Pros and Cons of Simulation Games
Why games - a lot of the things that make learning good are attributed to games and so it is worth having a very quick going over of these, however a simulation game is one step more specific.
"An adequate understanding of a given game would involve knowing what content is taught by the game; under what conditions (including what type of players) it ismost effective; and - a crucial issue for adoption......whether it teaches particular things better than alternative method(s).
I am going to talk about simulation games involving a single player rather than multiplayer events (as promoted and supported by the Fabulisi software).
Why (Computer) Simulation games?
In Role-Play games played with other people - may feel you're put on the spot
The inability of others to act and role-play can ruin the sense of flow/reality/immersion? On a computer, easier to 'control' other characters.
On a computer - can practice as much as you want without the computer getting bored!
But in role-play sims - if you lose the computer - Schild (EO)"The social nature of learning in simulation games has been empirically demonstrated by Inbar.
So, why am I looking at what I call simulations? There is a lot on "why games" but less on the specific pros and cons of some games over other games. But I feel that simulation games do have a certain number of benefits over other games - in particular in the business environment and with adults.
Firstly, I think it's the purest form of games for learning - it is taking any activity, paring it down to its essential elements, and then turning these into these essential interactions into a game. It's the essence of apprenticeship except it sticks it into a "safe" situation where you can make mistakes. It is certainly the favoured method of training in business. Frame games - where content is stuck into a previously built game - the interactions aren't directly related to the game.
Benefits of experience over reading....
So:
PROS
Content is intrinsic to game-play.
Immediate feedback - generally the results of your actions can be perceived instantly...
It works in the same way as when you do the washing up and then turn it into a race in order to make it more exciting "lets see how fast we can do the washing up", let's pretend the queen is coming over.
Simulation-games have quite a long history in Role-playing - (since 1930s).
How to teach someone how to communicate? The best way is to practice directly.
Why is this? Look at the theorists.
Simulations put the content into context - unlike frame games that tend to distance content from context.
"importance to the notion of acting out, in a situation somewhat removed from reality, some of the problems that onemust subsequently cope with in real life. This is an important characteristic of simulation games...
"As Moreno pointed out, one advantage of role play over real-life experience (and this would seem to be an advantage of simulations in general) is their relative "safety".(All of this and up is Bookcock)
Sense of immediate control over one's own environment. Rotter (1966) has shown "impressive evidence on the importance of the actor's belief in internal over external control" ie the extent to which his destiny is contingent on his behaviour as opposed to luck and other abritraty features of the environment." Coleman, Campbell et al have shown such belief to be an important factor for achievement (in school).
CONS
Often don't have multi-levels.
The optimum degree of game detail from the aspect of "truth" and unlimited learning time conflicts with the optimum degree of student comprehension in the time available....What does seem to be different in game learning is th greater information-comprehending capacity of the student in an active role. If the model is greatly simplified, it may result in superficial student comprehension of the problem situation.
The only kind of reward that can be realistically built into a game situation is maximizationof some countable entity, be it money , token food, oints, or stars. This imposes a very unrealistic picture o psychological motivation in other cultures, for example companship may be a factor....events of real magnitutde such as death hunger separation are divorced from emotional consequences and can only be represented in the most artifical way......testing without consequence a real boon....but it is not conducive to empathetic insight into the lives of others.
So - see games and what they learn..but - games better for strategy and structure, rather than personal roles.
SCHILD "Difference between simulation gaming and role-play concerns the relative emphasis on instrucmental versus expersiive behaviour. To a considerable extent the purpose of role play is to highlight the importance of expressive behaviour; that the actor chooses a coures of action not because of its pay-offf value in the interaction, but because its very performance is satisfying - eg, releasing his anger. In the game such behavior is usually self-defeating: if the player wants to succeed, the only criterion for action is its effect on his score. Thus, the game focuses attention on the instrucmental aspects of behaviour.
Simulation games, I argued above, focus attention on relations and on instrucmental aspects of interaction. SCHILD (so less on expressiveness, expressing oneself - which games DO allow more self expression?).
My meandering essay voyage
I've taken so long to decide on an essay topic that i really thought would be valuable but I think I've now come upon something...
To recap,
I started off this whole course knowing that what I wanted to do was create learning experiences that could be really engaging - whether for adults or children, I don't care. Something that will make a user rethink their idea that learning is boring and that will encourage them to be more curious and continue to learn through their life.
I got rather fascinated by all the technology.
I also got a bit confused by what Marsh would want me to do.
I switched between boring academic learning projects to mad, exciting, adventurous things......like an outdoor adventure where the player would take on the role of his choice and become someone else, whenever the mood took them, a role that would encourage them to learn about a particular subject, in the outdoors, at any point that they wanted. The idea was to use mobile and ubiquitous technologies.
At the bottom of this was the implicit acceptance that there something about computers and games that can make learning really fun. People willing play games that still require the user to learn something - often quite a lot of things - playing games, people are willing to learn and master a specific set of rules. They willingly learn how they must behave in order to win a game.
So games is the subject but I don't see the point of writing an essay on that. The arguments are good, there's loads of research on it - I'm convinced and feel I have a fairly good understanding of the reasoning behind it....So - two issues - what to write an essay on that would interest me (and be acceptable to work), and what to make. I have been finding both these issues very tough to address, the first because so much has already been written, and I don't want to write an essay to convince myself of something I'm already sure of, second, how on earth was I going to design a game for a user to learn about something specific. I had absolutely no idea where I was going to start
I began to think about games - I didn't know ANYTHING about them. I started off just learning about what IS a game and how games are categorised. I was especially interested to note that computer games and all other kinds of games (board, sport etc..) tend to be considered separately.
I have started to recognise that the computer can, however enhance games in many ways and whilst the fundemental rules beneath games are the same, and it is worth studying games at this level rather than at the level of the medium, ultimately there was going to be a lot of benefits to creating a game for a computer.
I knew that you can't just take a game and stick content into it and expect that it will teach people stuff. But then what kinds of games were good for teaching what kinds of things?
People had some up with some categories -but were they any good?
As I researched I began to realise that the game categorisations weren't very helpful when trying to make an educational game. Adventure, Strategy, Role-Play, Platform games and shoot-em ups, these categories looked at the actual experience - linear of multi-directional, play once or many times - progress a story as the final aim, or progress your character skills....
I become aware of the fact that current educational games tend to fall into the intrinsic or extrinsic category - extrinsic games, or frame-games - are games where the game-play is independent of the content - they are seen to be best for teaching users facts where learning the facts themselves is a repetitive and boring activity - so you could get a shoot-em-up where every time you should something - you get a question that you have to answer before you continue.
I wasn't much interested in these kinds of games because I wanted to look at ways to make the content itself interesting so users wouldn't at the end say...right I've learnt that, thank God I never have to look at that subject ever again.
James Paul Gee argues that games are a great way to learn rules, but the rules that you learn in the games that he covers are rules that are related entirely to the games environment.
I started to wonder what kind of games allowed the content to be intrinsically motivating.....so far the only way I can see that you can do this is by making simulation games because simluations are basically interactive environments based on a particular set of real-life rules - by adding goals, competition, adaptivity if necessary, fun interfaces, the experience can become very engaging. If the user is willing to learn the rules, then the rules have to be based on the learning content.
It also became clear that all the best educational games (in business at any rate) turned out to be simulations. Perhaps because this is exactly how they are designed - the rules of the simulation are the rules of the game, plus a few additional goals - such as become victorious by using the rules to your advantage. Learn the rules and you could win the game (and by default you'd also become a master of the rules/knowledge)
You have to look FIRST at the content, and then decide how best to convey it.
Are simulations the only true way to do this? How does an adventure game teach?
Something else that I wonder - at their most basic, games are sets of rules. These have recently been looked at as Game Design Patters. In Rules of Play, a distinction is made between implicit (all participants should try to be fair, allow everyone their turn etc..), operational (real world rules eg - each user takes his turn, place your pawn on the START square, the first player rolls the dice and depending on his score.....) and constituent - eg there are mathematical formulas underlying the game that may be the same for snakes and ladders as they are for other games.
The question is - can you look at some information that you need to learn (it would, I guess be in the way of interactions in life, with rules, or in life what might be called variables), look at the information and say - there are some basic, constituent rules and if we can pin them down then we can then make a game out of them.
The next question is: do these rules repeat themselves in other learning areas - can we apply learning about how to work with feedback and people with how to deal with a computer? Or maybe other people situations? Are the fundemental rules that once learnt, can be reapplied in different discipline areas? This is important and would be useful because if you could see patterns, then simulation games for learning would get easier to build - you would be able to create games that could be built and then re-used. This would make them cheaper - in the commercial game world many games can be built upon the same games engine - could we do this for simulation games and other educational games?
In games, you often stick the rules together randomly. In simulation games or games for learning these rules must be laid down according to the subject matter at hand. Perhaps this is the fundemental difference when designing games?
Would it be worth looking at the differences and similarities between games and simulation games or educational games - would this be an effective title? By doing this what would I have discovered - it might help to define exactly what an educational game IS, and also help make some NEW design rules.
Some ideas for this
Game rules can be stuck together randomly to create a new kind of game - simulation rules have to be based on real-world rules in order to teach real world subjects
What is the difference in the approach to fantasy and reality in games as opposed to educational games
What is the difference in approach to competition, chance, graphics, the fundemental rules, the goals, etc etc... I think fantasy and the rules are especially prickly areas.
References
Digital-Based Games-Based Learning:Marc Prensky
Designing Simulations and Games
Simulations and Games
The Art of Play
Designing Management Games and Simulations
Simulations and Play (photocopy)
Flow
Clark Aldrich
Chris Crawford
Games and Simulations in Business
Rules of Play
Flash Enabled: Flash Design and development for mobile devices
Conferences:
Last year, April - UCI
NESTA - assessment
MGAIN
This had been a busy week in my head as well as in the outside world.
On Tuesday I had dinner with Shlair on her boat, on Wednesday, by luck I manged to get hold of some cancelled tickets so Charlote and I went to see the new Ronnie Burkett puppet show at the Barbican.
Tuesday and Wednesday I also went through Lectora training at Mercer - provided by trainer 1. I was interested to see that some really nice things could indeed be made using Lectora. also that Trainer 1 make a lot of their eLearning in this product. The general pattern is that they build it originally but the nice thing is that the client can then take over the updates.
I'm interested to see how Lectora could handle a role-play simulation - so that's what I'm trying to build at the moment.
Friday daytime I went down to the library and got out loads of role-play booklets and videos - I'm going to see what I can learn and whether I could transform this into a simple role-play.
I'm also interested in making a walkthrough/tour of the learning resource centre - so users can see what's there online, learn how to take out resources and who's there to help them.
Friday I popped by on Kim and since then I've been doing a LOT of studying.
I've been exploring Simulations.
Role-Play simulations that could be made for work
Simulations in general and how they can be made more engaging.
I've contacted CopyCatsoftware.com and they're going to come into Marsh and do a demo of their simulation software. The reason they interested me is because apparently their software allows you to make your OWN simulations. The only ting that worries me is that they haven't heard of Clark Aldrich who appears ot be a Simulation guru - or rather he's written quite a frequently mentioned book on the subject and is the founder of LIve Leader of Simulaiton Leader of something along those lines.....
I starting to get a handle on an essay that I think would be useful to write.
So far, my idea as to the structure is as follows:
Overview of games and simulations of eLearning
Explain its value and some proof that it works
Introduce the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic and why I am interested in instrinsic
Explain that basically this means the subject has to be covered by a simulation (I need to establish that this is really true as I'm not entirely sure about this yet). The game play then being fundementally tied to the activities of the content
Consider whether game design patterns have any relation to this - and that simulations are also based on game-play patterns, that life in general can be consolidated into patterns and that in this case, games and simulations are not different
Then explain that the games aspect should come into it as something that makes it more engaging and should include:
Competition
Adaptation (increasing in difficulty)
Fantasy (I'm especially interested in this in relation to simulations since you'd think fantasy ought to be the antithesis of fantasy)
Great graphics, music
Nice, fun(?) interface
Easy to learn - learn without having to read loads of "rules"
Probably some other stuff that I can't remember at the moment.
Finally, I'm in the process of putting together a mobile learning quick ref guide, my plan is that almost every element is built as a component so that non-actionscripters, maybe even non-flashers, should be able to update and extend that module to include additional information and interactive media.
MY TO DO LIST:
which I hope will go down but probably won't...
1. Write up presentation about mobile quick ref guide
2. View videos - Well 10/6/04 - I've started this and half way through - quite interesting!
3. Start to build a flowchart for my role-play (to then be built in...flash?)
4. Think about whether this could also be build for a mobile platform
(I've put a really sad role-play game that involves getting girls to undress on my mobile to understand how this sort of thing works..)
5. Start to plan essay
6. Talk to Enrico about my Flash problems - how I'm going to make my drag box work properly - I have a feeling that the interface is also getting a bit complicated - I might need to get rid of the scrollbars - 10/6/04 - I'm sending an email of right now
7. finish off my Clark Aldrich book.
8. Start to read my designing simulations and games book.
9. start to read my "Rules of Play" book.
10. Find more examples of simulation games - this is very hard - especially learning ones - although I think I may start having a go at the Sims, get a better idea of the gameplay and interace.
Guess that's it for now!
