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Winston Churchill once said I'm always
ready to learn although I do not always
like being taught I know most of us
don't sit in front of our games every
night to learn things but games have
more potential as teaching tools than
most people realize and they don't even
have to be boring games to do it but
before I dive into the topic headfirst
let's start by looking at the state of
educational gaming in the mass market
there's been a pretty big divide between
games meant to educate and games meant
to entertain like larger than any other
medium kind of big
it seems that somewhere along the way in
game history educational games and
entertainment games were made into two
completely separate industries so now we
have the video game industry and the
entertainment or simulation industry and
they've dug a nice deep trench between
themselves and we haven't seen each
other in years the problem is that in
digging this trench both sides gave up
something valuable to a degree
Entertainment gave up being fun while
the fun games gave up the opportunity to
benefit their audience adjust so we're
all on the same page let's look at the
educational games for a moment for
starters what does it mean to educate in
this case it means setting out with a
goal of teaching someone a specific
thing and that's what educational games
do games like math blaster duffer is
dying typing of the Dead they all take
this approach there are games yeah but
the primary focus is to teach you
something but you know those movies that
hold you down and hit you in the face
with the point a lot of modern
educational games are kind of like that
sitting you down with the promise of a
good time before just smacking you with
a lesson plan and being beaten over the
head just isn't very fun not how we want
to spend our leisure time is it not
while locust are running free and that
cut Amaury isn't gonna roll itself and
really if we wanted to spend our free
time working to learn something it'll be
faster and more effective to just pick
up a textbook now over in the other camp
we have the fun games and I'm sure I
don't need to introduce you to these
they're great aren't they but after a
long Halo session when you stand up for
the couch what have you really gotten
from the experience yeah you've had fun
no denying that but it hasn't expanded
your horizons or enriched your life in
any way has it so how can we make games
educational without sucking all the fun
out of them or substantially adding to
development costs the answer to enable
learning to facilitate learning rather
than trying to educate don't worry I'm
gonna explain what that means
study after study has shown that people
with simulator information better when
they're studying topics they're
interested in rather than things they're
forced to learn for school or for work
you know what I mean you can't remember
the names of all 50 states half the time
but you can draw a map of Azeroth from
memory don't be ashamed of it it's how
we are if we're interested in something
we're gonna have an easy time learning
it
the problem with the educational
approach is that it tries to jazz up a
topic we just don't care about rather
than trying to get us engaged in the
topic and care about it in a personal
way but video games have a huge
advantage here we inherently care about
what we're doing when we play games the
enthusiasm is already there and the game
designer just has to channel it this
brings us to the topic of tangential
learning tangential learning is not what
you learn by being taught rather it's
what you learn by being exposed to
things in a context which are already
engaged in for example consider say the
movie 300 clearly not a film intended to
educate right yet just about everyone
you know now knows who Leonidas is the
film didn't educate but it got people
interested in it stirred discussion
people were exposed to something they
didn't know they were interested in
which is one of the biggest
breakthroughs for learning some people
Google 300 and ended up at the Wikipedia
page for the historical Battle of
Thermopylae others simply thought hey
and I just seems pretty awesome I'd like
to learn more about him and you get the
idea this is what tangential learning is
all about it's the idea that some
portion of your audience will self
educate if you can introduce them to
topics in the context they already find
exciting and engaging for example maybe
after hours of playing call of duty to
certain shooter fans might decide to
read about the campaigns of World War
two
maybe some dynasty Warriors fans will
take time to learn more about conflicts
in Chinese history as for me thanks to
rock band I've discovered whole eras of
music I never realized I liked and I've
spent hours watching documentaries on
rock history and reading up on the rock
gods of old and my wife has been very
patient with me I bet most of you can
think of a time the sort of things
happened to you as well this is easy for
games to do and it costs nothing to the
developer and there are a lot of
different ways to do it too some of you
may wonder is tangential learning
possible in games that aren't
historically themed yes it is and I'll
give you an example this is how
tangential learning barely implemented
and taking no extra development time can
serve to introduce players to new ideas
consider how many RPG fans who have
never gone to Temple know what the
Sephiroth is simply because the Final
Fantasy team decided to name a character
after it if just 0.1% of the Final
Fantasy audience discovered what it is
Square just facilitated the learning of
10,000 people so let's think of some
good ways to put tangent to learning
into action without resorting to history
retellings one way is to follow the
Sephiroth example setting up a little
kernel of fact or a reference into the
game story but when your game is a giant
sea of fantasy fiction it's gonna be
pretty hard for your audience to figure
out which elements are references and
which ones are just crazy you made
up so how do you highlight which
elements have more to them you could use
the straightforward Xenosaga method and
simply make everything referential of
course that's probably
to take a lot of effort and pre-planning
to pull off alternatively you can
literally highlight the names of
referential things effective but China
tacky personally I recommend a more
subtle approach
for example I'm fond of games that give
information or quotations during loading
screens it's dead space anyway and it's
not like we gamers have anything better
to do while we wait so why not throw
something up there for us to read
another example if you include objects
in the game that are clearly referential
you can clue the player in that other
objects in the game might be references
as well so like if you include the
Excalibur as a sword in your game an
obvious reference then the player might
connect the dots and assume that perhaps
the Masamune in your game is a reference
as well a really great example of
tangents or learning opportunities in
action are those in-game indexes you
know like the civil appeal Mass Effect
codex the Metal Gear database that kind
of thing these are all good examples of
a game providing players a space to
access tangential topics in game but
that concept could go even further what
if rather than spending time money and
storage space developing a civil a PDF
you developers integrated a readily
available source of information
Wikipedia Wikipedia links could easily
be implemented into any PC game and
requiring no development time or disk
space Plus Wikipedia would allow users
to follow their interests from topic to
topic in a way that traditional in-game
encyclopedias simply never could
now these sort of features might sound a
little heavy-handed or intrusive but
they won't be if the player never has to
use them properly implemented things
like the Codex or a civil Appiah can add
to the depth of a player's experience
without making them feel like you're
holding them down and bludgeoning them
with knowledge that's the whole point
enhancing the player experience without
getting in the way of the fun I don't
think I'm saying that there's anything
wrong with old fashioned fun games a
game certainly doesn't have to be
educational to be worth our time
but many designers are missing out on a
prime opportunity to enrich their
audience's lives this is a chance for
developers to extend the players
engagement with their product at very
little additional cost and I hope more
developers start taking advantage of it
in the future games can be more than a
mere diversion when we put down the
controller we should have the
opportunity to bring something from our
recreation into our lives by simply
exposing players to new concepts
designers can lay the groundwork for
learning and to any of you who are
planning to look up with the Sephiroth
is after this you know tangent to
learning works see you next week
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