I'm Serious.net

GDC: Not a Banner Year for Serious Games Summit

  I've been trying to put into words the flat feeling I was left with after the Serious Games Summit.

Perhaps it's the word "summit" that generates expectations too lofty to be achieved. I had dreams of heated conversation about the challenges within and for the serious games industry. I envisioned impassioned discussions about learning design/game design mashups. I was yearning for all the new game concepts that would fuel and challenge us for another year. Such was not to be.

Rather, it was a bit stale and under-attended. Sure, a few more corporate initiatives have been funded, but not for any novel purposes. There were a couple of new tools on the market that claim to make it easier to author/script/develop learning games. But all in all, it was same old same old.

This leaves me with vague unease about where serious games are going - or, better, where the conference is going. My sense is that the company that puts on GDC keeps going to the same people to help them with their programming for serious games. This inevitably self-referential approach effectively eliminates new ideas or new entrants to the discussion.

I raise this point because I've wondered for some time whether a conference focused on the ways technologies for entertainment are used for learning and productivity should be co-located with a conference for game developers. There are great benefits, to be sure, but so many topics get left off the table. Important topics, like achieving the right balance between learning and game play; or, cross-cultural play styles and their impact on serious game design; or, whether music enhances learning equally well in story-driven games as in strategy games.

If you are a serious games professional, are your professional development needs being met? Your professional networking needs? If so, how and where? Inquiring minds want to know.

I'm serious,
Anne

Women and (Serious) Games

  One of the few general sessions I was able to attend at last week's GDC focused on the lack of women in games, both on the player and the creator sides of the equation. As the panelists were speaking about this wretched state of affairs, a silent slide deck ran behind them. The deck was created by Merrilea Mayo (one of the panelists) and Julie Becker, both of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and offers their analysis of the problem along with their tongue-in-cheek prescription for fixing it.

Download Kauffman

My solution is a bit more pragmatic. Focus on the part of the industry where there is a huge gap to fill: serious games.

What is the gap? There are not nearly enough learning designers involved in the creation of serious games (for the umpteenth time).

But there are many, many female learning designers, an unquantifiable subset of whom are interested in games and game technologies. By drawing on their learning design expertise while introducing them to game design and production, we are likely to see many benefits: new job opportunities; higher-quality games; and, a stronger industry all around.

So, go ahead. Start talking amongst yourselves. It's for (y)our own good.

I'm serious,
Anne

GDC: Game of the Day (Tuesday)

Several months ago, I drew readers' attention to what promised to be a "game-changing" game called Spore. Today, I heard Margaret Robertson offer a critical review of the game. It was a great presentation, and Margaret's insights offer valuable lessons for all game designers, whether entertainment or serious.

Spore, as you will remember is massive - massively multi-player, massive in scope, and massively ambitious. Players start with a single-cell creature that is nursed through many stages of evolution, 

ultimately achieving space exploration technology and abilities. The appearance and attributes of the creature are purely user-generated content; every aspect of the little dude is controlled by the player with the Spore Creature Creator. Along the way, your creature discovers other creatures that may or may not be friendly. Don't worry, though, everyone survives, and along the way, new worlds are colonized and societies flourish.

But even with all those new worlds, Spore is not gaining the traction that game design house, Maxis, and the publisher, Electronic Arts, had anticipated. One of the sub rosa goals of the Spore design team was to provide a platform to explore - and teach - biology. In fact, since the game launched, no one has been identified as using Spore to teach science.

In part, this is due to the windstorm that kicked up shortly after launch. Members of the science community took the game creators to task for their science, for the game's inattention to important details and nuances of biology and evolution, and for the cute-sy approach to graphics. Creationists took umbrage at the entire concept of the game, and intelligent design proponents felt equally digruntled.

Other design issues have posed barriers to adoption. The game has been called "too slow," "too long," "too complicated," and "too soon" (in other words, teachers haven't had enough time to be exposed to the depth and breadth of the game, and so haven't yet figured out how to fit the game into the rest of the curriculum). And of course, there's the little-referenced, although greatly considered, metric : TTP (time-to-penis, or the time it takes students to start creating sexually-explicit content).

There is promising news about Spore's utility in education, however. A number of education applications have been devised by clever educators, among those: creative writing; introduction to 3D modelling and thinking spatially; teamwork, particularly among those with developmental difficulties; and, emotional literacy for autistics.

As a result of her recent evaluation of the game, Margaret offers several "learnings" from which we can all benefit. I have taken her ideas and liberally elaborated on them, and so ask for her forgiveness if I misrepresent her thinking.

1. Marketing and advocacy are key to adoption, particularly within the education community. These activites should focus both on subject matter and on teaching.
2. Games being primed for the education sector should be marketed with lesson plans, model learning modules, and other teacher-assistance materials that make it easy for the educator to get on board.
3. Publishers need to learn how to sell to the education community, which is not at all the same as selling through retail channels or to the corporate world. This includes the ability to do education pricing and institutional licensing rather than seat licensing, just for starters.
4. Free is the best price of all in education. Of course, it's difficult to sustain a non-revenue business, so rather than giving it all away, consider "compartmentalizing" your game so that you can seed the market with the freebies while still charging for other components.
5. Make sure that your technology threshold is as low as possible to account for the aged equipment available at many schools.
6. Ensure that it's easy for players to collaborate.
7. Be as flexible as possible in the format of your outputs. User-generated content assets should be downloadable and exportable.
8. Practice patience. The education market moves much more slowly than business. Adoption and uptake happen on academic year cycles, not on a quarterly basis.

I'm serious,
Anne

GDC: Game of the Day (Monday)

Sometimes, little things make big differences. The garbage collector who called me, not to tell me he'd found my dog, but to tell me he'd spent his whole shift looking. The man who directed me to the "up" escalator when I could only find the "down". The shopkeeper who walked me a whole block to make sure I got to the right place. The highway patrolman who "loaned" me $5 when I was out of gas.

The people at Akoha built their company on the notion that the Internet can and should be used to bring happiness to the real world through the promotion of random acts of kindness. Akoha is an alternate reality game that sends players on missions of kindness by distributing playing-card size mission assignments. 

 

The missions are easy to accomplish (e.g., make someone smile, give someone a book), and have the result of delight and pleasure on the part of the giver and the receiver. When asked how the receiver can give back, the giver responds, "Pay it forward!" In other words, take the mission card and use it with someone else.

If gameplay alone doesn't inspire you, go to the Akoha website. You will find a map that tracks all the missions in action and those that are completed. You can follow your own missions to find out how far they have advanced, where in the world they have traveled, and how many stops they have made along the way. In the brief time since the game entered open beta (where it is now), 3,119 missions have been completed; as I've been sitting here writing, the map screen has been abuzz with activity.

While Akoha is a stand-alone game today, it has the distinct potential of becoming equal part game, equal part game platform. By that, I mean that one of the game's key design elements is the user-generated mission capability. Any player can submit a mission idea or set of ideas. Those missions then become available to all players. This is what has me seriously excited.

Imagine that you are a community organizer trying to engage your target group in the efforts you are undertaking. By setting up a series of missions, you might make the work lighter and the impact more widely-spread. What if you're a school vice-principal dealing with the problem of vandalism at your school. Maybe engaging known taggers in a game where they use their art talents for good acts instead of petty crimes would re-orient their behavior. Or you might be a coach whose team needs a lot of work in coalescing as a team, or a systems administration trainer, or nurse practitioner... well, you get the idea.

I urge you to take a look. Not only will you feel good about yourself and your magnanimity, you'll be inspired to figure out how to introduce this game into your learning activities. 

I'm serious,

Anne 

GDC Anyone? Taking meetings...

  I'm excited - GDC is almost here. All you folks partying your hearts out in Austin better rest up, 'cuz the real action's coming up next week. Honestly, if you're interested in designing games or using game technologies in the service of learning and you aren't planning to be in San Francisco, you need to re-think your priorities for next week.

I'm finalizing my conference schedule now. I have a few slots available, and would love to meet people who have projects to share or work to discuss. Please let me know immediately - EMAIL ONLY, please (anne@imserious.net) - if you would like to arrange to meet.

I'm serious,
Anne

Interactive Storyboards

Links for products mentioned: PowerPoint; Keynote; Flypaper; Xtranormal

Re-finding gems

  Every so often, while in a fit of agita, I run across a nugget that I appreciate just as much as when I first found it. Richard Van Eck is a frequent author of these treasures, and so it was today.

About a year ago, a question popped up on the serious game listserv run by Ben Sawyer. The discussion actually had to do with guided learning/discovery learning, but detoured at one point to scaffolding as a component of serious game design. Richard offered the following thoughts:

Regarding the idea of scaffolding a game, I would encourage us all to also consider how games provide scaffolding already, and to incorporate those strategies. First, games almost always begin with a tutorial which walks you through the main interface components and skill demonstration. Second, games often provide learner control over challenge (a la Malone and Lepper) in the form of selecting amongst levels of difficulty (usually akin to easy, medium, and hard). Third, games invariably proceed from the simple to the complex, require small, graduated steps in skill level until we "level up", at which point we usually face all the challenges of the first level plus increased challenges that require new learning (e.g., combination of a run and jump comm[a]nd in an action game, or combining two items in inventory to make a third thing). And this does not include the myriad of other features in the game that provide feedback and guidance (direct and indirect) such as journals that are automatically updated with important information, the availability of goal reminders (e.g., Bioshock or Neverwinter Nights), text options for possible actions, etc. So if we are going to scaffold learning in games, we need to [be] cognizant of the ways of scaffolding that are appropriate for games, and to make use of established tools and game strategies to do so.

And all of these ideas are just limited to what is part of the game itself--the game manual, cheats and walkthroughs, and game player social communities are also all arguably part of the game, and certainly allow players to self-regulate access to assistance (a kind of self-imposed scaffolding, I think).

I appreciate not only Richard's discussion of scaffolding, but his wholistic view of the game. If each of the components he refers to are also part of the game, then aren't they also part of the learning? Both learning about and learning from the game? Since these components often provide the player's "intro" to and "outro" from the game, don't these component's also have a good chance of influencing learning transference?

Good reminders, Richard. Thank you.

I'm serious,
Anne

Sweating the small stuff

  Bill Brandon, editor at the eLearning Guild just reminded me about Albert Mehrabian's conclusions regarding how humans determine whether we like one another. Mehrabian and his colleagues wanted to determine the relative influence of facial expressions and spoken words in human relations. After various experiments where subjects read words, listened to words spoken, and watched someone speak specific words, Mehrabian et al. concluded that the totality of interpersonal communication is conveyed:

• 7% through spoken word
• 38% through voice tone
• 55% via general body language

To be sure, these exact numbers can and have been challenged. But the relative influence of these communication modalities is generally accepted.

These findings have important implications for those designing immersive environments. Take, for example, a frequent in-world situation where a user must gather information and apply it in a new, potentially ambiguous context. The designer must decide the best way to present the new information and the best way to present the context for the user to apply it. Is a block of text the right way to set this up? Perhaps voice-over will assist in smoothing out ambiguities. Maybe an NPC with a facial expression or a gesture will be necessary to convey the full meaning, particularly when feedback is involved.

The process of design can be greatly informed by this awareness, as well. How do you develop and review storyboards? Is this an entirely paper-based process? Or, do you do storyboard walkthroughs with reviewers taking different "roles" so that the review is active, participatory, and more "life-like"?

While these details may seem to be more trouble than they're worth, it's this attention to detail that can make the difference between a transformational experience for your users and just another (maybe) learning event.

I'm serious,
Anne

RWJF announces new grants

Health Games Research: Advancing Effectiveness of Interactive Games for Health is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that funds research to enhance the quality and impact of interactive games that are used to improve health. The goal of the program is to advance the innovation, design and effectiveness of health games and game technologies so that they help people improve their health-related behaviors and, as a result, achieve significantly better health outcomes. In this round of funding, approximately $2 million will be available to support outstanding research projects that study one or more games designed to increase physical activity and/or improve self-care.

Go here to see the Call for Proposals (PDF). Proposals are due April 8, 2009.

Show Them Your Stuff!

Do you have a great serious game concept? Looking for a reason to build it? How about world-wide renown and a pile of money - is that reason enough? OK - I'm stretching it a bit, but this is a great chance for students and professionals to try their hands at designing and developing a serious game. Prizes will be awarded!

Whosegame, an alpha version from Orange (a French? developer), intends to be a portal for serious games built in Flash. In this early stage of the portal's life, a serious game design contest is being conducted at the site.

According to the site, "[y]ou can submit as many serious games as you want on the following topics:

• improve your knowledge in the telecommunications field
• be an eco-citizen with the help of telecommunications
• acting against isolation and exclusion thanks to telecommunications"

They even give you some examples to get your imagination going.

C'mon now - you have 3 months. Any professors out there looking for a class project?...

I'm serious,
Anne