The Game Learner

Fuchs, M. (2001) Expositur – A Virtual Knowledge Space (Theory). Retrieved May 25, 2008 from Syl.Eckermann website http://syl-eckermann.net/expositur/theory.html

I came across some additional information written by Mathias Fuchs about this project that raised a few more ideas worth quickly sharing.

Fuchs discusses the power and nature of games and how they approached the purpose of the project.

“Umberto Eco proposed to investigate certain works of literature as ludic machines. These texts would work as structural units, whose purpose is, to get the reader involved in a game of words. The activity of reading would therefore resemble the process of playing a game – as opposed to the more teleological task of understanding a story. It seems that computer games, too, can be understood either as narrative devices or as ludic machines”

“Ludites state that the act of playing the game is an activity which is often driven by joyful improvisation. Especially when the elements of chance and vertigo… are predominant in a game, there is no need for a narration. Throwing the dices or going on a roundabout are such games. New media in general and computer games in particular inherited the twofold nature of games. They contain narrative aspects and ludic aspects at the same time.”

“When we started working on a computer game about Viennese museums we visited many museums and tried to find out what a museum-goer is actually doing. Does he learn about a scientific field? Is he led by a narration? Does he randomly drift through halls and have his eyes wonder around amongst miraculous objects? Does the visitor always want to keep a sense of orientation? What is the potential use of loosing  orientation? Is predictability the death of the marvel?”

A few quick responses – I’d say that narration and play aren’t mutually exclusive and narration offers motivation to progress through the game by bringing greater emotional connection. (Not always of course)
I like the term “joyful improvisation” – it seems to embody the concept of “play”

“Even though the virtual museum “Expositur” tells about objects and processes, even though there is a semantic framework and an underlying logic structure our knowledge space leaves ample room for alternative readings, it encourages the user to define their private paths away from the main roads. It requires the visitor to set up his personal speed, pace and rhythm for the access to information, for contemplation and for sheer surprise”

Contemplation/reflection is also something I haven’t thought much about yet – this I guess slots well into constructivist approaches (as do large chunks of this project even though I choose to associate it more with cognitivist theory given the deliberate designing of information to be more processable. )

On the homepage of this section of this website is a nice summation of the intent of this project:

fuchs-eckermann: ‘We are looking for something which Friedrich Nietzsche labelled “Gay Science”, ["Fröhliche Wissenschaft"] a mode of experiencing knowledge in a joyful as well as thoughtful manner. Nietzsche thought that you can only come across important insights if you discover them when “dancing”. And that’s precisely what the users of our computer game have to do. They have to move in order to find out facts, they have to dive and swim to get deep into certain areas of knowledge and they have to dance around to discover unexpected aspects of a topic.’

Following this methodology, the user of the virtual museum has to jump into a water zone in order to hear about the extinction of an ancient fish once populating the Danube River. The user has to operate triggers and barriers to learn about the dangers of machinery provided by the Technical Museum. Or he/she has to walk to down a spiral staircase to reach the hall of Sigmund Freud’s subconsciousness ["Die Traumdeutung"]

Yep, it’s this old hobby-horse again but I still believe that FPP/FPS games can prove useful in education. Research into this field is still a little scant but I have found some useful stuff – not just about using these games in military training either.

This is the proposal that I’ve put together for a uni project to investigate these options – now I have a whopping great 21 days to put together the 6400 words I’ve promised to deliver (and 2 game prototypes – or at least designs)

Title:
Creating the First Person Learner: Educational Applications of the First Person Shooter game genre.

1. Abstract
Gameplay in First Person Shooter (FPS) games is generally highly structured with the player given limited options in terms of the paths they can take and the decisions that they can make. They are often taught a specific skill, practise it for a period of time and when they have adequately demonstrated it, they are given progressively more advanced skills.

This often reflects students’ initial experiences of Vocational Education and Training (VET), during which they spend large amounts of time methodically developing foundation skills and knowledge in their chosen discipline.
This proposal describes a study that aims to investigate the potential uses of First Person Shooter style games as learning tools for students in the VET sector. It will centre around identifying the unique characteristics of the FPS genre and examining ways in which varying educational approaches might be applied to the design of FPS style games for these learners.

2. Introduction
While the use of computer games in education has been widely researched in recent years (Prensky, 2006), a significant focus of this research has been on the development of higher level skills such as problem solving and collaboration in third-person perspective games and particularly virtual worlds such as Second Life. (Kay, 2007)

Much less attention has been paid to the first person perspective genre, typified by the highly popular (and sometimes controversial) First Person Shooter. An initial scan of educational and games research however has indicated that this genre possesses a number of relatively unique characteristics that mesh well with behaviourist, cognitivist and even constructivist approaches to education.

Behaviourist.
Robyler and Havriluk (1997) point out that among the “needs addressed by directed instruction” (their term for the Behaviourist approach) are “making learning paths more efficient… especially for instruction in skills that are prerequisite to higher-level skills” and “performing time-consuming and labor intensive tasks (e.g., skill practice), freeing teacher time for other, more complex student needs”.

In 2005, Oliver and Pelletier devised a methodology which permitted a detailed analysis of how people learn from particular instances of game play. They compared a player of an FPS game (Deux Ex) who played a level having previously used a training level with one who had not. Unsurprisingly, the player who had played the heavily structured and repetitive training level first progressed through the level far more quickly than the second player and also mastered a number of essential skills that the second player did not.

Cognitivist
In 2001, Fuchs and Eckermann developed Expositur – ein virtueller Wissenraum, a game based collaborative project showcasing ten Viennese museums. This first person perspective knowledge space, built using the Unreal FPS game engine, made use of loci, a place based mnemotechnique dating back to the ancient Greeks, to enhance the meaning of its virtual museum exhibits by “connecting seemingly unrelated imagery to gain insight into visual similarities and connotations”(p.84).

They considered “the freedom of the user to go his or her own way in the virtual environment as an important feature that allows for individually shaped relational networks inside a complex field of knowledge”(p.84), which ties in well with Ertmer and Newby’s description of knowledge acquisition under Cognitivism as “a mental activity that entails internal coding and structuring by the learner”. (1993, p.58).

Constructivist
Some researchers have also investigated the use of FPS games to develop higher level skills in decision making and problem solving using authentic and immersive scenario based learning approaches commonly found in the constructivist approach to education. (Colvin, Clark & Mayer, 2007). Barlow and Lewis from the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) presented a paper to the SimTecT conference in 2005 discussing their use of a customised FPS game (Operation Flashpoint) to develop and examine the tactical decision making skills of ADFA students in a variety of authentic scenarios.

I believe that elements from all of these approaches can be successfully integrated into an FPS based learning game, whether it be a drill based reinforcement of key concepts, using the arrangement of information in three dimensional space as a cognitive aid or engaging students with an authentic and immersive scenario based learning experience.

3. Methodology
This project will draw on the ADDIE instructional systems design model. This is a five stage process involving Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation and represents “a dynamic, flexible guideline for building effective training and performance support tools”. (Wikipedia, 2008) Given time and resource constraints, the project will focus on the first three stages of the ADDIE process.

In the Analysis phase I will initially seek to answer a number of questions which will give me a better idea of the strengths of the FPS genre, suitable content and activities for the games, evaluation strategies and pedagogical approaches to developing these games. Given my stated aim of examining games suitable for VET students, this will initially involve identifying particular types of structured tasks that would be appropriate to this form however all options will be considered as they arise.

Some of the key questions to be considered are:
What is the anatomy of an FPS game?
How do FPS games differ from third person perspective and virtual world games and what advantages do they offer?
How can FPS games be educational?
What kind of educational approaches lend themselves to this type of games based learning?
What are the factors that might determine the most appropriate target audience for an FPS based learning game?
What impact might game violence or destruction of virtual objects have on the learning experience?
In what circumstances might game violence or destruction of objects be appropriate in a learning activity?
Do single player and multiplayer games support different educational approaches?

A number of game design questions will also be considered including:
To what extent does the level of realistic representation of the learners’ environment affect their engagement with the game?
What makes a game enjoyable and what makes a player want to play a game repeatedly?

In answering these questions I will draw on existing research into the use of games in education in general then focus on the use of FPS games and environments specifically.

I have a growing list of game oriented resources at http://del.icio.us/colsim/edugames
which will be my first port of call. From there I’ll also look into writing from Marc Prensky, James Gee, the Serious Games Initiative, Constance Steinkuehler, Jack Thompson and other games in education writers and theorists as a starting point.

I will also make contact with Barlow and Lewis at ADFA and teachers at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment, a respected game design school in Canberra.

Based on the findings of this research, I will develop design statements for and build prototypes of two small games using FPS Creator, a game development software package. These games will serve to demonstrate some of the possible practical applications of the FPS game genre in education.

5. Results and Discussion
Assessment of this project will centre around a final report which documents and discusses the outcomes of this research. This report will examine the methodology used and outline the answers found to the questions listed earlier. It will consider the success or failure of my attempts to integrate learning strategies into FPS based games and consider approaches for future developments of educational games.

During the course of the project I will regularly discuss the use of games and particularly FPS games in education by posting observations and reflections on my edublog at http://gamelearner.edublogs.org. This reflection process will enable me to formulate my ideas and seek feedback from the wider games in education community. I will include a summary of these posts as an appendix to the report.

I will also include an annotated bibliography of the six most significant publications that I find in my research .

Due date:
June 13, 2008
Final Report – Methodology and findings
4000 words
50%

June 13, 2008
Annotated Bibliography (6 x 200 words)
1200 words
15%

June 13, 2008
Reflections
1200 words
15%

June 13, 2008
Game prototypes x 2
N/A
N/A

Easy right?

Well, it’s the beginnings of one anyways – I’ve gotten a little stuck.

I’ve been working on a game to be used as an orientation to the services of our team – currently known as the Flexible Learning Solutions team. It’s being built using a nifty piece of software called FPS Creator (First Person Shooter Creator) which allows you to create first person perspective 3d games with a mostly drag and drop interface.

Here are a couple of walkthrough videos that I’ve made about it so far.

I’m now trying to document the whole game so I have a better idea of exactly what it is that I need to complete it. I’m using the suggested Game Design Document from The Computer Game Design Course book that I’ve mentioned here before.

This is what I have so far.

Exploring the CEE

Producer: Flexible Learning Solutions

Version 1.0

Chief editor: Colin Simpson

Game concept:

A first person perspective exploration of the services of the Centre for Education Excellence – first stop, the Flexible Learning Solutions (FLS) team.

Game synopsis:

You are a teacher at the Canberra Institute of Technology, vying for the teacher of the year award against your arch-rival Peta Perfect. Use the skills and resources of the FLS team to enhance your teaching, improve your students average marks and satisfaction with the course and win the trophy.

Gameplay elements and features:

• complete 3D version of the CEE building at Southside.

• Relevant, real-world CIT based scenarios

• interact with 3D models of FLS team members

• learn all about flexible learning and how it can work for you

• watch videos, read guides – all inside the game

• you decide the best path to take

Market consideration: CIT teachers and staff

Platform: PC

Story synopsis:

It’s the first day back at CIT of the new year. Classes start in two weeks and tells you and your office-mate, Peta Perfect, that this year’s Teacher of the Year award will be decided based on student satisfaction and marks.

You have a friendly rivalry with Peta, who has won the TOTY award for the last 2 years running and you would also like to make some parts of your subjects more engaging for your students.

One of your colleagues asks you to do a quick favour for them and collect something from the Flexible Learning Solutions team while you are visiting the Centre for Education Excellence at the Southside campus. From here you start to get an understanding of the ways FLS can help you to enhance your teaching by interacting with the FLS team members and carrying out tasks.

Each FLS team member has expertise in a particular aspect of flexible learning and the more FLS team members you talk to and the more tasks you complete, the higher your student marks and satisfaction levels get and the closer you get to the Teacher of the year award.

Can you get there before Peta Perfect does though?

Look and feel:

Exploring the CEE has a fairly naturalistic look and feel, attempting to replicate the actual environment that the CEE is found in as closely as possible, while incorporating some changes to the space to enhance navigability.

The space is well lit and walls around each team member’s area are colour coded with subject matter related icons for easier identification. These colour/icon combinations are also used to make objects in the FLS office (such as folders or cd-roms) more easily relatable to the respective subject areas.

Game objective:

The ultimate objective is for the player to be more familiar with the services and information provided by the Flexible Learning Solutions team.

In the game, the player’s goal is to win the Teacher of the Year award.

Game mechanics:

Players are able to increase their score for student satisfaction and grades by interacting with FLS team members, gathering information, completing tasks within a certain time and correctly answering questions.

Menu systems:

Exploring the CEE features an opening menu allowing the player to begin a new game, load a saved game or exit. This menu can also be accessed at any point during the game by pressing the ESC key and during the game it includes the option to save the game or return to the game.

Controls:

This game uses conventional computer game controls, namely the keyboard and mouse. The player uses the mouse to control the camera (their view of the 3D environment) and the keys to move through the space and interact with objects.

In-game information:

A HUD (head-up display) provides information about the players current student marks and level of student satisfaction. During tasks it will also display time remaining or number of objects obtained/required.

Character movement and interaction:

The specific keys used for the character to move and interact with objects/other characters are:

• A = left

• W = forward

• S = back

• D = right

• Space = Jump

• C = crouch

• T = open chat window

• Enter = Use/Interact with object

The player can trigger certain actions (such as picking up an object or playing an audio/video file) by moving close to the object.

Character health and power:

Characters in this game can’t be hurt and have no specific powers. They accumulate points for student marks and student satisfaction based on the completion of tasks and these points are displayed in the HUD.

Camera systems:

The camera view is controlled by the player using the mouse. It offers a 360 view of their environment in any direction. It maintains a fixed perspective (i.e no zooming).

Gameworld:

Game activity takes place in the A block building of the Southside campus of CIT. In attempting to keep the game environment as free as possible and offer the player the widest range of choices, it uses a sandbox model of gameplay, in which the player is (mostly) able to choose their own tasks from a collection.

Game physics:

The player is able to walk at a modest pace, jump up onto tables and across approximately 3 metres. Inanimate objects can be set to be static or active – static objects don’t move if push while active objects do.

Non-player characters:

These represent CIT teachers (and students ?) as well as members of the FLS team.

Head of Dept

Peta Perfect

Colleague teacher (how many? – up to 6?)

Student(s? – how many?)

Colin

Marg

Bec

Helen

Aaron (or Dan?)

Len

Equipment and effects:

Folders containing information about the 6 specialisations of the team

CD Roms which trigger movies/audio files

Trophy

Key to open doors to rooms containing the bonus points?

Animation sets:

Machinima movies setting up story and interactions between the player and the FLS team members.

Opening movie – rivalry between player and Peta Perfect is established, Teacher of the Year conditions set out by Educational manager.

You can also read a little more about the underlying educational design theories in the document attached to this post, which was a uni assignment last year.

I have a few problems at this point. I’m very mindful of the need to keep this game relatively simple, as it’s as much of a learning experience for me and the team in game design as anything. I haven’t figured out where to physically locate the player’s character – the offices used in the video are actually those of our Curriculum dept. I’m leaning towards putting the teacher (and the teachers colleagues) in another building – though I don’t know if it’s connected to us or not.

I may also need up to 6 colleagues for the teacher to have as starting points for the tasks, which begin when they come over and talk to the FLS team members. Where to put these teachers – and perhaps a student might be nice as well – is another question. How does the teacher get from their office to our building? I’d like to keep it naturalistic, so walking from a connecting building sounds reasonable.

The question of how the teacher accumulates their score is another big one – are they given an object (eg a folder or a key – which might open a previously inaccessible area) on completion of a task or is the score just automatically incremented. (Which I’m not 100% sure I can even do in the game software anyways).

How in depth do the scenarios behind the tasks need to be. I can see the value in having them reflect the actual reasons that teachers might come to us for help but these may be relatively complex to explain while still keep the momentum of the game moving.

What are the best ways to present information to participants in these games – given that this is a showcase, I guess we’ll try a little bit of everything to see what works best.

Lots of things to consider really.

Exploring the CEE design statement

I went out and treated myself to an Xbox 360 during the week and based on the growing mountains of praise, the first game I bought was the Valve bundle The Orange Box. This includes Half-Life 2, a couple of extra HL2 episodes, Team Fortress 2 and most importantly of all, the game I’ve been hearing oodles about, Portal.

This is quite simply one of the most brilliant, entertaining and enjoyable games I’ve ever played. It’s not a long game – I got around 8 hours of gaming out of it but every moment is better than the last. It’s set in a slightly futuristic lab complex where you are asked by a friendly sounding computer voice to complete a series of puzzles using a portal gun that you use to move between otherwise unreachable areas.
If you complete the tests, there is the promise of cake at the end.

This video should give you the gist of how this works.

The writing of this game is simply superb – your only interaction (as it is) is with the computer voice running the tests and some other robots along the way. There is a bitingly dark and funny edge to the whole experience which grows the further through the tests you get – a very corporate “you’re very important to us but this test will probably kill you” kind of thing. The strength of the computer character goes to show how important this is in making a good game.

The puzzles themselves get progressively more mindbending and force you to think about using space and physics in your environment in ways I’ve never had to before in a game. (Not that you need to be a science nerd or anything).

Most of all, it’s just a lot of fun and even the end credits are entertaining, with a specially written song by the computer that sums everything up nicely.

It’s not surprising that this game is popping up at the top of best games of 2007 awards all over the shop.

Best of all, I haven’t done the bonus levels yet.

After reading about the game, I have to say I’m a little interested, so I’m signing up and taking off.

I’ve created my avatar (which I can’t seem to find to share with you but it’s a rather groovy looking manga-style boar) going by my standard username of colsim. My plane is the Black Betty – if you see me in the skies, say hello

Signup for the game here.

(screenshot only)

Looking at something a little lighter today – this is a great example of unlikely ways to bring the fun to drill and practice typing exercises – introduce killer zombies to the equation.

Typing of the Dead is a modified form of House of the Dead, an arcade based shoot-em-up (or shmup, if you will) game that took the player through a zombie infested game using guns. It’s been modified here so that instead of shooting, you have to type certain keys or whole words (even phrases) to get past them.

(My apologies in advance for the formatting of this post – I’ve been trying to fix it for a couple of hours now but Edublogs is being stupid and not doing what it’s told)

The 10th Annual Independent Games Festival has announced the finalists in its game awards sections and some of the most interesting developments seem to revolve around the ways players interact with the games.

There’s a platform style game called Fret Nice designed for Guitar Hero style controllers

Click here to see the YouTube video of the game

Then there’s Crayon Physics Deluxe, which seems to pick up from where Line Rider leaves off and expand on it.

Click here to see the YouTube video of the game.

Finally, there’s Audiosurf which makes a game out of any music tracks you have on your computer – the description on the game website is a little sketchy but it seems intriguing.

It’s well worth taking a look through the complete listing of games and their respective sites on the IGF site – there are a few games available with playable demos as well.

What I like about these three games in particular is that they show that the definition of a game and how it is played is still far from being locked down, something worth considering when it comes to games and education.

The Game Learner is all about using games in education – not just electronic ones (although these will definitely feature) but pretty well any kind of engaging activity that has at least some of the elements that make up a game.

I’ll get into what makes a game in more depth shortly but for now, some of the key elements of a game (according to Marc Prensky) are that:

1. Games are a form of fun. Giving us enjoyment and pleasure.
2. Games are a form of play. Giving us intense and passionate involvement.
3. Games have rules. Giving us structure.
4. Games have goals. Giving us motivation.
5. Games are interactive. Giving us doing.
6. Games are adaptive. Giving us flow.
7. Games have outcomes and feedback. Giving us learning.
8. Games have win states. Giving us ego gratification.
9. Games have conflict/competition/challenge. Giving us adrenaline.
10. Games have problem solving. Sparking our creativity.
11. Games have interaction. Giving us social groups.
12. Games have representation and story. Giving us emotion.

(from Marc Prensky’s writings )

For me, the three key elements, which you will generally find in any sort of game, from tic-tac-toe to Halo 3 are:

Rules – make things fair by forcing everyone to take specific paths to reach goals

Goals – the things you measure yourself against – we conceive a future state and devise strategies to achieve it.

Outcome/feedback – the game changes in response to what we do, gives us information related to our activities

I’ve had an interest in gaming since my parents brought home a basic Pong style game console in the late 1970s – as a young fella I was fascinated by it and it was much to my chagrin that they didn’t embrace the Atari revolution that followed not long after. (Or any of the following games systems for that matter – it wasn’t until I was well out of home in the mid 90’s that I was able to get a Sega MegaDrive and pick up where I’d left off – aside from the odd visit or 10 to the game arcades and friend’s houses that kept me going

Working as an educational multimedia designer/developer (I should really figure out that title one day) for the last few years – and studying for my Masters in Education (I.C.T in Education) has opened my eyes to some of the potential of games in teaching and learning. Given the emergence of gaming in general and the way the internet and the social web are reshaping the nature of knowledge and information in the 21st century, this seems like a good area to be focussing on.

I have a few game based design projects on the boil that I’ll talk about from time to time, there’s plenty of interesting other bloggers out there doing great work in this area (Karl Kapp and Jenny Weight to name but two) and plenty of research going on all the time – not to mention new games being released pretty well daily. I’ve also already done some writing on games in education for my aforementioned study which I’ll recycle tap into so new material (hopefully) won’t be too hard to come by.

And of course, links, contributions, ideas, feedback and so on are always most welcome.

cheers for now then

Col