Virtual Learning Worlds

The Games and Culture journal recently published an issue devoted solely to World of Warcraft. The articles touch on all the fun WoW things you’d expect, like:
- Guilds
- PvP
- Machinima
- Myth
- Gameplay

I haven’t had a chance to read any articles yet, but since I read TerraNova a lot, and nearly all of theses authors write over there, it probably won’t be entirely new stuff. If only I could figure out a way to tie my PhD to WoW…

Jenova Chen, designer behind flOw, was recently interviewed over at Joystiq. He did his master’s thesis on something called Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) in games. I always understood what DDA could do, in terms of data collection during the flow of the game to adjust difficulty, but Jenova has a different take on it (and even a new name, Embeded Difficulty Adjustment, or EDA):

Take Shadow of the Colossus, for example. You have to beat one giant after another. I reached a point where I couldn’t beat this one giant. I have no choice – I can’t skip him, I can’t work past him, I have to basically give up on the game. If that game uses the flOw system, the player can at least play other giants and when they’re more skillful they can come back. This automatically increases the playtime of other players.

I’m not so sure I completely understand how EDA differs from emergent gameplay and simple decisions that each player makes as he/she moves through a game world. But, could something like this work in an online learning scenario? I often wonder if certain elearning applications would work in a very non-linear fashion. Not just having the ability to bounce around between applications or documents for learning, but being situated in one elearning application, that has multiple paths and decisions the user makes to guide his/her own learning. If that application had some sort of DDA in the background, that positioned or suggested certain chunks of content in a certain manner after the learning has made progress…could be interesting.

The “Come Out and Play!” festival takes place in New York City next week, and looks like an absolute blast. Basically, the streets of NYC turn into a giant gameboard, for participants to take part in creative games within the city limits for 3 days (see the About page for more info). For example:

MEGAputt: a gigantic game of mini golf, played in Manhattan’s beautiful East Village. Teams of three battle each other, designed game hazzards, and naturally occurring hazards such as cabbies, skate punks, and pedestrians as they navigate a par 1000 course.

Shufflesition: Tag Shufflesition is a mobile game of movement, mimicry and mime, that uses iPods to see how fast can you find out who’s “it”!

Body Pong: Play the classic video game Pong - minus the screen! You’ll be on the court, using your sense of hearing to track the ball and your body as the paddle to hit it!

Just reading through all the games is quite a trip! I remember watching a real-world Pac-Man game a while back, and it looked hysterical (see http://pacmanhattan.com/ for more info).

Aside from being a lot of fun, I think these types of games provide a very active, engaging opportunity for learning. For instance the Pac-Man game looks to use GPS devices and cell phones to track the movements of the players down on the streets. A lot of the other games require the use of various technologies to win or solve puzzles. Many collaboratively. Two thoughts:
1. Would something like this work at our university? If it wasn’t tied to a class, could we somehow organize and hold an event like Come Out and Play! that students, faculty, and staff would take part in? There’s not much to do around central PA unless it’s football season…so maybe.
2. Could we create games like this within a course structure for learning? I’ve been thinking a lot about a course Cole and I pitched several years ago, something along the lines of Creativity and Innovation in IT. A quick google search yields three such courses at other universities with similar titles. I still believe the Institute could teach a similar course once a year, and utilize activities like this to teach innovate and creative concepts in a fun and engaging way…something that seems to lacking at R1 schools these days.

I’ve owned my share of consoles, all the way back to the Atari 2600 (which I still have in my office, and makes an appearance at the office Xmas party sometimes). My latest purchase was an Xbox, probably two years ago. Halo was a fantastic game, but after completing it, I rarely used the system. It’s sat under my home theater system for over a year now, and all my controllers are still on loan to friends.

The Xbox 360 has some interesting features, especially Xbox Live and it’s online capabilities. One of the early top selling games was a $10 download called Marble Blast Ultra. In a time of TripleA titles and teams of hundreds working on a game costing millions to develop, it’s fantastic to see a distribution channel for small studios and indie developers to push their games to the public. I read about PS3 from time to time…but Sony is shooting themselves in the foot…repeatedly.

Then there’s the Wii, from fan favorites Nintendo. Ever since the debut of the Wii-mote, I’ve been thinking I should buy a Wii. In the name of research, of course. Then I read a recent announcement from Nintendo, and I’m sold. Finally, a company had the guts to climb out of the “bigger, brighter, and faster” rut that all consoles and games in general has been in for a while. Here’s to hoping the Wii is a huge success with both gamers and non-gamers alike!

It appears the Dean of Wharton is down with this whole idea of Virtual Learning Worlds (VLWs). In a monthly brown bag with students, Dean Harker mentions:

Wharton’s committed to teaching students to be good learners. Right now, almost every business school is teaching students using the case method, with a mix of lectures and simulations. I think that the next big teaching innovation will come from the area of virtual worlds. Think Sim City or The Sims in a business environment.

I had to re-read this a few times, to convince myself that someone in the upper echelons of academia in the country (Wharton is one of the top MBA schools in the country from what I understand) is taking notice of virtual worlds, and the untapped potential they have in educational environments. Maybe someday I can sell this domain name for big bucks, spend half my time in San Juan, and the other half consuling on VLW projects.

The metaverse continues to grow I guess. In addition to musicians and advertisers taking up residence in Second Life, now comes…a governor? Mark Warner, former Virginia Governor, held a Q&A session in Second Life last week. By the looks of it, not many people attended. I wonder what it must feel like, being an ex-governor and potential presidential candidate, talking to people that look like this.

Other interesting game-related news…World of Warcraft made the front page of the NY Times (at least I’m told it was on the front page…I read it online). Finally, an author took a somewhat unbiased approach to covering a MMO, and didn’t focus on how these games are evil, lead to social isolation, suicide, destruction, and the ninth level of Dante’s Inferno. My favorite quote (lots of good ones):
“I play this game six nights a week from 8 p.m. to midnight,” he said in a telephone interview. “When I say that to people, sometimes they look at me a little funny. But then I point out that most people watch TV at least that much, and television is a totally mindless experience.

“Instead of watching ‘The Lord of the Rings’ as a three-hour experience, I am now participating in the epic adventure.”

In Penn State specific news…apparently we are the #2 gaming school in the country. The study isn’t all that ‘academic’, but it actually has some merit to it. They based the rankings on size of the student body; geographical location; student organizations; tournaments and LAN parties; tech-friendliness; Internet connections; and curriculum. We ranked high on all but one item: game curriculum. Go figure…

And if you’ve read this far…you’ll want to go watch this. Millet summed it up best: “Badass”