Video Games & Learning

"Video Games & Learning" is a fantastic little video by Daniel Floyd, who works with game designer James Portnow. The entire style of the video - fun, funny, entertaining but educational - accentuates the point they're trying to make: media (or, topic at hand, video games) can iclude learning at no cost to the fun factor. Here's some notes I jotted down to sort of summarize what was presented:

There's a huge chasm between educational and entertainment games, that's been made into two different industries: video games and the "edutainment"industries. Both sides gave up something: education gave up fun, entertainment gave up ability to benefit their audience.

So how do we make games fun without crazy costs?
Answer: not to educate, to enable or facilitate learning .

People best absorb or assimilate information they are interested in, rather than being forced to learn. The problem with the "education" approach is it tries to make interesting a topic that we just don't care about.

Enter tangential learning: Self-educating, not learning by being taught, but learning by being exposed to things in a context in which they're already engaged in. Take, for example, the movie 300. Not "educational" yet now everyone knows who Leonidas is and it got discussion going. People were exposed to something they didn't even know they were interested in... some googled 300 and ended up reading a Wikipedia article on the Battle of Thermopylae, etc. Call of Duty fans deciding to learn about WWII; Guitar Hero fans learning more about music and genres of music previously unknown to them...

How to do this in games (without automatically always defaulting to history retelling):
- setting up a reference in the game story: a name, a place etc. from real life that gamers become curious about
-  to highlight which elements are not fantasy but based in real-life 1) make everything referential (takes lots of effort and planning) 2) highlight names 3) information or quotations during loading screens 4) objects in game that are clearly referential that gives clues others are as well 5) in-game index like Civ's Civilopedia. What if, instead, games linked in-game to Wikipedia. Properly implemented, these things can add to the depth of the game without being something the players feel they *have* to do... enhancing the play experience without getting in the way of the fun.

Games should be fun. But many game designers are missing out on an opportunity to enrich players' lives, too; to extend engagement with the game product at very little additional cost.

For me these ideas are like a missing link/lightbulb. I think that last is the linchpin, that game designers are missing out on an opportunity to enrich players' lives, too; to extend engagement with the game product at very little additional cost. Don't we lack experts in this, that would benefit industry everywhere in this regard? Truly a win-win all around.

King Leonidas? Why yes, he's so cool and that beard... I just had to devour his Wikipedia article!