Writing a Game that Teaches?

[tarafore]

I'm not sure if this belongs here, but I think it's the closest fit, and I think the Forge is probably the richest environment to get ideas from.

Ever since I read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, I've been fascinated by the use of computers, and more specifically, of narrative and the game in education. To give you a short version of part of the story, the main character is tutored by an interactive story book from age five. It teaches her everything from how to read to how to fight to how to program in binary code, all through an interactive story-game. The idea was inspiring, and I would love to make something like that real (granted, it would be on a smaller scale to begin, or perhaps a more distributed scale).

I've taught and tutored public school students from elementary school up to community college, and worked as a high school teacher for four years, and it's lead me to the conclusion that our public school system is fatally flawed, deeply dysfunctional, and ultimately obsolete. It's a 19th century industrial age institution utterly unsuited to teaching 21st century digital boys and girls how to survive the information age, the upcoming biotech age, and the technological singularity that is at least theoretically possible within current students' lifetimes.

I'm enrolled for the fall in a graduate Instructional Technology program, but it will primarily teach me technology, and I want to learn how to design games that teach, starting with low-tech Role-Playing Games and board games (which I certainly can create on my own). The problem is, I don't entirely know how to do it.

It's possible that creating a base RPG isn't the way to go, but that focusing on the narrative as well as the game, by creating an adventure, possibly one that includes simple RPG rules, or one for a publish system like D20) or boardgame scenario that teaches useful information or skills would help.

I'd REALLY appreciate any comments any of you might have on this. I'm not being specific enough, please ask me to elaborate.

Thanks!

[Krippler]

What exactly is it you want to teach? I think RPGs are very well suited for generating discussion and exploring ones own morals, prejudice ect. but I've never learned anything apart from narration and perhaps the tidbit of historical facts (but I probably played the wrong games!).

[oriondarkwood]

I'm not sure if this belongs here, but I think it's the closest fit, and I think the Forge is probably the richest environment to get ideas from.

Ever since I read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, I've been fascinated by the use of computers, and more specifically, of narrative and the game in education. To give you a short version of part of the story, the main character is tutored by an interactive story book from age five. It teaches her everything from how to read to how to fight to how to program in binary code, all through an interactive story-game. The idea was inspiring, and I would love to make something like that real (granted, it would be on a smaller scale to begin, or perhaps a more distributed scale).

I've taught and tutored public school students from elementary school up to community college, and worked as a high school teacher for four years, and it's lead me to the conclusion that our public school system is fatally flawed, deeply dysfunctional, and ultimately obsolete. It's a 19th century industrial age institution utterly unsuited to teaching 21st century digital boys and girls how to survive the information age, the upcoming biotech age, and the technological singularity that is at least theoretically possible within current students' lifetimes.

I'm enrolled for the fall in a graduate Instructional Technology program, but it will primarily teach me technology, and I want to learn how to design games that teach, starting with low-tech Role-Playing Games and board games (which I certainly can create on my own). The problem is, I don't entirely know how to do it.

It's possible that creating a base RPG isn't the way to go, but that focusing on the narrative as well as the game, by creating an adventure, possibly one that includes simple RPG rules, or one for a publish system like D20) or boardgame scenario that teaches useful information or skills would help.

I'd REALLY appreciate any comments any of you might have on this. I'm not being specific enough, please ask me to elaborate.

Thanks!

At first let us review the things RPG's have taught us joking of course http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

Now seriously we all know RPG's in general teach us the following
Math (loads of basic algbra formulas ie d20 + weapon bouns + character bouns + stat bouns + feat bouns - penalites = armor class hit)
Social skills usually you have to be somewhat sociable to last long in a RPG group as a person and a character
Cause and Effect - ie if I kill the king I will be killed by his guards
Prefect world vs Reality aka the rules do not always cover everything
Psychology - Is the DM really trying to kill us or cheat us out of some treasure
Probability - the chances of me rolling a crit is 1 out of 20 or 5%

I guess the main part is deciding what you wish to teach them and then see if their is something already on the market that does what you need it do to (or can be modified to do it)

Orion

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I think that creating a game that teaches is great. And starting there is not a bad idea, IF that is the sort of thing you like to do.
  BUT, if you have never designed a game before and you are not sure if you want to design a game, it might prove fruitless. Most people I know who have designed a game never stop to think if it was a good idea or not, so I am concerned that this may be an intellectual exercise in futility for you if its not your bag.
  However, baring that in mind, it wouldn't really hurt anything for you to take a stab at it.
  As to teaching through games, you have to walk a narrow line between preachy and/or overbearing and too subtle that the lesson is lost.
  Games that try too hard to teach lessons (especially moral lessons) typically turn people off to the game. However, if the lesson is used as a highlight and not a blunt instrument, it can be a wonderful thing to behold (and play). Finally, you can make the message so subtle that it is not apparent to the player and thus teaches nothing at all.

  I think in order to "hit the mark" You should design the system from the ground up (don't use d20 or Fudge or whatever), with the lesson in mind. For instance, if the lesson is that doing good is harder, but ultimately more rewarding, make a game where you get a penalty for doing good and a bonus for doing evil on a single task/conflict roll. But that the rewards for winning are slanted towards doing good. Something as simple as this highlights the reality of the lesson without mandating player action, right?

  Anyways, good luck man!

[Illetizgerg]

Could you give us a bit more information, like what kind of subjects you would like to try teaching, and what ages you're talking about? I was thinking about the points that Orion brought up, and I can understand how small children, for instance, could benefit from the arithmetic involved in adding and subtracting numbers from dice, however ultimately the tween demographic that most games are marketed towards will not get a whole lot from the experience.

- Gregory Zitelli

[chronoplasm]

I should keep an eye on this thread. I too am trying to make a game that teaches.

I think your approach should depend a lot on what it is you are trying to teach. A straightforward approach would work for things like history while more abstract concepts might require the game to work more like an analogy.

[NN]

What kind of teaching? Are you trying to make facts fun, or make an analogy with a game?

I remember one game from school which worked.

It was called Barter.

We were all peasants, harvest just in, trying to collect stuff to survive the winter.

(History) Teacher dealt out resource cards - Grain, Meat, Cloth, Firewood, etc, - you needed certain cards to survive (maybe it was something like 3 grain and 1 of everything else) - and then we started trading.

However, there were complications. The only one I remember well is that one kid got to be the Miller. They didnt get any cards, but, Grain cards didnt count until the Miller stamped them. So of course they charged for this. Gimme 3 grains, ill stamp em for you but keep one for me. I think there were Gold or Luxury cards as well, they did nothing for survival, but they were nice to have once you had the important stuff. Probably the resource cards werent random either, maybe some kids were shepherds and got mostly wool and meat, others were farmers and got mostly grain.

From this I learned

Being a peasant sucks
You cant eat Gold
Millers are bastards
Banditry is better than starving


Enough of my rambling, but I hope this shows an example of how a simple game could teach history and/or economics.

[Moreno R.]

In the latest Solmukotha 2008 Book, "Playground Worlds", there is an article about Osterskov Efterskole, a Danish school for 14-17 years old that base its teaching primarily on role-playing.

[madunkieg]

RPGs are great teaching tools, in part because they work differently from other mediums. RPGs aren't so great for passing along specific facts or accurate accounts. What they do teach very well  are systems, both how something works, letting people work through concepts through a process of exploration and experimentation. Take the rpg Steal Away Jordan, by Stone Baby Games. It lets players explore the social forces involved in slavery. That's something that's really hard to teach by just telling someone or describing it in a textbook. Fiction does a better job, but I think that rpgs do it best of all.

The question is, what are you wanting to teach?

[Jason Morningstar]

There's a forum for discussing educational roleplaying run by Matthijs Holter; if you are interested in the topic it is well worth a look.

I think it's very possible to build a framework around a traditional tabletop game that supports learning, without the pedagogy getting in the way of ass-kicking fun.  Steal Away Jordan is a good example of this.  Other games to look at: Carry:  A Game About War (although it explicitly models fiction) and Spione. 

[FrankBrunner]

I've used role-playing games in my teaching at two different schools. To me, the most important thing is to let the game be the game. Let it be fun. Don't make it a teaching game. In other words, play D&D, or Traveller, or Hero, or Once Upon a Time, or Werewolf/Mafia, or even Apples to Apples. Don't try to get a game that is educational. That won't be any fun, and then you might as well just go back to lecturing. Play a game that is fun. Design your own if you must, but a game has to be fun to make it worthy of being a game.

Then, after the session - or in quick breaks during the session if that works better for you - bring up the teaching. Did someone in your Traveller session jump across two star systems, slow down in-system, and land on a planet? There's your special relativity and Newtonian gravity lesson. Give them two homework problems: at 99% the speed of light, how long would the jumps have taken? And, given the Traveller stats for the planet, what would the force exerted by the thrusters on the Broadsword-class merc cruiser need to be in order to provide a safe constant downward acceleration of 2*10^-5 g? Stuff like that. Or maybe your Travellers met up with a new alien culture. The follow-up questions can be: How would the Hardy-Weinberg principle apply to this new species? What effects would you expect to see represented phenotypically in members of this species living far from the equator?

Tailor your campaign (and game!) to the needs of your class. And then just ask relevant questions about your campaign!

[David Berg]

Creating some sorts of game goals that can only be achieved via acquired knowledge is a good way to get players psyched about learning.  Whether the knowledge that's imparted regards modern reality, ancient reality, or fiction will determine what kinds of sources are required by the game.

I've played several games run by GMs who knew more about medieval economics than I did, and when my character couldn't keep his hard-won loot because he forgot to pay a salvage tax, I damn well learned something there.  Another GM wouldn't have been able to do the same teaching with the same game materials, though -- he would've needed to read a lot first.

I like the idea of a game where my friend teaches me about cars and I teach him about astronomy, so our space-faring mechanic characters can Win.  I assume any group of players will have ample knowledge to share with each other, if a game were to make the process of sharing fun and the results rewarding.

[Ian Mclean]

Greetings Tarafore,
I happen to be working on developing a game/course for the college I attend that will endeavor to teach Game Design and Development. I would be interested in any feedback you might have about the concept I have floated here, and I would be delighted to discuss with you game design and development, resources and materials for the same, and anything else that might appeal to you about the subject.

To start with, "Game Design Workshop" by Tracy Fullerton was very helpful to me for defining what game design is and how it differs from game production. It describes various facets, processes, principles, methodologies, and qualities associated with game design.

"What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" by James Paul Gee is an fascinating dissertation on the fact that games are not only fantastic learning devices in and of themselves, but that they are dependent on that fact. The strongest games are always the games that have at their backs good learning principles. Any game that is unlearnable and that teaches very little or nothing of consequence fails.

Lastly, I would suggest taking a gander at "Persuasive Games" By Ian Bogost; I have yet to get very far in that one, but the argument it makes is that games use a relatively new kind of rhetoric to form complex, dynamic arguments that demand player feedback. He calls it procedural rhetoric.

Something to remember is that the medium is the message, so how you teach what your teaching affects what is learned by the students. Finally, we learn what we do. You want a game that will teach players? Follow the example of NN's teacher. His game taught in a visceral way what it was like both by it's form and it's content to be a peasant in the past.

I hope that helps.
-Ian Mclean (No relation to Ian Bogost )