Serious Game Theory
I am studying the use of computer games for learning, and the kind of learning that happens when people play these games. Specifically, for my doctoral research, I am looking at the games design process to how the instructional design part can fit in.
That's still a big topic, so the sub-piece I have carved out is to examine commercially and critically successful video games as though they had been designed as learning objects. There is no question that people learn things from games.
Whether or not what is learned turns out to be something that society values is a separate question, and one I don't intend to address here.
Also, whether or not the strategies employed to help people learn these things are actually effective/successful is also not my concern just now. Besides, I'm looking at games that both the industry and the public like, so presumably, they are successful enough at helping people learn what they need to to either win the game, or, at least remain entertained enough to keep playing (and provide favorable reviews).
First things first. I want to see what's there and how it's implemented. Then I want to see if and then how we can use this in the design of educational games (I'm obviously convinced we can, or there'd be little point to this exercise.)
Current Research Areas
- cultural preservation through game technology
Intro to Formal Game Theory:
I'm not a mathematician (though I live with one), but here's a crack at it:
Game Theory, as originally defined, has to do with decision structures, outcome prediction and strategy planning - it is popular with mathematicians and economists.
This is from gametheory.net <http://gametheory.net >: “Game theory is the study of how people interact and make decisions. This broad definition applies to most of the social sciences, but game theory applies mathematical models to this interaction under the assumption that each person's behavior impacts the well-being of all other participants in the game. These models are often quite simplified abstractions of real-world interactions.”
Being mostly math (John Nash really popularized this area), it comes out of Number Theory (http://www.numbertheory.org/ntw/N4.html); it is highly theoretical, very abstract, and primarily concerned with decomposing and examining the minutia of the interactions.
The theory, when applied to actual games (as opposed to social and business interactions) is applied mostly to fairly classic games like chess; prisoner's dilemma (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/); etc. I suspect there are some researchers trying to apply the same theories to highly complex to games like Doom, or Half-Life, or GTA(grand theft auto) - I don't know to what ends or with what success.
While formal game theory might play a role at the design level of digital games, it applies largely to the “AI” in the game, where it might be used to affect the behaviour of the NPC's (non-playable characters - aka bots), it's not really involved in the study of games for learning, and ultimately has little to do with what makes a game compelling.
If I were designing a digital game, I might want someone who's familiar with the math on my team, but she wouldn't be the lead designer. I'd also want a graphics expert on the team, but I wouldn't leave them in charge of designing the game either.
Here are a few links:
Images / Visualizations
<html> <table bgcolor=“#d9e5f4” border=“0” cellpadding=“4” cellspacing=“1” width=“100%”>
<tbody><tr> <td colspan="4" bgcolor="white"><font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-1">The following images are ones that I have made to illustrate various Learning and ID models, as well as other things. The Images were made by me. The Models were invented by others. The names of the originators or references are included. If you use these images, I would appreciate credit for the image, and I'm sure the original author would appreciate acknowledgement for the ideas.</font></td> </tr> <tr>
<td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Gagne's Nine Events" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:gagne_nine_events_orig_demo.png"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:gagne_nine_events_orig_tn.png" alt="Gagne's Nine Events" border="0" height="100" width="36"></a><br> Gagné, R. M., Briggs, L. J., & Wager, W. W. (1992). Principles of instructional design (4th ed.). Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.</font></div> </td> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center">
<font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Merrill's First Principles" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:gagne_nine_events_orig2_demo.png"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:gagne_nine_events_orig2_tn.png" alt="Merrill's First Principles" border="0" height="100" width="62"></a><br> Merrill, M. D. (2001). First Principles of Instruction. Journal of Structural Learning & Intelligent Systems, 14(4), 459-466.</font></div> </td> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Problem Based Learning" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:pbl_demo.png"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:pbl_tn.png" alt="Problem Based Learning" border="0" height="100" width="70"></a><br> Savery, J. R., & Duffy, T. M. (1996). Problem based learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework. In B. G. Wilson (Ed.), Constructivist Learning Environments: Case Studies in Instructional Design (pp. 135-148). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.</font></div>
</td> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Reigeluth's Elaboration Theory" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:reigeluth_orig_demo.png"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:reigeluth_orig_tn.png" alt="Reigeluth's Elaboration Theory" border="0" height="100" width="50"></a><br> Reigeluth, C. M., & Stein, F. S. (1983). The Elaboration Theory of Instruction. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-Design Theories and Models: An Overview of Their Current Status (Vol. 1, pp. 335-381). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.</font></div> </td> </tr>
<tr> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Gerlach & Ely" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide7_demo.png"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide7_tn.png" alt="Gerlach & Ely" border="0" height="75" width="100"></a><br> Gerlach, V. S., & Ely, D. P. (1980). Teaching & Media: A Systematic Approach (second ed.). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.</font></div> </td>
<td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Hannafin & Peck" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide9_demo.png"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide9_tn.png" alt="Hannafin & Peck" border="0" height="75" width="100"></a><br> Hannafin, M. J., & Peck, K. L. (1988). The design, development, and evaluation of instructional software. New York, London: Macmillan Collier Macmillan.</font></div> </td> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center">
<font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Rapid Prototyping" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide11_demo.png"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide11_tn.png" alt="Rapid Prototyping" border="0" height="75" width="100"></a><br> Tripp, S. D., & Bichelmeyer, B. (1990). Rapid protoyping: An alternative instructional design strategy. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 38(1), 31=44.</font></div> </td> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Wiggins & McTigh" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide13_demo.png"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide13_tn.png" alt="Wiggins & McTigh" border="0" height="75" width="100"></a><br> Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.</font></div>
</td> </tr> <tr> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a title="Jonnassen's Constructivist Learning Environments" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:constructivistlearningenvironments_demo.gif"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:constructivistlearningenvironments_tn.gif" alt="Jonnassen's Constructivist Learning Environments" border="0" height="95" width="100"></a><br> Jonassen, D. H. Design of Constructivist Learning Environments(CLEs). from <a href="http://tiger.coe.missouri.edu/%7ejonassen/courses/CLE/">tiger.coe.missouri.edu/<br> </a></font><font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><a href="http://tiger.coe.missouri.edu/%7ejonassen/courses/CLE/">~jonassen/courses/CLE/</a></font></div>
</td> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <a title="Rothwell and Kazanas" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide3_demo.png"><font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide3_tn.png" alt="Rothwell and Kazanas" border="0" height="75" width="100"></font></a></div> </td> <td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <a title="Dick & Carey" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide5_demo.png"><font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:slide5_tn.png" alt="Dick & Carey" border="0" height="75" width="100"></font></a></div> </td>
<td bgcolor="white"> <div align="center"> <a title="Domains of Ed TEch - Seels and Richy" href="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:EdTechDomains_demo.gif"><font face="Verdana,Helvetica,Arial" size="-4"><img src="/becker/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&h=&cache=cache&media=resources:illustrations:EdTechDomains_tn.gif" alt="" border="0" height="75" width="100"></font></a></div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table>
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Areas of Interest
Area of Specialization: Educational Technology
Field of Study: Serious Games; Digital Game Based Learning
Area(s) of Interest:
Design of Educational Games
Instructional Design for Serious Games.
Serious ID
- formal and structured as well as otherwise, specifically having to do with the design of educational games
Study of the Design Process
- (see Chapter 2 of Ame Elliott's PhD Thesis: Computational Support for Sketching and Image Browsing During the Early Phase of Architectural Design http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~ame/)
- Viability and use of computer games in school settings.
- Learning in (Massively) Multi-player Role Playing Games (secondary to my main thesis work)
- On-line gaming communities and their relationship to school communities. (Secondary to my main thesis work)
How I got Here, and why I think this work is important and worth doing:
I started learning to program in 1977. I taught my first computer science lab in 1978, and have been teaching freshman CS students how to program for about 27 years, with varying degrees of success. One of the things I have learned after all that time is that we still don't really know how to teach programming. Granted, we can teach those who are interested and already inclined, but this is not the same as, say, basic literacy (i.e. reading and writing), which we manage to teach to almost everyone.
There are those who hold that programming skills ought to be counted as a basic literacy in the 21st century, like reading and writing. There is a belief that learning to program helps people learn to think. It certainly helps with logical thinking. However, if we endeavor to make programming a basic literacy, we still have a long way to go in order to learn how to help (all) people learn it. This brings up the concomitant problem of teaching people how to teach programming. I submit that we have an equally long way to go in order learn how to teach people who do not dream of becoming Computer Scientists how to teach it.
Leaving the basic literacy debate aside for the moment, let's fast-forward to 2004 (this is *my* “How I got Here” story, remember? So, back to me.). I've been teaching people how to program for more than a quarter of a century. I've learned some things about what works and what doesn't. I've also learned some things about what is hard to teach.
I have recently turned my attention to the use of digital games as learning technologies. I'm all for it (although just like any other technology, it is unlikely to solve all our problems). This provokes a number of new questions, among them:
- What is it about games that makes them so engaging?
- How can we transform that into games for learning?
- How can we design GOOD games for learning?
- How important is it to know how the technology works, if you want to design artifacts that use it?
I can answer part of that right here and now: I am completely convinced that you have to know something about how the technology works in order to understand its possibilities and limitations. What I don't know yet, is just how much you need to know and what parts - I'm pretty sure you don't need to know everything. Can't know everything anyways, so that should be obvious.
For example, I am a better programmer because I understand something about languages and formal grammars. I am also a better programmer because I understand how data are represented at various levels of abstraction, and because I understand something about compilers and how they translate programs into executable code. All of these things contribute to my being able to design digital games. How can I hope to design good educational games if I don't know how to design games? AND, how can I hope to design good educational games, if I don't understand how to design good instruction?
Now there are many clever people working on various aspects of these questions (some of them are listed on the “People Page” of my Serious Games Pathfinder - apologies to people I have overlooked [I'll fix that if you let me know]).
I'd love to be able to devise a clean, structured ID methodology for designing good educational games. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon your POV) I also know something about software engineering. This is a discipline that has devoted itself to the pursuit of finding recipes for software design that do not require skilled or talented personnel. Or, to use Edsger Dijkstra's definition: “Software Engineering is programming for those who cannot.” After 30+ years of trying, we still have no real evidence that our efforts are actually producing better software. I feel there are many parallels between software engineering and instructional design. Similar desires for recipes and processes we can follow that will produce reliable results.
Still the fact remains, we need to be able to design and produce good software. Ultimately, digital games are still software. True, digital games are more than software - but they are not less than software. We also need to be able to design and produce good instruction. So, our goal is to design good instructional games, when we still don't have a nice recipe for how to design good software, or good instruction, or good games. Tall order.
There are people now who are designing and building instructional games that look like they will be pretty cool. Right now, most of the promising educational games are being designed by people with considerable experience, in education, software and/or games design or some combination. We can't always require that we have developers with decades of experience upon which to draw. We can't teach new people how to build instructional games by telling them to go away and acquire 20+ years of experience. SO, we have to figure out how to teach people how to do this.
Not only do we need to teach people how to do these things, we ultimately also need to figure out how to teach people to teach people how to do these things. Which ultimately led me to the question:
What do we need to know in order to TEACH others to design good games for learning?
The points to be made in this particular context is that a significant and irrefutable aspect of designing and creating educational digital games is the design and creation of the program that is the game. I remain unconvinced that we will be able to teach people how to design educational games without also having them understand how to design digital games. Since we don't really know how to do that either, our challenge is a large one.
I propose to start by “studying the masters”. In this case that means games designed for entertainment purposes. It also means looking at the best there are. Those that have achieved both commercial success and critical acclaim.
Brief Synopsis of the Work:
Main Question
Given a commercially and critically successful modern video game:
- What must be learned in the game in order to get to the end or win?
- How does the game support that required learning?
Background
Support for the use of digital games in learning contexts is increasing, and the body of research examining the contexts and conditions for the effective use of these games as an instructional technology is growing along with it. Most would now agree that players learn from digital games; in other words games teach. Whether or not games can be made to be educational is a different proposition. Effective application and use of this technology for education requires examinations of existing artifacts, both in and out of formal educational settings, as well as the development of new theories and models for how to design games intended primarily to educate rather than entertain. One way to facilitate an understanding of how a new medium like digital game technology can be used effectively in education is to study that medium's outstanding examples, regardless of their original purpose. This research operationalizes such study.
Research Objectives, Significance and Impact
Earlier work conducted and published by me (see publication list) has demonstrated that many commercially and critically successful games already embody multiple widely-known and well-accepted instructional approaches even if that incorporation was not intentional. Based on that research it is claimed that existing digital game pedagogy is sound but unrecognized: at least some digital games made primarily for entertainment already incorporate the major components necessary to meet the requirements of sound instruction. Since this incorporation has not been a deliberate game design decision, it is unlikely that designers such as Sid Meier or Sir Peter Molyneux would have included '“mplement Gagne's nine events of instruction” as part of their design specifications when creating Civilization or Black and White. Because this actualization was spontaneous, interviewing or otherwise studying the games designers themselves is unlikely to generate results in a form that can be applied to instructional design. Consequently uncovering the mechanisms that support learning in digital games must be approached from a different angle. This research will examine several top-rated commercial digital games in order to identify the learning support mechanisms employed.
Originality of Results
Other reports have proposed instructional design theories and models for educational digital games. Most games that have been examined in this context have either been educational games or commercial games being used in educational contexts. However, most commercial games do not lend themselves especially well to analysis as educational learning objects because they were never designed as such. Analyzing an entertainment game as though it were an educational one when it was not designed as such necessitates a dissociation of what is learned in the game from how society values that which is learned. Doing so creates a common plane on which both educational and entertainment games can be assessed. In this study the methodology employed towards this end is that of reverse engineering, an approach that has not been used in this context before. Normally, reverse engineering attempts to recover the original design of a software application, but in this case it will be used to generate an alternate design that can then in turn be used to inform instructional design. Through this perspective, it is possible to identify and classify built-in learning objectives and from there to associate the mechanisms and strategies employed to teach them. These strategies can then be used in educational games without compromising the essential qualities that have made digital games the most popular leisure activity in the western world today.
Two significant outcomes of the final work will be:
- a taxonomy of learning strategies in digital games and
- a description of how the existing strategies used to promote 'learning requirements' in top-rated commercial video games can be used in the design of educational games. An additional outcome will be a synthesis of the core requirements for instructional design of digital games for learning.
Related Areas:
(Traditional) Game Based Learning (i.e. the use of games to teach)
Activity Theory
Cognitive Science
Computer-Based Learning
Educational Technology Research on Games and Simulations
Experiential Learning
Game-Based Activity
Games & Simulation in Education
Games as Motivating Contexts for Learning
Instructional Design
You know, even after thinking about it a long time, I an STILL fuzzy on what is a learning theory and what is an ID theory and what is an ID model. Most people I ask have quite definite answers, but I have received almost as many different definite answers as there are people I've asked.
What I am going with is:
learning theory = notions about how people learn
ID theory = notions about how to organize instruction
ID model = specific 'plan' or 'recipe' for the design of instruction
I think part of my confusion comes because these seem to become intertwined, so Reigeluth's Elaboration Theory implies that this is how people learn (the learning theory part), but it is also a theory about how to design instruction that compliments this notion of how people learn (the ID theory part), AND I can use it as a sort of check-list to make sure I have design my lesson to include all the things he says are important (the ID model part).
Instructional Media Production
Interactive Multimedia Learning
Learning through Play
Motivation Theory
Situated Learning & Cognition
Socio-Cultural Learning Theory