Videogames, Learning, and Darwinism

Let’s begin with a quote from our own James Paul Gee: “I eventually finished The New Adventures of the Time Machine and move on to Deus Ex, a game I chose because it had won game of the year on many Internet game sites. Deus Ex is yet longer and harder than Time Machine. I found myself asking the following question: ‘How, in heaven’s name, do they sell many of these games when they are so long and hard?’ I soon discovered, of course, that good video games sell millions of copies.
So here we have something that is long, hard, and challenging. However, you cannot play a game if you cannot learn it. If no one plays a game, it does not sell, and the company that makes it goes broke. Of course, designers could make the games shorter and simpler. That’s often what schools do with their curriculums. But gamers won’t accept short or easy games. So game designers keep making long and challenging games and still manage to get them learned. How?
If you think about it, you see a Darwinian sort of thing going on here. If a game, for whatever reason, has good principles of learning built into its design – that is, if it facilitates learning in good ways – then it gets played and can sell well, if it is otherwise a good game. Other games can build on these principles, and perhaps, do them one step better. If a game has poor learning principles built into its design, then it won’t get learned or played and won’t sell well. In the end, then, video games represent a process – thanks to what Marx called the “creativity of capitalism” – that leads to better and better designs of good learning and, indeed, good learning of hard and challenging things.” (Gee, 2007). (I would argue simulation type software such as Matlab and Mathematica share a similar economic pressure to teach users “how to use the software” within their own software package, since users are more likely to use and continue to use that software package they know best and in which they can do the most. Same with AutoCAD and IntelliCAD, who compete head-to-head in the marketplace for that matter.). John Kirriemuir has argued that the reason the world is lacking in really good educational videogames is because the “economic incentive” of a gaming company is to sell lots of copies of a game that people actually “enjoy,” not necessarily that “educate” (Kirriemuir, 2002). But here Gee has turned that principle on it’s head, as he argues that at the very beginning of a videogame this principle is working in reverse: the Darwinism of capitalism is creating games that are very successful at teaching the user how to play themselves. This goes for other software packages as well, but let’s explore Gee’s remaining questions: “How are good video games designed to enhance getting themselves learned – learned well so that people can play and enjoy them even when they are long and hard? What we are really looking for is this: the theory of human learning built into video games.” (Gee, 2007).
Within my previous experience with creating an educational videogame, at least 50% of the time was spent after the videogame was already created, on educating the user as to how to play the game within the game itself. This process was actually a result of the “user testing” we did with elementary school students. The process of playing the game must be explained within the game itself, and in this way most any computer game is already a “teaching tool” (and it our case, a “double teaching tool,” since we were trying to teach elementary school students Mathematics and how to play our game at the same time.). But it was very interesting to see from our “user testing” what information we adults thought was “intuitive” and therefore taken for granted, while the elementary school students did not. To get around this issue, we decided at one point to just “explain everything.” This turned out to be a lot of work, and it at least doubled the size of our written code and creator content.
However, one of the main themes I grasped from playing the Age of Empires and Age of Mythology series, was how effectively such games instructed the user on play, especially with such a large variety of active elements within the game. Both games Age of Empires III and Age of Empires II come with very thick instruction manuals, but I have never had to touch them once. Why is this? The reason is because the game creators have managed to include most all of this information to the user within the game itself. Better yet, the instruction for how to drag the mouse and select units and select elements on the upper or lower screen bars, are much more quickly grasped from the interactive in-game “Tutorial” than in reading the book provided with the game(s). And it is this one theme that is incredibly important: what is it about the interactive in-game tutorial which makes it much more effective than the old method of simply “reading the book,” because this idea is central to how videogames may one day have an effective place in the educational system.
Certain themes for how software packages instruct the user on their own use overlap with computer videogame attempts to do the same. (1) Anytime the user places the mouse pointer over certain objects in the game (usually an object that can be manipulated by the user), unobtrusively place a text description somewhere in the screen briefly explaining this object and/or how is may be manipulated by the user. If the user is in “Tutorial mode,” then possibly vocalize this text by having it read to the user. (2) If the user is in “Tutorial mode,” use visual notifications of (usually animated) arrows or flashing of some kind or highlighting, to direct the user’s attention to the area of the play screen where the specific functionality or object described by the Tutorial narration can be located. This sort of visual representation of information has become such an expected representation to the current generation, that they have come to expect it to a certain degree (and this process is likely to get worse as we raise more and more “Digital Natives”) . Therefore, because they have come to interact in this way to a certain extent with the information they are gathering, the idea of reading a pure text description of the structure of a DNA molecule becomes more work perhaps than just plugging “DNA” into a Google Image search. But expectations are one thing, why is it this visual-with-auditory representation is more effective than the “user manuals” of the past. The briefest explanation is perhaps one of “time”: if a user is looking through the manual attempting to program the VCR, then they keep looking back and forth from the manual to the VCR; first to locate the information in the manual, and then to locate on the VCR the appropriate button, and then back and forth like this all the way through the procedure. However, if the user if constantly looking at the screen for information, there is less time and effort loss between looking at “the object being operated on” and “the instruction manual for that operation.” And this is not even to mention the amount of time that is lost when the paper manual simply says “locate the Insert button,” and you search the screen for five minutes and cannot locate that button for the life of you (a problem of the computer programmers and manual writers “assuming” what is “intuitive” to the user, as I mentioned before.). (3) Run through the “Tutorial” with the same sorts of game-play used to play the actual game. Age of Empires is very good at this, playing through the Tutorial is fun and interesting the same way the game itself is fun and interesting. Actually, it could be better stated that the game Tutorial is simply campaign-style game-play, there is simply the clear halt of game action as the narration pauses the play in order to dictate to the user all of what is going on and what functionality the user has at each point. (4) Much of the background information the user might find useful is accessible at anytime during normal game-play by simply clicking on specific icons within the menu bar. Within the computer videogame, this is analogous to clicking on the “Help” tab within most any software package these days, and searching within the index on an inquiry term. However, within Age of Empires, this drop down menu is more visual with text descriptions than simply text-based, but the ability to access background information at any time by clicking on the menu bar icon which automatically pauses the game and presents that information is indespensible. If information presented on the screen during a “Mouse over” is a way of “Real-time information gathering,” then the ability to immediately pause the game, grab the background information you need, and go immediately back, is the next closest thing. (5) The narration within the Tutorial is “interactive” in the sense that it instructs the user to click on a certain object or area of the screen, and then sits and waits for the user to do so correctly before it proceeds. This form of teaching cannot be underestimated in its importance. Imaging a 300 student lecture hall, where the professor would stop and not proceed anytime any member of the audience did not fully understand what he/she was talking about. A professor for any class that would not proceed until any individual has understood up until that point what is going on is a form of “customized” or “personalized” education for each individual user. Of course, college professors with large classes cannot do this, but what is the result of this? The result, from experience, is the student does not understand a complex topic or is unable to locate what the professor is talking about, but the professor just keeps on breezing through and so the student says “bag it” and tries to keep-up with what is currently being talked about. But the game Tutorial does not allow you to say “bag it.” In fact, the game Tutorial will not proceed until the user has clearly understood where to click on the screen up until this point. This fact alone brings something to the educational system, because “interaction” in this sense mandates a certain degree of “attention.” However, this could be used to create aspects that students hate as well. All technologies have possibly negative applications as well it seems. (6) Dynamic animations. This sounds like a mute point but it is not. Why is it so much more fun to look at a dynamic presentation on a computer screen rather than just the standard text in a book. The same reason it is so popular to watch a movie or watch TV rather than read a book (at least for most people)(forget about the “passive” part, here were are concerned with the fact that “there is just something about the visual medium.”) Perhaps it is because, biologically, the human brain and visual cortex is just attracted to visual movement. As we learned in psychology class, the brain tends to “pay attention” much better if there is movement, and this is why TV channels such as MTV tend to move around and switch visuals in such a rapid fashion. Regardless, I once heard the assertion that we should be teaching high school students “how to make movies” rather than “how to write” because “this is the communication medium of this and future generations.” I don’t know how true that is, but it is an interesting assertion.
So let’s relate these principles back to what they are telling us about models of human learning, because there is clear Darwinism in game creators ability to teach. Number one: make the information accessibly quickly and just-a-click away, I may not memorize it the first time I click-to-see that information, but because it is so easy to see I may click on it five times anytime I need it and eventually learn it (if “adults learn best by doing” as they say, then it is partially because they are not just hearing information but attempting to immediately “apply what they are learning” in the real-world, and this “immediate application” of the information very soon after they learn it is one possibility for the retention of the information)(That is, declarative knowledge becomes procedural knowledge before that declarative knowledge can be learned and lost.). Number two, the “tutorials” in games can be nearly as fun as the games themselves, and therefore “motivating.” This is information presented in an exciting way, but this problem shares similar themes as to asking why students are motivated to play games but not motivated to go to school. (If I knew the answer to this question, I would present it; but I truly don’t. The only lesson here, is that because of the Darwinism of capitalism, videogames have figured out how to be “fun” and “motivation,” while school being more of a socialist institution has not.). Number three: Make it visual. There is just something about the visual medium truly, movement focuses the attention of the mind somehow. This was a principle we learned was a proven fact in psychology class. But the question is, why can so many students I know quote extensively from movies and know “strategies for succeeding” in old videogames, but they don’t know near as much from books. If is enough to say that movies and videogames have become more of the common communication of our culture than books, which they truly have. There are really two strategies here: we can argue about how people need to read more (which doesn’t seem to be working), or we can go ahead and embrace the communication mediums of the next generation and start teaching all people who have ideas to communicate how to more effectively presents these ideas in the mediums of the present (perhaps not so possible for the “Digital Immigrants,” but perhaps for the “Digital Natives” or the children of those Natives.)(Prensky, 2001)

Works Cited

Gee, James Paul, 2007. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and

Literacy, Palgrave MacMillan, New York, NY.

Kirriemuir, John, 2002. The Relevance of Video Games and Gaming Consoles to the

Higher and Further Education Learning Experience, TSW, 02-01, April 2002.

Prensky, Marc, 2001. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, NCB University Press, Vol. 9

No. 5, October 2001.