that I find most interesting, but it's probably the most limited in terms of applicability to diverse subjects. English courses teach using novels, because we accept that novels have something valuable to say—both within the narrative, and as artifacts of the culture in which they were written. The same is true of movies. Mediums are also studied as mediums, to explore what message is inherent within them, and why certain storytelling forms persist ("wherefore and whence the FPS, and wither?"). Vanderbilt University's Worlds of Wordcraft course (class audio available through iTunes U) contrasted The Lord of the Rings Online against Tolkien's novels and Jackson's films for clues to how each version was able to accomplish necessary narrative tasks, such as showing the passage of time; the same class began "translating" a book of Edmund Spenser's romance poem The Fairie Queene into The Fairie Queene Online, a persistent online quest-based fantasy using the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine. A study that compared the top ten best-selling computer and video games of 1988 to those from 2008 as a lens through which to examine changes in technology and popular culture would also fall into this approach.
Making Games — Also fairly straightforward: students making games themselves, either from scratch or by modding existing games. Marc Prensky is big on this [pdf], and I agree that it's promising. Games made by students will still align with one or both of the approaches above: either they're directly embedding content or they're learning about the medium itself.
Game-Like Motivational Structures — This is probably the approach that has been least explored. By "game-like motivational structures," I mean the aspects of games that keep players interested in playing. Please don't confuse this with "game-like interactions" such as Second Life or virtual manipulatives. This can include everything from a strong plot to beautiful environments to satisfying animations when you take down an enemy; and perhaps some educators and game designers have found ways to apply these to the classroom. The motivational structure that I consider to have the most potential, however—the one that I think could survive the surgical removal from games to the classroom intact—is the specific combination of mechanics that one finds in games as diverse as Mafia Wars, Torchlight, World of Warcraft and EliminatePro. These games all intersperse core gameplay with elements that resemble gambling, and dole out rewards (leveling up, visual rewards, public recognition) based on a combination of skill and luck. They are all undeniably addictive. I see strong links between these mechanics and Behaviorist techniques, as I've written before. What convinces me that this structure would survive the transition to the classroom is the fact that the core gameplay of these titles diverges so dramatically. In the case of Mafia Wars, it consists solely of clicking the mouse and then waiting to be told you can click the mouse again. In other words, the structure of rewards and progress is fun enough on its own that even if the actions that must be performed to advance are dull, many players will perform cheerfully perform them.
This topic is a kettle of worms, but it raises too many interesting questions to leave it alone. Here are the facts, some background and my initial take.
Call of Duty is a very popular first-person shooter franchise which recently made the leap from historical/fictional WWII settings to completely fictional near-future settings. News broke last week that a mission within the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will allow players to play as the game's villains as they conduct a terrorist attack on an airport. For non-gamers out there, think of "missions" as discrete levels of the game, something like chapters in a novel.
From what I can gather—the game will be released on November 10, so news of this mission only broke after footage was leaked illegally—the player takes the role of an undercover CIA agent who is complicit in the massacre. According to the game's publisher, Activision, players are given two very explicit warnings that they may be disturbed by the mission, and can choose not to play it. From Activision:
The scene establishes the depth of evil and the cold bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain and his unit. By establishing that evil, it adds to the urgency of the player's mission to stop them.
I frequently find myself leaping to the defense of video games as a medium worthy of the same freedoms and respect that are accorded to disturbingnovels, films, music and other arts. When this all shakes out, I'll almost certainly conclude that the game's developers should have been allowed to include this controversial content. However, it's still hard stuff to watch. The video is embedded below; don't click it if you don't want to see it.
The tone of the comments on that video don't make it any easier to defend as a piece of challenging but thought-provoking art. Groan.
One final related question: if the political objectives of the authors of the propaganda games above are germane to our interpretation of those games, then are the political views of the members of Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward equally relevant? The question of developer intent and political affiliation was raised earlier this year with the release of Shadow Complex, an extremely well-reviewed game that was nevertheless the subject of a boycott by gamers unhappy that it was based on the work of virulent homophobe Orson Scott Card. (Incidentally, Infinity Ward recently courted their own homophobia controversy.) Personally, I believe that an author's background and intentions matter a great deal, but I won't go so far as to argue that authorial intent is always primary. Update [11/12/2009]:Tom Chick has the most valid take yet on this topic, which means not that I agree with him (I can't, since haven't played the game yet), but that his opinion actually addresses the fundamental questions raised by this level. Aaron Thomas, Brett Bates, Shanker Srinivasin and Jay Frechette discuss the level on the most recent Bitmob podcast, but the level of the discussion is disappointingly shallow. The absolute lowlight is Shanker's missing-the-point argument that games should be able to do whatever they want, because freedom of speech and stuff.
Budget Hero, the excellent national debt management game by American Public Media which I reviewed back in February, has been ported to Facebook and other platforms in the form of a neat little iframe code widget. Check it out if you haven't already. I'd embed it here, but I think my blog's too narrow to show the whole game.
As someone who used to work for NPR myself, I'm delighted that a sister organization is delving into new media in order to better explain difficult issues. At the same time, as my review makes clear, the game seems to make some judgments about "correct" and "incorrect" policies (hint: the correct ones are mostly left-wing). Whether you believe that print journalism can be objective or not, this seems like a controversial path to take, if not necessarily a slippery slope. What do you think? Please play the game before commenting, of course. How is your take on this question influenced by your own political beliefs?
Proposal submission time draws nigh for what I'm ready to officially dub "The Educational Games Database" (TEGD?). Over the past few days, I have been reaching out to communities of teachers and other professionals interested in video games for education for feedback on the idea. For the benefit of those of you who have been kind enough to visit this blog to provide your take, here is the clearest and most focused outline of the project I've yet developed.
What is The Educational Games Database? The Educational Games Database is a project I will be working on beginning in January of 2010. It will be a website designed to help teachers who want to bring video and computer games into the classroom, but who don't know a lot about games or how to use them. What specific things will The Educational Games Database include? My vision for the site includes the following elements:
a glossary of common games-related words and phrases
explanations of common game genres and mechanics
assessment tools to direct site visitors to specific articles that are appropriate for their level of interest and understanding
forums where teachers can communicate with site writers, administrators, fellow teachers and other interested parties
a database of articles about specific games, written with a focus on those games' potential to teach specific subjects, as well as their appropriateness for various grade levels (due to content and difficulty)
easy searching by criteria that matter to educators, such as age appropriateness, game genre, technological platform, cost to purchase software and educational content alignment
The site will be built using the following technology:
Drupal — a PHP-based free content management system, because I have worked with another PHP-based CMS in the past (WordPress) and Drupal is well-supported by the University of Arizona and the Learning Technologies Center
Wiki — I can't possible create all the content for this site alone, and a wiki is a great crowd-sourcing solution that allows for easy cross-referencing of content
Forums — to allow for freeform discussion of The Educational Games Database and any other related subjects, as well as direct and public communication with me and other site administrators
The site will be media-rich throughout—games are more a visual and auditory medium than a text-based one, so videos and screenshots can frequently give a clearer and quicker picture of game concepts and content than words. Finally, my goal is to have all content licensed under Creative Commons.
Is there a need for a resource like this? I'd love to hear teachers answer that question. Clearly, I think there is. I know a lot about games, and I'm working hard to learn a lot about the frontier of academic thinking and research regarding how to teach using games. However, the experiences I have had talking about these issues with working educators have demonstrated that there is frequently a need for very practical training and remedial "gaming literacy" training before any advanced integration of games into classroom curricula can take place. Teachers have limited time, money and attention to expend on professional development. I hope to lower the barrier for teachers who are interested in games but currently lack the expertise to use them.
What will be developed first? I recognize that my goals for this project are ambitious, and that it's not easy to start a site like this from scratch. I hope to develop a community of both consumers of information and experts eager to volunteer their knowledge and help me produce content for the site. I plan to work on the site in this rough order:
Establishing the technological framework for the site (Drupal, wiki, forums)
Building a relatively static front-end for the site that clearly explains the rationale and directs visitors to the core content
Writing the gaming glossary and articles about game genres and mechanics
Writing articles about specific games
Creating search tools
I'll simultaneously be active on the site forums (if there's a need to be, as I hope) and out promoting this venture to both potential users and contributors. On the other hand, show me a plan that hasn't evolved dramatically and I'll show you one that's never been put into action... How can I get involved? In many ways, depending on your background and desired level of involvement. Here are some important needs I currently have:
Feedback on the plan you are reading right now. Comment on this post or write me at maxl@email.arizona.edu, particularly if you're a teacher with suggestions for improvement.
Content writers. Are you a teacher who uses games already? I'd love to have you develop articles on the games you have used, and how. Are you a gamer with an interest in helping teachers use games in schools? Your help writing about game genres and terminology would be greatly appreciated.
Legal advice. I'm not a lawyer, but I need to build a site that uses content legally. How can I license work from contributors so that we're allowed to modify it, and others can use it too? What kinds of multimedia can I embed under fair use or other relevant rules? What questions am I simply not asking yet due to my ignorance of these matters?
Wikipedia is a great site. I appreciate expertise as much as the next guy, but you can't deny that crowd-sourcing produces generally accurate content much more quickly and affordably than hiring experts. However, the model is not without its flaws, one of which is the difficulty of enforcing stylistic guidelines on articles. The hodgepodge of tone, tense, approach and even universe one finds in Wikipedia articles—particularly articles about pop-cultural artifacts such as TV shows, movies and of course video games—is not what I have in mind for the project described in my last post.
With that in mind, I present for your edification and merciless critique (this being a blog, those are one and the same) an experiment with style and approach. The article in question is about Sid Meier's Pirates!, a 2004 game in which the player sails, swordfights, trades and ballroom dances his way across the Caribbean ocean.
Style A: Wikipedia There's no point in my doing this database if Wikipedia is a sufficiently accurate and appropriate source for the same information already. So is it? I say no. Here are the problems I identify with the Wikipedia article on Pirates! from the point of view of my target audience, educational professionals with limited game literacy:
Too comprehensive. This may seem counterintuitive, but I want users to be able to scan these articles for the most important content. The abundance of technical information (Gamebryo engine and platform-specific release dates = irrelevant) and the way that every single game mechanic is described in excruciating detail are the main offenders.
Poorly organized. Leading with the genres is fine, but the publisher, comparison to the original game, and publishing specifics aren't important IMHO.
No educational focus. My website is for educators, who need to know at a glance what subjects this game touches on in terms of built-in content, and what subjects it could be used to teach (not necessarily the same for all games, although in the case of Pirates! they probably are). Other pertinent information: have other teachers used this game to teach, and what were their experiences? What state standards have those curricula conformed to? Is there any content in the game that is conceivably objectionable? On what grounds, and for what age of student? Are cheap or free copies available? Is special hardware or other technology required to play the game? Can you jump directly into the educationally relevant parts of the game using saved game files? Roughly how long will it take teachers to learn to play the game at the level of expertise necessary to incorporate the game in a meaningful way?
Media poor. Describing the ship battle mechanics is a great idea, because that's a big part of the game. But describing it with words when finding a video like the one below took me all of 10 seconds is just stupid.
Style B: My First Draft Rationale: My experience as a TA for ETCV524 at the University of Arizona has shown me that game literacy is poor among teachers. Do you accost a struggling student with Henry James? You do not. Here's an approach that breaks things down to the fundamentals.
Formatting note: underlines represent words that I think deserve to have their own articles, but that I don't have time to write at the moment.
Genre(s): strategy, action, adventure Content alignment: geography, history, economics, systems thinking, Earth science, international relations Game mechanics: simulated physics, turn-based, real-time, resource trading, puzzle-solving, pattern recognition, stealth Graphics: 3d, top-down perspective, third-person perspective ESRB rating: E (PC<), E10+ (PlayStation Portable), T (Xbox)
Sid Meier's Pirates! is a game in which the player takes on the role of a young ship's captain in the 16th or 17th century Caribbean. Players may choose to act as traders, privateers, pirates, or a combination of the three, and may participate in any of several minigame activities. These include naval battles, land battles, swordfighting, ballroom dancing, trading goods and hunting for buried treasure.
Pirates! contains scenes of cartoonish violence with weapons of the period, and there are references to war, death, alcohol use and romance in the game. However, the game's colorful graphics, easy difficulty curve and non-explicit approach to this mature content keep things kid-friendly for the most part.
Educational Potential Pirates! is not an educational game by design, but designer Sid Meier is known for making games which teach about their historical settings by osmosis. Aspects of the game could be used in classrooms to teach about subjects including:
the geography of the Caribbean and Americas
international relations in the age of sail
mercantile economics
the colonization of the Caribbean and Americas (see also Civilization IV: Colonization)
Earth science (trade winds)
As a collection of minigames woven together by a central narrative, theme and world map, Pirates! is not particularly complex in any one aspect of gameplay. As a result, educators should have a good sense of the game's content and mechanics after a relatively short session of play. Experienced gamers could become expert at the game in as few as five hours, while players who are not familiar with basic gameplay conventions (movement within 3D space, turn-based vs. real-time action, win and loss conditions) will take longer.
Gameplay At the start of the game, the player character is tasked with succeeding financially, winning fame as a pirate or privateer, and locating his lost family, who have been kidnapped by the game's villain. The map of the Caribbean appears to be generally accurate for the era. Cities may belong to any of several factions or European colonial powers; colonial powers are at war with each other from time to time. Factions include the English, the Dutch, the French, the Spanish, Jesuit missionaries, Native Americans and pirates.
Although the player may have a number of specific goals to complete at any given time during the game, gameplay is generally open-ended. The whole world is open to the player from the start, and the critical path through the game's narrative changes dynamically with each playthrough in certain minor respects.
Controls Note: Although Pirates! has been ported to console game systems, this article refers to the PC and Macintosh version of the game with regard to controls.
The controls in Pirates! utilize both the keyboard and mouse. Many minigames rely on the number pad for selecting actions at the appropriate time, although the mouse may be used for that purpose on laptop systems or desktops without a number pad. The mouse is used primarily for menu selections.
Sailing The bulk of the game is spent sailing from city to city, searching for enemies to fight in ship-to-ship battles and then retreating to friendly ports for repairs. Different ships have different sailing qualities as modeled through the game's physics engine, and can be upgraded with new equipment and officers over the course of the game. Players must find the best point of sailing for their ship given their destination and the prevailing winds at the time.
Naval Battles Ship-to-ship combat is a major element of the game. Combat is conducted in real-time and consists of outmaneuvering the enemy ship or ships in order to hit them with broadsides of cannon, while avoiding the same. Damage can be done to ships' hulls or sails by several types of cannonball, and sailors on either ship may be killed (represented as flying overboard). Either ship may board the other by sailing directly at it. In cases of overwhelming force, enemy ships may surrender to the player when boarded. Other times, a duel with the enemy captain is triggered. The player may capture enemy ships, increasing his fleet or replacing his flagship, or may choose to sink them.
Swordfights Swordfights can occur during naval combat or at land-based taverns, and consist of simple pattern recognition. Players must identify the type of attack or parry being used by their opponent as high, medium or low, and respond with the appropriate counter. Enemies may be struck by weapons, thrown overboard or even lit on fire (their clothes, at least) during these sequences, but the rendering of the violence remains cartoonish.
Land Battles If the player has captured a number of ships from, or otherwise angered, a specific faction, the player may have the option to attack a port rather than landing there. Choosing this option triggers a turn-based land battle minigame, in which the player's units move on a grid against the city's defenders. There is a limited strategic aspect to these battles; for example, attacking from behind an enemy unit confers an advantage. The violence in these sections includes gunfire and swordfights, but defeated units retreat rather than die.
If the player successfully defeats the defenders, he may have the option to install a new governor from a faction of his choice in the city.
Sneaking Rather than attacking a hostile port, the player may choose to sneak into the city at night. This option begins a Pac-Man-like minigame in which the player character must navigate through city streets to his chosen destination while avoiding lantern-holding guards.
Dancing While in friendly cities, the player may choose to visit the governor's mansion. This may trigger a sequence where the governor's daughter asks the player to accompany her to a ball. If the player accepts, a ballroom dancing minigame begins, wherein the player must watch his dance partner's hand signals and respond by pressing the appropriate key (to trigger a specific dance step). This, like the swordfighting minigame, is a very basic pattern recognition game.
Treasure Hunts At various points in the game, the player will acquire maps to buried treasure (or to the location of his missing family members). These maps include a reference to a city, and specific geographical features which can be seen while sailing on the game's main screen. Sharp eyes and an understanding of the cardinal directions and the in-game geography are necessary to follow the maps and find these treasures.
Potentially Controversial or Inappropriate Elements There are several aspects of Pirates! which may be considered inappropriate by school administrators, teachers, parents or even students. The game's violent content, references to alcohol, portrayal of women and portrayal of Native Americans are most likely to inspire controversy.
Violence As has been mentioned, Pirates! features as central gameplay elements representations of swordfighting, gunfire and cannonfire, immolation and even (implied) drowning. This violence is rendered in highly stylized fashion, with no real harm apparently done in most cases. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rated the PC and Macintosh version of the game as appropriate for all players despite "Alcohol Reference, Suggestive Themes and Violence"; other versions of the game received ratings of "Teen" and "Everyone 10+" with the descriptor "Mild Violence." Teachers must decide for themselves whether the violence in the game is too much for their students, parents and school.
References to Alcohol References to alcohol in the game exist, but are limited to implied alcohol use in taverns, where non-player characters can be seen sitting near and drinking from unidentified mugs and glass bottles.
Portrayal of Women The player character in Pirates! is male. No female player character can be selected. Female characters in the game are limited to governors' daughters and serving girls in taverns. The latter are buxom and beautiful, while the former are explicitly rated according to a scale of attractiveness (plan, attractive or beautiful). Governors' daughters can be wooed through gift-giving and good dancing. Wooing a beautiful daughter confers greater benefits on the player. Once the courtship proceeds to a certain point, the player may be asked to duel a rival suitor in a swordfight, or even to rescue his beloved from a pirate kidnapper.
The sexism inherent in the game's portrayal of women may be explained to some extend by its campy, traditional approach to storytelling, and further by its historical setting, but this remains a significant point when considering the game's value for classroom use.
Portrayal of Native Americans Pirates! portrays Native Americans in-game as generic "Natives," who may be warlike raiders or mercenaries, or may be peaceful traders. No effort is made during gameplay to differentiate between native cultures, and although game's "Pirate-o-Pedia" entry (shown below) includes mention of various ancient native cultures, it also includes potentially offensive material.
For several months now, I've been kicking around the idea that one of the primary obstacles to the real use of games in schools is cultural and generational: the "education dorks" who become teachers are not the same as the "technology dorks" (like me) who love games; on top of which, gaming culture today is far more advanced than it was when many working teachers might have been exposed to games in their youth. It's a very specific digital literacy gap, in other words.
The problem is that even if teachers are interested in using video games to teach, they don't have a good place to turn to learn about them. There are probably thousands of blogs, gaming news and game review sites out there, but these are not targeted to educators. They assume a level of comfort with the history, language, culture and technology of games already—a level of comfort that players will have achieved by playing games for years. Teachers lack the luxury of that option, if they want to do good work with games right now.
I have the opportunity to propose a self-directed internship next semester, and I'd very much like to fill this gap (more of a yawning chasm, really). I have in mind something like what John Davison and now Dana Jongewaard have done with What They Play, a website that bills itself as a non-histrionic "Parents' guide to video games." I'll be coding it myself, so production values will be lower, and until I can build a critical mass of content contributors, the scope will be far more limited. But I think it's a step in the right direction.
I'm thinking of wikis and forums to start, supplemented with some static pages to guide people down the right path based on their interest and level of knowledge. My dream at the moment I write this post would be to see the following:
an active community of users who contribute material such as lesson plans, reviews of games from an educator's point of view, and guides to gaming conventions, terms, etc.
conversations between students, teachers and even game developers on the boards
reports from teachers on informal "pilot studies," along with breakdowns of what went right and what needs to be rethought, as both a guide to other instructors and a possible basis for future structured research
visitors to the site who aren't related to me
I want to hear from my readers—both of you, unless one has stopped following me since I've gone dark between monthly posts lately. Is this a good idea? Are you a teacher? Would this help you? Most exciting of all, for me: is anyone interested in helping me to populate such a site with content?
I'm a graduate student studying how computer and video games can be used in education. I also have a web and graphic design company, Cranky Bear Design.
(Image taken from Flickr user Thomas Hawk and licensed under Creative Commons.)
