The document discusses the educational opportunities offered by mobile social gaming networks. It finds that games can provide engaging learning experiences for disenfranchised youth and foster both hard and soft skills. Players developed teamwork, time management, literacy skills, and even basic business and economic knowledge through game activities like trading and recruitment. The gaming network gave participants a social community and sense of belonging when not in school. It taught them that success requires sustained effort over time. Educators saw potential to build on students' gaming interests and skills to re-engage them in classroom learning.

1. “ONE THING THIS TAUGHT ME IS THAT IF YOU WANT ANYTHING
GOOD IT TAKES TIME AND A LOT OF HARD WORK. I NEVER LEARNT
THAT IN SCHOOL!”
The educational possibilities offered by
mobile social gaming networks.
Nic Crowe – Brunel University

2. Hunting Monsters…

3. Starting Position:
Youth Practitioners and ‘Alternative’ provisions have long
recognised that interventions are more effective when they
start from the ‘every day’ experiences of Young People
rather than attempting to ‘impose’ from outside
(Alanen 1988, Davies 2010, Whelan 2010)

4. Some assumptions:
Contrary to contemporary anxieties:
• Virtual and Material spaces are not distinct – rather they
are porous and young people make and re-make the
material through the virtual, and vice versa.
• For most young people Digital Game Spaces are
‘ordinary’ spaces (Digital Natives as opposed to Digital
Immigrants – Prensky: 2001)
• Digital spaces must be understood as social contexts (in
principle, like any other) where young people spend parts
of their leisure lives.

5. • The ‘realism’ of computer games lies not in the accurate
re-creation of the material world as an aesthetic but in it’s
re-working of material and social processes – Parker
2004
• As material space is increasingly denied to them, Digital
Games offer young people a new arena in which to hang
out – to do many of the things that were once done in
material public spaces
• Compared with many aspects of the School environment,
Games represent a ‘safe’ arena that contrasts with the
‘dangers’ of the material in terms of an arena in which to
engage in or ‘test out’ certain practices and behaviours.

6. Why Games?
Whilst many forms of E-learning have a reputation for being
dull and ineffective, games have developed a reputation for
being fun, engaging, and immersive, requiring deep
thinking and complex problem solving. (Gee 2003)

7. Mobile Games…
• Most young people (9-19) spend as much time playing digital
games as they do doing their homework.
(Livingston and Bober 2005)
• 75% 9-19 regularly engage in social and/or online play
(ChildWise 2009)
• Games industry estimated to be worth $49 billion by end of
2011 – 9.1% annual growth.
(Pricewaterhouse)
• Mobile market predicted to be worth $10 billion
(FutureSource)

8. Monster Hunter
Freedom
• Role-Playing Game
• Multi-player’ 400
missions,1500
weapons, 2000
armour sets
• Trade and
commerce options
• Complex and
immersive narrative
which requires
engagement with the
diagesis and
encourages the
development of in-
game characters.
• Players rewarded for
complex expressions
of ‘social’ and ‘co-
operative’ modes of
play

9. Participants..
• 12 x Year 10 boys who had been identified as
disenfranchised/not attending/excluded.
• Group identified by YOT as ‘likely to offend’ on account of
non-attendance
• „Qualitative study – considered the educational
opportunities offered by the group’s ‘in-game’ and ‘out-
game’ interactions.
• Considered ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills

10. Focus:
• Zhang, Perris and Yeung (2005): it is how students feel
about their learning experience that effects their
engagement with their studies, and that this need not be
based on how they are actually performing.
• Attitudes and Experience
• Literacy
• Self-Esteem
• Confidence

11. Sophisticated Social Arenas
"It's what I try to tell everyone! These games give not only a
good social education, but encourage teamwork, team
building (to form a successful party you will not only need
nice people, but people of different classes, such as
healers and damage dealers), time management skills
(within the game of course), map reading skills, financial
planning (Will I be able afford that spell at lv 20 if I buy this
shiny new sword now), as well as giving a completely
fascinating look at how economies develop. Each title has
it's own in game economy. These are affected by inflation
and demand just as much as any other, so if, say, there is a
high demand for copper bars, and yet they are not in very
good supply, the price, will shoot up.…

12. …clever people can achieve the same effect by artificially
creating demand- buying up all the copper bars in the
Auction house and then selling them for higher. This is on
top of the fact that faction games teach you to deal with
people who are out to get you. Look at „WOW‟. If you are
an Alliance player and you meet a higher level Horde
player (Who would normally shoot on sight, and can't
understand your language), you can use emotes/gestures
(such as dance/smile/plead) in order to convince them to
stop. (This doesn't always work of course).
- Tom (15)

13. PSP – means play almost anywhere
“Yeah the PSP was boss! No kid can afford a Smartphone
cus they don‟t do them on pay-as-you-go so usually we
have to wait until we have a computer or something but this
way we could meet whenever we wanted to. I could play
anywhere. School, bedroom – I even played in Starbucks
once (laughs). But its important Nic. If you have arranged
a hunt the others in your party are relying on you to be
there, and you lose kudos if you let them down.”
- Lance (14)

14. Dealing with the isolation of non-attending
A new space to hang out?
“Its funny, if you don‟t go school you don‟t see no-one – this
made me feel like I still belonged to something. Stopped
me hanging about” Sam (13)
“It gave me something to do in the day – something to
focus on. As I got better I felt better” - Marc (14)

15. New (adult) skills:
“I am like the trader on here. I get the stuff and then sell it
to the others (Laughs) its like a business. But it taught me
to know the value of things. So like, if you price something
too high then no one buys it and you are left with loads of
shit that no one wants. But if you let it go too low, like it is a
rare item or something and you sell it for a few coins, then
you is a mug „aint you. I know it don‟t seem much, but us
kids don‟t get the chance to do this sorta thing… made me
feel grown or something”
– Jordan (14)

16. New literacy?
“As you get further on it gets harder. More and bigger
monsters you know. Then you need the best equipped
hunters and the most experienced ones. We designed
some recruitment posters and leaflets to put online to get
people to join our clan. I used some of them for my English
coursework. My teacher was well surprised” - Lance (14)
“I kept a diary of all my adventures. I used to do it every
night. Only time I ever did that, could never do my
homework, but this was different cos I was interested”
- Si (14)

17. Re-focus
• “One thing this taught me is that if you want anything
good it takes time and a lot of hard work. I never learnt
that in school!” – MikeB
(13)
• “Mandy, my worker, helped me see how some of the stuff
I did on here could help me in school. It seems obvious
now, but no one gave us the chance before” - Jon (13)
“All kids want is to be interested. Once I got interested,
and my teachers were interested in me, and in what I was
good at, I didn‟t see no point in messing around” - Manni
(13)