Time to talk gaming

With so much great research coming out about gaming in education, now's a better time than ever to adapt gaming into your instructional practice. If you're interested in game-based learning or gamification but aren't sure what next steps to take, you should join our Level Up Book Club. We're taking on those questions and more together, so there's no reason to ever feel like you're taking on a colossus alone. Read the monthly Level Up book selection, participate in the weekly challenges, or just follow the #levelupbc hashtag on Twitter. It's good stuff. I promise.

And now... the love letter I've been promising myself I'd write about my current favorite game and how it seamlessly demonstrates sound gaming principles that work like gangbusters in the classroom!

Introducing Rayman Origins.

For those unfamiliar with the Rayman franchise, let's summarize by saying that Rayman is loving-life free-spirited bad-guy-basher with a huge smile and floating hands and feet. The color palette is always vibrant and the world settings are diverse and immersive. But my favorite part of this game (and arguably the quality that works best in Rayman's favor) is the game's refusal to take itself seriously.

I play games regularly (and perhaps obsessively), often allowing gaming to distract from my work and, it goes without saying, allowing work to distract from my gaming. Much like my reading habits, it's not uncommon for me to have several games going an different systems over the same period of time. I'm currently absorbed in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Nintendo Wii while rarely missing a night to tuck myself into bed with a few minutes of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (DS) or Super Mario Brothers 3D Land (3DS) on my 3DS handheld system.

Ah! But I'm getting distracted.

I had an amazing revelation while conquering the end stages of Rayman Origins. Rayman is a superb game by design, but it's design also makes it a superb example of how we can extract game design and sound gaming principles from the world of gaming and apply them to a non-gaming situation (a practice known as gamification).

So, what can we learn from the game design of Rayman Origins?

One New Skill at a Time

There are a slew of unique skills to unlock in Rayman, but to start, you're only able to use the directional pad for movement and a single button to jump. There's no need for ancillary skills until the player has mastered those skills which are thought to be the most basic and essential. Why overcomplicate things or, worse, start the player off with so many skills that he/she learns to survive early stages without ever using a given move. Instead, skills are introduced as needed to progress and players are given the opportunity to master each skill in turn in order to move forward in the game. This idea, known as cascading information theory, assures that the player will feel successful because he or she is challenged in a world where they have already mastered the skills necessary to succeed. New skills will be introduced in proceeding levels, but failure at the current level won't be because you don't know how to do something. Rather, failure results because you're still working toward mastery of the skills you do know.

In education we can unknowingly throw children into the middle of a project in which they may not have the mastered skill in order to succeed. We may assume that they should have gained these skills from previous grades or classes, but without testing for mastery early on we, as teachers, are really setting ourselves up in a bad situation. If a game falsely assumes that I have already mastered the skills necessary to progress (this can happen in sequels or, simply, in poorly designed games), the result will more likely be that I will become so frustrated that I no longer want to play the game at all. Think of what the implications are for education in this situation. A child could assume he or she will never be successful in your class if given one too many opportunities where he/she is unable to succeed. This can also go another way. If I'm able, by some fluke or miraculous turn of events, to pass a level, I could face an even more challenging environment where my failure is, likewise, eminent. This is not fun. Squeaking through one overwhelming task just to face an equally daunting assignment without an opportunity to improve my skills will not be a pleasurable experience. This is when the students begins to dread coming to your class, no matter how fun or appealing you try to make it. You can dress up the game any way you'd like. The bells and whistles won't matter if it's no fun or too difficult to play.

Not Before You're Ready

Not knowing what to do in a level can be maddening. In a puzzle game such as The Legend of Zelda series, this is a game component players accept and expect with each new game iteration. Even in these cases, however, good games set the player up for more challenging puzzles and build gradually to the level of mind-stumping frustration (this is where the player achieves those feelings of fiero, where you lift both arms proudly in the air at your win against what felt at the time like insurmountable odds). Those experiences are good. Starting off the game with a belt fool of unfamiliar tools and not knowing which to use in order to progress forward? That's a recipe for frustration and one that could easily extinguish any interest the player previously had for the game.

In education we see this happen when a student is given a task in which he or she lacks the skills to be successful. If the student cannot determine what to do in order to "pass" the assignment, he or she becomes frustrated which may lead to wanting to abandon the assignment altogether. The only problem is that's not an option in school. Common educational practice does not always address students at the level (and with the skills) they enter each assignment. This goes back to the "one size fits all" mentality that more teachers are guilty of then care to admit, this blogger included. We may not mean to do it, but expecting a student to produce a result when he or she has not mastered the skills necessary to successfully do so is evidence of poor game design, so to speak. The problem is creating an environment where a class of diverse learners can each progress through work at the pace appropriate to the individual far exceeds the amount of planning and coordination of instruction typical to teaching. And yet, we as teachers could arguably experience much greater satisfaction (and much less frustration) if we allowed our students to perform at their skill level and develop new skills at their own pace, with the expectation of reaching a predetermined goal (i.e. rubric expectations) in a given amount of time (i.e. assignment deadline).

Moving Forward Takes Failure

You die a lot in Rayman. But it's okay. The game even has built-in components that reassure the player that dying is okay. There are no "lives" in Rayman. Just one continuous retry after another. The music doesn't even miss a bit. nor does the load time. You fall off a cliff; you immediately restart at the last save point of the level. You walk into an enemy; you bounce back to face the enemy without so much as skipping a beat. No shame. No waiting. No time to ruminate on failure, just on how to progress to the next platform, past the next enemy, or to the next goal. If you die too much, a continue screen pops up asking if you want to stay on the level or leave. There's no shame in leaving and the game makes that clear by pointing out how "really dangerous" the level is. If you were to pick up the game from a friend's save point (assuming he/she is ahead of you), you would likely experience this screen a lot.

In education we don't often give students endless retries. There's just not enough time in the day and, besides, we want all of the kids to stay on the same assignment because that's easier for us to manage, right? Can you sense my own conviction here? Finding a way to promote regular failure is a key component of game design that could transfer nicely to education if given the right learning environment. Finding safety in failing doesn't lead to laziness of complacency. Rather, it informs the player that it's okay to take risks and try even harder. The player knows he or she will have the opportunity to restart, so trying something new doesn't feel so much like abandoning all of your hard work up to that point. So, what if we could build that kind of thinking into education? Imagine being able to foster the kind of learning environment where students fail and restart, fail and restart, fail and restart until they have a true mastery of the skill and produce results that support skill mastery. There would be no question as to whether or not a kid "gets it" and he or she could presumably demonstrate the skill in a variety of environments and situations (as you would in a video game) to further support skill mastery. As a teacher, I revel at how a parent-teacher conference could proceed if I knew my individual students on that level.

The "Accepted Reality" Can Change

One of the understandings I couldn't let go (partially because it tricked me so regularly) was the insistence Rayman puts on the player to learn and unlearn, to expect and then be surprised. Just when I thought I "knew" the game, that the game had earned my trust and that I was starting to feel really successful, the game design altered and forced me to rethink the environment. An easy place to point this out is in the treasure chase stages. An anthropomorphic treasure chest realizes you've just walked into its territory and so begins a perilous high speed chase through impossible terrain. You run and run. You leap what feels like impossible distances, only barely avoiding being crushed by falling rock, squeezed in narrowing passageways, and other ridiculous circumstances, all, if you're anything like me, while basically holding your breath from one leap to the next. These stages call for players to throw everything they have into the chase. Other stages throughout the game follow this same idea, but are quickly followed by environments where speed betrays the player. It's an ongoing battle of exercising caution and carelessness at the right times, and the creators of Rayman are pros and changing things up just when you get comfortable.

In education we tend to stick with what's comfortable and familiar to the students without ever throwing curve balls. Unexpected tasks cause anxiety and frustration, two qualities no loving teacher would ever intentionally place on his or her students, right? But let's not forget that, in the world of Rayman, these changes are not anything I'm not already equipped as a gamer to handle. I've mastered the skills. I wouldn't become more adept at playing the game if provided the exact same experience time and time again. Challenging my expectations requires that I improve my performance in order to succeed. If we constantly provide students with typical learning opportunities, it goes that we should expect typical performance gains. If, however, we challenge students, not regularly, but on occasion and when they're least expecting it, to rethink how they apply their skills to a new situation, students will experience growth and will attain new mastery of familiar skills. Students should trust us as teachers. But within this trust, they should also learn that we will, on occasion, place them in situations that are initially academically uncomfortable, knowing that they will use the skills they have already mastered in order to succeed on the task.

It's Different When We Work Together

Playing Rayman alone is a whole lot of fun, but it's a completely different experience from playing with a friend. Aside from the obvious enjoyment of exploring the lush environments and facing challenges together, multiplayer is a shared experience and, therefore, is full of shared failures, wins, and moments of fiero. Multiplayer does not necessarily make Rayman easier, either. It just make it different. You approach challenges differently because another player is able to monitor a side of the screen, watch for things you may not catch, or reach locations you though unreachable. Other players also bring other skills and different approaches to the game. Inevitably, two players won't play the exact same way and, therefore, will have different experiences playing the same game. This quality means that you'll naturally go after different goals (such as collecting the yellow sprites which lend to achieving higher scores and unlocking secret levels) and will be able to accomplish more together that a player could accomplish alone.

In education group work is almost always miserable. Someone always assumes a leadership role. Another almost reliably sails through the assignment without contributing much more than his or her name to the rubric. And somewhere in between is a member just trying to have his or her ideas heard. I've had great experiences (both as a student and as a teacher) with group work, as well as numerous horrible experiences that have caused me to reconsider at length how best to foster effective, meaningful group work. The key is somewhere in the way good multiplayer works. Both (all) players must be working together in order to succeed. If one member trails behind he/she will prevent the group from moving forward. Additionally, all group members should have (and should feel like they have) something to contribute to the success of the group. Pairing with someone whose skill level far exceeds yours won't be much fun for you or he/she. Finding someone who is equally (yet differently) skilled can make for a really great experience. We want group work to be a really great experience for our students. We want the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts. We, as teachers, just need to be more intentional about how and when we use group work.

Epic Bosses

At some point there has got to be a boss battle. The bigger and the more intimidating, the better. The bosses in Rayman are huge, often consuming nearly half the screen. Studying the boss's movement and attack patterns while assessing for a weakness are key components to winning. Tie this in with a rousing score, spine-tingling sound effects, and a little bit of hope that I may actually survive and come out on top, and you've got one epic boss battle.

In education we don't pit students against bosses too often. Sure, you could stretch and make an argument that quarterly assessments or statewide testing can equate to boss battles, but those are pretty lame bosses, don't you think? This is one that still perplexes me, though. I've been thinking a lot about what a boss battle could "look like". When I play a game, I like that I can see that I'm wearing the boss down. Sometimes the boss goes through different stages, weakening or bringing out new, more deadly attacks in the process. I like that there's victory music after the boss collapses and I like that the game often indicates, in some way, how I've leveled up in the process. Did I unlock a new skill? Open a new area on the map to explore? Improve some of my character stats? Earn vital experience points? All of these things have great return when it comes to my commitment to a game. What would it look like if we could apply the same qualities to a learning experience? Could I determine the assignment's weakness and attack it accordingly? Maybe a culminating project in geometry would contain a component where I could complete the task more quickly by demonstrating skills in a specific area, such as determining the unknown length of a side on a given triangle for a succession of problems. Could the boss reform and attack even more furiously in its final stage? Maybe all of the skills I demonstrated successfully on the project could be pulled together to solve a real life problem hinging on my skills mastery, such as designing a strategy guide for how to overcome a bully or solve a quadratic equation. I can see that this process would take a lot of thought and effort, but I'm confident my students would thrive if provided the right learning environment to demonstrate their skill mastery.

Leave Motivation for the Completionists

A completionist is the term for a player who seeks to complete every aspect of a game, whether this means locating every item, unlocking every unlockable, or mastering every skill possible. Opportunities present themselves differently depending on the game, but a completionist doesn't leave a single drop when it comes to full exploration of a game. I'm a completionist. I find every star possible in Super Mario Galaxy, achieve every gold medal in Super Mario Kart 7, find every hidden item and complete every sidequest in Final Fantasy XII. This comes with the tradeoff of spending innumerable hours immersed in the game's world. But good games make it worthwhile for completionists by offering secret game endings, bonus content, or even just the end screen or achievement medal indicating you did it all. It's not for everyone, nor, by any means, is it necessary to go to such great lengths to explore every inch of a game. But completionists find satisfaction therein and that's why they do it.

In education our classes are full of completionists that often don't know what to do with themselves. They complete an assignment early and the teacher asks them to read quietly at their desk. They're finished with a project days before the rest of the class and the teacher seeks out some sort of extension (or, perhaps, reassigns the child as an assistant to the students who trail the furthest behind). I often wonder how best to serve the completionists in my classes. While some are more than content to pour energy into supporting their classmates, others seek greater brain stimulation. This leads me to consider what side quests I could fashion into my lessons or units for those completionists to seek after mastering the projects the rest of the class are laboring through. The challenge, of course, is knowing that you are crafting an activity for a very small number of students which, by all intents and purposes, must require minimal attention from you so that you can assist the rest of the class on the main assignment. But this has been a common theme to this post: Are you, the teacher, willing to put in even more time on an assignment or project in order to make it more meaningful for every single student in your class? I'm confident I know the answer to that one, but the challenge is knowing that school will inevitably "get in the way" of good instruction.

Nevertheless, it is a worthy goal worth keeping in mind as we approach a new school year.

(Originally published on the Busy Librarian blog: http://www.busylibrarian.com/2012/08/gamification.html - more)