OUseful blog post 501: Martin's been wondering Is education intrinsically a bit dull?, Marc's been deliver[ing] a stinging condemnation of elearning at his keynote address to the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies on Friday in Niigata, Japan and I have been asking myself the question: "if courses are games, have we got the gameplay wrong?"
This question arises partly from my background reading for a new 10 point short course on computer game design and interactive media, which has the deliberately provocative internal working title of "Playing God: Designing Games, Creating Digital Worlds: A hands-on guide to computer game design and interactive media."
Yesterday, I was looking at Half--Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds by Jesper Juul, which has an interesting take on the way rules limit, or afford, particular behaviours within a game.
One interesting distinction that was made in the book (and in this short paper) is between games of progression and games of emergence:
[G]ames of progression ... directly set up each consecutive challenge in a game, and games of emergence ... set up challenges indirect because the rules of the game interact. (p67)
The earliest adventure games are fine examples of games of progression - the aim is for the player to solve a series of puzzles in a particular order; Pong is used as an example of a game of emergence - every game is different depending on how the game is played (even though the rules are very simple).
This distinction - simple as it is - got me thinking about courses that have a strong linear narrative (which is how our online courses tend to be constructed): in a sense, they resemble games of progression. In games of porgression, the game designer specifies quite tightly how the game will proceed and what the player must do in order to proceed.
Compare this with resource based and informal models, which arguably have more in common with games of emergence. Games of emergence set up situations that allow the game designer to be surprised by the actions of the player as they proceed through the game - the goal state may be defined, but how the player reaches that goal is not.
Another feature of games of progression is that you probably don't want to keep playing them over and over again, once you've cracked them. Whereas games of emergence can be played again and again, with the player changing their behaviour as their skills develop, in turn changing the possible outcome of the game (and maybe even the way they play it).
Considering courses as games has a lot to offer, I think, particularly in terms of "gameplay" and player reward schedules...
...but first, I have some script marking to do... :-(
Posted by ajh59 at July 25, 2007 07:43 PM