Pablo Moreno-Ger’s blog

…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.

Sources:

Good Videogames + Good Learning, by James Paul Gee
Principles of Virtual Sensation, by Steve Swink (Gamasutra)

Haven’t I used that title before?

Just a quick post to remind myself that I’m not dead, that I supposedly maintain a blog and that my vacations haven’t started yet. Mostly bad news.

I’m currently trying to put together all the stuff I’ve done in the last few years about games and learning in a big boring document that noone will ever read but that my advisor strongly feels I should write and won’t allow me not to do it. He calls it a thesis or something like that. Sigh.

This post in TerraNova recently called my attention. The summary is that Second Life is apparently getting rough on issues such as offensive content (namely, violent or child-related porn). The content of both the post and the comments is in the line of the political analysis of the role of Linden Labs in Second Life.

The actual spark that ignited the discussion is the statement on an official post that “our community has made it clear to us that certain types of content and activity are simply not acceptable in any form” and thus they are going to enforce the ban of some material. The main page of Second Life states that “Second Life is an online digital world imagined, created and owned by its residents”. And yet Linden Labs enforces some rules within that world. The post (along with the comments) is an amazing read, with the typical TerraNova level of maturity and depth in the analysis. As always, reading their posts is intellectually enriching, with highlights such as identifying the “our community” phrase as a Marxist reminiscence, or the analysis of SL as an Anarchist Utopia with self-organization through mutual agreement.

However, the topic and the comments entirely miss the point. Second Life might feel like a country with their own currency, politics or culture. A Virtual World with forms of government that may or may not be legitimate. But it is not. Beneath the marketing layer, Linden Labs is a corporation and Second Life is a service (even when you pay for it). The fact that you own Second Life is not true either. The TerraNova post sees a political speech where in fact there is just a sugar coating over an official announcement that they expected would cause some unrest in their politically-minded residents.

The question of what is the role of Linden Labs inside Second Life was brought in a talk I attended about a month ago. In words of Cory Ondrejka (Linden Labs CTO) during that talk, Linden Labs is a corporation and the content is stored in data centers that belong to them. As these servers are located in the US, they are subject to the US law. If there is any kind of illegal content in their servers, they are responsible for it and legally forced to remove it.

And when they do enforce policies, their marketing divisions uses expressions like “our community has made it clear to us”. You cannot interpret this literally and study them as a government because they are in fact a service provider that owns the data centers and they can (and must) enforce rules through their Terms of Service agreement.

Nick Yee once published on his website a very interesting critique on the research methodology on most tests relating aggressive behaviors with videogames. The article is not new, but its main assertions are highly relevant and I still consider it a a must-read. Essentially, it critiques studies that survey for a relation between playing violent games and exhibiting aggressive behaviour. A researcher surveys a number of children and tests whether they like violent games and whether they are aggressive. Seeing a correlation, the researchers takes a leap of faith and states: Playing violent games leads to an aggressive behavior. And it even gets published in a renowned Psychology journal.

Now, the mistake here is to see a causality where there is just correlation. Nick Yee’s metaphor is for researchers going to a kindergarten to study the average age of its inhabitants and concluding that attending kindergarten makes you younger. Aggresive kids like violent videogames would be the right conclusion, not the other way round.

Being a long-time admirer of Yee’s work, I have many times used it to refute similarly poor tests that errouneusly infer causality relations. But this blog entry is not to bash anti-videogame research. On the contrary, I have seen the same flaw in a study in the other direction. Newspiece: Study: Surgeons who play video games more skilled.

The research queried a number of surgeons for past experience playing videogames and checked for higher performance in skill tests, seeing a correlation. I do believe that playing videogames enhances coordination, reflexes and similar. And I would love to see this article as a proof of that idea. Alas, it is not. It has the same problem as the opposite research. Just like the aggressive kids feel attracted to violent videogames, kids with high motion skills will feel attracted to the fast and difficult interaction with videogames. It would follow that, even if videogames could improve the skills of future surgeons, this study is contaminated by the noise introduced by those “higly skilled kids” that simply felt more attracted to videogames (instead of, say, TV) before they became surgeons.

The gaming world is constantly being assaulted with research that infers causality from correlation, and now we see it in the other direction. Correlation may hint the presence of causality, but does not prove it.

It is easy to spot a certain tendency to jump into the game-based learning wagon with a shallow approach that I would summarize as “Kids play videogames, let’s teach kids with videogames”. Sorry guys, but that is not the good position. It is shallow because it observes an effect (kids play videogames) and tries to leverage it (let’s teach kids with videogames) without actually analyzing the cause of the effect. It leads to awful “games”, usually centered on a popular IP (Disney comes to mind) in which you get your average school content and a fancy presentation. And the result is always the same: A boring product in which parents (sometimes schools) invest great sums of money and the box is left on a shelf after failing to capture the attention of the student.

In a column about good writing and stories in commercial games (completely unrelated to game-based learning) Matt Sakey states:

I’d love to see a game like Solaris, or Fiasco, another Lem book – essentially mysteries, both reflect on the inherent unknowability of nonterrestrial intelligence, but are still hard sci-fi that as games would theoretically allow you to kill aliens (Hey, I said innovate fiction, not turn games into homework).

And he hits the nail there. When game-based learning feels like like regular school work it won’t be accepted as a game by gamers.

The correct approach should sound more like “There is something about videogames that fascinates kids, and we should use it to improve our teaching”. Simply stating that games can teach is a gross simplification. There are elements in games that engage the player in a motivational and FUN activity. And those elements (ellusive as they are) are the key to a successful learning experience. We are talking of eye-candy, fantasy, action, challenge, proyection of the self onto the avatar, and, high and above, conflict. Those are the ingredients hat make game-based learning interesting and useful, but the industry tends to forget it and keeps pulling myriads of boring learning products (go to your usual retailer and check the “Educational Software” section).

And I have heard that “some interest is better than no interest” but that is, again, a serious mistake. There is a growing interest in game-based learning which migth become excessive. If ten thousand boring games fail to teach anything, the perception of “games can’t teach, sorry, nice try though” may become generalized and then the idea would die before reaching a mature state. So, if you are working in a game-based learning initiative, please ask yourself: Is my product fun? Would a student play my game outside an educational context? Would he pay for it? If the answer is “no” for all three questions, you should step down or start all over. Successful game companies are those that manage to find out that their game is crap before publishing it.
If you got at least the first question right, you are on the track. Most of us are in that level. It is fun. At least, more fun than regular school and the students love to play it in an educational context.
If you got two positives you can consider your initiative very successful and I would like to hear of your design and how it magically mixes fun and education. Few titles have gone there and they deserve proper recognition.
Finally, if you got three positives then you hit the sweet-spot. Congratulations, you nailed it and went beyond all expectations, reaching a product that competes against state-of-the-art games and yet manages to provide a learning experience. We all dream of getting there, but we are no envious, for your success may unlock the doors to a wider acceptance of game-based learning as a valid learning medium.

This blog is part of the efforts of the <e-UCM> research group to bring online our activity, disseminate our results, and get online exposure.

But, unfortunately, the task is not as simple as it sounds. The members of our group work hard in their corresponding fields (both researching and teaching) and online activity usually comes in just as an after-thought. As long as the group is focused in online education, this is something we should be ashamed of. And yes, we are.

This is the reason why from the beginning of 2007 (call it a new year’s resolution if you will) we have been focusing on the improvement of our web presence. One of the first steps was to bring forward a renewed version of the official <e-UCM> website with updated information, including a publication list and offering drafts of relevant publications for direct download. This step is not finished, although we have certainly improved the quality of the information available there.

Another step (which directly affects me) was the already announced publication of a fresh and renewed website for the <e-Adventure> project and to keep updating this blog. Well, the website is there and this is a blog update. What now?

I would like to post a brief reflection on the game Ayiti: The Cost of Life, which was recently brought by my attention by a friend.

Not an educational game, but rather a serious game with a specific message, Ayiti puts you in control of a family trying to survive in Haiti. The player assigns tasks to the members of the family (go to hospital to improve health, get some education at school, work at the family farm, get a job, etc.) and all these tasks have an impact on aspects such as “Happines”, “Health” and “Education”. You can see the progress of the three needs in bars that fill with care and empty with time.

Ignore the setting for a moment. Think of the actual gameplay based on giving slices of time to different activities in an attempt to keep a number of mood variables high. Yes, correct, we are talking of the best-selling PC game “The Sims”.

In essence, what we get is a (very simplified) Sims clone. But The Sims is about progress in a capitalistic society, gathering riches, getting a better house, flirting with members of the opposite sex, getting a big swimming pool and, long story short, to have the ultimate virtual doll-house representing the ideal of success in western society.

With the same gameplay, in Ayiti the priority is not getting a better swimming pool to attract more friends to your place, but actual survival. You quickly notice how it is not possible to raise a member of the family to be educated, healthy and happy. Most of the family must be doing work shifts most of the time to keep basic subsistance. Altough it is possible to keep a low level in all areas, it is not possible to excel in all of them, and the game is about sacrifice and surviving rather than about fulfilling dreams.

Ayiti transmits a necessary message: The dream we live in The Sims is happening today with 2/3 of the world being so far from it, that survival means success and the dream makes no sense at all.

In game design it is often said that the perception of progress is a key element of interesting games, and in The Sims the progress is reflected on better properties and social relations. Ayiti reflects a reality in which no progress is possible, the best you can do is to avoid failure. Maybe it does deserve the label “educational“.

Disclaimer: Barely any game-based learning in this blog entry, just serious gaming.

I’m not exactly sure why, but all my reading regarding serious games this last couple of weeks has been solidly returning Second Life hits. This blog reflected on IBM’s approach, with employees meeting in Second Life and with its CEO, Sam Palmisano, appearing in the game for a press conference with his own avatar. In fact, that information had previously been covered by Reuters on its permanent section devoted to Second Life . IBM is also trying concepts and holding events within Second Life.

More or less at the same time, Dell announces an in-game store where you can see your computer, configure it, and customise it. When you’re satisfied with the product, you pay and you get it shipped home. I haven’t been able to find out whether you also get a virtual computer to install in your virtual home, which would be a cool (and very cheap for Dell) gift for the customers. In any case the idea is great. It theoretically cuts down prices and provides a more attractive experience. And, even if it does not cut those prices, it gets you a heck of a PR-impact.

Same thing goes for Pontiac, opening Motorati Island in Second Life where they will be selling virtual models of their Solstice brand. I can imagine the potential should they try the same approach as Dell. Come, design your car, throw in the accessories, have a virtual test-drive and then purchase the real car. Our valet will drive it to your doorstep. In case the PR hype, plus the in-game car sales do not provide enough ROI, Pontiac will be renting lots in Motorati Island to companies and individuals willing to establish their own car-culture-oriented business in the island (I wonder if that includes competitors). BTW, both Toyota and Nissan are already doing this, let’s not assume novelty where there is not. The impact here is the sheer size of Pontiac’s initative and the amount of marketing they are dumping in the news.

And in the very same week, learning within Second Life, although not a new idea, is showcased in CNN regarding online education and virtual universities.

So, does this seem like enough hype around a concept? I think the PR people at Linden Labs must be having a huge party. Probably inside the game.

Once again, a long time between posts. I am expecting a rough September but, after that, posts should become more frequent (every other week, I hope). Last post came from Boston, while I was working at the Laboratory of Computer Science (Mass General Hospital / Harvard Medical School).

My research stay was a great experience. It was refreshing to be immersed in a different work culture, which by the way I found much more challenging and interesting than the rather stale model we have in the Spanish academic field. Our paper-publication model, with all its flaws, cheats and bad effects in the quality of our science is substituted with a model based on actual products that work. Mind you, I’m not stating I prefer that model, for I haven’t been working in that context for long enough so as to detect its own flaws.

In any case, it was surprising to meet there, in that product-oriented research facility, a far more open-minded approach to innovation and different things. A token of that was the reaction to my ideas regarding game-based learning. In the “open” and “free” environment of my univeristy those ideas are at least tolerated and, at best, seen as amusing. On the other hand, at the lab the idea was taken as new ideas should be understood in science: “Hey, it might be worthless but it might be a bomb… let’s follow that line and see where it goes”. That’s the best that a plan for introducing things with a bad reputation (that is, games) in a serious process could hope for. And the LCS really had that spirit. I mentioned it during a meal and 48 hours later the Lab had devoted some money to purchasing a promising game. Getting my univeristy to pay for a videogame… well, I don’t even want to think about that.

So, kudos to the LCS for their attitude, thanks for having me there, thanks for listening, thanks for teaching me and, most of all, thanks for involving me. From a professional perspective, those have been the most interesting months in my career so far.

Trauma Center. Ever heard that name mentioned in the context of serious games? Probably not, but it is not your fault because it is not a traditional serious game. It is an actual commercial game developed for the Nintendo DS portable console (a wonderful platform that sacrifices graphics and power for new forms of gameplay via its touch screen). The main objective of the game is to entertain, not to teach, but it is deserves some study from a Game-based Learning perspective.

The game puts you in the role of a young doctor just emerged from the haze of being an intern. You finally made it and you are ready to perform operations on your patients, although your distracted and overconfident attitude may soon get you into trouble. As you perform different operations, a fantastic story unfolds around you.

Gameplay itself is actually quite simple. You are presented with the interior of the patient and a set of tools is at your disposal. You use them by selecting the appropriate tool and making specific gestures. For example, you excise a tumor by selecting the scalpel and cutting along a dotted line around the tumor, or you apply stitches to a wound by selecting the needle and swinging your stylus in a zig-zag motion for the length of the wound.

The game is fun because the operations are not about being calmed, precise and thoughtful. Actually, they are a frenzy, with the clock ticking against you, problems emerging inside the patient and the patient’s condition decreasing at different rates. A mid-level operation will require you to keep under control several steadily growing aneurisms with a nasty tendency to explode, while keeping an eye in the blood that needs to be drained and having to continuously inject substances to to keep the patient’s condition high enough. Bottom-line is: operations are not easy. This is not about making the player comfortable with the procedures, but about pressing to the limit of his skill (some consider they overdid it a bit… indeed, some of the operations are a real nightmare).

In addition to the operations, the story itself also works in the line of providing fun. Soon you see yourself immersed in a bio-terrorist plot and enlist in a counter-terrorist agency of elite surgeons, where you eventually discover your dormant powers that allow you to slow time down if you concentrate enough. And you will certainly need them, for the terrorist bio-attacks grow more and more sophisticated: you will find tiny creatures eating your patients from the inside, rapidly moving tumors, intelligent cells that disguise themselves and so on.

And this is where the criticism may emerge: “It is not realistic!” “The doctors will not learn the proper lessons!” “This can’t substitute a regular class!” Those assertions are correct, although naïve. They miss the point and don’t see the potential. This is a game. It is meant to entertain and its creators never wanted it to be a learning tool. But this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have good learning principles into it.

When challenged with an operation in Trauma Center, I will repeat it many times, devising new strategies, changing the order in which I treat the different problems and trying to figure out the most efficient procedure. While I am trying to master one of these science-fiction procedures, I am repeating to the point of automating several simple tasks such as always disinfecting before cutting, not using certain tools near sensible organs, or performing the eight-step tumor removal procedure without missing a step and in the right order. In addition, I am always being guided by my assistant, who instructs me on the procedures and teaches me about obscure medical terms and treatment names.

The game as it is right now, is just a game. But some slight modifications would turn it into a suitable learning product. And if you are thinking “well, if we remove the oversimplification of the procedures, the magic powers and the terrorist plot, we have a learning game”, I’m sorry, but I think you are wrong. Those should stay, or the game would no longer be fun and there would be no point in playing it.

Leave in the twitch speed, the terrorists, the magic powers, and the potential romance with the assistant. Just modify it so that complex real procedures with lots of steps that must be performed in a specific order are included. The assistant can always guide you through those procedures, but soon you will have to be able to do them correctly and in the right order by yourself. The game doesn’t give you enough time to read what the assistant says if you want to succeed.

And suddenly, the true and often elusive magic of game-based learning, might appear. Medicine students would still understand the procedures as usual: lectures and practical exercises with “real” patients (well, donated corpses). But the step of careful memorization of the steps of the procedures is substituted by the game. If (and only if) you didn’t kill the fun of the game with the modifications, the students will enjoy the game, play on their free time, while in the subway, at night, on the weekend, etc (as I do, and I’m not into medicine). They (we) don’t play it to learn. The objective is to beat the game, to get the highest score on each operation. And in doing so, those procedures are being memorized far more deeply than with any study session.

And this is precisely what would define a good example of game-based learning. Fun. If it is not fun, it is not a game. If it is not a game, it is not game-based learning. If it is not game-based learning, it is just another bunch of boring multimedia content.