I'm Serious.net

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

Seafoam gets some air

Inspiration comes from so many places. For example, my sister-in-law makes a candy called seafoam. She sends a (only one!) package every year for Christmas. I love the stuff - so much that I have blessed one of my game concepts with the name "Seafoam".

My notes and scribbles about Seafoam are in a notebook I have labeled "Fragments". It's where I keep all those idea kernels for game designs, game mechanics, scenario descriptions, concepts, settings - any little nugget that seems worth remembering because someday it might be worthwhile. When I get in an idea logjam, I go through my notebook for inspiration. Maybe someday, all those fragments will actually come together, and Seafoam will be built - but in the meantime, I can occasionally test out some of my ideas in other ways.

Formats and venues for testing those ideas occur in equally unexpected ways. Today, The Seasteading Institute's (TSI) announcement about their current contest came to my attention. As they research and design ways to engineer, construct, launch, and manage (semi-)permanent floating communities, they are inviting involvement of the public in the physical design of the free-floating villages that they imagine will dot the oceans. Currently, they are looking for creative and talented designers to design a seastead using 3D modeling software (Google SketchUp recommended - it's free). A seastead, by the way, is a floating platform that allows people to permanently settle the ocean as they do land.

It strikes me that designers of immersive environments, MMOGs, and other imagined domains may be uniquely suited to conceive of the sort seastead that would address TSI's needs in ways that traditional, land- and reality-based designers, architects and engineers are not.

So pull out your notebooks, eat some seafoam for inspiration, and get busy. There are world's to be designed - and $1000 to win!

I'm serious,
Anne

IBM continues to "innovate"

Looking for business sims? According to Red Herring, IBM has just announced a new version of their BPM serious game title, Innov8 2.0. Here is the video promo for the previous version:

This free title is currently only available to the academic community - for now. And, you'll also have to wait if you are a Mac user. I suspect inquiries will be welcome.

I'm serious,
Anne

Why I Changed the Tagline

  Did you notice? I did it several weeks ago, when the colors and some other things changed (more on that later). Don't worry, my feelings are only a little bit hurt. But, seriously, I did it for a reason.

My view of the intersection of new technologies and workplace learning and productivity has expanded. In the first place, the shifting sands of new and emerging technology have blurred the boundaries between games, virtual worlds, social networking, 3D simulations, and other immersive technologies. As a result, I'm socializing an ür-term to embrace it all: immersive environments.

Secondly, organizations that adopt immersive environments do so to facilitate work and enhance productivity. This is equally the focus of learning design professionals, not to mention business managers and decision-makers.

And so, "serious thoughts about immersive environments for learning and productivity".

Some things haven't changed, though.

I'm (still) serious,
Anne

Hitting the Trail

  As a teenager, I visited Williamsburg. It was quite an interesting experience to see the town and townspeople trying to convey an impression of life in 17th-century colonial America. And I did learn quite a bit - mostly about how I would never want to wear those clothes in heat and humidity, and about how small and tall rooms were back then, and about perpetual grime and grubbiness. But, it was a weird and off-putting culture clash as all of us 20th-c. visitors went to gawk at the faux-17th-c. residents as though they were a zoo exhibit. For me, not the immersive experience the designers imagined.

In the mid-80's, Oregon Trail was the quintessential example of a computer-based learning game. It was wholly different from Williamsburg, in that it had a compelling storyline, the activities were fun - and instructive, and I learned more about the journey those gutsy pioneers took than I ever did in grade school social studies. I was hooked - on the power of the medium to:

• create an engaging environment that I could be a part of
• tell a story that captured my imagination and curiosity
• engage me in an experiential way that would otherwise have been impossible to achieve
• show me how my decisions would play out
• make me want to learn more

I sure wasn't alone in my admiration of Oregon Trail. It has gotten a lot of wistful ink and pixels in the last two decades.

Now, there is good news for Oregon Trail fans. Gameloft is preparing an iPhone version of the game. No release date, no price, no additional information, except some screenshots.

 

Keep watching the iTunes appstore for updates. And, of course, I'll pass on any more news I get.

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

Go Boilermakers!

  Purdue University has announced the opening of its Center for Serious Games and Learning in Virtual Environments. A reception is being held February 12 to mark the official opening.

As readers know, I have many times decried the lack of formal programs for those wishing to study the design and implementation of games and other immersive environments for learning. Kudos to Purdue and Dr. William Watson for bringing this center to life.

I'm serious,
Anne