Play with Learning

Games teach us nothing

playing games

There is an unending stream to commentators praising or damning the educational potential of games in equal measure but hard, empirical evidence is still hard to find.  I thought I’d write a quick summary of papers for either camp.  Those in favour claim that games are “ideal learning environments” and  players demonstrate an “innate ability to learn and to see how to take it forward themselves.” However, today I’ll focus on a few of those arguing against games and learning or a least suggesting that the case is far from proven.

It’s worth reiterating that solid independent evidence is largely absent: Julian Sefton-Green, points out that “the absence of empirical observations or audience studies or good industry-based research only helps the texts float free in this speculative ether” (‘Changing the Rules? Computer Games, Theory, Learning and Play’ Review Essay Discourse: The Cultural Politics of Education Vol. 26.Nos3. Sep 2005 pp:411-419)

Rae Condie and Bob Munro in their 2007 report for Becta (pdf) say “There is limited robust research on the use of computer games (both general commercial products and those specifically created for educational purposes) and the application of gaming skills and techniques in educational contexts.” (p50)

And most damning for the supporters of game-based learning is Professor David Buckingham’s supplement to the Byron Review (pdf).  He notes that “Many claims have been made about the beneficial effects of computer games, particularly in respect of education; although here too, such claims are far from adequately supported by evidence … This work is frankly very limited in its empirical base – [J P ] Gee bases his arguments solely on his own game play and that of his six-year-old son, while [Marc] Prensky’s claims about the beneficial effects of games are little more than anecdotal.”

Even where studies exist, it is worth remembering that it is difficult to remain entirely objective about about such an emotive subject.  Many of the enthusiastic proponents of game-based learning inject so much energy into it that it is bound to have a positive effect, in just the same that a lover of Shakespeare is likely to present and leave a favourable impression of the Bard.  In 2009, Alain Lieury, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Rennes comprehensively demolished claims that brain training games were any better than even the humble paper and pen for increasing brain ‘power.’ This doesn’t negate the value of the activity’s outcome but it does remind us that the media is just another tool in the hands of expert teachers and no more special than television programmes, theatre shows, interactive whiteboards or books in their turn.

The other aspect to recognise is the Hawthorne Effect, that is the positive influence being studied has on the participants.  In such circumstances people tend to perform better simply because someone is a) watching and b) investing time and effort on them.  It is a powerful motivator.

And finally, although there are many examples of games complementing traditional methods, there is little, if any evidence to support the claim that games can improve learning entirely on their own or to be more precise, that they offer any learning that can be useful outside the game itself.

In my next post, we’ll look at the evidence that supports games for learning.

Games, Narrative & Storytelling

storyteller

Following my series on narrative formats, I thought it worth thinking a little about the relationship between narrative, storytelling and games more generally.

Storytelling and narrative are central components in many forms of entertainment.  In traditional dramatic media, the authored story engages the viewer emotionally through a set sequence of predetermined pieces of information, like beads on a string.  If the term ‘story’ describes characters, events and plot, then ‘narrative’ describes how the story is told.

The relationship between narratives and games is well documented yet it remains contentious.  At the heart of the stormy relationship is the apparent contradiction between predetermined storytelling and user control, and existing and emergent story lines.

At one end of the scale, the use of traditional narrative structures within games takes its inspiration from classic literature and Hollywood and delivers finely crafted, but largely fixed, story lines in which the player has a walled garden of opportunity.  At the other end, hypertext narrative suggests stories that emerge entirely according to the user’s interactions with the game environment.

Commercial computer games rarely choose one of the extremes when approaching narrative.  Instead, they seek to balance participation with presentation.  This judgement is not purely artistic, there are serious pragmatic considerations with delegating control to the user or not.  Given story lines provide context and player-character motivation as well as helping to control the pace of the user experience and providing respite in the activity.  However, almost all single-player games structure play around a narrative containing a clear goal, some ultimate triumph and a defined finale.

‘Serious’ games have clear objectives for player achievement that are transferable to spaces outside the game world; they are rarely ends in themselves but mechanisms to improve skills in other domains.  Serious games tend to provide virtual facsimiles of their target environment and its behaviour to facilitate easier transfer.  Central to this portrayal is the structured, and therefore restricted, presentation of events, actions and consequences: within serious games, the role of the narrative becomes more pronounced.

However it is not just games, serious or otherwise, that benefit from the effective combination of storytelling and control. Just about any activity that involves communication benefits from the right balance between receiving and doing.  Get it right and the user feels part of the experience, get it wrong and they remain separate and disengaged.

Exploring Interactive Narrative – Simultaneous

I had thought that I would be able to conclude the series on interactive narrative with a flourish talking about 2-screen TV, this being the season for reality shows and all.  Alas, for reasons known best to the broadcasters, this year’s incarnations of Strictly Come Dancing, The Apprentice and others are bereft of the social media accoutrements that they enjoyed last year.

simultaneous narrative

2-screen TV describes a version of simultaneous narrative that complements and supports ‘live’ events.  It is a situation whereby the audience ‘participates’ in a parallel but linked environment.  The BBCs’s Apprentice Predictor was typical.

The Apprentice sets Twitter alight every broadcast.  The target audience are particularly network-savvy and opinionated.

Recognising that the community already existed, was engaged and vocal, the BBC gave them somewhere to gather – the Predictor website.  Although ‘live’ for the duration of the series, the Predictor came into its own during the broadcast with viewers able to comment on the proceedings and in a beautiful playful way, attempt to predict who was going to be fired.

Roo Reynolds wrote about it and included this video clip of the Predictor in action:

strictly social

Another BBC show, Strictly Come Dancing, created Strictly Social as a vehicle to support simultaneous activity during the broadcast.  It provided a structured focus for chat, comments and audience scoring.  Comically, it also offered the facility to cheer and boo, virtually.

The fact that the participation wasn’t acknowledged in the broadcast (in any more meaningful way that advertising the existence of the site), let alone influencing the judging did not detract from the audience’s pleasure – it put them in touch with thousands of like-minded individuals to create a unique shared event.

Lots of shows now host simultaneous online communities that chatter away during the broadcast (although one might argue they are not providing anything more than Twitter or Facebook except channel advertising).  However, Channel 4′s Seven Days actually allowed users to communicate with the onscreen participants for real.  Their ChatNav website offers a direct line to the show’s stars and promises to influence the course of events.

In real life, Twitter has provided a ‘back channel’ for conferences for some time. It enables audiences to discuss the presenter’s current topic in the background.  It can be a highly disruptive activity – in both a positive and negative way.  At its best, audience comments can be incorporated into the presentation, either in the form of discussion or to help the presenter tailor the talk more appropriately.  At its worst, it can fatally undermine the presenter’s talk by damining it with a barrage of criticism.

What all these illustrate is the ability to engage an audience without necessarily offering them any real control but the fellowship of community instead.  And that community writes its own story and defines its own narrative.

The whole Interactive Narrative series is:

• Linear narrative
• Parallel narrative
• Non-linear narrative
• Branching narrative
• Dynamic narrative
• Simultaneous narrative

P.S. If anyone can offer an explanation for the premature demise of 2-screen TV from UK broadcasting, please let me know.  c

Creativity, Wooing Women and Disneyland

The evolutionary psychologist, Geoffrey Miller, has published many papers speculating about the development of human creativity – that is, why would we evolve in such a way that we create apparently wasteful artefacts such as art, poetry, humour and music?  According to Miller it is all about the Mating Mind – it’s peacock feathers and courtship or as John Keating in Dead Poets Society says, it is “to woo women.”

the magic kingdom

Now a new study suggests it might not be about sex at all.  Or at least not all about sex.  Research (pdf) published in the International Journal of Tourism Anthropology (yes, really), suggests that Disneyland, as the epitome of popular culture, storytelling, music and dance, tells us all sorts of things about entertainment, and it has nothing to do with woo-ing.  Unless you have a thing for mice.

The paper proposes that rather than being about courtship, the creative aspects of the human brain and the behaviour they provoke is all about passing on information between generations; it is how parents play with their children, how society bonds and how it develops communally. “The brain circuitry involved in both the generation of, and response to, these traits was selected for because it enabled parents to increase their fitness by increasing their ability to influence their offspring” say the authors Craig Palmer of the University of Missouri, Columbia, and Kathryn Coe of the University of Arizona.

This idea of entertaining culture being part of child development ties in with the idea that play is part of a training ground for adaptability more than more obvious role-playing.  In his book The Ambiguity of Play, play theorist, Brian Sutton-Smith argues that the dynamics of play mirror the biological processes that lead to adaptive variability, that is, play is characterised by quirkiness, unpredictability and redundancy.

By linking family behaviour with the activities associated with these theme parks, Palmer and Coe are connecting community bonding with play and reiterating the importance of shared parent-child amusement.  Maybe going to the Magic Kingdom is more like entering the Magic Circle afterall.

1 in 3 a gamer

gamer

On the MCV website today, the UK trade body, UKIE, speculates that 1 in 3 of UK population is now a ‘gamer.’*

I’m sure they are attempting to challenge and dispel the stereotype of the teenage boy hunched over a console in his bedroom. It’s the games industry’s attempt to mainstream and normalise gaming. Changing the perception of the ‘typical’ gamer from the ghetto of adolescents to middle-aged woman is (possibly) shrewd marketing – it creates an air of respectability, permanence and familiarity – “see, games are not so bad after all!” it says.

But reports like this irritate me. It’s difficult to fully explain why. I suspect it is because I regularly have to respond to people contesting such hysterical reporting. It’s to do with definitions of gamer such as ‘someone who had played a game on a mobile, handheld, console, PC, Internet or interactive TV at least once in the last 6 months.’(BBC, 2005, Gamers in the UK: Digital play, digital lifestyles – which claimed 59% of the UK are gamers). Their problem is this: playing an occasional game no more defines me as a Gamer than writing a holiday postcard makes me a Writer.

playing an occasional game no more defines me as a Gamer than writing a holiday postcard makes me a Writer

The long and the short of it is there is a world of difference between the typical Call of Duty player and someone casually dabbling in Farmville.

People wouldn’t be half as upset if they weren’t blindly categorised with obsessive gamers. Attempting to ‘civilise’ the stereotype of gamer by incorporating such wildly different usage patterns is rather optimistic because only the hardcore proponents are comfortable with the label. It’s not a helpful way to encourage a more positive attitude towards gaming.

It’d be much better if we celebrated the fact that one in three are finding time to play and having a positive experience from it. Now, that feels like something worth a headline.

* Incidentally, there’s no source or evidence attributed to the claim but others have suggested similarly high figures.

Exploring Interactive Narrative – Dynamic

dynamic narrative

So far as we’ve considered interactive narratives, all the models have had one thing in common – a predetermined ending.  Like it or not, the authors of the experience have, more or less, decided when it ends.  Dynamic narratives offer users object-oriented storytelling which extends for as long as the user wants or the narrative elements allow.

These dynamic experiences may contain discrete storylines (in the form of implicitly linked events) but have multiple connections to other event nodes built into them.  This allows the user to construct a narrative at will and where the relationship between characters or the plot revelation unfolds unpredictably.

This model potentially provides a high degree of personalisation because it opens the door to optional elements.  Of course, you may want all users to see all the pieces regardless of the sequence but this ‘pick and mix’ approach is the essence of user-defined journey.  In learning terms, this is illustrates the user’s ability to choose components between an initial diagnostic and a summative assessment.

Finally, experiences without end.  In games such The Sims, without declared goals or a finite number of prepared events,  there can be an implied or emerging narrative as stories evolve from a dynamic play environment.  These open-ended experiences develop a continuing story through the behaviour and interactions of characters and forces within the milieu.  The unfolding events are entirely determined by user actions and world rules – that is things happen according to fixed algorithms but are conditional on unpredictable use.

Although simulations and game worlds may not contain pre-authored dramatic events, they create their own storylines.  Lisbeth Klastrup describes them as “tellable events…which would retrospectively make good stories” (pdf).  In these unending stories, the user can play forever but it is arguable that without the imposition of goals, the experience never reaches a satisfying conclusion – something that a good author always delivers.

The whole Interactive Narrative series is:

• Linear narrative
• Parallel narrative
• Non-linear narrative
• Branching narrative
• Dynamic narrative
• Simultaneous narrative

Exploring Interactive Narrative – Non-linear

As an alternative to the different routes between common events offered by parallel paths, non-linear narratives offer the user the chance to control the order of the stages between the beginning and the end of the experience.

non-linear narrative

Again all the content is predefined but the user can sequence the material in a manner of their choosing, rather like connecting assorted lengths of pipe.  Although every viewer receives the same introduction to the narrative and, in most cases, the same ultimately successful conclusion, they choose their own route through the elements.

Each story segment has to be self-contained without any dependency on prior experiences because of the inability to know where the user is coming from but collectively the elements work like a jigsaw puzzle to present the full picture.  Puzzle adventures such as Myst demonstrate this approach by offering a free roaming experience through related challenges.  Only at the end, when all the pieces have been explored is the storyline fully understood and the conclusion sensible.

The random rearrangement of elements is the basis for films such as Momento and, more recently, Inception but in traditional media it is the author who determines the sequence.  If they do it well, they seed each sequence with sufficient clues to simultaneously reward and tease the viewer.  These gentle interdependencies help reinforce the experience.  The educational thinker John Dewey identifies the educational importance of continuity by arguing that every experience takes something from previous events and modifies the perception of those that come afterwards.  Most valuable experiences only “live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences” he says in his book Experience and Education (p28) [summary].

The crucial aspect of this non-linear model is its ultimate need for completeness: although it doesn’t matter what order the user examines the content, for it to make sense, they have to see it all.

The whole Interactive Narrative series is:

• Linear narrative
• Parallel narrative
• Non-linear narrative
• Branching narrative
• Dynamic narrative
• Simultaneous narrative