By This summer, I had the opportunity to attend the Games for Change Festival, an annual convening of academics, game developers, non-profits, and educators who are interested in using games to create social change. Over three days, I attended a game-making workshop, an expo of new social issue games, and panel discussions on topics ranging from funding to using games in schools.
The highlight of the festival for me though, was a short talk given by high schooler Kaelan Doyle Myerscough, who is an advisor for NYU's new Games for Learning Institute. In five minutes, she thoroughly impressed a packed room of adults and reminded us all how important it is to speak directly with young people about their thoughts and experiences with new media.
In her talk, Kaelan explains the importance of creating a sense of immersion when developing games. She also gives examples of games that are both fun to play and great learning experiences. (Here's a link to her talk.)
I asked Kaelan if she could expand on some of the ideas she brought up in her talk over email.
Here's what she had to say:
Can you explain how you became involved with the Games for Learning Institute?
Well, I am friends with Ken Perlin, who is heading up the Institute, and whenever he would come to Toronto for whatever reason we'd spend hours talking about pretty much everything. When I first met him I was working on a game with my friends, and we talked about that a lot. Eventually when it came time to put together the advisory board he asked if I wanted to be on it. At the time I was in grade 8, which was right in the demographic that they were looking at, and he thought it'd be good to have someone from that age group who was also knowledgeable about games and gaming. Of course I was thrilled, and I guess the rest is history.
Do you consider yourself a "gamer"? What games do you like to play?Yeah, I'd say I'm a gamer. Some of my friends play games more than me, and there are times when I hardly play games at all. But for the most part I tend to keep my Nintendo DS with me wherever I go, and I play games a lot just as part of my daily routine. As for my favorite games, I nearly always have a Pokemon game (or two) in my aforementioned DS, and I've played through most of my Pokemon games about 5-10 times. Right now I'm playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. I'm a huge fan of the NES as well, and I'm addicted to Tetris and Crystalis. Lastly, the Legend of Zelda games are really awesome, especially Ocarina of Time. Of course, that's just video games, but I won't get into analog games much because the list would be too long.
In your presentation you mentioned that immersion is what makes games fun and engaging. Can you explain what you mean by immersion and talk about how you experience it in games? Do you think most young people experience immersion in school?
Basically, immersion is the feeling of losing yourself in something, so instead of seeing it through your own eyes you see it through the eyes of the main characters. People experience immersion with movies, which is why the good ones generate emotions, like crying or happiness. It's the same with games. I think one of the major reasons why kids play games is because they like the feeling of losing themselves and their problems and being immersed in another world where the rules and limitations are different, or even non-existent. Oftentimes the difference between a good game and a bad one is how immersive the world is.
No, I don't think school is as immersive as it could be. Maybe it's because of the social culture and idea of 'school is boring, work is boring', but it's also because of the attitude of the establishment. To schools these days, there's more pressure on teachers to teach the curriculum than to allow students to learn, so instead of being interested by the material it's pushed on us, and the result is that kids don't like school or learn as much. If the curriculum was a little more flexible and less written in stone, maybe kids would actually be able to be immersed in school.
You also mention that learning games typically aren't very fun. Why do you think this is and what are the exceptions?
The thing about 'learning' games is that it completely takes away the immersion aspect of the game. When someone is immersed in a game and looking at things from the character's perspective rather than their own, if the game suddenly jumps back and says, "look! You just learned something in the REAL world!" it removes them from the game. It's sort of like getting someone's very serious and undivided attention when you want to tell them something important and serious, and then asking if they want to go to the store and get some eggs. It ruins the carefully-constructed world that you've built and reminds them of the very things they've been trying to escape. Likewise, games that are labeled as 'educational' or 'learning' generally don't work because people are trapped right from the get-go at the metaphorical doorway of the game, not really able to truly enter the world of the game, but still unable to completely step back.
A notable exception is Brain Age and its spawn, the numerous educational 'games' that Nintendo is coming out with (eg. Flash Focus, Big Brain Academy, Wii Fit). With those games, instead of having their own world, they operate in the context of our world. With them, you're perfectly aware that you're learning, but it's presented in an entertaining way. Also, instead of the game setting objectives for you, you set those objectives, like in Wii Fit where you set your own goal to lose x number of pounds in y months. They work as learning games because while they're presented as video games, they're turning our world into a sort of virtual world, with objectives and goals.
Have you ever had a class in school that successfully used video games to help you learn something? If not, what do you imagine is the best way for games to be used in schools?
Actually, I don't remember ever using video games as part of school. We did use a simple RPG to learn about history once, but that was pen-and-paper...
It's tough to say what the best way is, because any approach you take has its drawback. It would be interesting to publicly fund a school to distribute Nintendo DSes to a class of kids and then give them, for example, Professor Layton and the Curious Village to play as a class. That's expensive, though, and it could be a bad decision to support brand names on such a large scale. I'd say it'd be a good idea to use computers, because we already have them and there's a gold mine of awesome games on the internet for free.
The downside of using games in school, though, is that just the idea of having games as part of the class has the potential to make kids uninterested. A more open approach for teachers might be a good idea, like giving kids a link to a website full of games and letting them play any game they want. It might also be fun for kids to play games as a class. For example, the teacher could get out a projector and play the McDonald's game, and the kids could advise the teacher on what to do. The key is not to be too upfront about the whole 'learning' thing, because that could really turn kids off... instead, make it like a fun and open thing to do for a week. If the next week, the teacher of that class brought up the subject of McDonald's without relating it directly to the game, a class discussion could be really interesting for the kids.
[http://www.mcvideogame.com/ <-- here's a link to the McDonald's game, so you know what I'm talking about. That's for me one of the best examples of an educational game: subtle, immersive and really really addictive.]
Assuming that most of the people reading this are adults, can you explain from your perspective as a high schooler why we should be researching how to use video games to enhance learning experiences?
Well, first of all, we all know that grades are dropping and all that. Math scores are at an all-time low. But personally for me it's not just the idea of marks dropping, it's watching them drop. When I was in the gifted program (which I was in from grade 5 to grade 8) I was surrounded by people who were actually interested in learning, and who thought of their education as something they really had to try hard in and improve in.
Coming out of gifted I saw tons of people who weren't at all interested in learning, and who hated school and all that. Not only that, I found that by the end of my first year of high school I felt a similar way--classes were boring and routine, and the whole experience made me feel a lot worse about school. It's not just me and my classmates, it's the entire continent--there really is something wrong with our educational system. I think that in some cases, kids are even learning more from video games and the like than they are from school. Video games aren't just pastimes at all--if well-done, they can be teachers for people of any age.
Take Pokemon for example. As a child, I played Pokemon all the time, and it helped me learn not just about strategy and mathematics, but also about animal cruelty, the importance of the environment and the need for social activism in the world. Those are subjects that are awfully hard to teach to a 7-year-old, but Pokemon did it easily. Even though there's no connection to the real world on the surface, people are really capable of connecting the dots and understanding the big picture.
Video games are really underestimated as a medium--they're immersive and interesting, kids love them already, and they have the potential to teach complex issues without being overwhelming. I think they could be the saving throw of the educational system, and they could bring interest back into the classroom for sure.
[picture of Kaelan above is from Games for Change's Flickr site.]
Hilary, I would say this to Kaelan - I am one of those teachers out there in the schools, and I agree 100% with your summation of the situation. There are a few teachers trying hard to make school make sense and matter, but so many more have no idea that there is a real need to do so.