DevLearn ‘09 Keynote: Eric Zimmerman #dl09

These are my live blogged notes from Thursday’s keynote at DevLearn.

Eric Zimmerman – started career as an artist. 15 years in game industry. Gamelab CEO.

Book:   Rules of Play – Game Design Fundamentals (Eric wrote the textbook on that!)

Meaningful Play

Opening with the a rousing game of rock, paper, scissors…

Meaning

A closed fist: in rock, paper scissors it means a certain thing.  The game gives the gesture meaning.

MMRPS - massively multiplayer rock-paper scissors. Round robin style – everyone is now playing the game!  And we’re down to the final two: Josh and Alex

Who am I?

Game designer.  Written a few books (The game design reader), ran a game company for 9 years – including diner dash.  Started Institute of Play (a non-profit).

Today:

• Nuts and bolts of game design
• Teaching, learning and literacy
• the big picture

Shows a quick video of game evolution – checkers < pong < space invaders < clone wars…(David Perry at TED)

But games are NOT graphics.  Rock, paper, scissors has nothing to do with putting pixels up on a screen.

World of Warcraft (WOW) – using ebay like trading system within WOW is not really about the 3D space.

Chess/Boxing championship – players alternate rounds of boxing with chess. Really.

Games one of our most ancient forms of interaction.

What is so new today?

Games do have a special relevance to us today in terms of learning and literacy. The way we work and learn and connect…all of these aspects of our lives are mediated by digital (mobile tech, internet, etc.) – which is changing what it means to be literate.

Now entering a Ludic Age (an age of play).

The Information Age

• factory processing
• paper bureaucracy
• telephone switchboards
• pneumatic tube networks
• abstraction of information
• ones and zeroes
• a century of an image

The Ludic Age

New kinds of literacies.

Literacy – ability to create meaning and understand meaning. Literacy is the idea of creating and understanding meaning.

James Paul Gee:  What Video Games have to teach us about Learning and Literacy (book)

Today – to be literate is something new.  As information is put at play, game design becomes a model for literacy.

3 concepts today: Systems, Play, Design (linked to literacy and thus linked to learning)

SYSTEMS

a set of parts that interrelates to form a whole (think of our MMRPS – as the room played, dynamics changed. )

No matter what kind of training you’re creating, don’t you want to create that kind of excitement?  When there’s an emotional component to learning, people retain more.

Scrabble – a set of parts interrelating to form a whole.

Systems Thinking:

How do systems relate?

The key skill for the coming century is not to memorize facts, but to do the research – to solve the problems. 

• Teach people how to get information and critically filter that information.
• How to use and deploy that information.

Electro City – wonderful example of integration of games and learning.

Pandemic – board game – collaborative play to stop outbreak of a global pandemic.  Applying systems thinking (how parts interrelate).

Designing System Thinking: chose systemic subject matter NOT content: instead, systems of interaction, parts and wholes

If creating a game on history – not focus on facts and history, instead focus on process.  Maybe it’s not about actual history, but possible things. Or take history as it happened and trace relationships…

If using games in an instructional context, use them for what they do well.  Systems. – collection of parts that work together to form a whole.

PLAY

Play a game. 

Colors.  A massively multiplayer color-matching game.  Trading cards…(I don’t think I can explain what just happened.  We all had colored index cards.  You can trade your card with adjacent people.  The goal to get the largest group of adjacent people with the same color cards.  Yellow won.)  [Was there a rule that you couldn’t move?] 

Rules & Play – game designers create rules of play.  Game designers create an experience by creating rules.

What are rules?  Dry, rigid, scientific guidelines. Rules are fixed, rigid, locked but play is spontaneous.  The paradox.  Play happens because of rules of game or in spite of the rules of the game?

Forms of play: competitive, narrative, etc.

Colors the game was a set of rules that became an experience of play and created new meanings. (We all had cards of different colors.  Index cards.  And suddenly these cards had meaning.  Within the context of the game, this card has meaning.  People were waving and yelling and brokering their cards.)

Play – “free movement within a rigid structure.”  Something has “play” when it’s a little lose – the “play” of the steering wheel.  The play is only there because of the other structures (the tires, the axels, etc.)  The play is the interstitial space. That little wiggle room when the system is not functioning in a purely logical manner.

Play gives us the unexpected.

Different from traditional ID – this is what we want you to get out of it….

Sissy Fight (game Eric created 10 years ago) – social community around sissy fight came up.  Fan art examples.  None of the fan art was expected. The system generated unexpected forms of play.

[How can you create an experience – a space – where the unexpected can happen in your learning design?]

How is play relevant to learning and literacy?

• Systems are necessary but not sufficient.
• information put at play
• Play is innovation
• play transforms thinking

Our education is going back to the 19th century with heavy emphasis on standardized testing.

Examples:

• space invaders projected on a wall of a building.
• Race of huge game pieces through a city
• Come out and play festival of street festivals – mini golf in urban environment using physical objects as part of game (sewer hole lid as the ball cup).

Being playful – not taking structures for granted. be a bit subversive (being playful subverts the completely utilitarian function of something)

Making play happen:

• Is there room for play in your system? 
• Are you creating spaces where unexpected things can happen?
• Can your players/your learners be creative and flexible

DESIGN

Designing meaning.  Games are activities – what is the player actually doing?  Your design gives meaning to the player’s action.  

A game is a context designed to support meaning to action.

Many levels of play in a game – social play, strategic play, gaming the systems.

Games that combine physical action with game play e.g., guitar hero.

Back chatter – conference twitter game that eric designed. 

Design = creating a space of possibility where things can happen.

Play a game:

Two people came up on the stage.

Round 1: 2 people alternate words.  Only rule can’t repeat a word.

Round 2: add a rule.  Now they can only use animal words.

Round 3: add a rule to limit what the player could do – to constrain possible actions:  Now the word said has to start with the last letter of the previous player’s word.  It is only now that the game starts to get interesting.  The crowd starting claling out possible answers.  We were all more engaged.

If the game’s not interesting, then it’s the fault of the designer.  Need to add a bit of structure or rules.

Create space but add some constraints.

When we create games we create systems of possible outcomes. 

Examples:

• Quest to Learn (school based on games as the model of learning)
• Gamestar mechanic (a beta site that lets kids create their own games) – the players themselves become designers.  How play and systems can blur distinction between users and designers.

The Age of Play (The Ludic Century) – design as a paradigm

It looks like a pretty playful world.

Games for the Six and Under Crowd (iPod Touch/iPhone)

My kids have discovered my iPod Touch.  They're as hooked as I am.  Last night my daughter hid it from me after I told her it was time to go to bed.  (I didn't miss it until she was asleep and found it in the nightstand after a bit of searching).

What's all the fuss?

I've founds some great games that they love.  These are the recent faves:

iWriteWords This is a fun little spelling game.  You trace out letters to spell words.  When you finish the word, a cute drawing appears and then you shake the letters into a little hole to move on. 

Sort of a Montessori style approach, like the sandpaper letters that my daughter does at school.  When she's trying to write a letter she doesn't know, I have to "dot it out" on paper for her so she can trace it herself.   This game matches that experience really well.

$.99 on iTunes

AniMatch  A classic memory game with fun animal cards and sounds.  I played it a few times myself before going to bed last night.

$.99 on iTunes

 

Pacifier1 Marketed for the 1-3 set, although my older kids are mesmerized by it.  Little dots and shapes float around on the screen.  As you touch them, a number is spoken out loud from 1-10.  When you get to 10 it starts all over again.  Soothing background music, smooth movement and lots of colors to pacify and interest your young child.  And get her hooked to electronic games early.

However, if your child is still in an oral phase, probably not the best thing.  My 10 month old thinks the smooth, shininess of the iPod is a perfect thing to chew on.  I think I'll wait until she's a bit older...

$.99 on iTunes

Other Resources

This looks useful:  iPhone and Kids.  I especially liked the section on extending battery life.

Any special games that are hits in your family?

Building Better Learning Games

Interested in building casual games for your learners?

Read on for notes from a webinar today, April 9, 2009:

Building Better Learning Games: Leveraging Game Design and User Testing for Results

Our hosts today:

Enspire Learning (Ben Katz)

Doorways to Dreams D2D -- financial entertainment. Work with and for consumers how to better manage their money. Focus on casual video games. (Nick Maynard)

Skillpoint Alliance (Kristy Bowden)

Partnership of profit and non-profit organizations.

Games in a variety of shapes and sizes:

• Console Games (for the Xbox or Wii)
• MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game): World of War Craft, Club Penguins.
• Simulations (Flight Simulator, The SIMS)
• ARGS (Alternate Reality Games: World Without Oil)

But there's a whole 'nother genre of games: Casual Games.

Poll: Do you play any of these? (Solitaire 92%, Tetris 75%, Bejeweled 47%, Peggle 7%, Diner Dash 13%)

These are all casual games.

Demographics of Casual Games:

In 2007, 61% of online game play was in the genre of casual games.

• Gender: 63% of casual gamers are WOMEN
• Age: 71% are 25-54, 17% are 55+
• Families: 46% have kids
• Experience online: 90% have been on Web longer than 3 years

Casual Game Design principles:

• Low barriers to entry (few instructions)
• Forgiving (no punishment if wrong)
• Short play times (10 minute coffee break game)
• Highly re-playable
• Non-violent themes

Casual Game Development:

make it easy to

• build a prototype and iterate quickly
• Closely match game mechanics to key learning objectives
• Deploy games online in Flash - which can reach wide population (and eventually via web portals like Kongregate)

Diner Dash actually used by restaurants.

Case Study: Celebrity Calamity (Casual Financial Literacy Game)

Casual game about credit cards.

D2D's vision is financial entertainment. Creating a library of casual games to teach simple lessons (credit cards, personal budgeting, saving, loans, etc.)

Looked at existing games and saw issues...

Celebrity Calamity Game has focus on fun, but explicit learning objectives:

• Pay more than min on credit card
• Min credit card finance charges
• Avoid fees on card
• Make good APR choices

Check out the game yourself:

Prototype game: www.celebritycalamity.com

YouTube Trailer

Ben Katz (Developer at Enspire) now shows the game:

• 3 celebrity characters in the game. Player controls that celebrity's job. (Player is managing a celebrity).
• Income is collected.
• Player goes on a shopping mission (the celeb wants to buy something).
• Player runs around on screen to collect cash, but to avoid the things you don't want (falling watches, laptops, etc.)
• Player has to pay with credit or debit card (making choices) and sees balances mounting.
• Finance rules are explained as you read the CC statement.
• The Celebrity has different emotional states (happy, content, anxious, and something else). As you make decisions, the celebrity rebukes you or praises you.
• Player goes up a career ladder based on decisions made.
• Celebrity is onscreen at all times -- creates emotional engagement.

Lessons Learned

• Know your audience
• Games are popular form of digital media
• Listening to people's needs and preferences is important
• Evaluation is Important.

For this project, target audience was mostly women.

72% of Americans are playing vid games; high rates of play under 35, casual games are fastest growing segment.

Did testing sessions -- with focus groups, observational feedback.

Development Milestones:

First Playable (rough prototype)--> User Test --> Alpha --> Test --> Beta --> Test --> Final

At each development milestone:

• Fun. How much fun is player having? Do they want to keep playing?
• Learning Needs. What do players know about the teaching topics.
• Assessment. Are players engaged? increases in self-confidence?

Community benefits of the testing process.

Evaluation is Important

Engagement of individuals. Built assessment into the process. Pre-test. Play game for 90 minutes. Then do a post-test. (The evaluation is not part of the game).

Preliminary evidence of Efficacy Testing -- increased self confidence in the 5 core teaching points.

Big increase in knowledge in APR and Finance Charges. (People use financial products -- credit cards -- without really understanding them).

Qualitative Feedback: Enthusiasm, Engagement, Education, Empowerment.

Next Steps

• More rigorous evaluation of Celebrity Calamity
• Creating additional casual games: Starting to work on a budget game
• Testing distribution strategies

Looking for national employers and organizations testing distribution of Celebrity Calamity (contact Nick Maynard at D2D).

Lessons Learned:

• Test early, test often
• Usability testing first, efficacy testing later on (early prototypes on creating best user experience, focus on knowledge and confidence after usability of game is assured)
• Collect as much good data as possible (Likert scaled confidence questions, knowledge questions, in-game data collection, avoid focus groups until end of session -- focus groups people can color each others' opinions).

The game doesn't use quizzes, but used knowledge questions as part of user testing.

Education: Lessons Learned

Discipline in the scope of teaching content (fun can be overwhelmed by rush to include teaching points, if teaching points not relevant player will miss)

Repetition, repetition, repetition (APR talked about in many contexts)

Players can learn from failure (can change strategy and try new things)

QUESTIONS

Where to get data on games?

Independent Game Developers Association -- for data on games (what consoles are people using? what games are people playing?)

Electronic Software Association -- trade org for game developers in the US

Gama Sutra

Game Developer Magazine

Timeline/Team to Develop?

• About five months
• Had lots of volunteer support for testing and feedback

Made at Enspire with a team of three people!

[Many of Flash games you'll find on Kongregate are made by one person!)

If you're an ID who wants to create games:

• play games
• read up on game design
• Need to be both an ID and a game designer

Content can be easily updated via XML.

Check out the game yourself:

Prototype game: www.celebritycalamity.com

YouTube Trailer

Video Games, Tire Swings and Learning

My almost six-year old son LOVES video and computer games:  Wii, Nintendo 64, computer, my iPod Touch. 

I struggle with this.   Trying to strike a balance between how much is ok for a five year old to play (if he should play at all) and going with the Everything Bad is Good for You mentality.  Trying to embrace the notion that he is of the next generation.

Son was struggling with a certain game for quite a while.  The big boss was really hard to beat and after countless attempts, even my husband gave up.

Change scene to an indoor playground a few weeks ago.  My son engrossed in conversation with a 7 year old as they sit on a tire swing.  The topic?  Video games.  And how to beat this particular boss.

This week, my son beat the boss in one try.  All by himself.  Turns out Playground Kid made a suggestion about which characters he should choose to play on his team.  He didn't know exactly which ones to pick, but it got Son thinking.  Son carefully selects the right team and wins. 

Elation.  Triumph.  Joy.

Photo credit:  tire swing by without you

On Games and eLearning

As eLearning designers, your goal is (hopefully) to make the learning experience engaging.

(Realistically, sometimes all you can do is build the sucker in order to meet some crazy deadline.)

It's easy to equate engaging with fun.

(Fun is a funny word.)

So then it's really easy to think that the best way to make a course more engaging is to make it fun.

And the best way to make it fun is to make it a game. Right?

Maybe...

Clark Quinn in Learning Predictions for 2009:

I continue to see interest in games, and naturally I’m excited. There is still a sadly-persistent view that it’s about making it ‘fun’ (e.g. tarted up drill and kill), while the real issue is attaching the features that drive games (challenge, contextualization, focus on important decisions) and lead to better learning. Still, the awareness is growing, and that’s a good thing.

Mark Oehlert likes to remind me about flow: being immersed in an experience with a sense of full involvement and energetic focus. Which is a much better way to think of engaging.

Go for flow, not fun.

(Of course, sometimes they coincide.)

(Now go have some fun with this Flow Game).

What are you doing to create a more engaging experience? How do you help your learners get into a state of flow?

Photo/Video Credit: Amusement Park -- a Long Photo by respres

Making Six Sigma Training Fun

OK. Maybe it's not possible to make Six Sigma eLearning fun. But I've tried.

And to be honest, it wasn't quite Six Sigma, but close.

This manufacturing process training course was originally delivered as a four hour plus death-by-PowerPoint classroom session (if you could see the original PPT source content, you'd begin glazing over within a few slides).

I went out on a few limbs here and tried to design something different. Within certain parameters as defined by the client (of course).

Here's some of what I tried to incorporate in order to (we hope) create an engaging experience:

Less is More. Cut, cut, cut.

Of course, SMES pushed back on this approach during story board review.

But when I hear someone telling me that this is the spot in the classroom session when the users start drooling and staring out the window, don't you think that's a good place to simplify?

Storyline. I created characters that the learner follows throughout the course. "Meet Pete and his team." Learn from this manufacturing group and how they applied these principles to their work place.

And we made it fun. Rubber Ducks! Everyone loves rubber ducks, right? Applying concepts to a fun, but real-world scenario to ensure better knowledge transfer and retention.

Got some pushback on this one, again from the SMEs. "Is it too juvenile?"

When reviewing the alpha version of the course, I made sure to have their team have actual end-users take the course and see what their responses were.

End-users thought it was fun. SMEs felt a bit threatened by this fun take on their sacred content. The juries still out.

Games! We created three or four mini-games scattered throughout the course to test concepts. Of course, we used rubber ducks whenever possible to create some fun graphics and exercises. For design inspiration, I took a few pages out of Karl Kapp's book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.

Using Audio. I tried to make more effective use of audio. Avoided reading text heavy pages word-for-word. But I got pushback. "Unless there's audio on every page, our user's will think it's broken..."

Better Assessment Questions. I wrote scenario based questions that were about context and concepts -- not rote memorization skills.

Navigation. I tried, but couldn't convince my client to go with open navigation. We had to go with lockouts, meaning the learner must go through the topics in order and can't advance to the next topic until the previous topic has been completed. Alas.

Overall Feedback. So far, the client likes it, but there's some uncertainty. "This is unlike anything we've done before." Which can be a good thing and a bad thing, right?

Do you think I went too far with the rubber duck motif? Did I threaten a sacred cow?

Photo Credits:

• So many ducks...Ducking hell. by Gaetan Lee
• Cut my breath by batega
• Devil Duck by wonderferret

I'm a Gamer 3.0!

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I've been really into the whole topics of gamers -- who is, who isn't, and should we even use that term? I had a poll a while back, Are You A Gamer?, that sparked a good conversation.

Now a few of Karl Kapp's students "(Nicole Clark, Heather Gee, Aaron Kennelly and David Robbins) have created a fun little assessment tool called Gamer Rater that helps you determine what level of gamer you are according to Games, Gadgets and Gizmos for Learning. You progress through a series of choices you make throughout a typical day and at the end you are given a summary and a brief description of the type of gamer you are."

I'm so pleased. It turns out I am a Gamer 3.0er. Which means I've lost more than a decade, putting me somewhere in my late 20s.

A couple of issues I had with the game:

• If you're asking friends over, would you invite them to play a board game or a video game? I'd like another option here -- invite friends over for dinner (which is probably take out) and watch the kids run around until they pass out.
• If you want to buy a book at the store and they don't have it, would you have the employee order it or use the kiosk? I would never have bothered going to the store in the first place if I knew just what book I was buying. I would have bought it from Amazon.com.
• If you go to the gym, do you listen to the radio or an mp3 player? My response was "gym, who has time for that?" When I do have the time, I'd rather walk in the woods and listen to the wind.

Anyway, I've got a spring in my step today feeling so young.

How 'bout you. What kind of a gamer are you? Go on, play the game.

College Women on Gamers: They Giggle

I came across this on Wired: Giggling Girls Fail Videogame-Related Quiz, in which college-aged women are asked a series of somewhat spoofy questions on games and gamers. The responses are generally preceded by a giggle and a "what's that?"

According to Wired, this video is from the folks at PurePwnage.com


I find these young womens' clueless responses interesting, especially in light of the rise in gaming culture and the onslaught of Gamers that is about to hit the corporate workplace (and perhaps is, right now, as we speak) -- at least according to Karl Kapp who wrote an entire book on it! (You can read my review of Gadgets, Games & Gizmos for Learning).

Will young women be speaking a different language from their male counterparts? Will they be left out of the Guild Master corporate cult?

New Survey -- What's Your Demographic?

Because people are wondering. How old are all of you? Some of you call yourselves gamers. Some of you have been in Second Life. So where do you fit into the demographic, dear readers?

You'll have to come visit the blog to respond to the new survey. It's on the blog's side bar at the top.

(All survey responses are completely and utterly confidential!)

Thanks ~

Women Gamers on the Rise

According to an article today in Times Online (Nintendo's women gamers could transform market) , Japanese women gamers have overtaken men to become the biggest users of the Wii and DS.

"If the change repeats itself around the globe, said analysts, it could force a complete change of business model for many of the world’s largest games makers."

I don't doubt that women's use of the Wii will be on the rise, especially with games like Wii Fit on the way (although, I wonder if that's really a "game"?)

"Wii Fit, which uses an innovative floor-based sensor to register body movement, takes players through a daily regimen of yoga, balancing exercises and other fat-fighting activities."

So maybe the Guild Master Ceiling will get replaced with a Wii Ceiling?

Check out the full story: Nintendo's women gamers could transform market at Times Online.

Photocredit: "Eva" by milopeng from Flickr.

Second Life and Gaming Poll Results

I don't claim to be a researcher, nor can I claim that the results of polls conducted on this site are in the least bit statistically significant. But I am interested in the responses I've been getting.

Last week, I asked "Have you ever been in Second Life?" There were 20 responses.

Never (9) 45%
A few times -- I don't get it. (3) 15%
A few times -- I'll go back. (5) 25%
A lot. (3) 15%

Over at Mission to Learn, Jeff cites these stats and then wonders about the demographics of my site -- the answer to which I can vaguely guess at: eLearning professionals in their 30s-40s -- on average? (Perhaps another poll is needed?)

I think that all that my Second Life poll can really tell us, is that there are a lot of folks who still haven't tried Second Life...and some folks who see the potential.

I'm also interested in the results of the poll question I asked, "Are you a Gamer?" This poll -- to-date -- has had 29 responses. Again, not statistically significant I'm sure.

• But 62% are willing to call themselves Gamers. This surprised me.
  
• I fell into the NO category along with another 34%.
• 1 person called themselves "Other", stating "I would be if I could afford the time."

I you'd like to add your two cents, and tell us what kind of Gamer you are, that poll is still open. Unfortunately, the Second Life poll is closed.

Whee! We got Wii!

My son just turned 4. He is blessed with an indulgent grandmother. Because he seems to like gaming, she got him a Wii for his birthday. (Don't ask me how -- and I don't even want to know how much she paid for it.)

My son "games" by watching us grownups play. He's not coordinated enough yet to work the controls, but he seems to have the basic strategy down and tells us where to go.

I've written about my gaming experience before. It's rather limited.

So last night I stayed up until 1:00 playing Zelda: The Twilight Princess. I had to force myself to stop.

The graphics are amazing. The controller is so fluid and much more intuitive than the Nintendo 64. I'm definitely hooked -- you might say, "immersed" or "addicted".

And now that I've been reading about games via the blog-o-sphere, I've got a different appreciation for them. I just played in the first village last night. This is basic training mode for the novice. You solve a few simple puzzles. You learn how to use your slingshot, ride a horse, wield your sword, go fishing.

I was learning and I hardly even noticed.

Wii!

Video Games & Retirees

Interesting article in today's New York Times by Seth Schiesel about the increasing acceptance of video games among retirees/baby booomers, especially older women. Some of this due to the introduction of the Wii. Think Nintendo bowling league for seniors.

I think NYTs links don't last too long, so I'll quote some key nuggets here in case you can't get to the article later:

...the women of St. Mary are actually part of a vast and growing community of video-game-playing baby boomers and their parents, especially women.

Anxious about the mental cost of aging, older people are turning to games that rely on quick thinking to stimulate brain activity.

It turns out that older users not only play video games more often than their younger counterparts but also spend more time playing per session.

“Women come for the games, but they stay for the community. Women like to chat, and these games online are a way to do that. It’s kind of a MySpace for seniors.”

Games vs. Gaming

The topic that kept me thinking late last night: the difference between games and gaming; between people who play computer games and so-called gamers. Maybe this is an obvious distinction for those who have been long immersed in the immersive learning simulations discussion.

Here's my novice view on the differences between games and gaming:

Games are short, finite experiences. A game can be used as a simple distraction to pass some time; to cleanse the intellectual palate between tasks at work. Tetris. Solitare. Advancing to the next level usually means an increase in speed (the tetris blocks fall faster); the environment doesn't generally change although the degree of difficulty may. They can be immersive, in the sense of addictive. I've said before how occasionally I like to play Counterfeit when in need of distraction and the chance to view a beautiful work of art. Just one more time and then I'll get back to work...

I am a person who occasionally plays computer games. I am not a gamer.

Gaming involves a plot and storyline. Character development. Virtual worlds. Advancement to the next level -- which may be a new environment in that world. Examples are games like World of Warcraft, Zelda, Turok (those limited few to which I have had any exposure). Gaming requires a real time commitment; it might takes weeks of concentrated play to get through an entire game world and finally kill the boss monster and save the world. And a gamer is someone who is willing and able to spend that amount of time. Building gaming games requires a vast amount of resources.

So in the corporate training world, can we ever hope -- and is this even a worthy goal? -- to build a gaming game? Or should e-Learning designers be focusing instead on just trying to build some really good and addictive and immersive games that teach the required topic and enhance the learning experience? I wonder if some of the resistance about using games/serious games/ILS into the corporate training environment stems from the perception that ILS = gaming.

Immersive = Addictive

A couple of weeks ago, I participated in the eLearning Guild online presentation of their 360 Report on Immersive Learning Simulations hosted by Steve Wexler and Mark Oehlert. The conversation was initially focused on defining just what ILS is. I was of the naive mindset that ILS = dragons and virtual worlds and high-end 3D graphics and enormous budgets. Something that will be out of range for most organizations, at least for now.

Mark tried to set me straight on this point. By "immersive", what we actually mean is "addictive." A game that you don't want to stop playing. This could be tetris or solitare. Low-end on the graphic scale, but addictive nonetheless.

Lots of us e-Learning designers have built plenty of games into courses: crossword puzzles; mini-jeopardy; drag and drop. I often find the use of these kinds of games to be somewhat gratuitous. Look, we made a game! Aren't we fun? Aren't we creative? The client asked for a game, and, boy, did we deliver.

I suppose these types of games may actually add to the learning experience by providing repetition of learning points, but to call these games immersive or addictive? Learning designers will have to get a lot more creative in order to take these kinds of games to the next level....perhaps Patrick Dunn can provide us with some pointers on that. Karl Kapp often links to good examples of educational games, although these are typically created for the K-12 environment.

Games for Girls...

...and by girls, I mean women. Specifically me.

(Image of Torus Trooper -- a game I've never even heard of -- from yotophoto. CC License).

I've been trying to learn about games lately. Inspired by all this blog talk about simulations and immersive learning and Second Life and World of Warcraft. Apparently, I've been missing something that may be crucial to my job.

I've been reading "Everything Bad is Good for You" by Steven Johnson. This week I listened to Brent Shlenker's recent podcast with David Williamson Shaffer author of "How Computer Games Help Children Learn". I participated in the eLearning Guild online presentation of their 360 Report on Immersive Learning Simulations hosted by Steve Wexler and Mark Oehlert.

One of the piece of research that stuck out to me was the obvious gender gap. Men use games a lot more than women. There was little age gap -- "digital native" or not -- men use games more.

This gender gap is striking to me, too, in terms of who is talking about games/immersive learning and instructional design. Mostly men.

Wendy Wickham has blogged on her most recent gaming experiences, but she writes like an outsider peering into a foreign land. I'm right with you. See Playing Games: Big Mutha Trucker and Playing Games: Gauntlet.

Which brings me back to me. I now feel the need to chronicle my own experience in the world of games.

Step back in time to the late 70's/early 80's. Sitting with a group of friends on Mark's floor on a Saturday afternoon. Watching the boys play PONG. It was so exciting to watch that little blip go back and forth across the screen. I probably played a few times, but it wasn't my thing. The way that tennis wasn't my thing. All that hand-eye coordination.

7th grade -- 1981. Saturday afternoon after swim practice at a fast food joint. It may have been McDonald's. Watching Brad Woehl play Space Invaders. I like to watch, I guess.

This is the same era in which the boys would mysteriously disappear for entire afternoons into dark rooms to play D&D. They had these cryptic grid maps and would talk about their characters. Again, not my thing. (Which is not to say that I don't like fantasy or dragons. Hey, I probably read Lord of the Rings at least ten times before I was 13. That, AND I played Bilbo in my 6th grade school play).

Fast forward about 16 years. It's 1997 and my now-husband turns me onto Myst. Once he showed me the basics for moving around and got me thinking about problem-solving in the right way, I was hooked. Immersed. Addicted. I got great pleasure out of that game and still like to quote from it..."the blue pages!"

New Year's 1998-99. 25 of us partied like it was 1999 in a rented mansion in Vermont. One of the guys brought up his Nintendo 64 along with games like Turok and James Bond. Now, these were creative hipsters from NYC who worked for cool companies like MTV and Nickelodeon. The played a lot of games. The ladies got a tutorial and took over. We had a blast, but we were mostly shooting floors and running into walls.

Soon after that, we got our own Nintendo. I really got into Turok and was surprised at how much joy I got out of killing dinosaurs. I liked playing with other people, but I would get killed pretty easily. The solo quest was fun, although I didn't get too deep in the game before it just got too hard. Zelda was even more fun, but again, I couldn't get past those witches and I gave up.

The CTO of my company recently had everyone download a trial version of WOW so we could play during lunch. Of course, my laptop doesn't have the right video card so I just watched over some guy's shoulder.

So now, here I am with young kids. Who's got the time? I'd much rather pass out than stay up until the wee hours wandering around Second Life or playing World of Warcraft.

I'm a female instructional designer in my late 30's. What should I do? Try to immerse myself into gaming because that's what everyone says is going to happen. Or just hire a 13 year old, like Karl Kapp suggests?

Or, perhaps I should get a Wii. According to David Williams Shaffer,

Wii’s are opening up a whole new market of gamers–I’ve had several colleagues
who say their spouses NEVER played games with them until the Wii.

(And I assume by "spouses" he means wives...)

One thing is definitely changing all of this, and that's my kids. My almost 4-year old son and 2-year old daughter are home all day with their dad, who used to play non-graphical games on his Commodore 64. (Now he says he'd be really into WOW if were in his 20s and didn't have kids). So these two kids are definitely digital natives. And it's not just the Elmo keyboard-o-rama game.

The other evening I came home and played Scooby Doo games for an hour before dinner. And I liked it. Our favorite was Mayan Mahem. Sort of Myst-like puzzles, although I'm definitely out of practice from that way of thinking....

Games for the Brain

These brain games are from Phillip Lenssen, via Dean at my company who was thinking about how we could use brain teasers or games to get a learner prepped to learn. The warm up before the real e-Learning begins.

My favorite game is Counterfeit. Get me started and I can't stop.

What if you did something like this, but tried to connect it with the content? Use your brain game as a pre-question to focus the learner on the program's learning objectives. Use a game like this instead of a pre-test. I've posted on pre-testing before, in response to some questions raised by Clark Quinn at Learning Circuits.

Anyone have any experience doing something like that?