ASTD Keynote: “People Lie” Richard Hilleman Electronic Arts #tk10

This are my liveblogged notes from Thursday, January 28 Keynote at ASTD TechKnowledge 2010 in Las Vegas, NV.

Richard Hilleman, the man behind the EA sports brand (Madden football) -- currently focused on EA’s internal university.

People Lie…

…but their actions don’t.

This is the most important trend in video game design.

(When people lie, they make his job harder).

Who is Richard Hilleman?

Worked for EA for 25 years.  Since 1983.  In the business of making video games.  producer, designer, production manager, has run studios, has been a teacher.  Now Chief Creative Director.  A guy with a high school education.  Doesn’t have a traditional background.  Embraces change.  And stirs things up.

At EA - people make games and they like to play games.

Cartels and Cutthroats – an economic simulation game – at their company retreat they had a tournament.

EA University Knowledge Changes Everything

Producers and designers – at EA – the business is so unique.  Have spent a lot of time to invest in those capabilities.

Creative Directors Accelerator

creative director is like the director of a movie – they only have about 20 creative directors at EA.  Needed to invest in most senior designers.  Year long program.  Meet once a quarter.  Run through a specific curriculum.  Specific report cards.  Training built out of training in a really structured way.

Built an exercise around Lego Mindstorms

• objectives
• metrics
• rules

In his classes – need to learn about leadership and teamwork.  So create games that use computers in one component, but most of game built on human interaction.

Rapid iteration cycle

Lego Mindstorms – The Game:

In one day create a simulation of a 4 year product/platform lifecycle (game platforms change every 4 years – e.g., playstation 3 1/2.)

• Everyone plays “out of position” – engineers plays producers, producers play programmers, etc.
• Each team attends a developer’s conference to learn technology
• (Espionage encouraged)
• Producer from each team gets access to a close room at the top of the hour (The Market)
• That Market contains a number of 9x9” plexiglass squares with Play Money.  (turned the floor into the 2D plane of the market analysis)
• During the market cycle – robot has to drive through the room and stop on a moneyed square. 
• Markets get more difficult – squares moved, money amounts changed, obstacles added
• At end of 10 minutes, get the money under the square.

Complications:

• The market you see in the focus group isn’t exactly what you get
• More than one team can win a square and robots don’t play nice.
• Wheels don’t always have to stay attached (nuances of design encourage creativity)

Outcomes:

• Create change – how they work with each other – dynamic of market and dynamic of team.
• Winners always have combo of appropriate risk and high iteration cycle.
• In those 45 minutes between rounds – their iteration cycle looks like 5-10x the number of market cycles (which is what they want).

Some other games:

• The “gong” show – rapid prototyping – dynamic thinking on feet, creative direction
• The Pieces Game – looks like a game design exercise, but a the end it’s about listening.
• The Roaring silence – to teach audio direction.  Audio is 50% of experience = George Lucas.  Audio costs are %10 of cost of game!

How we used to make games – really smart kids working on games until they think they are done…that doesn’t work anymore!

Now have bigger teams – so higher costs – lower margins.

Can’t say “I’ll know when it’s done” anymore…

Have changed leadership strategies –Why was it failing? Because they are guessing about what people are telling them.

The problem is…PEOPLE LIE. (They don’t mean to.) But their actions don’t.

Every online game played in John Madden for the past year phones home…it reports button presses, the timing, lots of detailed information. 

The data showed that madden 10 had a kicking problem – their telemetry showed it.  A playing mechanic for kicking that didn’t work.  Took data from those reports, showed video tape of person playing…

This kind of process (telemetry based analysis) – changes everything you do as a designer.

Google – semantic analysis – take text that you have typed and try to make sense of it.  Problem with that…people lie.

Amazon - -thinks about what you do.  Mining your previous choices and correlating that to other customers (based on actions – not what you say).

Stop guess, start measuring!

• Identify your markers of progress that matter (objective measurements – subject measurements fall into the people lie category).
• Turn scoreboards on so all can see.
• Pay attention to the results
• iterate for effect
• Demonstrate and callibrate progress through metrics
• Pursue new markers and correlations for the insight they provide

Example of using technology in a more traditional education environment (teaching kids how to spell better, improve vocabulary).

• Have all class do composition in Google Docs. (use python scripts to process web data).  Every day, mine that class directory for data. 
• Updates metrics on your scoring spreadsheet.  students scores are updated daily.
• Outcomes: best practices are telemetrically reinforced.  Instruction time is spent editing and correcting for quality, clarity and meaning (and not mechanics)
• more face time, less grading

Telemetry based Developement Programs

• Diff between clients and customers: customers are looking for a measurable ROI; clients looking for personal progress
• Avoid diff scoreboards for diff audiences
• measured progress metrics ensure all parties’ development outcome = business outcomes

People lie – don’t trust, don’t guess.  Their actions don’t.

Find metrics to measure.  align metrics of personl progress with indicators of enterprise success (OUTCOMES)

Communicate progress and value through scoreboards of those metrics – when the metric matters to people they obsess on it and it improves their performance.

(Prius is first video game car – it comes with a high score!)

Bottom line – people lie – so need to measure on objective metrics.

Q&A:

Sim City source code is now open source!  Can be used for educational

Why games become social – we love playing with human beings – more challenging and interesting than playing against a computer

What tools can corporates use to incorporate gaming (“I know a lot of tools, but it’ll take you 3 years to figure out how to use them!”)

Sims – 25% of game market and primarily women.  This year women took over the video game business!

Products like Instant Action (simplified game engine, Seashark – need to be a programmer ), Flash!  We still haven’t figured out how to make this easy.

Tools like Google Analytics can be used to measure your Flash…

(Q&A session still going…I’m off to the Expo – booth babe duty!)

Brent Schlenker: Marketers and Game Developers Know More About Learning Than We Do!

Live session with Brent Schlenker: Marketers and Game Developers Know More About Learning Than We Do! hosted by Training Magazine Network.

***********

Disclaimers: “I am not a marketer or a game developer.”  (Although he plays a LOT of games).

When he listens to game developers talk, feels like they’re in the learning prof.

Everything IS about learning. 

Brent’s background:

What I am:  15+ yr learning professional, lifelong learner, player, consumer.

• news – using media to tell stories.
• Masters degree in Instructional Systems Design Process
• 10 years at Intel working in tools.

How do we use new and emerging technologies in the learning space?

We don’t typically create the new tools in eLearning – that innovation is happening in other places – e.g., marketing.

What’s coming down the pike so we can prepare our learners for them?

Point of today’s conversation: talking training, design and development if a marketing person were doing it. Or a game developer.  What cool things are other areas doing that we can leverage to make us better designers and developers?

Comment (Julie S):  “My first boss said that training is very much selling.”

Marketers are REALLY good at understanding who their target audience is.

People, Context, Content

Corporate ISD:

• When working with a Subject Matter Expert (SME), they have a tendency to put everything into the training.
• In corp learning space, we have a tendency to give in to that.  We bow to the will of the SME…
• Little room for creativity

New technology gives us new tools. 

Marketing Depts:

• Marketing dept always has the money.  That’s where most creative talent in organizations go.  This is where business finds the value, which is why marketing is where the dollars go.
• They also get the resources to analyze the data.
• What are they doing that’s different?
• How do they measure success?  Are the expectations on marketing depts greater than on training? 
• Marketing brings in the money.
• A big part of marketing IS education --  what is the product? how does it add value?  why should you buy it?  This is the greatest connection between what we do…

Learners need to change behavior…which is what marketing does. 

Event-based learning vs. Learning Campaigns

Marketing talks about a CAMPAIGN. Learning talks about a curriculum.

A campaign is a series of events/operations/continuing storyline – not just a “set of courses”.

A campaign that’s a continuous storyline involving a set of adventures and characters (learners) to achieve a set goal…

Design and develop learning campaigns that involve storylines, adventure, social media, people – every campaign has a structure to it – there is a formal development/design process.  But there’s room to move. Different media involved in an ad campaign.  Let people engage with others in the learning process.

New tools make this easier to implement from cost perspective, but still a big time cost to developing/designing learning campaigns.

A learning campaign is different than a marketing campaign.  It’s not about t-shirts and email blasts – it’s about providing more ways for learners to engage with and access content.

World of Warcraft:  getting people into a shared space to figure out together how to get the boss (the bad guy).  Someone in comments wrote “sounds like a business strategy meeting!”

Get the Learner’s Attention

We use a lot of “fake” ways to get people’s attention…fun flash movie and then slide into the boring content…but I got their attention!  (Yes, we need to sustain that attention.)

Each person’s individual desire to learn something is what makes for engagement.  We’re not talking about “dressing up” content to fake that it’s engaging.

Book Recommendations:

Made to Stick (idea of attention – marketers do something shocking and unexpected, “unexpectedness”.)

A Theory of Fun (“games are puzzles to solve, just like everything else we encounter in life”)  The most serious issues we have to approach are puzzles.

Don’t just read learning design and pedagogy books.  Extend what you can do – think outside of your field.

Common Craft Videos

Great at explaining.  Now companies are coming to them to do marketing – to explain their products.

ShamWow

Why are these so memorable?  What can we learn from these infomericals?  What are they doing – how do they display information and what' they’re teaching us about their product?  Seems like an ID at work in there.

YouTube – videos – short hits to educate.  30-90 seconds.  A whole lot of info, but the right info when you need it.

Production costs have dropped – we can start adding a lot more media/engagement to our programs.

Quickly produce short tips.

Attention – ways marketers and game developers get our attention.  They do this well.

Analysis – really know their audience.

Objectives --

Measurement --

What you can do?

• Keep it quick
• Make it short
• Be really creative
• Make something that actually affects behavior (marketers want people to change their behavior – drink pepsi not coke, drink coke not pepsi)
• Make it truly memorable

Don’t just need IDs on your staff – get some creatives in there who look at things a bit differently.

Understand gaming theory and gaming design. 

Put the customer/consumer/learner first.  We say we do…but we don’t often do it.

The best stuff is not trickery – it’s an engaging game; it’s a great product or service.  That’s all.  (Jeopardy is really kind of lame…)

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

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.

So What Kind of a Gamer Are You?

In yesterday's poll, I asked readers if they think of themselves as gamers. As of this post, 55% of respondents proudly say "yes, I AM a gamer." Maybe not so proudly. There is some hemming and hawing amongst folks. Read the comments and see for yourself.

At Phil Charron's suggestion, I'm taking this next poll a bit deeper.

Let's talk about your gaming habits. And I mean digital gaming habits. Not whether or not you like to play Boggle at home the old-school way and rope your significant other into it on a regular basis. (Hey, that sounds like a slice of heaven to me!)

Instead, I want to know about your regular computer/digital game playing habits. And by regular, I mean that you access and play these games at least one a week.

So answer the questions, and take some time to comment. It's fun! It's almost like a game!



And be sure to response to the first poll "Are You a Gamer?"

"Work is Going to Be a Game"

Gamasutra: The Academics Speak: Is There Life After World of Warcraft?

On page 3 of the article, there's an interview with Jeff McNeil, a PhD candidate at University of Hawaii, Manoa (Random sidenote about me: I went to highschool right down the street from UH and had daily swim practice at the UH pool).

McNeil says,

The Wall Street Journal just had a great article which said “Work is going to be a game.” Game-like features help us to manage this level of complexity that we can’t keep up with anymore. Students, right now, have more decisions, choices and control than ever before. And yet school hasn’t changed.

Pretty soon, we’re going to be saying goodbye to classrooms where students put their hand up and get a single question in an hour… It’s just not enough interactivity. And once the value of game design is discovered, well, you’re going to see changes in the way that we think about, play, and buy games – whether they’re single player, MMO, or whatever else is just around the corner.

It’s a lot of work, making curricula game-like but it’s also quite fascinating. This is how educators can become re-invigorated in their discipline. Some are seeing it. Some are doing it. Harvard’s Chris Dede is doing it, and has been extremely successful.

Are You A Gamer?

In the spirit of continuing the great conversation that we've been having in the comments on recent review posts (see Women, Gaming & the Guild Master Ceiling and my first review post) of Karl Kapp's Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning -- and in the spirit of experimenting with polling tools (thanks to Soha El-Borno of the Wild Apricot Blog, I thought I'd try a quick, down and dirty poll.

Obviously, this poll won't tell us that much. But perhaps leave a comment to explain your vote.

I used Poll Daddy to create this. It took about 2 seconds.

Women, Gaming & the Guild Master Ceiling

This post is an addendum to my first review of Karl Kapp's book, Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning.

A basic premise of the book is that gamers are on their way into the workplace and will be changing how we do business. Karl and I have had lively discussions about whether or not girls are gamers. Of course they are. But I would argue not in the same numbers as the boys.

Karl sites statistics that "Seventy percent of the players of the social interaction game The Sims are women under twenty-five," and that the number one game from May 2004-July 2006 was Princess Fashion Boutique.

"Gamer traits are cross-gender traits, because young girls play video games and are growing up in a culture influenced by those games." (p. 25)

Yes, girls play Princess Fashion Boutique in record numbers. And this will change how they think and learn to some degree. Young girls are digital natives. But gamers?

Recently, I conducted a series of interviews with college-aged women. They all had gadgets, relied heavily on their laptops, checked Facebook constantly, and considered themselves "digital natives." But very few of them were/are active game players and, as a rule, did not consider themselves gamers.

I'm concerned that women will be excluded if such a focus is put on gaming skills -- or at least the gamer label. Have you heard the urban legend regarding the big executive who was hired because he was a World of Warcraft Guild Master who had attained some really high level?

The traditional Glass Ceiling will be replaced with a new, but invisible and invincible Guild Master Ceiling.

This past Saturday, there was a Women In Games International (WIGI) Summit at the Austin Convention Center.

In Gamasutra, John Henderson has posted about a summary of a presentation by Dona Bailey. Dona was an early Atari employee (and the only woman at the time) and spoke about women in the gaming industry and provided some specific ideas for getting girls and women more involved in games and gaming.

DebySue Wolfcale, senior brand manager for Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) participated in a panel on Diversity in the Workplace.

As for how to include more women, Wolfcale said her employer, SOE, has realized women players make up a significant part of massively-multiplayer games, the sort they make, and for their sake female game developers are necessary to build the games to attract and keep women playing them.

Furthermore, women are often in roles that hold communities of players together, Wolfcale said, acting as socialite players and leaders of player groups, or guilds. “If we want people to keep playing and paying,” she said, “we have to make sure we're building games that attract women.”

I don't have a conclusion here. I'm just raising some questions.

Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning

Welcome to stop #3 of The Karl Kapp Games, Gadgets, and Gizmos Virtual World Book Tour.

I've grown up with the mentality that it's cheating if I don't read a book from cover to cover. But I have to admit that I used a few cheat codes to read this book. (I just didn't have a lot of time given that I was stop #3 on the tour!)

I suspect the concept of cheats is going to resonate a lot with Boomers and Gen-Xers as a foreign, but thrilling concept. (See Chapter 5: Cheaters Never Win...Or Do They?) It sure did with Tom King over at stop #2 of the book tour....his was just the clever approach I was going to take in beginning this book review. Tom beat me to the punch.

I'm a linear reader in recovery and have been actively learning how to skim books and not feel guilty about it. For this exercise, I was a good doobie, and I read all of Chapter 1, which gives a great background on Boomers, Gamers and the differences between the two.

Then I read the descriptions of each chapter and decided on which ones I would focus. I circled Chapter 6 (moving from creating rigid course structures to small, easily searched nuggets) and Chapter 8 (gamers' expectations of bosses/teachers).

My plan failed me and I just started reading Chapter 2: It's in the Game. (Hey, I can only stray so far from my linear, conforming roots!)

Be sure to read Chapter 2 if you're about to start a new project and need some juice before you start brainstorming. Lots of practical ideas and examples for turning basic teaching points into learning games -- from casual games to teach facts and concepts, to detailed simulations that teach procedures and problem solving. Although I'm not in active instructional design mode for any projects right now, I did jot a bunch of ideas.

Then I started jumping ahead and reading the summary of each chapter. The summaries usually intrigued me enough to go back and read/skim the entire chapter.

Ultimately, I think I actually did read the entire book. Cheat codes and all.

Here's some more thoughts....

Are You a Gamer?

If you were born anytime after 1960, then, technically, you are a gamer.

"A gamer is someone who has grown up in the generation influenced and shaped by video games and technology." (p. 14)

It's not whether or not you played games or still do, it's simply the fact that you were shaped by a popular culture that was shaped by video games.

Karl chunks groups out based on year of birth...roughly a decade at a time. Gamer 1.0s were born between 1960-1970. That's me. But I really don't feel like much of a "gamer." Compared to a Gamer 4.0 (those born between 1991-2000), I'm a bit of an ape (no offense to apes, mind you).

Gamer 1.0ers overlaps with Generation Xers (born between 1965-1979). I was born in 1968. I'm a Gen Xer and a Gamer 1.0er.

Gen Xers are digital immigrants; they did not grow up with the dual technologies of the Internet and video games. But then Karl says this:

"The first generation to be fully immersed in video games and the Internet is the gamer generation." (p. 28)

So, Karl, am I of the gamer generation or am I not?

I feel like I'm floating in this liquid generational gap between the boomers and the gamers...

Workplace Change

"So even if boomers do not leave the workplace en masse, they will most likely be leaving your organization, taking with them a vast amount of knowledge and possibly costing your company dearly if you don't prepare now." (p. 6)

This strikes me as completely foreign. At my current company, I am the OLDEST employee at 39. No boomers here. We're a small company, founded by a couple of Gamers 2.0ers. I'm the Gen Xer who can hardly work a video control to save her life.

Just ask my CTO, who was recently peering over my shoulder as I struggled to figure out how to play a Flash Game. "Wow, you're really not very good at this, are you?"

Cheat Codes & Gaming the System

"But to gamers, cheat codes are not cheating. They are more like help codes." (p. 158)

Bending the rules is fine, if it's not strictly disallowed.

"Successful people learn the unwritten rules of engagement and push those rules, work around those rules, and subvert those rules until they are highly successful." (p. 153)

I agree. And some of them also go on to do illegal and highly unethical or questionable things.

It's a fine line, and Karl makes sure to mention that management must also guide the use of corporate cheats to the ethical benefit of organizations, employees and customers.

Karl recounts a workshop he ran one summer to teach business concepts to middle school kids using the game Railroad Tycoon. The first level objective was to build a park with high customer satisfaction ratings.

One group's satisfaction ratings were through the roof. It turned out they were drowning the unhappy guests, which the game allowed them to do. "It was a little disturbing to me, but to them it was part of the game." (p.157)

Gamers learn to play by the letter of the rules and not the intent. But they're still playing by the rules.

OK. Well, I think "bending the rules" is good. Thinking creatively is good. Working at the edge is good.

But my god. It's bad enough having a boomer in the White House.

Implications for Instructional Design

"Games have a different expectation. They desire instant (or almost instant) learning delivered in an informal manner. They do not want to log into the corporate learning management system, navigate to the desired course, and then page through forty screens to find that one desired piece of information." (p. 165)

Hallelujah! So when can I stop writing these courses? And yet, I'm scared to admit that I don't know if I've got what it takes to do what this generational shift requires. That's way more creativity than I may have in me.

Can someone just write me a page-turner of a course to teach me how to be an instructional designer for the new millenium?

Corporate training departments are set up for the old-school boomer approach to training. Selling a different approach is hard. "We don't have the budget for that." "That's not in our plan." These are actual objections I've heard from clients when I've tried to discuss some alternatives.

And, hey, many e-Learning vendors are vested in the "old boomer" model of training. It's primarily what pays my salary and keeps my company in business. At least this year.

It's a big shift for instructional design. We're no longer talking about designing "courses"; instead we need to talk about helping companies design different strategies (and using games, blogs, wikis, instant messaging -- the gamers' learning tools), about crafting a strategic approach to learning and performance support throughout an organization.

I think we'll need to just send this book along to any prospects before we head out on a sales calls.

Some More Things You Should Know

This book is not just about gadgets, games and gizmos. It's also about using blogs and wikis and other collaborative tools for workplace learning and knowledge sharing.

This book isn't just for learning professionals. Managers, HR, recruiting officers, and consultants working with clients on organizational change initiatives should read it. Karl's provided some great roadmaps for implementing a Knowledge Transfer Process within an organization (see Chapter 11: Getting to the Next Level), with lots of specific examples and practical tips.

The Future

Knowledge Transfer will be an ongoing issue. As the boomers fade away and are completely replaced by a workforce of gamers who change jobs frequently, there will be a constant knowledge drain. It'll be essential that companies have systems in place to capture knowledge as it's being created.

You can read more about Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning at Karl's website. And be sure to buy a copy (or better yet, have your company buy it) for your collection.

GAME OVER

Update: As soon as I published this, I saw a post in my reader from Richard Nantel, CEO at Brandon Hall Research: The Myth of Boomer Retirement. If boomers aren't going to be retiring and leaving the workforce in droves as predicted, then will the knowledge transfer gap be an issue? Do we actually have a lot more time to figure this out?

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.

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....