Hooked on games

Instructors who look to games as models for designing their instruction look to the risk/reward ratio of games as something that they want to emulate. But the detractors will often say “but the easy games are too easy and the hard ones are too hard – what good is that for anyone?”. It might very well be that the detractors are correct that there is a wide span of difficulty, but this is as much a reflection of the great range of quality that exists – just as there are easy intro math courses as well as “killer” intro math courses, and of course to throw a monkey into the mix, different people will react differently to the same course.

With this in mind, I found a couple of articles that talk about how difficulty is designed in games and looking at these, even in passing will certainly help those who are interested in getting into game based learning and maybe thaw some of those who are thinking that using gaming as a model for instruction is nuts.

First, Wired has an interview with the creators of Bejeweled, talking about how casual games hook players. The elements that are transferable to instruction include:

• create order
• search and discover
• let go of conscious thought

So while the first two are rather obvious when putting together a lesson, the last one isn’t. But if you think about it, this really means the ability to practice something – a physical or mental skill – until it becomes second nature. But the problem here is that practice does not make perfect, it makes pattern. This is where a second article from Gamasutra about making “hard hard” comes in. Points from that article:

• exercises should allow students to see every step at their level and then be able to take responsibility for errors
• have a path that can be followed through the instruction without an “epic fail” experience
• manage “safe” questions or “gimmes” that allow for students to check their work before “leveling up”

But just as creating higher difficulties in games is an investment, it is also the same in instruction and the down side of the experience is that many teachers are not going to have time to think about this when they are collecting questions for a homework exercise. It is more likely that they will grab a few from each “difficulty” bin, paste them to a document and fire it out the door. So until we have a solution to this, I think this will have to be one of those ideas that you can suck in and let simmer.