The subject of games and simulations in education and learning has been talked about quite a lot again recently. There is no way I can cover all the work that is being done in this area (or do it justice) so I’ll link to as many of the work I’ve been reading as I can remember and find, and point out some of the choicest quotes.

Ben Betts: “The problem with E-learning games”

“Where goals are included as a part of the Plaything a Challenge is created. Challenges played without Competition are defined as Puzzle’s. Typically, this is where the majority of E-learning games and interactions lie. Whilst many of these E-learning objects are goal orientated, they do not actively present a competitor for the user to play against. Crawford defines this competitor as “an active agent against whom you compete”. Where this agent is apparent we have defined a “Conflict”. Conflicts in which you cannot interfere with your opponent’s performance are defined as “Competitions”.”

Chris Brannigan: “Simulated Death”

“Simulations are all about performance; undertaking actions, behaviours and thinking in a situation that closely approximates the reality to promote understanding and transfer. A big focus has been on ’suspension of disbelief’ – the degree to which learners can engage with the authenticity of the experience and produce realistic behaviour.”

Real Projects: “Game-based Learning Resources for LT2010”

I was honoured to be in the audience for Scott’s seminar at the LT2010 exhibition. Scott showcased some well-received games / simulations, and the link above is to the list of resources he used or spoke about in his presentation. Well worth spending time looking over and through them, there are some gems in there.

Steve Wheeler: “Just a game?”

“Around the table at lunch, in the Headteacher’s office, we sat eating pizza and drinking fruit juice with five year 10 students. The talk inevitably turned to Internet games … and suddenly the students because very animated. They enthused over Farmville, the Sims and other long games and talked about how much they enjoyed playing them.”

These are extremely well defined, well documented, and well designed games (and quite expensive to develop too) that have managed to make the subject of learning enjoyable. It isn’t until quite far into the game that the player realizes that they’ve learned something (time and/or character management, organisation, planning, etc).

“Such games are often maligned by some teachers and parents as a ‘waste of time’ and children do, if allowed, play for long periods of time on such games. But doesn’t that tell us something about the power of these tools to engage, enthrall and educate? How can we harness this power in the classroom – that is the question…”

I find that the name ‘game’ has negative connotations for some, which can be overcome very simply by calling them a simulation. Similar is that some people don’t understand why children or students would want to play a simulation, but a game is a given. The wrong terminology can turn people on or off. Get this right and you could be over the worst hurdle in presenting the idea of these ‘games’ for education.

Tony Bates: Moving educational games forward

“A useful introduction to some of the issues around educational gaming.”

Paul Pivec: “Does Game Based Learning Really Exist?”

View more presentations from Learning Without Frontiers.

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Well, here I am. Two days of training with Brian Bishop from Caspian gone and what next? Blimey, now I ‘ve got to build the game(s).

Brian was truly awesome, extremely knowledgeable and honest enough to say when he didn’t know something … and straight on the phone to the office to get the solution.

From introducing the interface, the characters, the environments, etc all the way through to managing the ‘scene flow’ interactions, character animations, conversations, communications, moving around the scene (and changing scenes) it is all so very complicated … but SO MUCH FUN!! Who’d have thought I’d be coming to work today to design a game?

So, what is it all about? Thinking Worlds, as I’ve already introduced in a previous posts “Caspian Learning; Game Based Learning 2009” and “eLearning Game; have you produced or used one?” is a;

“… globally unique 3D engine and authoring environment. Thinking Worlds enables designers to create and publish highly immersive simulations”.

Brian reckons that 1 hour of playing time is equivalent to 300 hours of development time. Food for thought before you start thinking “hey, this is easy”.

From my previous ‘playing’ with the software when I had it on a 30-day trial download, now we have the fully licensed version, I was able to produce a simple environment with object and characters and very basic interactions. The training has enabled me to properly visualise the pedagogy of the scenario for the game, as well as introduce the kind of techniques that enables the player to take different tracks through the game depending on decisions and performance.

So, if I’m going to create something for a Contract Law Unit, let’s use the Courtroom environment.

Click to enlarge

This is ‘empty’ but with minimal desks, chairs, etc. Using keyboard and mouse controls together you can easily move around the scene, going into each room, changing the aspect of the view (from above, from beneath, rotate left/right, etc) and start placing and planning the ‘game’.

Here’s one I worked on during the training;

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Here you can see (if you look at the bigger version);

• a stereo – will play audio MP3 when clicked (Guns n’ Roses; it was all I could find at short notice),
• Laptop – will open and play a downloaded YouTube clip,
• Spline (red line) – a character will walk along this line when the game starts. You can then, if you can catch him, stop him and enter into a communication,
• Extra characters – a few placed around to fill the court up,
• Documents – click on the document icon on the table and read copies of PDF or Word documents.

There is much that can be done here, and I know I haven’t got anywhere near the full feature or interaction list but I am loving it.

Part of the game above is that you can walk up to a door and move to another scene; in this case into a new environment, a different Office;

Click to enlarge

This is going to be part of the background story to why the player is in court.

So, why haven’t I shown you the game so you can walk around it yourself? I think I fluffed something up when I created it. When I came to publish it I get an error, which Brian and his team are looking into for me.

One downside of the current version (soon to be remedied) is that I cannot publish for the web with embedded video in the game (on the laptop, and projector screen), but it should work when publishing for a ‘standalone’ .EXE file. Another downside is really something individual to me; unless I use this software a lot over the next few weeks I will soon forget how to use it, especially when you start looking into the advanced interactions in the ‘scene flow’ arena.

I will be writing more about this as I do, generate, and learn more about it.

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