Submission – games as pastime

From the MDA model what I am most interested in – in conjunction with my previous research – is Submission games. This category is home to those games that mean nothing and require minimum thought yet you can play them for hours even though you’re not sure why you’re still playing. It’s usually a case of, ‘gotta beat my last score’ or ‘I almost got three stars that time, how about this time?’ Popular games in this category are Tetris, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, and of course the most recent, Flappy Bird.

For a lot of these games the purpose is not to win – in fact, in many of them you can’t win – but rather to progress, either improving your own score of simply getting a better score than others. The idea that you don’t have a win at the end (you simply get better and better) is much like the learning process itself. There will always be more to learn, as long as you’re looking for it. Also, what better way to learn a language – or anything else – than to play a mindless improvement game? Whip it out at the bus stop, while you’re waiting for the doctor, when your friends are taking forever to show up. It’s mindless indulgence you don’t have to feel bad about wasting hours on.

I’ve included here a selection of different types of games that fall into this ‘more-ish’ category. Note that many of them are simply ‘updated’ versions of old games, with new visuals and pretty graphics. What I’m most interested in – and what inspired me – is games like ‘Sodoku Sushi’ and to a lessor extent, ‘Taptiles’. These are not simply copies of games that already exist, they are edited and redesigned version of the games they are based on. ‘Sodoku Sushi’ has combined the 9 to a row, column and square rule of Sodoku with dropping tiles Tetris style, making it more exciting and challenging. ‘Taptiles’ takes Mahjong into a 3D world and adds things like scoring systems, bonuses and time limits to keep things exciting. In doing so, they’ve turned the aesthetic of Mahjong into something completely different.

Connect Four – mindless indulgence everyone should have heard of

Minesweeper – where the numbers indicate how many squares around the current tile have a bomb in them

Hexxagon – jump one or two places, and when you land next to an opponents tile it becomes yours

Angry Birds – catapult birds into structures in order to kill all of the pigs

Pacman – eat all the dots, and stay away from the ghosts.

Taptiles – an upgraded, 3D version of Mahjong, which is a sllightly more complicated game of ‘match’.

Candy Crush – the Facebook player’s Bejeweled. Match at least three in a row for points.

Faerie Bubbles – I can’t remember the original name, but that’s what Neopets calls it. Match three or more bubbles to destroy them. Take too long and the screen starts crushing down on you.

Korbats Lab – or single player pong? Hit and destroy all the tiles with the little ball.

Meerca Chase (Snake). Grow your tail by collecting ‘neggs’ and avoiding the walls, your tail, and the ‘bad neggs’.

Mouse About. Don’t know the original game name, but you can only travel in one drection until you hit an object. Avoid shooting off the screen while collecting all of the fruit.

Sodoku Sushi – a fresh, new take on the game of Sodoku.

Fear Less! an example of a continuous runner in which there are no ‘levels’ so to speak, and instead you level up your character by collecting coins and achievements. See also ‘Jetpack Joyride’.

Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics

The MDA framework is a critical attempt to formalise game design. It takes the three main components of what makes a game – rules, system and ‘fun’ – and translates them into design terms – mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics.

Mechanics are the core workings to the game as described in code, or in objects such as dice or spinners in a board game.

Dynamics are the way the mechanics interact with player input as the game progresses, the connection between the player and the game world.

Aesthetics  are the emotional responses desired (and to a certain extent, expected)  from the player whilst engaged with the game.

The core idea of MDA is that the designer experiences things mechanics end first, whereas the player’s view is the opposite – aesthetics first, then dynamics, then mechanics. Each of these categories is not static; it flows and effects the next, so designers have to be aware of how minor mechanic adjustment may affect play aesthetics.

Aesthetics fall into these (see image) broad categories, and while most games will engage a selection of these there is usually one core aesthetic.

 

REF: Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (n.d.). MDA: A formal approach to game design and research[online article]. Retrieved from http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

Koe – A ‘learn Japanese’ JRPG

An RPG (role-playing game) is a huge undertaking at the best of times, and to make it educational (with a base team of three) is nothing short of ambitiously crazy. However, that is what Rawal, Suyuki and Tsukasa are doing – with no shortage of supporters. Their potential game has over 75,000 pounds backing it on Kickstarter. I’m interested to see how it will turn out, though I hold no high hopes for it. It’s a great idea; many English speakers who want to learn Japanese do so because they’ve got a fixed interest in anime, manga or JRPG’s, and the sort of words learnt in this engaging environment would help to directly understand these media.

 

REF: Rawal, J. (2013). Koe – a jrpg with Japanese at the core of gameplay. Retrieved from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/297265509/koe-a-jrpg-with-japanese-at-the-core-of-gameplay

games in education [EC]

Extra Credits is a youtube channel run by James Portnow (game designer) and Daniel Floyd (narrator and animator) that covers various topics under the broad spectrum of games and the gaming industry. Their videos are thought provoking and educational.

What they touch on in this video is that while people are starting to get this idea that games are a good thing in education, people in the education industry are going about it the wrong way. They think that ‘games are engaging, kids love ’em, so if we toss them in a classroom kids will love to learn!’ when games really don’t work that way. They’re forgetting that the core of gaming – play – cannot be treated in this way because the number one rule of play is that play is voluntary. By forcing kids to play you’re removing any positive effect the play could have.

A balance must be struck between ‘this will help educate you’ and ‘this will entertain and engage you’. Well-meaning educators just don’t see that forcing kids to play a specific game at a specific time every day is going to end up the same to the kids as every other part of their education; boring and a chore. Games need to be allowed to be treated as games.

 

 

REF: Portnow, J., & Floyd, D. [Extra Credits]. (2013, Aug 22). Extra credits: games in education . Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HTS2nxpRqM&feature=share&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CGkK6JpIagshOH0k4hi3vD&index=4

Portal 2: Educational version?

I love Portal, largely because of the characters and the amazing copywriting. If I was given the chance to have dinner with anyone in the world, screw meeting a celebrity – I’d sit down with the guys who made this game. Anyway, it has been brought to my attention that Valve (the creators) have designed an educational version of Portal 2 so kids in schools can have a hands-on experience with physics.

This video says a lot. The ‘educational’ version of this game is not a complete game in itself, but rather a level builder. Students build levels, observing what happens to their character in different situations as they play through, and teachers can then explain the reasoning why. It is to be used in conjunction with a teacher who can guide them, or feed them ideas. What came out of the video was something different, though; something I’ve probably been harping on about for a while. The teacher noted that aside from the fact that the kids were excited and fascinated by what they were doing – always a bonus – they were learning that what they were learning in class had meaning in the real world. People work in teams in the real world, and people have to learn the boring stuff to do the fun stuff. You want to do something ‘cool’ like game design because it will be easy? You need to learn a fair bit of math first, study how people interact with objects, how people move, how to develop character – even the simplest of platformer games need basic gravity and friction to work.

Central Proposition

I considered writing the whole abstract, but there are a few texts I’m still waiting on the library to collect for me that I want to read first. This is what I’ve come up with so far, in terms of a central prop.

The two-way communication, immersion and customisable experiences found within successful game design can be exponentially beneficial to students when combined with educational content.

I’m not happy with the word ‘students’ as I wish to include anyone who want to learn something, and ‘students’ tends to imply those at university or school but not sure just yet what to replace it with. ‘Learners’ might work, but I’m not a big fan of that either.

Customisation and Transformation

163. “[for] what we once sought for free, we now pay a fee.”

164. “In education, businesses increasingly establish their own institutions of learning, no longer able to rely on public schools to graduate educated students.”
Pine and Gilmore use this as an example of the customer desire for experience and transformation, but it speaks of a larger problem. It suggests that people believe the education system is incapable of providing the basic transformation from uneducated to educated, which is its core mission. If it does not have this, then what is the point of schooling? Something needs to be done about how children are taught.

165. “When you customise an experience you change the individual.”
Education is supposed to be a transformation, but it is not always (in fact, it is seldom) a customised experience.

180. “It’s not a true transformation unless it is sustained.”

 

 

REF: Pine, B., & Gilmore, J. (1999). The customer is the product. In The Experience Economy (pp. 163-183). Boston: Harvard Business School Press

A comic of utmost importance, though unfortunately I don’t know the artist.

Learning to play to learn

Arguably, since this article was published in 2005 educational games – or ‘serious games’, as they now like to be known – have improved a great deal. Of course there are still crappy games out there, but the merging of games for entertainment and games to teach is slowly happening in some areas.

Despite the fat that – at the time of writing (though it does rather still apply today) – the general consensus among the game community is that educational games are a monumental failure, “Educators are energized by games’ ability to engage with students, to capture their wayward attention and help them learn in rich and dynamic ways.” Kids these days are just more entertained by something on a screen. They want immediacy. They want interesting. And games are a great way to do that – if they are designed well.

The main problem, it seems, with designing educational games is that those making them are looking from two different side and don’t know how to work together. The educator only cares about dressing up their topic in a ‘fun’ way, while the game designer is more interested in making a game, first and foremost. And the game designer understands that games need certain elements in order to be successful games, which are: “interactivity designed with clarity of input and output; short-term and long-term goals to shape the player’s experience, a well-designed ramp for beginners to learn the ropes; and a game structure that actually contains the possibly of genuine play, not just quiz-style questions and answers.”

“Every game contains a seed of conflict… The struggle to overcome these obstacles, the engagement necessary to outwit the opponent or solve the riddle, is a primary source of fun.”

 

 

REF: Fortugno, N., Zimmerman, E. (2005). Learning to play to learn [Article]. Retrieved from http://ericzimmerman.com/files/texts/learningtoplay.htm

Reading’s Break: Major Project Topic

Now I’ve been doing horrendously in keeping up with the ‘once a week blog post’ thing, and even in turning up to class session. Whoops. Anyway. I’ve known for nearly two years that the one thing I am super interested in is game design and education. And this is great; it’s a perfectly good topic that ties into visual communication design well. My problem was simply that I didn’t really have a topic I wanted to teach, or explain. Well, I think I’ve found it now.

In the last few years I’ve become really interested in languages and speech, colloquialism, sentence structure, voice – I’ve always had a bit of a boner for words and I love to write, but I never looked outside of English until recently. And then I started learning Japanese – albeit haphazardly – and I still get excited learning new words, recognising their kanji (or pieces of it) and understanding direct translations. The only thing is, self-teaching a language is really f#$%ing hard. Seriously. Particularly when the language you’re interested in learning has three alphabets.

In any case, over the last year or so I have looked at what seems like hundreds of learning sites, trying to find the one (or the ones) which will help me on my way to becoming Japanese literate. “Games” or “game devices” seem to feature prominently in certain areas, but not many seem successful. In any case, this long-winded speech is really my way of saying this:

TL;DR: I want to design a game which teaches Japanese.