Dungeons & Dragons and Degrees

I recently started playing a game called Dragon Age: Origins. Those of you who know what that is can give there condolences to my family and friends in the comments section. For those of you who don’t know about the game: Dragon Age is a type of game known as a role-playing game or RPG. Playing an RPG is a bit like having a second life, where your character learns and develops various skills as you play. Each action you do earns you a certain number of experience points (XP) that will be added to your character’s overall experience, eventually allowing you to ‘level up’. Levelling up rewards you with attribute points and talent points (bear with me here, there will be a point to this) which can be used to add or improve your character’s abilities. Attributes are things like strength, dexterity, willpower, cunning, magic, and constitution. By increasing your attributes, you can gain access to more talents, as well as increasing the effectiveness of those talents. Talents are things like stealth, dirty fighting, evasion, and so on; and are special abilities that directly affect how you interact with the world.

So let’s say, for example, you start the game as a level 1 character with a smattering of attribute points across the board and maybe one skill. We’re going to say that skill is stealth. Now this doesn’t stop you from being able to do other things, it just means you can be stealthy whereas most other people can’t. A lot of the game revolves around doing heroic deeds and fighting monsters, so you run off to fight some nasty things. As I’ve said even though your only talent is stealth, you can still do other things such as fighting. Your stealth talent might help give you an edge against enemies by allowing you to sneak up on them, or later the game, staying completely hidden whilst attacking them (not very sportsmanlike; Fezzik would not approve). Each enemy you vanquish will reward you with a number of XP (lets say 50XP to simplify things) and once you’ve earned 2000XP, you level up to level 2. This gives you 3 attribute points to assign however you see fit. In this case I might want to improve my stealth ability to reduce the chance of being seen sneaking up on someone, so I add one point to cunning. I might be getting badly beaten up in fights so I’d add a point to constitution because this will enable me to take more of an ass whooping, and I would maybe choose to add my last point to strength so I can dish out more of an ass whooping myself. I can then use my talent point to upgrade my stealth talent or buy a new talent like deadly strike which will allow me to really mess up some motherfunksters. I can now take on bigger and stronger enemies to earn more XP, level up, and improve my character.

The reason I’m looking at this is because it, in some small way, reflects how we live our lives. Before you start calling the men in white coats, I’m not saying we’re all knights stomping around hunting goblins and killing them so we can level up, but the whole point of these games is to create a believable world in which a person can play and develop the role of a character. They are designed to imitate real life in at least some respects. There are, however, some flaws.

The thing I personally dislike most about role-playing games, and something that I think draws some parallels with reality is the fact that you must choose your profession before you begin the game. You see, the thing I neglected to mention at the start of this post is the fact that the skills available to you are dictated by the profession you choose to play as. Professions tend to be things like warrior (like a knight), mage (magical person), or rouge (sneaky, underhand weasel), and so on. My problem with this is that I have absolutely no idea at the beginning of the game, what I am going to encounter, or how I intend to tackle each task. If in real life I am asked to go and film something on location, I will ask every question under the sun to ascertain what tools are required to do that task. What is the location like? What am I filming? Will I need to record sound? What are the current lighting conditions? To arrive at a job with no information, having simply brought a few basic tools that you think might be useful is just plain unprofessional; and as a game mechanic, this irritates the hell out of me. I’m not being given the opportunity to try the profession before I commit to it; I have no real clear understanding of what is involved in such a profession; and, perhaps above all else, I am committing to a single profession that limits my abilities to only those that fit within one of a handful of specialisations. My biggest gripe? This is almost exactly what we do with generation after generation of children in our schools.

I can quite clearly recall being in school towards the end of my A-levels and telling my head of year that I wasn’t going to university yet because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. The look of shock on her face was almost as surprising to me as her assertions that I had to go to university because a degree was vital (Something I admittedly half agree on), and that I needed to go straight after school without taking any kind of gap year or time to make an informed decision (obviously she didn’t explicitly state “You should go to university without making an informed decision”, but that is what I inferred). Needless to say I took a gap year, and having failed to follow my original plan to travel, I ended up working in a hotel. Working gave me the money to do the things I wanted to do; it paid the bills and it gave me freedom to spend time discovering what I enjoyed and where my talents lay. I spent most of that year editing videos; the next year I took an art foundation degree that allowed me to try many different things where I discovered an appreciation for photography and animation. The year after that I started my B.A. (Hons) degree; and three years later, I graduated with a 2:2 in Moving Image Design. By comparison, I don’t have any figures, but I happen to know that a large number of people from my high school  who went straight into university; dropped out in the first year, and a good few more didn’t finish their respective degrees. I’ve known people who have began studying to be lawyers and architects, and dropped out before completing the course because it turned out to be something other than they expected.

There is so much wrong with this idea of forcing young adults to commit to a profession so early, or rather waste money (their parent’s money anyway) on a degree they will never use. If a young person knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what they want to do with their life, by all means, let them go to university. But if someone doesn’t know what they want to do, let them live their life a little. Make your kid get a job or do volunteer work; encourage them to find their own passions and interests. In fact, why wait? Do this from the moment they can walk. Encourage them to explore and play; because the biggest aid to learning is a passion for the subject, and nothing else can compare to that. It is a mentality that will serve them well, and something that many adults would do well to act upon too.

I leave you today with another video from TED. This particular video features Sir Ken Robinson who, to my mind, has produced some of the most interesting; funny; and, above all, important TED talks I’ve seen yet. Please do your children, and maybe yourself, a favour and take the time to watch this video, because I think it carries a very important message.

Headmastery

Monday’s post, on computer games and learning, got me thinking; how would I design a game to teach people the things I've been talking about in my blog? I think something that can't be assumed is a love of computer games, or even a familiarity with them. A game would need to be simple and intuitive enough for anyone in the target audience to pick it up. The second issue would be trying to create a game that would make the person want to play it. I found myself looking at casual games for two reasons: 1) Casual games are aimed at appealing to a wide audience, including people who don't usually play games. 2) Many casual games contain ‘compulsive gameplay’ elements that keep people coming back for more.

I can think of a few examples off the top of my head: Farmville, Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies, and for those who can appreciate the classics we have Tetris, Solitaire, and Minesweeper. I’m pretty sure that if you’ve ever owned a computer (which, considering you’re reading my blog, I think I can safely assume you have) you will have played at least one of these games. In fact, considering that Farmville’s Facebook page currently shows around 57 million active users, I’d feel fairly confident in saying that if you don’t play the game yourself, you at least know someone who does. Looking at the page now I can see there are 10 people on my own friend list who play Farmville, and I will be un-friending them as soon as I finish writing this post. I think it would be fair to say that casual games might solve the two issues I mentioned in the first paragraph.

So, how do we recreate the appeal of a good casual game whilst providing a useful learning experience? That’s the multimillion dollar question. Zynga (developers of Farmville) claim the secret to their success is metrics, where the game developer analyses a user’s interactions with a game to decide what improvements to make. This would be a useful fringe benefit of using fully interactive learning software, as it would give teachers the opportunity to asses where the software was more or less successful. Zynga also build their games on a three pillar system of -play, express and invest- meaning that the user first plays the game,  then express themselves through the content, and ultimately feel committed to the game due to the time they have already invested. I should remind you at this point that we’re looking to create useful games that will teach new ideas and processes, not a highly addictive time sink, so we’ll be taking all this information and formulating our own methods. The first of these three pillars is the easiest for us because we don't have to encourage the person to play the game initially, as they should understand that it is relevant to their job, and designed to help them improve their performance. The third pillar can be pretty much ignored since we are not looking to make the user committed to the training software, just the processes it teaches. Our problem then, is finding how to keep a person engaged in the learning experience.

Perhaps the most important element required to keep a person's interest in a game or activity is the reward element. The reason for people doing anything can often be reduced to the rewards gained from doing that action. Generally, we go to work because we get paid or because we get pleasure from our job. There are monetary rewards; and there are the emotional or (at the risk of sounding all new age here) spiritual rewards. At this point, I’m reminded of a talk by Dan Pink at the RSA which can be heard here, accompanied by pretty illustrations. This led me to look at another talk by Dan, from TED, in which he elaborates on these ideas. In his talk, Dan mentions studies that have been carried out to assess the effect of monetary rewards on performance. The experiments showed that, by and large, monetary rewards had either no effect on performance, or impacted performance negatively. These are not new experiments or new findings, but one interesting aspect of this was the actual effect monetary rewards had. As Dan puts it, the rewards had the effect of focusing subjects on a task which, in our case, would be a desirable effect. As he states in his TED talk: When there are a clear set of rules and a clear outcome, incentives work exactly as they're supposed to. So in this instance we can assume that offering a greater reward for a greater performance will increase performance. If monkey climbs tree to get a coconut, monkey gets banana. In the context of a game you could compare this somewhat to what Farmville does. It is about following the rules and going through the motions to gain credits and then using those credits to improve your farm so you can get more credits with which to improve your farm. This particular process would work great for learning fixed processes, but isn't much good if you want people to be able to operate with any level of autonomy.

So, lets take a look at the other side, what I would refer to as the 'spiritual' rewards. Dan Pink refers to three elements of what motivates people: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Of these three motivators, I'd like to look at Mastery. The idea behind Mastery is that people want to get good at things. Take, for example, my learning to play the piano (mentioned in my earlier post); I didn't need to learn the piano, I wanted to. I learned to play the piano because I enjoyed the challenge and felt rewarded by my achievement at the end. Many people, myself included, will play games for this very reason. To take another couple of examples from this blog: My girlfriend learning to play Sodoku or adventure games; being driven by the feeling of achievement for getting the right answer, and wanting to improve those skills. Suddenly I'm hit by a solution. People play Tetris and Bejeweled for hours on end because it is skilled game play, and their skill level is indicated by how high their score is. People continue to play these games out of a desire to achieve the highest score. Surely we can use this to maintain the user's interest long enough to teach them something useful.

Taking this information into consideration, how could we create a game to teach a process? I'm going to use 5S as an example here. Say we have a problem in our car manufacturing plant where employees aren't sticking to the rules of 5S, or rather the rules of 5S aren't sticking with our employees. It would be possible to build an interactive computer generated model or diagram of a workstation (which should be standardised according to 5S). The employee is then asked to use workstation and produce one unit of whatever it is designed to produce. This task is timed allowing the user to track their performance. It should be made clear to the user that these scores are for their own self evaluation and will not be used by the company to evaluate them. This is a self-improvement exercise. The next stage would then allow the user to alter the layout of the workstation in an attempt to improve efficiency, and ultimately their time score. This adds a layer of autonomy for the user. At this point the user will find that they are unable to move the actual tools, but can only move the markers that indicate where the tools should go (if the tools are in their place, they will move with their 'home'). Now the employee is tasked with constructing the same item as before. If the user failed to place objects back in their proper place during the previous production cycle, they may find it very messy and confusing during this production cycle. They are now learning, from experience, the detrimental effect that not putting tools away can have. This process is repeated. Each time, the user is timed during the production of the item and only allowed to move tools during production. After each production cycle, the user is allowed to streamline their workstation in an effort to improve their performance. The replacing of tools could also be emphasised by adding a second layer of scoring where the user is awarded points for returning tools to their correct home. This seems, to me, like a potential way of turning a learning experience into an engaging game/simulation.

This is only one simple example and may not be perfect, but I think it is the beginning of an idea/understanding and a potential way forward for training software.

As a side note: Whilst looking at Dan Pink's talk on the TED website I came across a very interesting talk in which someone suggests re-engaging boys in learning through the use of computer games. I think it's quite relevant to what I've been talking about and recommend checking it out, if you're interested. You can find it here.

Learn to play, play to learn

I feel that, over the years, I've got a lot out of playing computer games in addition to the intended entertainment factor. One game alone (Grim Fandango) helped me to extend my English vocabulary (I specifically remember hearing the word 'ostentatious' here for the first time), learn some basic Spanish phrases and vocabulary, and informed me about Mexican beliefs in relation to the afterlife and their celebration of The Day of the Dead. This, however, isn't a unique quality for a game. I have clear recollections of various bits of information I've learned from computer games. I've always thought of the things I've learned as mostly useless, but as I grow older (and hopefully wiser) I find myself being more and more aware of the value of this knowledge.

I've always been quite an interested person. I've always been curious about why things are the way they are, how things work, and how we got to this point in civilisation (the real one, not the game). The problem is that although I can be very interested in a given subject, I tend to need a little direction to get me started. With Grim Fandango, I simply wanted to play an interesting game that would be challenging but, most importantly, fun. It was a fun game with interesting characters and an exciting story, but the fringe benefit of playing was that it got me interested in The Day of the Dead festival and the beliefs surrounding it. Not only did I learn a lot from the game, but it whet my appetite, encouraging me to find more information on these beliefs. I've found computer games to be an incredibly powerful way to inspire learning, as well as being a resource to some extent.

Primary education

I mentioned simulators in my post last week. Many people know that pilots are trained in flight simulators, and some of you might be aware that some driving schools use driving simulators these days; but simulators are used for numerous things because, lets be honest, experience is much more useful than a lot of theory. You could spend months reading the instructions for your new mobile phone, but why bother? Most people keep the manual for reference and just get on with using the phone. Things stick in your head better when you've learned them yourself, and if they don't stick the first time, you will have at least had practice at figuring it out; making it easier to do it again. I never liked reading manuals, even for computer games. Games always come with a manual, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a reference guide, and I suspect that most people are the same. You check the manual on a drill because you want to make sure you don't put a hole through your leg, but mostly, learning is about doing.

Secondary education

Ignoring, for a moment, the information I've learned from games; I find it interesting to think of the skills I've learned. I can genuinely look at video games as having given me many opportunities to practice my lateral thinking, logic, management skills and strategies. I always find it interesting to watch other people play computer games. I think you can tell a lot about a person by how they act, and these behaviours can still be spotted when you watch someone playing a game. I am a perfectionist. I know most people who know me won't believe that but it's true. I've been known to be quite lazy, but in the past that has tended to result in me not finishing things. The things I actually finish, are done to a very high quality, and this became apparent in my gaming habits. If I messed up in a game, I would tend to reload a saved game from earlier and redo that section until I got the absolute best result possible. I learned where pitfalls were and was able to avoid them, as well as learning to spot them in the future. In contrast, I have a friend who also plays a lot of games, and when I watched him play the same games, it became apparent to me that there was a lot of his personality going into how he played the game. If something went wrong, he just pushed on. Even when things became desperate, he would continue playing until he achieved his goal. Obviously he would hit a dead end from time to time and he'd get a game over screen, but each scenario gave him more training. The interesting thing was that we were both learning, and both achieving the end goal; but I was amazed by the kind of insight that watching a person play games could give me. It has become even more apparent over the years that these interactions have become like practice for real life. I don't mean this in the sense of “I learned to drive from Grand Theft Auto” but that there are certain cognitive processes that can be honed through the use of computer simulations.

I recently got back into playing sudoku. I think that many people assume that because it's a game played with numbers, it's a game about maths; but sudoku is a game of logic. I introduced my girlfriend to the game and she has taken it up very enthusiastically, but she isn't particularly good at it at the moment. This isn't at all because she's dumb (she's quite the contrary) but she clearly hasn't played as much sudoku and so she hasn't had the same practice in using that form of logic. It's an easy comparison for me to make and through this logic exercise I can practice using my brain in certain ways that are beneficial in life. I find much the same in computer games. I love adventure games, especially ones with environmental puzzles. I am concious of having grown up with fairly well developed lateral thinking skills which I feel can be at least partly attributed to computer games. Again, I recently introduced my girlfriend (who has hardly ever played any computer games) to one of these games, and again I have found the results very interesting. She is very good at getting the answers and more than capable of solving the puzzles herself, but I found that if I'm in the room when she's playing, she can't help but ask me what she needs to do. This makes for quite an interesting game play style because , to be honest, there's no reason why she wouldn't ask me for the answer; I do know it after all. I even found that when I left the room and came back some time later, she had looked up a website with the solutions to the puzzles. That to me is brilliant task oriented thinking. She got the answer and the result. What is to say that she hasn't learned anything from that? She sought the answer herself and was presumably able to understand how the solution worked, and so she learned something new.

BA(Hons)

There is plenty of educational software out there. There are simulators and games that are specifically intended to teach us things, but I definitely feel that even mainstream games have something to offer. Even if the only thing we get is a taste for a deeper knowledge of something that game introduced us to. Games and simulations can train us, and exercise our brains; but they can also give us things to take away and consider and develop. There is such an ocean of games to choose from and whilst some of them might find you with your pants rolled up splashing in the shallows, other will give you reason to dive in head first; and you might just be surprised how deep they can go.