From Wednesday until Friday, X|Media|Lab - an international digital media think-tank and creative workshop - organized their latest Professional Day Conference and lab session in Singapore. This year the theme is “Learning from Games”, covering the emerging area of ”Serious Games” or game-based learning, in which pedagogical approach of education meet with fun, entertaining aspect of games. The blending between these two perceivedly different, opposite areas leads to interesting implications and discussions, for example to what extent education can be embedded in games, vice versa.
Noah Falstein, Board Member of Serious Games Summit and Games for Health Conference, began the conference by highlighting positive implications of gaming that help to enable social change, improve dexterity and skills, and support healthy living. Serious games, to him, are characterized by 4 aspects: creative (offer fresh approach), commercial (first step toward what will be huge market), compassion (helping with real world problem), and consequential (shaping opinion).
Chee Yam San, from National Institute of Education (NIE, Singapore) followed up this topic by highlighting the importance of designing serious games seriously, putting pedagogical considerations into game design. This requires game designers to think more about what they consider as “Education”, in which goals, values, and beliefs play important role. They also have to figure out learning from simply knowing, and doing to “become and becoming”. It is important to realize that Game is just a means to end - just be sure what the end is.
Zhan Ye, from China GC Networks explained the emerging market of serious games, especially in China, given the increase in government spending, common chinese ideology, and increase in education and learning needs. Serious games are likely be able to bridge the gap between education needs, and entertaining preference of learniers.
Katie Salen, from Parsons The New School for Design, insightfully explained the nature of game. By looking at participatory nature of games rather than just interactivity, she noticed the role of bringing affiliation, expression, collaborative problem solving, and circulation into games. In addition, she looked into the nature of “gaming” which is the “frame of mind that produce something beyond the artifact of game”. Game, to her, are important because it teaches about system, procedural thinking, and computational literacy to collaborate and solve problem.
Siddharth Jain, from Playware Studios Asia described the challenge of designing serious games, because to him “learning stops cold when game gets too serious”. He highlighted the importance of having engaging narrative, experience, suitable game mechanics and meaningful challenge in games.
John Buchanan, from Carnegie Mellon University described the problem of interacting with game characters late in the development cycle. He introduced game sketches methodology to be done even before prototype was made. The purpose of sketch is to record ideas, provide flexibility by minimizing stakeholders’ commitment to the initial design, invite comment, and focus attention to certain design aspect while abstracting anything else.
Sande Chen, previously from MIT, introduced issues of assessment in serious games. Assessment is particularly important to measure effectiveness of Serious Games. Traditional assessment like feedback and quizzes only provides proof of learning and gauge on students’ ability. It is neither measure engagement nor self-motivation of learners/gamers. Serious Games assessment on the other hand, opens new possibility of providing continuous assessment, for example via logging, tracking, observation, replay/reviews, and modding.
Chris Deering, previously President of Sony Computer Entertainment , described new digital experiences (such as Big screen PC, handheld and mobile devices, content acquistion devices, monetization, games interactivity, user generated live content, and concierge services) that are happening, emerging trends (unlimited access that replaces ownership, streaming that replaces download, helping customer to find more what they like, easier way to pay, utilization of AI everywhere, improvement on voice recognition, and GPS) and their implications.
Jyri Salomaa, from Nokia Research Centre, highlighted mobile specific features that make it compelling for ubiquitous learning and games in the future: always with you and personal, always connected to network, and rich communication capabilities (like video, audio, and messaging).
Caryl Shaw, who works in Will Wright’s Spore, Maxis shared about working in communities, identifying different user categories that emerge from the community, for example: casual, browser, collector, story teller, content creator, webmaster, toolmaker.
Deb Polson, from Australian Centre for Interaction Design (ACID) highlighted several elements of gaming that make it appealing: autonomy, simulation, consistency, feedback and authenticity. Autonomy of game provides genuine choice to control game path; Simulation in game sufficiently provide accurate representation of things to model. Consistency provides believable narratives to help players to immerse, establish clear casual relationship between variables to form hypothesis and strategy. Feedback allows players to test and refine their hypothesis and assess consequences of action. Finally assesment allows meaningful demonstration of ability and understanding, construct rather than recycle knowledge.
Richard Sanford, from Futurelab noted emerging new learning models (like student centric, knowledge as construction, experiential and situated learning) and the embrace of pedagogic changes as symptom of a broader educational shifts.
Finally, Tracy Fullerton, from Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab looked at Games as system of meaning in which looking at what games mechanic communicate is essential.
To sum it up, I learned that fundamentally, Games and Learning are not that different. The blending of games and learning are not something unexpected; in fact, it is about time to realize that games is another system that enables learning, and learning is already embodied in games. What is important is to leverage on natural mechanics of games to deliver appropriate mode of learning that will yield the expected results.
