2. Games in Education
• Games used as motivator (especially boys)
• extrinsic motivator
“finish your work and you can play”
• intrinsic motivator
• “since they like play, we’ll put learning
in their games!!”
13. Raph Koster
• Game Designer
• Ultima Online
• Everquest
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Author
• Theory of Fun for Game Design
14.
15.
16. Wil Wright
• Game Designer
• sims
• sim city
• spore
17. Will wright @ GDC2010
• Said that designing games is like building a
model of the universe. Playing a game is
like testing a world model and learning
from how it behaves.
• like a child playing with water or shapes.
18.
19. • Neither Raph Koster or Wil Wright are
educational game developers - but they
have noticed the potential of games to
teach through modelling some aspect of
the world.
20. Kurt Squire
• Indeed, this kind of learning seems to be
something that games do particularly well
• Kurt Squire’s work with Civilization 3 - just
by playing scenarios in this commercial
game, students gained a deep, meaningful
understanding of history
• not as a series of facts - but as patterns,
relationships - as a model of how history
works
22. David W Shaffer
• Similar idea - game models physics.
(Svarovski & Shaffer, 2006)
• By playing with it, students get a really deep
understanding of physics.
23.
24. • Instead of separating the game from the
learning, it seems that one of the best ways
to teach through play is to have the game
model the learning outcomes.
• By playing with a simulation, students can
attain a deep learning experience.
25. GM Choccoli
• If games teach what games model, then we
can design game mechanics that model
learning outcomes
• by doing that, we can create ‘genetically
modified broccoli’
• Broccolate? Choccoli?
26. • This puts an emphasis on the ‘game’ part of
educational game design.
• Educational game designers need to
understand the game development process.
27.
28. e-Bug
• European Commission project to improve
microbial education
• Two audiences.
• 9-12 year olds
• 13-15 year olds
• Games to be suitable for play in class or at
home.
29. Audience Research
• Mix of desk and primary research
• Amazon for cartoon sales
• Focus groups with Scottish children for
further information
• Looking for kinds of games that they enjoy
that I could see being adapted for e-Bug
30. Genres (13-15yrs)
• Older children ALL liked shooters and
sports games (problem!)
• There wasn’t much consensus beyond that.
• I brought in some games for them to play
and give feedback. They were receptive to
story based games like Monkey Island and
Phoenix Wright.
31. Genres (9yrs)
• Surprisingly, the young pupils were less
opinionated on what they liked.
• Few owned a console. Most played
whatever games were on the popular Flash
portals (Kongregate etc)
• They liked arcadey, simple games and TV
quiz games like Millionaire.
32. Design Process
• Audience research identified possible
appealing genres.
• Pragmatic element
• > 60 scientists & teachers from 18
countries.
• I pitched ideas that I thought would work
and they ruled most of them out for
various reasons
33. Abandoned Ides
• Some ideas were ruled out for political
reasons.
• Sneezing game where you played AS a virus
was ruled out because some thought it
would encourage children to sneeze on
each other!
34. Accepted Ideas
• Two ideas were approved by the team:
• an action / platform game with lots of
specific mechanics tied to LOs for young
children
• a story based game with scenarios tied to
LOs for older children
35. Detective Game
• Narrative / conceptual model based.
• Heavily inspired by the Phoenix Wright: Ace
Attorney games
• Players explore locations, looking for clues,
and speak to characters.
36.
37.
38. Using Scenarios
• The idea was that each learning outcome
would be modelled through story.
• The characters in the game would describe
a mystery and a possible solution.
• The player would use evidence to disprove
these solutions and in the process would
learn the science.
39. For example...
• One learning outcome was:
• You should use a separate chopping
board for meat and vegetables.
40.
41.
42.
43. Another Example
• LO: There are good microbes in the body
and we should look after them.
44.
45. • Using dialogue, the player knows that the
Coach Beveridge character is sick.
• The player is talking to a girl called Allison
who tells the player that Coach Beveridge has
been taking her antibiotic pills.
• When the player confronts Coach Beveridge,
it emerges that he has killed his good bacteria
and that is why he is sick.
46.
47.
48. Younger Children
• For researching the younger audience, we
had decided that:
• we couldn’t use too much text.
• we wanted a visual and simple interaction
• I wanted an interaction that was very
immediate in its response
49.
50.
51. Converting LOs to
Mechanics
• Learning Outcome
• Some microbes are good for us.
58. Some areas that worked
• Enjoyable - why?
• Platform game - good play-testing throughout
• levels tweaked to find appropriate difficulty
level.
• Didn’t ‘feel like’ an educational game
• Detective game - good stories / dialogue
• stories discussed with children before hand
59. • Teachers liked the games
• teacher involvement in conceptual stage
helped ensure their concerns were met
• rolled out to 10 EU countries, more coming
60. • High production values
• good team work / art / management in-house /
personal investment / communication
• Because of the internal art production, we
managed to get 2 man-years’ worth of
production from what would have been 3
months of outsourced work.
61. • Internationalisation
• technical solution that decentralised the
process
• allowed for cultural sensitivity
• allowed for variation in puzzle emphasis
• Google Spreadsheet used to coordinate.
• because the game was data driven, could
pretty much ‘save as’ the spreadsheet straight
into the game.
62.
63. • Some positive knowledge change results
• in platform game, particular areas very
successful in short period of time (30
minutes of play covering multiple LOs)
• in detective game, some encouraging
results but not statistically significant -
too many pupils already aware of correct
answer - need further study
64. Data Collection
• We used two methods of data collection
• The platform game had a built-in quiz show
that asked the players questions. Their
answers were automatically saved in a
database.
• The detective game featured a pre and
post-play web-questionnaire.
65.
66.
67. differences
• found many players post-game questionnaire did
not match their pre-game one
• name differences
• claimed to have played a different mission
• many players did not fill out post-game
questionnaire
• having a questionnaire up front scares of players
68. whereas...
• having mini-quizes at each stage of platform
game meant that even if a player left early,
we still got some data
• also we could validate and contextualise
data (identify player, level, what content
exposed to etc)
69.
70. Some areas of difficulty
• Detective game did not get enough player
testing during development.
• before and after - but not during
implementation (3 month)
• didn’t paper-prototype
• a number of UI issues
• some conceptual issues causing difficulty
for some players
79. • Why would you need to use your phone to
speak to someone who is in the same
room as you?
• Why would you need to use your phone to
change room?
80. How could this happen?
• Phone metaphor was popular with children
pre-development, but we did not use UI
design best practice
81. How could we avoid?
• Paper prototype would have found that the
phone interface wasn’t meeting player
expectations before software development
• Use of cognitive walkthrough and other
established UI techniques could have
identified problems during early stages of
development - before any art or
programming
82. Didn’t allow for player error
• If players accidentally clicked through a
dialogue without fully understanding it,
there was no way of getting that
information
• because the game is totally reliant on
players understanding this content, we
should have considered this.
83.
84. Complicated
• The Detective Game required some
actions from the player that were intended
to emulate the real-world investigation
practices of institutions like the UK’s
Health Protection Agency
• These were functionally unnecessary in
terms of game play and players found them
confusing.
85. Platform game
• Mostly successful
• Hard to adapt because each LO has a hard
coded mechanic
• some of the LOs weren’t successfully
taught because the mechanic wasn’t evident
enough
