Why Video Games Matter

I admit that playing video games since a very early age has affected the way I view the world. This point is proven most regularly when I’m trying to motivate myself to take some sort of action, such as washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, or folding laundry. Most often, it takes the form of a countdown clock, ticking off seconds until I “run out of time” to accomplish a task, but I’ve been known to award myself points for accuracy, neatness, and task completion creativity wherever the situation presents itself! If you have picked up a console controller, opened an iOS or Android game, or even just spent time in the company of children, you are aware that time can be a highly motivating factor in getting you to perform a task.

So, why are we so motivated by time? I'd like to argue that it’s because we crave competition. We like to best the odds. To overcome boundaries. In short, we like to win. Humans are built to like games. We place ourselves in competition with one another and push ourselves to limits we may or may not have realized are within our reach. And when we play games and win, no matter what’s at stake, we feel a sense of accomplishment. We have conquered time, whether on a clock or by taking fewer attempts to accomplish the goal, and it feels gratifying.

Knowing this much, it’s easy to recognize the power video games have to motivate us, inspire us, and entertain us. As an educator, I see limitless potential for the role video games can play in preparing our students to compete in a global market. The challenge is not getting kids interested in playing video games, but rather in helping educators to recognize the academic implications of games-based learning and gamification, the practice of applying game design principles to real-life problems in order to increase productivity.

GAMES MAKE US MORE PRODUCTIVE

Playing video games requires work, and ingame work takes many forms. Completing level objectives may require a player to gather resources, earn a set number of points, or travel from one location to another within a world. Though this work could be seen as meaningless to those not playing the game, for the gamer these are the very missions standing between them and the progression of the game itself. They are critical to the advancement of the story, and in a well-developed game the in-game work contributes to skill mastery which will pay off later when approaching new objectives or challenges.

So what does this mean in terms of engaging our learners in the library? As it turns out, it means everything. Meaningful work gives learners a sense of purpose and relevance. When traditional work is assigned that lacks personal relevance to the learner, he is not motivated to complete it. Moreover, the skills required to complete the assignment are quickly forgotten, having not been presented in a context meaningful to the learner. Making the learning experience meaningful to students is something many of us take for granted in education. Discerning what I, as a teacher, think is meaningful and what I think is necessary to learn does not always perfectly align. Students are expected to master a myriad of skills in order to achieve college and career readiness. Making this content relevant to and aligned with student interests is paramount. If learners are interested in the subject, the content becomes less about work and achievement and more about play and exploration. All of this leads to what a colleague of mine would call “sticky” lessons, those learning opportunities that stick in the memories of the students. The greater the “stickiness” potency of a lesson, the more readily available the information is in the students’ working memory, increasing said students’ progress toward mastering the skills.

GAMES MAKE US MORE CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVERS

Games emphasize exploration and risk-taking. Gamers forego instruction manuals for the immediate immersive experience of on the fly mastery of game mechanics. Moreover, if the solution to an in-game problem is not obvious, the gamer will willingly expend numerous retries in order to figure things out. Most gamers don’t give a second thought to the “willingness to fail” mindset, accepting it as part of the necessary steps in achieving the end goal.

In the library we help build competencies in inquiry, web-based learning, and effective use of collaborative and technology tools, but how much of our time is focused on providing meaningful opportunities for students to explore concepts in ways that will allow them to think creatively about how to arrive at a solution? I myself am guilty of leading students to answers instead of allowing them a certain degree of frustration as individuals work to problem-solve. If I allowed them to solve problems in my library media class with the same attitude toward failure as a necessary means in working toward skill mastery, I would be, in effect, changing the culture of the classroom, if not the school. To allow time for solution exploration, the pace of lessons would need to change. In doing so, instructional units would require a greater amount of time, a precious commodity increasingly gaining value as teacher schedules become more overwhelmed. My principal has a great mantra for situations such as these: Sometimes you need to go slow in order to go fast. It speaks to the need for educators to allow themselves permission to slow down the pace of instruction in order to allow a greater amount of foundational skill mastery. In doing so, students will be able to move through future content more quickly, having already mastered basic competencies.

GAMES IMPROVE PERSEVERANCE

Let’s return to failure for just a moment. Failure happens regularly in gaming. It’s how we learn and how we master skills. But failure plays a deeper role that is almost countercultural to the way we educate our students. In games, failure is necessary for the gaming experience to be enjoyable. Game theory describes a flow state, somewhere between boredom and anxiety, in which things “click” for the gamer. Games that are too easy will not sustain the player’s attention. However, it is not necessary for the entire gaming experience to be challenging as this could also result in a negative gaming experience, causing the player to abandon the game. Rather, the ideal in-game setting challenges a player’s skill set just enough to elicit stress without turning the player off from the gaming experience. In these moments gamers persevere to meet their objectives, and completing the task does not come easily. However, overcoming obstacles and achieving the objective are deeply satisfying.

How often do our students achieve a flow state in school? When all synapses are firing and we are able to “see the code” (to reference The Matrix), something really incredible happens: Students find confidence in their work and their ability to achieve. When students feel flow, their brain is able to retrieve the skills and knowledge necessary for completing the task at hand without the student needing to actively seek it. It’s the time when we lose ourselves in the work and only fully appreciate the breadth of what we’ve accomplished by stepping back from the work and surveying the scene. Providing greater time on a task is critical to helping students achieve flow state, as is putting them into academic situations that require perseverance in order to achieve the outcome. Without this opportunity to experience flow, the students are left with only two states of attentiveness during instruction: anxious or bored.

GAMES BUILD RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Materials stored by a player in video games are universally known as inventory. Some games require strategic management of inventory, such as food, ammunition, or found objects, for significant playtime in the game. Most games limit the amount of materials a player can store on-person, sometimes providing alternate storage for material hoarding, in the case of storage lockers or the like. Other games incentivize resource collecting by including rare or hidden items or by awarding achievement trophies to players who can collect all of a certain item or category of items.

Imagine limiting the number of resources a student could use to solve a problem and letting the student select which resources would serve the problem best. Or offering students incentives for surpassing the requirements of an assignment in such a way that some students may be motivated to double their work output in order to earn recognition for completing the extra work. This practice of taking game design elements and applying them to problems in order to increase productivity is known as gamification, and, though the term may be unfamiliar to many, at its core it is not a foreign concept to highly effective teachers. When we intentionally limit students’ resources—including the number of materials that can be used, the selection of source material through which they can research, or the time students have to complete a task—we are creating stress for the student. That stress helps to establish an environment in which the student must perform to a certain degree or standard in order to meet the goal. It’s the incentive many students need in order to do their best, and it’s also one many are familiar with because of their experience playing video games.

GAMES GIVE US COMMUNAL AFFINITY

Video games are usually played alone, but that does not mean that the experience is solitary. Unlocking achievements, mastering skills, accomplishing objectives, and discovering hidden content are all characteristics that define an individual gamer’s role in the “tribe,” and the gaming community, as much as it is based on competition, embraces discovery and skill. You need only look so far as YouTube to see the strength of the gaming community in exhibiting skills, learning from one another, and pushing the limits of their capabilities and gamer prowess in order to earn the respect of their peers. It is a place where it doesn’t matter what games you play, what talents you bring, or how many years of experience you’ve built—every single person has something unique to contribute.

Our classrooms and libraries can function more like these gamer tribes, too, but it requires intention on the part of the teacher-librarian or classroom educator. Understanding the needs of the students and recognizing what motivates these students to exceed the limits of their perceptions takes time, patience, and crafting. And by taking a note or two from video games, our students can be more productive in class, approach problem-solving more creatively, demonstrate greater perseverance, manage resources effectively, and establish a community among their classmates.