I'm Serious.net

Teach them to search...

Good "search" skills are misundersestimated, to borrow some coinage from our inestimable erstwhile president, George. W. Bush. Indeed, knowing which search engine to use for what purpose and then how to use advanced queries to find useful information can make the difference between an efficient research exercise and a frustrating, potentially unfruitful trial. 

Good search is a matter of entering the right question - or key words - into the search field. Finding the proper key words and the proper syntax for joining those words require complex language and logic skills. Effective search also requires enough knowledge of the subject matter to formulate a query that will yield the desired information. 

For the most part, Internet users gain search skills over time, through trial and error. Unless you're in library school, you are unlikely to be presented with a tutorial on search techniques. We all just kinda wing it, hoping to find the info we want, presuming it's not available if we don't find it right away.

Last Fall, Google released Search Stories Video Creator. It's a nifty little tool that they've released on YouTube that lets you create narrative around search queries to build a short (very short) movie. Enter seven queries in a sequence, indicate whether you want to search the Web, YouTube, maps, etc., then add a soundtrack - et voilå, your very own little 30-sec. movie. Here's mine (my first one, anyway):

I'm reeling from the scads of ways learning designers can embed this tool into all sorts of curricula. Give learners a topic, and have them tell a story to demonstrate content mastery.

• Tell me a story about "metamorphosis."
• Recap the story of "To Kill a Mockingbird."
• Who's got the best story about "quadratic equation?"
• Team A: your group's story is about microlending. Each team member tells a chapter of the story. Each chapter focuses on one key principle. Organize your team. Assign chapters. Tell your story.

There's even a dedicated Search Stories channel on YouTube, with some really fun (and some really not - but they're all PG-rated) examples.

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 

Do you know where your critters are?

 There are only 45 days left before Spore is launched! Have you gotten Spore Creature Creator yet? No? Not even sure what I'm talking about?

Spore is the next game phenomenon from Will Wright, creator of The Sims franchise. In Spore, players nurture single-cell animals into sentient beings that create community and build civilizations, eventually exploring and colonizing space. In this video, Will presents Spore - and his game design philosophy, based in large measure on Maria Montessori's philosophy of education. Notably, Will underscores the importance of user-generated content to the player's attachment to the game and the player's overall game experience.

To my mind, there are three key take-aways from Will's presentation:

1. The notion of attachment is vital to learning, too, of course. Attachment creates personal meaning and relevance - important factors to learning, retention, and transference.
2. Learner-generated content is not only useful in demonstrating content mastery; it keeps a learner/player engaged with content - and potentially with other learners/players.
3. Serious game designers have much to learn from the gurus of entertainment game design.

After you look at Will's presentation, create your own critters. Yes, you'll get attached to the little buggers. You'll be very excited to launch them into the Spore universe and grow them into complex societies. Along the way, you'll learn about evolution, biology, geology, climate change, cosmology... Now that's a seriously fun game.

I'm serious,
Anne

A Call for Standards

It's back. Another episode is on its way. The new title says it all - "Survivor: Virtual Worlds." The race is to see which serious game engine and which environment are going to take over the game industry. Many players have been announced: Multiverse, Second Life, Torque, Big World Technology... Others are in the wings.

And, yes, we all get to vote. With our purchases, certainly, but with our voices, even more so. As with so many elections, the majority of those affected by the outcome of this race will not register an opinion. This is a mistake. Here's why.

At stake is more than power, flexibility, ease of use, multi-platform compatibility, and all the bells and whistles that make us "ooh" and "aah". Yes these, and some other really critical things. In particular, I return to two fundamental issues: learner-generated content, and assessment. (I hope you count yourself, dear reader, among those who feel these are integrally linked.)

Several companies have announced not just game engines, but whole ecosystems. Second Life and Multiverse, for example, provide technology that enables players to move from one game/title/island to another without leaving the uber-verse that is their proprietary system. This portal notion is initially intriguing from a player perspective (single login, portable identity, portable avatar, portable content) and from a developer perspective (large developer community, cross-title fertilization, built-in business models).

But if I'm a learner/subscriber to a Second Life title and a Multiverse title (just for example's sake), I can't leap back and forth between the two. Most importantly, I have to learn two sets of tools to generate my own content (like I have time for that). Consequently, I can't leverage what I learn in one environment when I'm in a different environment based on a different tool set.

This is equivalent to saying, "I can't show you my video project, because it's on a VHS cassette and yours is a Betamax." Or, "I can't read your diskette, I have a Mac."

Assessment presents its own headaches. I've made clear my feelings about learning-management systems and assessment vis-a-vis serious games. Still and all, I'm making my peace with the fact that most of you will be looking for ways to tie your serious games to your LMS. Or you'll be looking for ways to tie LMS functionality into your game engine.

Remember the early days of eLearning? Remember when you had to commit to a single-vendor solution for both content and LMS because of lack of compatibility? Same problem.

Let's get ourselves out of this mess before we get in it, this time.

We need a quick intervention on the part of relevant standards bodies to address both of these issues. Specifically, we need standards to address:

1. Cross-"world" compatibility for learner-generated content.
2. Integration/compatibility issues with serious games and LMSs.

And we need this to happen now, before a lot of time, energy, and money is spent as we all try to pick the right contestant before the "Survivor" episode is over.

I'm serious,
Anne

Learners’ Rights

One might be inclined to giggle (to oneself, of course) when the subject of the legal rights of learners arises. Certainly, learners have the right to expect a good and effective learning experience, as squishy as those terms may be. They have the right not to have their money or time wasted. But these are more ethical than legal assertions.

There is a very interesting case (Bragg v. Linden Research, Inc.) before the court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Mr. Bragg alleges that, by terminating his account, Second Life (a California corporation) has unlawfully deprived him of access to his virtual possessions, which possessions are the plaintiff's alone. This case is pending, but a couple of weeks ago, the judge decided that Second Life's Terms of Service were too one-sided, and granted the plaintiff the right to sue Second Life in the plaintiff's home state of Pennsylvania. If I were Philip Rosedale, I think I'd be uneasy.

I'm vaguely uneasy anyway. These kinds of cases are being fought in jurisdictions all over the world. Whatever decisions are rendered will apply equally to entertainment and learning virtual environments - but not necessarily equally around the globe.

As I've made clear, I believe learner-generated content is a critical component to serious games. But as these cases make their way to the law books, serious game designers will need to stay current on the changing requirements.

Ultimately, if we are designing for a multi-national audience, we will be forced to level our designs to meet the tests of the most restrictive legal environment if we are to ensure that all learners have an equivalent game and learning experience. And at all times we must be sensitive to the sometimes emotional attachments we all develop toward our creations.

This issue will become even more vigorously debated, I'm sure, when some of the planned game portals are launched, including a few directed at serious games. These portals will offer features such as single logon, portable avatars, and portable game content.

More than anything else, planning ahead will keep us out of the crack on this issue. Designing the rules of game play up front - and making them clear to the learners - will accomodate the emerging cyberlaws without impinging on the experience of the learner.

I'm serious,
Anne

Thanks to reader Ovidiu Ciobanu for bringing this case to my attention.

Game Content 2.0

In a recent article in Develop, executive editor Owain Bennallack looks at what game designers can learn from Web 2.0 companies. There are many interesting implications here for serious game designers as well.

I am especially intrigued by the article's side bar, where Bennallack homes in on 10 sites (e.g., YouTube, del.icio.us, Threadless) in particular, and asserts some interesting applications to game design. Essentially, what it comes down to is the importance of individual and collective Player Involvement - with the content and with each other.

Distill it further, and we find that the gift of Web 2.0 to serious game design is the technical ability to integrate learner-generated content and to have the learner community rate its quality and relevance.

Consider, then, a fully-tagged repository of learner-generated content that results from learners playing through a purposeful game design that might require players to submit content from time to time. (Then consider including ALL game world content in a repository for review and evaluation by the community.) The content that best serves the learning community in achieving their individual and collective learning goals rises to the top.

Why is this cool? First, engagement and involvement of the learner. Second, feedback - not just to each other, but to the designers as well. Third, learning - through content development and through group feedback.

I'm serious,
Anne