Unlike school, learning is fun…
…and therefore, school is not learning.
In the book mentioned in the previous post, Gee states that part of the reason why games are fun is precisely due to the satisfaction of learning them. What this means is that games tap into a common human trait, the satisfaction of mastery. This is neither new nor specific to videogames. It happens, for instance, when driving. Many drivers (myself included) refer to the pleasure of driving. Paraphrasing Steve Swink, when driving a car, you have a very strong sense of the direction, speed and behavior of that car and you feel the effect of steering and controlling it. A feeling of control and mastery. You develop the ability to extend precise control over something outside your body. There is a great amount of pleasure in the learning and eventual mastery of such a motion translation. In scientific terms, cognitive scientists argue that this control is exercised through remapped neural pathways, and when mastery is achieved, your brain rewards you with pleasure.
Games transmit these feelings too. Complex games, when mastered, are deeply satisfactory just because of that mastery. Gradually, the myriad of controls that you need to lookup constantly and keep mistaking, becomes an intuitive process where you think the action and see it on the screen, no longer thinking about buttons or even about your thumbs. This is what my mind process when learning a new game feels like:
Ok, now I need to jump this gap, which is means I must run towards it and then press button 1. There is an enemy on the other side, so I draw my sword with button 2 after completing the jump. I need to attack him, and the attack is with button 3… oh, shit! I ducked! agh! It was button 4!. Ok, button 3 to stand up again, now button 4 to slash the sword. Oh, and I approach a wall, I can use button 1 to jump against it and dive towards my enemy. Ok, that was a cool move… now keep pushing button 4 for more slashing, move here… wow! that was awesome! How did I do that? Did I press 2 and then 1?
At this point I’m exploring the game space, trying to learn the controls as the in-game tutorial instructs me. The example is somewhat inspired by the new Prince of Persia series (altough it could be any other game) because these games offer a very interesting and fine-tuned learning curve for some very complex controls. The theory says that mastering these controls is a great part of the fun. Here’s a figurative line of thought a few days later into the game…
So, there is a crowd of enemies below, the space is ample which suggest an easy fight if I manage not to get cornered. Ok, now I dive from this ledge and do a controlled descent using my dagger to cut this hanging curtain and in the middle of the descent, do a back flip and fall in the middle of the group with my weapons unsheathed. I slash a couple of enemies and then jump over a third one with a back flip, performing an execution move as I fall behind him. Now I’ll use the wall to bounce above another enemy and slash yet another opponent. Since I got at least two seconds, I will actually do the cool backstabbing move, and then quickly turn back to attack the last enemy.
Now I’m proficient in the game space. I think of actions and plan my moves, but no longer think about the controls. The game-pad is an extension of my mind, and my fingers are doing their job on their own. Gee says that when you achieve this kind of mastery, the game is fun. Let me tell you, in a good game, it’s actually exhilarating. Your mastery has immediate results and you see your character on the screen perform amazing feats just as you think them.
But if I’m absolutely proficient, the novelty and feeling of mastery may eventually fade… my brain wants to keep learning and mastering more things! Thus, a good game, will keep a consisting learning cycle in which it teaches the player a new skill, allows her to practice and master it and then moves on to new skills and challenges before she gets bored.
Prince of Persia has a great implementation of this cycle, in which you keep learning moves and techniques until the very end of the game. The design is so conscious of this having-fun-because-you-master-the-controls aspect that, often, after learning new amazing moves, you are presented with in a room with a few of lesser monsters so that you can practice your new skill and recreate on its use. Finally, when you have mastered all the feats, the learning process is over and the fun is over. Thus, the game ends there.
The moral of the story is: learning complex skills is fun. If you are not having fun, chances are you aren’t really learning them, just being exposed.
Good Videogames + Good Learning
Principles of Virtual Sensation, by Steve Swink (Gamasutra)
This is not a very useful comment, but I thought Pablo would appreciate it
It’s amazing how we are capable of learning things like the use of controls in videogames without being conscious of it. For example, a few nights ago a friend of mine was playing Mario Kart DS for her first time at home. At one particular moment she asked me how she could drop objects, and it was like “Errr… I know the answer, but I cannot tell you without taking the console and playing”. Not only we are unconscious of what are we doing when playing, but also we are not capable of remember if we try!
Along the same line, it is also interesting to think about how much time these habilities remain. A few months ago, I found my old GameBoy in a drawer at home. It had been years since I last played with it. To remember old times, I switched it on and started playing Wario Land. In a few minutes, my fingers were playing like years ago, although I could not say which were the moves I was doing. It was funny to discover that I still had the same habilities after so many years.
There is this classic game, called Shadow over Mystara that I used to play a lot in arcade machines. Along with some nostalgic friends, I have also played it a lot in an emulator. We keep in touch and organize a “Mystara Night” every few months.
The point is that, when we come together after many months, none of us remembers how we used to set up the controls. Playing the magician (which requires quick sequences through the 3 buttons controlling the spell menus), I always start the first round with a configuration that seems good enough. I tend to be able to use that new control scheme proficiently although slowly.
But when the battle heats-up well into the game, I start making mistakes with the control scheme. I will need to change a spell quickly and fire it instead, or jump, or whatever. This is my play-by-memory skill kicking in. In that moment I will usually pause the game and reconfigure the controls to the actual scheme that I have always used. I can never recall consciously those controls, but my fingers eventually remind me when I get really immersed into the game. Funny, isn’t it?.
Anyway, this reminds me that it has been a LONG time since I last had a Mystara night.