Back homeAnother ramble I posted on AOL:
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 16:27:46 EST
Subject: On the nature of games
I was just thinking on my way home from the grocery store. In the winter, all my best thinking happens in the car. In the summer, it's my garden. :-)
This is going to be long and rambling.
I recently bought a CD-ROM called "Next Step Mars", without really knowing anything about it other than that it's narrated by Patrick Stewart.
I've since watched two of my kids playing with it, and what I've seen concerns me.
It's a game, sort of, but it is clearly designed to teach. The part I saw has a room, with several stations around it, each with some sort of statue or something. In the center of the room is something that can't be opened until you answer a series of questions. You're supposed to go to each of the stations in the room, read through them (and in fact, you can't do *anything else* until you have read (or clicked through) *everything* in at least one of them), memorize the facts, and then go to the middle for your quiz.
But that isn't what is happening. At all.
First time in, the kid goes to one station, and clicks through it all, without even looking. This unlocks the quiz device. Then they go to the center, and get the first question. They figure out which station will have the answer (it's really obvious- one has people, one has inventions, that sort of thing), and then go see what the possible answers are by looking at the list of contents for that station (maybe 4 things). They pick one, at random, then go try it. If it works, they repeat with the next question. If not, they pick another one at random until they have the right answer.
Once they have all the right answers for the quiz, they get to go to another section of the game, with some cool something-or-other. A reward, so to speak. And *that* is absolutely all they are interested in- advancing in the game.
The thing is, my kids aren't generally like this. This is the only situation where I've seen this sort of behavior- running through something to get done with it, but not paying attention to any of it. So I was wondering why it might be that they're doing this.
I think it has to do with the rewards, and with the very nature of games.
Games are for playing. For having fun. Yes, you can learn many things from games, but that isn't why people play them. It might well be why some parents buy them- but it's not what keeps the kids playing. For example, zoombinis. Yes, you can learn lots of strategy and math concepts from the game, but people play it because it's fun, it's interesting, it's challenging.
The more I thought about the zoombinis, and why it's fun, and what is learned from it, the more I realized something. Maybe the problem isn't only with something being created in order to teach, maybe it's *what* it is supposed to teach.
With this Mars game, I think the design is that kids will play it, have fun, and then, afterwards, they will have learned a particular set of information. Facts. But they have no interest in the facts, and the facts are not *in and of themselves* important to the game. It's test and forget. Guessing works because there is nothing built on the information, there is no use for it after the quiz.
Zoombinis, on the other hand, isn't meant to teach facts, it's to teach *concepts*. Guessing doesn't work because until you *understand* how it works, you won't be reliably successful getting through a puzzle, especially as they get more difficult. You really have to know *how* it works, in order to complete it. The entire rest of the game is built on the concepts learned right from the beginning. So there is no test and forget, you must have the information in order to finish the game.
Now I'm wondering some more. Is Zoombinis fun *because* you have to learn to advance in the game? Is it the feeling of having learned, having mastered something, the *same* as the feeling of "fun"? I'm trying to think of all the things I find fun. All of them involve feeling some level of competence, I think. Of feeling that I'm growing in my competence. Things I'm not good at, or not interested in becoming good at, aren't fun.
Like housework. I'm not good at housework. I don't like it. I feel like no matter what I do, there won't be any feeling of accomplishment, because it's all still there, needing to be cleaned again. How can I learn to want to be really good at housecleaning? Maybe if I find a way to see it as something I *am* getting better at, it will get easier, and more fun?
Hmm. What about movies? I enjoy movies. Are they something you have to be "good at"? Not really. I tend to prefer movies that make me think, but I like some sheer escapism, too. I'm not sure where that ties into all of this.
Anyway...
I'd love to hear some thoughts about fun, the nature of games, the difference between learning facts and learning concepts, and whatever this ramble has caused people to think about.
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Any comments? E-mail me . Thanks! I'm more than happy to discuss these ideas.