Virtual Learning Worlds

I wrote about the game Privates in May, hoping that Microsoft would pass it for XBLA.  No news from Microsoft about the game passing internal tests, but the game is available for free via Channel 4’s website.  After spending 30 minutes or so playing, I believe this game is a fantastic example of educational games done right.  Recently, I’ve been involved in a few discussions around the design philosophy of educational games.  In the context of these discussions, two somewhat conflicting viewpoints arise:

1. The instructional design paradigm.  The game needs to be instructionally valid and accurate above anything else.  Content is still king in this paradigm, and the content should be extremely accurate to convey the material effectively.
2. The game design paradigm.  The game needs to be…well, a game.  It needs to have game mechanics, that combine educational content with fun.  Content isn’t necessarily king, but still important.  The *design* is king, making the experience fun and engaging for the player.

The first paradigm seems to lead to more simulation-style games, where designers attempt to insert very accurate content into an interactive environment, allowing the player to experiment with variables that affect some sort of model the designer is trying to convey.  The second paradigm focuses more on blending the instructional content into a game experience.  Personally, I tend to fall in the game design paradigm, but understand the value of the instructional paradigm.  The biggest pitfall I see from folks in the instructional paradigm is the mindset that the game should be able to stand entirely on its own, as an instructional activity.

I think this is a mistake.  Think about how we learn for a moment. Think about how good teachers go about teaching their students.  It is almost NEVER a single method or a single instructional strategy.  It’s a combination of things, like lectures, assignments, powerpoint, etc.  A game is just another way to engage students, it doesn’t need to be 100% accurate, it simply needs to provide enough content to spark a student’s motivation, to drive them to other learning outlets like Wikipedia, friends, instructors and so on.

The designers for Privates sum this up nicely:

You know how you wouldn’t write a history essay based on your experiences playing a World War II shooter? Well, Privates is a bit like that - while the action takes place in and around peoples’ parts, the anatomy is in no way biologically accurate. We’ve had to make loads of concessions in order to make the game fun to play. There’s still loads of important stuff to take from Privates. Just be sensible about which bits, eh?

I urge everyone to give this game a try.  It certainly is NOT a standalone sex education game.  But I can already envision what would happen if my niece were to play this.  It offers enough content to be compelling, but also offers solid and fun gameplay to keep you interested.  Once the game is over, I’m sure my niece would have a lot on her mind to go and look up on the web, as well as ask some questions of her parents (that they may or may not be ready to answer!)

NASA announced a gaming initiative a couple years back, and it looks like we might have our first glimpse of the results with Moonbase Alpha. A recent article describes NASA’s goal with the game:

The game is a proof of concept to show how NASA content can be combined with a cutting-edge game engine to inspire, engage and educate students about agency technologies, job opportunities and the future of space exploration.

The game does look somewhat interesting, based on the short teaser video embedded below. My big question: but is it fun? The video makes the game look rather dry, aside from the part where you pilot a robotic rover across the surface of the moon. I understand that a big part of this is to educate, but part of the magic of games is the fun factor, which leads to a huge impact on engagement. We talk a lot at ’serious game’ conferences about the balance of fun vs. educational content. With the audience NASA is shooting for (K-12 I’d wager), this game has to be fun first, with the educational content built-in to the flow of the gameplay. If this was a captive audience, maybe you could get away with focusing on the content first and the fun second…but that is not the case here.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a HUGE player of casual games. I’ve tried Mafia Wars and Farmville (among others), but just don’t stick around for long. Although, I DO like to keep an eye on trends in casual gaming as I believe this sector of gaming has a LOT to offer and is experiencing incredible growth. I specifically keep an eye on Facebook games because a lot of the insane growth numbers were generated by games like Farmville and other games by Zynga.

A recent article on Joystiq pointed out the massive decline of casual Facebook gamers in May. The original gamasutura article states:

…23 of the top 25 social games on Facebook (determined by monthly active users) forfeited users in May, and 12 of those saw an exodus of at least one million players. Zynga’s FarmVille, the most popular app on the social network, suffered the biggest losses as it surrendered over 7.7 million gamers just last month.

Things are definitely getting worse for Farmville, as they lost an estimated 4.4 million users in April. The likely culprit for this mass exodus? Apparently Facebook has changed the method that notifications from apps work. They want to make app notifications more streamlined and less spammy; but the spam part of these apps certainly seemed to have an impact on growth. Without the app spam, what’s the next method these innovative developers will try to get you back into your digital gangster or farmer lives?

Some strange data coming out of market research group NPD the last few months. First, NPD reported that game sales were down a wopping 26% in April 2010. They provide some guesses on why the big drop. The industry did see some quality releases in March, but April was a fairly slow month. Still…26% is one of the biggest drops since 2000, when you eliminate the holiday spending season in November and December. Strange…

Today I saw another reference to NPD research indicating that portable gaming is on the decline as console and PC gaming increases.

Huh?

With the continued success of handhelds like the Nintendo DS, the mobile gaming on various phone platforms and then throw in the release of the iPad…and mobile gaming is down?

This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but I think this is simply some irregularities, not foreshadowing a shift of some sort. Once Project Natal and the PS Move arrive on the market this holiday season, things should get even more interesting.

A fairly successful indi studio, Zombie Cow, recently unveiled their new effort, Privates. From their website:

Privates is a funky little game about tiny little condom-hatted marines going right up peoples’ rude areas and shooting all the nasty chompy things that tend to live there if you’ve been carelessly putting bits of yourself in silly places.

Ok, I think you can read that one of two ways:
1. This is going to be a fairly gross, disturbing game where you encounter gross things inside peoples’ bodies (ala Southpark’s Leminwinks episode).

2. This is going to be a game with an educational component, where the player has to learn about the body to succeed.

I get the feeling they are leaning more towards #2 than #1. Microsoft recently reported the game might not pass peer review process to launch on Xbox Live based on what they’ve read so far regarding the context of the game. Dan Marshal, a co-founder of zombie cow, chimed in:

…it’d be a shame if a huge number of teenagers missed out on some quality gaming and vital education because of some abstract, cellular-level innards and pubic hairs.

Here’s to hoping that they can get the game past peer review with Microsoft AND it’s a good game with some interesting educational aspects integrated into the gameplay.

Something that has been active internally with Blizzard for a long time now has just gone into Beta: Remote Auction House access via the web or an iPhone, iTouch or iPad.

For those few soles that never experienced World of Warcraft, the Auction House is just what you would expect: a central place for players to buy and sell goods between one another. The catch: many people play ‘the auction house game‘, buying low and selling high, following supply-and-demand trends. Some players that get very good at this then take their in-game gold, and sell it for actual real world dollars on sites like eBay and other game exchange services.

The magic circle of gaming has been broken around the edges for several years now, but it seemed to be on the fringe, something that was actively frowned upon and many times banned by publishers. While Blizzard still maintains that buying and selling of virtual goods for real money is against their Terms of Service, this move will increase the level of real money transactions for a time. Besides, allowing people to access the virtual world from outside the virtual world kind of breaks the magic circle anyway, right?

Some interesting times to be in the MMO space these days. Like usual, many companies are embarking on MMO projects (and if history is any indication, many will likely fail). BUT…some of the projects have the potential to really push the genre forward.

Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware): Bioware is the undisputed king of story in games. Just take a look at their catalog of games (Knights of the old republic, neverwinter nights, baludur’s gate, mass effect, dragon age) of great games that rely heavily on great story. With their more recent releases, they’ve taken storytelling to a new, interactive level where your decisions actually impact the characters you interact with and the world around you. Many game companies claim their games do this, but Bioware is the only company that pulls off the promise. They’ve promised this in an MMO, where story typically falls to the back burner. Especially YOUR story in an MOO. It’s very easy to get lost in the shuffle of thousands of people, where you stop feeling like your character narrative is unique and it simply becomes the same as hundreds of other characters. When the Old Republic hits in 2011, I hope we’ll see innovation in storytelling in an MMO.

Guild Wars 2 (ArenaNet): I enjoyed the original Guild Wars briefly, because a little game called World of Warcraft came out around the same time. I still pop-in to GW from time to time. Guild Wars 2 is shaping up to really innovate in the quest model of MMOs. In a typical quest, in games such as WoW, you might find an NPC that gives you a quest along the lines of “Please, save my farm from these zombies!” and you’re directed to go and kill 10 zombies. Well…the zombies aren’t really destroying the farm, they are just wandering around in a field, minding their own business. You go fill 10, turn in, and go on your way. Guild Wars 2 is implementing what they call a dynamic events system that could take the old model and turn it on its head. Building on the example above, if you (or someone else in the world) don’t stop the zombies, they WILL destroy the farm. Then, if no one wipes them from the farm, they WILL move to the closest town and start attacking that. Events will cascade from to the other, making a very unique environment that could potentially change each time you visit, and keep the game fresh for a long time.

Finally, we have Blizzard’s unannounced MMO project. Most of their leads from the original Warcraft are all working on the new game now. Knowing Blizzard’s history and high standards, plus the huge amount of knowledge they’ve gained with WoW…whatever they do next I’m sure will push the envelope in a LOT of ways from a design perspective.

The next 2-4 years will be a VERY interesting time, a time when we might see actual innovation in a genre that really just continues to build on the D&D design and mechanics established in the 70s and 80s.

A few things have been bouncing around in my brain lately on the game front. I’ve been a customer of Gamefly for about 3 months now, so I’ve been able to try a lot of games on the cheap. One thing that still irritates me is the input device for the Xbox 360 (yes, I’m talking about the controller). I guess the controller isn’t the sole problem, it’s in combination of designers trying to leverage every single button and button combo the controller has to offer. See GTA IV’s scheme below, and NOTE that many of the buttons have duel functions, some even 3 functions in the game.

* Photo from gaming today.

I tend to put a game down for weeks at a time, then come back to it. It’s frustrating when you come back to it and it takes 20 minutes to recall all the different button combos you need to beat a boss fight. I wonder if a gaming system with an ‘old skool’ input device would be profitable? Or making a controller like the NES (D-pad and 2 buttons) that is Xbox-compatible that designers could design for? Designers: You don’t HAVE to use all those buttons just because they are there!

This brings me to another idea I’ve had for a while: why not provide a subscription model to indie games on Xbox Live of the PSN? Spending $5-$20 for a crappy downloadable game is disheartening and puts a taint on possible future purchases, giving the buyer good reason to second guess. What if you provide a $20 per month model for access to Xbox Live? Maybe it’s structured in such a way that you can only have up to 4 games downloaded on your hard drive at any given time. Maybe it allows you to play up 50% of a game, then you’re forced to buy (vs. the typical 8-10% demos provide). Maybe it simply nets you 5 downloads a month? With the time commitment and complexity of most AAA games, I’m much more inclined to go the path of Indie games, but there just isn’t an appealing alternative model than outright purchases.

Finally, anyone catch Blizzard’s recent item in the Blizzard store? The Celestial Steed is a ridable mount in Warcraft, that offers NO gameplay advantages. Simply a 100% aesthetic ride for your digital persona in WoW.


* Photo from Joystiq

So this thing costs the player a one-time, $25 cost. Here’s a look at the math:
$25.00 x 200,000 purchases = $5,000,000

Here’s the kicker…Blizzard sold 200,000 of these mounts IN THE FIRST 4 HOURS it was on sale. That’s a cool $5mil, in 4 hours, for a digital horse you can ride around on that likely took a few artists and animators a couple weeks to produce.

Insane.

Last night on ESPN’s E:60 show, they ran an interesting segment on In-running wagering. In a nutshell, this is a method of gambling on games that are already in-progress. The gambler can use a handheld device provided by the Casino, or they can sit at a station resembling a cubicle, driven by touch screens to make wagers. The whole operation is driven by Cantor gaming (they are doing some extremely interesting gaming technology development). They built a computer with complex algorithms that, within seconds of a basket or a ‘change of state’ in a game, re-calculates odds within seconds. Over the course of a single game, one man had played a total of 89 wagers.

Listening to the gamblers ESPN interviewed, this type of gaming is eerily similar to online video gaming. One man described In running wagering as ‘the grind’, a term used consistently by players in MMOs talking about their advancement. The gambler stated that making $300-$500 a day is a solid outing, ‘It’s all part of the grind, slowly moving up and gaining money in small amounts’. He also discussed how the immediacy of In running wagering turns him on, similar to how the immediacy of online worlds engages millions of people every day.

They even interviewed someone in Vegas that treats addicted gamblers, and his concerns mirror exactly the concerns of online gaming addiction treatment professionals. When immediacy is such a big engagement factor, it’s very difficult to disengage. You can get drawn into something in a very deep, meaningful way based on the constant feedback loop, providing data streams at an alarming rate.

I always saw a loose connection between gambling and online gaming, but this piece by ESPN really strengthens the tie. Toss in the recent situation in South Korea where a massive betting scandal has been uncovered involving the top Starcraft players (remember, StarCraft is a HUGE spectator/sponsor sport there), and I think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg.

For the last week or so, while sitting at my desk over lunch, I fired up some talks by Jane McGonigal from the Institute for the Future. I attended one of Jane’s talks several years ago at the Game Developer’s Conference where she talked about one of the larger alternate reality games she designed, I love bees (in support of Halo 2’s release).

Jane is onto something interesting, focusing on how games, specifically MMOs and ARGs, can help us solve real societal problems. She illustrates how game designers create experiences that exemplify her 4 pillars of happiness, and how we can start to re-create these experiences in the real world to do some good. She cites that gamers play ~20 hours of games a week, akin to a part time job. If designers can somehow leverage this fact, and get gamers into MMOs that somehow have some inherent social value, we can much more quickly move to solve some of the larger issues facing our world.

Nothing like thinking big, eh?

She gave a talk a couple years back sponsored by the New Yorker where she elaborates on this. Personally, I think this is fascinating stuff and I’m hopeful this picks up momentum. But just listening to the moderator of this talk (as well as audience members and moderators of some of her other talks) it’s clear some people think she’s totally out of her mind or simply humor her. I guess on one hand that’s flattering, considering a lot of folks thought Einstein was crazy, too! But I do feel she (and a few other game designers thinking really big like Jesse Schell) are so far ahead of the curve, not enough people are listening.

Here’s to hoping this crop of designers begins to pick up momentum and we really do start seeing games for change.